Ressources numériques en sciences humaines et sociales OpenEdition Nos plateformes OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypothèses Calenda Bibliothèques OpenEdition Freemium Suivez-nous

SRI LANKA & DIASPORAS

Observatoire pluridisciplinaire

SRI LANKA & DIASPORAS

BNF – France-South Asia, shared heritage online

https://heritage.bnf.fr/france-southasia/en/homepage

Resources on France and South Asia’s shared heritage.

Power structures and spaces / Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka

Ceylon was mostly known for its strategic trading position in the Indian Ocean. European powers, the Portuguese (1505-1658), the Dutch (1658-1796) and the British (1815-1948) colonized the island. The attempts by the French to establish a trading post in Ceylon began when French naval expeditions prospered during the reign of King Louis XIV.

The French crown in Ceylon

The French East Indies Company, created in 1664, soon had the monopoly of French commerce and navigation in the Indian Ocean. In 1670 the French Minister of Finance Jean Baptiste Colbert summoned a naval force under the official name of “Squadron of Persia”. This was the first military squadron sent to the Indian Ocean, entrusted to Admiral Jacob Blanquet de la Haye. A few years earlier, the French East Indies Company had recruited François Caron, who had previously served the Dutch East India Company for 30 years. Caron was French by birth and Dutch by adoption. As Commander of the Dutch East Indies (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie -VOC) forces he succeeded in capturing Negambo (on the west coast of Ceylon) in 1644 from the Portuguese. When he offered his services to the French, he declared that he knew of a suitable location for them to establish their maritime base, and suggested Trincomalee, on the east coast of Ceylon. Caron became the Director General of the French East Indies Company. 

It was thus that the squadron reached the bay of Trincomalee in March 1672. The king of Kandy, in the central highlands of Ceylon, King Rajasinghe II was engaged in getting rid of the Portuguese. He had signed the Kandyan Treaty of 1638 with the Dutch, which secured the terms under which they would cooperate in defending the Kingdom from the Portuguese. Caron knew that King Rajasinghe was at war with the Dutch and made use of this situation to gain favor with the King. He negotiated with the King, offering French help to oust the Dutch, while requesting to occupy the bay of Trincomalee in return.

French at the court of King Rajasinghe II

The French saw Trincomalee as an important target in their greater aim of controlling trade in the Indian Ocean. Also known as Koddiyar Bay, it had received high praise for its beauty and location by countless travelers and explorers of all origins. The French too were prolific in their descriptions of the bay, as the journal entries of various officials show. Logbooks from the French National Archives provide insightful accounts of their encounters in Ceylon. The French were entranced by the customs and behavior of the natives in the Kandyan court. One of them is noteworthy. Sieur de La Nérolle arrived in 1672 and left behind a living legacy. He was part of an expedition which departed from La Rochelle in 1670 and arrived at Trincomalee Bay in 1672. The expedition failed to secure control of the Bay, although the French connection with Ceylon was not entirely severed. The members of de la Haye’s delegation sent to the Kandyan King’s court remained in Ceylon and the story of Lieutenant de La Nérolle, whose descendants today belong to the 12th generation, testifies to lasting connections surpassing trade or colonial ties. It emphasizes the impact the French strategies had on Sri Lanka’s history and identity. 

King Rajasinghe II officially handed over Trincomalee Bay to the French. On the 17th of June 1672 the French flag was hoisted on the Sun Island. However, the French occupation of the bay did not last long. De la Haye’s attempt to take over Trincomalee was foiled by the Dutch.

Second French naval expedition to Ceylon

A century after this expedition, many French governors and generals serving in India brought up the importance of Trincomalee again. General de Bussy and Admiral de Suffren pointed out that it was to be regretted that the French possessed no harbor equal to Trincomalee. In 1781, a French squadron was sent to the Coromandel Coast under the command of the experienced naval officer Suffren. In August 1782, his fleet anchored in front of Trincomalee in Ceylon. The French had joined up with Hyder Ali, the leader of Mysore, to counter the British. In fact, out of the five battles fought between Suffren’s fleet and the English fleet led by Admiral Edward Hughes in the Indian Ocean, the Battle of Trincomalee of August 1782 is the most well-known.

The second French expedition was carried out not through negotiations, but through battle. It also had a different focus. It aimed to destroy the English squadron, and to seize the English establishments in India. Unlike their first expedition, the French won the second battle for Trincomalee. However, their control of Ceylon was short-lived. As a result of the 1783 Peace Treaty in Europe, they had to restore Trincomalee back to the Dutch. The political forces in Europe, once again grasped the control of Ceylon from their hands. Then in 1795 it was taken over by the British.

Published in February 2025

 

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

Question – poem in Tamil and English

https://polity.lk/question-cheran-rudhramoorthy-trans-anushiya-ramaswamy

Question – கேள்வி  

Cheran Rudhramoorthy (trans. Anushiya Ramaswamy)

 

The moon, shredded, hangs on
the fence; midnight.
Yama’s messengers,
who rend lives,
tread on the falling leaves.

Demons buried in the well
in the corner of the backyard
brace to emerge now.

On this night that dissolves in grief,
without losing to slumber,
I pluck my heart and
place it on the table.
The table trembles from
the loud groans dripping with blood.

The heart cools
in the external breeze.
I begin my poem from where
I had stopped.

I have never been grappled
by a poem, like today.
This poem wandered about
in the open space for a long time.

The very beginning of the
poem is a question;
A question about
friends who were murdered,
friends who disappeared.

This poem, born out of
a question,
leaves me suddenly;
As unwoven words and
passion, unstructured by the brain,
outpour,
this poem departs—

It goes around the two-storey house
that lies in the dark,
unwashed even by the full moon;
angrily slams the ancient doors
now locked,
listens intently from beside
the tightened windows.

It melts near the blood stain
smeared on the outer wall,
searches the voices of grief
still clinging to the tall trees;
in the nights,
it follows footprints
on the seashore;
gets drenched in blood
amid the Pandanus thickets.

It wanders over the waves,
prodding the overturned corpses;
Looking for eyes among the
corpses without eyes,
faces amid the corpses
without face,
it is enraged.

It stops hesitantly on a
single slipper thrown
into the street,
the glasses tossed
on the doorstep,
the overturned bike lying
on the street corner.

It is puzzled, unable to comprehend
the reflection in the marble eyes of babies,
born after their father’s death;
carrying the tears of the mothers,
it stumbles and falls down.

Under the gallows,
above the graveyards,
in the corners of camps,
on the tables,
near the pen that is open now,
like before,
in the unfinished lines of a letter,
on the pictures hanging from the wall,
clothes scattered in the room,
the flowerless Portia trees,
the wet Palmyra,
on a single flower on the hair,
it spins on like a top.

In the wind and the expanse,
the closed iron doors,
guns that leak smoke,
the poem slams and asks,
what happened to our children?

நிலவு கிழிந்து தூங்குகிறது
வேலியில்
நள் யாமம்;
உதிர்ந்து கொண்டிருக்கும் இலைகளின் மேல்
நடந்து திரிகின்றனர்
உயிர் திருகும் எமதூதர்.

அடிவளவின் கிணற்றுக்குள்
காலம் காலமாய்ப் புதையுண்டு கிடந்த
பூதங்களும்
இப்போது சிலிர்த்துக்கொண்டு
கிளம்புகின்றன.

துயிலில் தொலையாது
துயரில் கரையும் இன்றைய இரவில்
இதயத்தைப் பிடுங்கி
மேசைமீது வைத்துவிடுகிறேன்
குருதி சொட்டச் சொட்டப்
பெருகும் அதன் ஒலிக் குமுறலில்
கொஞ்ச நேரம் நகுங்குகிறது மேசை.

வெளியுலகின் காற்று வாங்கிக்
குளிர்ந்து போய்விடுகிறது இதயம்

அப்போது
விட்ட இடத்திலிருந்து என்னுடைய
கவிதையைத் தொடங்குகிறேன்

இன்றையைப் போல
என்றைக்கும் ஒரு கவிதைக்காக
நான் உழன்றது கிடையாது
வெளியில்
நெடுநாளாய் அலைந்தது இக் கவிதை

அதனுடைய ஆரம்பமே
ஒரு கேள்விதான்
கொல்லப்பட்ட நண்பர்களைப் பற்றி
காணாமல் போன நண்பர்களைப் பற்றிய
ஒரு பெரிய கேள்வி அது

கேள்வியில் பிறப்பெடுத்த
இந்தக் கவிதை
திடீரென்று என்னைவிட்டுப் பிரிந்துசெல்கிறது
நெய்யப்படாத வார்த்தைகளுடன்
அறிவால் நெறிப்படுத்தப் படாத
மிகையுணர்ச்சியும் சேர்ந்து
பிரவாகம் எடுக்க
இந்தக் கவிதை பிரிந்து செல்கிறது

பௌர்ணமி நிலவிலும்
ஒளி தோயாமல் இருளில் கிடக்கிற
அந்த மாடி வீட்டைச் சுற்றி வருகிறது
இறுகப் பூட்டப்பட்டிருக்கும்
அதனுடைய பழங்காலக் கதவின்மீது
மூர்க்கமாக மோதுகிறது
இறுகிய யன்னல்களுக்கு அருகே சென்று
உன்னிப்பாகக் கேட்கிறது

