11th May 2018

Dr Vickramabahu Karunaratne Some Polpotian Marxists repeat ‘This is a new, a new situation, and a new and higher level of struggle left behind by neo liberalism and new priorities corresponded to it. Globally the bourgeois-democratic stage had passed, and with it the formal legal demand for national self-determination – characteristic of this stage – lost its former significance. Hence the slogan ‘overthrow the rule of the bourgeoisie on a world scale and set up the international dictatorship of the proletariat’ became the immediate practical slogan. Therefore, the concentration on national democratic tasks is outdated. This means that national self-determination lost all significance.’ So Polpotian Marxists in Lanka are preparing an immediate red revolution that could replace all democracy slogans with the ‘self-determination of the […]

By N Sathiya Moorthy It is sad that 40 years after it was signed to end the ethnic strife in Sri Lanka and a decade after the conclusion of the ‘ethnic war’, someone still should have to talk about the Rajiv Gandhi -Jayewardene Accord of 1987, whose aim was to end the strife and de-escalate the war for good. What instead the nation and the neighbourhood witnessed was an unstoppable, no-holds-barred LTTE war. “Our journey continues, we need the Accord, we need to ensure that the ‘spirit’ of the Accord is implemented and India must do its duty to ensure the same. It is India’s duty and India cannot get away from that duty,” The Hindu quoted Sri Lanka’s Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader R […]

A perspective on the recently launched Or Inapprachinaiyum Or Oppandhamum (An Ethnic Conflict and An Accord) by journalist T. Ramakrishnan, former correspondent in Colombo for The Hindu newspaper The much-maligned Indo-Lanka Peace Accord of 1987 is back in public focus, courtesy T. Ramakrishnan’s book Or Inapprachinaiyum Or Oppandhamum (An Ethnic Conflict and An Accord), introduced at an event at the Colombo Tamil Sangam, recently. Ramakrishnan, a senior Indian journalist and an associate editor of the The Hindu, had engagements in Kandy and Jaffna promoting his book before the Colombo event. In the run-up to the event, some journalists asked this writer whether there was any interest among the Sri Lankans about the Accord at all. The answer was pretty much in evidence at the Tamil […]