This fascinating autobiography of Vijaya Vidyasagara edited by Skantha Kumar and Marshal Fernando and published by the Ecumenical Institute for Study and Dialogue is excellent reading. Priced at Rs. 500/- and covering 300 pages…
Soon it will be two years since the election of President Sirisena. His victory was consolidated in the general election held in August 2015. There was a lot of euphoria when this…
The United States and Sri Lanka both call themselves democratic societies. Like most of the rest of the world, we have had the U.S.A. held up to us as a model of…
No century in recorded history has experienced so many social transformations and such radical ones as the twentieth century (Peter, 2016). Over this period, without any exception every human culture has been…
A particular segment of the country was decisively committed to defeat the Rajapaksa regime and replace it with the present regime of Good Governance. This segment was motivated not by party politics…
Around the debris of triumphantly post-war Sri Lanka, new research is churned out, state grant money proffered and secured, and security expert careers built around jihadi headlines, veil puns, and paradoxically hyper(de)racinated definitions…
Featured image courtesy BBC I preface this piece by acknowledging my own discomfort as an educator in addressing sticky issues of equity and justice in education. I was motivated to write this piece…
Featured image courtesy EPA The COP on climate change in Paris saw Sri Lanka make pledges on the global stage, that we will be a responsible nation when it came to the…
There has been an organised move to bring back the hangman and implement the death penalty in Sri Lanka. Several weeks ago, Colombo District MP Hirunika Premachandra presented in Parliament an adjournment…
Featured image courtesy Newsfirst. Leonard Cohen[1] Giuseppe di Lampedusa[2] The genesis of this paper was a recent trip we took to Lanka as election observers for the August parliamentary elections. During the…
Picture courtesy SriLankaBrief I am worried and mad at my Mum. Why is she doing this? Is she insane or greedy? She says it is foolish to keep something that will be…
Picture courtesy Time.com Last Monday (12) a desperate situation raged across Colombo, Anuradhapura, Jaffna and Kandy as hundreds of prisoners who had been detained under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) began…
Picture courtesy Colombo Gazette “Want to buy some illusions, Slightly used, second hand? They were lovely illusions, Reaching high, built on sand….” (Marlene Dietrich in A Foreign Affair) “After emergency laws are…
What role (if any) did social media play in the recently concluded Parliamentary (General) Election on 17 August 2015? Many are asking this question – and coming up with different answers. That…
Image courtesy Sumith Wickramasinghe. For a wider examination of the issues covered in this article see my recently published book , London: I. B. Tauris, 2013 The just concluded presidential election saw…