வெளிச் சுவரில் தெறித்திருக்கும்
குருதிச் சுவட்டருகில் நின்று உருகிறது
வீட்டின் வெளிப்புறம்
ஓங்கிய மரங்களில்
இன்னும் ஒட்டிக்கொண்டிருக்கும்
அவலக் குரல்களில் தேடுகிறது
இரவுகளில்
கடற்கரையில் காலடிச் சுவடுகளைப்
பின்தொடர்ந்து செல்கிறது
தாழம் புதர்களுள் ஒளிந்திருந்து
குருதியில் நனைகிறது

அலைகளுக்கு மேல் அலைகிறது
அவை புரட்டிவிடும் உடல்களைத்
திருப்பித் திருப்பித் தேடுகிறது
கண்கள் இல்லா உடல்களுக்குக்
கண்களையும்
முகம் சிதைந்த உடல்களுக்கு
முகங்களையும் தேடிச் சினக்கிறது

தெருவில் வீசப்பட்டுள்ள
ஒற்றைச் செருப்பின்மீது
வீட்டுப் படிகளில் வீசியெறியப்பட்ட
மூக்குக் கண்ணாடிமீது
தெரு முனையில் புரட்டி விடப்பட்ட
மோட்டார் சைக்கிளின்மீது
தயங்கித் தயங்கி நிற்கிறது

தகப்பன் தொலைந்த பிறகு
பிறந்த குழந்தைகளின்
பளிங்கு போன்ற விழிகளில்
எதிரொலிப்பது என்ன என்று தெரியாமல்
குழம்புகிறது
தாய்மாரின் கண்ணீர்த் துளிகளை
ஏந்திக்கொண்டு செல்கையில்
தலை குப்புற வீழ்கிறது

தூக்கு மரங்களின் கீழ்
புதைகுழிகளின் மேல்
முகாம்களின் கோடிப்புறங்களில்
மேசைமீது இப்போதும்
அப்போது போலவே கிடக்கும்
மூடப்படாத பேனையருகில்
முற்றுப் பெறாத கடித வரிகளில்

சுவரில் தூங்கும் படங்களில்
அறையில் சிந்தியிருக்கும் ஆடைகளில்
பூவாத பூவரசுகளில்
ஈரப் பனையில்
ஓரக் கூந்தலின் ஒற்றை மலரில்

நின்று பம்பரம் போலச் சுழல்கிறது

காற்றிலும் வெளியிலும்
மூடப்பட்ட எல்லா இரும்புக் கதவுகளிலும்
புகை கசியும் எல்லாத் துப்பாக்கிகளிலும்
அறைந்து கேட்கிறது
எங்கள் குழந்தைகளுக்கு என்ன நடந்தது?

1990.

 

Cheran Rudhramoorthy, professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Windsor, is an academic, poet, playwright, and journalist.

Translated from Tamil to English by Anushiya Ramaswamy, professor in English, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, USA.

Image source: https://bit.ly/4hPRvmy

 

Note

Original poem in Tamil published in: Cheran. (2000). Nee Ippozhuthu Irangum Aaru [The River You Are Now Descending Into]. Nagercoil: Kalachuvadu Publications.

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

Words to Kill a Man, and Free a Man

https://polity.lk/words-to-kill-a-man-and-free-a-man-kanya-d-almeida

 

Words to Kill a Man, and Free a Man

Kanya D’Almeida

 

In the early months of 2012, I inherited two troves of literature. I had been hunting for one of them for years; the other arrived unsolicited.

The first was an archive of the journalistic work of my uncle, Richard de Zoysa, during his career—cut short by his murder in 1990—as a reporter for the Rome-based Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency. 

The second was the unbound, unedited manuscript of an American political prisoner, a former Black Panther named Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz who had been incarcerated in the state of Pennsylvania for nearly four decades.

I was a news reporter myself at the time, employed by the same agency that Richard had been working for when he was killed. I had recently been transplanted from New York City to a desk at IPS’ Washington office, where my bureau chief, an exceptionally sharp, veteran journalist—whose small room on the 14th floor of the National Press Club in DC was primarily occupied by heavy metal filing cabinets jammed with news cuttings and clippings from decades past— kindly allowed me to conscript him into my search for Richard’s dossier.

All my life, Richard had twirled above me like a mobile over a baby’s crib: shifting, wonderful, shadow-casting, and always out of reach. He and my mother, first cousins, had been raised as siblings in the same home. She had witnessed, perhaps more intimately than anyone else, his evolution from a precocious child (whose mind may have bordered on genius) to a kind of cultural titan in Colombo, his presence dominating the stage, his voice crackling through radio broadcasts, his face on television screens reading the evening news—and finally, his byline on the international wire, in dispatches from Sri Lanka.

I had read his poetry and paged through dozens of photo albums documenting his acting career (which began with a very professional adaptation and home production of Hamlet’s soliloquy To Be or Not to Be when he was nine years old) and I had heard stories about stories about stories—but never actually read his journalistic work.

All these articles, I would ask my parents, his colleagues, the Internet—that he was threatened for, followed for, murdered for—where are they?

            Gone? Lost? Scrubbed out?

It was with my excellent bureau chief, both of us huddled over his archaic desktop computer one afternoon, that we managed to extract, from the depths of JSTOR, one of Richard’s pieces entitled ‘Pride Stalks Beneath a Full Moon’. The dateline read “COLOMBO, May 22, 1989”. It was locked behind security passwords and paywalls. While my boss made stern phone calls to the relevant, automated authorities of that impenetrable digital library, I hurled abuse at the screen that kept telling me I lacked the required credentials to access my uncle’s writings.

What we ultimately ended up with—a small cache of articles constructed in the signature IPS style of an inverted pyramid with a buried lede and delivered in Richard’s sparse yet polished prose—felt to me like finding the missing shard in a fragmented family heirloom.

*

A few weeks later (or was it a few weeks earlier?), I received a FedEx envelope containing a 200-page document titled, The Making of a Political Prisoner by Russell Maroon Shoatz. An accompanying note from a recent acquaintance said only that he wished me to review the draft of this autobiography with a view to using it as the basis for a screenplay. The man whose life story was contained in that bulky envelope, my friend explained, was nothing short of jaw-dropping—he’d escaped prison twice in the 1970s, spent over 22 years in solitary confinement, and was a prolific revolutionary theoretician and scholar, revered by The Movement and despised by the authorities who had sworn to preside over his slow death in the Hole. The Hole. Shorthand among prisoners and guards for solitary confinement.

The name ‘Maroon’ was an honorific, a respectful reference to the many thousands of slaves who, on almost every continent, escaped the plantations, formed liberated communities, and lived as free people. His supporters and some of his family believed that a powerful biopic would help to ignite an international campaign for his freedom bid. After all, everyone loves a good story. It would require a significant commitment on my part: to interview Maroon himself, which was complicated by his status as a maximum-security prisoner; and to meet and speak with his tribe—children, comrades, counsel, co-defendants.

I was fresh and green—25 years old, with a ready pen, steeped in American cultural mythology (particularly such vague notions as freedom of speech, or the power of the people, organised and united)—and hungry for meaningful work as a writer.

I was also afraid. The twin revelations of Richard’s past and Maroon’s imagined future—with myself strung between—felt somehow double-edged: the sweet promise that words might be powerful enough to free a man were dogged by the horror that words were dangerous enough to kill a man. 

Both men were stunning writers, in very different ways. Maroon’s chapters read like spoken word, a beautiful language of the streets fine-tuned in the depths of isolation. He grew up in a gang in West Philadelphia, became a community organiser, joined the Panther Party, and stood trial for murder before spending most of his adult life in prison. But his story had no ending, whereas Richard’s seemed to begin at the end—with his own death—and then plough its way painfully backward in time through a dismal chapter of Sri Lanka’s history.

*

All of Richard’s articles I unearthed were published roughly in the first half of 1989 and ceased abruptly on 10 August with the publication of a piece entitled, ‘SRI LANKA: Nearing a Human Rights Apocalypse’. Still, after thirteen years and dozens of reads, the prophetic flavour of that pithy 899-word bulletin sends chills down my spine. The opening paragraphs need little explanation:

Residents of the seaside suburb of Mount Lavinia, three miles from the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo, were awakened at around 3:00 AM on Aug. 6 by gunshots.

As the night curfew in force throughout Sri Lanka ended one hour later, the bolder ones ventured out of doors. They found the bodies of six youths – five dead, one dying of gunshot injuries – their hands tied behind their backs, lying on the beach.

The injured boy told them he was from Ganemulla, a small town 25 miles from the capital. Mount Lavinia residents say he accused the Special Task Force (STF) – police commandos – of dragging him from his house, bringing him to Colombo and shooting him.

Killings like this happen daily in southern Sri Lanka, where the security forces are hunting down left-wing rebels from the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in a major government drive to wipe out what it calls “subversion”.

This, in a nutshell, was Richard’s beat: piecing together, victim by victim, corpse by corpse, the story of the violent insurgency and still-more-violent counter-insurgency that throttled Sri Lanka in the late 80s. And it wasn’t the first time—the piece took its title from remarks delivered in Parliament on 9 August 1989 by the then-opposition leader Sirimavo Bandaranaike, demanding the creation of a parliamentary committee to look into arrests and indiscriminate killings, which had topped 1,000 just that month:

Bandaranaike, who crushed a JVP-led student insurrection when she was prime minister in 1971, yesterday chose to make a distinction between the JVP and the youth who support it in her apocalyptic statement in Parliament.

