Please find below an Interview of the artist and audience reviews, in Tamil. The interview was conducted by S. K. Rajen for எம் தமிழ் – Emthamizh, during the opening of the exhibition.
source: எம் தமிழ் – Emthamizh | S. K. Rajen
Creative Unique Productions from Europe since 1996. Focusing on and beyond our new Generation.. முற்றிலும் எம்மவர் சுய ஆக்கப்படைப்புகளின் தரிசனம்.. [1996] “அடுத்த தலைமுறை நோக்கி”
Salamalecs est un roman comme vous en verrez rarement. Deux couvertures, deux sens de lecture. D’un côté, la vie de Nandan au Sri Lanka, enrôlé dans une milice tamoul et la violence. De l’autre, sa vie en France, de galère, d’errance, de mariage, de divorce. Nandan n’arrive pas à prononcer le prénom de son fils, Maxence, né en France. Depuis Paris, Antonythasan Jesuthasan (personnage principal de Dheepan de Jacques Audiard, palme d’Or 2025) de la langue comme une façon d’accéder à l’autre face à nous. Avec l’écrivain Antonythasan Jesuthasan, et sa traductrice Léticia Ibañez.
Musique : Dou Coula de Arat Kilo ft. Mamani Keïta, Mike Ladd.
Source : Chaine Youtube de Editions Zulma
Developed by Iromi Perera, Meghal Perera and Piyumi Wattuhewa from Colombo Urban Lab for Everystory
https://www.everystorysl.org/yfn/women-and-the-city
“Any settlement is an inscription in space of the social relations in the society that built it…. Our cities are patriarchy written in stone, brick, glass and concrete.” Jane Darke, Geographer
Cities have historically been planned for and by men. From the 1970s, architects, geographers and feminists have questioned the impact of such a built environment on women, exploring what it means to be a woman in anurban space and what struggles and opportunities women encounter in these environments. As urbanisation increased in the 19th century, so did concerns about women’s place in these unfamiliar crowded environments, as cities offered a degree of freedom and agency to women, from economic opportunities to romantic encounters.
Colonial cities were often missing women and Colombo was no different, as early migrants were often single men migrating to the city in search of fortune. In fact it was only in the 1960s, centuries after its founding, that Colombo’s gender ratio caught up with the rest of the country. Nihal Perera charts the transformation of colonial Colombo from a white male city to one with both European and indigenous Lankan women through processes of interracial marriage and missionary schools. In Sri Lanka, the city has been seen as a Westernised and modern space contrasted with the village as a site of national authenticity. Cultural narratives have often positioned women in Colombo as corrupted and Westernised: Harshana Rambukwella discusses common trope of a young man from a village losing himself through contact with the city and the sexually promiscuous (often Eurasian) women who inhabit it.
Colombo in the 1970s
Architect Dolores Hayden observed that a century of urban planning was informed by the principle that ‘a woman’s place is in the home,’ noting that these “dwellings, neighbourhoods and cities designed for homebound women constrain women physically, socially, and economically.” These cities were designed for the model of a male breadwinner commuting from the suburbs to an office in the city, returning to an oasis of domestic bliss governed by his wife. The city was a masculine space of economic activity, work and production, while the home was the worker’s refuge. Home is a site of shelter and nurture, the site of essential domestic labour that enables life and work to continue. Whether referred to as social reproduction or care work, the mundane tasks of cooking, cleaning, laundry, taking care of children and elderly are performed mostly by women at home.
1950s advertisements promoted and reflected the gendered divide of space and roles.
Making and running a home is no easy task, especially in the cities of the global South where infrastructure and service delivery may be insufficient, fragmented or non-existent. Where the grid is overburdened or absent, women often do the work of making sure their households have access to water, electricity and sanitation. This was particularly so during COVID-19 and Sri Lanka’s economic crisis. Washing clothes by hand, foregoing nutritious food, cooking on hazardous wood-stoves to save gas, were all strategies that women adopted to navigate the crisis which had a disproportionate impact on low-income urban households who relied on daily wages and often had higher costs of living than their rural counterparts. Meghal Perera reflects on the electricity consumption of the working class poor in Colombo, examining the impact of tariff increases in 2022 – 2023 and its impact on women and their time poverty.
