Photo courtesy news360.lk Professor Urmila Phadnis the late of Lankanology in Indian academia was utterly discerning when she concluded over two decades ago in her last book (‘Ethnicity and nation-building in South…
The keynote speech by Mr. R Sampanthan, the leader of the main Tamil parliamentary party at the recent congress of that organization is in many respects a landmark event. It sheds light…
Photo courtesy UN May is the month of the diplomatic success of Sri Lanka and its friends at the Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in 2009. That…
Image courtesy JDS Each generation brings its own collective formation and experience to the Left project. Each historical period produces its own Left or mutates the existing Left. An abiding failing of…
Photo courtesy JDS Let’s learn the right lessons from the Geneva outcome, not the wrong ones. It is not the case that a small country such as Sri Lanka cannot fight a…
Image from The Nation It is almost a crime to lie to the people and mislead them on a matter of vital national interest. When it is committed by politicians it is…
Image courtesy South Asia Monitor I am appreciative of the fact that this is a seminar on geopolitics. I think geopolitics has been underestimated; perhaps overestimated earlier and then there was a…
Photo courtesy The US resolution at the UN HRC in Geneva has deepened the schisms in Sri Lankan society. That resolution will have the same polarising function as did the Ceasefire Agreement…
A prophet spoke at the UNESCO in Paris this week, though he joked that having lived for 90 years, he had written thirty pages and found he had been turned into ‘a…
Photo courtesy Daylife/Reuters We all know about the 99% and the 1% and most of us know where we are or which we sympathise with. I’m with the 99%. But what about…
– Fidel Castro, Feb 4, 2012, launching his memoir, ‘Guerrilla of Time’ As world class singers of Sri Lankan Tamil parentage go, MIA isn’t half as good as a new voice, Bhi…
Photo courtesy Daylife. Activists of Sri Lanka’s opposition Marxist People’s Liberation Front, wearing masks that represent President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brothers, walk in a protest against the government in Colombo, Sri Lanka,…
Image taken from ‘Interrogating a public intellectual: Noted bloggers and youth activists engage Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka‘, published on The phrase ‘a man for all seasons’ being a compliment -which is clearly not…
Photo courtesy JDS The New Year brought a valuable gift in my email. It was a dossier entitled ‘Seeking Space for State Reform’ and carried an even more beguiling subtitle, ‘Consensus and…
Photo, courtesy JDS, is of Sri Lanka’s President reading the LLRC report on a ‘‘ at his official residence. Though not without flaws and lacuna, the long awaited LLRC report does not disappoint, and…
