වට ම ගොස් ගෙට ම ආ සර්ව පාක්ෂික යෝජනා
Tissa Vitharana handed the Malwatte Mahanayake a set of proposals for the north and east, and the prelate replied that any settlement must stay inside a unitary framework. Ivan traces the two rival reports of the all-party expert committee and says the majority’s proposals are caught in the same cycle that has turned every seven or eight years — war for peace, then fighting the war properly — and will likely end in the rubbish tip near the Temple of the Tooth.
ඩියුටි ෆ්රී වාහන විවාදය
When the Hela Urumaya’s monk members were reported to have sold their permits, the party said the vehicles were sold on a five-year transfer, thirty lakhs each went to the monks and the rest to the party fund — and the story has since changed. Ivan’s point is the gap the permit creates: a permit worth between fifty lakhs and a crore on sale is why laymen and monks alike want to be members.
චම්පික රණවක හා ශබ්ද දූෂණය
The Hela Urumaya’s outlook is divisive, Ivan writes, and its lay leader’s noise-control bill is a good and forward-looking law: no loudspeakers from ten at night until dawn. He blames the UNP for opposing it in order to stir religious feeling, and says religious observance may be broadcast to the temple, the church or the kovil but not forced on people who are asleep.
ලෝනා රයිට් හා වෘත්තීය පුහුණුව
A portrait of Lorna Wright, who stayed to work for the poor when she could have gone to Australia, and an argument built on her work: unemployment should be addressed through the international labour market rather than the domestic one, because creating an industrial job at home costs millions. Ivan ends by asking temples to become vocational training centres rather than political ones.
රටේ පොදු වස්තුව කොල්ලකෑම
A UNP member’s disclosure about Land Reform Commission land deserves public argument: two acres at Kaduwela worth ninety-five million rupees were bought for Rs 30,200, and by implication by a monk who is loud about corruption. Ivan widens it — broadcasting licences worth crores are handed out through the back door where Europe would auction them, and the money goes to the hangers-on instead of the treasury.
නීතිය ද? කැලේ නීතිය ද?
A Supreme Court noise-control order, a monk remanded under it, and monks protesting inside the court itself have become a chain of incidents. Ivan grants that noise control is arguable and that whether such an order binds the whole country is arguable too — and says the real problem is a crisis in the institutions that dispense justice, with the most complaints about abuse of power coming from the Supreme Court.
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.
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.
Darkness and light
A monk asks the diaspora for dollars to keep the government running. Victor Ivan sets the new president’s inheritance against the Yahapalana years and against the murder of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike.