අර්බුදය මට පෙනෙන හැටි (අවසන් කොටස)
Ivan divides the post-independence period into two eras and traces the second, from 1977: a government that could not be changed, thuggery institutionalised in the universities and unions, Black July and the JVP ban, and the violent era of 1985 to 2009, including Indian intervention and the state’s brutal suppression of the second JVP rising under Premadasa. Kumaratunga’s People’s Alliance continued the corrupt system, and Mahinda Rajapaksa, after defeating Prabhakaran, chose a stinking path instead of reconciliation, leaving the country as isolated as it was when Prabhakaran was strong.
අර්බුදය මට පෙනෙන හැටි
Replying to a reader who said he blames everything on the executive presidency, Ivan traces the crisis further back, to a crisis of thought. Buddhism became confined to the Sinhalese, and independence came without a mass struggle, so the new state inherited narrow limits. He follows the distortions through to 1977 and beyond: the crushing of the 1980 general strike, the burning of the Jaffna library during the 1981 district council election, the 1982 referendum, and Black July, blamed on the JVP, which pushed both Tamil and Sinhala youth towards violence.
එකක් කඩතොලු වසා ගන්නට ගොස් දෙකක් කඩතොලු හදා ගැනීම
Ahead of the March 2014 Human Rights Council session, where the High Commissioner was to report on Sri Lanka, Ivan warns that the government is making things worse by putting the President himself at the head of the Geneva fight. He compares the two JVP risings and the LTTE war, three youth rebellions crushed by force, and argues that after defeating the LTTE Mahinda Rajapaksa had a rare chance to heal the nation and win international respect, but instead undermined the rule of law and turned manageable problems into international crises.
සමාජ පාදඩකරණය
Starting from P.B. Jayasekera’s first novel, whose hero is a former rebel of the second JVP rising turned political fixer, Ivan traces how a lumpen class has come to dominate Sri Lankan society. A black economy existed before 1977, but the executive presidency, the open economy and patronage let thugs, criminals and politicians form an alliance, strengthened by the private militias of the 1988–89 terror and the war. The LTTE was defeated, he writes, yet violent crime has become an everyday event, and he asks where the country is heading.
සිංහල-බෞද්ධ මනස තේරුම් ගැනීම
Responding to Kusal Perera’s ‘In Search of the New Man’, Ivan revisits two debates: Newton Gunasinghe’s great and little traditions, which suggest Sinhala cultural narrowness belongs to the era of decline rather than all history, and Sarachchandra’s claim, contested by Martin Wickramasinghe, that Buddhism does not see art as purifying. Europe escaped a similar world-denial through the Renaissance; Sri Lanka’s revivals, independence movement and parties never produced one. Every movement from Dharmapala and Bandaranaike to Wijeweera and the JHU has pandered to the Sinhala-Buddhist mind, shaped by an island that kept its identity against India, rather than changing it.
චෝගම් ආශ්රයෙන් උගත හැකි පාඩම්
CHOGM exposed the depth of Sri Lanka’s crisis, Ivan argues: foreign lawyers were refused visas for a Bar Association event, when Param Cumaraswamy had once come freely to criticise the judiciary. The government cannot investigate war-time abuses because it fears the armed forces it now leans on, and Gotabaya Rajapaksa would not welcome it. Every insurrection and its suppression was brutal; Ivan judges the army’s conduct against the LTTE less savage than in 1989 and rejects the 40,000 figure, yet accepts crimes such as the Trincomalee killings. Sirimavo Bandaranaike prosecuted Premawathie Manamperi’s killers; Mahinda Rajapaksa has shown no such courage.
බැරැක්ක සංවර්ධනය
Unlike after 1971 and 1989, when troops returned quickly to barracks, the defeat of the LTTE brought glorification of the forces and a steady military creep into civilian life: officers as governors and secretaries, soldiers running what they build, principals given military ranks. Ivan argues that soldiers and rulers who ended the war did their paid duty and the public owes them thanks, not debt. Command without question suits armies, not societies. The army’s shooting of unarmed villagers protesting polluted water at Rathupaswala, Weliweriya, shows the cost of barrack rule.
රජිව් ගාන්ධි ලංකාවේ වීරයෙක්ද? ද්රෝහියෙක්ද?
After a brief tribute to the Elections Commissioner for requiring asset declarations with nominations, Ivan marks the Accord’s 26th anniversary by defending Rajiv Gandhi against the Sinhala view of him as a scheming invader. Drawing on J.N. Dixit, he recounts Rajiv’s insistence on signing amid riots, his calm after a sailor’s rifle-butt blow, his concessions to Prabhakaran and the IPKF operations that led to his assassination. The IPKF, he argues, saved the state from two simultaneous insurgencies until Premadasa armed the LTTE; Sri Lanka should honour Rajiv with a statue.
අන්තෝ ජටා බහි ජටා
Ivan asks why more than a hundred thousand deaths in two insurrections have left so little mark on Sri Lankan thought and literature, recalling conversations with Simon Navagattegama and Ediriweera Sarachchandra and a sharp exchange with Sugathapala de Silva. He argues that caste, not only race and class, drove both rebellions: Wijeweera and Prabhakaran came from parallel non-dominant castes and drew their foot soldiers from oppressed ones. Only Premadasa grasped this, and the chance to rebuild society after the LTTE’s defeat has been squandered.
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.