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.
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.