Of pre-1943 period translated by Sachi Sri Kantha, October 25, 2021 Front Note by Sachi 40th death anniversary of King Poet Kannadasan (1927-1981) passed by on October 17th. Among his numerous books, two autobiographical memoirs, Vana Vaasam (1965, 376 pp) and Mana Vaasam (1980, 228 pp) stands out. Vana Vaasam covers the period of Kannadasan’s… Read more »
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Chinese sea cucumber farms back in operation in Kilinochchi by Dinasena Ratugamage, Sunday Island, Colombo, August 6, 2021 Two sea cucumber farms, managed by a Chinese company in Kilinochchi, recommenced its operations after fishermen’s associations in Jaffna and Kilinochchi said that they no longer opposed the farms. The operations of the two farms were stopped… Read more »
A review of Peer Vries’ “Escaping poverty” by Branko Milanovic, his personal Substack, July 22, 2021 While the world is witnessing global convergence (essentially the catch up of Asia with the West), the debates about the origins of the Great Divergence—the take-off of the West and absence of growth in the Rest—are going strong. I… Read more »
Sri Lanka’s Rajapaksa Dynasty is Not as Secure as It Appears
by Banyan, The Economist, London, July 17, 2021 The family that runs everything is running out of cash Since winning the presidency in a landslide nearly two years ago, Gotabaya Rajapaksa has worried not that he has too many relatives in government, but that he has too few. One of the 72-year-old’s elder brothers, Mahinda, himself… Read more »
False Promises by Ambika Satkunanathan, ‘Groundviews,’ Colombo, July 14, 2021 For decades human rights activists have highlighted the draconian nature of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), which promises safety and security, yet in practice makes each citizen vulnerable to being arbitrarily arrested, detained, tortured and even convicted of an offence the person did not… Read more »
by Nimal Wijesinghe, Daily News, Colombo, February 27, 2021 There is an awakening in the field of irrigation development in the country. The ancient kings treated rainwater as a highly precious national asset and constructed small, medium and large-scale tanks and anicuts for collecting and storing every drop of rainwater for irrigational, agricultural and drinking… Read more »
by N. Shanmugaratnam, Groundviews.org, Colombo, July 13, 2012 Image courtesy Sainthan Sivanesan on 500px I am thankful to the Norwegian Tamil Study Forum for inviting me to address this Workshop and am looking forward to listening to the main speakers. In this brief intervention I wish to make some general comments and raise a few issues,… Read more »
Masters Politics, social tensions, and comedy all found a home in Tamil cinema. The Tamil meme needs all four things to work. by Aditya Shrikrishna, FiftyTwo.in, March 25, 2021 Nesamani was a contractor. On 26 May 2019, the Bharatiya Janata Party was confirmed to have swept the seventeenth Lok Sabha elections. At some point on… Read more »
Feedback re 1986 killing of TULF MPs Alalasuntharam and Dharmalingam from a reader: March 29, 2005 Dear Editor, In Chapter 38 the writer mentioned that the TULF MPs’ murder had been carried out by Das. This is totally untrue. Sri Sabaratnam gave the order to kill all former TULF MPs who lived in Jaffna at… Read more »
by T. Sabaratnam, February 25, 2005 Chapter 35 Original index to series Original Chapter 36 [renumbered from Chapter 35, Part II] The First Round (Continued) As indicated in the previous chapter, the first day of the Thimpu Talks was devoted to the inauguration. Talks commenced on the second day, 9 July 1985. The entire morning… Read more »
by T. Sabaratnam, November 25, 2004 Chapter 25 Original index to series Original Chapter 26 Three Factors 1984 is a milestone in the life of Pirapaharan and in the history of Tamil freedom struggle. In that year, as I indicated in Chapter 21, Pirapaharan switched over from hit-and-run guerrilla combat to sustained guerrilla warfare, and… Read more »
by T. Sabaratnam, August 2004 Chapter 10 Original index to series Original Chapter 11 Training Militants Indira Gandhi always called President Jayewardene ‘the old fox.’ Her assessment of him was that he could not be trusted. Her opinion of Jayewardene was based on the information given to her by her friend Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the lady… Read more »
by T. Sabaratnam, June 11, 2004 Chapter 5 Original index to series Original Chapter 6 Tamil Nadu Erupts Tamil Nadu erupted in anger on Tuesday, 26 July 1983, when news spread that atrocities had been committed on Tamils in Sri Lanka. Thousands of Tamils poured onto the streets in Chennai, Madurai and other cities denouncing… Read more »
by Steven R. Weisman, The New York Times, December 13, 1987 IN AN ISLAND in a pristine lake near Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, gunmen guard the sleek new Parliament building, which a terrorist bomb ripped through last August, wounding the Prime Minister and barely missing the President. Downtown, the scattered vacant lots and… Read more »
Socio-economic and psychological impact on families of PTA detainees following the Easter Sunday Attacks by Marisa de Silva, Law & Society Trust, Colombo, November 2020 PTA_Terrorising-Sri-Lanka-for-42-years-English “When I was in prison, I met and spoke with other Tamil PTA prisoners, some who had been there for 10 years, with their files not even taken up… Read more »
by Sharanya Manivannan, Medium, November 15, 2020 I had first known that there was a film adaptation of Shyam Selvadurai’s iconic novel Funny Boy when I had heard about closed screenings of it in Colombo sometime in mid-2020. The story is a bildungsroman about a queer, upper-class Tamil teenager, culminating in the Black July riots of 1983 that… Read more »
A systematic review by Kamanthi Wickramasinghe, Daily Mirror, Colombo, February 5, 2020 A systematic review of Sri Lanka’s post-war defence budget reveals that Sri Lanka spends too much on defence and the defence budget is spent inefficiently. The study done by Daniel Alphonsus, who had served as an advisor to Sri Lanka’s finance minister with… Read more »
by Sachi Sri Kantha, October 11, 2020 Part 2 Front Note by Sachi Sri Kantha I provide below, a balanced portrayal on the activities of the Black Tigers, described by Prof. Mario Ferrero, in 2006 in an article comparing “diverse instances of public-spirited suicide.” In approximately 1,150 words, salient points emphasized by Ferrero include, (1)… Read more »
U.K. Conservation Society Details Links to Colonialism and Slavery
The National Trust said a third of the properties it manages had direct links to colonialism or slavery. Some have a “hugely uncomfortable” history, it said. by Elian Peltier, The New York Times, September 22, 2020 LONDON — The country house of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, an ardent imperialist; an estate in northern England… Read more »
And the need for a referendum in Tamils’ homeland [North & East of Sri Lanka] by Kumarathasan Rasingam, August 23, 2020 It is high time and urgent need for the United Nations, UNHRC, ICC and the International Community to find remedial justice to the oppressed Tamils in Sri Lanka. The following facts prove beyond doubt… Read more »