Asanga Welikala, Senior Researcher in the Legal & Constitutional Unit, delivered a lecture in Jaffna on 19th December 2012 on the topic of “A Bi-Nationalist Perspective for Sri Lanka: Prospects for State Transformation in the Post- War Context”. The lecture was organised by the Centre for Civil Society, and was held at ‘Kalaikottam’, Jaffna.
Asanga’s lecture drew on his ongoing doctoral research at Edinburgh Law School into the concept of the plurinational state and its relevance for Sri Lanka in constitutionally accommodating multiple nations and conceptions of nationality within the framework of a united state. It concerned the theoretical possibilities for the better constitutional organisation of the Sri Lankan state in view of the island’s national pluralism, i.e., the empirical fact of the existence of more than one (ethnic) nation within the territorial and historical space of the polity.
The lecture, which was simultaneously translated into Tamil, was followed by a session of questions and answers in which the idea proposed and its political and legal prospects were robustly investigated and critiqued.
Selected photographs of the event are attached.
