H. L. D. Mahindapala When in two successive silent revolutions the Sinhala-Buddhist voters confirmed, with  pencilled crosses, their commitment to regain their lost hopes and heritage and usher in a new age, the stunned political scientists and other assorted pundits, mainly in the media, did not know what  hit them. What threw them off balance, […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Needling the South with provocative anti-Sinhala-Buddhist hate speech led the North all the way to Nandikadal. So why is C. V. Wigneswaran going down the same old path of divisive and  destructive politics? What does he hope to gain when the mightiest collective forces of the Jaffna Tamils failed to divide […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala When the Working Committee of the UNP met yesterday at Siri Kotha  to decide who will succeed the Leader, Ranil Wickremesinghe, the voting was decisive: 28 voted for Ruwan Wijewardene and 10 voted for  Ravi Karunanayake, according to informed Party sources. It was a secret ballot. Shamal Senarath prepared the ballot […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Once upon a colonial time, when the Vellalas dominated the casteist fiefdom of Jaffna, a husband of a low-caste Tamil decided to bury his wife  accompanied by the ritual of beating the tom-tom. But beating the tom-tom was an exclusive privilege accorded only to the Vellalas, the highest caste. The ritual […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The abuse of history has been one of the major contributory factors that led to the exacerbation of the North-South relations. If our political/social scientists had balanced the mono-ethnic extremism of the North with the Southern forces rising against the provocative politics  of the peninsula (Example: 12% Jaffna Tamils demanding 50% […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Of all the oddities displayed at the opening of the new Parliament – and there were some exceptional ones like an MP arriving in a prison van and another landing in a boat etc. – the most significant one to my mind was the presence of two fathers-in-law sitting on opposite […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala      Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain – Gerard Manly Hopkins After zig-zagging under the pressures of multiple inimical forces, evolving history has once again returned to its traditional Centre to reclaim its roots. From the thirties, the Marxists struggled to take the nation through parliamentary/electoral manoeuvres, and […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Two news items published in the prestigious New York Times tell the harrowing tale of what has happened to the USA in the ceaseless deterioration of conditions under the Covid-19 pandemic.  News item 1: The U.S. coronavirus caseload, the world’s biggest, passed four million on Thursday. (23/7). The numbers of daily hospitalizations and deaths were […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Social scientists and the commentariat have either failed, or deliberately ignored, to take note of the changes in the surface and subterranean foundations of the political landscape in the post-Nandikadal period. Our pundits are still cackling as if we are in the post-1956 period in which the mono-causal theme of blaming […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Managing a democracy in normal times is bad enough. Managing it in times of crises can be a horripilating nightmare. Choices have to be made between confronting imperatives demanding urgent and unpalatable decisions and the popular will that will invariably opt for the comfortable and the least painful way out. The […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Imagine for a moment Gunadasa Ameresekera, last of our novelist in the great tradition, writing a tirade against the Muslims, giving it the title F*** you, Mr. Rauf Hakeem”. Imagine if it is published in a leading Sinhala newspaper. Can you imagine the reaction? The entire phalanx of the NGO moralists […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala It is curious how the unfortunate Sinhalese, to whom the credit of the decorations (of a dance hall for a visiting British dignitary) was due, are always overshadowed by the more widely known Tamils who are their fellow islanders.” – Ceylon in Early British Times, J. P. Lewis, CMG, Government Agent […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The Twentieth century, it is safe to say, has made all of us into deep historical pessimists – The End of History and the Last man – Francis Fukuyama One of the primary tasks of a creative and path-breaking political scientist is to demystify and demythologise the hidden past to raise […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala In these critical times it is necessary to scrutinise the public statements of our academics / intellectuals to understand the hidden political agenda they push in the guise of objective analysis for public guidance. Take, for instance, the case of two ex-Vice Chancellors, Prof. Savitri Goonesekere and Prof. Arjuna Aluvihare of […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Despite all the convoluted threads of history and politics running through the Vadukoddai Resolution there is only one simple meaning in it: it is a classic case of a crime against peace, the first crime listed in the Nuremberg Charter on which the Nazi war criminals were tried by an international […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala May 14, 1976 is one of the most underreported, underestimated, underexamined dates in the political calendar of independent Sri Lanka. It was the date on which the Tamil leadership which had gathered in Vadukoddai passed a resolution declaring war against the democratically elected state demanding a separate state. Stitching bits and […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala May 14, 1976 is one of the most underreported, underestimated, underexamined dates in the political calendar of independent Sri Lanka. It was the date on which the Tamil leadership which had gathered in Vadukoddai passed a resolution declaring war against the democratically elected state demanding a separate state. Stitching bits and […]

