PolityLK

Kaushalya Ariyarathne | Gehenu Api Eka Mitata: Building a Women’s Political Movement in Sri Lanka Kaushalya Ariyarathne (PhD., Colombo), a founder-member of the Progressive Women’s Collective, was elected to the parliament of Sri Lanka in November 2024, and appointed Deputy Minister of Mass Media ...

The near doubling of women parliamentarians in #SriLanka owes to the community activism and left-feminism of 𝐺𝑒ℎ𝑒𝑛𝑢 𝐴𝑝𝑖 𝐸𝑘𝑎 𝑀𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑎 #NPP explains Kaushalya Ariyarathne MP, but challenges persist.

polity.lk/kaushalya-ar...

Prasanna Pitigala Liyanage | Safety is Not a Wall: Beyond Protection from Domestic Violence Prasanna Pitigala Liyanage is a senior lecturer in the Department of Integrated Design at the University of Moratuwa and a Chartered Architect.

The protection order interrupts harm but stops there. Prasanna Pitigala Liyanage asks us to re-design #SriLanka's Prevention of Domestic Violence Act (PDVA 2005)--from a wall to a safe space for victim-survivors.

polity.lk/prasanna-pit...

Prasanna Pitigala Liyanage | Safety is Not a Wall: Beyond Protection from Domestic Violence Prasanna Pitigala Liyanage is a senior lecturer in the Department of Integrated Design at the University of Moratuwa and a Chartered Architect.

The protection order interrupts harm but stops there. Prasanna Pitigala Liyanage asks us to re-design #SriLanka's Prevention of Domestic Violence Act (PDVA 2005)--from a wall to a safe space for victim-survivors.

polity.lk/prasanna-pit...

Vajra Chandrasekera | “There is nothing inherently liberatory in the imagination, but it must be made so” Vajra Chandrasekera is a writer from Colombo, Sri Lanka, currently visiting New York as one of the 2025-2026 Fellows of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York...

"Rakesfall is an extraordinary achievement in science fiction, and a titanic work of art.” Congratulations Vajra Chandrasekera ( @vajra.me ) on the award of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction!
polity.lk/vajra-chandr...

F. Zahrah Rizwan | Transgender Sex Work in Sri Lanka: The Politics of Nachchi Sex Workers. Kaushalya Ariyarathne. Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. F. Zahrah Rizwan is a doctoral student in the Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies Department at Ohio State University, USA. Her research interests include exploring the intersections of colonialism, ra...

Kaushalya Ariyarathne breaks new ground in scholarship on gender and sex-work in South Asia, beyond binaries of victim-hood and empowerment, in a fine ethnographic account of #SriLanka's #Nachchi, writes Zahrah Rizwan.

polity.lk/f-zahrah-riz...

F. Zahrah Rizwan | Transgender Sex Work in Sri Lanka: The Politics of Nachchi Sex Workers. Kaushalya Ariyarathne. Palgrave Macmillan, 2025. F. Zahrah Rizwan is a doctoral student in the Women’s Gender & Sexuality Studies Department at Ohio State University, USA. Her research interests include exploring the intersections of colonialism, ra...

Kaushalya Ariyarathne breaks new ground in scholarship on gender and sex-work in South Asia, beyond binaries of victim-hood and empowerment, in a fine ethnographic account of #SriLanka's #Nachchi, writes Zahrah Rizwan.

polity.lk/f-zahrah-riz...

Feminist Collective for Economic Justice | End the Microfinance Menace! No to the new Bill! The Feminist Collective for Economic Justice is a collective of feminist economists, scholars, feminist activists, university students and lawyers that came together in April 2022 to understand, analy...

Will the new #Microfinance Bill be the latest knot in the noose for poor people in #SriLanka asks the Feminist Collective for Economic Justice? Why is the #NPP not consulting with women victims to eradicate the microcredit menace?

polity.lk/fcej-end-the...

