The Sri Lankan Tamils

The Sri Lankan Tamils
Author: Chelvadurai Manogaran
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2019-06-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000306003

Within the larger context of bitter ethnic strife in Sri Lanka, this timely volume assembles a multidisciplinary group of scholars to explore the central issue of Tamil identity in this South Asian country. Bringing historical, sociological, political, and geographical perspectives to bear on the subject, the contributors analyze various aspects of

In My Mother's House

In My Mother's House
Author: Sharika Thiranagama
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2011-08-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0812205111

In May 2009, the Sri Lankan army overwhelmed the last stronghold of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam—better known as the Tamil Tigers—officially bringing an end to nearly three decades of civil war. Although the war has ended, the place of minorities in Sri Lanka remains uncertain, not least because the lengthy conflict drove entire populations from their homes. The figures are jarring: for example, all of the roughly 80,000 Muslims in northern Sri Lanka were expelled from the Tamil Tiger-controlled north, and nearly half of all Sri Lankan Tamils were displaced during the course of the civil war. Sharika Thiranagama's In My Mother's House provides ethnographic insight into two important groups of internally displaced people: northern Sri Lankan Tamils and Sri Lankan Muslims. Through detailed engagement with ordinary people struggling to find a home in the world, Thiranagama explores the dynamics within and between these two minority communities, describing how these relations were reshaped by violence, displacement, and authoritarianism. In doing so, she illuminates an often overlooked intraminority relationship and new social forms created through protracted war. In My Mother's House revolves around three major themes: ideas of home in the midst of profound displacement; transformations of familial experience; and the impact of the political violence—carried out by both the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan state—on ordinary lives and public speech. Her rare focus on the effects and responses to LTTE political regulation and violence demonstrates that envisioning a peaceful future for postconflict Sri Lanka requires taking stock of the new Tamil and Muslim identities forged by the civil war. These identities cannot simply be cast away with the end of the war but must be negotiated anew.

This Divided Island

This Divided Island
Author: Samanth Subramanian
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2015-12-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1466878746

Samanth Subramanian has written about politics, culture, and history for the New York Times and the New Yorker. Now, Subramanian takes on a complex topic that touched millions of lives in This Divided Island. In the summer of 2009, the leader of the dreaded Tamil Tiger guerrillas was killed, bringing to an end the civil war in Sri Lanka. For nearly thirty years, the war's fingers had reached everywhere, leaving few places, and fewer people, untouched. What happens to the texture of life in a country that endures such bitter conflict? What happens to the country's soul? Subramanian gives us an extraordinary account of the Sri Lankan war and the lives it changed. Taking us to the ghosts of summers past, he tells the story of Sri Lanka today. Through travels and conversations, he examines how people reconcile themselves to violence, how the powerful become cruel, and how victory can be put to the task of reshaping memory and burying histories.

TAMIL TIGRESS

TAMIL TIGRESS
Author: NIROMI DE SOYZA
Publisher: MEHTA PUBLISHING HOUSE
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2011-01-01
Genre: Sri Lanka
ISBN: 8184983913

A story of a child soldier in Sri Lanka's bloody civil war. Two days before Christmas in 1987, at the age of 17, Niromi de Soyza found herself in an ambush as part of a small platoon of militant Tamil Tigers fighting government forces in the bloody civil war that was to engulf Sri Lanka for decades. With her was her lifelong friend, Ajanthi, also aged 17. Leaving behind them their shocked middle-class families, the teenagers had become part of the Tamil Tigers' first female contingent. Equipped with little more than a rifle and a cyanide capsule, Niromi's group managed to survive on their wits in the jungle, facing not only the perils of war but starvation, illness and growing internal tensions among the militant Tigers. And then events erupted in ways that she could no longer bear. How was it that this well-educated, mixed-race, middle-class girl from a respectable family came to be fighting with the Tamil Tigers?

The Guru Chronicles

The Guru Chronicles
Author:
Publisher: Himalayan Academy Publications
Total Pages: 1204
Release: 2011
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1934145408

Anyone on the spiritual path knows it's rare that the illumined lives of yogis and gurus are laid before us. We have but a handful: Autobiography of a Yogi; Milarepa: Tibet's Great Yogi; Ramakrishna and His Disciples and a few of others. Now comes an amazing book, The Guru Chronicles, filled with the magical and highly mystical stories of Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, his Sri Lankan guru Siva Yogaswami and five preceding masters, who all held truth in the palm of their hand and inspired slumbering souls to "Know thy Self."

Ritual and Recovery in Post-Conflict Sri Lanka

Ritual and Recovery in Post-Conflict Sri Lanka
Author: Jane Derges
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2013-05-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1136214879

Following over twenty years of war, Sri Lanka’s longest cease-fire (2002-2006) provided a final opportunity for an inclusive peace settlement between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). However, hostilities resumed with ever increasing desperation and ferocity on both sides, until the LTTE were overcome and largely eradicated in 2009. This book provides a contextualised analysis of the effects of war on a small Tamil community living in northern Sri Lanka during the cease-fire period. It examines how the society changed and adapted in order to accommodate the upheaval and destruction of war, and its inevitable resumption. In particular, it focuses on the nature of suffering through an exploration of a well-known ritual: Thuukkukkaavadi that transformed the experience of pain and suffering and contributed to a process whereby many village communities could come together in a demonstration of strength and resilience. It contributes to studies on violence, reparation processes of so-called ‘post-conflict’ societies and the medical anthropology of healing. It questions assumptions concerning the nature of suffering and critiques the application of western categories in settings like northern Sri Lanka, where entire communities have been silenced by political violence. The book therefore presents a claim for more culturally specific understandings of what constitutes suffering and is of interest to students and scholars of South Asian Studies, Conflict Resolution, and Social and Cultural Anthropology.

Rebuilding Communities After Displacement

Rebuilding Communities After Displacement
Author: Mo Hamza
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2023-02-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3031214145

This book presents a collection of double-blind peer reviewed papers under the scope of sustainable and resilient approaches for rebuilding displaced and host communities. Forced displacement is a major development challenge, not only a humanitarian concern. A surge in violent conflict, as well as increasing levels of disaster risk and environmental degradation driven by climate change, has forced people to leave or flee their homes – both internally displaced as well as refugees. The rate of forced displacement befalling in different countries all over the world today is phenomenal, with an increasingly higher rate of the population being affected on daily basis than ever. These displacement situations are becoming increasingly protracted, many lasting over 5 years. Therefore, there is a need to develop more sustainable and resilient approaches to rebuild these displaced communities ensuring the long-term satisfaction of communities and enhancing the social cohesion between the displaced and host communities. Accordingly, chapters are arranged around five main themes of rebuilding communities after displacement. Response management for displaced communities The Built environment in resettlement planning Governance of displacement Socio-Economic interventions for sustainable resettlement