By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Rushdie is a perfect master of his medium and his message. The two elements define and shape each other. Those who attack the work purely on religious grounds totally miss the point, for they trivialize the book’s meaning to the point of absurdity. The real importance of the novel lies […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island ‘A poet’s work. To name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.’ Nonconformist satirical poet Baal, a character in The Satanic Verses The publication of Salman Rushdie’s fourth novel The Satanic Verses very nearly cost […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island I heard about the novel Siddhartha and its author Hermann Hesse for the first time when it appeared in film version in 1972. Watching the film prompted me to read the book. It is claimed that the book enjoyed the highest global popularity it ever achieved during the period 1960 […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island The German-born Nobel Prize-winning Swiss novelist, poet and essayist Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) is well known to most Sri Lankan readers of English literature as the author of the classic novel Siddhartha (originally written in the German language, but later made available in English translation). American Independent  film maker Conrad Rooks […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island To be free of attachment and so also of anger, fear, and pain. Eat me, Professor Solanka silently prayed. Eat me, America, and give me peace. Salman Rushdie in his novel ‘Fury’ (2001) The Island editorial of November 24, 2015 entitled Power Play” about Samantha Power’s Sri Lanka visit provided […]

By Rohana R. Wasala This article was written on July 24, 2014 in reply to one of Mr Izeth Hussain’s articles in The Island a few days before that date. Mr Hussain wrote under the title Making Sense of Bodu Bala Sena”; the title of my article was a play on that. But my article was […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island About a month ago, that is, around early September 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India described Bodh Gaya as the land of enlightenment”, when he visited the Buddhist shrine there, the Mahabodhi Temple. It was a happy coincidence, as he noted in his speech, that he got to visit […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Time will say nothing but I told you so Time only knows the price we have to pay; If I could tell you I would let you know. W.H. Auden If I could tell you” At long last, Sri Lankans may be arriving at the moment of truth in the […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Where national leadership is concerned, Mahinda Rajapaksa is a diamond; he may be a slightly flawed diamond, but he is the only diamond we have. The bitter lessons he has learned will help him to change himself into a polished gem of enhanced value. (These ideas are entirely my personal opinions. Readers […]

By Rohana R. Wasala We are familiar with the case of individuals who become obsessed with some project, plan or ambition and who devote themselves to it with great enthusiasm only to give up disheartened after a short period of focused engagement with it. I think it’s a fairly common experience among people. The Japanese have […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?–  Bertrand Russell, British philosopher (1872-1970) C.P. Scott (1846-1932) served The Manchester Guardian, now known as ‘The Guardian’, for 57 years from 1872 to 1929 as its editor. The paper celebrated its […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island The overwhelming success of the Matara rally has demonstrated beyond any doubt that the pro-Mahinda forces have decisively turned the tide against the status quo. It is not against the presidency of Mr Maithripala Sirisena. He is secure as president for the next five years, but at present […]

By Rohana R. Wasala  Courtesy The Island Listening to the Adaderana TV  8 pm/May 25 news bulletin the next day (May 26) on the internet, I was shocked and saddened by the unjustness, the irrationality, and the insensitivity of what prime minister Ranil Wickremasinghe (whom I always respect as a decent and cultured person) was reported […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Scientists believe that, with the discovery of evolution (which is the most plausible scientific theory about the origins of life on earth), humanity has emerged from an era of benighted ignorance and false beliefs into a brave new age of knowledge and reason. They predict that the first […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Tenzin Gyatso, better known as His Holiness Dalai Lama XIV, is arguably the most popular spiritual leader of the world today. Though he doesn’t radiate ‘spirituality’, he demonstrates it by his practice and his precept; he is the most relaxed looking ‘holy man’ that people of all faiths are […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island  Then the liars and swearers are fools, For there are liars and swearers  enow to beat The honest men and hang up them Son to Lady Macduff in Shakespeare’s Macbeth Act IV Scene II With the January presidential election, we have been pushed, for good or bad, to the most […]

By Rohana R. Wasala One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once […]

By Rohana R. Wasala (This is the concluding part of the article) It is known that although it has been traditionally described as the country of the Sinhalese (Sinhale/Si:hala/Ceylao/ Ceylan/Ceylon, etc), in its long recorded history of more than two thousand three hundred years it has been ruled as a single entity only on a few […]

By Rohana R. Wasala In this era of science, any serious belief in racial myths as records of historical facts is not likely to survive, especially among future generations, for it has been established beyond any disputation that all humans, as Richard Dawkins, eminent evolutionary biologist, categorically says, are actually not descended from apes, but are […]

By Rohana R. Wasala What is history? According to the online dictionary.com, history is a continuous, systematic narrative of past events as relating to a particular people, country, period, person, etc., usually written as a chronological account; chronicle”; according to the same source, historiography is the narrative presentation of history based on a critical examination, evaluation, […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy Sunday Island History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave, But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme. From “The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes” by Seamus Heaney What follows is a response to […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Oh, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t! -Miranda to Prospero, her father, in Shakespeare’s play The Tempest We, Sri Lankans, have just survived a political tempest conjured by the powers that be, who/which, collectively, […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is let loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. And what rough beast, its hour come round […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island The embryonic beginning of representative government in Sri Lanka occurred in 1833, just eighteen years into the British occupation of the whole of the country, with the establishment of the Legislative Council of Ceylon along with the Executive Council of Ceylon on the recommendations of the Colebrooke-Cameron Commission. At […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island In his opinion piece in The Island (24-01-2015) Professor O.I. Illeperuma urges the authorities to re-open the Maligawa road immediately. I, for one, share  Professor Illeperuma’s great concern with the problem of air pollution in Kandy that has led to an increasing incidence of respiratory diseases particularly among school […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island These days, the phrase ‘good governance’ reverberates across the media reporting on Sri Lanka. It refers to a vague concept that is being used by the West and their opportunistic allies as a very effective weapon against our country to keep it destabilized for their own purposes, while trying […]

By Rohana R. Wasala   The embryonic beginning of representative government in Sri Lanka occurred in 1833, just eighteen years into the British occupation of the whole of the country, with the establishment of the Legislative Council of Ceylon along with the Executive Council of Ceylon on the recommendations of the Colebrooke-Cameron Commission. At the beginning, […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island I hail the final result of the free and fair election so efficiently conducted under the outgoing administration as confirmation of the fact that democracy remains still safe and untouched in this country. The coming together of many diverse, formerly well-nigh irreconcilable factions, but which were eventually  bound by […]

By Rohana R. Wasala Courtesy The Island …FUTA executive committee member and ex-FUTA Chief Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri emphasized that there was absolutely no basis for a government claim that Maithripala Sirisena’s election would be detrimental to national security. …. (and) … accused Sri Lanka’s former ambassador in Geneva Dr. Dayan Jayatilleke and presidential media spokesman […]

By Rohana R. Wasala The firm conviction of some young Sri Lankans here in Melbourne Australia whose opinion I have had the opportunity to sound regarding the relative prospects of the two principal presidential candidates appears to be that Mr Mahinda Rajapaksa must and will be defeated at this election. Of course, this statement is based […]