Polity aims to advance democratic consciousness, gender equality, state reform, and social change in Sri Lanka, while interested in South Asia and the World.
As its predecessor Pravada (1991-2002), Polity is published by the Social Scientists’ Association in Colombo, with critical content on politics, political economy, history, women, ethnicity, sexualities, religion, labour studies, agrarian relations, nationalisms, violence, ecology, and much more.
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan. Manhattan: Random House, 2023
Reviewed by Vasugi Kailasam
Brotherless Night is V. V. Ganeshananthan’s second novel. I read this novel in late July 2023, with a fevered reminder...
Ceylon’s ‘Great Hartal’ of 1953: The Masses Enter History
B. Skanthakumar
NM Perera addresses Galle Face Rally 23 July 1953 “It was the class struggle in free flow and it constituted the...
Claiming Identity, Dignity, and Justice: Malaiyaha Tamils of Sri Lanka
B. Skanthakumar
The 150th anniversary of the beginning of the tea industry in British Ceylon was marked in 2017 by a range of...
Hyper-Reforms amidst Hyper-Austerity
In an ongoing economic crisis whose fundamental causes the ruling class has absolute disinterest in tackling, an...
Abolish Marriage? Kanchuka Dharmasiri’s play Surpanakha
Liyanage Amarakeerthi
The Ramayana has many retellings, and there will be more to come. Kanchuka Dharmasiri’s new play, Surpanakha (2022),...
Women’s Labour Force Participation: Three Themes
Chulani Kodikara
The IMF Staff Report on Sri Lanka released in March 2022 outlined a number of policy prescriptions to address Sri...
Current Issue
Out Now! Vol. 13, No. 1 (2025), LKR800 from the Social Scientists’ Association and LKR1000 from Barefoot and Vijitha Yapa bookshops.
170 pages of analysis, commentary and perspective: the implosion of liberal internationalism; aspirations for, and appraisal of, the NPP government; the long march of the JVP from subversive to sovereign; feminist statements demanding action against misogyny and male violence; the May 2025 local government election and axes of polarisation; US and Lankan narratives on culling USAID; the thriving and prosperous national security state, and its gaze on queers; Richard de Zoysa’s short life, long death, and literary legacy; Asoka Handagama’s Rani and memory against forgetting in struggles against enforced disappearances; avatars of privatisation in higher education; continuities and concerns in AKD’s first budget; anatomization of an economy in permanent crisis; retrieving the political economy of SBD de Silva; an IMF poster-child in the crosshairs of Trump’s tariffs and the Washington Consensus; combating corruption in market mode; caricaturing gay representation in mainstream media; celebrating Bapsi Sidhwa’s itinerary and oeuvre; Indian and Pakistani women speak out against war and hate; the performance of Tamil nationhood in and after war; international law facts and fictions in Filastin; and Iranian voices against Israeli-US warmongering and state repression. Front cover art by Minal Naomi Wickrematunge.
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Pravada (1991-2002) and Polity (2003-) back issues available here.
Social Scientists’ Association
The Social Scientists’ Association (SSA) was founded in 1977, at a turning point in Sri Lankan politics, economy, and society, marked by among other aspects: the ‘open economy’ market reforms; deepening ethnic conflict; and the growing concentration of executive power. Its initiators were academics from public universities, seeking an autonomous space to grapple with these shifts; and to promote progressive political, economic, and social change.