PolityLK
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politylk.bsky.social
PolityLK
@politylk.bsky.social
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Polity is a left forum for democracy, feminism, and social change in #SriLanka. Submissions welcome at [email protected]

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PolityLK @politylk.bsky.social · 22d
Out Now! Vol. 14 No. 1 (Jan - Jun 2026). 134 pgs. #SL. Politics. Ecology. Justice. Agrarian Studies. History. Religion. Books. Gananath Obeyesekere memorial. Cover Picture: Ranjini Obeyesekere. To get your copy by mail and/or keep Polity website open access, subscribe/donate: polity.lk/subscription/
politylk.bsky.social
The emergence and salience of the 'border village' in discourse in #SriLanka is unpacked by Viyanga Gunasekera; exploring implications for inter-ethnic community relations along the frontier during and after war.

polity.lk/border-villa...
Viyanga Gunasekera | ‘Border villages’: Emergence, Salience, and implications for ‘Community’ in Sri Lanka
Viyanga Gunasekera is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University, with research interests in border studies, conflict and peacebuilding, and women’s empowerment.
polity.lk
October 6, 2026 at 11:07 AM
politylk.bsky.social
𝐒𝐮𝐛𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐞 𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐏𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐩𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐭!
Visit polity.lk/subscription/

#politics #justice #gender #history #ecology #religion #labour #GananathObeyesekere
October 5, 2026 at 5:06 AM
politylk.bsky.social
'Who Decides Her 'No"'? Sely Liyanage explores consent in the digital age in relation to image-based-sexual-assault #SriLanka

polity.lk/image-based-...
Sely Liyanage | Image-Based Sexual Abuse, and Consent, in the Digital Age
Sely Liyanage is an assistant lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Ruhuna.
polity.lk
September 22, 2026 at 11:14 AM
politylk.bsky.social
#India's Jantar Mantar protest and the #CJP are critically analysed by Manoranjan Pegu. What would it take to translate South Asia's varied resistance struggles into enduring structural change for its working people?

polity.lk/indias-youth...
Manoranjan Pegu | India’s Youth Protest and the Limits of Demand-Driven Mobilisation
Manoranjan Pegu holds a PhD in Sociology and writes in a personal capacity on issues of tribes, labour and nationalism in India.
polity.lk
September 15, 2026 at 7:34 AM
politylk.bsky.social
Out Now! Vol. 14 No. 1 (Jan - Jun 2026). 134 pgs. #SL. Politics. Ecology. Justice. Agrarian Studies. History. Religion. Books. Gananath Obeyesekere memorial. Cover Picture: Ranjini Obeyesekere. To get your copy by mail and/or keep Polity website open access, subscribe/donate: polity.lk/subscription/
September 14, 2026 at 8:30 AM
politylk.bsky.social
Lionel Bopage invites us to imagine how trade union leader Bala Tampoe would have taken stock of the #NPP government, the opposition, and the absent alternative in #SriLanka.

polity.lk/this-governm...
Lionel Bopage | This Government, That Opposition, and the Work Still Ours
Lionel Bopage is a retired engineer, former political prisoner and refugee, and longtime rights activist and analyst. He is a founder and was the first General Secretary of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramu...
polity.lk
September 8, 2026 at 6:52 AM
politylk.bsky.social
In solidarity with political prisoners in #Iran and elsewhere; against executions, sanctions and the US-Is**el war; and for an anti-imperialism from below, @politylk.bsky.social amplifies this collective statement initiated by #anticolonialiran

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Collective | Our support for the open letter: To Iran’s political prisoners, trapped ‘between two blades of a scissors’
Editors’ Note: This statement was initiated by anti colonial iran—a transnational collective that translates and circulates the statements of incarcerated, marginalised, colonised and revolutionary vo...
polity.lk
September 1, 2026 at 8:28 AM
politylk.bsky.social
Plumbing the depths of the archive on Colombo’s breakwater, Sujit Sivasundaram explores some of the questions about the present that emerge from an imperial photo album in Cambridge.

polity.lk/breaking-the...
Sujit Sivasundaram | Breaking the Spell of an Imperial Photo Album: The Unlikely Beginnings of ‘Colombo Histories’
Sujit Sivasundaram is professor of World History and fellow of Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge. He is the author of the prize-winning Waves Across the South: A New History of Revol...
polity.lk
August 18, 2026 at 6:48 AM
politylk.bsky.social
Sunil Bastian argues that ethnic conflict, civil war, and economic crises in #SriLanka emerged from interaction between evolving state structures, capitalist transformation, electoral politics, and international political economy, writes Bhadrajee Hewage.

