By Rohana R. Wasala Continued from Wednesday, October 26th, 2016 Samantha Power, the US Ambassador to the UN, Draper reminds the reader, praised President Sirisena for the government’s ‘extraordinary progress’ in working towards ‘a durable peace, an accountable democracy, a new relationship with the outside world, and expanded opportunities for all’. Actually, Power’s alleged observation […]

By Rohana  R. Wasala Courtesy The Island The article entitled Can Sri Lanka hold on to its fragile peace?” on the National Geographic  website by American journalist Robert Draper  seems to be nothing more than a sample of the run-of-the-mill false propaganda that is usually churned out to promote the Tamil separatist cause in Sri […]

By Rohana R. Wasala (Following is the entertaining story of Kandula, the battle elephant of king Dutugemunu, pieced together from incidental details found in the classic historical epic poem The Mahavamsa of the 5th CE, which I consider a rich source humour, humanity and wisdom. This article recently appeared in the Sri Lankan daily The […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Norway this month (September) decided to destroy 70% of its wild wolf population, shocking conservationists and animal rights campaigners around the world. But there is some tragi-comic irony in the sharp numerical disparity between the potential victims and the prospective killers: The actual number of wolves affected is miserably small, that is, […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Secularism is wrongly believed to be something negative, or something that denies the importance of religion, and it is seen (quite wrongly) as promoting immorality. When the term ‘secular state’ is translated into Sinhala as ‘anaagamika rajyaya’, many average Sinhalese speakers tend to think that such a state is against religion or […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s impromptu remarks in the course of a lecture at Colombo Hilton on the eve of his departure from Sri Lanka after an official visit (September 2, 2016) comparing the Sri Lankan civil war to the genocidal conflicts in Rwanda and Srebrenica (in […]

By Rohana R. Wasala A group of Tamils initially identified as members of the so-called Tamil Diaspora in Malaysia held rowdy protests against former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa who was visiting Malaysia to attend the 9th General Assembly of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) held at the Putra World Centre in capital […]

by Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island A protest march organized by the Inter-University Student Federation (IUSF) with the participation of   state university medical and bhikshu students demanding the abolition of SAITM was dispersed by police using teargas and water cannon in Colombo on August 31, 2016. The protest  march started at the Sri Jayawardanepura university premises […]

By Rohana R. Wasala The noisy confrontation between a group of demonstrators holding banners with the slogan ‘Different but Equal,’ with Azad Salley, a Muslim politician, apparently leading them and another group of activists challenging them, led by a young Buddhist monk – Ariyapola  Rathanasara  Thera – from a nationalist organization called the ‘Sinhale Jathika Balamuluwa’ […]

By Rohana R. Wasala The Tamil problem started decades before independence as a result of the unequal treatment of the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamils, the former being at the receiving end of particularly harsh colonial suppression reserved for a conquered subject. Generally, while Sinhalese leaders agitated for the independence of the whole country, Tamil […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Fears have been expressed by concerned groups and individuals that the special place now enjoyed by Buddhism in the Constitution is likely to be done away with as part of the reforms proposed by the experts appointed to advise the government based on public representations. But government ministers confidently dismiss such concerns […]

By Rohana R. Wasala What appeared to have happened on the Jaffna University campus on July 16, 2016 (as judged from newspaper reports, electronic and social media, personal communication, etc) was an unprovoked attack by some racist Tamils (both students and outsiders representing perhaps a minority of hardcore separatist sympathizers) on a troupe of  Kandyan dancers […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Apropos ‘Perahera through the eyes of elephants’/Opinion/The Island/August 9, 2016, written by ‘Concerned Citizens of Sri Lanka’ on behalf of ‘Sentinels Against Wildlife Crime’ (SAWC). Their motto seems to be ‘Say No to Cruelty to Our Elephants of Sri Lanka’. A very laudable objective. The concern they show about cruelty to wildlife […]

By Rohana R. Wasala One’s own self-worth is tied to the worth of the community to which one belongs, which is intimately connected to humanity in general. What happens in Darfur becomes an assault on my own community, and on me as an individual. That’s what the human family is all about.-Wole Soyinka (b. 1934), Nigerian […]

