Latest news with #Sinhalese
Time of India
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
IIM-Bodh Gaya hosts 24 political leaders from Sri Lanka
Patna: Indian Institute of Management (IIM)-Bodh Gaya hosted 24 young political leaders from Sri Lanka for a specially designed academic module as part of the ongoing Young Political Leaders Programme (YPLP), organised by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR). The Sri Lankan delegation represents a diverse cross-section of the island nation's political spectrum, comprising sitting members of Parliament, local govt councillors, youth leaders and legal professionals. Delegates from 15 political parties participated, including four representatives from National People's Power, three each from Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna and Samagi Jana Balawegaya, two from Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna and Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi, and one each from ten other national and regional parties. The cohort comprises 20 male and 4 female participants, representing the Sinhalese, Tamil and Muslim communities, reflecting the country's political and cultural diversity. IIM-Bodh Gaya director Vinita Sahay said, "This is not merely an exchange of knowledge, but a forging of democratic kinship. As future leaders of South Asia engage with each other at IIM-Bodh Gaya, they are laying the groundwork for a region defined by cooperation, empathy and shared progress."
News18
14-07-2025
- Politics
- News18
History In Motion: Razeen Sally's Journey Through Sri Lanka's Past And Present
In his book "Return to Sri Lanka – Travels in a Paradoxical Island," Razeen Sally skillfully blends the narrative styles of George Orwell and Bill Aitken. Razeen Sally's transition from his traditional academic and policy advisory roles into travel writing marks a significant breakthrough. In his book ' Return to Sri Lanka – Travels in a Paradoxical Island," he skillfully blends the narrative styles of George Orwell and Bill Aitken. The work is both scholarly and engaging, combining elements of history, religion, people, and politics, as Sally explores his Sri Lankan roots. Although raised in England, Sally is of Sri Lankan Muslim descent, with family ties in and around Colombo. He describes himself as 'half and half," born to an Anglo-Welsh mother and a Sinhalese Muslim father, yet he has grown into a Sri Lankan British writer. The book is divided into two parts: Sally's Sri Lankan childhood and his adult travels across the island. Accompanied by two trusted drivers, Nihal and Joseph, Sally traverses the teardrop-shaped island, formerly known as Ceylon. His narrative is enriched with quotations from renowned explorers and pioneers of Sri Lanka, primarily British, who once made the island their home. Sally's historical account begins with the arrival of Muslim traders from Arabia and Java, who were predominantly Sunnis. His personal recollections start from the 1960s Ceylon to modern-day Sri Lanka. The author's empathy with the country stems from his experiences with the IPKF, which aimed to subdue ethnic conflict, and his enduring affection for Sri Lankan friends. This bond drew him back to the island repeatedly, retracing familiar paths. Both Sinhalese and Tamils migrated from India, with frequent Tamil Chola invasions from South India. These invasions fostered a paradox: a minority complex among the majority Sinhalese and a majority complex among the minority Tamils. This dynamic prompted the Sinhalese to move their citadel from Anuradhapura to Polonnaruwa, then to Kandy, and finally to Colombo—places Sally vividly describes. The Sinhalese-Tamil tensions were also influenced by four and a half centuries of colonial rule, which ended with the British period beginning in 1815 with the capture of the Kandyan kingdom. The Sinhalese attempts to reverse their minority psyche are symbolised by two military victories: King Dutugemunu's triumph over King Elara at Anuradhapura and the defeat of Tamil Tiger leader Prabhakaran's insurgent forces at Nandikadal by Sri Lankan security forces. The Sri Lankan Army Chief's office features a portrait of Elara's surrender. Domestic racial conflicts were not limited to Sinhalese and Tamils but also involved Sinhalese-Muslim and Muslim-Tamil tensions. The Burgher community largely avoided these conflicts. Sally highlights the distortions in Theravada Buddhism that led to Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, fuelled by post-independence political leadership. The