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.
Rani: The Politics of Erasure and the Aesthetics of Forgetting
Prasanna Pitigala Liyanage and Malithi Liyanage
Cinema does not merely reflect history; it remakes itWhat appears on screen influences what is remembered and what is...
Asoka Handagama’s Rani: Diminishing Struggles Against Enforced Disappearances
S. Janaka Biyanwila
The film Rani (2025, Lyca Productions) by Asoka Handagama based on the character of Manorani Saravanamuttu, a medical...
Richard de Zoysa in the Classroom
Vihanga Perera
Richard de Zoysa was abducted from his home on the night of 18 February 1990, brutally killed, and body discarded....
The Ritual Sacrifice of Richard de Zoysa: “Not really one of us, hence one of them”
Dhanuka Bandara
In Violence and the Sacred, René Girard (1979) understands ritual sacrifice as a means of stalling the cycle of...
Richard de Zoysa: A Legacy of Injustice and Resistance
Manikya Kodithuwakku
This year marks the 35th death anniversary of journalist, human rights activist, and actor, Richard de Zoysa. As de...
Me Kauda? Monawada Karanne? The Potential Futures of an “Alternative World” and the Political Legacy of Richard de Zoysa
Prabha Manuratne
Me Kauda? Monawada Karanne? (‘Who is he? What is he doing?’) was the title of a play, allegedly, that got Richard de...
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.