“These are our future generations. Why have they resorted to violence? Because they have no education — schools and universities are closed, they have no hope of employment, they see injustice and corruption all around them, she declared.

“If you have no answer except to meet indiscriminate killings with equally brutal reprisals . . . You will build up a monster no-one will be able to control”, Bandaranaike warned.

The article goes on to detail the particular horrors of that time, namely the lawlessness that rendered the entire population either victim or suspect, and the rest terrorised into silence:

Masked men travelling in vehicles without license plates were abducting young men from their homes. Human rights activists say most of the “secret” killings are carried out by plainclothes squads from the regular forces. The government closed down schools in Sinhalese areas in June and followed up by sending the military onto southern campuses July 11.

Members of the campus group “Students for Human Rights” say the 250 students taken into custody were the lucky ones.

“Most of those arrested on campus are still alive, although in detention”, says “Kumar”, a spokesperson for the group. “It is when the students go back to their homes that they are in the greatest danger. The local police or military come for them with a license to kill.”

The “tire treatment” is a common form of punishment meted out to suspected rebels. Villagers and townspeople alike have grown used to the sight of bodies smouldering on public roadways, charred flesh indistinguishable from burning rubber.

Other suspects were blindfolded, tied to trees or lampposts, and shot – often after being tortured.

Under Sri Lanka’s harsh emergency regulations and anti-subversion laws, police or military officers can dispose of dead bodies without autopsies and detain anyone for up to 18 months without producing them in court.

“We have filed hundreds of habeas corpus applications (calling on police to produce arrested people before magistrates) but under the law, the government need not do anything about these”, explained human rights lawyer Prins Gunesekera.

Gunesekera says he himself is in danger. He and another lawyer, Kanchana Abeypala, have been placed on an “endangered” list by the human rights organisation Amnesty International after they were warned to stop campaigning against rights abuses.

A third lawyer from the human rights lobby, Charitha Lankapura, was murdered – allegedly by the STF – in early July after returning home from a student demonstration.

Surely, no clearer prologue to his own death could have been written: abducted from his home without charge or warrant, shot, and his body dumped in the sea. No investigation, no explanations. For decades I have listened to my elders talk in circles of speculation as to the causes and culprits behind Richard’s murder—Why? On whose orders? For what?—without ever arriving at an undivided answer.

*

It is tempting to surmise that Richard’s clarity of analysis and reporting were reason enough for the government to remove him. In a dispatch from 22 May 1989, Richard notes:

Pride stalks Sri Lanka today, in a variety of guises. There is the racial pride of the Sinhalese, who make up 70 percent of the island’s 17 million people (mostly Buddhist), as well as the pride of the 1.4 million-strong Tamil minority.

There is also the pride of two fierce militant groups, one Sinhalese and one Tamil; the pride of two armies, one Sri Lankan and one Indian; and the political pride of their governments in Colombo and New Delhi.

He goes on to detail the political manoeuvres required to juggle multiple conflicts, with the government funnelling its armed forces into the “economically underprivileged southern belt” to root out the JVP while simultaneously directing a stream of soldiers to the Northern Province to wage war against the LTTE. All this, Richard notes, while the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF), by order of Rajiv Gandhi, were half-cajoling, half-strong-arming the Tigers to a negotiating table, upon which lay the highly divisive devolution plan outlined in the 1987 Indo-Lanka accords.

“The JVP and the shadowy organisation suspected of being its armed wing (known as the Patriotic People’s Movement or DJV) [are] implacably opposed to Tamil separatism or anything remotely approaching it”, he wrote, adding that on the flip side of the coin, the LTTE remained hell-bent on the creation of a wholly separate Tamil homeland, despite a strong political tide amongst more moderate Tamil forces that would have accepted an agreement for regional autonomy. Richard concluded:

A triangle of power [now governs the country]. If [President Ranasinghe] Premadasa, a shrewd self-taught professional politician, wants his presidency to get off the ground, he will have to deal swiftly with two men who, like him, have simple origins – Tamil Tiger guerilla leader Velupillai Prabhakaran and JVP supremo Rohana Wijeweera.

The actions of this trio will determine Sri Lanka’s immediate future – as well as the fate, in life or death terms, of the country’s 16.4 million people.

It was the kind of journalism I aspired to: clean, clear, concise, and contextual, with a beating heart that seemed able to keep time with the louder pulse of the nation. Nothing seditious or revolutionary. No call to arms. Nothing but a writer’s quiet plea for sanity or humanity to prevail amidst a massacre. It was not, to my mind, the kind of blazing scroll that an artist might—even for the faintest moment—think they’d die for.

The unasked question being, of course, Was it worth it, in the end? These dispatches from Sri Lanka, written in a time of terror, delivered to an international audience that could do nothing to stop the bloodshed—was it worth it? How, really, do you value a human life against the value of his or her work?

Such was the diabolic arithmetic I was being forced to work out in real time as a small team of freedom fighters working on behalf of Russell Maroon Shoatz pressed me for an answer on the proposed assignment of working with a complete stranger to tell his life’s story. I read and reread Richard’s articles, and read and reread Maroon’s letters, which had begun to arrive in my mailbox on Georgia Avenue NW Washington, DC. I observed the words of both men fusing together in unnerving ways. Notions of duty, legacy, and artistic responsibility jostled in my mind with a dull, pervasive anxiety at the prospect of committing myself to a literary work with the highest possible stakes: another person’s life and freedom, and—if I was to follow the mad logic that resulted in Richard’s murder—possibly my own.

“Let’s say I write this book, with a high-security prisoner who’s accused of murder and who calls himself a prisoner of war,” I said to my father, trying to laugh off my deepest fears. “What’s the worst they can do to me? What’s the worst that could happen?”

To which he answered, quietly and without pause, “Deportation. Incarceration. Torture.”

I grieved that response for a long time, perhaps because it was the first time I had truly confronted the fear that the survivors of Sri Lanka’s violence—my own family, myself—carry with them, in their bones. I grieved also for these two men, one who had been killed, and the other who’d been sentenced to a different kind of death, which in the twisted parlance of the American justice system is known as Life. Maroon was serving back-to-back life sentences in solitary confinement. His letters to me were composed in the laboured hand of an old man with a youthful spirit who has been made to stare into the black abyss and see right through it, to the beauty and the hope.

I shared some of Richard’s work with Maroon, and told him, briefly, the story. He wrote back at once, soulful and wise: When we speak truth to power… When we speak truth to power… When we speak truth to power. It was, in a way, an answer to the question I had not asked, that my family have prowled around all my life, that Maroon had, I later learned, been avoiding and confronting for decades in the screaming quietude of a cage measuring five by seven feet: Was it worth it, in the end?

A year later I met Maroon in person, down in the dungeon of the State Penitentiary at Mahanoy, an all-male prison in rural Pennsylvania, in a visiting room bisected by a sheet of bulletproof glass. Throughout the visit Maroon remained shackled at the ankles and at the wrists, a bright-eyed, ageing, and agile man with whom I would collaborate for 12 years on his autobiography I Am Maroon. He did not live to see its release. It was published, posthumously, on 3 September 2024, nearly three years after Maroon died of cancer.

People often ask my family how we make sense of Richard’s life and death. It was not until I met Maroon and undertook a kind of doctoral degree in American studies under his tutelage, with his supporters acting as my academic advisors and the prisons of Pennsylvania serving as my campus, that I began to understand how legacies work: they must be allowed to live. Nothing finishes a person quite like memorialising them; nostalgia and romanticising will make quick work of whatever is left. Maroon did not suffer from nostalgia—probably because, I always assumed, it’s a deadly disease for a prisoner serving a life sentence. He was a great believer in living legacies. He mentored countless young men who were thrown into the penitentiary alongside him and saw many of them off into the free world while he continued to Do His Time. Dozens have said they regard him as a father-figure, as their greatest teacher.

As for me, writing together with Maroon, through the bars and over all the hurdles thrown at us—visits cancelled and monitored, our correspondence surveilled, letters destroyed or returned to the sender, threats and lawsuits—seemed like the most sensible way to honour Richard’s legacy in my own lifetime. Mainly because it helped me to do away with that blasted question: Was it worth it, in the end?

Turns out it’s not a question at all, but a slow reckoning with language itself, with these words that are strong enough to kill a man, and free a man. And what emerges from that reckoning is not doubt or unknowing, but a certain certainty, that you have to use words to make sense of them. You have to let them play, let them remake themselves: We are worth more than the ends they devise for us. We live, and live on, because we are worthy of life.

 

Kanya D’Almeida is a writer, and winner of the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She is the co-author of I Am Maroon: The True Story of an American Political Prisoner, available now from Hachette Books.

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

History – Archive of memory

https://www.archiveofmemory.lk

“The Archive of memory seeks to reflect on 70 years of Independence by focusing on the perspectives and experiences of ordinary Sri Lankans. Each story pivots around a specific object which is in turn associated with a personalized story that is linked to a significant event in Sri Lanka’s political, economic or social history”.

