Editorial: Hyper-Reforms amidst Hyper-Austerity Sri Lanka 2023: Anniversaries of Struggle – Q. M. Saul May Day Diary 2023 – B. Skanthakumar Don’t Use Class as a Weapon to Dismiss Social Struggles – Devaka Gunawardena Resisting the Nationalist Right’s Framing of the Economic Alternative – Devaka Gunawardena Resisting the Liberal Left’s Framing of the Economic Alternative… Continue reading Polity Vol. 11 No. 1
Author: ssalanka
Polity Vol. 10 No. 2
Editorial 2023 Budget: False Promises at the Expense of Women and Working People – Feminist Collective for Economic Justice ‘The Writing Was on the Wall’: Debt Distress and Ways Forward in Sri Lanka – Jayati Ghosh The Election of Ranil Wickremesinghe: Reaction and Prospects for Democratic Revival in Sri Lanka – Devaka Gunawardena Situation Nominal,… Continue reading Polity Vol. 10 No. 2
Negotiating Power and Constructing the Nation: Engineering in Sri Lanka by Bandura Dileepa Witharana. Colombo: Tambapanni Academic Publishers, 2022 – Reviewed by Cherry Briggs
Since the mid-1980s, the subjects of nationalism and Sinhalese identity have dominated scholarly output on Sri Lanka. Negotiating Power and Constructing the Nation: Engineering in Sri Lanka offers a range of fresh perspectives on these subjects by considering the close relationship between engineering – a site that has received little academic attention in Sri Lanka… Continue reading Negotiating Power and Constructing the Nation: Engineering in Sri Lanka by Bandura Dileepa Witharana. Colombo: Tambapanni Academic Publishers, 2022 – Reviewed by Cherry Briggs
In 2024’s elections, lessons from 2015 – Devaka Gunawardena
Ahead of the 2015 Presidential Elections that were held on 8 January, Mahinda Rajapaksa seemed unlikely to be defeated. Although Maithripala Sirisena had split from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, the Rajapaksas had tremendous control over the state and media. Any struggle to prevent a third term and the likely consolidation of a quasi-dictatorship appeared… Continue reading In 2024’s elections, lessons from 2015 – Devaka Gunawardena
“Austerity driven economic reforms affect women more than men” – An Interview with Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky
Dr. Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky was the United Nations Human Rights Council’s (UNHRC) Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights between June 2014 and April 2020. He was previously a sovereign debt expert of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). He is currently based at the National Council for Scientific and Technical… Continue reading “Austerity driven economic reforms affect women more than men” – An Interview with Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan. Manhattan: Random House, 2023 – Reviewed by Vasugi Kailasam
Brotherless Night is V. V. Ganeshananthan’s second novel. I read this novel in late July 2023, with a fevered reminder of the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Black July in Sri Lanka. The reading was a moving exercise that prompted me to pause and reflect on the fractured nature of modern Tamil identities, and… Continue reading Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan. Manhattan: Random House, 2023 – Reviewed by Vasugi Kailasam
Ceylon’s ‘Great Hartal’ of 1953: The Masses Enter History – B. Skanthakumar
NM Perera addresses Galle Face Rally 23 July 1953 “It was the class struggle in free flow and it constituted the highest point that the class struggle had yet reached in Ceylon”[i] 70 years ago this month, on 12 August 1953, “a demonstration of the tremendous power of the masses in action”[ii] influenced by Left… Continue reading Ceylon’s ‘Great Hartal’ of 1953: The Masses Enter History – B. Skanthakumar
Claiming Identity, Dignity, and Justice: Malaiyaha Tamils of Sri Lanka – B. Skanthakumar
The 150th anniversary of the beginning of the tea industry in British Ceylon was marked in 2017 by a range of government and corporate events, mostly to promote Sri Lanka’s premier agricultural export. In counterpoint, the Gampola-based Tea Plantation Workers Museum and Archive hosted a symposium in Hatton that year, with the purpose of redirecting… Continue reading Claiming Identity, Dignity, and Justice: Malaiyaha Tamils of Sri Lanka – B. Skanthakumar
Hyper-Reforms amidst Hyper-Austerity
In an ongoing economic crisis whose fundamental causes the ruling class has absolute disinterest in tackling, an unelected President and an illegitimate government are on a legal and policy reform spree. Who can possibly keep up with or even comprehend all the changes that the current government has made, or is proposing to make? Here… Continue reading Hyper-Reforms amidst Hyper-Austerity
Abolish Marriage? Kanchuka Dharmasiri’s play Surpanakha – Liyanage Amarakeerthi
The Ramayana has many retellings, and there will be more to come. Kanchuka Dharmasiri’s new play, Surpanakha (2022), is a brilliant retelling of an episode in the South Asian mythical narrative of which Lanka is part of the setting. It has been pointed out that the ‘Lanka’ of the myth is not the country known… Continue reading Abolish Marriage? Kanchuka Dharmasiri’s play Surpanakha – Liyanage Amarakeerthi