In Sri Lanka’s upcoming presidential election, the contest is intense among the three leading candidates: the incumbent president, Ranil Wickremesinghe; Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the left-leaning National People’s Power (NPP) coalition; and the current opposition leader, Sajith Premadasa, from the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB)

Sri Lanka enters a presidential election like no other before it

Marlon Ariyasinghe

2 hours ago

A three-party contest with no certain frontrunner, the 2024 presidential vote is the first since the economic crisis and mass protests of 2022 sparked calls for deep systemic change in Sri Lankan poli ...

Ranil Wickremesinghe’s chances of winning Sri Lanka’s 2024 presidential vote are slim. But the election is set to be the country’s most free, fair and non-violent one in living memory thanks in the main to constitutional and legal changes that Wickremesinghe effected.

How Ranil Wickremesinghe became Sri Lanka’s unlikely repairman

Tisaranee Gunasekara

13 Sep 2024

Arjun Daware, a fisherman who returned from Pakistan after three-and-half years breaks down with tears of joy after seeing his 4-year-old daughter and family members, at Aamgaon, in Palghar district. In 2023, almost 500 Indian fishermen held in Pakistani prisons for years on charges of illegal fishing along the disputed International Maritime Boundary Line were released. While the release itself made headlines, less discussed was how these fishermen gained their freedom.

The fight to release detained fishermen from India and Pakistan

09 Sep 2024

Deepthi Jeevanji, an Indian para-athlete with long black hair pulled back holds the Indian flag high with both her hands

Para athletes are elite competitors – not tragic or inspirational caricatures

06 Sep 2024

A fisher from the coastal village of Illupaikadavai, in Mannar district, which has seen coastal erosion and loss of fish stocks. Many of those most impacted by the climate crisis in the North and East of Sri Lanka are from farming and fishing communities.

Climate change brings a new emergency to the Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka

Amita Arudpragasam

03 Sep 2024

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Podcasts

A selfie of 13 women from the Women in Cinema Collective with Kerala’s chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who is dressed in a white shirt

State of Southasia #09: Anna M M Vetticad on the gender reckoning in Malayalam cinema – and India’s film industries

Film journalist Anna M M Vetticad explains the landmark Hema Committee report and how it has sparked a reckoning over the discrimination and abuse facing women in the Malayalam film industry

22 hours ago

Books

Artwork commemorating the Language Martyrs at the Bangla Academy, in memory of activists killed in the Bangla Language Movement in 1952. As a teenager, Noorjahan Bose led a girls’ walkout to fight language tyranny in East Pakistan. In her memoir, she writes that she hopes the new generation will keep fighting for their rights in the same way.

A Bangladeshi feminist’s personal – and political – history of her land

28 Aug 2024

Mihir Bose (left), the first non-white editor at the BBC, at the 1995 British Sports Journalism Awards in London. Bose’s memoir reiterates the idea that the British Empire is over and all that remains is the difficult task of acknowledging it; but a wave of new books shows that nothing could be further from the truth. Photo: Colorsport / Imago

The spectre of racialisation that haunts brown Britain

03 Jul 2024

E V Ramasamy (right) and C N Annadurai (left), founders of the Dravidian movement. In view of the Hindu Right’s assertive presence in Indian public life, ideas from the movement have acquired a new lease on life – but it remains to be seen how much they resonate with the citizenry at large. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

The limitations of the Dravidian model

30 Jun 2024

Chinese New Year celebrations in Kolkata. There is growing interest in interpreting as well as questioning “China–India” solidarity and connectivity as a comparative framework. Photo: IMAGO / Pacific Press Agency

The limits of our understandings of India–China cultural exchanges

24 Jun 2024

From the archives

Smoke rising from World Trade Center. 11 September 2001. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Life after 9/11

01 Oct 2001

A shopkeeper in Delhi with a statuette of B R Ambedkar for sale. Six new books on Ambedkar examine his life and thought with sincere reverence as well as honest critique. Photo: Hindustan Times / IMAGO

Who gets to write about Ambedkar?

Harish S Wankhede

28 Jul 2023

After a four-year hiatus, Shah Rukh Khan released three globally successful films in 2023 – but once-ardent fans in Pakistan now feel a disconnect with the star and with Bollywood. Photo: IMAGO / agefotostock

How Shah Rukh Khan’s spell over Pakistan was broken

08 Jan 2024

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Axing Chipko

01 Jan 1994

Shah Rukh Khan in a still from Jawan. After many Indian viewers made it a point to watch Pathaan, Khan’s last release, as a political statement in Modi’s India, Jawan is disappointingly meek. / Courtesy Red Chillies Entertainment

‘Jawan’ treads with caution in an India on edge

Anna M M Vetticad

12 Sep 2023

A survivor’s story as instant history

A survivor’s story as instant history

30 Apr 2000

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