“Showdown in Sri Lanka: PM’s sacking sparks constitutional crisis” France 24 Debate

Regional players China and India are keeping close tabs on the Sri Lankan president’s decision to sack Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and replace him with the country’s longtime strongman, Mahinda Rajapaksa. But Sri Lanka continues to have duelling prime ministers. We look into the cause and the legality of the recall, a test for the nation’s democracy. It was on Rajapaksa’s watch that a civil war ended with the crushing of Tamil Tiger rebels. Could the turmoil in Colombo reopen wounds?

Guest

Mohan WIJEWICKRAMA

Former Governor of the Eastern Province

Bharath GOPALASWAMY

Director of the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center

Delon MADAVAN

Research Associate, Centre for Studies on India and South Asia

Alan KEENAN

Sri Lanka Project Director, Crisis Group

https://www.france24.com/en/20181102-debate-sri-lanka-constitutional-crisis-india-china-rival-prime-ministers-test-democracy?fbclid=IwAR2p9ORonEMmPe-b0r-dzpsFnduatK-I5w5aRltFbP-LEZ36ImDU4Ty81RM

LST New Publication Series – “පුරවැසි සංවාද”

We are pleased to inform you that LST has initiated a new publication series that covers the ongoing issues in Sri Lanka. The publication will be published from Sinhala and Tamil languages.  
 
Please click HERE to download the full publication or download the attached PDF file.

Online Museum of Memory and Coexistence

The International Centre for Ethnic Studies is pleased to launch its online Museum of Memory and Coexistence.  The museum will seek to celebrate diversity, coexistence, resilience and solidarity, while archiving social exclusion, loss, and personal trauma. 

​​It​ is part of a larger ICES initiative to explore the use of arts, and physical and digital spaces, to facilitate social healing, archive narratives of the past, and build creative spaces for talking about a shared future and non-recurrence.

Projection/débat autour du court-métrage “Unlock”, dimanche 6 mai à 18h, Grand Rex

Le court-métrage “Unlock”, réalisé par Nirmalan Nadarajah, qui sera projeté au Grand Rex ce dimanche 6 mai à 18h en présence du réalisateur et du comédien Shobasakthi.
Pour information, vous trouverez ci-joints une affiche, une bande-annonce et un lien vers la page du film

keynote lectures for crafts conference “Tradition or Trans/formation? Craft, Practice and Discourse”, Jaffna, 10 May

You are cordially invited to the inauguration of a International interdisciplinary trilingual conference on craft

Tradition or Trans/formation? Craft, Practice and Discourse

Organized by
The Department of Fine Arts, University of Jaffna in collaboration with

American Institute for Lankan Studies, Colombo
Lanka Decorative Arts, Colombo
Sri Lankan Archive for Contemporary Art, Architecture and Design, Jaffna

10thMay 2018 at 3.00 pm

Jaffna Public library Auditorium

Keynotes

“Transformation at the heart of tradition: A history of the institutionalization

of craft in South Asia”

Anais Da Fonseca (Tate Research Center: Asia, London)

and

Vishwakarma craftsmen, guilds and caste issues in Pre- Colonial South India

Vijaya Ramaswamy (Centre for Historical studies, JNU, New Delhi)

“‘I thought I was a bad son’: the emotional distance between migrants and their children” by Guy Gunaratne

In 1951, Guy Gunaratne’s Sri Lankan father learned English by reading in a London bookshop. Almost 70 years later, the same shop sells his son’s novel.Guy Gunaratne considers their very different journeys.

To read more: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/may/02/story-father-immigrant-experience-guy-gunaratne?CMP=share_btn_fb

Source: The Guardian

“Pathways to Leadership: Perspectives from Accomplished Women Leaders from from the Legal Field” Panel discussion organized by USAID, at The Royal Mall (Kandy), on 10th May 2018

Notable women lawyers speak about the challenges they faced in their professional and personal journeys to success and how they overcame these hurdles. Panel discussion followed by a networking event

Thursday, 10th May 2018, 2.30 p.m. – 5.30 p.m. at The Royal Mall (No. 18/903, William Goppallawa Mawatha, Kandy)

Email events@corejustice.org or call on 11 257 5603/4 to confirm participation (limited seating available)

Download the flyer: Flyer – Pathways to Leadership – KANDY

“Culture persane et médecine ayurvédique an Asie du Sud” Fabrizio Speziale

Résumé. Cet ouvrage traite des interactions entre l’Ayurveda et la culture médicale persane en Asie du Sud. Il présente, pour la première fois, une étude du mouvement de traduction en persan des sources ayurvédiques qui a eu lieu à partir du XIVe siècle. L’image de la culture ayurvédique reflétée par les traités persans offre un nouvel éclairage sur l’histoire de l’Ayurveda à l’époque de l’hégémonie politique musulmane en Asie du Sud. Les traités persans appliquent de nouvelles catégories à l’analyse des matériaux traduits et ils transforment les modalités de présentation du savoir ayurvédique. En parallèle, l’ouvrage de Fabrizio Speziale aborde le phénomène symétrique de persanisation de l’univers intellectuel des médecins hindous qui, à travers l’apprentissage du persan, s’approprient des connaissances médicales de la culture musulmane.

English abstract. This book looks at the interactions between Āyurveda and Persian medical culture in South Asia. It presents, for the first time, a study of the translation movement of Ayurvedic sources into Persian, which took place from the 14th century onwards. The image of Ayurvedic culture emerging from Persian texts provides a new insight into the history of Āyurveda under Muslim political hegemony in South Asia. Persian treatises apply new categories to the analysis of translated materials and transform the way Ayurvedic knowledge is presented. At the same time, Fabrizio Speziale’s book deals with the symmetric phenomenon of Persanization of the Hindu physicians who, through the learning of Persian language, appropriated medical knowledge of Muslim culture.

