(This interview by Asif Bin Ali was initially published in the Dhaka, Bangladesh-based, The Daily Observer on Thursday, 28 March, 2019. It took as its point of departure the publication of the book, Against the Nation: Thinking Like South Asians by Sasanka Perera, Dev Nath Pathak and Ravi Kumar (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), and discusses issues […]
~ Nira Wickramasinghe, Leiden University At different moments in time Sri Lanka was known by different names, Serendib for the Arabs, Lanka in the Ramayana and other chronicles and Ceylon for the successive European rulers who conquered parts of the island from the sixteenth century. In modern day Sri Lanka there is a small and […]
~ Gitanjali Surendran, Jindal Global Law School, India On the face of it one of the greatest challenges for humans in a modern age marked by conflict, is how to live together with atl east the minimum degree of security and harmony. I once heard a Palestinian film maker say to an audience in Delhi […]
~ Sasanka Perera, South Asian University As J. Krishnamurti and Educational Practice: Social and Moral Vision for Inclusive Education edited by Meenakshi Thapan enters circulation, I wondered how to write a non-conventional review of it. That is, to outline the politics in which it can be located and read, rather than say what it contains […]
~ Nira Wickramasinghe, Leiden University In (Dis)connected Empires: Imperial Portugual, Sri Lankan Diplomacy and the Making of a Habsburg Conquest in Asia, Zoltán Biederman traces the shift from diplomacy and commerce to conquest in the island of Sri Lanka under imperial Portugal, the turning point being the dynastic union in 1580 of the crowns of […]
~ Anoli Perera, Senior Sri Lankan artist and art commentator based in Colombo and New Delhi. Yashodhara Dalmia’s book on Geoge Keyt, a pioneering 20th century Sri Lankan artist is of crucial historical importance at a time when such efforts are extremely scarce in Sri Lanka itself. When I read through the pages of Dalmia’s […]
ලංකාව නිර්යටත්විජිතකරණයට ලක්කිරීම: ශ්රී ලංකාවේ යටත්විජිතවාදය, ජාතිකවාදය හා අවකාශය පිලිබඳ දේශපාලනය (2021) – නිහාල් පෙරේරා මෙම කෘතිය මගින් අවධාරණය කෙරෙන්නේ යුරෝපීය යටත් විජිත යුගය තුළ ශ්රී ලංකාවේ නගර — විශේෂයෙන් කොළඹ නගරය — බිහි වූ ආකාරයත් එම නාගරික අවකාශය තුළ යටත් විජිතවාදීන්ගේ අවශ්යතා අනුව නගරය නිර්මානය වූ ආකාරය පිළිබඳවත් ය. මූලික වශයෙන් මෙම කෘතිය අවකාශය හා […]
~ Ranmalie Jayawardana, Queen’s University Belfast Perera opens Violence and the Burden of Memory with personal recollections of a childhood friend who found success in the army, and ultimately died in battle. As Perera walks the reader through memories of his old friend, pondering how he is remembered today and through whom his story is […]
~ Nira Wickramasinghe, Leiden University In May 2009 the secessionist war that had pitted the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) against the security forces of the government of Sri Lanka since 1983 came to a brutal end. Prabhakaran, the ruthless leader of the LTTE, and countless other combattants lay dead around the Nandikadal lagoon, […]
~ Nira Wickramasinghe, Leiden University This elegant volume that grew out of a workshop held at the Australian National University in 2013 brings together ten essays that focus on exile, through three central themes: kings (a shorthand for members of royal families), convicts and commemoration. It is situated at the intersection of histories of banishment, […]