Sacrificing Accountability to Save the Official Narrative: The UK’s Legacy Act of 2023 and Parallels in Sri Lanka Daniel Holder In September 2023, the UK parliament passed The Northern Ireland Troubles (Reconciliation and Legacy) Act entrenching immunity for crimes committed by the British army during the Northern Ireland conflict (1966-1998). Human rights organisations and… Continue reading Sacrificing Accountability to Save the Official Narrative: The UK’s Legacy Act of 2023 and Parallels in Sri Lanka
Daniel Holder
Author: ssalanka
Sacrificing Accountability to Save the Official Narrative: The UK’s Legacy Act of 2023 and Parallels in Sri Lanka
Understanding Fascism: Writings on Caste, Class & The State by K. Balagopal. Curated and Introduced by V. Geetha. Hyderabad: South Side Books, 241p.
Jairus Banaji
K.Balagopal was a civil rights activist and left-wing intellectual who was mainly active in Andhra Pradesh from the 1980s down to when he died in 2009. In the nineties he became increasingly critical of the People’s War Group, with which he had been associated, and developed those criticisms at length in a famous Telugu essay… Continue reading Understanding Fascism: Writings on Caste, Class & The State by K. Balagopal. Curated and Introduced by V. Geetha. Hyderabad: South Side Books, 241p.
Jairus Banaji
Shyam Selvadurai’s Mansions of the Moon: A Lankan Review
Crystal Baines
The question of ‘woman’ in Buddhism has always rested on a paradox. On the one hand is the misogyny couched in the canon and in later monastic traditions which highlight women’s “subordinate” physical and mental constitution as reason to prohibit them from entering the Sangha. On the other hand, is the progressive register in the… Continue reading Shyam Selvadurai’s Mansions of the Moon: A Lankan Review
Crystal Baines
“Put people at the centre of plans for socio-economic recovery and advancement”: No to IMF’s cosmetic civil society consultations!
68 Civil Society Organisations and Trade Unions
The IMF team is in Colombo for the Second Review of the ongoing Extended Fund Facility (EFF) loan agreement with Sri Lanka and will meet with some civil society organisations and think-tanks in Colombo on 19 March 2024, to receive their views on the progress of the ongoing structural reforms, and governance issues including anti-corruption reforms. This… Continue reading “Put people at the centre of plans for socio-economic recovery and advancement”: No to IMF’s cosmetic civil society consultations!
68 Civil Society Organisations and Trade Unions
Two conceptions of Jewish identity
Rohini Hensman
Critics of religion who regard it as illusory and harmful, from Marx and his associates and followers to militant atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, assume implicitly that religions are monolithic. However, studies of major religions like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Judaism show that they are anything but monolithic: with multiple internal divisions,… Continue reading Two conceptions of Jewish identity
Rohini Hensman
Undermining statutory rape protection in Sri Lanka
Kumudini Samuel and Chulani Kodikara
On 9th February, the government gazetted a Bill to amend Sections 363 and 364 of the Penal Code (Chapter 19) which deals with statutory rape. According to these sections, sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 16, with or without her consent, amounts to rape. An amendment to the Penal Code in 1995… Continue reading Undermining statutory rape protection in Sri Lanka
Kumudini Samuel and Chulani Kodikara
Privatisation from within ‘Free Education’: Tuition Classes in Anuradhapura
Amali Waidyasekera
The school attendance of students facing national level examinations such as Ordinary and Advanced Level, drastically drops closer to the respective examinations according to the National Education Research and Evaluation Centre (NEREC) (2004), This seemingly counter-intuitive tendency is explained by tuition classes that have come to not only supplement, but also substitute for, school education.… Continue reading Privatisation from within ‘Free Education’: Tuition Classes in Anuradhapura
Amali Waidyasekera
Zionism in Crisis after October 7? What Crisis?
Neve Gordon
Editors’ Note: The remarks below by Professor Neve Gordon were made at a teach-in on Gaza at Queen’s University, Belfast (QUB) organised by the QUB University and College Union branch on 7 February 2024. They have been adapted for exclusive publication in Polity magazine with his permission. I was asked to speak on the topic… Continue reading Zionism in Crisis after October 7? What Crisis?
Neve Gordon
Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962 by Kalyani Ramnath. California: Stanford University Press, 2023, 308p.
Luc Bulten
Kalyani Ramnath’s Boats in a Storm contributes to the ever-growing body of literature using legal archives to help reconstruct a supernational history of the Indian Ocean World. And she does so in a refreshing, impressive, and layered way. Continuing in her role as a bottom-up legal historian, Ramnath convincingly sets out on an exploration of… Continue reading Boats in a Storm: Law, Migration, and Decolonization in South and Southeast Asia, 1942–1962 by Kalyani Ramnath. California: Stanford University Press, 2023, 308p.
Luc Bulten
Opening: Post-doctoral and Senior Research Fellowships
The OSUN Forum on Democracy and Development by CEU Democracy Institute (Budapest), Universidad de los Andes, (Bogotá), the Nelson Mandela School of Public Governance at the University of Cape Town and the Social Scientists’ Association of Sri Lanka (Colombo) invites applications for a total of 32 open positions: six post-doctoral and two senior research fellows at each… Continue reading Opening: Post-doctoral and Senior Research Fellowships