Writing about how care is intrinsically linked to housing, David Madden notes that “every time a public housing development is demolished or a household is evicted, some piece of care infrastructure is shattered and needs to be rebuilt at cost. The contemporary city is battered by a relentless churn, which forces households to repeatedly build and rebuild structures and networks of social support.” In Sri Lanka, displacement has had a disproportionate impact on women in urban settlements. Even the possibility of eviction can send ripples through communities, with women again bearing the brunt. Asha Abeysekera describes how women in a low-income settlement in Slave Island face hostility and violence from their brothers, husbands and in-laws as inheritance disputes come to a head due to looming evictions and anticipated compensation. Relocation itself is a jolting experience; networks of communal care and surveillance that made it safe for children to play outside no longer exist, narrow corridors and unlit stairs limit the mobility of teenage girls. Iromi Perera writes about how even simple tasks like laundry become fraught and contested in high-rise tower blocks in Colombo that communities are relocated to in the name of development.
Iromi Perera looks at how relocation to a high-rise building makes the gendered work of laundry more complicated and time-consuming for women.
One approach is to think of urban infrastructures of care, which are aspects of the built environment that impede or support caregiving labour. Hayden warns us that the solutions to “overcome an environment without child care, public transportation, or food service have been “private,” commercially profitable solutions: maids and baby-sitters by the hour; franchise day care or extended television viewing; fast food service; easier credit for purchasing an automobile, a washer, or a microwave oven.” The cost of these private fixes is often borne by poorer women who take on the poorly paid jobs generated by these conditions. Yet care infrastructures can be thought of in more transformative ways. For instance, the first female Mayor of Bogota, Colombia established ‘Care Blocks’ which provided integrated public services around the needs of caregivers and their dependents. Located within a 15-20 minute walk, they offer not only childcare, eldercare and job training, but legal assistance, adult education, recreation and leisure facilities. In Colombo, care remains very much within the mother’s domain, and impedes working class women from taking on full time work or formal work and their income generation activities are very much still determined by the timings and availability of day cares or school timings.
Women traditional flowing dresses for their performance at a “care block” center in Bogotá, Colombia. The class is one of the free services offered to anyone in the neighborhood who is an unpaid caregiver for their family.
While urban planners may not count on women working, the reality is very different. In the cities of the global South, a majority of women work in the informal sector, in jobs that are poorly paid and precarious. Women constitute a majority of market vendors worldwide, and often suffer as a result of spaces that have not been designed with them in mind. Female vendors often do not have access to toilets and sanitation facilities, and even when they do these are often not gender-separated which poses safety issues. The precarity of informal vending also exacerbates working conditions with women vendors facing violence and harassment from the police, male vendors and even customers, alongside the constant threat of eviction. Female-gig workers don’t have it any better, experiencing sexual violence, pollution and a lack of labour protections.
Such work is also complicated in the context of climate change and the increasing intensity and frequency of extreme heat. In Colombo, outdoor female workers are affected by heat stress in different ways: goods spoiling in the heat causes income loss, reduced water intake when they don’t have access to a bathroom and may cause infections and other health impacts. The absence of public infrastructure such as public bathrooms only exacerbates these vulnerabilities. Even in their own communities, women in low-income settlements across South Asia lack access to bathrooms which puts their health and safety at risk. Bathrooms can also be another flashpoint of sexism that is designed into the city: open-air urinals installed in Paris in 2018 were widely condemned for reinforcing the idea that only men exist in public spaces.
Women’s mobility in the city is influenced by a variety of factors. Women have different transport patterns from men, often taking additional trips to take care of domestic responsibilities and caregiving, rather than a straightforward commute to office. They are also more likely to take more walking trips than their male counterparts. Given that women are often confined to the domestic sphere in places where gender roles are rigid, efficient and affordable public transport can have a huge impact in increasing women’s mobility. Karnataka’s Shakthi Scheme, which provides free rides to all women and trans people on state buses, resulted in women having more financial independence, joining the workplace and taking trips for leisure for the first time.
The threat of gender based violence also looms over women’s transport choices. A UNFPA study found that 90% of Sri Lankan women had experienced some form of sexual harassment on public transport. Such experiences can have ripple effects into all aspects of women’s life. Long commutes may dissuade women from joining the labour force, while time-poverty of caregivers may increase as they have to accompany female children to places on public transport. Ride hailing apps may facilitate women’s mobility, particularly at night, but also come with their own risks.
In light of the threat of gender based violence on public transport, many cities have adopted female-only carriages and buses as a means of ensuring women a safe journey, including those in India, Japan and Iran. While such measures may ease anxieties around public transport, critics note that sex-segregated transport does not address behavioural change and reinforces the idea that men and women cannot exist in the same space without gender based violence.
