” Sovereignty as Tension: Sri Lanka and Its North-​East” by Mahendran Thiruvarangan

“Even as neo-​liberalism attempts to trans-​nationalize the globe, the nation continues to be popular among many communities in both Europe and the postcolony. For Marxist postcolonial thinkers like Neil Lazarus (1999:48) and Timothy Brennan (1999:25 – 26), the nation and the nation-​state function mainly as communities of resistance to globalization and American-​centered global cosmopolitanism. But in places like the UK, Spain and Belgium and in many parts of the postcolony such as Somalia, Sri Lanka and Pakistan, the nation exists as a vibrant political entity primarily because it refuses to tolerate the character of the state under which it lives and due to its desire to have a state exclusively for itself. Nations in these places predicate their demand for self-​rule on historical claims over territory, the differences that they draw between themselves and other nations in terms of culture and language and the ripening of their collective self-​consciousness into nationhood. The dominance of one nation over others in these places intensifies the marginalized nation’s thirst for national liberation. Claiming to resist the hegemonic Sinhala-​Buddhist nationalist project of the Sri Lankan state, Tamil nationalism invokes many of these arguments to legitimize the Tamils’ right to self-​determination in the north-​east of Sri Lanka which the nationalist narrative inscribes as the historical habitat of the Tamils.”

see: http://criticallegalthinking.com/2015/08/03/sovereignty-as-tension-sri-lanka-and-its-north-east/

“Can the Anti-Mahinda Camp Think Straight?” by Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

“Lastly, Dayan makes a claim of surpassing ignorance that I wish he never did when he says that, “In the case of Sri Lanka the case of pluri-nationalism is patently absurd, because one ethnic group constitutes almost 75% of the island’s population, and according an equal status of nationhood to a far smaller formation is logically untenable. With such overwhelming preponderance of one community, how could the entity that is Sri Lanka be described as pluri-national or bi-national?” He then goes on to substantiate this claim with exactly the same kind of asinine analogy from international relations that I have previously said makes the argument in his book more unpersuasive than it should be.

There is a book to be written as to why this is complete nonsense, but suffice it here to say one thing. There is nothing ‘patently absurd’ about this. Every plurinational state is dominated by a large majority nation. That is a fact, a given, a reality, and as can be seen from basic statistics, this is even more pronounced than in Sri Lanka in
the three most advanced plurinational states in the world.”

###

Asanga Welikala’s response to Dayan Jayatilleka article can be read in full here http://groundviews.org/2014/06/12/can-the-anti-mahinda-camp-think-straight/#comment-1433504510

source: http://groundviews.org/

“Rescuing Patriotism from the Extremists” by A.M. Faaiz

It is almost five years since the military victory of May 2009 brought an end to three decades of armed conflict. Yet, the prospects for securing a stable and inclusive peace in Sri Lanka appear bleak. The first victim of “peace” was the APRC. This long and important process for developing a consensus-based political solution was marginalised and shelved. The second victim is ethnic and religious relations. Emergent Buddhist extremist groups have been allowed to target and attack both Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike with relative impunity – to the point where religious minorities are experiencing a distinct sense of being under siege.
Read more here.