F*** You, Mr. President
Photo by Tharaka Basnayaka/NurPhoto via Getty Images, taken off Middle East Institute In what must surely count as one of the most hilarious, unintentionally ironic and terrifying proclamations ever uttered by a…
Author: Prof. Qadri Ismail
From casualty to catastrophe
Photo by Asanka Brendon Ratnayake for We hadn’t seen him in years, ever since he left to work abroad. So, on the day of his return, his mother invited the extended family…
What, to the minority, is democracy?
Photograph courtesy Maithripala Sirisena violates the constitution, stands to destroy democracy itself. Liberals, overwhelmingly Sinhalese, are aggrieved, appalled, aghast. As a minority, I laugh. Not the happy laughter of someone enjoying a…
Copies of Loss
cc: Ravi, Priya, fighters both, taken before their time. Three pictures hang in my study. (Not my study actually, contractually; the bank retains the mortgage. I do not write in, from a…
Troubling, The U.S. Declaration of Independence
Modern, recent, European, the concept of the human being as a rights bearing subject dates only from around the seventeenth century. This in itself isn’t troubling. (Europe has given us good things:…
The Import Of Sri Lankan Muslim Names
Image courtesy Taqwa Magazine My name is Mohamed Qadri Ismail. Mohamed Qadri Ismail is not my name. The statements may prompt a wtf. (The acronym, btw, of the World Taekwondo Federation.) Surely…
Responding to Aluthgama
Photography by Thyagi Ruwanpathirana Responding to Aluthgama Imagine a country, an island in the Indian Ocean. Let’s call it Serendib (ooh, the irony). Imagine further: several groups, including those named Limat, Milsum…
Jagath Weerasinghe’s Hiding
It never ceases to amaze me that our cultural critics – and I refer exclusively to those writing in English – do not address our art. You meet them at exhibitions, where…
Should a Muslim eat wedding cake? A note on interpellation and agency
A few days ago, at the wedding of two Sri Lankan Muslims, both of whose families hail from Mannar, families forcibly evicted from their homes by the LTTE in 1990, a married…
Not By Ourselves Alone: A Critique of (Tamil) Self-Determination
Photo by LAKRUWAN WANNIARACHCHI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES via Twenty eight years, four months and some days ago, the LTTE killed more than one hundred and thirty Sinhala civilians in what has become known as the…
Critiquing the President’s victory speech: Evidence of a majoritarian mindset?
Authors note: The following is the text of a talk before a forum on minority rights organized by the CPA in July. It should, ideally, have been edited for publication. But, given…