Some extracts:

சிலேட்பென்சில்

நான் பிறந்தது இரத்தினபுரி மாவட்டத்தில் ஆனாலும் எனது பாடசாலை வயதிலான பழைய ஞாபகங்கள் நிறைந்துள்ளது கேஹெலேள்ளையிலாகும். என்னை தத்தெடுப்பதும் நான் குனுமுள்ள பாடசாலையில் சேர்வதும் அங்கே. என் ஆருயிர் நண்பனின் பெயர் பிரபாகரன். 1957ம் ஆண்டு யூத்தத்திற்கு முன்னைய காலக்கட்டத்தில் அந்த பெயருக்கு எந்தவொரு விசேஷமும் இருக்க வில்லை. எனக்கு அவன் தமிழ் என்றே தெரியாது. எனக்கு அவனை ஞாபகம் வரும் போது அவனின் இடது காதிலுள்ள ஓட்டையே ஞாபகத்துக்கு வரும்.

நாங்கள் நாலாவது தரத்தில் படிக்கும் போது எலார – துடுகெமுனு போரை பற்றி படிப்பித்தார்கள். கதை முழுதாகவே கெமுனுவின் கோணத்தில் இருந்ததால் எம்மவர்கள் அனைவருக்கும் எலார ஒரு வில்லனாக தெரிந்தார். எங்கள் ஆசிரியர் கெமுனு இளவரசரின் சிறுவயதில் நடந்த மறக்கமுடியாத ஒரு அனுபவக் கதையூம் கூட கூறினார். இளவரசனின் தாய் விகார மகா தேவிஇ ஒரு நாள் இளவரசரை பார்த்து ஒரு கேள்வி கேட்டாராம். “இவ்வளவூ இடம் கட்டிலில் இருக்கும் போது ஏன் சுருங்கி நித்திரை கொள்கிறாய்” என கேட்டபோது இளவரசர் பதில் அளித்தாராம்இ “வடக்கு திசையில் பர தெமழுஇ தெற்கு திசையில் ஊமை கடல் என்று.

வகுப்பிற்கு பிறகு நாங்கள் வழமைபோன்று விளையாடுவதற்காக வெளியில் சென்றௌம். எங்கள் வகுப்பில் ஒரு மாணவர் பிரபாகரனுடன் சண்டை பிடித்தமையால் பிரபாகரனுக்கு கல் துண்டால் குத்தினான். அந்த கல் துண்டு 6 இஞ்சி உயரமானது நாங்கள் கல்லால் எழுதுவதற்கு உபயோகித்த பென்சிலாகும். 1977 ம் ஆண்டு தமிழ் விரோதத்திற்கு பிறகு பிரபாகரன் குடும்பத்துடன் ஊரை விட்டு போய்விட்டான். அத்துடனே எனக்கும் அவனுக்கு இருந்த உறவூம் எங்களை விட்டு சென்றுவிட்டது.

பாரக்கிரம நிரியல்ல,
கேஹெலேள்ளஇ திவூலப்பிடி

 

*******************************************************************************************************

කොහු ලණු

මට මතක හැටියට මේ හතලිස් හතේ අටේ විතර. හැම සඳුදාම උදේට මම උණවටුනේ ඉඳන් ගාල්ලේ මහින්දෙට ඉස්කෝලේ යන්න බයිසිකලෙත් එක්ක මහ පාරට බහිද්දී ලුසී හාමි අක්කා කියන වයසක අම්මා මට මුණගැහෙනවා. ‘අනේ මහත්තයෝ හාල් සේරුවක් ගන්න කීයක් හරි දෙන්න’ කියලා මගෙන් ඉල්ලනවා. ඉතිං මට කෑමක් ගන්න ගෙදරින් දුන්න සත විසිපහ එයාට දෙනවා. ඒ කාලේ හාල් සේරුවක් සත විසිපහයි. වාසනාවකට මගේ පන්තියේ ළමයි විවේක වෙලාවෙදි මට වඩේයි ප්ලේන්ටියි අරන් දෙනවා.

දවසක් මම වෙරළ දිගේ ඇවිදිනකොට දැක්කා ලුසී හාමි අක්කාගේ පැල්පතේ අක්කා කොහු අඹරනවා. ඉතිං මම ලඟට ගිහිං ඇහුවා ‘ලුසී හාමි අක්කේ ඔයා කොහු අඹරනවානේ ඇයි එහෙනං මගෙන් හැමදාම සල්ලි ඉල්ලන්නේ’ කියලා. ‘අනේ මහත්තයෝ අත ලේ යනකම් අඹරලත් මුළු සුමානෙම හම්බවෙන්නේ 2.50යි.’

මම කොහු ලණු ගන්න මුදලාලිව හොයන් ගිහිං ඇහුවා කොහු ලණු ගාල්ලට විකුණන්නේ කීයටද කියලා. 7.50 ට. පස්සේ ගාල්ලේ කොම්පැනියට ගිහිං හෙව්වා. ඒගොල්ලෝ ඒවා විකුනන්නේ රුපියල් 16කට. එතනින් පස්සේ මම කොහු කාර්මිකයන්ගේ සමූපකාර සමිතියක් හැදුවා. ගමේ කොහු අඹරණ දුප්පත් ගැහැණු 80 දෙනෙක් විතර සාමාජිකයෝ වුණා. තාත්තා සල්ලි ටිකක් දුන්නා. අපේ බාප්පා කෙනෙකුට කියලා කොහු අඹරන්න පොඩි මඩුවක් හැදෙව්වා.

ඉතිං මං ජීවිතේ මුල් වතාවට කොළඹ ආවේ අපේ සමූපකාර සමිතිය ලියාපදිංචි කරන්න. නිදහසින් පස්සේ පත් කරපු මුල්ම ආණ්ඩුවේ සමූපකාර හා ස්වදේශ කටයුතු ඇමති අබේරත්න රත්නායක මට ඉස්සෙල්ලාම මුණ ගැහෙන්නේ එතනදි.

පස්සේ කාලේ මම නාලන්දා විද්‍යාලයේ උගන්වන කාලේ ශිෂ්‍යයින් එක්ක එකතු වෙලා ශ්‍රමදාන ව්‍යාපාරයක් පටන් ගත්තා. අපේ පළවෙනි වැඩසටහන සිද්ධ කලේ කුලහීන ගම්මානයක් වුණ කනතො`ඵව ගමේ. සර්වෝදය ශ්‍රමදාන ව්‍යාපාරයට අඩිතාලම වැටෙන්නේ එතනදි. ඒ ගමේ ගැහැණුන්ට ගමෙන් එළියට යනකොට හැට්ට ඇඳගෙන යන්න තහනම්. ඒ මිනිස්සු දානේ අරගෙන පන්සලට ගෙනිච්චහම හාමුදුරුවෝ දානේ බාරගත්තේ නැහැ. ඒ මිනිස්සු දානේ ගල උඩ තියලා ආවේ. පස්සේ ඒවා බල්ලෝ කනවා.

කොහු කාර්මිකයන්ගේ සමූපකාර සමිතියෙන් පටන් ගත්ත මගේ වැඩේ පස්සේ ගම්මාන 15,000 ක කුල පීඩනයට, දුප්පත්කමට, සූරාකෑමට විරුද්ධව සටන් කරන ව්‍යාපාරයක් බවට පත්වුණා.


ඒ. ටී. ආරියරත්න
මොරටුව

*******************************************************************************************************

Saree pota

I was 8-years old during the bheeshana kalaya (time of terror), in 1988. Most schools were closed though mine opened for a few hours per day to teach us Maths and Science as the management thought they were the most important subjects. I hate these two subjects to this day because of that! We couldn’t wear uniforms to school and were also drilled on how to take cover under our desks, in case of an emergency. In the night, we would often hear gunshots and the elders would speculate how many had been killed and where their bodies might be found the next day. One day, I was accompanying my mother to a parent-teacher meeting in school when she suddenly covered my eyes with her saree pota (fall) and asked me to pinch my nose tightly. It was a beautiful morning; the sun was shining and people were going about their routines but through her diaphanous, rose-patterned saree pota, I glimpsed several young men burning on a pile of tyres. This was the first time I had seen anyone naked, let alone dead.

Nayana (pseudonym),

Panadura

 

 

 

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

Cinéma sri lankais – “Sheysha” au Grand Rex

We are delighted to announce the screening of the film “Sheysha”, directed by Isuru GUNATHILAKA, taking place on Sunday, March 23, 2025, at 5:00 PM at the Grand Rex VIP Hall in Paris.

The film features an exceptional cast, including Chandana Wickramasinghe, Umali Thilakarathne, Yohan Jays, Nalin Pradeep Uduwela, Thilina De Silva, Samantha Kumara Gamage, and Malkanthi Jayasinghe.

Event Schedule

  • Doors Open: 4:00 PM
  • Screening Starts: 5:00 PM

Ticket Categories

  • Standard Tickets: €25
  • VIP Tickets : €35 (includes a glass of champagne, Sri Lankan delicacies, priority access without queuing, and premium seating with excellent visibility).

