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.
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.