LATEST
Forced Out of Their Own Land: Sinhala Colonisation in the Vanni
The Kivul Oya project exemplifies a decades-long pattern in which the Sri Lankan state uses irrigation and settlement schemes to dispossess Tamil communities in the North-East. Framed as development, the scheme follows earlier projects like Mahaweli System L, altering ethnic demographics, renaming Tamil landscapes in Sinhala, and displacing agricultural livelihoods while promising benefits that rarely reach the people whose land is taken.
Record These Times
Originally published by Velicham on August 25, 1993.
The Position of the Depressed Classes
The following two pieces are an illustration of the discussions surrounding the temple entry movement as they played out in The Hindu Organ in 1956. We are reproducing them here not as an endorsement of the sentiments expressed, but as a means to provide insight into the conversations happening in the months preceding temples opening their doors to Panchamar (Dalit) castes.
The Other 1956: The Ignored National Struggle
The anti-caste movement formed one of the earliest foundations of Tamil political resistance. Panchamar communities transformed struggles for temple entry, equal citizenship, and social dignity into mass movements that shaped Tamil nationalism, challenged caste hierarchy, and demanded liberation from both internal oppression and Sinhala-majoritarian domination.
70 Years On: The First Act of Ethnic Cleansing in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka's government launched its first post-independence act of ethnic cleansing against Tamils during the 1956 Gal Oya pogrom. It used discriminatory policies, state-sponsored Sinhalese colonisation, and official complicity in anti-Tamil violence to reshape the North-East's demographics, deepen ethnic conflict, and lay the foundations for decades of war and displacement.
MOST READ
Changing of the Guard
Fifty years after the Vaddukkoddai Resolution, the Sri Lankan state’s efforts to destroy Eelam Tamil nationalism have failed. Since the end of the war in 2009, everyday Tamils have taken over from the stagnant institutions that positioned themselves as successors to the armed resistance. Today, the people lead a thriving resistance that takes on cultural, social and political forms.
Extend Moral Support to the Tamil National Liberation Struggle: A Call to the Nations of the World
SJV Chelvanayakam’s address to the inaugural Tamil United Liberation Front convention in Vaddukkoddai on May 14, 1976, as published in the Suthanthiran on May 19, 1976.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
The Position of the Depressed Classes
The following two pieces are an illustration of the discussions surrounding the temple entry movement as they played out in The Hindu Organ in 1956. We are reproducing them here not as an endorsement of the sentiments expressed, but as a means to provide insight into the conversations happening in the months preceding temples opening their doors to Panchamar (Dalit) castes.