Where to Book Your Tickets

  • Online: https://www.helloasso.com/associations/sri-desi-dance/boutiques/sheysha-movie?_gl=1%2a1qww69y%2a_gcl_au%2aMTc3NDUxNDk3NC4xNzM1NDg4NjUz
  • Sara’s Kitchen, 77 Rue du Poteau, 75018 Paris
  • Bon Voyage Agency, 33 Rue Philippe de Girard, 75010 Paris

About the Film
Produced and directed in 2023 by Isuru GUNATHILAKA, Sheysha celebrates the rich traditions of Sri Lankan dance and delves into the intricate family dynamics intertwined with them.
The film has earned two prestigious awards:

  • Best Dance Film at the Cannes World Film Festival “Remember The Future” (2024), marking a historic first for Sri Lankan cinema.
  • Best Debut Director at the Ciné Paris Film Festival (2024).
    Join us for an unforgettable evening celebrating Sri Lankan art and culture. We look forward to welcoming you!

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

New publication: History of Women’s Health in Sri Lanka

A Critical History of Women’s Health in Modern Sri Lanka
Darshi Thoradeniya,
Orient Black Swan, 2024
 
Book launched held at ICES (International Centre for Ethnic Studies):
 
Sri Lanka gained prominence in international policy circles as an apparent ‘success story’ in the initial two decades of its independence. Crucial to this perception is women’s health, given its central importance to the indicators of decreasing population growth rate and decreasing mortality. However, how have individual women’s bodies fared within the twentieth-century Sri Lankan stories of development?

Through an examination of the history of women’s health in this island nation, A Critical History of Women’s Health in Modern Sri Lanka sets out to answer this question. Darshi Thoradeniya traces women’s health from the initial days of birth control and family planning, to development and population control, to militarization and financialization of women’s bodies. Questioning this ‘success story’, she shows how women’s bodies were framed around the notion of social reproduction for the nation-building project of post-independence Sri Lanka.

Through meticulous research, interviews, policies and advertisements, and oral narratives, the author highlights how the Sri Lankan state made use of women’s health, while at the same time silencing women’s corporeal experiences.

She argues that even though women’s health serves the state-building project and women’s bodies serve the nation-building project, women were neither subjects nor objects of these two projects. Women’s reproductive bodies were, rather, the ground for a complex and competing set of struggles on population, family planning, development, modernization and ethno-nationalism of post-independence Sri Lanka

This book will be a valuable addition to the fields of public health and public policy, history, women’s studies, history of medicine and the sociology of medicine.”

https://www.ices.lk/event-details/a-critical-history-of-womens-health-in-modern-sri-lanka

 

 

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

Shobasakthi – Itinéraire d’un réfugié

Shoba – Itinéraire d’un réfugié

“INEDIT

Au Sri Lanka, alors que les populations cingalaise et tamoule s’efforcent de vivre ensemble, un nouveau gouvernement arrive au pouvoir et accorde tous les privilèges aux Cingalais. Nous sommes en 1983, le pays bascule dans la guerre civile.
Comme celle de milliers d’adolescents, la vie d’Antonythasan, surnommé « Shoba », change du jour au lendemain. Il prend les armes, quitte sa famille, et rejoint les rebelles du mouvement de la Libération Tamoule (LTTE). Mais ces derniers tombent dans l’engrenage de la violence, s’attaquent aux civils, et Shoba ne veut plus soutenir leurs actions. Comment partir sans trahir les siens ? Recherché, persécuté par la milice, le jeune homme se résout à l’exil.
Des rives de l’île de Velanaï à Paris, en passant par les prisons de Bangkok, Shoba revient sur la période méconnue de la guerre civile au Sri Lanka. Il nous offre le témoignage inédit d’un homme, à la fois amoureux de son pays et en quête d’une terre d’asile.”

Interview de Shobasakthi

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

Perspectives on history in Sri Lanka – Herstories, Everystory

https://theherstoryarchive.org


“This archival project is first of a series of Sri Lankans’ histories that focuses on mothers from the South and North. It highlights their strength in the face of adversity, and their hopes for their children’s and Sri Lanka’s future. Mothers are guardians of their family history. They are the pillars of strength upon which a family is built. As such, this project chooses to archive mothers’ stories, thereby recording the story of an entire family.

Copyright © 2013 Herstories project”

 

https://theherstoryarchive.org

https://www.youtube.com/@HerStoryArchives/videos

Everystory

“Empowering Voices and Inspiring Change

Everystory Lanka (formed in 2018) is a Sri Lankan-based feminist collective focused on storytelling and knowledge sharing. We use creative practices, mixed media, panel discussions, and more to create this space. We believe that stories and knowledge come in all shapes and forms, and it is within this complexity and potential for creativity that we engage.”

https://everystorysl.org/aboutus

Everystory – Day in the Life Trailer
 
 
Everystory, in collaboration with the Embassy of France to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, presents A Day in the Life series – an audio-visual campaign that captures the everyday resilience of women in Sri Lanka who have shaped or been shaped by the country’s political, cultural, and social contexts.
In its pilot edition, launched in the spirit of the 2024 French Olympics, the series follows three Sri Lankan sportswomen through their day. From training sessions to balancing domestic responsibilities, careers, or education, we delve into their reflections on life, the challenges and politics of their practice, and the moments that inspire them to keep moving forward.
Stay tuned to our socials and YouTube as we share their stories.
 
Everystory, ශ්රී ලංකාවේ සහ මාලදිවයිනේ ප්රංශ තානාපති කාර්යාලය සමඟ සහයෝගයෙන්, රටේ දේශපාලන, සංස්කෘතික, සහ සමාජ සන්දර්භයන් හැඩගැස්වූ හා ඒවායින් හැඩගැස්වුනු, ශ්රී ලංකාවේ කාන්තාවන්ගේ එදිනෙදා ඔරොත්තු දීමේ හැකියාව ග්රහණය කර ගන්නා ශ්රව්ය-දෘශ්ය වියාපාරයක් වන A Day in the life වීඩියෝ මාලාව ඉදිරිපත් කරයි.
2024 ප්රංශ ඔලිම්පික් උළෙලේ ආත්මය තුලින් දියත් කරන ලද මෙම වීඩියෝ මාලාවේ නියමු සංස්කරණය ශ්රී ලාංකික ක්රීඩිකාවන් තිදෙනෙකු ඔවුන්ගේ දවස පුරා අනුගමනය කරයි. පුහුණු සැසිවල සිට ගෘහ වගකීම්, වෘත්තීන් හෝ අධ්යාපනය සමතුලිත කිරීම් දක්වා, අපි මෙහදී සොයා බැලුවේ ඔවුන්ට තම ජිවිත පිළිබදව ඇති ආවර්ජන, ඔවුන්ගේ ක්රීඩා පුහුණුවේ තිබෙන අභියෝග සහ එහි දේශපාලනය, සහ ඉදිරියට යාමට ඔවුන්ව පොළඹවන අවස්ථා පිළිබඳවයි.
අපි ඔවුන්ගේ කථා අපගේ සමාජ ජාලා සහ යූ ටියුබ් වලින් බෙදා හරින විට රැඳී සිටින්න.
 
எவ்ரிஸ்டோரி இலங்கை, இலங்கை மற்றும் மாலைதீவுகளுக்கான பிரான்ஸ் தூதரகத்துடன் இணைந்து, எ டே இன் தி லைஃப் என்ற தொடரை வழங்குகிறது – இது ஒரு ஒலி-ஒளி ஊடான பிரச்சாரம் ஆகும், இது இலங்கையின் அரசியல், பண்பாட்டு மற்றும் சமூக சூழல்களால் வடிவமைக்கப்பட்ட அல்லது அவற்றை வடிவமைத்த மகளிரின் தினசரி வாழ்வை பதிவு செய்கிறது.
2024 ஆம் ஆண்டின் பிரெஞ்சு ஒலிம்பிக்ஸின் கருப்பொருளை பிரதிபலிக்கும் வகையில் தொடங்கப்பட்ட இதன் முதற் பதிப்பில், வீடியோ தொடர்கள் மூன்று பெண் இலங்கை விளையாட்டு வீரர்களின் அவர்களின் அன்றாட வாழ்க்கை வழியாக பின்தொடர்கிறது.பயிற்சிகள் முதல் வீட்டு அன்றாட பொறுப்புகள், தொழில் மற்றும் கல்வி ஆகியவற்றை சமமாக சமாளித்தல் , அவர்களின் வாழ்க்கை, அவர்களின் நடைமுறை
Producer – Thadini Liyanage
Cinematographer – Yoshitha Perera
Sound engineer – Bhanu Ekanayake
Editor – Sandaruwan Abesinghe
Music composed and produced by Hania Mariam Luthufi
Santoor – Marilia Pilti
Viola – Marton Kopcsik
Voice – Hania Mariam Luthufi

https://www.facebook.com/Everystory.SL/videos/4765506710341119

Reading list from everystory:

https://everystorysl.org/blog/september-2024-narrative-reading-list-on-girlhood

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

Bharata Natyam and Akram Khan in Jaffna

“I am beyond excited to embark on the Third Edition of our Classical Intensive residency. Each iteration is specifically curated and developed by Akram and our team – to ensure that we create an immersive space of refuge and love for Indian Classical Dance, and the tradition that underpins its spine.
Our third series is being designed for a collective of Bharatanatyam artists in Sri Lanka, and will be delivered in the northern city of Jaffna. With a history and culture that is rich with creativity and artistry, it is surely the perfect ground for us to unite in our love for Bharatanatyam.”
– Mavin Khoo
AKC Classical Intensive – Jaffna | 9-13 December 2024
Supported by the British Council Sri Lanka
Images by Arun Pradeep from AKC Classical Intensive Edition Two: Seeking Satori
 

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1168378654651022&set=pcb.1168379147984306

Midweek Review

Seeking cultural transmission between bodies

From Chitrasena to Akram Khan:

by Saumya Liyanage

Akram Khan is a world-renowned dancer, choreographer and the founder of Akram Khan Company (AKC) in the UK. He has been an impactful dancer and choreographer who was initially trained as a Kathak dancer during his apprenticeship under various Kathak Gurus in Asia and elsewhere. He and his dance company have created numerous dance productions that surpass the traditional boundaries. Akram Khan is a recipient of top awards including two Laurence Olivier Awards, the Bessie Award (New York Dance and Performance Award), the prestigious ISPA (International Society for the Performing Arts) Distinguished Artist Award, the Fred and Adele Astaire Award, the Herald Archangel Award at the Edinburgh International Festival, the South Bank Sky Arts Award, and ten Critics’ Circle National Dance Awards for his company.

