The Aragalaya: A sceptic's notes

• Published date: 09 August 2022
• Publication title: Daily Financial Times

There is a widespread view that the Aragalaya is utterly exceptional, not just in terms of its outcomes but also in how it was constituted. For instance, speaking at a Teach Out session - a series of independently organised short lectures that took place on the sidelines of the main protest - the historian Shamara Wettimuny framed the uniqueness of the Aragalaya in terms of the breadth of solidarities it assembled.

Before I unpack Wettimuny's specific claims, it is worth recognising, first, that one can always find a combination of axes for every event such that it is novel along those axes. For instance, the fact that the Aragalaya is the first and only protest to have established the Gota Go Gama village at the Galle Face Green, on 10 April, 2022, makes it utterly unique on that count alone. Given that every event is exceptional with respect to some combination of features, no event really is. Second, novel events are not always nice: indeed, the very novelty of many historic moments is entirely rooted in their evil.

Third, there is a tendency amongst Sri Lankans to superficially count themselves as an exceptional people and I view the exceptionalist claims about...