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March Madness: Is it USA Vs India?

In the case of Burma, India and America’s good cop, bad cop routine worked to ultimately undo the military junta.

But will India and America reenact the same play in Sri Lanka or are their objectives diverging? …

Tamil Nadu activists have chosen to protest against the American resolution because it does not include charges of Genocide. While that is reasonable request, protesting it misses the tree for the wood. Tamil Nadu’s immediate focus should be in getting Delhi to take a public position within the next few weeks. Letting Delhi wait until the voting time, is a strategic mistake by the Tamil Nadu brethren. Tamil Nadu activists should first mobilize towards getting Delhi to openly support an International Investigation mechanism. Without that, protesting the resolution for what it does not include is premature and above all not prudent. It only helps Delhi’s agenda of deflection.

NPC Chief Minister Wigneswaran on Good Governance

by ‘Colombo Telegraph,’ January 20, 2014 New Year 2014 is starting well for us. The War had got us into a cocoon in which we  managed howsoever we could, not really appreciating the changes taking place locally and globally all around us. We failed to appreciate the nuances of political or administrative terminology too. We… Read more »

Fury in Sri Lanka at U.S. Embassy Tweet on Killing of Tamils

The Sri Lankan Ministry of Defense expressed shock and anger on Friday atwhat it called a “baseless allegation” against the nation’s military in a photo caption posted on the official Twitter feed of the United States Embassy the day before. The photograph showed the American ambassador to Sri Lanka, Michele J. Sison, and Stephen J. Rapp, the United… Read more »

Art Buchwald Humor Awards for 2013

The seventh death anniversary of humorist Art Buchwald (1925-2007) falls on January 17th.  And for this occasion, I also release the 5th consecutive list of news-making 15 individuals who are natives to South Asia region, for 2013.  These selections are based on the words or deeds performed by the chosen individuals during 2013, as indicated… Read more »

Genocide as Counterinsurgency

by Karthick RM, ‘Sanhati,’ West Bengal, India, October 10, 2012 Countering insurgencies is as old as states and empires. As a concept, however, study in Counterinsurgency (COIN) gained momentum in the colonial period so as to deal with frequently occurring rebellions in colonies as well as to counter the “communist menace”. COIN grew as a… Read more »

State Facilitated Colonization of Northern Sri Lanka

by Watchdog, ‘Groundviews.org,’ Colombo, September 19, 2013 On 25th September 2012, the Menik Farm camp in Vavuniya, which at its peak, housed close to 300,000 internally displaced persons, was officially closed down when the Government of Sri Lanka relocated the last batch of IDPs. This formally marked the closure of all post-2009 IDP camps in the… Read more »

Anna, Annachi, Annathe

by Sachi Sri Kantha, August 21, 2013 Recently I completed reading a wonderful biography on C.N. Annadurai (1909-1969), the founding leader of DMK, by R. Kannan. It’s title was simply ‘Anna’ – appearing palindromic in English. This led me to study the semantics of this endearing Tamil word. This essay is also a sort of… Read more »

Land Issues in Northern and Eastern Provinces

Mr. Deputy Speaker, my Adjournment Motion that I have proposed to move today deals with nine situations pertaining to land both in the Northern and the Eastern Provinces. Land issues are a matter of grave concern to the Tamil-speaking people, both the Tamil people and the Muslim people in the North and the East. We… Read more »

Broker Politics Or Democratic Action?

The more incisive comments on myprevious posting, The Meanings of Wigneswaran, raise several inter-related issues that have been central to the Tamil Question and still bedevil action. This writing responds to and builds on them and attempts to probe further. It is necessary at the outset to clarify an unfortunate misreading in one comment, that… Read more »

HRW: No Justice in Aid Worker Massacre

The Sri Lankan government has made no real progress in holding accountable those responsible for the execution style slaying of 17 aid workers seven years ago despite renewed international calls for action. On August 4, 2006, gunmen executed 17 Sri Lankan aid workers – 16 ethnic Tamils, four of them women, and a Muslim – with the… Read more »

Resistance and Martyrdom

by Peter Schalk, TamilNation.org, UK, 1997 Professor Peter Schalk has written extensively on subjects related to the struggle for Tamil Eelam. This essay is excerpted from* Martyrdom and Political Resistance : Essays from Asia and Europe (Comparative Asian Studies, 18)  edited by Joyce Pettigrew published by VU University Press for Centre Asian Studies, Amsterdam. The book  is essential reading for… Read more »

Buddha Buzz

Across the Bay of Bengal, a Therevada Sri Lankan monk—adopting what has become a common strategy among Tibetan Buddhist monks—self-immolated in the street. The monk, Ven. Indarathana, set himself on fire outside the Temple of the Tooth—the holiest Buddhist shrine in the country—in protest of the Muslim halal method of slaughtering animals.

Ven. Indarathana belonged to the Buddhist revivalist group Voice of Sinhala, a hardline Buddhist rights group. This could qualify the self-immolation as the first connected with an anti-Muslim organization. According to BBC correspondent Charles Haviland, Sinhalese ultranationalist government ministers are praising the incident as “an act of self-sacrifice for the good of the country.”

Burma [not so random] Connection

The similarities of the Myanmar and the Sri Lankan states are obvious. Majority of the people in both countries practice Theravada Buddhism. And both countries are plagued by ethnic conflicts.

T.L.B. Bastianpillai (1941-1978)

April 7th marked the 35th anniversary of Bastianpillai’s killing at a jungle in the Mannar area… As one can check again, torture of young Tamil militants by Bastianpillai has been excluded in these descriptions. Those who don’t know the facts may perceive and conclude that Inspector Bastianpillai was an innocent law enforcement officer who was killed when he was doing his duty. Even the fact that he belonged to the CID division has been omitted! Getting information about the notorious CID personnel in Sri Lanka is more difficult than searching for a needle in a haystack.

The China Card

Many among the Eelam Tamils continue to fall for the “China card” claims of Sri Lanka.  These claims serve, however, as a smokescreen for the realpolitik of the region vis-a-vis Sri Lanka.  A critical analysis of this is helpful for Eelam Tamils to develop a more nuanced approach. China is of no help to Sri… Read more »

Mullikulam: Restrictions Continue

The people also told us about how approximately 25 Navy families now live in their lands and that 33 houses have been repaired and occupied by the SLN, with more than 20 female Navy personnel having taken up residence within the former hospital building. Furthermore, of the two school buildings, only one has still been released for the 35 students from Mullikulam to study in. The remaining building is still being utilized to conduct Civil Engineering classes for the SLN.

MGR Remembered, Part 6

One of MGR’s critical biographers, M.S.S. Pandian noted, “Several of the MGR films give primacy to the role of the mother and it is reflected in the names of films like…”. Pandian counted only 5 of the above-mentioned MGR movies, and missed 4 which I have included. To quote Pandian again, “Significantly, MGR, during public meetings, addressed his female audience as ‘Thai kulam’ or ‘the community of mothers’. And it was also well propagated that MGR, in his real life, had shown enormous devotion to his mother Sathyabama. This included worshipping her picture every morning..”

Britain Must Stand Up for Human Rights in Sri Lanka

Our government should back UN calls for justice by urging the Commonwealth to move its summit elsewhere    The Queen shakes hands with Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa at the Commonwealth heads of government meeting last year. Photograph: Wpa Pool/Getty Images   In early 2009, as foreign secretary, I travelled to Sri Lanka with Bernard… Read more »