 
À propos de l’auteur :

Fabrizio Speziale est Directeur d’études à l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Centre d’études de l’Inde et de l’Asie du Sud, Paris. Il a largement publié sur l’histoire de la médecine ayurvédique dans le monde indien et est le directeur de Perso-Indica. An Analytical Survey of Persian Works on Indian Learned Traditions (www.perso-indica.net).

Fabrizio Speziale is Professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Center for South Asian Studies, Paris. He has published extensively on the history of medicine in the Indo-Persianate world and is the chief editor of Perso-Indica. An Analytical Survey of Persian Works on Indian Learned Traditions (www.perso-indica.net).
 

Google books preview:

https://books.google.fr/books?id=HntTDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false  

https://brill.com/abstract/title/35649

“Caste in the United States: A Survey of Caste among South Asian Americans” by Equality Lab

“This report came out of a community driven survey conducted in 2016 and has now emerged as a crucial document that both presents the first evidence of Caste discrimination in the US and helps to map the internal hegemonies within our communities. It also provides insight into how the South Asian community balances the experiences of living under white supremacy while replicating Caste, anti-Dalitness, and anti-Blackness.

As the South Asian American community, we are uniquely situated to redeem the errors of history as well as set the tone for a progressive conversation around Caste, both here and in countries of origin.”

via: https://www.equalitylabs.org/caste-survey-2018

To download directly the report: https://nofile.io/f/OXRXwaHU0dG/Caste+Survey+2018+Full.pdf

“Friday et Friday” de Antonythasan Jesuthasan alias Shobasakthi, en librairie à partir du 5 avril 2018

 

“Friday et Friday” de Antonythasan Jesuthasan alias Shobasakthi.

Nouvelles traduites du tamoul (Sri Lanka) par Faustine Imbert-Vier,

Élisabeth Sethupathy, et Farhaan Wahab

Une enfance à Allaipiddy, au nord de Sri Lanka, la guérilla tamoule, l’errance, l’exil en France… Autant de motifs et de personnages qui habitent l’œuvre d’Antonythasan Jesuthasan : Diana la Ronde, pétrifiée par le bruit des bombes, qui remue ciel et terre pour obtenir son abri ; Pratheeban, le demandeur d’asile, floué pour une poignée de kilomètres ; les 37 Mouvements de rébellion, bien décidés à se tailler la part du lion ; Layla, la petite dame du numéro 7, que son nom de code – Oiseau jaune – finit par trahir, ou encore le chevalier de Kandi, condamné à devenir un coq en pâte aux frais du Comité central.
À travers tous ces portraits, c’est aussi celui du narrateur qui se dessine, tout en humour et en finesse – le roman d’une vie, le miroir d’une âme et d’un peuple qui sait que c’est parfois en perdant de vue le rivage que le cœur se remet à flot.

A propos de l’auteur

Si l’on connaît son visage grâce au superbe Dheepan de Jacques Audiard (Palme d’or à Cannes en 2015) dont il est l’acteur principal, Antonythasan Jesuthasan est surtout écrivain reconnu – auteur de quatre romans, plusieurs recueils de nouvelles et de nombreux essais, pièces de théâtre et scénarios.

Antonythasan Jesuthasan – alias Shobasakthi – est né en 1967 à Allaipiddy, un village à l’extrême nord de Sri Lanka. Ancien enfant soldat du Mouvement de libération des Tigres tamouls, il arrive en France en 1993 où il obtient l’asile politique. Il vit désormais à Paris.

Son œuvre est traduite pour la première fois en français. L’adaptation cinématographique de la magnifique nouvelle Friday, qui se déroule dans la communauté tamoule du quartier de la Chapelle, à Paris, est en cours de réalisation.

Le dossier de presse du livre est accessible à travers ce lien : dossier_presse-572162dp-mars-18pdf

Une première revue du livre a été rédigé par Véronique-Atasi et peut-être lu sur son blog atasi.over-blog.com

Pour plus d’information, vous pouvez consulter le site de la maison d’édition Zulma qui a publié Friday and Friday.

New articles on religiosity among Tamil Hindu youths in Norway by Valen Kleive

Hildegunn Valen Kleive has recently published two articles (one in English and another in Norwegian) looking at religiosity among young Tamil Hindus in rural Norway.

The first (in English), ‘Belonging and Discomfort: Young Hindu Religiosity in Rural Norway’ is published in the Nordic Journal of Religion and Society and may be accessed here.

The second ‘Mestring og balanse. Trekk ved ung hindureligiøsitet’ is published in Prismet and may be accessed here. An English translation will follow at a later date.

Film Screening of “DEMONS IN PARADISE” at ICES Auditorium, on 8th August 2017, at 4.30PM

Synopsis

Sri Lanka, 1983: Jude Ratnam was five years old. He fled the massacre of the Tamils instigated by the majority-Sinhalese government on a red train.
Now a filmmaker, he takes the same train from the south to the north of the island.

As he advances, the traces of violence left by the 26-year-old war, which turned the Tamil’s fight for freedom into self-destructive terrorism, pass before his eyes.
Reminiscing about the fighters and Tamil Tigers, he unveils the repressed memories of his compatriots, opening the door to a new era and making peace possible again.

Demons in Paradise is the result of 10 years of work. For the first time, a Tamil documentary filmmaker living in Sri Lanka is showing the civil war from the inside.