සේකරගේ ප්රහේළිකාව ගැන වැඩිදුරටත්
The article on the Sekera puzzle and the interpretation of the communal crisis brought a number of telephone responses, and this is Ivan’s answer to them — including a correction he is careful to make gently about the answer Professor Sarath Wijesuriya had given him.
මහගමසේකර ප්රහේලිකාව හා අර්බුදයට තිබෙන අර්ථකථනයේ දුගීභාවය
Mahagama Sekera was an artist the country loved and respected, of the first rank in several branches of art at once, and the authenticity in his work was the artistic expression of the authenticity in his life. Ivan had a puzzle about him he could not settle for years: why the statue of him at the junction where you enter his village had been attacked, several times, by somebody.
විදුහල්පති ධර්මදාස හා දොස්තර ජයසිංහ
When Ivan heard that a doctor had been shot dead at Karandeniya he wanted to know why. He asked several people in Colombo with connections there, and from every one of them heard only that he was a kind young doctor who worked with great love for the people of the area — and nothing at all about the reasons behind his killing.
ගාන්ධි නූතන ශ්රී ලංකාවට කැඳවාගෙන ඒම -5
As in many other colonised countries, the political awakening that sought reform came out of the religious revival — the native religions, pushed into a low condition under foreign rule, working to recover the standing they had held. In Ceylon that happened in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.
ගාන්ධි නූතන ශ්රී ලංකාවට කැඳවාගෙන ඒම (4)
The British took the Kandyan kingdom in 1815 not by battle but by a crafty programme, and Sir John D’Oyly admitted as much in a long conversation, describing the programme he had run and naming several of the natives who acted as its chief pawns. It succeeded because of the support the Kandyan chiefs gave, in the expectation that the power to rule under British authority would come to them.
ගාන්ධි නූතන ශ්රී ලංකාවට කැඳවා ගෙන ඒම (3)
Gandhi’s analysis of the crisis modern Sri Lanka faces and of the way to overcome it comes with his commentary on Sri Lankan history, and this instalment is his reading of the Portuguese and Dutch periods: the conversions, the Karava and Salagama communities, the Malays, and the taking of the Kandyan kingdom.
ගාන්ධි නූතන ශ්රී ලංකාවට ගෙන්වා ගැනීම (II)
It was Gandhi who showed the world that spiritual strength joined to popular power can be turned into an undefeated motive force working for the progress, the justice and the liberation of ordinary people, free of self-interest, malice and hatred. Einstein said at his death that a powerful following can be won not only by political cunning but by the example of a disciplined and exalted human conduct.
දෙමළ සන්ධානයේ නව අස්ථානය
With the LTTE gone, the Tamil National Alliance is becoming again the main vehicle of Tamil political hopes — and, most importantly, has set aside the demand for Eelam as unrealistic, accepting a unitary state within which a lasting settlement is to be sought with Sinhalese support. Ivan writes that hatred and separatist feeling are not found only between communities but between castes, religions and parties too.
දෙමළ සමාජය ගැන
Three and a half hours with a delegation from the Tamil diaspora — all of them long-standing opponents of the LTTE — gives Ivan an account of the north he could not get otherwise: the local elections, the caste composition of Jaffna now that most Vellala families live abroad, and the widespread refusal to believe Prabhakaran is dead.
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.