Bridging The Racial Divide
Featured image courtesy the Music Project It can hardly be denied that divisions based on race has proved a major issue for Sri Lanka in the past. Racial discrimination propelled by the…
Culture
Deadlier than the Male
Featured image courtesy Kentridgecommon I have just read Kishani Jayasinghe’s excellent article ‘My Experience of Independence’, published in The Sunday Times ‘Plus’ of March 6, 2016. In this, she expresses her perceptions…
Some Thoughts on our Cultural Values and National Harmony
Photo by Sarah Crake, via Compas Blog I recognise, respect, appreciate and congratulate the valuable work done by many including those of Sri Lanka Invites. Several other organisations that promote rights, freedoms…
Requiem for Morals and Ethics
Featured image courtesy AFP/Getty Images Judge Patrick Arthur Devlin Given the manner in which this land is touted as the “Miracle of Asia” by some, living in a state of utopia, as…
The politics of musical taste, the inadequacy of good intentions, and not saying “no!” to racism
Featured image courtesy Bands in Town The timeless universal language, music? Not the way I see it… in fact, a musical experience is much more likely to reflect a particular time, place,…
Book Review: From Shame to Sin by Kyle Harper
Featured image courtesy Amazon (Adapted from Chaucer’s ‘The Canterbury Tales’) To use a colloquial phrase, Buddhism has no special “hang-up” about sex; the third of Buddhism’s five moral Precepts carries no more…
A 2500 year-old Culture that was!
Featured image courtesy AFP The current wave of Sinhala-Buddhist supremacism, and attempts to establish a ‘Sinhala-Buddhist Raj’ in Sri Lanka, if left unchecked will eventually lead to fragmentation of Sri Lanka into…
Time out on tusk trade
Photo courtesy A Voice for Wildlife Over 25 million elephants in Africa have succumbed to the now illegal ivory trade that has spanned across the last 200 years. To put that into…
On GLF and Evolving Culture
Featured image courtesy Amalini de Sayrah Last week saw the usually sleepy town of Galle come to life with the Galle Literary Festival. In a celebration of all things literary, Colombars descended…
Culture happens. No matter what.
Image via NKAR Currently there is an initiative to draft a National Cultural Policy for Sri Lanka – which will look at bringing arts, culture and creative thinking into the heart of…
Silence in the Courts, Silence in Society and Women at Peril
Featured image courtesy The Justice Project – South Asia As I watched ““, a documentary movie by award-winning Sri Lankan filmmaker Prasanna Vithanage aired at the University of Ottawa Human Rights Film Festival…
De-stigmatising HIV On World AIDS Day
Today (December 1) is World AIDS Day. According to reports, approximately 4 people are diagnosed with HIV every week in Sri Lanka, with an estimated 5 more going undetected. The National STD/AIDS…
Aiyo! lamented Aiya to the Adigar
Picture courtesy Thuppahi Work on the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has been underway since the turn of the century, but will not be finished for another decade or…
Frangipani : Opening Ourselves to Dialogue
90 min. Sinhala feature film with English subtitles is a Sinhala film made in Sri Lanka in 2014 written, directed and produced by Visakesa Chandrasekaram, a Sydney-based lawyer and creative writer. While…
Bikes, Helmets and Public Safety Concerns
The official government news portal of Sri Lanka recently reported that a ban on full-face helmets will be re-imposed starting April 02. The report argues that the “face of the motorcyclist should…