With the initiative of the British Council in Colombo, the Akram Khan Dance Company contacted me a few months ago. The Legacy International Project Manager of the AKC, Varsha Kumar sent me an email informing me of an exciting project the dance company wanted to initiate in Jaffna. It was an upcoming collaboration between Akram Khan Company supported by the British Council Colombo to conduct an intense dance exchange workshop. This initiative facilitated a five-day intensive cultural transmission of Bharatanatyam dance conducted by Mavin Khoo, the artistic associate of the Akram Khan Company with a selected group of youth from Jaffna.

The idea was to continue and sustain the traditional dance forms and explore how they could be sustained and continued further through innovative practices. Mavin Khoo visited Jaffna for the first time to initiate this cultural transmission project with the hope of conducting this intense workshop on Bharatanatyam. Mavin Khoo, trained as a traditional dancer in Bharatanatyam in Malaysia, is a choreographer and the creative collaborator of Akram Khan. Mavin holds an MA in Choreography from Middlesex University and was a faculty member of the Dance Studies Department, School of Performing Arts at the University of Malta in 2014. He has been working as the rehearsal director of the Akram Khan Company and is exploring traditional dance and its contemporary relevance as a mode of human agency and provocation.

It is an ongoing work that the AKC initiated and this collaboration will continue further in future. Here is something interesting about what happened when Khoo, Varsha and their team came to Colombo after finishing the Jaffna Classical Intensive project. The British council director Edward Orlando invited me to a networking lunch in Colombo, where Khoo and Varsha were present. At lunch, I met some of the Sri Lankan dance community representatives. They included versatile dancers such as Upeka Chitrasena, Heshma Wignaraja, and Kapila Palihawadana. We shared our thoughts and ideas about dance and future collaborations during lunch. After this session, Upeka Chitrasena invited us to visit Chitrasena Dance Company. Akram Khan Company focused on helping peripheral dance groups to sustain and continue their traditional dance heritage and encouraged them to expand their possibilities of innovations, and the Chitrasena Dance Company in Colombo is also dedicated to preserving and continuing Sri Lankan traditional dance practices for posterity.

Dance as Ekstasis

I am not a dancer, but I have been interested in dance and dance theatre throughout my academic career. Dance and theatre share many elements and it is the body that is central to the dancer and actor’s work. A few days ago, at the Faculty of Medicine, a session was conducted by the Centre for Meditation Research on how movement facilitates happiness and wellbeing. With my research collaborators, Kanchana Malshani and Chamanee Darshika, I demonstrated how movement is central to our understanding of the self and the world. The key question that I posed at the seminar is that movement allows us to understand our body, time and space and allows us to understand how we could connect with other bodies. Movement is the primal element of the body of the animated being.

What fascinates me here is that actor/dancer experiences time and space and the Other, in a different way than we experience the same phenomena on the daily basis. Dance scholar and Philosopher Sheets Maxine-Johnston argues that Man comprises temporality within himself, for he is such an ekstatic being. He is always at a distance of himself, always in flight” (Sheets-Johnston, 2015, pp. 16-17). This statement clearly indicates how the dance and dance experience override the objective time and space. Greek etymology of the word ekstatic means how one emancipates from her/his own self and transcends for the daily reality. In this sense, the moving body of the dancer, as I witnessed at the Chitrasena Dance Company, shows that dancers’ “being” is not in the daily reality when they intensely move their bodies in the space and time with the complex drum ensemble. Hence, I argue that our understanding about time and space is constructed through the physiological and mathematical understanding of time and space. The other is understood in a way that we as selves are constructed and defined through various lingual and cultural discourses. In this sense, the dancer/actor surpasses these constructed boundaries when the body becomes animated through dance and acting.

We sat at the Chitrasena Dance Company in the afternoon of Dec., 14 2024, and Khoo and Varsha were scheduled to leave Colombo a few hours later. An intense and galvanising performance was unveiled at the bare stage of Chitrasena Dance Company with Thaji Dias and the dance ensemble with seven master drum players. One after the other, a series of traditional dance repertoires unfolded before our eyes. Particularly Thaji Dias’ mesmerising and electrifying bodily motility of Kandyan, Low Country and Sabaragamuwa styles blended with intense rigor and precision. It was evident that some of the dance repertoires that Thaji and the lead male dancer performed were somewhat improvisational, bringing key elements of Kandyan dance into an ecstasy of performance. Both dancers seemed to be connected with each other through somatic means, communicating with facial and bodily gestures to trigger certain dance repertoire to perform together. I witnessed that both dancers were kinesthetically and sensorially joined through learned repertoires to perform a new interpretation of Kandyan dance form.

 

Cultural Transmission

These traditional dance performances triggered several important questions related to the dance body and cultural transmission of somatic knowledge. First, when Heshma, the artistic director and choreographer of Chitrasena Dance Company introduced a particular dance repertoire developed and choreographed by Vajira Chitrasena, she articulated this as a cultural transmission of choreographic knowledge which came through two generations of dancers. This statement triggered several important questions related to dance historiography. When Chitrasena and Vajira choreographed their works, it may have been done through the embodied knowledge that they possessed through what they learnt and mastered from the traditional Gurus. However, Chitrasena and Vijira may have understood that replicating traditional dance and its repertoire would not add any innovation to their dance interventions. My interest was drawn to this phenomenon and the question emerged on how these individual dance artists have distilled the traditional Kandyan dance to modernist choreographic works through adding innovative elements to their newly founded body notations.

Researchers who are working on the intangible cultural heritage mainly focus on how traditional dance and heritage can be transmitted. They are mainly concerned about how these traditions are continued and sustained through contemporary dance ensembles. However, the intangible heritage discourse has least focused on how these dance traditions have been changing through time and how these new elemental changes have been transformed and transmitted to the next generation of dancers. During our encounters with dance choreographer and artistic director of Chitrasena Dance Company, Heshma discussed how they “do” dance. Her articulation of “doing” dance rather than talking about dance explains how they transmit knowledge of somatic elements of dance through bodies. She said, “We rarely talk … we do not use language but we do dance”. One of the challenges posed by these issues is that the corporeal learning and embodied knowledge cannot be objectified in the researcher’s eyes. They are somatically embedded in the dancers’ bodies and are sedimented within their dance repertoires. A meticulous observation, analysis and categorisation will be required for someone to understand and identify how these dance elements have been changed and embedded in the dancer’s body. As I believe, new dance ethnographic research would be useful for researchers to extricate those elemental dance repertoires to understand how contemporary dancers’ bodies embody dance heritage in their somatic memories.

Conclusion

Akram Khan and his creative associate Mavin Khoo explore the possibilities of preserving traditional dance forms while seeking opportunities to revive them through innovative practices. The Chitrasena Dance Company working in the field of traditional Sri Lankan dance ambitiously is in search of a new era of Sri Lankan dance while passing the Chitrasena -Vajira dance heritage to the next generation of dancers and choreographers. Both companies share similar objectives in dance preservation and innovations within the highly contested Global cultural domains. Khan, Khoo, Chitrasena, Vajira, Thaji and other dancers embody a vast knowledge of somatic practices akin to their own dance traditions. Yet, these ekstatic bodies transcend the daily constructed selves, which carry the somatic knowledge of dance that are waiting to be disseminated in the bodies of the next generation of dancers. These areas of dance-ethnography should be further developed to understand the embodied knowledge and the somatic practices infiltrated through the generations of dancers and drummers. New dance-ethnography, dance historiography and new methodologies should be developed and applied to deepen our understanding of dance as an explicit knowledge of human expressions, emotions and ecstasy.

 

References

Sheets-Johnston, M. (2015). The phenomenology of dance. Philadelphia (Pensilvania, Estados Unidos) Temple University Press.

Company, Akram Khan. n.d. “Our Biographies.” Akram Khan Company. Cog. Accessed 2024. https://www.akramkhancompany.net/about-us/our-biographies/.

Company, Akram Khan. n.d. “Our Biographies.” Akram Khan Company. Cog. Accessed 2024. https://www.akramkhancompany.net/about-us/our-biographies/.

