Yearly Archives: 2014

Pirapaharan at Sixty

by Karthik RM, November 21, 2014 Is Pirapaharan dead? Ten years back, TamilNet senior editor and military analyst Taraki Sivaram wrote a brilliant piece on the political legacy of Pirapaharan at fifty.  Come 26 November this year, the founder-leader of the LTTE and one of the most brilliant military minds of South Asia will turn… Read more »

Indira Gandhi: Interviewed by Orianna Fallaci

by Sachi Sri Kantha, November 19, 2014 Prelude November 19th 2014 marked Indira Gandhi’s 97th birthday. It has been 30 years since she was assassinated on October 31, 1984. Unlike Sinhalese, Eelam Tamils (as well as a sizeable segment of Tamil Nadu Tamils) had warmth sentiments towards her. Despite Indira’s arrogance and political peccadillos, Indira… Read more »

CM Wigneswaran Speech in India

Wigneswaran Kannabiran Memorial Lecture Nov 2014 After brief intro in Tamil, CM – Justice CW Wigneswaran’s speech is in English.    

These Are My Humble Requests To Gotabaya

*Speech made by R. Sampanthan on the 4th of November 2014 in parliament We are discussing today the Votes of the Ministry of Defence, the Minister of Defence being His Excellency President Mahinda Rajapaksa and the Secretary to the Ministry being his brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who rumour has it will probably be a Member of… Read more »

Cosmetic Fixes

by Taylor Dibbert, ‘Foreign Policy,’ Washington, DC, October 31, 2014 SOUTH ASIA Sri Lanka’s twenty-six-year civil war was a brutal conflict that pitted the Sri Lankan government forces against the Tamil Tigers, a group that fought for a separate state in the country’s northern and eastern provinces. Though the government defeated the Tamil Tigers in… Read more »

Buddha is Alive Everywhere, Excluding Politicians’ Hearts

Few days ago, I received an email from Mr. Villa Anandaram (currently living in Canada), a friend of 50 years standing. He had visited Sri Lanka two months ago and his email was a touching document for me. He had given me permission to share it with the readers of this website. I also include… Read more »

The Seasons of Trouble

2012 piece by Rohini Mohan in Caravan Magazine ————— From Verso Press: The Seasons of Trouble: Life Amid the Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Civil War by Rohini Mohan “A significant, though heartrending, account.” –Alan Moores, Booklist For three decades, Sri Lanka’s civil war tore communities apart. In 2009, the Sri Lankan army finally defeated the separatist Tamil… Read more »

CBK Waged ‘Mother of All Wars’ – Rev. Dr. Emmanuel

Last week, The Island partly dealt with Rev. Dr. S. J Emmanuel’s thoughts on the collapse of talks between the government of the then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, in April 1995. The priest blamed Mrs. Kumaratunga for the breakdown of talks. Rev. Dr. Emmanuel’s views, on the conflict, are relevant,… Read more »

Rev. Dr Emmanuel on Collapse of CBK-Prabhakaran talks

Rev. Dr. Emmanuel, who had occasionally provided to the writer valuable perception, as regards significant conflict-related events, made available to The Island his presentation at a conference organized by the International Alert, way back in July, 1997. Rev. Dr. Emmanuel dealt extensively with the Kumaratunga-Prabhakaran talks during 1994-1995 period…

“The government did not understand the LTTE as representatives of an aggrieved and oppressed people. Nor did they recognize the LTTE’s demands as the demands of the people.”

MGR Remembered – Part 22

Part 21 by Sachi Sri Kantha, November 3, 2014 In the previous chapter, I introduced Erik Erikson’s generativity concept by MGR as a member of DMK in 1950s. As previous observers of DMK politics of that era, especially Robert Hardgrave Jr., had noted MGR was not alone in promoting DMK policies. Due credit should be… Read more »

On The Rajapaksa Budget

By R. Sampanthan – ‘Colombo Telegraph,’ November 1, 2014 We tabled a Position Paper in January 2011 setting out our position. I table that Position Paper and kindly request that it be included at the end of my speech. The Position Paper defined the position of the TNA in regard to a political solution at the… Read more »

Tamils Were Not Fooled

By M. A. Sumanthiran – ‘Colombo Telegraph,’ November 3, 2014 You stop people of this country going to meet their very near relatives by placing travel restrictions. Is that not treating the North differently? This is also an attempt to pull wool over the eyes of people, not of the people of the North. If the… Read more »

The Road to Justice

by Committee to Protect Journalists, New York, October 28, 2014 The lack of justice in hundreds of murders of journalists around the world is one of the greatest threats to press freedom today. While international attention to the issue has grown over the past decade, there has been little progress in bringing down rates of… Read more »

Learning to Cook South Indian Food

by Lavanya Ramanathan, ‘The Washington Post,’ November 3, 2014 A decade ago, after just a few ill-fated and highly self-esteem-damaging attempts to learn my native South Indian cuisine, I threw in the rice cooker. Really. I chucked my tiny four-cup nemesis into a dumpster, and with it any illusions that I’d ever make dosa, please… Read more »

Critiquing Nationalism

Tagore recognises the problem of races as the most menacing of the issues faced by India, making our history a continual social adjustment rather than one of organised power for defence or aggression or the rise and fall of dynasties as in the case of most other countries. Social regulation of differences with a spiritual recognition of unity has been the twin strategy for her to cope with her ethnic multiplicity. Tagore is sharply critical of the rigidity of social stratification in India and the resulting crippling of her people’s minds, the insularity of world views and the perpetuation of hierarchies. But he is even more critical of the West where “the national machinery of commerce and politics turns out neatly compressed bales of humanity which have their use and high market value; but they are bound in iron hoops, labelled and separated off with scientific care and precision”…

Whatever hopes of world peace, the dismantling of the Soviet Union and the rhetoric of globalisation had raised for the unthinking have been erased by the post-1980s genocides in Bosnia, Somalia, Iraq, Sri Lanka and Gujarat…

Tagore circumvents the issue of civilisational hierarchy by contrasting civilisations through their respective capacities for handling difference and sees history proceeding through the effects of one civilisation on another, thus placing civilisations symmetrically rather than in a progressive hierarchy. Tagore provides an alternative to the narrative modes of his time by directly critiquing the basis of the global modern located in its homelands in the West through the counter-universal. He neither privileges the “difference” of the post-colonial world nor critiques universalism itself as an embodiment of Western culture; “instead he interrogates the basis of a universal, modern Western project of nation-making by posing a counter-universal derived from his location in the East”. He invokes the East as an ensemble of non-instrumentalist modes of social relationships which can supply the principles for an alternative to the “Nation”, a Western creation.

Amnesty: UN Review Highlights

by Amnesty International, London, October 30, 2014 Amnesty UN review AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC STATEMENT Index: ASA 37/014/2014 30 October 2014 Sri Lanka: UN review highlights ongoing human rights abuse and impunity The UN Human Rights Committee review of Sri Lanka has once again highlighted the vast disconnect between Sri Lanka’s promises to Sri Lankan citizens… Read more »

Jaffna International Tamil Research Conference of 1974

Introductory Note The 40th anniversary of the 4th International Tamil Research Conference held in Jaffna (January 3-9) had passed by silently. The sad event of January 10th, 1974 in which nine Tamils lost their lives was one of the trend setting episodes which generated the Eelam Campaign of late 1970s among Tamil militant youth. As… Read more »