This collection, which is available on open access through Princeton University Library and the South Asia Open Archives, documents the activity of a generation of Sri Lankan radical activists who, in their different ways, attempted to escape the claims of rival ethno-nationalisms and build alternative political and development projects, drawing on Marxism, Christian socialism, and feminism, among other inspirations. The digital library is the product of a collaboration among the American Institute for Lankan Studies (AILS), the University of Edinburgh, Princeton University Library, and the South Asia Open Archives. It was produced as part of a larger project entitled A Comparative Anthropology of Conscience, Ethics and Human Rights. The project was generously supported by a European Research Council Horizon 2020 Consolidator Grant (648477 AnCon ERC-2014-CoG), with additional support from the American Institute for Lankan Studies.
A complete description of the digital library and access to its contents is available through the project’s home page on Princeton University Library website. The contents are also available through the South Asia Open Archives.
TESTIMONIALS
“This project supplies brilliantly a category of resource that libraries to date have found hard to handle. Ephemera are irreplaceable primary evidence for moments and movements long past, and they are also by nature fleeting, scrappy, hard to organize and to preserve. This collection on social activism in Sri Lanka is rich and varied, with newspaper clippings drawing together states of knowledge and states of play in several arenas, and pamphlets full of arguments too urgent to wait for more staid forms of publication. Primary evidence, fully word-searchable, fulsome, well curated, and easy to use—a great contribution to studies of Sri Lanka, and of social activism more widely.”
– Dr. Bronwen Bledsoe, Curator, South Asia Collection, Cornell University Library
“It was a time of terror and a time of awakening. These collections record a period of Sri Lankan history in the 1980s and the 1990s where despair lived alongside possibility; where the terrible violence and acrimony did not take away from hope; where the networks of solidarity and social bonding allowed people of all communities to think and work together for peace, women’s equality and social justice. The memory of that era must not be forgotten.”
– Dr. Radhika Coomaraswamy, Chairperson, South Asians for Human Rights
“The individuals represented in this collection dedicated their lives with ground-breaking scholarship and committed activism, to respond to the tumultuous struggles in the 1960s and 1970s for reform and renewal in the socio-economic, political and religious fields in Sri Lanka and worldwide. While accurately anticipating the national and global problems we face today, they also demonstrated that there can be creative and alternative ways to apply our social roles to address contemporary issues. This website provides valuable access to their writings not only for research purposes as an archive but also to inspire and energise a new generation of scholars and activists.”
– Rev. Aloysius Pieris, S.J., Tulana Research Centre, Kelaniya
“This digital collection on Dissidents and Activists in Sri Lanka, 1960s to 1990s, is an important initiative to preserve and make available to a worldwide readership, documents that represent an important period of Sri Lanka’s modern political and intellectual history. The institutions and individuals included in this collection have been active in sustaining alternative political and social imaginations as well as practices at a time when Sri Lanka was going through a tumultuous transformation amidst social and ethnic conflicts, major shifts in economic policy and state-society relations. I congratulate all those who have been involved in supporting, preparing, and hosting this digital archive and hope that its content would be further enriched.”
– Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda, University of Colombo
SUMMARY DESCRIPTION OF THE COLLECTION
The collection consists of three sections. The first is an assorted collection of Left-wing political and civil rights pamphlets and booklets dating from the 1960s to the 1990s. The authors and publishers include former left-wing political parties, trade union movements, and civil rights movements. The second section of the collection includes writings from the Sri Lankan Liberation Theology movement of the late twentieth century, which was inspired by the movement’s contemporaries from across Asia and Latin America. It includes the writings and publications of Rev. Paul Caspersz, Rev. Tissa Balasuriya, Rev. Yohan Devananda, and Rev. Michael Rodrigo, along with materials produced by their respective civil and human rights organizations. The third section is a selection of materials from the library of the Women’s Education and Research Centre (WERC). It includes WERC’s journal Nivēdhinī, newsletter Pravahini, and other pamphlets, booklets, and flyers related to women’s resistance movements and women’s rights awareness programs of the late twentieth century.
Left-wing political pamphlets (Dr Nirmal Dewasiri’s Collection)
Approx. images: 1000
Genres: Pamphlets, Booklets
Topics in the selection for digitization include, left-wing perspectives on the ethnic conflict, the National Question, trade union activism and workers’ struggle, general strikes, Socialist ideology and women in the left movements. The publications are booklets by and on parties and organizations such as Lanka Sama Samaja Party, Communist Party, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, Workers’ Peasant Institute, Federation of Ceylon Trade Unions, Movement for Inter Racial Justice and Equality (MIRJE) etc.
Paul Caspersz (Satyodaya Centre for Social Research and Encounter, Kandy)
Approx. images: 1800
Genres: Newspaper articles, Reports
Topics in the selection include, Labour Rights (plantation worker wages, privatization of land and the tea industry, living conditions), Statelessness (disenfranchisement and repatriation of Malayaha Tamil workers), Human Rights (in relation to the plantation community and the civil war), Socialist/Marxist Theology, Liberation Theology, Development and Globalization (Open-Economic policies, privatization of state industries, its impact on the agrarian sector; development and economy in wartime contexts of Sri Lanka).
Tissa Balasuriya (Centre for Society and Religion, Colombo)
Approx. images: 2500
Genres: Pamphlets, Booklets, Short Journals
Topics in the selection for digitization include Human Rights, Feminism, Women’s Rights, Gender and Sexuality, Workers’ Rights, documents related to his attempted excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church, Liberation Theology, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Environmental Conservation, “Third World” Ecumenism. The more well-known among the many published books by Balasuriya include, Planetary Theology, and Mary and Human Liberation. The centre is also a publishing house for Balasuriya’s writings as well as the centre’s journals and magazines such as Quest, Logos, Vimukthi Prakashana, Sadharanaya, and Social Justice. The ephemera for Princeton will include a selection from these publications.
Yohan Devananda (Devasarana Development Centre, Kurunegala)
Approx. images: 1000
Genres: Pamphlets, Booklets
Topics in the selection for digitization include pamphlets, articles, and poetry booklets related to the 1971 Youth Uprising, ethnic conflict, inter-religious dialogue and national politics; the Constitution and administrative pamphlets and booklets of the early decades of the Devasarana Development Centre Kurunegala.
Michael Rodrigo (Family Collections, Oblate Scholasticate Kandy, Suba Seth Gedara Centre for Christian-Buddhist Dialogue and Conscientization Buttala)
Approx. images: 2000
Genres: Newspaper articles/clippings, booklets, posters, handwritten diaries
Topics in the selection for digitization include Buddhist-Christian dialogue, social justice, Socio-Economic Rights of the rural agrarian community, sustainable organic farming methods, environmental conservation, indigenization of Catholic/Christian worship. Selections of Poetry and Posters on social justice and awareness in rural citizenship Rights. The collection also includes his two PhD theses from Gregorian University Rome and the Institut Catholique de Paris.
Women’s Education and Research Centre, Colombo
Approx. images: 1000
Genres: Journals, Newsletter, Pamphlets, Booklets
Topics in the selection of digitization include Women’s Rights movements in twentieth century Sri Lanka, women’s literature, women’s issues related to Law, Economics, Politics, Sexuality, War, Violence included in annual journal Nivēdhinī and the newsletter Pravahini.
