The rough sea, sinking ship and the captain
A novice captain took the helm in the worst weather at sea. Victor Ivan reads Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s presidency that way, then turns to Geiger and the curse laid on kings in the chronicles.
Deceiving the Sinhala Buddhists
The utopian Sinhala-Buddhist state promised in 2019 and 2020 did not arrive. Victor Ivan argues that of everyone deceived by the racist project, the Sinhala Buddhists themselves were deceived most.
Short-sightedness, where shall it end?
Minorities, the judiciary, and a cabinet Victor Ivan says cannot see past the next few months. He argues that with both parties failing, only public pressure is left.
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.
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.
Understanding the puzzles of history
Victor Ivan goes back to the chronicles: how ethnic groups and religions formed on the island, what the South Indian invasions actually did, and how monks writing history shaped the way Sri Lankans think now.
Foundations of incivility
Why does a country tolerate constitutional violation after constitutional violation without protest? Victor Ivan looks for the answer in the intellectual poverty of the Left, the language question and the habit of judicial silence.
Ranjan’s whirlpool and National Anthem
Thirteen thousand recorded phone calls seized from an MP’s house, and a government that wants the national anthem sung only in Sinhala. Victor Ivan reads both as tests of how civil the nation is.
Roots of the crisis
Not the debt alone. Victor Ivan digs for the roots of the crisis in the subsidies handed out for votes, the language policy, the identity-card system and the corruption that has spread through every institution.
Unanswered question
North and east voted one way, the Sinhala south the other. Victor Ivan takes the ethnic arithmetic of the 2019 result as the unanswered question of Sri Lankan politics: how to make one nation out of three electorates.