Nürnberger, Marianne. 2014. “Vajira – the First Professional Female Dancer of the Sinhalese Style.” Sri Lanka Journal of Humanities 40 (0): 99. https://doi.org/10.4038/sljh.v40i0.7232.

Raheem, Mirak. 2022. “Vajira: The Pioneering Female Dancer.” South Asian Dance Intersections 1 (1). https://doi.org/10.55370/sadi.v1i1.1475.

 

–––

Saumya Liyanage is an actor and professor in Drama and Theatre, currently working at the Department of Theatre Ballet and Modern Dance, Faculty of Dance and Drama, University of Visual and Performing Arts, Colombo, Sri Lanka. saumya.l@vpa.ac.lk

The author wishes to thank Himansi Dehigama for her assistance in preparing this article.

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

Exhibition – Rooted. History of Malaiyaga Tamils

https://www.sundaytimes.lk/241013/plus/keeping-memory-alive-the-exhibition-on-malaiyaga-tamils-shows-the-need-for-justice-573767.html

Keeping memory alive: The exhibition on Malaiyaga Tamils shows the need for justice

Sunday Times
 

A fistful of earth tied to a corner of a sari pallu hangs as one of the exhibits in the old Matara courthouse. This display was recreated by Sujata, a welfare officer at Oliphant Estate in Nuwara Eliya, inspired by a story among the Malaiyaga community. During the forced repatriation of Malaiyaga Tamils from Sri Lanka to India in the 1970s and 1980s, some women would take soil from the land of their birth, Sri Lanka, to in effect consecrate temples they made in India. This speaks of the powerful emotional tie to the country from which they were forcibly uprooted. This precious earth from a kovil was believed to have curative properties.

At a time when colonial histories are being widely re-examined and historical narratives energetically contested across the world, the Malaiyaga Tamils have mostly been confined to a footnote. ‘Is the tea plant a tea bush or a tree?’ asked Velusamy Weerasin-gham, who was moderating a discussion on the Malaiyaga community last weekend in Matara, part of a series of events curated by the Collective for Historical Dialogue and Memory around the exhibition, ‘Rooted: Histories of the Malaiyaga Tamils’. Some say a bush. But it is a tree, he corrects them, making a broader point.

“The Malaiyagam is symbolic of this. The colonial Raj and majority communities pruned the plant aggressively to extract the maximum yield, but, if given the right conditions, we can also blossom into a healthy tall tree,” he says. The term ‘Malaiyaga’ means ‘from the hills’ and was introduced in the 1950s when they were still referred to as ‘kallatoni’ or illicit boat people. The term Malaiyaga acknowledges their roots to the land.

The singer T.M. Krishna in an article in late September recounted meeting a young Malaiyaga Tamil writer who regarded the long-used official categorisation of Indian-Origin Tamils “as a bane; (that) only placed them in no-man’s land.”

Inevitably, while viewing the exhibition, debates sometimes arose with members from the majority community over the term ‘plantation workers’ or ‘estate workers’ to refer to the Malaiyagam. A panel at the exhibition duly addressed these issues, going back to derogatory terms used for the community and how it is necessary to change. Even today, many people in Sinhala and English use ‘wathu demala’ or ‘estate Tamils’.

The idea of holding an exhibition to mark 200 years of the arrival of the Malaiyaga Tamils was conceived by CHDM in late 2022. The first recorded effort to introduce Indian labour on plantations here was in 1823.

Collaborating with the Institute for Social Development and the Tea Plantation Workers’ Museum and Archive in Gampola, CHDM was able to display artefacts such as the kambili (blanket) and thappu (frame drum) that represent a sense of belonging for the Malaiyaga Tamils. A session with leading Malaiyagam academics and professionals provided feedback on the exhibition’s framework, especially to highlight the community’s own efforts to demand rights as opposed to being viewed as passive victims. With the support of ISD, CHDM joined a workshop in Hatton in March 2023 with poets, journalists, teachers, public servants and activists and documented their memories of these objects.

Last weekend, a group of young cultural artists from Nawalapitiya performed with the thappu. This drum was used by the first migrants to ward off wild animals as they made a perilous journey of 150 miles to tea plantations, carrying bundles of tamarind rice and basic provisions that suggested they expected the journey to be much shorter. Thappu player Moses Suresh, 28, and the others in his group are former students of the Kandaloya Tamil Maha Vidyalaya, whose inspiring principal is Yatiyantota Karunagaran. The school actively encourages students to embrace Malaiyagam cultural heritage, learning folk songs and organising street dramas.

Suresh and his friends are completing their university education at the Eastern University in Batticaloa, a huge achievement given that members of the community still struggle to be on par with national educational attainment levels. When they light-heartedly demonstrated beats of a deity-possessed man, the deity delivered a message through the medium: “It is your…duty as educated youth…..to preserve…..this heritage for the future.”

Voices of the community such as Karunagaran were presented through an audio-visual installation to reinforce that Malaiyaga Tamils have also risen to become lawyers, award-winning writers, engineers, businessmen and tea-tasters.

In taking the exhibition to Nuwara Eliya, Colombo and now Matara over the past year or so, we have seen that it evokes a range of emotions. One person, aged 65, said sounds could also trigger haunting memories; Oppari Kochchi, or the lamenting coach, was the sound of steam engine trains that was associated with the painful separations of families due to repatriations to India.

The overwhelming response, however, was that many visitors were not aware that the histories of the Malaiyaga were so intertwined with the history of the nation. A young Malaiyaga woman wrote, “I was born and raised in Sri Lanka but stuttered with tears to learn about my ancestors’ journey. Even though they tried so hard to give us a good life, we are still in the same hardships.”

Another visitor to the Colombo exhibition put it, “We are aware of slavery in terms of what happened in Britain and America, but our history books have nothing to show what happened on our own soil.” CHDM hopes to take the exhibition to more cities, including Jaffna, in the next few months.

One huge positive is that in 2024, the community will have the option of identifying themselves as Malaiyaga Tamil on the Sri Lanka census for the first time. But, the need for societal change has a long way to go. Almost two-thirds of the Malaiyagam still live in line rooms, originally constructed during the colonial period with a single source of water and communal latrines. Land distribution measures for the most part were not extended to the community. Groups from the community are in conversations to include their history in textbooks. A public apology by both India and Sri Lanka for the forced repatriation would be a step towards redressing historical wrongs.

Coincidentally, protest posters bearing slogans from earlier years to recent times were placed along the judge’s seat in the Matara courthouse, a metaphor for the community’s continued need for justice.

(Johann Peiris works for the Collective for Historical Dialogue and Memory and was part of the curatorial team of the exhibition)

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

Publication récente sur Sri Lanka et les diasporas

Les minorités tamoules à Colombo, Kuala Lumpur et Singapour

Identités, intégrations socio-spatiales et transnationalités

janvier 2024

Delon Madavan

et ouvrage propose, à travers une analyse tant spatiale que politique et culturelle, dans une perspective comparative à l’aide de trois terrains asiatiques (Colombo, Kuala Lumpur et Singapour), d’étudier les différents modes et degrés d’intégration des minorités tamoules, tant localement (évaluer leur citadinité), nationalement (évaluer leur citoyenneté) que mondialement (situer leurs transnationalités diasporiques).
L’analyse des politiques menées par la puissance coloniale, puis par les trois États indépendants à l’égard des minorités, permet de mieux comprendre leurs impacts sur le sentiment d’identification et d’intégration des Tamouls à la nation, ainsi que sur leur répartition dans ces villes. À l’échelle locale, les politiques urbaines développées par les États, qui selon les cas préservent ou détruisent les
ethnoterritoires, transforment l’empreinte urbaine et la pratique de la ville des Tamouls et influent sur la façon dont ils perçoivent leur appartenance à la nation.
Enfin, les liens transnationaux et les dynamiques migratoires internationales contemporaines des Tamouls dans ces trois pays ont aussi des conséquences sur leur identification et leur intégration

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

Sri Lankan writers in English

https://www.thehindu.com/books/sri-lanka-new-literary-voices-writers-debut-books-novels-war-society-politics/article68535824.ece

The island nation’s young crop of writers is winning international awards and starting conversations on their post-war society and its unique challenges

Updated – September 17, 2024 11:26 am IST

 
(From right) Authors Shehan Karunatilaka, V.V. Ganeshananthan, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, Shankari Chandran, and Thushanthi Ponweera.

(From right) Authors Shehan Karunatilaka, V.V. Ganeshananthan, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, Shankari Chandran, and Thushanthi Ponweera. | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

The past years have seen numerous Sri Lankan writers and those of Sri Lankan origin make their mark on the literary awards circuit. Recently, V.V. Ganeshananthan won the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction for her novel Brotherless Night, which took 18 years to write. Australian-Tamil author of Sri Lankan Tamil heritage, Shankari Chandran, won the 2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award for her third novel, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, which is set in contemporary Australia and 1980s Sri Lanka; her first book Song of the Sun God is being adapted for television, starring Bridgerton’s Charithra Chandran.

 
Author V.V. Ganeshananthan

Author V.V. Ganeshananthan | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

Shehan Karunatilaka’s Seven Moons of Maali Almeida won the 2022 Booker Prize, while his debut novel Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and the 2012 Commonwealth Book Prize. Vajra Chandrasekera’s debut novel The Saint of Bright Doors was recently awarded the Nebula award for best novel, Locus first novel award and 2024 Crawford award, and was shortlisted for a Hugo award. In 2021, Sri Lankan Tamil author Anuk Arudpragasam was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his second novel A Passage North; previously, his first novel The Story of a Brief Marriage (2016), won the DSC Prize for South Asian fiction.

