The focus of the fourth paper, ‘Ravana’s Sri Lanka: Redefining the Sinhala Nation?’, by Dileepa Witharana, focuses on the recent widespread surge of interest in Ravana within the Sinhala community. This interest has reached unprecedented levels, to the point of redefining the Sinhala nation in popular public space by discarding the theory of Aryan descent… Read more »
Posts Categorized: Religion
The Ritualizing of the Martial and Benevolent Side of Ravana
in Two Annual Rituals at the Sri Devram Maha Viharaya in Pannipitiya, Sri Lanka by Deborah de Koning, MDPI Religions, Netherlands, 21 August 2018 https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/9/250 Reflections …That the Ravana myth should not be considered a version of the Ramayana becomes for instance clear in the wall paintings of the Ravana mandiraya: These wall paintings concentrate… Read more »
Buddhist Nationalists Claim Victory in Sri Lankan Election
by The Associated Press, November 17, 2019 KANDY, Sri Lanka — In this mountain city that was for centuries home to Sri Lanka’s kings and in recent years has been riven by religious violence, Buddhist nationalists are rejoicing the election of the country’s newest leader. They hope he ushers in another golden era for the… Read more »
Identity, Choices and Crisis
A Study of Muslim Political Leadership in Sri Lanka by ARM Imtiyaz, Journal of Asian and African Studies 48(1) 47 –63, 2012 Identity_Choices_and_Crisis_A_Study_of_M Abstract This study attempts to understand the choices made by Muslim political leaders in general, and after independence in particular. Muslim leadership has been broadly classified into two categories based on their… Read more »
Ignorance and Populism Puts Sri Lankan Muslims in the Crosshairs
by Farzana Haniffa, East Asia Forum, Australia, October 4, 2019 There is no locally-relevant social or communal cause that could explain the Easter Sunday 2019 attacks in Sri Lanka. Christian–Muslim relations are largely cordial. Mobilisation of Buddhists through anti-Muslim rhetoric after the war’s end in 2009 led to several incidents of anti-Muslim violence with large-scale… Read more »
Divide in Press Reporting on Kanniya, Trincomalee
by The Media Analysis, Verite Research, Colombo, July 24, 2019 Was there a difference in front page headlines in reporting the protest? Find out at: 23 July 2019: http://divide.lk/divided-headlines-23-july-2019/ 19 July 2019: http://divide.lk/divided-headlines-19-july-2019/
The Muslim Factor in Sri Lankan Ethnic Crisis
by Ameer Ali, 1997 A Critical Front-Note by Sachi Sri Kantha, July 25, 2019 ‘Under the bamboo Bamboo bamboo Under the bamboo tree Two live as one One live as two Two live as three Under the bam Under the boo Under the bamboo tree.’ S.Eliot’s lines in the verse, ‘Sweeney Agonistes’, 1926-27. In a… Read more »
Shifting the Blame
by Harini Amarasuriya, Himal, Colombo, June 20 2019 A minority is framed again to cover Sri Lanka’s fault lines, in wake of the Easter attacks. Photo: Francisco Anzola / Flickr Much has been and continues to be said and done, since the Easter Attacks in Sri Lanka on 21 April, that killed over 250 individuals…. Read more »
Reign of Sinhala-Buddhist Chauvinism in Sri Lanka
by Thambu Kanagasabai, LLM [Lond.] Former Lecturer in Law University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, June 17, 2019 Sri Lanka’s image as a prosperous and multi-racial peaceful country took a nose dive and u-turn from 1956 with the passing of Sinhala Only Act in 1956, a short-sighted political move by S.W.R.D. Bandaranayake to capture power at… Read more »
Sri Lanka’s Muslims Bloodied by Buddhism
by Ana Pararajasingam, ‘Asia Times,’ Bangkok, June 20, 2019 Sri Lanka has become more fragile, fractured and polarized following the Easter Sunday bomb attacks as the country’s Muslims are harassed and subjected to violence by mobs of Sinhala Buddhists who form the majority of the island’s population. Although those targeted by jihadist violence on Easter… Read more »
Island of Racial & Religious Extremism
