I don’t think I had the slightest inkling of a problem between the sinhala and tamil people in Sri Lanka, until July 1983. But I should have.

In the heady days of the 1977 election, a good 13 years before I could vote, I remember my father quite nonchalantly relating a story: at some time and place in Sri Lanka, strangers accosted people on the street and forced them to pronounce the sinhala word Baaldhiya (meaning “bucket”). The tamil language wasn’t familiar with the “B” sound as a starting consonant. So a tamil person would say Vaaldhiya. Tamils, thus identified, were beaten or killed. They were, literally, condemned by the difference of a consonant.

What I don’t understand, even now, is why …

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The quality of chutzpah has been described vividly as a boy who murders his parents and pleads with the judge for clemency on the basis of being an orphan. In the BBC interview aired April 16, 2008, the arguments of Central Bank governor Nivard Cabraal aptly lived up to this vivid portrayal of chutzpah.

Media Analysis in Sri Lanka
To say that the Sri Lankan media analysis of this interview was mixed, is to put it mildly. “Nivard gets foxed by straight talk” announced the Sunday Leader on April 20. The Island editorial the next day, “Hard Talk and not so soft options”, made a contrary assertion. It not only praised the governor and the interview but went on …

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Yesterday, the front pages of several English papers the Daily Mirror and the Daily News amongst them carried an intriguing news flash: “British will not de-ban LTTE”, and “British government will not revoke LTTE ban”. Readers all over Sri Lanka could be pardoned for scratching their heads, furrowing their brows, and saying “Eh?”

It is often joked that only strange stories get selected for news: “dog bites man, not news; man bites dog, news”. The principle behind the “dog bites man” phenomenon in journalism is that something is news only when it changes or challenges the status quo of facts, norms or prevailing beliefs. That grass grows on ministerial lawns is not news, but if a Minster was paid …

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The Daily Mirror on 29 August 2007 reports a high-level meeting at Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC) between state and business leaders of Sri Lanka and a state delegation representing trade interests in Myanmar. The vice chairman of the CCC is reported to have addressed the visitors with the words, “This is an opportunity to extend our friendship for a fruitful partnership”. I wondered if those attending realized who they were befriending, and the possible consequences of this attempted friendship.

Myanmar is the new name for the country that has been better known as Burma. It is a country of about 47 million people who are predominantly Buddhist and, along with Sri Lanka, an important centre …

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What place is home for Tamil, Muslim and Sinhala Sri Lankans?

Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.
                       — Robert Frost, “The Death of the Hired Man”

The recent fiasco of trying to evict Tamil people from the city of Colombo, saw them being transported by the SLFP government to the North-East of the Country. In different circumstances, in 1983, when Tamil people were being killed and their houses burnt in Southern cities by Sinhala mobs, the UNP government, while encouraging the rampaging mobs, also sent Tamil people living in the South to the North-East.

The much loved poet Robert Frost has a definition of home that is as incisive and accurate …

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