BY H.L.D. MAHINDAPALA Prof. Savitri Goonesekere, Dr. Usvatte-Aratchi and Prof. Arjuna Aluwihare of the Friday Forum have come out with another one of their usual sermons composed purportedly to guide the people trapped in Covid19 pandemic. Prof. Savitri Goonesekera and her two ideological clones front up claiming that they are not alone but have the […]

BY H. L. D. MAHINDAPALA Each time the Rajapaksas win a legitimate mandate from the people the moralising mafia comes out howling mendaciously that it is going to be the end of democracy. Historical evidence, however, has debunked this canard of the hired fear-mongers. If the tumultuous post-independent years have proved anything, it is that […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The sartorial signatures of the three main leaders of recent times  – Mahinda Rajapakse, Ranil Wickremesinghe, and Gotabaya Rajapakse — have escaped the notice of the commentariat. Each one of them has come out sporting three different garments signifying their respective brands of politics. Mahinda Rajapakse displays the most recognisable costume […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Each disaster that had hit us made us believe that we had hit rock bottom and nothing worse can happen again. Wasn’t a 33-year-old war which began with the Vadukoddai Resolution passed on May 14th 1976 and ended on May 19th 2009 enough to end all disasters? But new disasters came […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The pioneering Indo-Aryan settlers, who came to be known as Sinhalese later, never stopped making history from the time they stepped ashore. The mission of making history came naturally to them. It was their innate penchant for making history that gave birth to a new civilization which rose to the heights […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Of all the community leaders in Sri Lanka only the Tamil leadership has officially declared war against another community (i.e., the Sinhalese) and led their people to commit the crime against peace.  On May 14th 1976 they collectively passed the Vadukoddai Resolution urging the Tamil youth to take up arms and […]

H. L. D. MAHINDAPALA With incontrovertible evidence gleaned from unimpeachable international sources Daya Gamage, by far the most knowledgeable analyst of America’s role in Sri Lanka – he once worked in the American Embassy acquiring detailed insights into the operations of the mission – has revealed that the decision to place a travel ban on […]

BY H. L. D. MAHINDAPALA Of all the community leaders in Sri Lanka only the Tamil leadership has officially declared war against another community (i.e., the Sinhalese) and led their people to commit the crime against peace. On May 14, 1976 they collectively passed the Vadukoddai Resolution urging the Tamil youth to take up arms […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Dr. Murugar Gunasingam is a path-breaking and indefatigable Tamil historian who earned his doctorate based on his exploratory history of the Jaffna Tamils of Sri Lanka. He undertook this mission of discovering the history of Jaffna when he first realised that no one had ever written a truly comprehensive history of […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Any critical assessment of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa must take into consideration the salient characteristics that make him stand out from the run-of-the-mill politicians who had occupied the peaks of power. The first notable characteristic is that he is the first head of state to come from the Sri Lankan diaspora. Initially […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Ranil Wickremesinghe’ss refusal to quit, when the rising waves of the UNP are pushing him out, confirms his total inability to grasp the grinding power of the ground realities that had knocked him out 30 times in the power struggle with his opponents in the electoral field – a fate that […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The Vadukoddai Resolution was written by the best of Tamil political theoreticians / activists who encapsulated their version of the history to justify their political claim for Eelam, a separate state.  In it the history of an imagined past was tailored to fit into the politics of the present. Overnight it […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Faced with the monumental achievements of the Sinhala-Buddhist civilisation the Tamils have been struggling constantly to pose as if they were the Gullivers who were the founding architects of the nation, from the dawn of  history”,  and the rest were all second-class Lilliputians. However, in the twentieth century, as decolonisation unleashed […]