Nayomi munaweera biography of albert einstein

A day that has been observed since the 1900s International Women's Day is now recognised each year on March 8. In 1910, a woman called Clara Zetkin – leader of the ‘women’s office’ for the Social Democratic Party in Germany – tabled the idea of an International Women’s Day. She suggested that every country should celebrate women on one day every year to push for their demands. A conference of more than 100 women from 17 countries agreed to her suggestion and IWD was formed. In 1911, it was celebrated for the first time in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on March 19. In 1913, it was decided to transfer IWD to March 8, and it has been celebrated on that day ever since. The day was only recognised by the United Nations in 1975, but ever since it has created a theme each year for the celebration. 

International Women's Day is not affiliated with any one group but instead it brings together women's organisations, charities, unions, governments and corporations together. International Women's Day is a global event that celebrates women's achievements ranging from political to social while issuing a clarion call for gender equality. Around the world the day is marked  with exhibitions, marches, rallies, networking events and performances all aimed at spreading a message about gender equality, empowerment or advocating rights for women. 

In Sri Lanka, it is no different as Women's Day is marked with various events including fashion shows and discussions on empowering women. While good practices are preached at these events, do these words of wisdom actually trickle down to the day to day lives of women? In rural Sri Lanka, women's empowerment and equality have a long way to go until they reach the same levels of the their sisterhood in the cities. 

The original aim – to achieve full gender equality for women the world – has still not been realised. A gender pay

On Wednesday of last week I woke up in the predawn darkness, the vestiges of jet lag from a month in Sri Lanka still washing over me. I reached for my phone and was immediately greeted by the news that several staff members of CharlieHebdo, a French satirical magazine, had been killed by Islamic fundamentalists. Twelve people in all were confirmed dead. The news had me reeling. What does it mean to live in a world where blood is still shed over medieval debates about what is blasphemy and what is not? And yet I have to say that the enemy of free expression, of everything that is sacred to me as a writer, is not Islam but fundamentalism of any kind. I know this because I am from Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka has the dubious honor of birthing Fundamentalist Buddhism.

On Sunday June 15, 2014, in Sri Lanka, the land of my birth and a country I feel deeply tied to by both love and despair, the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) went on the warpath. In English, “Bodu Bala Sena” translates as the “Buddha Power Force,” a puzzlingly oxymoronic label for a militant faction of Buddhist monks dead set on defending the country, by any means necessary, from what they see as encroachment from Muslims and Christians.

Sri Lanka is a country of deep devotions. Almost every street in the capital, Colombo, boasts churches, mosques, and temples—often in close proximity. Lonely country crossroads shelter shrines to Ganesh or St. Sebastian. But the most ubiquitous religious icons are the Buddha statues that dot the country, from tiny garden shrines to 80-foot-tall figures rising up from the forest in the ancient Buddhist citadels of Polonaruwa and Anuradhapura. For much of the country’s history—despite a 26-year-long ethnic civil war—the religions have generally coexisted.

Yet in recent times a brand of militant nationalist Buddhism led by BBS has risen to prominence in part as a response to what monks see as the unchecked spread

“Already the people murmur that I am your enemy
because they say that in verse I give the world your me.

They lie, Julia de Burgos. They lie, Julia de Burgos.
Who rises in my verses is not your voice. It is my voice
because you are the dressing and the essence is me;
and the most profound abyss is spread between us.

You are the cold doll of social lies,
and me, the virile starburst of the human truth.

You, honey of courtesan hypocrisies; not me;
in all my poems I undress my heart.

You are like your world, selfish; not me
who gambles everything betting on what I am.

You are only the ponderous lady very lady;
not me; I am life, strength, woman.

You belong to your husband, your master; not me;
I belong to nobody, or all, because to all, to all
I give myself in my clean feeling and in my thought.

You curl your hair and paint yourself; not me;
the wind curls my hair, the sun paints me.

You are a housewife, resigned, submissive,
tied to the prejudices of men; not me;
unbridled, I am a runaway Rocinante
snorting horizons of God's justice.

You in yourself have no say; everyone governs you;
your husband, your parents, your family,
the priest, the dressmaker, the theatre, the dance hall,
the auto, the fine furnishings, the feast, champagne,
heaven and hell, and the social, "what will they say."

Not in me, in me only my heart governs,
only my thought; who governs in me is me.
You, flower of aristocracy; and me, flower of the people.
You in you have everything and you owe it to everyone,
while me, my nothing I owe to nobody.

You nailed to the static ancestral dividend,
and me, a one in the numerical social divider,
we are the duel to death who fatally approaches.

When the multitudes run rioting
leaving behind ashes of burned injustices,
and with the torch of the seven virtues,
the multitudes run after the seven sins,
against you and against everything unjust and inhuman,
I will be in their midst with the torch in my hand.”
― Jul