origins of political parties and their ideological paths for electoral victory contributed to recent history, culminating in the rise of the Rajapaksa dynasty. Following the 30-year civil war, Sri Lanka faced the COVID pandemic, Easter Sunday bombings by indigenous Muslim terrorists, and a 2022 economic meltdown due to a sovereign default. The Argalaya movement and the subsequent fleeing of President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa mark a sad chapter in contemporary Sinhalese Buddhist politics. Between 2015 and 2018, Sally served as a policy advisor to Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, gaining insight into the disastrous rule of the first Unity government. A major irony was the resurgence of the urban Marxist JVP movement, which twice failed to seize power in Colombo, reinventing itself through the Argalaya movement as the ruling NPP. This movement secured a massive parliamentary majority, with the little-known Marxist leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake becoming President. Sally covers Dissanayake's narrow victory in the presidential elections. At the heart of Sri Lanka's issues lies the 1978 Republican constitution, which no president or political elite has sought to alter despite promises. Sally's encapsulation of political history is facilitated by his engaging writing style. The book's narration of ancient history, including Buddhism, is equally superb. Few books offer such comprehensive knowledge about a country, seamlessly blending with the author's travels. Sally describes Buddhism's arrival from India, the preservation of the Theravada tradition distinct from the Mahayana tradition, and Anuradhapura as the cradle of Theravada Buddhism. He details the Bodh tree sapling from Bodh Gaya in India, where Buddha attained enlightenment, and Buddha's relics in Sri Lanka—a collar bone, a foot, and a tooth. The descriptions of the world's largest standing, recumbent, and seated Buddha statues in Gala Vihara are mesmerising. The travelogue begins in Sally's hometown of Colombo and its surroundings, followed by trips to the south, including Galle, Tangalle, Hambantota, and Kathiragama, Sri Lanka's national shrine. The Kandy road takes him to hill areas, tea and coffee estates, and stunning landscapes. He also travels to Rajarata, the original Sinhalese Buddhist kingdoms, ending in Anuradhapura. Sally's longest journey takes him to the northeast, a region scarred by the civil war. Amparai district, with its significant Muslim population, and Kathankudy in Batticaloa, home to Sri Lanka's largest mosque, are significant stops. Sally recounts the war and post-conflict situations well, also noting that JVP rebel leader Rohan Wijeweera was captured from a tea estate in 1990 and shot on the 13th tee. Sally's prognosis for Sri Lanka's future is bleak: 'Drift, Relapse and Take off." He believes the country will oscillate between drift and relapse, never achieving take-off. This dire prediction is a harsh truth. Prompted by his driver Nihal, Sally's journey of Sri Lanka culminates in a self-discovery. The 'half and half" Sally realises that his true home is Sri Lanka. view comments First Published: July 14, 2025, 12:16 IST News opinion Book Review | History In Motion: Razeen Sally's Journey Through Sri Lanka's Past And Present Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
New Indian Express
13-07-2025
- New Indian Express
Rock that became a temple
After 14 years in hiding, when King Valagamba finally returned to reclaim his throne in Anuradhapura around 89 BCE, he paid homage to a cave—a dark, wind-swept sanctuary carved deep into a 160-metre granite rock in the heart of Sri Lanka, just outside the dry plains of Dambulla. Here he carved a reclining Buddha into a rock, leaving behind a legacy that would only grow as other kings came; Nissanka Malla gilded the walls and left inscriptions of his generosity in Sinhalese. Today, the Dambulla Cave Temple—also called the Golden Temple of Dambulla—is not just the largest and best-preserved cave complex in Sri Lanka, it is a place where 2,000-year-old walls bear mural-painted Buddhas; more than 150 statues of the Enlightened One sit, stand, lie, meditate, gaze down at you with half-closed eyes. You climb slowly—360 steps if you're counting—past monkeys and neem trees and clouds that drift below your feet. Take the King's Way to pass resting ledges where pilgrims pause and gaze out across the dry plains of central Sri Lanka, until finally the mouth of the cave opens before you like a secret revealed.
