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Following the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2010, the Sri Lankan political system has seen the rise of a ‘one-party dominant state’ and a ‘hybrid regime’. This new political order consists of a mix of democratic and authoritarian elements largely seen in countries such as Malaysia and Singapore. This essay examines the social and political changes introduced by the highly militarized regime led by Mahinda Rajapaksa, which has slanted towards a Kautilyan ideology and authoritarian constitutionalism. It is argued that Sri Lanka needs a glasnost, marking a new political and social ethos based on the principles of accountability, openness, transparency, freedom and justice.

Just war, a concept stemming from Christian theological scholarship, has become part of the Western social and political lexicon. This article examines how Buddhism as a non-Abrahamic faith has dealt with just war thinking. To this end, it specifically analyzes some of the recent scholarly studies of just war ideology in relation to the civil war in Sri Lanka. It is argued that just war thinking is essentially a question of how issues of religion and politics are handled in Buddhist countries.

Australia, being a settler society, an immigrant-receiving country from its inception, was until recently, firmly committed to an ideology of settlement which ensured racial and cultural homogeneity. The firm belief in ‘one country, one nation’, was achieved by a strong insistence on ‘anglo-conformity’, embodying the cultural mores and national characteristics of the early settlers, the charter groups. This close link between immigration and settlement has become problematic with the influx of waves of immigrants from non-traditional source-countries and the accompanying new philosophy of settlement, based on cultural pluralism and commonly labelled ‘multiculturalism’. The ongoing public debate and controversy in Australia1 about immigration has drawn attention to the problematic nature of the disjunction between policies of recruitment and settlement, and equally to the dilemmas confronting multiculturalism as a philosophy of settlement, and a ‘policy regime’ (Rein, 1976). In a world increasingly engulfed in ethnic conflicts and tensions arising from migration, the way in which this new policy of ‘multiculturalism’ developed in the short space of less than two decades represents a success story of migrant settlement worth recounting (see Jayasuriya, 1987; Castles et al., 1990; Foster and Stockley, 1988)).

This article examines the rationale and philosophical underpinnings of Australian public policy relating to language and culture, especially as they have emerged in relation to nonindigenous ethnic minorities, i.e., migrants and ethnic groups. An underlying theme is that the concepts of language and culture as they have evolved in relation to the ideologies of multiculturalism are not neutral but contested concepts which need understanding and critical analysis. The article has three main objectives. The first is to show how, historically, language—in particular English—has been an important public issue in matters of migrant settlement. Second, it examines the hidden and often unstated assumptions of social theory implicit in policies relating to language and culture by analyzing the way in which the key concepts of culture and ethnicity have been used in policies. Third, it presents the case for a paradigm shift in public policy and argues that the issue of language and culture should be re-examined and restructured to serve new and emerging social needs.