Sri Lanka: Another cause for failure
Dharmapala and Marx, the Soulbury Constitution broken before the ink was dry, and the citizenship of the plantation workers. Victor Ivan traces the decline to the choices made at the moment of independence.
The end of a journey and beginning of a new one
Anti-Muslim feeling, the forced cremations, and what Victor Ivan says the National Intelligence Service did. The column argues the old era has ended and asks what should be built in its place.
More about the ‘end of an era of extremism’
A sequel to the previous week’s column. Victor Ivan goes back to Turnour’s Mahavamsa, to Anagarika Dharmapala and to the growth of literacy to show where Sinhala-Buddhist racism got its history from.
The end of an era of extremism
From the Mahavamsa to Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Victor Ivan follows one line of thought through Sri Lankan history and argues that the era it produced is now, at last, ending.
Reawakening of Tamil society
The Pothuvil to Polikandy march reads to Victor Ivan as a Tamil society waking up. He sets it beside the two Sinhala insurrections and the failure, since 1948, to build a nation any minority could belong to.
Lost hopes of freedom
On the 73rd independence anniversary, Victor Ivan traces the country back to 1815 and the Colebrooke reforms to ask how a state that began ahead of Asia ended at the bottom of it.
What if everyone fails?
With every institution of the state failed, Victor Ivan asks who is left. He measures Champika Ranawaka against the standard and finds an educated man who is still, in his judgment, a tribal leader.
Making the nation a bunch of morons
A school system built on memorising, and a country that has stopped being able to reason. Victor Ivan argues the damage runs from Grade 1 to the way Sri Lanka has understood the pandemic.
What may happen?
The winner has the cake and it is not edible. Victor Ivan describes a government that has taken enormous power at exactly the moment power stops being worth having.
Understanding core issues: The key for solution
Answering readers who asked for a solution, Victor Ivan goes back to the core issues — the limits of the independence Sri Lanka was given, the disenfranchisements that followed, and the nation never built.