Category Archives: sri lankan society

In Memoriam: Vijaya Kumaratunga

DBS Jeyaraj in 2022 at https://dbsjeyaraj.com/dbsj/?p=67620 where the title reads “Vijaya Kumaratunga: Charismatic Actor-Politician May Have Changed Nation’s Destiny” …… Posted by Administrator on 21 February 2022, 1:11 am

The political landscape of Sri Lanka seems gloomy and desolate. Most of the actors who strut about the political stage posing as visionaries and leaders are in actuality empty vessels devoid of substance. Proverbial wisdom tells us that empty vessels make most sound. This is most apparent in the cacophony of voices currently prevalent in the polity. In the words of William Butler Yeats “ The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.” The positive dream of Sri Lanka evolving into an inclusive, plural nation is slowly turning into a numerical majoritarian hegemonic nightmare.

 Vijaya Kumaratunga in Jaffna

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Sri Lankan Migrants Abroad as Productive Oysters for the Island

Item circulated by Sunil Thenabadu, Keith Bennett and  one Dee de  Silva

The Sri Lankan diaspora consists of approximately three million Sri Lankans living abroad, significantly contributing to their host countries and maintaining ties with Sri Lanka.

Demographics and Distribution

The Sri Lankan diaspora includes emigrants and expatriates from Sri Lanka residing in various countries, with significant populations in Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, Australia, and North America. An estimate from 2013 indicated that around three million Sri Lankans live outside their home country, with about one million permanently settled abroad. This diaspora is characterized by a diverse mix of ethnicities, including Tamils, Sinhalese, and Burghers, each contributing uniquely to the cultural landscape of their host nations. 

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Is Prabakaran NOT a Hitler! …. Goodness Gracious Me!

Shenali D. Waduge, whose slashing sarcastic essay is entitledLet’s Celebrate Prabakaran & the LTTE’s Glorious Achievements!”  ... with the highlighting being that in  the original item

A tribute to the world’s most misunderstood mass murderer and his liberation-through-terror campaign.

They say greatness demands sacrifice—and Velupillai Prabakaran understood this better than most. He wasn’t content with speeches; he offered the world a blueprint: to build a homeland, first destroy the present; to claim justice, first silence every voice—especially your own people’s; to prove your worth, leave no witness behind. For over three decades, he led with unmatched precision: dismantling democracy, eliminating dissent, recruiting children, and bleeding civilians dry—all while demanding the world call it liberation. Some build nations through unity; he built his with bunkers, landmines, cyanide, and the bones of the innocent. And still, they light candles for him. They hold commemorations in universities. UN officials attend. Foreign parliamentarians give speeches. So, in the spirit of glorifying terror, let’s not just mourn Velupillai Prabakaran—let’s celebrate the man who redefined cruelty and called it Eelam, by honoring every child stolen, every right violated, and every drop of blood shed in his name.

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Chemmani Graves: The Site Today

Map  and Photos supplied by a friend


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Global Economics & Sri Lanka over the Recent Centuries

Sunil Bastian: “Sri Lankan state in a changing global context”  … a 2025 article presented  here with highlights  imposed by The Editor,  Thuppahi.**

This short article emphasises the need to analyse the Sri Lankan state by placing it in the global context. This means not confining our minds within the borders of the Sri Lankan state. To emphasise this point I would like to point out that the formation of the Sri Lankan state itself was a product of a global phenomenon – British colonialism (see Bastian Sunil (2025) State formation and Conflicts in Sri Lanka. London: Bloomsbury Academic for an analysis of Sri Lankan state formation).

Under British colonialism the entire geographic space of the island was covered by a single unit of territorial power. To administer the territory, the island was divided into spatial units using the directions of a compass. In this way cartography became an instrument of British colonialism. Other techniques of state formation were establishing an administrative structure, a judicial system, a system to collect taxes, regular census and the coercive power of the state to cover the entire island.

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Chemmani Graves Site & OCHCR Finds

N. Sathiya Moorthy, in CEYLON TODAY, 1 August 2025,  with this  title “Hundred Not Out” **

For the uninitiated readers of the national media, and possibly the majority Sinhala media, Chemmani may yet to happen. But after weeks of digging up unmarked graves in Northern Jaffna town, Government officials under Court supervision have already taken out over a hundred human skeletons, including those of infants and grown-up children. The numbers are growing with each passing day of digging, which is at times halted for logistics reasons, one should assume.

Yes, only scientific studies would show if they are of recent origin, but the fact that they have been recovered from dig-outs six to eight metres deep may indicate that they are not ancient. Yet, they are historic in their own way, adding heft to the Tamils’ charges that the Armed Forces ruthlessly killed their civilians during the three-decade-long ethnic war – and are yet to be held accountable.

 

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Deciphering Patriotic Devotion: The Japanese in the 1940s & the Lankan Tamil People For the LTTE

Michael Roberts reproducing an article presented in a popular website during the final stages in Eelam War IV in 2008/09 within the context TODAY of a horrendous war-situation in Palestine and its environs — the website being GROUNDVIEWS: …………….. https://groundviews.org/2009/04/21/ltte-and-tamil-people-i-preamble/ ….. This article was just the first essay in a four-part enterprise.**

LTTE and Tamil people, I: preamble,” http://www.groundviews.org, 21 April 2009.

This set of essays on “LTTE and Tamil People” submitted to Groundviews is a sequel to the four articles on “Suicidal Political Action” reproduced in http://www.transcurrents.com from 2 April onwards. Both sets of essays are interconnected and involve a measure of repetition because they are set out as separate articles. All of them are a product of a comparative survey that I embarked on about five years ago: namely, reviewing the cultural ingredients which have motivated the projects of the jihadists (holy warriors) and mujahideen (fighters for cause) on the one hand and, on the other, the

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For Lankan Researchers: An Oral History Workshop

 

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This interactive workshop, led by experienced oral historian Gaya Fernando, will introduce participants to the principles, practices, and power of oral history. Tailored for researchers, journalists, documentary producers, and writers, it will explore how personal narratives and community voices can enrich social and political research.

 

The formal session concludes at 12:30 PM, but participants who are interested are welcome to stay on for an informal discussion with Gaya until 3:30 PM.

15th August 2025

 

9.30 AM onwards

 

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Is Sri Lanka permanently Kota Uda?

Jehan Perera in The  Island, 29 July  2025, where the title runs thus“Engagement is essential for national progress”

Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga

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From Kamburupitiya … Malkanthi’s Multi-Faceted Journey

Fazli Sameer in Those Fuzzy Days, July 2025 … presented in fazli@substack.com with a slightly different title and the sub-title: “A trek through days of milk, honey, and roses”

In the small southern village of Kamburupitiya, nestled amidst the mist-covered hills of the southern coastal city of Matara, a determined teenage girl named Malkanthi prepared for a journey that would alter the course of her life. At sixteen, she was the pride of her village school, a bright, kind-hearted girl who had earned a scholarship to pursue her higher studies in Colombo.

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