Many scholars have argued for a new approach to how we think about women’s safety in public places. They note that safety for women is a goal that can be co-opted by patriarchal forces to reinforce gender stereotypes and limit freedoms of women. What would happen if we abandoned viewing women and the city solely through the lens of potential violence? Shilpa Phadke and Sameera Khan argue that a right to risk is a more liberatory goal which grants women unconditional access to public space. Under this logic, women, like men, can access the city even at night, because they have the right to public space and its pleasures. Reorienting the city as a place of pleasure, joy and fun can be a means of attacking the original logic that would see women’s place in the kitchen. In their seminal work, Why Loiter? Sameera Khan, Shilpa Phadke and Shilpa Ranade make the case for women’s right to loiter in the city, as men do all the time. Only through loitering, or existing in space without a legitimate or respectable reason, can women reclaim urban space and the full citizenship that comes with it.
Why Loiter has inspired initiatives like #GirlsatDhabas and #GirlsPlayingStreetCricket through which women and girls across South Asia reclaim urban spaces.
Books
Feminist City: A Field Guide by Leslie Kern
Cities, Slums and Gender in the Global South – Sylvia Chant, Cathy McIlwaine
The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs
Why Loiter?: Women and Risk on Mumbai Streets by Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan, and Shilpa Ranade
Urban Undesirables: City Transition and Street-Based Sex Work in Bangalore by Neethi P. and Anant Kamath
Articles
Feminism and the Politics of the Commons – Silvia Federici
Dangerous Liaisons – Shilpa Phadke
Women’s search for public space and leisure in Agra: cots, courtyards, and riverbank – Mahima Taneja
Gender, public space and social segregation in Cairo: of taxi drivers, prostitutes and professional women– Anouk De Koning
Gender, space, and resistance: street vendors of Dhaka city – Meheri Tamanna, Kyoko Kusakabe, Joyee Shairee Chatterjee & Vilas Nitivattananon
Making Colombo Intimate – Mihirini Sirisena
What it’s like being a female tuk-tuk driver in Sri Lanka – Zinara Rathnayake
Can Fun Be Feminist? Gender, Space and Mobility in Lyari, Karachi – Nida Kirmani
On Building Cities for Women and the Early Days of Feminist Architecture
Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London – Lauren Elkin
Watch
What Would a Feminist City Look Like?
Listen
She Builds: Episode on Minette De Silva https://www.shebuildspodcast.com/episodes/minnettedesilva?rq=minette
The Feminist City https://vidhilegalpolicy.in/podcasts/the-feminist-city-trailer/women-in-the-platform-economy-with-dr-sarayu-natarajan-part-2/
Nous avons le plaisir de partager un lien pour télécharger le mémoire de Master 2 d’Adeela Shaikh qui porte sur « La distribution indépendante du cinéma populaire indien en France : Entre enjeux diasporiques et défis interculturels (2011-2024)». Ce travail, dirigé par Morgan Corriou, à été réalisé dans le cadre du Master 2 « Industries culturelles, parcours Communication pour l’audiovisuel » à l’université Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis.
Lien pour télécharger le mémoire : SHAIKH Adeela Mémoire M2 CPA
A propos de ce mémoire:
Nous interroger sur les raisons d’une distribution indépendante du cinéma commercial indien en France nous a permis d’abord de comprendre les enjeux diasporiques inhérents à celle-ci. Dans un pays où les sujets, les récits et les perspectives ayant trait aux communautés sud-asiatiques sont négligés, le cinéma populaire indien représente pour ses diasporas autant un lieu de refuge qu’un véhicule moderne de transmission de l’indianité, qui les relie à leur pays d’origine. Face au manque de diversité culturel observé dans les circuits d’exploitation traditionnels français, des membres de la diaspora tamoule pondichérienne partageant des parcours de vie similaires et mués par une même passion pour le cinéma tamoul se sont mobilisés au début des années 2010, pour que leur communauté accède, elle aussi, à des conditions de projection décentes.
Cependant, cette distribution repose sur des relations professionnelles complexes, voire conflictuelles à certains égards. Avec une concurrence des plus féroces pour un marché de niche, où se disputent un nombre élevé de distributeurs qui courent à la surenchère permanente pour acquérir les droits de distribution des films indiens. Cela engendre inévitablement une hausse générale des prix d’achat et une part de risque toujours plus élevée sur ces derniers. Les exportateurs indiens en sont les véritables gagnants, par l’imposition de conditions draconiennes qui menacent le fragile équilibre économique des distributeurs français : prix d’achat de plus en plus exorbitants, cession des films pour une durée limitée à trois mois maximum… En conséquence, les distributeurs appliquent des tarifs majorés sur les entrées des premières semaines d’exploitation, pour ne pas être en perte. À cela s’ajoute le lot de défis interculturels auxquels les exploitants des multiplexes semblent désormais habitués à relever : de la réception tardive des films, aux avant-premières mouvementées.