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Bhadrajee Hewage | State Formation and Conflicts in Sri Lanka. Sunil Bastian. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025.
Bhadrajee Hewage (DPhil., Oxon) researches the intersection of religious, cultural, social and intellectual history in modern South Asia.
polity.lk
August 11, 2026 at 11:33 AM
politylk.bsky.social
#SriLanka's 2026 #Animal Welfare Bill is a major step forward from the current colonial-era law, writes Kasun Kavishka. However, dilution of the 'duty of care' in the 2006 version, after 20 years of struggle, disappoints.

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Kasun Kavishka | A ‘Duty of Care’ to Animals: Two Decades of Struggle for Law Reform in Sri Lanka
Kasun Kavishka is an undergraduate in the Faculty of Law at the University of Colombo. | In late April 2026, Sri Lanka welcomed Aloka, an Indian stray dog who walked along with US-based Buddhists monk...
polity.lk
August 4, 2026 at 8:45 AM
politylk.bsky.social
As youth in #JantarMantar and across #India protest a broken system, Binu Peiris remembers the 2022 #Aragalaya in #SriLanka.

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Binu Peiris | A Heart That Never Forgets
Binu Peiris is an undergraduate in the Department of English at the University of Colombo.
polity.lk
July 28, 2026 at 9:38 AM
politylk.bsky.social
DBS Jeyaraj in banishment remained a writer on #SriLanka rather than a writer on exile, writes Ruben Thurairajah in an appreciation of the journalist as witness and chronicler from afar of his troubled and divided home.

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Ruben Thurairajah | DBS Jeyaraj: The Witness in Exile
Ruben Thurairajah is a Yorkshire-based general practitioner in Britain’s National Health Service; who also tweets https://x.com/RubenThurairaj and writes https://drruben.substack.com/
polity.lk
July 21, 2026 at 7:44 AM
politylk.bsky.social
France's prize for Asian #literature in translation has been won consecutively by Shehan Karunatilaka & Shobasakthi. Their novels, writes Nadeera Rajapakse, speak to plural identity; the critique of violence; and migration & exile.

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Nadeera Rajapakse | Literature and the Politics of Plural Identity, in and beyond Sri Lanka
Nadeera Rajapakse is an Assistant Professor in the History of Economic Thought at University Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne, with research interests in identities, migrants, and global mobilities.
polity.lk
July 14, 2026 at 8:49 AM
politylk.bsky.social
#DCS7 (2026) by Stages Theatre Group is lauded by Shannon Constantine for embodying seven tumultuous decades of #SriLanka's history through shapes and sounds, shadow and light, words and language, and always-moving bodies of an ensemble cast.

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Shannon Constantine | Dear Children, Sincerely: Seven Decades of Sri Lanka. Stages Theatre Group. Colombo. 2026.
Shannon Constantine is a PhD. candidate in the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University.
polity.lk
July 7, 2026 at 9:47 AM
politylk.bsky.social
"Agrarian relations can tell us something fundamental about politics" begins Benedikt Korf, in his reconstruction of the management of hydraulic conflicts among ethnically antagonistic Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim farmers during #SriLanka's civil war.

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July 1, 2026 at 7:32 AM
politylk.bsky.social
In his acclaimed autobiography, S. Shakthidharan's telling of his grandmother's act of reconstruction of her Colombo home in Sydney, braids fragmented elements of self and #history, writes Suvendrini Kanagasabai Perera.

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Suvendrini Kanagasabai Perera | Gather Up Your World in One Long Breath. S. Shakthidharan. Sydney: Powerhouse, 2025
Suvendrini Kanagasabai Perera is John Curtin Distinguished Professor Emerita at Curtin University. Among other books, she is the author of Survival Media: The Politics and Poetics of Mobility and the ...
polity.lk
June 23, 2026 at 6:43 AM
politylk.bsky.social
Dr. Devanesan Nesiah (28 April 1935 - 12 June 2026) was a distinguished public servant, stalwart of civil society, and longtime member of SSA.
June 19, 2026 at 7:00 AM
politylk.bsky.social
The #SriLanka state visualises land as emptied of people, in the pursuit of global renewable energy goals, writes Thiruni Kelegama in her review of Amita Arudpragasam's arresting film #Thayakam on climate change and livelihood loss in #Mannar.

