Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam is a Sri Lankan journalist and author from Jaffna, known for incisive reporting on conflict, culture, and geopolitics across South and Southeast Asia.

Sri Lanka

THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE

THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE

ANURADHAPURA, Sri Lanka — She was eleven years old, by her own account, when her mother first brought her to the private residential quarters inside one of the holiest Buddhist precincts in the world. She was fourteen when she told police what happened there. The man she named is Pallegama Hemarathana Thero, 71, the Atamasthanadhipathi — Chief Prelate and Custodian of the Eight Sacred Sites of Anuradhapura, and the senior-most administrative authority over the Sri Maha Bodhi: the sacred fig tr


Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Ailing Sivajilingam's Appeal Touches a Nerve

Ailing Sivajilingam's Appeal Touches a Nerve

JAFFNA — When former parliamentarian M.K. Sivajilingam stood before reporters recently, his voice unsteady as he appealed for financial assistance to treat kidney failure, the moment resonated far beyond a routine public plea. It triggered a deeper reckoning within sections of the Tamil community — including both those aligned with his Tamil nationalist politics and those who are not. A veteran of Sri Lanka's turbulent Tamil political landscape and the current chairman of the Valvettithurai Urb


Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

The Final Hours of Kapila Chandrasena

The Final Hours of Kapila Chandrasena

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Former Sri Lankan cricket captain Aravinda de Silva told a Colombo magistrate on Tuesday that he personally arranged bail guarantors and sent Rs. 500,000 in cash to secure the release of Kapila Chandrasena, the former SriLankan Airlines chief executive found dead at his Kollupitiya residence last week, and that he repeatedly tried to reassure Mr. Chandrasena in the final hours of his life that a fresh arrest warrant was "a small matter" that could be resolved. Mr. de Silva


Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court Bars Professor From Academia After University Failed to Act
Prof. W. M. Thilakaratne, former dean of the Faculty of Dental Sciences at the University of Peradeniya, now at the University of Malaya. Sri Lanka's Supreme Court has permanently barred him from any academic post in Sri Lanka after a university inquiry found him guilty of harassing a junior colleague.

Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court Bars Professor From Academia After University Failed to Act

When the governing council of the University of Peradeniya voted in May 2020 to discard the findings of its own formal disciplinary inquiry, which had found a senior professor guilty of cyberstalking, repeated physical touching and sustained emotional abuse of a junior colleague under his academic supervision, it may have assumed the matter was over. Dr. W. A. M. Udari L. Abeyasinghe, the junior colleague at the centre of the complaint and a dentist and lecturer at the same faculty, had already


Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

How Vijay Turned Triumph Into Turmoil

How Vijay Turned Triumph Into Turmoil

CHENNAI — Whether one supported actor-turned-politician Vijay or not, almost everyone agreed on one thing: he had done the impossible. In a state where political power had rotated between two Dravidian parties for nearly six decades, Vijay emerged out of the blue, entered the political spectrum, and led his fledgling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam to 108 seats, making it the single largest party in Tamil Nadu’s 234-member assembly. It was, by any measure, a democratic earthquake. Even his critics a


Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

A Majority on Paper, a Night of Crisis: Vijay’s Bid for Power Plunges Into Uncertainty

A Majority on Paper, a Night of Crisis: Vijay’s Bid for Power Plunges Into Uncertainty

CHENNAI —On the evening of May 8, what began as an expected constitutional meeting for actor-turned-politician Vijay with the Governor to stake claim to form the government quickly turned into one of the biggest political dramas Tamil Nadu has witnessed in recent years. As of early Saturday morning, Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar had not invited Vijay, whose Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam won 108 seats in the 2026 state election and emerged as the single largest bloc in the 234-member Assembly,


Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Kapila Chandrasena Found Dead at Cricket Legend Aravinda de Silva’s Home

Kapila Chandrasena Found Dead at Cricket Legend Aravinda de Silva’s Home

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Kapila Chandrasena, the former chief executive of SriLankan Airlines who faced corruption charges in one of Sri Lanka’s most consequential bribery investigations, was found dead on Friday morning at the Colombo residence of his brother-in-law, the former Sri Lankan cricket star Aravinda de Silva, according to police and information obtained by Jaffna Monitor. Mr. Chandrasena, 58, was found hanging inside the residence on Pedris Place in Kollupitiya, police said. Authorities


Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam

A Treasury Breached, a Witness Dead
Ranga Nishantha Rajapaksa

A Treasury Breached, a Witness Dead

KULIYAPITIYA, Sri Lanka — On the afternoon of April 30, the daughter of Abeysinghe Mudiyanselage Ranga Nishantha Rajapaksa noticed her father walking toward the back of their house. He carried a knife. His wife, a schoolteacher, was at work. Sometime between that moment and 2:00 p.m., she found him near a banana tree, bleeding from severed veins in both legs and his left hand. A blood-stained knife lay nearby. By nightfall, Sri Lanka was confronting a new and deeply disturbing chapter in an alr


Aruliniyan Mahalingam

Aruliniyan Mahalingam