Thahira Cader & Raaya Gomez | Reflecting Back and Looking Forward: 20 years since the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act Thahira Cader is an Attorney-at-Law and interdisciplinary researcher on issues relating to human rights, access to justice, and gender and development. She recently completed her Masters in Internatio...

Two decades since the #PDVA, how does it work for victim-survivors of intimate partner violence? Thahira Cader & Raaya Gomez talked to lawyers on hurdles in obtaining protection orders under the Act.

polity.lk/thahira-cade...

Out Now! Vol. 13, No. 1 (2025), LKR800 from the Social Scientists’ Association and LKR1000 from Barefoot and Vijitha Yapa bookshops.

Out Now! Vol. 13, No. 1 (2025), LKR800 from the Social Scientists’ Association and LKR1000 from Barefoot and Vijitha Yapa bookshops.

Ruben Thurairajah | ‘Dead Catting’: Manufacturing Moral Panic in Sri Lanka Ruben Thurairajah is a Yorkshire-based doctor in Britain’s National Health Service; who also tweets https://x.com/RubenThurairaj and writes https://drruben.substack.com/

A few columns, a press conference, pronouncements by the cassock-clad and saffron-clothed; suddenly, the streets are alive with suspicion and anxiety. Ruben Thurairaj on how moral panic is manufactured in #SriLanka

polity.lk/ruben-thurai...

20 years ago, the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act took force in #SriLanka. #PolityLK has a few yowls in store, but begin with this 2010 hiss from the Cat's Eye feminist collective.

polity.lk/wp-content/u...

20 years ago, the Prevention of Domestic Violence Act took force in #SriLanka. #PolityLK has a few yowls in store, but begin with this 2010 hiss from the Cat's Eye feminist collective.

polity.lk/wp-content/u...

FCEJ condemns the violence perpetrated by the state against the people of Mannar and demands that the right to energy be recognised alongside the right to a safe environment.

www.srilankafeministcollective.org/_files/ugd/0...

Suriya Women’s Development Centre | Family Law and Practice in Sri Lanka: Women’s Declaration This Declaration was prepared through a collective process grounded in survivors’ lived realities and Suriya Women's Development Centre's long-standing work in the Eastern Province for over three deca...

Women from across #SriLanka call for a reformed family law and practice that centres equality, dignity, and safety for women and children. Read, sign, amplify, and organise, around the Women's Declaration.

polity.lk/suriya-women...

Shashik Silva | Sinhala Buddhist Nationalism and Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Sri Lanka Shashik Silva is chief operating officer of the Social Scientists’ Association of Sri Lanka, with research interests in conflict and peace, local governance, youth political participation, and public ...

Has #NPP rule overcome #SriLanka's deeply embedded ethno-religious cleavages? Shashik Silva thinks not in his dissection of state responses to Sinhala Buddhist sentiment and nationalist mobilisation.

polity.lk/shashik-silv...

Ruben Thurairajah | Man in the Mirror Ruben Thurairajah is a Yorkshire-based general practitioner in Britain’s National Health Service; who also tweets https://x.com/RubenThurairaj and writes https://drruben.substack.com/

Two men once in power. Two men disgraced. In a striking comparison between Ranil Wickremesinghe and Boris Johnson, Ruben Thurairajah plumbs the depths of their hubris and its consequences #SriLanka #UK

polity.lk/ruben-thurai...

Join the Global Action for Gaza!
On September 6th, starting at 4pm outside the UN Office in Colombo.

Ruben Thurairajah | Man in the Mirror Ruben Thurairajah is a Yorkshire-based general practitioner in Britain’s National Health Service; who also tweets https://x.com/RubenThurairaj and writes https://drruben.substack.com/

Two men once in power. Two men disgraced. In a striking comparison between Ranil Wickremesinghe and Boris Johnson, Ruben Thurairajah plumbs the depths of their hubris and its consequences #SriLanka #UK

polity.lk/ruben-thurai...

