List of articles and abstracts

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Clandestine Transactions of the LTTE and the Secessionist 
Campaign in Sri Lanka
 
G H Peiris

Abstract

This article is a synthesis of information from various published sources on the ‘commercial’ transactions of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which has enabled it to sustain a campaign of war and terrorism in Sri Lanka in its efforts to create in the northern and eastern parts of the country an independent Tamil nation state. The focus of the article is on clandestine operations outside Sri Lanka. The available evidence suggests that the involvement of the LTTE in the global narcotics trade has continued to figure prominently among its diverse fundraising activities. The income generated through the drug trade, it appears, has been used for the smuggling of arms for its own war effort and for supply to several insurgent groups in the Indian subcontinent. The indications are that the funds raised by the LTTE and its front organisations operating in more than fifty countries are being used in a wide variety of enterprises, both legal as well as illegal. While the income from these enterprises sustains the secessionist campaign in Sri Lanka, the latter provides the organisational cohesion and the main impulse for what appears to have assumed the form of a massive and highly ramified business empire.

Foreign Languages and National Imperatives in Pakistan
  Tariq Rahman

  Abstract

Foreign languages are taught in Pakistan, in common with other countries, primarily to increase the power of the state. The state projects Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, in foreign countries, as a symbol of the Pakistani national identity which, it is felt, is best symbolised by a single national language rather than many ethnic languages. The state also ensures that the military, the diplomatic service and other state functionaries learn foreign languages so as to look after the trade, security and diplomatic interests of the country. For this purpose the army has created the best language-learning institution in the country. It was called the National Institute of Modern Languages and is now called the National University of Modern Languages, in Islamabad. Knowing foreign languages is very essential for the functionaries of the state and is, therefore, in the national interest. People who learn foreign languages do so to equip themselves for jobs as well as to travel abroad in order to find jobs there.  They look for personal empowerment through employment. In short, the teaching of foreign languages is connected with power: both national and individual.

Ethnicity after Edward Said: Post-Orientalist Failures in Comprehending the Kandyan Period of Lankan History
 Michael Roberts

Abstract

 Disenchantment with the excesses of nationalist and ethnic claims in recent decades has directed the analysis of ethnicity presented in academic writings in recent decades.  Ethnicity is seen as pernicious, "primordialist" and "essentialist."  Other scholars as well as nationalist spokespersons are castigated for reading the present into the past.  This line of criticism has entered the scholarship on the Indian subcontinent and been extended to surveys of the literature on the pre-British and British periods of Sri Lankan history.   Yet these critics themselves are governed by the either/or epistemology of 20th century rationalism.  They are unable to decipher the worldview and the political ideology that organised the socio-political order of the Kingdom of Sihale, better known as the Kingdom of Kandy.  Their bias is "presentist" and "modernist."  With little patience for historical puzzles, their readings of the pre-British period are simple-minded.  For the most part they rely on the severely flawed interpretation presented in Leslie Gunawardana's "People of the Lion."  This dependence marks their ignorance.  

Criminalisation of Politics: Karachi (A Case Study)
Mehtab Ali Shah

Abstract

Since 1984, Karachi has been passing through different phases of violence, ranging from relatively minor issues such as the theft of push bicycles, to the destruction of property and on to murder.  It is estimated that during the 1990s at least 1,000 persons were killed in the city every year.[i] Murder, extortion (bhatta) and other crimes in the city, have mainly political purposes.  The levels of criminality are so high that the city is regarded as one of the most violent in the world.[ii]  Currently the situation has begun to change after the imposition of Governor's rule in the Sindh Province in 1998, and military take-over of Pakistan by General Pervaiz Musharraf in 1999.  This article investigates the nexus between crime and politics in the city and the principal causes of this phenomenon.  In addition, it seeks to examine the remedies that could be taken to mitigate the situation.  This study formally covers a period of ten years (1990-2000), but occasionally it briefly goes back to the recent past, and even on to 1947, when Pakistan came into being.      

Book Review
Situating History and 'The Historian's Craft'
 Sudharshan Seneviratne

The Institutions of Ancient Ceylon from Inscriptions (from 3 century BC to 830 AD) Volume 1 by Lakshman S Perera (Introduction and supplementary notes by Sirima Kiribamune and Piyatissa Senanayake), Kandy, Sri Lanka, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, 2001.

 
Book Review 
Jessica Diebert Vechbanyongratana
 

Emerging Voices: South Asian American Women Redefine Self, Family and Community, Sangeeta Gupta (ed), New Delhi, Sage, 1999