A quotidian response: Letter to President regarding religious extremism
On 4th July 2012, along with printed and bound copies of the over 1,400 comments in Tamil, Sinhala and English generated by Not In Our Name (coming to over 300 pages), a…
Religion and faith
Buddhist monks and party politics in post-war Sri Lanka: In conversation with Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe MP
Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, President’s Counsel, is a Member of Parliament from the United National Party, and currently President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka. In the past, Mr. Rajapakshe’s also chaired the…
Letter to President regarding religious extremism in Sri Lanka
Along with printed and bound copies of the over 1,400 comments in Tamil, Sinhala and English generated by (coming to over 300 pages), the following letter was penned and delivered to the…
Sons of One Religion
Thirty years of civil war may have resulted in an awkward reconciliation process on racial fronts, but one thing it hasn’t diminished is our overlapping plethora of religious practices. We are born…
In conversation with Bishop Duleep de Chickera
I clearly remember Bishop de Chickera at S. Thomas’ College, from around 25 years years ago. The fact that I hadn’t seen him in person for a quarter of a century hit…
Not In Our Name: 1,400+ signatures against religious extremism in Sri Lanka
Not In My Name (NION) ran from 27th April to 31st May 2012. The blog was created and launched late on the 26th, just under a week after a violent attack on…
A different take from the Sangha: The dhamma and religious co-existence in Sri Lanka (UPDATED)
[Editors note: Sanjay Senanayake in a comment below raises a number of concerns regarding inflammatory statements made by Rev. Dambara Amila Thero in the past, which invariably inform the appreciation of the…
No longer blind, No longer bound
Poster for the film Oh My God I was born into a Malay family, where religion never seemed to play an important role. Most of the women in my family hardly covered…
Some Thoughts on the Eve of 2012 Vesak
Image courtesy Reuters Two Veask Poyas have come and gone and three years have sped by since May 2009 when the prolonged war with the LTTE ended. And we Sri Lankans are…
Mobs, Monks and the Problems of Political-Buddhism
Original photograph REUTERS/Damir Sagolj It is always a curious and odd little matter, to witness how even Buddhists become so obsessively attached to ‘sacred’ lands and in protecting them, commit acts seemingly…
Dambulla Mosque Attack: A Litmus Test of a Nation in Transition from Chauvinism to Civility
This is in response to the comments to my previous post – Dambulla Mosque Attack: Is there a hidden hand? At the time of writing this, there were nearly 50 comments displaying…
Not In Our Name: Campaign update and video
After the email update reproduced below was sent on 2nd May, less than a week after the Not In Our Name initiative was launched, Deshabandhu Jezima Ismail, senior lawyer and HR activist JC…
The Mind of Compassion: Buddhism and Violence
A lion carries a dead wild boar in his mouth. He is walking through the grasslands, victorious after the hunt. On the dead boar is a crudely imprinted crescent moon and star….
Some Critical Reflections on the Silences on Secularism: A Response to Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge
Photo courtesy Hemant Buch via JDS In a piece published on on 29 April, Ms. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunge (CBK) makes many pertinent observations on religion and society in South Asia. Underlying all her arguments…
Photo essay: Freedom, Religion, and Dambulla
Navin Weeraratne’s photo essay around the recent violence in Dambulla has already been shared widely on Facebook, and elsewhere on the web. Describing himself to us as “an amateur photographer, toy painter,…