මගේ සිහිනය ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
Replying to readers’ reactions to his plan to reorganise Ravaya, Ivan explains his habit of seeing things unconventionally, as Gandhi and Mandela did, and sets his plan against his forecast that Sri Lanka is heading for anarchy. After Prabhakaran’s defeat the political system stood exposed; Mahinda Rajapaksa, the only leader left, failed to rebuild the state, and parties on both sides are historically spent. With a monk’s self-immolation over cattle slaughter and the row over the Thirteenth Amendment as signs, he argues Ravaya must be strengthened to guide readers through the coming collapse.
කියවීම හා ප්රශ්න කිරීම
A visit to Prem Dissanayake’s bookshop leads Ivan to a Sinhala translation of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities’ by Liyanage Amarakeerthi. He laments a culture in which teachers, journalists and politicians rarely read — no Sri Lankan leader since D.S. Senanayake has written a serious book, unlike India’s — and in which publishers favour novels over ideas. Drawing on Nussbaum’s chapter on Socratic pedagogy, he argues that Sri Lanka treats the questioner as a traitor and must learn to read, argue and respect dissent.
නව ව්යවස්ථාව ගැන
Continuing his response to the draft Nineteenth Amendment, Ivan sets out how a new constitution should be made: first agree the principles with the public, as South Africa and India did, then draft. He argues it must define a Sri Lankan nation of equal peoples and outlaw caste discrimination; return to a reformed parliamentary system with a mixed electoral system, a Senate and an Indian-style election commission; devolve power to village and district councils; bind governments to national policy frameworks, above all a foreign policy that respects India; and make the state secular.
චින්තනයේ දුප්පත්කම (3) — ධර්මපාලගේ සිට පැරණි වම දක්වා
In the final part of the series Ivan surveys the currents that shaped modern Sinhala political thought and finds that none could build a nation. Anagarika Dharmapala’s liberationist vision had room only for Sinhala Buddhists; the Ceylon National Congress spoke of one Ceylonese nation but had no plan to unite it; the Gandhian Jaffna Youth Congress had the most progressive vision but wrecked itself with the 1931 election boycott; and the brilliant Marxist Old Left, schooled on Lenin and Trotsky rather than Locke and Mill, cared for class, not nation.
චින්තනයේ දුප්පත්කම (2)
Ivan argues that British rule transformed Ceylon’s economy and state but left its thinking feudal. Europe’s Renaissance and liberal philosophers — Copernicus to Locke and Mill — remade how people thought as well as how they lived; India’s Congress, under Gandhi and Nehru, used the freedom struggle itself as a revolution in thought against caste and communalism. Ceylon, handed independence on a tray, had only Buddhist and Hindu revivals that fought Christian dominance but, trapped by caste and unlike Ram Mohan Roy’s, never turned their criticism inward.
මරණය භීතියට හෝ කනස්සල්ලට හේතුවක් කරගත යුතුද?
Responding to comments overheard at the funeral of the poet Ratna Sri’s wife, Ivan accepts that some of his advice on family life suits the middle class more than the poor, and describes how his own mother lived with his wife in her last years. He then argues that retirement is a long stage of life, not a waiting room for death, and considers great deaths — Madduma Bandara, the Buddha, Christ and Socrates — as well as Gandhi and Tolstoy, who learned to cycle at 67, to urge older readers to live fully until the end rather than in fear.
දරුවන් යහපත් හා සාර්ථක කිරීම
Prompted by the response to his column on retirement, Ivan writes about raising children. Gandhi, his hero, was in his view a failed father, and he describes how he kept his own weekends for his family. He argues that mothers should stay with young children through the long human childhood, that parental quarrels harm them, and that reading and chess build intelligence and self-control, drawing on how chess helped his son. He warns parents against forcing children into careers they do not want, and tells of his younger daughter’s school survey of social attitudes.
වැරදුණේ කොතැනද? පැරණි වම හා නව වම
Marking N.M. Perera’s 106th birth anniversary, Ivan rejects the view — shared by the Frontline Socialists about the JVP — that the Left failed by abandoning class struggle for coalition politics. The old Left’s leaders were middle-class intellectuals of great learning, as Mick Moore described, and able administrators: Anil Moonesinghe made the CTB profitable and handed commission cars to the board, while Leslie Goonewardene refused Yugoslav money. The LSSP might have beaten the UNP in 1947 had it not opposed the war and fled to India, and lacked a Gandhi to hold it together. Its real error was believing socialism could be built through coalitions and abandoning its minority-rights policies; Colvin R. de Silva told Ivan the 1978 Constitution was better for minorities than his own of 1972. The JVP had devotion but no study, and should use parliamentary politics to pursue achievable reforms.
ප්රතිසංස්කරණය හා ප්රතිනිර්මාණය
Answering lawyer Sudarshana Gunawardana of Rights Now and the Platform for Freedom, who wrote in Samabima that Ivan merely preaches to the ruler, Ivan says he never believed sermons to leaders could change the system. Rejecting violent revolution, he sees two peaceful routes — persuading lawmakers, the quicker one, or building an alternative within the old system, as set out in his book on saving Sri Lanka — and argues reform must come now, not after the next change of government, because terrorism is gone, the system is exposed and exhausted, and black money is taking over. He calls for a broad national reform agenda drafted as carefully as India’s constitution, dismisses the Platform as a foreign-funded project with a narrow base and no theory, and describes his own books on the political system, caste and religion as the result of long study.
අහිංසාවාදයේ පැණි තැවරූ අවස්ථාවාදය
Dr Sunil Wijesiriwardena, who turned back at the gate of Ravaya’s anniversary rather than submit to security checks, wrote that two front-page photographs showed Ravaya treating its readers as a feudal lord treats low-caste visitors. Ivan answers with satire and six historical photographs — LSSP leaders seated above their supporters, Trotsky at the Comintern’s top table, Tagore, Gandhi and Nehru in chairs above others — to show where such reasoning leads. He then turns the test on Wijesiriwardena’s own record: how he ran his organisation Vibhavi, why it closed when foreign funding ended, and whether as a paid consultant to other NGOs he ever challenged their corruption. Those who judge others’ spaces, Ivan says, must first look at their own.