Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
“It was the class struggle in free flow and it constituted the highest point that the class struggle had yet reached in Ceylon”
70 years ago this month, on 12 August 1953, “a demonstration of the tremendous power of the masses in action” influenced by Left parties and trade unions, shook (...)
The socialist era art collection at People’s Bank in Slave Island
Nestled amidst the bustling streets of Slave Island (Kompannavidiya) lies an obscure art gallery that remains largely unknown to the public. The building, a stark relic of Sri Lanka’s socialist era in the 1970s, is frequented (...)
For a start I divide the history of Samasamajism, the story of the Samasamaja movement as whole, not just the Party, into four periods centred on the last century. We are entering a fifth Period which will encompass Samasamajism’s Twenty-first Century.
The two Phases of the first or (...)
The idealised “village” was at the core of the people’s struggle last year. As a fundamental of Sri Lankan nationalist thought, agrarian utopianism helps to explain the country’s past and imagine a different future.
In Sri Lanka, during last year’s aragalaya, or people’s struggle, the (...)
“Our challenge is to devise some arrangement which enables us to coexist if not in amity then at least in forbearance.” Jawaharlal Nehru (quoted in Andre Malraux’s Anti-Memoir).
During Black July, marauding mobs, when uncertain about the ethnic identity of a potential victim, would order (...)
Inspired by Yugoslavia’s market socialism, Trotskyists in the Sri Lankan government instituted workers’ councils during the 1970s. A decade later, the experiment collapsed. What explains its rise and fall?
On June 28, 1948, the Cominform, the Stalinist alliance of European Marxist-Leninist (...)
Set during the Sri Lankan civil war and narrated by a dead man, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is part murder mystery, part political satire and part love story. Its author recalls the grim events that inspired it – and the editor who kept pushing him to do better
When Shehan Karunatilaka (...)
I am not in Sri Lanka, and I feel torn about what is happening there. Acute anxiety about how millions will survive the shortages of food, fuel and medicine jostles against a glimmer of hope that this crisis could be the beginning of the end of a decades-long nightmare. Since the country (...)
It was daily routine for Robert to exercise every morning on the balcony. He was exercising as usual on that fateful day while two of his comrades stood by watching. Suddenly there were three or four “plops” in succession. A bleeding Subathiran was rushed to the Jaffna Teaching Hospital (...)
A study on the paradox of religious art and Sri Lanka’s diverse ethnic history
That Sri Lanka was an ancient trading hub based on our strategic positioning on the global map is a well-known facet of our history and that positioning as a trading hub is one that we’re still very much trying (...)
Sarath Wijesinghe Charithapadanaya saha 71 Tharuna Pibidhime Yatapathkala Ithihasaya (The Biography of Sarath Wijesinghe and the Suppressed History of Youth Awakening in 1971)
By Susila Hemamali Wijesinghe Author Publication, Colombo, p. 380, 2022
The title of this book review is borrowed (...)
The 150th anniversary of the beginning of the tea industry in British Ceylon was marked in 2017 by a range of government and corporate events, mostly to promote Sri Lanka’s premier agricultural export. In counterpoint, the Gampola-based Tea Plantation Workers Museum and Archive hosted a (...)
I do believe that Sarath Amunugama’s memoirs will prove a valuable resource for future historians. However, in the cause of historical accuracy, I should like to take issue with what he writes (“April Fifth 1971: High drama in Temple Trees”, the book extract published in the Sunday Times of (...)
Deepa Mehta’s latest film, an adaptation of Shyam Selvadurai’s Sri Lanka-set coming-of-age novel “Funny Boy,” has been picked up by Ava DuVernay’s ARRAY Releasing, and will land on Netflix this December, Variety revealed.
The Oscar-nominated “Earth” and “Midnight’s Children” director wrote (...)
This Thursday will see the launch of my documentary Keenie Meenie – Britain’s Private Army.
It investigates the shadowy mercenary group Keenie Meenie Services (KMS), which secretly helped Sri Lanka’s military to suppress the Tamil independence struggle during the 1980s.The film accompanies (...)
The first anniversary of the passing away of Richard (Batty) Weerakoon, who was Batty to all those who came to know him, falls on October 7th. He had a varied career as a political activist who rose to the position of the General Secretary of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, lawyer who rose to the (...)
When her resignation as Human Rights Commission (HRC) Chair became public two days before the August 5 Parliamentary election, it was speculated that Deepika Udagama had quit under pressure.
“I want to say upfront that, when people ask me whether I was leaving because I succumbed to (...)
She was born to a life of privilege and was planning a career as a medical doctor. However, she gave it all up in pursuit of a dream of changing this country to one where all citizens would enjoy equal status.
Hemamali Wijesinghe was just 18 in 1971, and she was amongst the many young (...)
Protests after police shot a labour protester in 1939 contributed to the coalescence of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) as a party representing labourers and middle-class anticolonial activists.
The national leaders of Sri Lanka made several attempts to take the ruling power of Sri Lanka (...)
“Friends, you have dark skins, but white hearts- while my people here have white skins but their hearts are packed with black treason of such a nature that even an infected rat would despise to dwell in their ‘hearts’”
—Bracegirdle addressing a group of estate workers
Mark Anthony Lyster (...)
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