ඇත්ත ඇති සැටියෙන් දැකීම
Ivan answers two replies to his article on the genocide claim, apologises for having left a
professor unnamed, and turns to what international law actually says: who counts as a
combatant, what carpet bombing forbids, which three rights survive an emergency, and what
the International Criminal Court could and could not be asked to do. He closes on a
comparison few make — the caste composition of those killed by Wijeweera’s followers and by
Prabhakaran’s, and of those killed by the forces suppressing both.
ව්යවස්ථා සභාව, උයන්ගොඩ හා විග්නේෂ්වරම්
The Jathika Hela Urumaya objects to Jayadeva Uyangoda’s nomination to the Constitutional
Council because he once served a twelve-year sentence, and the prime minister to C.V.
Wigneswaran’s. Ivan answers that the 1977 government repealed the law Uyangoda was sentenced
under and gazetted that it should not follow him, that Gandhi, Mandela and D.S. Senanayake
were all imprisoned men, and that being Tamil does not make a retired Supreme Court judge a
separatist. The deeper fault, he argues, is a constitution written to place the president
above itself.
යුද්ධය නපුරුය විනාශකාරීය, ඒ සමඟ එය ඓතිහාසික කාර්යභාරයක් ඉටු කරයි
Answering Ravaya readers angry at his support for the war, Ivan points to Gandhi raising an
ambulance corps in the Boer War and blessing the Allies against Hitler, and argues that the
Second World War was won not by non-violence but by a greater counter-violence. He applies
the same reasoning to the two JVP insurrections and to this one, and — drawing on Michael
Roberts — describes the people held with the LTTE as citizens of a de facto state that ran
its own courts, customs and army on Sri Lankan salaries.
ප්රගතිශීලිත්වය හා ප්රතිගාමිත්වය
A philosophical and historical reflection by the author on their controversial support for the state’s harsh military suppression of both the JVP insurrection and the LTTE. Drawing comparisons to the non-violent civil rights movements of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, the author argues that when armed rebellions become devastatingly brutal and jeopardize society, state counter-violence can sometimes be a progressive necessity rather than a reactionary evil.
වඩා වැදගත් කවුද?
Ivan discovered on a Friday that most of Ravaya’s ten-member editorial board are Marxists of one school or another. From there he argues the case against: the socialist experiments that failed, Pol Pot’s regime killing people for wearing sunglasses, Wijeweera’s two attempts at armed seizure — and sets against them the India Gandhi made, the largest democracy on earth, beside which he thinks Marx looks small.
What is More Decisive: Ethnicity or Class?
Ivan argues that Sri Lanka’s crisis is not only ethnic: caste, which the youth commission found behind the second JVP rising, cuts across it. He draws on his own custody after 1971, when he was known as Podi Athula, on the caste make-up of the JVP and LTTE, and on the killing of a school principal during the second insurrection.
වඩා ප්රමුඛ වර්ගය ද? කුලය ද?
Answering Gamini Viyangoda’s criticism of his position on the ethnic crisis, Ivan opens the side of it nobody wants to discuss. The ethnic question is half the truth, he argues, not the whole: the 1971 insurrection, the monks who joined it, the Samasamaja movement, the second insurrection and the killing of Saddhatissa all point to inequality inside the communities as well as between them.
දාර්ශනික මාක්ස් හා දේශපාලනික මාක්ස්
A reply to Sumanasiri, who holds that Marx the philosopher is not dead. Ivan grants that the world Marx hoped for is more beautiful than liberal democracy, but separates the philosopher from the politician. Drawing on Dmitri Volkogonov’s biographies of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, drawn from the opened Soviet archives, he argues that attempts to build Marx’s world produced tyranny, likens Pol Pot, Wijeweera and Prabhakaran to those figures, and concludes that capitalism cannot be replaced and must be reformed through liberal democracy, his preferred model being Gandhi’s India.
සංඝ ආඥාව – සුන්දර
The Sunday Lakbima’s front page announced that a Sangha decree would expel the President from Buddhism, and its editor-in-chief Sundara Nihathamani de Mel had to answer for it. Ivan compares Gandhi’s model of satyagraha with the Sri Lankan version, and weighs a ruler’s right to decide against the need to win public consent for agreements such as the ceasefire.
දේශපාලනය හා ධර්මය
Ranil Wickremesinghe’s 54-page booklet on politics and the Dhamma was launched with great ceremony. The note compares the thin record of books by Sri Lankan leaders, J.R. Jayewardene’s included, with India’s tradition from Gandhi onwards, and links that emptiness to the emptiness of the country’s politics.