ආචාර්ය නිර්මාල්ගේ දයලෙක්තික අච්චාරුවාදය
Ivan replies to Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri’s critique (17 June) of his column ‘Is the Thirteenth Amendment the Best Solution?’. Listing his earlier Ravaya pieces on the national question from 2006 onwards and his debate with Kumar David, he rejects the charge that he has turned against devolution, and cites the Asia Foundation survey and the ICES study ‘Seeking Space for State Reform’, in which about 80% of Sinhalese backed reform, to argue that a solution must be built with, not against, public opinion.
ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණේ දෙකඩවීම
Prompted by a 71-year-old reader in Kandy who hoped the JVP’s breakaway ‘people’s struggle’ group might revive Marxism, Ivan reflects on Marxism as a secular religion whose paradise collapsed with the socialist world, leaving devoted followers stranded. He remembers his lawyer and friend Suranjith, who gave years to the Communist Party, and the short story he wrote in prison after 1971 predicting that Mao’s own people would one day strike his statue. He recalls Leslie Goonewardene’s view that the LSSP split merely scattered a brilliant young generation — a warning for the new group — and argues that the old Left’s intellectual, liberal-democratic tradition deserves respect, that Wijeweera’s rejection of it was wrong, and that the dissidents stop their self-criticism short of Wijeweera and the two insurrections.