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Thiruni Kelegama | தாயகம் (𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘺𝘢𝘬𝘢𝘮 / motherland). Amita Arudpragasam. Harvest Moon, 2026. 76 mins.
Thiruni Kelegama (PhD., University of Zurich) is a lecturer in modern South Asian studies at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies in the University of Oxford, and author of Central Margins: Sr...
polity.lk
June 16, 2026 at 7:37 AM
politylk.bsky.social
Aloysius Pieris SJ, scholar and practitioner of Buddhist-Christian dialogue in #SriLanka never separated scholarship from praxis, writes Elizabeth J. Harris, giving agency to victims of global capitalism and corporate greed.

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Elizabeth J. Harris | Aloysius Pieris, S.J.: Visionary Activist
Elizabeth J. Harris retired as Associate Professor in Religious Studies at Liverpool Hope University and is presently Honorary Fellow in the Edward Cadbury Centre in the Department of Theology and Rel...
polity.lk
June 2, 2026 at 7:45 AM
politylk.bsky.social
Within 50 years British India experienced five partitions, and not only one in 1947, explains Sam Dalrymple. Their legacies of separation, violence, and migration, remain with us, writes Roshni Kapur. #ShatteredLands

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Roshni Kapur | Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia. Sam Dalrymple. Harper Collins, 2025.
Roshni Kapur is a PhD student at the University of Ghent focusing on caste and land conflicts in Sri Lanka. She is an editor of a forthcoming volume on the 2022 economic crisis and implications for co...
polity.lk
May 26, 2026 at 6:35 AM
politylk.bsky.social
One year since the first exhumation of skeletal remains from the mass grave site in #Chemmani #Jaffna, #poetry by M. C. Kanula on where the "earth spits out bones". #SriLanka

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MC Kanula | Chemmani '25
MC Kanula has an LLB from the University of Colombo and is currently pursuing a degree in English and English Language Teaching at the Open University of Sri Lanka.
polity.lk
May 19, 2026 at 6:43 AM
politylk.bsky.social
Once upon a #time not long ago, #Ceylon substituted the lunar for the Gregorian #calendar. All became out of joint. Sharni Jayawardena tells the story behind 'Just A Phase' (59 mins | 2026) produced by ICES (International Centre for Ethnic Studies), and on release 15 May.

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Sharni Jayawardena | ‘Just A Phase’: The forgotten lunar calendar
Sharni Jayawardena is a documentary photographer and filmmaker.
polity.lk
May 13, 2026 at 10:23 AM
politylk.bsky.social
"Neutral but humanitarian" is how Anura Kumara Dissanayake explained his #NPP government's stance in the ongoing US-Israel war in West Asia. Yet, in a unipolar moment, what does "neutrality" amount to, and why should it be right?

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Editors | Neutrality in the Face of Injustice
The Iranian ship with around 130 crew on board had concluded goodwill visits in India between mid and late February. This was just before 28 February when Israel and the US began their unprovoked atta...
polity.lk
May 5, 2026 at 6:48 AM
politylk.bsky.social
Marking the 7th anniversary of the 2019 Easter Sunday terrorism, the Centre for Society and Religion (CSR) analyses past official inquiries, with which it expresses dissatisfaction, calling for truth in the hope for justice. #SriLanka

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Centre for Society and Religion (CSR) | Memory, Pain, and the Hope of Justice
Seven years after the brutal terrorist attack in Sri Lanka on 21 April 2019, on Easter Sunday, the primary objective of publishing a special report by the Centre for Society and Religion (CSR) is to c...
polity.lk
April 28, 2026 at 8:39 AM
politylk.bsky.social
#CycloneDitwah Everyday #politics at a #disaster relief management centre near Colombo; and during a restitution handover ceremony, vividly described by Shashik Silva #SriLanka

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Shashik Silva | Ditwah Relief Management: Politics and Perceptions in ‘Kolamba Gama’
Shashik Silva is Chief Operations Officer of the Social Scientists’ Association (SSA) and the Quantitative Research Lead for the SSA January 2026 survey on public perceptions of Cyclone Ditwah impact,...
polity.lk
April 21, 2026 at 6:48 AM