Can a society move forward when the violence of its past has never fully been laid to rest?
In this episode of the SADF Podcast, host Tapas Kanti Baul and co-host Natasha Fernando speak with Andy Schubert, PhD researcher at the University of Cambridge, about Sri Lanka’s “haunted histories” and the ways in which memory, violence and unresolved claims for justice continue to shape the present.
The discussion explores how colonial and postcolonial histories, civil conflict, the JVP insurrections and state violence remain embedded in Sri Lanka’s political and social life. Schubert reflects on the figure of the “ghost” as a way of thinking about histories that refuse to disappear, especially when accountability is incomplete and competing communities remember the same events in radically different ways.
The conversation also examines the limits of transitional justice. Rather than assuming that legal processes can permanently settle questions of victimhood, responsibility and memory, Schubert argues that justice may remain contested and unfinished. The discussion turns to researcher positionality and privilege, the politics of historical narrative, and the way particular figures and sites of violence can stand in for many others whose experiences remain less visible.
The broader challenge is therefore not simply how Sri Lanka remembers its past, but how it can build democratic reconciliation when memory itself remains unsettled—and when the institutions expected to deliver justice may also be implicated in the violence being remembered.
Tags:
#SriLanka #Memory #Justice #TransitionalJustice #HumanRights #Democracy #Peacebuilding #Reconciliation #HistoricalMemory #StateViolence #Accountability #PostcolonialHistory #CivilWar #SouthAsia #SADF
Click ‘Download PDF’ for the edited transcript!