India.com
08-07-2025
- Politics
- India.com
Who was Prabhakaran? Dreaded LTTE chief and mastermind of ex-India PM Rajiv Gandhi assassination
LTTE founder Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed on May 18, 2009. (File) Velupillai Prabhakaran, the notorious leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who masterminded the shocking assassination of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, is regarded as one of the most infamous yet influential insurgents in the last 50 years. The 54-year-old who was reportedly killed by Sri Lankan forces on May 18, 2009, led a decades-long insurgency that transformed the serene island nation into a warzone in which hundreds of thousands were killed, maimed and injured, and millions displaced. Who was Prabhakaran? Born into a middle-class family in Valvettiturai, a fishing town on the northern coast of Sri Lanka's Jaffna peninsula, Prabhakaran was the youngest of four children, however, not much is known about his early life. 'My childhood was spent in the small circle of a lonely, quiet house,' Prabhakaran had said in a 1994 interview. In the interview, the slain LTTE chief revealed that his deep-seated anger against the military as he recalled a teacher in his middle school extorting students to take up arms against the violence perpetrated against the ethnic Tamilians by the state. 'It is he who impressed on me the need for armed struggle and persuaded me to put my trust in it.' At the time, Jaffna was considered the heart of Tamilian culture and literature in Sri Lanka, and soon emerged as the center of the growing Tamil nationalist movement, which demanded greater autonomy for Tamil-majority areas to protest against the alleged discrimination against Tamils by Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority. How Prabhakaran emerged as the leader of LTTE? In 1975, Prabhakaran emerged as one of the faces of Tamil New Tigers– the predecessor of the LTTE– after the group claimed responsibility for the assassination of Alfred Duraiappah, the then mayor of Jaffna city. A year later, Prabhakaran established the LTTE, a guerilla movement which later evolved into a full-scale civil war in 1983, when the group ambushed and killed 13 Sri Lankan army troops in Jaffna. In retaliation, more than 3,000 Tamils, mainly in Colombo, were killed in wanton violence that lasted several days, marking the beginning a full-blown civil war that lasted for decades, and tore apart the Sri Lanka to its very core. According to Prabhakaran, the 1983 'holocaust', infamously dubbed 'Black July', 'united all sections of the Tamil masses'. Soon, the onset of July instilled fear among Sri Lanka's Sinhalese majority as the the LTTE would commemorate the month with bombings and assassinations, while Prabhakaran rose from a radical Tamil nationalist to a feared terrorist insurgent. Why Prabhakaran assassinated Rajiv Gandhi? India is home to a large population of ethnic Tamils and the Indian state is believed to have clandestinely supported the Tamil cause in Sri Lanka since its very inception. However, in 1987, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi decided send in Indian peacekeeping troops to Sri Lanka, to crush the LTTE and Tamil nationalist movement in the neighboring country. Consequently, the LTTE, under the leadership of Prabhakaran, orchestrated the assassination of the then Indian Prime Minister, when he was targeted by a female suicide bomber in during a public meeting in Tamil Nadu in 1991. The incident made Prabhakaran the most wanted man in India and changed the public opinion about the Tamilian cause in Sri Lanka, even though the LTTE leader never claimed responsibility for the assassination. 'It is a tragic incident that happened 10 years ago. We are not in a position to make a comment,' Prabhakaran told reporters in 2002. Prabhakaran's cult of personality Over the years, the LTTE became a cult of personality centered around Prabhakaran as the group steadily acquired massive caches of conventional weapons, and also pioneered two of the most brutal tactics of modern guerrilla warfare; child recruitment and suicide bombing. As per 1996 UN report, children as young as 10 deployed to kill women and children in remote rural villages, while about 40%-60% dead LTTE fighters during the 1990s were children under 18, according to a 2004 Human Rights Watch report. Later in 1987, Prabhakaran founded the Black Tigers– suicide cadres of the LTTE, most of whom were young women. These future suicide bombers would be graced with a private dinner with Prabhakaran, before being deployed on their missions, as per reports. How Prabhakaran was killed? On May 18, 2009, the Sri Lankan government announced that Prabhakaran had been killed in action by Sri Lankan forces, decades after the dreaded terrorist leader had been pursued by the country's armed forces through jungles and other rough terrains. Akin to other LTTE fighters, Prabhakaran had pledged to die by suicide, and reportedly wore a cyanide capsule around his neck if he was ever captured by the Sri Lankan Army. In a 2002 press conference, the LTTE supremo revealed that he has directed his aides and bodyguards to kill him if his capture was imminent, and he was unable to end his life at that time. A day after his death, the Sri Lankan army released images of his dead body, still draped in LTTE fatigues, on state-run TV, where his face was clearly visible.
