KAMALIKA PIERIS There were Tamil occupants in north Sri Lanka before Settler Colonialism started. The Pandya dynasty ruled in Tamilnadu in two bouts, 6th to 10th and again from 13th to 14th century .In the second bout, they entered Sri Lanka. When they departed, in 1323, they left a military outpost in Jaffna, with an […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS The Ceylon Tamil, despite the label, is not ‘Ceylon’ at all. The Ceylon Tamil originated in Tamilnadu. The British got down Tamils to carry out Settler Colonization” in Ceylon. Settler Colonization”is the introduction of a foreign settler group, to crush the existing indigenous group and take over the country. Settler Colonialism”   is a […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS Brotherless Night (2023) by Vasugi.V. Ganeshananthan won UK’s 30,000   pound sterling Women’s Prize for Fiction in   2024. The book   was also a   New York Times Editors’ Choice. It was   shortlisted for the Carol Shields Prize and was a finalist for Minnesota Book Award and the Asian Prize for Fiction. Ganeshananthan is a journalist, […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS Brotherless Night is well written, with nice turns of phrase.  ‘I wanted the four clean walls of my Jaffna childhood, the courtyard with its cup of sunlight, the small and dear lane where I had grown up. A home full of people who considered me precious,’ wished Sashi. For authenticity and context, there […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS The book ‘Brotherless Night’ is the ‘inside’ story of   the Eelam war, written by an author who did not live through it and extravagantly praised by others who had no firsthand experience of it, either. This book is yet another novel on the Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka, written by second generation immigrant […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS  ‘Dear Children, Sincerely is   an English language   play presented by Stages Theatre Group,    directed by Ruwanthie de Chickera. It was first shown in 2016 and had been in the Stages Theatre repertoire ever since. The most recent performance was in Colombo in September 2024, just before the Presidential election, in the hope that […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS The Booker Prize, formerly known as the Booker Prize for Fiction (1969–2001) and the Man Booker Prize (2002–2019), is a literary prize awarded each year for the best novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The Booker Prize is a high-profile literary award, it is greeted with much fanfare.  It is […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS In the novel ‘Song of the Sun God,’ at the end of the story, almost at the last page, there is a reference to an ancient   Indian kingdom called Lemuria. (p 394).   The novel said that there was a great Tamil civilization in Lemuria from as early as 50,000 BC .The South Asian […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS Shankari Chandran’s first novel Song of the Sun God” (2017) is about a Ceylon Tamil family, caught in the Tamil Separatist Movement in Sri Lanka. Shankari feels strongly about what happened to the Tamils in Sri Lanka. For me, ‘Song of the Sun God’, more than any other novel I have written since, […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS General C.S. Weerasooriya ’s memoir, ‘Duty and Devotion’ (2024) records certain valuable observations about the conduct of the Eelam war in Sri Lanka .Weerasooriya   had a successful career in the Sri Lanka army and  retired as  Commander of the Army in 1998. He participated in the Eelam war, in various locations, and in […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS Shankari Chandran’s book  Chai time at Cinnamon Gardens,” (2022) won the Miles Franklin award for 2023.This award was established in 1954 by the estate of Miles Franklin to be given to the  novel of the highest literary merit which presents Australian Life in any phase. However, there are no rave reviews of this […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS The Ravana project is quite different to the Ramayana Trail. The Ramayana trail links Buddhist Sri Lanka with Hindu India.  The Ravana project goes in the opposite direction. The Ravana project aims at removing Gautama Buddha from the temples of Sri Lanka and substituting Ravana as the main idol there. Eventually, Ravana will […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS In this essay, I return to the topic of the Ramayana trail in Sri Lanka. The RASSL held a well attended seminar on the Ramayana trail in 2010, where many spoke against the Ramayana trail. They commented on the political implications of the Ramayana trail in Sri Lanka. They thought that the Ramayana […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS After the end of the Eelam war, something new was introduced to the Sinhala-Buddhist arena, the   Worship of Ravana. Ravana worship has been introduced to Sri Lanka in the post-war period, without much fanfare. This is not the Ramayana Ravana this is Sri Lanka’s very own Ravana, sans Sita. The west tried to […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS Deborah de Koning’s doctoral research was on Ravana in post war Sri Lanka. The title of her thesis is: Ravanisation: The Revitalisation of Ravana among Sinhalese Buddhists in Post-War Sri Lanka. The thesis is published online under the title: The Many Faces of Ravana (2021). The full text is available at https://pure.uvt.