Sakuna M. Gamage | Chemmani: Where the Soil Speaks, Where Memory Refuses Silence Sakuna M. Gamage is a researcher with the Law & Society Trust and independent journalist and social documentary photographer based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

In a moving photo-essay, Sakuna M. Gamage brings poetry and pictures into conversation to ponder grief, resistance, and justice, in the wake of the ongoing #Chemmanimassgrave excavation in northern #SriLanka.

polity.lk/sakuna-gamag...

Niyanthini Kadirgamar | Stirring the Hornet’s Nest: The NPP’s Education Reforms Niyanthini Kadirgamar is a PhD candidate in education at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, USA.

Yes. #SriLanka's education system needs overhaul. No. The @NPPSLOfficial warmed-up proposals are not solutions to ongoing problems. Why squander precious political capital, asks Niyanthini Kadirgamar?
polity.lk/niyanthini-k...

One week more to submit your EOI for the forum on the life, work, and legacy of Gananath Obeysekere. Send your pitch (under 300 words) to polity@ssalanka.org by 25 August 2025.

Nadeera Rajapakse | Magic Maids: Sweeping Up a Storm at the Sorbonne Nadeera Rajapakse is an assistant professor at the University of Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne in the History of Economic Thought and in English for Economics. She is a member of the PHARE (Philosophy, H...

Women migrant domestic workers, heroines and victims? Reviewing Magic Maids, Nadeera Rajapakse showcases how these women subtly and definitively resist these restrictive narratives through their own forms of feminist praxis.

polity.lk/nadeera-raja...

Please note changed assembly point and route.

B. Skanthakumar | Ceylon’s ‘Great Hartal’ of 1953: The Masses Enter History B.Skanthakumar is co-editor of Pathways of the Left in Sri Lanka (2014, Colombo: Ecumenical Institute for Study and Dialogue)

#PolityArchive Today is the anniversary of the 1953 ‘Great Hartal’, when the collective action of the masses changed the course of Sri Lanka. Skanthakumar writing in 2023 on its 70th anniversary dissects the causes and reach of the Hartal, with the 2022 #Aragalaya in mind.
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Gripping stories that stay with the reader; adding much to what we think we know (and lesser understand) of #war and #peace in #SriLanka through the prism of conflict-related sexual violence. Thanks to Radhika Hettiarachchi for sharing them with @politylk.bsky.social

‘When the Devil Drums We Dance’: Sex Work and Sexual Violence in Wartime Sri LankaRadhika Hettiarachchi - polity.lk Radhika Hettiarachchi is a public history practitioner, researcher, and curator based in Sri Lanka.

Drawing from the Women’s Histories of Sex Work archive, Radhika Hettiarachchi explores powerful narratives of violence, vulnerability and agency articulated by sex workers in wartime Sri Lanka and their search for justice for their work and for themselves.
polity.lk/radhika-hett...

‘When the Devil Drums We Dance’: Sex Work and Sexual Violence in Wartime Sri LankaRadhika Hettiarachchi - polity.lk Radhika Hettiarachchi is a public history practitioner, researcher, and curator based in Sri Lanka.

Drawing from the Women’s Histories of Sex Work archive, Radhika Hettiarachchi explores powerful narratives of violence, vulnerability and agency articulated by sex workers in wartime Sri Lanka and their search for justice for their work and for themselves.
polity.lk/radhika-hett...

Anushka Kahandagamage | Mountain at a Center of the World: Pilgrimage and Pluralism in Sri Lanka. Alexander McKinley. New York: Columbia University Press, 2024. Anushka Kahandagamage (PhD, Otago) has researched new Buddhist trends in post-war Sri Lanka. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Divinity School 2025-2026.

Mountain at a Center of the World destabilises the dominant anthropocentric gaze on #Siripāda in #SriLanka. Anushka Kahandagamage hails Alex McKinley's urging of humans to re-examine our position on Earth.

polity.lk/anushka-kaha...

"Liberties of expression, association and assembly once taken-for-granted, are in rapid retreat. The liberal firewall has fallen. The traditional parties of the right, centre and even left, embrace anti-immigrant, misogynist, anti-DEI, prejudices, and language..." #Ecocide #Liberalism #IMF #PolityLK