Enfin, il faut souligner au sein du paradoxe que soulève la distribution indépendante du cinéma commercial indien en France le manque de liberté éditoriale des distributeurs, qu’il soit imposé par les exportateurs avec la pratique abusive du block booking ; ou qu’il soit une conséquence du manque de ressources humaines et financières leur faisant défaut. Néanmoins, ces distributeurs contribuent à une plus grande diversité culturelle au sein du paysage cinématographique national avec des films certes commerciaux, mais qui restent singuliers pour les spectateurs avertis ou non. Les contraintes de tardiveté et de simultanéité avec lesquelles ils doivent composer les laissent dans l’impossibilité d’anticiper tout line up. Bien qu’étant énormément tributaires du marketing indien, ils ont malgré tout réussi à engranger 329 635 entrées à travers le pays en 2023, et ce sans réelle couverture médiatique. Cependant, ces distributeurs se heurtent aujourd’hui à un plafond de verre financier, qui empêche tout développement à plus grande échelle de la distribution du cinéma populaire indien en France. Sans visibilité à moyen terme, en raison des cessions de droits limitées, couplées à la montée fulgurante des prix d’achat des blockbusters, ils doivent encore continuer à composer avec les moyens artisanaux qui sont les leurs.
Malgré ces obstacles, ces acteurs indépendants contribuent à la diversité du paysage cinématographique français, enregistrant 329 635 entrées en 2023 sans soutien médiatique significatif. Le mémoire conclut que ces distributeurs se heurtent néanmoins à un plafond de verre financier qui, combiné à la hausse des prix et à l’absence de visibilité à moyen terme, compromet tout développement à plus grande échelle de ce secteur.
A propos de l’auteur:
Adeela Shaikh est présidente co-fondatrice de l’association Desi Kino, elle y programme un ciné-club pour explorer la richesse des cinémas d’Asie du Sud et de leurs diasporas, à travers des projections, rencontres et discussions, le dernier jeudi du mois à 20h30 au cinéma Le Brady à Paris.
Le Centre d’études et de recherches sur l’Inde, l’Asie du Sud et sa diaspora a le plaisir de vous partager la 15e édition du Festival des Films de l’Asie du Sud de Montréal (FFASM), à laquelle le des membres du CERIAS participent en tant que jury. L’évènement se tiendra en format hybride au mois de mai prochain.
Festival dédié au cinéma indépendant d’Asie du Sud et de ses diasporas, le FFASM met en lumière des films qui abordent la culture, l’identité, la migration, la justice sociale, le genre, l’environnement et les dynamiques communautaires.
Au programme cette année :
Au cinéma : 1 – 10 mai 2026 (Cinéma J.A. DeSève, Université Concordia)
En ligne : 4 – 24 mai 2026 (Inscriptions : Register – SAFFMontreal)
Nous espérons vous y voir nombreux, à Montréal ou en ligne !
Pour découvrir la programme complète : SAFFM 2026 – SAFFMontreal
How does the insular condition of Sri Lanka affect the different historical, political and social realities of the country? Delve into an online discussion around this topic with Pr. Eric Meyer and Pr. Sasanka Perera that took place on July 5th, 2021.
Eric Meyer is a French historian specializing in Sri Lanka and the Indian subcontinent, previously director of the South Asia department and then vice-president of INALCO as well as director of the Center for Indian and South Asian Studies (EHESS). His research initially focused on the relationship between colonial capitalism and rural society in Sri Lanka and extended to the history of inter-communal tensions between Sinhalese and Tamils. He is particularly interested in the uses of history in the construction of national identities. He is the author, among others, of “Sri Lanka between particularism and globalization” and “The uses of history and linguistics in the identity debate in Sri Lanka”.
