“Sri Lanka’s Bumpy Road to a Political Reset” by Alan Keenan (International Crisis Group)

Alan Keenan’s new report on Sri Lanka for the International Crisis Group is available.

Victory for National People’s Power at the ballot box in 2024 opened a rare window of opportunity to forge a more inclusive, transparent political system in Sri Lanka. But the report argues the window has already begun to narrow.

Almost eighteen months into its term in office, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s National People’s Power (NPP) government has kept Sri Lanka’s economic recovery on track and made notable efforts to fight corruption. But it faces growing questions about its ability and commitment to achieve its bold promises of “system change”.

Dissanayake’s election in September 2024 and the NPP’s subsequent parliamentary majority created a rare opening to address the country’s most important and intractable governance problems. Failure to achieve a substantial portion of their ambitious agenda threatens to open the way to a return to ethnic tensions and political authoritarianism.

To regain momentum for reform, Dissanayake’s government will need, as a priority, to reinforce its anti-impunity campaign with investigations of wartime atrocities (beginning with mass graves); adopt a more inclusive, less defensive style of governance; strengthen independent oversight of the state, including by allowing its own officials to be prosecuted when faced with credible allegations of wrong-doing; end abuses of counter-terrorism policing; and do more to protect the most economically vulnerable.

We offer ideas for how they can try to accomplish this in the report.

FSF 2021 | Discussion on “Sri Lankan insularity” with Eric Meyer and Sasanka Perera

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

“Coolie Poesis: Plantation Sounds and Labor Heritage on Sri Lanka’s Tea Estates” by Mythri Jegathesan (UC Davis College of Letters and Science)

Mythri Jegathesan at the UC Davis Global Tea Initiative for Tea Culture and Science 2nd Annual Colloquium: “The Sensory Aspects of Tea” on January 19, 2017. This talk explores the relationship between tea plantation labor and production and coolie identity formation and heritage in Sri Lanka. Also how the human voice—through the poetry, and song written and performed by Tamil plantation residents—reinforce coolie narratives of labor, connectivity, and desires for social recognition in a multicultural, postwar Sri Lanka. This reinforcement creates a coolie poesis—an emergence of a complex labor heritage to be duly acknowledged in Sri Lanka’s colonial and postcolonial history and present.

source: UC Davis College of Letters and Science

“Buddhism and law”, in Asian Journal of Law and Society, vol. 3, no. 1 (mai 2016) (Les Carnets du CASE)

ALS

Content

  • Setting an Agenda for the Socio-Legal Study of Contemporary Buddhism by Benjamin Schonthal & Tom Ginsburg
  • Keeping Monks in Their Place? by Thomas Larsson (sur la Thaïlande)
  • The Impossibility of a Buddhist State by Benjamin Schonthal (sur le Sri Lanka)
  • Varieties of Religious Freedom in Japanese Buddhist Responses to the 1899 Religions Bill by Jolyon Baraka Thomas
  • Blood Curse and Belonging in Thailand: Law, Buddhism, and Legal Consciousness by David M. Engel
  • Promiscuity, Polygyny, and the Power of Revenge: The Past and Future of Burmese Buddhist Law in Myanmar by Melissa Crouch
    http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=als

Source: Sophie Hénon (12 avril 2016). Asian Journal of Law and Society, vol. 3, no. 1 (mai 2016). Les carnets du CASE. Consulté le 31 mars 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/m7tf

“Remembering the Present : Mindfulness in Buddhist Asia” by Julia L. Cassaniti (Les Carnets du CASE)

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” by Sophie Hénon (Les Carnets du CASE)

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:

  • General Resolutions of Batavia Castle 1613-1810
  • Realia 1610-1808
  • Appendices to General Resolutions 1686-1811
  • The Placards of Batavia Castle 1602-1808
  • Daily Journals of Batavia Castle 1624-1806
  • Marginalia to the Daily Journals 1659-1807
  • Diplomatic Letters 1625-1812
  • Corpus Diplomaticum 1595-1799