The Hindu
01-07-2025
- Science
- The Hindu
Sinhalese migrated from South India, mixed heavily with Adivasi post-migration, genome study finds
Analyses of whole-genome sequence data of urban Sinhalese and two indigenous Adivasi clans in Sri Lanka, which live in geographically separated regions in the country, shed light on the migratory history of these populations and their genetic relationship to each other and to many Indian populations. The study published recently in the journal Current Biology found that Sinhalese and Adivasi are genetically closest to each other and to South Indians, but, at a regional and fine-scale level, the two Adivasi clans are genetically distinct. For the study, whole genomes of 35 urban Sinhalese individuals and 19 individuals from two indigenous Adivasi clans were sequenced. Of the 19 genomes of Adivasi clans that were sequenced, five were from Interior Adivasi and 14 were from Coastal Adivasi. The sampling and data generation became possible due to the outreach efforts of Sri Lankan collaborator, Dr. Ruwandi Ranasinghe from the University of Colombo. In addition, the whole genome data of 35 Sri Lankan Tamils sampled in the UK, which were already sequenced as part of the 1,000 Genomes Project, were included in the analyses. Sinhalese chronicles and previous genetic studies had proposed that Sinhalese had migrated from northern or northwest India around 500 BCE, though their exact origins and migratory history are still debated. That Sinhalese speak an Indo-European language, Sinhala, whose present-day distribution lies primarily in northern India further supports the idea of their migration from northern India. But the current study contradicts the findings of the previous studies from a genetic perspective. 'The genetic ancestries and their proportions in the Adivasi and Sinhalese are most similar to Dravidian speaking populations who live in Southern India today,' says Dr. Niraj Rai from Birbal Sahni Institute of Palaeosciences (BSIP), Lucknow and one of the corresponding authors of the paper. Also Read | Genome study: 180 million genetic variants found in 9,772 individuals 'Even among South Indian populations, we find that the Sinhalese are genetically closest to those communities that have higher proportions of the so-called ASI or Ancestral South Indian ancestry. In contrast to many North Indians, these populations generally have lower levels of a genetic ancestry related to ancient groups from the Eurasian Steppe, proposed to have carried Indo-European languages into South Asia and that are today spoken widely in northern regions of India,' says Dr. Maanasa Raghavan, Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago and a corresponding author of the study. But how does one reconcile the fact that Sinhalese speak a language that is classified as Indo-European, which today is spoken mostly in North India? The authors explain that genes do not reflect linguistic affinities, and biological and cultural evolution can have different trajectories. They speculate that this genetic-linguistic discordance may have been caused by the Sinhalese population having migrated from somewhere in North India geographically, but genetically speaking, the migration may have come from a group that resembles more South Indian Dravidian speakers today. An alternative explanation is that a small group of Sinhalese, perhaps representing the elite, might have migrated to Sri Lanka and transmitted the language but not genes. 'If the Sinhalese were derived from a North Indian genetic cluster with higher Steppe-related ancestry, mixing had to have happened with ASI populations to dilute their genetic ancestries and pull them genetically closer to South Indian populations in our analyses. More anthropological studies are needed to fully understand these differing genetic and cultural affinities of the Sinhalese,' Dr. Raghavan says. The time of formation of the Sinhalese genetic pool was dated in the study to about 3,000 years ago, falling within the range of dates displayed broadly by Indian and other Sri Lankan populations and around the time of the proposed migration date of the Sinhalese in the chronicles (500 BCE). 'The date our analysis reveals is interesting. It implies that the Sinhalese ancestors migrated to Sri Lanka fairly close in time to the dynamic genetic mixing events that were occurring about 2,000-4,000 years ago in India that created the ANI-ASI genetic spectrum we see in today's populations,' Dr. Rai explains. Sinhalese chronicles also say that when Sinhalese migrated from India to Sri Lanka about 3,000 years ago, Adivasi were already existing in Sri Lanka. This is also supported by anthropological studies that propose that Adivasi are descended from early hunter-gatherers in the region. The Adivasi are, in fact, traditionally hunter-gatherers and the Indigenous peoples of Sri Lanka. 