Burning for (Sinhala) Buddhism?
Image from First, I want to convey my deepest sympathies to the family and friends of late Venerable Bōwatte Indrarathana (VBI) for the shocking and untimely way he embraced his death on…
Author: Suren Raghavan
Bodu Bala Senā and Buddhism’s militant face in Sri Lanka
Image courtesy website One of the first things I had to do in the new year was to firmly remind my (Lankan) Facebook friends to avoid posting or tagging me to any…
Democratic Debates in 2011
I am not aware of another county in the UN’s 200 odd membership that debates on its national anthem some 62 years after independence from colonial rule. Since we all agree that…
Radical Reforms in Sri Lanka: Realities we are afraid of?
Enough conceptual theories are produced and articulated on the need and urgency of the political power sharing in Sri Lanka. Avoiding the torturous repetition and gauging the current diminishing appreciation for any…
Imagining the immediate (im)possibilities
Preamble My last reflection on the immediate possibilities of state power sharing had an unusual over 25,000 readers generating 77 comments amounting to a staggering 24,500 word count. Luckily for the most…
Delusions of (power) devolution: Searching post–Prapa possibilities
The elite based political debate in Sri Lanka once again appears to gravitate around the primordial issue of deciding the best mode of power-sharing between the centre and the periphery, primarily between…
Demographic Assimilation vs Democratic Accommodations: An analysis of Sri Lanka’s first post war election results
The first post war election results generates some serious propositions regarding the future of democracy in Sri Lanka in general, in the North East –once accepted as the traditional Thamil Provinces, in…
Designing democracy: A post-Prabhakaran future
Was/is he an ethnonational liberation fighter, an egocentric megalomaniac or an unschooled political protagonist? Depending on the perspectives they would prefer to take, concerned future historians will struggle to pigeon hole Veluppilai…
Four things done, Four things undone: The self-immolation of the LTTE Part 2
A Brief Preface Some of my friends were worried that through the previous articles I may have inadvertently ‘’caught the tiger by the (ir) tail’. They have requested me to take care…
Four things done, Four things undone: The self-immolation of the LTTE
It is clear, even amongst the most liberal of the western political academic circles that the end of the LTTE is now inevitable. Backed by the widow state of Sonia Gandhi and…