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

“Digitising Malay writing in Sri Lanka – Endangered Archives Program” by Sophie Hénon (Les Carnets du CASE)

EAP609 : Digitising Malay writing in Sri Lanka – Endangered Archives Program (British Library)

Dr Ronit Ricci, The Australian University
Archival partner: National Archives of Sri Lanka
 
Project Overview
 

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

“The Politics of Culture in Peninsular India and Sri Lanka, 900-1500 AD” conference, on 10th April 2026, at Cornell university

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

 

“Republic of Amnesia” Film screening on Tuesday, April 7 at 6:00pm, at Williard Straight Theatre, Cornell Cinema

 

                     Republic of Amnesia | Official Trailer

Young activists lead Sri Lanka’s 2022 uprising, toppling an authoritarian president but can fragile hope survive in a country built on forgetting?

Directed by Kannan Arunasalam, Republic of Amnesia follows the rise and fall of Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya (“The Struggle”) the youth-led protest movement that forced authoritarian president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country in 2022. At its heart are young activists like Melani, Buwanaka and Jeana, who organize marches, face arrest, and confront a political system built to endure. As they challenge a powerful dynasty, their struggle raises a deeper question: can fragile hope survive in a country built on forgetting?

As the spirit of the Aragalaya ripples across Asia, inspiring youth movements from Bangladesh to Indonesia, the film looks beyond the moment itself. It asks what remains and what is lost when a movement fades, and suggests that the struggle for democracy lies not only in institutions or leaders, but in the stories a society chooses to preserve.

Filmmaker Kannan Arunasalam will join for a conversation after the film with Daniel Bass, Senior Program Manager of the South Asia Program.

Free admission! Sponsored by the South Asia Program at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

About the filmmaker
Kannan Arunasalam is a British-Sri Lankan filmmaker working across documentary film and moving-image installation. His work explores memory, political resistance, and the legacies of conflict and colonialism. His installation The Tent (2019) was presented in a solo exhibition at Yorkshire Contemporary. His documentary Sri Lanka’s Rebel Wife (2021) was shortlisted for Best Documentary at the DIG Investigative Film Awards. He recently completed two feature documentaries: Republic of Amnesia (2025, UK/Sri Lanka), examining Sri Lanka’s 2022 Aragalaya protest movement, and Possible Landscapes (2025, US/Trinidad & Tobago), which premiered at the BlackStar Film Festival and explores intergenerational environmental experience.

In Sinhala, Tamil and English with English subtitles. More at republicofamnesia.film.

Part of our “Campus Collaborations” and “Doc Spots” series.

“Iran pledges fuel, essential goods for Sri Lanka; Strait of Hormuz open to friendly nations” by Iranian Ambassador to Sri Lanka Dr Alireza Delkhosh (Ada Derada)

We share a statement by Iranian Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Dr Alireza Delkhosh, who recall the current situation of war and in Strait of Hormuz. He emphases that Sri lanka is friendly country for Iran and that his country is ready to provide fuel or essential goods for the island nation.

Source: Ada Derada Youtube Channel

“James Brow, Anuradhapura 1984, and the Question of Agrarian Change”by Jonathan Spencer (Social Scientists’ Association, Critical Agrarian Studies Seminar Series )

We are happy to share Jonathan Spencer’s presentation on “James Brow, Anuradhapura 1984, and the Question of Agrarian Change”. This presentation was given during given during Critical Agrarian Studies Seminar Series, organized by Social Scientists’ Association (SSA).

Summary

James Brow (d. 2022) made a major contribution to the analysis of rural society and structure in Sri Lanka, in his two monographs on Anuradhapura district, but also in co-organising an international conference on ‘Symbolic and Material Dimensions of Agrarian Change’ in July 1984. My talk combines a personal reassessment of the work of a friend and exemplary mentor, with reflections on a meeting of brilliant young researchers who had carried out field studies in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Yet when Agrarian Change in Sri Lanka (Sage, New Delhi) belatedly appeared in 1992, the age of the classic village study seemed over. How did this happen? What can we still learn from that encounter of 40 years ago?