Sasanka Perera is Professor of Sociology at South Asian University, New Delhi, previously Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences. He was the Editor in Chief of the journal, Society and Culture in South Asia co-published by Sage and South Asian University for 9 years. Having been trained as a cultural anthropologist, he also served the Department of Sociology at the University of Colombo for a period of 20 years. An interest in photography, poetry, blogging, art, music and journalism has kept him in touch with both his own creative drives as well as the changing world of thought and expression. His publications in English include, “Warzone Tourism in Sri Lanka: Tales from Darker Places in Paradise”; “Violence and The Burden of Memory: Remembrance and Erasure in Sinhala Consciousness” and “Against the Nation: Thinking Like South Asians”. More information here: https://www.frenchspringfestival.com/…
📅 June18-July 18 2021 📍 Full program: https://www.frenchspringfestival.com/
Visual arts • Music • Fashion • Ideas • Slam poetry ► #FSF2021
Julia L. Cassaniti, Remembering the Present : Mindfulness in Buddhist Asia, Cornell University Press, 2018
What is mindfulness, and how does it vary as a concept across different cultures? How does mindfulness find expression in practice in the Buddhist cultures of Southeast Asia? What role does mindfulness play in everyday life? J. L. Cassaniti answers these fundamental questions and more through an engaged ethnographic investigation of what it means to “remember the present” in a region strongly influenced by Buddhist thought.
Focusing on Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar, Remembering the Present examines the meanings, practices, and purposes of mindfulness. Using the experiences of people in Buddhist monasteries, hospitals, markets, and homes in the region, Cassaniti shows how an attention to memory informs how people live today and how mindfulness is intimately tied to local constructions of time, affect, power, emotion, and selfhood. By looking at how these people incorporate Theravada Buddhism into their daily lives, Cassaniti provides a signal contribution to the psychological anthropology of religious experience.
Remembering the Present heeds the call made by researchers in the psychological sciences and the Buddhist side of mindfulness studies for better understandings of what mindfulness is and can be. Cassaniti addresses fundamental questions about selfhood, identity, and how a deeper appreciation of the many contexts and complexities intrinsic in sati (mindfulness in the Pali language) can help people lead richer, fuller, and healthier lives. Remembering the Present shows how mindfulness needs to be understood within the cultural and historical influences from which it has emerged.
Ecouter l’entretien avec Julia Cassaniti sur son livre : http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?gcoi=80140107114010
source: OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Sophie Hénon (14 juin 2018). Remembering the Present : Mindfulness in Buddhist Asia. Les carnets du CASE. Consulté le 31 mars 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/m8ie
Treasures from the the 17th and 18th VOC archive, Sejarah Nusantara, Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia
The paper archives created by the Dutch East India Company (VOC, 1602-1799) and dealing with its commercial operations in Asian waters are preserved in the national archives of Indonesia, the Netherlands, Sri Lanka, South Africa and India. In particular, the archives in Jakarta contain thousands of documents originating from Asian persons, including many local rulers from around the Indonesian archipelago. The most voluminous collections spanning 2,000 metres are in the Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia (ANRI). On 9 March 2004, the archives of the VOC were included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
The 2.000 metres of archives in ANRI can be roughly divided into two sections:
1) The archives created in and formerly kept at Batavia Castle, the former headquarters of the VOC in Asia. This is the archive of the Supreme Government (the Governor-General and the ordinary Councillors of Dutch Asia).
2) The archives of local private and public institutions in Batavia.
For this digitalization and public access project, a selection had to be made. The Daily Journals of Batavia Castle which can be found in the archives of the Supreme Government were digitalized and published first. This series reflects the principle concerns of the Supreme Government. Prominent here were internal Company affairs in matters as diverse as the general management of trade, personnel and financial affairs, shipping and logistics. The Supreme Government also dealt with all political and diplomatic affairs, the administration of justice and correspondence with other VOC factories in Asia as well as the VOC Chambers and their Governing Board, theso-called Gentlemen Seventeen (Heren XVII) or Directors of the VOC in the Dutch Republic. The Daily Journals were created to maintain an ongoing overview of such activities.
During the course of the eighteenth century, the Resolution Books of the Supreme Government became more and more important and voluminous while the registration of correspondence in the Daily Journals gradually declined. In particular, the handling of all matters to do with the regional establishments of the Company were included in the General Resolution Books. In 1743, such matters were recorded in a separate yearbook, giving birth to a separate series: the General (Foreign) Affairs Books (Net-Generale Besogneboeken).
Another, hitherto unresearched and historically unique series are the Appendices to the General Resolution Books. These total together some 742 volumes numbering some 550,000 folio pages. This series contain a variety of documents which may gradually become accessible via a special database. The first document descriptions for this database were started in 2013 by ANRI’s Content Team (see organisation).