'At a broad scale, Adivasi today look genetically very similar to the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamil. This must mean that the Sinhalese, Sri Lankan Tamils, or other groups migrating from South India must have met the Adivasi, mixed with them heavily, and contributed to what is the present-day genetic structure of the Adivasi,' Dr. Raghavan says. Sinhalese and Adivasi are close to each other and share broad-level genetic similarities, but on a fine-scale demographic resolution, the study found that the two Adivasi clans are a bit different from the Sinhalese. The Adivasi have slightly higher levels of ancient hunter-gatherer ancestry than the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils, and have maintained smaller population sizes over the course of their history, both of which support their traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle. The Adivasi genomes also display signatures of endogamy, which appear as long stretches of DNA inherited from a common ancestor. The study further reports that a consequence of the low population size and endogamy is that the genetic diversity in the Adivasi is lower than the urban populations, which may have an impact on their health and disease status. While both Adivasi clans maintained lower population sizes compared to the Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils, the authors found that the Interior Adivasi clan seemed to have undergone a stronger reduction in their population size compared to the Coastal Adivasi, leading to a greater loss of their genetic diversity. 'We find the two Adivasi clans — the Coastal Adivasi and the Interior Adivasi — also have some differences in their genetic ancestry arising due to distinct geographic separation between them,' says Dr. Rai. This, according to Dr. Raghavan, indicates that the Interior Adivasi clan must have undergone stronger pressures, perhaps societal or environmental, to keep the population size lower compared to their Coastal counterparts. Explaining how the two Adivasi clans are more similar to each other, but still have genetic differences at a fine scale, she says that this basically means that at some point in time, due to geographic separation, the genetic and lifestyle attributes of the two clans started to drift apart. In fact, the fragmented nature of the Adivasi clans also impacted the study sampling strategy. While 35 individuals representing the two large groups — Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils — have been included in the analyses, the numbers for the two Adivasi populations are small — five for interior Adivasi and 14 for coastal Adivasi. Though it would be ideal to keep matched sample sizes of different populations for genetic analyses, the reason for including only small numbers for the two Adivasi clans was because the Adivasi communities today are very fragmented. 'Historical, anthropological, as well as our genetic results all suggest that these communities live in small sizes and practice endogamy,' says Dr. Raghavan. 'Because of endogamy, a lot of these individuals tend to be quite related to one another. Having really high relatedness in a group impacts the genetic analyses because then everybody's going to look like each other. So that's why our sample sizes were lower for the two Adivasi clans.' Despite the number of individuals representing the two Adivasi clans being small, the researchers were able to recapture the entire population history of these two groups. The study was able to address the questions that the researchers set out to do despite the Adivasi sample sizes being small, says Dr. Raghavan. 'Since every individual's genome is a mosaic of their ancestor's genomes, even a small number of individuals can represent their population's genetic histories. Moreover, we didn't find any genetic outliers within the Adivasi clans. So, all the sampled individuals fit into the model that we propose,' clarifies Dr. Rai. 'This is the first time that high-resolution genome data have been sequenced from multiple populations in Sri Lanka, including the Indigenous Adivasi and urban Sinhalese, to understand the deeply rooted ancestries and their population histories,' says Dr. Rai. Broadly, the study has important implications for how humans moved across South Asia and highlights the high degree of interconnectedness between India and Sri Lanka over millennia.
