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Democracy Protest and Resilience: Reflections on the Aragalaya Uprising in Sri Lanka book cover

1st Edition

Democracy Protest and Resilience Reflections on the Aragalaya Uprising in Sri Lanka

Edited By Kalinga Tudor Silva, Ramesh Ramasamy Copyright 2027
344 Pages 43 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book explores the rise and the fall of Aragalaya, a spontaneous protest movement demanding system change that erupted in Sri Lanka in the wake of the unprecedented economic crisis of 2022. With articles from Sri Lankan social scientists and activists with varied positionalities relating to peoples’ struggles, the volume captures their diverse views and interpretations of this largely... Read more

PART I: POLITICS OF ARAGALAYA

1.       Introduction

Kalinga Tudor Silva and Ramesh Ramasamy

2.       Aragalaya in Sri Lanka: Citizens’ Protests for Re-democratisation

Jayadeva Uyangoda

3.       Aragalaya, Democratic Reawakening and Active Citizenship in Sri Lanka

Ramesh Ramasamy and Rukshana Rizvi

4.       Locating Aragalaya on the Trajectory of Post-war Political Protest

Gamini Keerawella

5.       An Insider Perspective on  Aragalaya

Asanka Abeyratne

PART II: RELIGION AND RESISTANCE

6.       Religion, Resistance, and Interfaith Activism in Aragalaya

Kalinga Tudor Silva

7.       The Catholics in the Aragalaya and the Aragalaya in the Catholic Church: Between Prophetic Witness and Institutional Pragmatics

Jude L. Fernando

PART III: MASS MEDIA, SOCIAL MEDIA AND PROTEST ART

8.       Analysing Aragalaya through the Lens of Mainstream Media

Deepanjalie Abeywardana and Rochel Canagasabey

9.       Social Media as Civic Space for Political Participation in Aragalaya

Rebecca Jayatissa

10.   Aragalaya Art, Aesthetic Politics and the 2022 Occupy Galle Face Movement, Sri Lanka

Gayathri Madhurangi Hewagama

11.   Protest and Transformation through Creative Art: Aragalaya as an Artscape

Sarath Ananda

PART IV: DEMOCRACY PROTEST, CONTINUITY AND RESILIENCE

12.   Repression, Resilience and the Future of Aragalaya

Bhavani Fonseka

13.   From Protest to Ballot: The Impact of the Aragalaya on Post-Aragalaya Electoral Politics in Sri Lanka

Ramesh Ramasamy and Dhammika Herath

14.   Beyond Aragalaya

Ramesh Ramasamy and Kalinga Tudor Silva

Biography

Kalinga Tudor Silva is  Professor Emeritus at University of Peradeniya and the research lead in the Hidden Peace Builders Project in Sri   Lanka. He holds a BA from the University of Peradeniya and PhD from Monash University, Australia. He headed the Centre for Poverty Analysis from 2010 to 2013, and the International Centre for Ethnic Studies from 2007 to 2008.As a  guest editor of the Journal of Caste and Social Exclusion published by the Brandeis University in the US, he contributed to the publication of a Symposium of Caste in Sri Lanka in 2025.  He was the chief editor of the Sri Lanka Journal of Social Sciences published by the National Science Foundation from 2015 to 20.  His publications include Decolonization, Development and Disease: A Social History of Malaria in Sri Lanka, 2014, and Checkpoint, Temple, Church and Mosque: a Collaborative Ethnography of War and Peace, 2015 and Why Reconciliation Matters (2022).

Ramesh Ramasamy is a senior lecturer in Political Science at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He obtained his Ph.D. under the NORHED project on Governance and Policy Studies in South Asia. His research interests are mainly on the quality of government, democracy, corruption, institutional trust, public service delivery, and citizenship rights. He has published articles in journals such as Contemporary South Asia, Asian Journal of Political Science, Policy Studies, Public Organization Review, and Journal of Youth Studies. He has contributed chapters to several edited volumes published by Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Springer, and Oxford University Press.

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