How did Sri Lanka, where the revolutionary socialist left was so strong, descend into the politics of ethno-national chauvinism? That left was in large part itself culpable. Dan Katz tells the tragic story.
How did Sri Lanka, where the revolutionary socialist left was so strong, descend into the politics of ethno-national chauvinism? That left was in large part itself culpable. Dan Katz tells the tragic story.
General strike in Ceylon (later Sri Lanka), 1953. But the LSSP party that led it would soon capitulate to Sinhalese chauvinism, betraying the country's Tamil minority and socialist principles, and fuelling Sri Lanka's disastrous trajectory Ceylon (renamed as Sri Lanka when the country became a republic in May 1972) won independence from Britain, peacefully, on 4 February 1948.
By Uditha Devapriya On June 7, 1964, the Central Committee of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party convened a special conference at which three resolutions were presented. The first, moved by N. M. Perera, called for a coalition with the SLFP, inclusive of any ministerial portfolios. The second, led by the likes of Colvin R. de […]
by ECB Wijeyesinghe When Selina Peeris, the Badulla heiress hitched her wagon to a rising young politician bred in the London School of Economics, little did she think that marriage would one day make her a Marxist. But the example of her handsome suitor was irresistible, and both of them plunged into the stream of […]