It was in the 1960s that my parents took me to see the play at the then-new Veerasingham Hall in Jaffna. A key attraction was that producer Ernest MacIntyre and his sister Evelyn had been living within a hundred yards of our home down Chemmany Road w

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s four-day visit to the North last week seemed to have been aimed at the forthcoming Presidential and Parliamentary Elections, in the light of the plethora of large-scale development projects he announced during

Passing of the 19th Amendment in the most disgusting manner with unwanted, undemocratic provisions smuggled in was yet hailed as democratic victory highlighting the Constitutional Council (CC) and Independent Commissions.

The Colombo municipal Council (CMC) inspecting eateries in Borella just few days ago, closing down one and filling cases against three leaves room for us to check what we purchase when dining out.

The February 14 attack on an Indian military convoy in the disputed Kashmir region once again underlines the importance of a concerted international effort to find a solution to the seven-decade-old crisis.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s call for ‘forgive and forget’ on incidents related to the war drew a jibe from the Tamil politicians.In his remarks made in Jaffna last week, the Prime Minister meant to say that those who committed crimes

The arrest of Makandure Madush and the revelation of several politicians consuming narcotics underscores the fact that the drug trade in Sri Lanka has deep roots and can’t be eradicated that easily.

Saturday’s Daily Mirror carried an expose headlined, ‘Who was behind the arrest of Makandure Madush’. The article gives a new take on the story that is continuing to create headlines and take centre-stage with startling new revelations on a dai

Many years ago, before the 17th Amendment was implemented, I ended my weekly column to the Sunday Island newspaper mentioning the number of days since the said amendment was passed and asking why the independent commissions had not been appointed. Ar

Freedom of expression, freedom of movement, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship; these are all enshrined in our Constitution as fundamental rights. No one can take them away; no President, no Prime Minister and no Parliament. The judiciary, the t

Hardly had the smoke of the gun salutes fired on February 4 settled, when we received news of the arrest of Makandure Madush with 40 of his entourage in Dubai. On Independence Day, we sing eulogies to those who fought against the British and other wh

Reading newspapers fuels my thoughts and perusing pictures catches my eye! My first question then is WHY? Why can’t our leaders be ‘real leaders’ like most of them in every other part of the world? Memory takes me back to a particular picture o

In May 2009, when the nation was celebrating the war victory over the LTTE, the key government ally nationalist Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) had a crucial meeting. It was to discuss what the party would do next. After all the purpose of floating an all

Joint Opposition front-liner Dr Bandula Gunawardena has protested against the purported decision by the Government to permit private schools to open five branches, each claiming that the decision would be detrimental to the free education.’

President Maithripala Sirisena genuinely or otherwise seems to share the rightful sense of urgency to combat the drug menace in this country. If he is genuine, he would be the first national leader who understood the gravity of the problem, and sough

Undoubtedly, Mahavamsa focuses essentially on the Sinhala-Buddhists. What else could historian Mahanama do writing in the 5th century? What else was there for him to write about at the time? He couldn’t write about the Tamils because they were not

With the advent of European power in Ceylon in the 16th Century, the Hndus of Jaffna began to face religious annihilation. The Portuguese and the Dutch were hell bent on converting them to Christianity – the Portuguese to Roman Catholicism and the

On Friday, US President Donald Trump declared a state of national emergency in the United States. The president is in search of a means to provide himself with funds to construct a 230-mile long wall between the US and Mexico.

A decade after the war, the North continues to be mired in a social and economic crisis, with little light at the end of the tunnel. The liberals address this crisis by increasingly resorting to attitudinal, behavioural and cultural explanations.

Last Monday President Trump signed an executive order titled ‘Maintaining American leadership in Artificial Intelligence (AI)’. This new policy is based on five main principles, first of which firmly outlines....

Five months after Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was decriminalised, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ) community still feels the stigma and discrimination lurking around.

This week, the United Nations  marked the International Day of Women and Girls in Science with the theme being “Investment in Women and Girls in Science for Inclusive Green Growth.”According to the UN, Science and gender equality are vital for t

Nigeria is a veritable factory of sophisticated novelists. It was no surprise that Ben Okri won the British Booker Prize that goes annually to the best novelist of the year.     

The arrest in Dubai of Makandure Madush and a few others wanted here in Sri Lanka for drug trafficking and murder, first made stories in media giving credit to different persons for the “meticulously planned” arrest.

Deputy Minister Vijayakala Maheswaran, who was in hot water in July last year for praising the one-time administration by the LTTE before it was militarily decimated, told a few days ago that it was the southern politicians....

The drug issue in Sri Lanka made everybody look beyond drug lord Makandure Madush because a leading musician and his son were also among those arrested in Dubai. 

Hibakusha in Japanese means bomb-affected persons and the word is exclusively used to refer to the survivors of atomic explosions at Hiroshima or Nagasaki in August 1945.

Nine years after the defeat of the tiger rebels we still hear stories about disgruntled Tamil citizens demanding justice and also of attempts by certain parties to give hero status to rebel cadres who perished during the conflict. 

The call for several decades has been the abolition of the executive presidency. It’s as if the one and only problem this country has had is this office, its powers, functions and those who hold it. An all-powerful presidency that makes a moc

Exactly ten days ago Sri Lanka celebrated its 71st Anniversary of Independence. But in the hustle and bustle and the pomp and pageantry of the Independence Day celebrations it appears that the life and times of our nation’s founding father, D