With culture of impunity by Thambu Kanagasabai, LLM [Lond. Former Lecturer in Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka], May 28, 2019 April 21st attacks on three Churches and three star Hotels by radicalized Muslims surprised Sri Lanka’s Government, its citizens and the world. They were well pre-planned and co-ordinated to unleash the killings on worshippers… Read more »
Unholy Tension in Lanka’s Muslim East
Different interpretations of Islam by Thawheed and traditional school divide the community by Chris Kamalendran, Asif Fuard and cameraman Saman Kariyawasam in Kattankudy, The Sunday Times, Colombo, August 9, 2009 The tiny coastal village of Kattankudy, a ten minutes drive from the eastern capital of Batticaloa, lies in a picturesque setting. Its boundaries hug the… Read more »
What Sri Lanka Needs Now
by Kitana Ananda and Mythri Jegathesan, CNN, USA, April 28, 2019 Since multiple blasts killed at least 253 people and injured hundreds more in Sri Lanka last Sunday, the government has declared a state of emergency, bringing back draconian anti-terrorism laws that will curtail civil liberties and increase militarization. Officials have begun to investigate, and though… Read more »
Sri Lanka’s Bloody Easter Puts Spotlight on a New Terror Threat
by Ishan Tharoor, Washington Post, April 22, 2019 A shocking, coordinated series of bombings on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka marked one of the world’s bloodiest terrorist attacks over the past half-decade. At least 290 people were killed and more than 450 others injured after suicide bombers exploded devices in three churches in the cities… Read more »
For Christians in Sri Lanka, Violence is at Once Old and New
by Emily Tamkin, Washington Post, April 22, 2019 No group or individual has asserted responsibility for the attacks on churches and hotels that killed more than 290 people and injured more than 450 in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday. But the suicide bombings on the holiest day of the Christian calendar, when churches see their highest attendance… Read more »
Muslims in Post-War Sri Lanka
An Opportunity Lost for Conflict Transformation by A.R.M. Imtiyaz, S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole, Amjad Mohamed Saleem, V. Ameerdeen, Journal of Arts & Humanities, Maryland, USA, 2015 Abstract This paper examines the post-war Sri Lankan conditions among Sri Lanka Muslims, also known as Moors. The article will attempt to argue that state concessions to Muslim political… Read more »
The Outbreak of ‘Hell’ by the Portuguese on Jaffna
by G. Pathmanathan (Dept of Anthropology, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India) and Raghavan Pathmanathan (School of Archaeology & Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia), ‘Nalluran.com,’ January 14, 2014 OUR CHERISHED MEMORIES OF TWO LORD SRI KARTHIKEYA TEMPLES AT MAVETTAPURAM & NALLUR, JAFFNA PENNINSULA, SRI LANKA [Not sure why the section on the Portuguese is in this article, but it… Read more »
Buddhism in Sri Lanka
A brief history by Barbara O’Brien, ‘Thoughtco,’ July 23, 2018 When Buddhism spread beyond India, the first nations in which it took root were Gandhara and Ceylon, now called Sri Lanka. Since Buddhism eventually died out in India and Gandhara, it can be argued that the oldest living Buddhist tradition today is found in Sri Lanka. Today about… Read more »
Progressive Hinduism and a New Movement Against Poverty
by Nooreen Reza, Kajal Magazine, New York, June 26, 2018 Fifty years ago this month, a movement for economic justice built upon racial solidarity was brought to a halt in the US national capital of Washington DC. That movement was the Poor People’s Campaign, created by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in December 1967. In… Read more »
The Chronic and the Entrenched
Ethno-Religious Violence in Sri Lanka by Gehan Gunatilleke, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, 2018 http://ices.lk/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/The-Chronic-and-the-Entrenched-Mr.-Gihan-Book-FINAL-WEB-PDF.pdf …This study set out to establish the hypothesis that ethno-religious violence in Sri Lanka is ‘entrenched’ within cultural, socio-political and state structures, and requires radical interventions to overcome. It first reflected on the nature of communal violence in Sri… Read more »