topic: 1971 insurrection

ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක් සමග ඉදිරිය දැකීමක්

Ivan sets out his own positions and why they left him isolated. He held that the Tamil rebellion was inseparable from Tamil grievances and had to be settled by negotiation — until it became clear the LTTE would accept nothing short of a separate state or confederation, at which point he supported defeating it militarily. He backed the war publicly and predicted the LTTE’s defeat while most of Ravaya’s own writers argued it could not be won. On the killing and beating of journalists he told colleagues the blame could not be laid wholly on a government unable to move against its army commander mid-war, and was angrily rejected by Sunanda Deshapriya. He records that this was the third insurrection he supported suppressing, including the 1971 rising he took part in himself. At the presidential election his loyalty was to Rajapaksa, whose remaining task he defines as remaking the state and political system.

පෑරුණු හදවත් සුව කිරීම

Written as the military defeat of the LTTE became inevitable, this article shifts focus to the monumental task of post-war reconciliation. The author argues that true victory requires healing the psychological wounds of the Tamil people, acknowledging past mistakes by the Sinhalese, and addressing legitimate minority grievances. Drawing a powerful historical parallel to the successful rehabilitation of JVP youth after the 1971 insurrection, the piece advocates for a compassionate, rehabilitative approach for surrendered LTTE cadres and a unified, cross-ethnic national effort to rebuild the North.

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.

ප්‍රචණ්ඩත්වය වන්දනාමාන කිරීම

The JVP rose twice in arms and the LTTE is still fighting; between them more than a hundred thousand are dead, and both movements commemorate their own dead without distinction as heroes. Ivan says the JVP’s transformation into a parliamentary party is good and incomplete: it has not yet given up honouring its own violence, and among the heroes it commemorates are people who killed without reason.

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.

Who Wins?

Victor Ivan reads the JVP’s place in the Alliance government as a third attempt at the ambition two rebellions failed to deliver. The 1971 rising, aimed at simultaneous attacks on police stations across the Sinhala areas, Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s government put down in days; the second, seventeen years later, killed its opponents methodically and came close to power before the Premadasa government crushed it. Having abandoned armed struggle in 1994 and entered parliament in 2001, the party now holds a share of power it means to convert into the whole. Ivan credits it with persuading the President to seize three ministries and dissolve a parliament the UNP controlled, against her own promise and at the cost of her party, and with using state power and state media unlawfully in the campaign that followed. Each then hoped to use the other and neither can now escape: the JVP cannot leave, the President cannot sack it, and both must ridicule the other to keep their own credibility. Meanwhile the Alliance is bound to a JVP economic programme — state sector, self-reliance, a mixed economy, no privatisation, no interim administration for the north-east — that Ivan thinks belongs to 1970 and has no room in the world today. He expects her to end up playing her father’s part.

Silence Must End

This article addresses Sri Lanka’s intellectual stagnation, arguing that high literacy rates mask a deeply backward social consciousness starved of meaningful public debate. Contrasting Sri Lanka’s superficial modernism with Europe’s Enlightenment and India’s inclusive movement under Mahatma Gandhi, the author criticizes Sri Lanka’s past reform attempts for fragmenting society along racial, religious, and class lines. The text delivers a sharp warning to the educated class, asserting that their persistent silence and fear of controversy create a dangerous vacuum—one historically filled by violent extremists like Wijeweera and Prabhakaran—and calls on intellectuals to fulfill their civic duty by sparking dynamic social discussion across all areas of national life.