By Rohana R. Wasala It goes without saying that the lives (meaning the future) of the students of the South Asian Institute of Technology and Medicine (SAITM) at Malabe and of the students agitating against the private institution are infinitely more important than the government’s policy decisions on education or its own survival. If necessary, policy […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York.–          Opening lines of the Shakespeare play ‘Richard III’ uttered by (the Duke of) Gloucester who later became King Richard III ‘Listening to discontent’ by Sanjana Hattotuwa (Sunday Island/June 26, 2016) attempts an answer to the writer’s own […]

By Rohana R. Wasala (Courtesy The Island)   And we shall play a game of chess, Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.  From ‘A Game of Chess’( the second canto of The Waste Land” by T.S. Eliot) Meaning of the epigraph These lines from Eliot contain an allusion to the comedy A […]

By Rohana R. Wasala The armed terrorist struggle for creating a separate state in Sri Lanka was decisively defeated in 2009. But the separatist ideology is still very much alive and there are signs of it flourishing again. According to the US State Department the LTTE fronts active in that country continued their collection of funds […]

By Rohana R. Wasala According to the last census (2012), the total population of Sri Lanka is 21 million; the Sinhalese account for 75% of it, Tamils (+ Indian Tamils) 15%, and Muslims 9%. In terms of religion, the percentages are as follows: Buddhism 70%, Hinduism 13%, Christianity 8%, and Islam 10%. (To get these percentages, […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island The recent furore over eastern province chief minister  SLMC provincial council member Ahmed Nazeer’s outrageously humiliating treatment of the commanding officer of the Sampur navy camp Captain I.R. Premaratne during a function at Sampur Maha Vidyalaya in Trincomalee presided over by the provincial governor Austin Fernando and graced by the […]

By Rohana R. Wasala (This article was recently published in two parts in The Island daily (Sri Lanka) under the title ‘Carlo Fonseka’s ESSAYS OF A LIFETIME” – A personal appreciation’ as a tribute to the distinguished Sri Lankan  it is about. I am happy to share it with Lankaweb readers, under a new title as […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Following is a slightly edited version of a ‘letter to the editor’ that I sent to the under-mentioned recipient. Since s/he seems to have found it too long to accommodate in the valued columns of that paper, I decided to seek the indulgence of the Lankaweb. Editor Daily News Sir/Madam, This refers […]

By Rohana R. Wasala When I recently watched the You Tube video of the launch of the book To End a Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka” at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London held on October 28, 2015, I felt sorry for British  ‘writer, researcher, and consultant’ Mark […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island That ‘Old soldiers never die, they just fade away’ was the wisdom that General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964) of World War II fame had acquired about the common but uncommonly honourable fate of a retired soldier. He distinguished himself as an army officer in both World Wars fought in the last […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Thou dost conspire against thy friend, Iago, If thou but think’st him wronged and mak’st his ear A stranger to thy thoughts. – Othello , the eponymous hero of the Shakespeare play of the same name The political stability that Sri Lanka enjoyed for a brief five years after the conclusion […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Let’s go invent tomorrow rather than worrying about what happened yesterday. –Steve Jobs The political stability that Sri Lanka enjoyed for a brief five years after the conclusion of the civil conflict in 2009 brought about tangible economic development and social progress in a nationally secure, peaceful environment. Of the economic growth […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Untouchable Woman’s Odyssey (‘2014, Nalanda Publishing Canada. ISBN 978-0-9867198-0-6.), a novel by Suwanda H.J. Sugunasiri, a Canadian of Sri Lankan origin, is a story set against the socio-political background of southern Sri Lanka. The novel was first published in 2010. It covers an eventful period in the island nation’s recent history from […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Anagarika Dharmapala (1864-1933) is arguably Sri Lanka’s greatest national hero that emerged between 1815 – the year that the kingdom of Sinhale was brought under foreign imperial rule in its entirety for the first and the last time in its more than two thousand years of unbroken existence – […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.” Franklin D. Roosevelt, the 32nd American president (1933-45) (This is an ordinary citizen’s personal […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Ven. Galaboda Atthe Gnanasara Thera, General Secretary of Bodu Bala Sena, who had been charged with contempt of court, was arrested and remanded on surrendering to the Homagama magistrate’s court on 26 Tuesday. Some young monks of the BBS behaved riotously trying to prevent their leader from being taken […]