 
Sri Lankan author Anuk Arudpragasam

Sri Lankan author Anuk Arudpragasam | Photo Credit: Getty Images

Sri Lankans — both resident in the island and in the diaspora — have been telling their stories for decades, but when literature is shaped by the marketplace and writing is ascribed value by literary gatekeepers of the western world, perhaps the world hasn’t been ready to hear these stories.

 

“The idea that Sri Lankan creative writing in English has come into the spotlight only recently is possible only when we focus on the international awards Sri Lankan writers have been winning of late. But writers living in Sri Lanka, as well as diasporic authors have been writing for a long time,” says Neloufer de Mel, Senior Professor of English (Chair) at the University of Colombo. “What has happened now is that a generation of Sri Lankan writers, who are between 30 and 50 years of age, are writing on the Sri Lankan war, its society, and its politics in new ways and voices. They also belong to a more global generation with international links and so, have been successful in getting their work internationally published and in circulation. It is this generational shift that I think is important to mark, and what is exciting is their new voices, figurative imaginations, use of language, and the stories they tell.”

Writing as a team sport

In the 90s and early 2000s, writers such as Michael Ondaatje, Romesh Gunesekera, Shyam Selvadurai, Carl Muller and Michelle de Kretser were also successful in publishing internationally and reaching wider audiences. Currently, Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, Amanda Jayatissa, Nizrana Farook, Thushanthi Ponweera and Shyala Smith are among the new crop of writers making their mark in science fiction, thriller, and children’s writing, internationally. Their books display inventiveness in form and explore a variety of themes drawing from Buddhist mythology, Sri Lanka’s socio-political history, its civil war and more.

Author Shehan Karunatilaka

Author Shehan Karunatilaka | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

“I think it is always nice when writing — which can be very solitary — becomes more of a team sport where you are able to cheer for other people who are interested in the themes, ideas, people and communities that you are, and who have their own approaches and language and energy that they’re bringing. It just makes the conversation so much more interesting and exciting and less lonely. I think it’s the beginning of great things, hopefully, to come for writing connected to Sri Lanka and I hope that it will expand so that those who are working in Sinhala and Tamil also get more of the spotlight because I know remarkable work has been taking place in these languages for a really long time,” says novelist Ganeshananthan, who is based in the U.S.

 
Author Thushanthi Ponweera

Author Thushanthi Ponweera | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

While writing and publishing in English remains a niche market in Sri Lanka, the country has a long literary tradition of Sinhala and Tamil writing. Although there has been little overlap in recent years, there are ongoing efforts to encourage translations and cross-pollination between the three languages. “Translations are very important because this is the way you get to read each other’s work, particularly in monolingual societies as in Sri Lanka. There are very few people who work in literary translation here and this is a great setback. The Gratiaen Trust has offered the H.A.I. Goonetilleke Prize for translation of creative writing from Sinhala and Tamil into English since 2003 to encourage such translations,” says de Mel, former chair of the Gratiaen Trust. “University departments of English and Sinhala have also added translation, either as a course or module, into their curricula in Sri Lanka. These are good initiatives, but we need a concerted effort to encourage and train more literary translators because this is a special field in its own right.”

Author Shankari Chandran

Author Shankari Chandran | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

Long road to publishing

While there is a welcome spotlight on stories about Sri Lanka, the road to publication remains long. In interviews, author Karunatilaka has spoken of the struggle to get Seven Moons published. It was seen as a ‘difficult’ book by many — the only publisher willing to take it on was an independent firm, Sort Of Books, based in the U.K.

Author Yudhanjaya Wijeratne

Author Yudhanjaya Wijeratne | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

In 2022, Sri Lanka faced its worst economic crisis since independence, and is currently rebuilding from the aftershock. In a bid to increase government revenue, the state has imposed taxes on previously exempt industries such as publishing. For writers based in Sri Lanka, this is yet another challenge to overcome. “The price of books [fiction] is exorbitant, so writers find it hard to access contemporary fiction. Writers need to read and when a country levies high taxes on books, it dampens critical thinking and creativity,” says Ramya Jirasinghe, who recently won the 2023 Gratiaen prize for her unpublished novel, Father Cabraal’s Recipe for Love Cake.

 
A generation of Sri Lankan writers, who are between 30 and 50 years of age, are writing on the Sri Lankan war, its society, and its politics in new ways and voices.

A generation of Sri Lankan writers, who are between 30 and 50 years of age, are writing on the Sri Lankan war, its society, and its politics in new ways and voices. | Photo Credit: Getty Images

But for many Sri Lankan writers, the recent spotlight on Sri Lankan stories is encouraging. “If you accept how small this country is, how small our reading/writing population in English is, and how hard it is for local writers to access resources, what is happening now is groundbreaking. Shehan and Ashok [Ferrey] have broken into global markets becoming trailblazers for others and have shown that it can be done from Sri Lanka,” says Jirasinghe. “Sri Lanka is very unique even within South Asia, which means that our stories really must leave these shores and encounter readers from around the world.”

The writer is based in Colombo.

 

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

Emission Radio: Election présidentielle au Sri Lanka: l’heure du renouveau politique (France Culture)

https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/les-enjeux-internationaux/election-presidentielle-au-sri-lanka-l-heure-du-renouveau-politique-2275458

 

Anura Kumara Dissanayaka a été élu dimanche soir président du Sri Lanka, devenant le premier président de gauche du pays. D’obédience marxiste et fils de paysan, il incarne un renouveau politique très attendu…

Avec
  • Delon Madavan Géographe, chercheur associé au Centre d’Études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud de l’EHESS

La prise de fonction de Dissanayaka intervient deux ans après la révolution citoyenne : il a promis de “faire de son mieux” pour relever le pays, en répondant aux aspirations de la population face à l’austérité.

Qui est Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, le nouveau président du Sri Lanka ?

Dissanayaka, le nouveau président du Sri Lanka, a connu une trajectoire tout à fait singulière. D’abord leader du parti d’inspiration marxiste JVP, le Front de Libération du Peuple, il a mené dans les années 1970 et 1980 deux insurrections pour renverser l’État sri-lankais, considéré comme capitaliste et impérialiste. Mais la violence de la répression coûta la vie de 60 000 personnes, retrace Delon Madavan. “Dissanayaka a donc renoncé à la violence et a recentré sa position politique en reconnaissant la nécessité de composer avec l’économie de marché”. Son élection, pourtant surprenante après des scores électoraux marginaux en 2019, est largement due au soutien du mouvement de protestation “Aragalaya”, né en réaction à la crise économique et politique de 2022.

 

Les défis du nouveau président

Depuis cette date, la situation au Sri Lanka reste très précaire. Selon Delon Madavan, Dissanayaka fait face à des attentes considérables : “pendant sa campagne, il a voulu rassurer sur son engagement marxiste, tout le monde craignant qu’il n’applique le plan de sauvetage du FMI. S’il ne compte pas le rejeter, il a promis d’en renégocier les termes, notamment pour alléger le fardeau fiscal qui pèse sur la population, dont un quart vit désormais sous le seuil de pauvreté. Parmi ses autres priorités figurent la lutte contre la corruption et la poursuite des membres de la famille Rajapaksa [famille influente dans la politique sri-lankaise, NDLR] pour détournement de fonds et abus de pouvoir. Il souhaite “aussi éviter que les fleurons de l’économie nationale ne tombent entre les mains étrangères via des privatisations”. Dissanaeke doit rétablir la confiance dans une classe politique accusée de népotisme et d’autoritarisme tout en gérant une situation économique très inflammable.

 

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

Theatre

Dear Children… Sincerely :

Seven decades of Sri Lanka

 

Directed by
Ruwanthie de Chickera

Devised and performed by
The Stages Ensemble


Trailer: https://youtu.be/orehmyLXnxo

Reviews:

‘Dear Children, Sincerely’: Reviewing our political history through theatre

08 Sep 2024 | By Naveed Rozais – The Morning

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn

Books on the Ravana trail

Ravana’s Lanka. The Landscape of a Lost Kingdom

Sunela Jayawardene, 2024, Vintage Penguin Books

About the book: https://www.community.lk/history/442-ravana-s-lanka-sunela-jayawardene-s-quest-to-uncover-sri-lanka-s-ancient-civilizations

 

The Line of Lanka. Myths & Memories of an Island

Sunela Jayawardene, 2017, Sailfish

Sit back and let yourself be swept along in Sunela Jayewardene’s intrepid journeys across Lanka’s lush countryside. Join her and rediscover myth & legend, history & heritage as she adroitly describes nature’s enduring beauty and oft forgotten traditions that pulse to the beat of an unseen drum. Line of Lanka is a brilliant and unusual portrayal of a country and its people that will change your perceptions of Sri Lanka.

About the book: https://srilankanwriters.wordpress.com/2018/05/22/re-imagining-an-islands-past-by-needling-through-the-cement-of-dominant-history-sunela-jayewardene-author-of-the-line-of-lanka/

NR

More Posts - Website

Follow Me:
LinkedIn