Source: SSA Youtube Page

“Debt without development webinar” by Centre for a Smart Future (with Jonathan Spencer & Avanka Fernando)

In January 2025, Colombo Urban Lab hosted a webinar on Sri Lanka’s development projects and debt, with a focus on the lived realities of communities affected by the Colombo Urban Regeneration Project, on the 16th of January, at 6pm via Zoom. The team at Colombo Urban Lab shared some highlights from the November 2024 report on the URP, followed by a discussion with Professor Jonathan Spencer from the University of Edinburgh and Dr. Avanka Fernando from the University of Colombo.

Source: Centre for Smart Future

“The Complex Human Geography of Sri Lanka” by Lost in Context

The first video in the series introduces the island of Sri Lanka, the people that live there and where they come from, with a particular focus on the Sinhalese and the Tamils. It also explores part of Colombo.
 
Sources:
-A History of Sri Lanka, K. M. de Silva -Elephant Complex; Travels in Sri Lanka, John Gimlette
-The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers, Gordon Weiss
-The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History, Sanjeev Sanyal
-This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War, Samanth Subramanian
  • Various news sources, especially The Economist
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Intro
01:20 Geography
02:30 Ethnicity
03:33 Veddas
04:40 Sinhalese
05:12 Tamils
08:31 Indian Tamils
09:45 Caste
11:50 Sinhalese-Tamil Relations
13:30 Moors/Muslims
15:15 Summary
15:56 Colombo
 

“What the Europeans did to Sri Lanka” by Lost in Context

From their first arrival in 1505 to Sri Lanka’s independence in 1948, European empires shaped the island, and the rest of Asia.
 
This video looks at Sri Lanka’s colonial experience, how it was transformed and what stayed the same.
 
Sources:
-A History of Sri Lanka, K. M. de Silva -Elephant Complex; Travels in Sri Lanka, John Gimlette
-The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers, Gordon Weiss
-The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History, Sanjeev Sanyal
-This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War, Samanth Subramanian
  • Various news sources, especially The Economist
00:00 Intro
01:00 Portuguese arrival
02:23 Portuguese Ceylon
04:12 Dutch Ceylon
07:00 Colombo to Hikkaduwa
11:00 British arrival
12:14 ‘Indian’ Tamils
13:15 British Ceylon
16:33 Independence
17:27 Hikkaduwa to Galle
18:37 Galle Protest
21:39 The President resigns
23:21 Next video
 
 

 

 

“Les familles tamoules sri lankaises et l’école en France : des projets différenciés d’ascension sociale” par Blin Laurence (Mémoire de DU de INSHEA)

Nous partageons un lien pour lier ou télécharger le mémoire de Laurence Blin sur “Les familles tamoules sri lankaises et l’école en France: des projets différenciés d’ascension sociale“. Ce mémoire a été réalisé dans le cadre du diplôme universitaire (DU) de INSHEA – Institut national supérieur de formation et de recherche pour l’éducation des jeunes handicapés et les enseignements adaptés, lors de l’année 2020/20

Résumé: 

L’auteure cherche à identifier les éléments constitutifs de la diversité des parcours scolaires des enfants de familles tamoules du Sri Lanka. Elle s’appuie à la fois sur des éléments théoriques et sur l’analyse des entretiens réalisés auprès de neuf personnes. Dans une première partie, elle s’intéresse à la diversité des positions sociales des parents dans le cadre historique commun d’un mouvement de minorisation des Tamouls sri lankais. Dans une deuxième partie, elle étudie comment ces positions et expériences prémigratoires mêlées aux positions et expériences sociales de la société d’immigration transforment des différences sociales en inégalités scolaires.