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/59020919/De_Koning_The_Many_15_12_2021_incl_kaft.pdf Deborah […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS The Ramayana trail focused on Sita, the wife of Prince Rama of India and the heroine of the Ramayana. Sita is promoted in the Ramayana tourist trail of Sri Lanka, for political purposes, while pretending it is pilgrimage.  But the local culture has never been very interested in Sita.  Sri Lanka‘s attention is […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS This essay looks at some of the sites where Ravana   shrines have been set up. Most are in little known Buddhist sites, but there is one in Sigiriya.  Most people have accepted the Mahavamsa perception of Sigiriya as Kasyapa’s rock fortress said researcher Deborah de Koning. But having read Mirando Obeyesekere and Gananath […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS The Ramayana Trail was criticized by various individuals. Lucian Rajakarunanayake made fun of the Ramayana trail in his newspaper column of September 2007.  In a recent YouTube presentation (July 2024) Nirmal Devasiri said ‘At the moment we can see Ravana only as a fictitious person, not a real person. There would have been […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS The Ramayana trail of Sri Lanka seems to have started in 2008.In 2008, 50 sites related to the ‘Ramayana trail’ have been selected by Sri Lanka Tourism in order to promote visits by Indian tourists.  The tours were from one to three weeks duration and contained a maximum of 25 locations spread across […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS Ramayana trail is a pilgrimage to the Ramayana sites in Sri Lanka .The main sites of the Ramayana trail have been given in the earlier essays. This essay looks at some of the lesser known Ramayana sites,  as listed in the tourist itineraries shown on Google. A selective collection of the lesser known […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS India is encouraging the Ramayana trail”.  The Government of India and the Indian High Commission in Colombo are very active in the matter.  It is quite possible that Ramayana trail idea may have originated in India.  The idea for a pilgrim centre at Seetha Eliya was first suggested by an Indian team that […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS The intelligentsia viewed the Ramayana trail with great concern. Ramayana trail is a deliberate distortion of Sri Lanka‘s history. There is a political purpose behind it, charged the intelligentsia.   The Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka held a symposium on the subject in   October 2010. Papers presented at this symposium can be […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS In the 1990s Sri Lanka decided to embrace the Ramayana .A search for Ravana sites in the Nuwara Eliya and Uva districts started. Rev. Harry Haas (1925-2002) a Roman Catholic   priest from the Netherlands, who had settled in Bandarawela  in 1983, was very active in looking for these sites. Sri Lanka was full […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS P Ramanujan, Secretary, Ministry of Tourism stated in 2006    that they were planning to set up a Ramayana Trail for tourists to encourage Indian tourists. In 2007 S. Kalaiselvam, Director General of the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority said in a statement to Press Trust of India   that the Sri Lanka government had […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS The Ramayana legend did not catch on in Sri Lanka the way   it did in South East Asia. Unlike in south East Asia, Ramayana tradition was not allowed to take root here, said historian Bandu de Silva. Not a single manuscript of Ramayana is found among the many Sanskrit texts preserved in Sinhalese […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS This series titled BUDDHIST VIHARAS AND EELAM ends with a discussion on the Hindu Ramayana viharas” sprouting in Sri Lanka. The Ramayana is one of the two great epics of India, the other being the Mahabharata. Ramayana is a part of the Hindu mythology of India and is an important part of the […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS The location of Valmiki’s ‘Lanka’ had been keenly discussed by Indian scholars. Indian academics cannot agree on the location of the ‘Lanka’ in the Ramayana. Romila Thapar says the matter has been disputed by Indian scholars for centuries and Lanka remains unidentified. The term Lanka is some Indian languages means island and Sagara […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS A strong Buddhist lobby should be set up to support the return of Buddhism to north and east. That lobby should firstly   ensure the protection of Buddhist ruins in north and east. That will not be easy, because there are so many ruins and they are scattered all over, but the Buddhist Lobby […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS Tamil Separatist Movement has shown an open lack of respect for Kurundi. Tamil activists entered Kurundi twice, while conservation was going on. They successfully disrupted the ceremony for enshrining relics, and then sometime later, said they wished to conduct a Pongal on the stupa premises. They behaved in a rowdy manner showing disrespect […]

KAMALIKA PIERIS Tamil Separatist Movement is scared that Buddhism will become popular in the north and east. That it will catch on and the Hindu population will decrease. That is one of the reasons for the strong resistance to Buddhistization. The Hindus do not permit low castes to enter their best temples. Buddhists allow anyone […]