Liste des archives consultables moyennant une inscription sur le site:
Plus d’informations sur : https://sejarah-nusantara.anri.go.id/archive/
source: Sophie Hénon (30 octobre 2017). Treasures from the the 17th and 18th VOC archive. Les carnets du CASE. Consulté le 31 mars 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/m8fb
« The Tale of Prince Vessantara », until 09 September 2018, Ashmolean Museum (University of Oxford)
The Buddha is believed to have had many lives before being born as Siddhartha Gautama. Stories of his past lives are known as jatakas (‘birth stories’). They play an important role in teaching Buddhist values.
The Vessantara Jataka is the last and most popular of the jataka tales. Here the Buddha was born as Prince Vessantara of the Sivi Kingdom, a very generous man who gave away everything, including his wife and children, to help others. His actions demonstrate the virtue of generosity, which in Buddhism is one of the ‘perfections’ required to achieve enlightenment.
The tale is often illustrated in Southeast Asian and Sri Lankan art. Buddhists can gain merit by making and commissioning these images. This display, drawn from the Ashmolean’s own collection, highlights a selection of Burmese and Sri Lankan drawings, paintings and woodcarvings of the story dating to the 19th century.
Curator : Dr Farouk Yahya
Voir : https://www.ashmolean.org/event/the-tale-of-prince-vessantara
Source: OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Sophie Hénon (23 avril 2018). The Tale of Prince Vessantara at the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford). Les carnets du CASE. Consulté le 31 mars 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/m8ho
http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cimw20/44/130
Sommaire
Research Note
Cette revue est disponible à la BULAC et à la bibliothèque de l’EFEO.
source: Sophie Hénon (10 novembre 2016). Indonesia and the Malay World, vol. 44, no. 130. Les carnets du CASE. Consulté le 31 mars 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/m80w
EAP609 : Digitising Malay writing in Sri Lanka – Endangered Archives Program (British Library)
This project aims to create a digital archive of Malay writing (including manuscripts, printed books, letters, other documents) held in private collections in Sri Lanka. Written for the most part in Arabic script (but also in the Roman, Tamil and Sinhala scripts) by descendants of exiles, convicts, and soldiers from the Indonesian archipelago and the Malay Peninsula between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, these rare and fragile documents attest to social and cultural aspects of the community’s life, allow for an expansion of our definitions of the ‘Malay World,’ and provide insight into local forms of Islam. There is urgent need to document and preserve such collections, endangered not only by tropical weather and the ravages of time, but also by their owners’ lack of knowledge in archival preservation and a contemporary ignorance regarding the manuscripts’ content and significance …
The project will result in the creation of a digital archive freely available to all. Copies will be accessible via the National Archives of Sri Lanka, the British Library and the library at the Australian National University.
Project Outcome
The project encompasses a range of materials written in the Malay language, in Sri Lanka, from around the mid 19th century to the late 20th century. It includes manuscipts, printed books, prayer booklets, wedding invitations, personal letters, family records, poems and songs. These diverse materials testify to the variety of ways in which Malay was, and is, used in Sri Lanka. The majority of older materials are Islamic in nature, including theological manuals, poems in praise of the Prophet, and tales and histories written in the hikayat genre. These are written in gundul (Malay-Arabic script) and/or romanised Malay. The collection also includes modern examples of Malay written in the Tamil and Sinhala script, as well as older materials in Arabic and Arabu-Tamil owned by Malay families, testifying to the lingusitic and orthographic diversity of the community’s writing practices.
For more informations : http://eap.bl.uk/database/overview_project.a4d?projID=EAP609;r=41
To consult texts : http://eap.bl.uk/database/results.a4d?projID=EAP609;r=41
Source: Sophie Hénon (28 février 2017). Digitising Malay writing in Sri Lanka – Endangered Archives Program. Les carnets du CASE. Consulté le 31 mars 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/m861
This conference explores the interrelationships among political literary, and religious culture in early second-millennium South India and Sri Lanka. Scholars of premodern South Asia and Indian Ocean political culture now recognize that transregional processes fundamentally shaped political environments in this region. The substantial migration of scholars, military operators, ritual specialists, and pilgrim-patrons led to substantial transfers of knowledge. During this period, textual forms, material culture, languages, and technical sciences were on the move. Speakers will highlight the potential of working across languages and between key political-cultural centers to identify core characteristics of premodern political culture in peninsular India and Sri Lanka from approximately 900-1500. The culture of politics in this region underwent substantial changes during this period, bookended by the Indian Ocean imperial vision of the Cōḷas to the advent of the Portuguese Indian Ocean colonial empire.
For more information: Cornell university