“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.”

Richard Nathaniel Wright, 1977 in American Hunger  

The most consistent preoccupation of the Colombo Institute is its publication program. The Institute strongly believes in critical writings on society, culture and politics in the country and beyond. It is hoped that critical literature in the social sciences and humanities would, in the long run, help expand the critical thinking abilities of youth. Towards this end, the Institute’s publication program uses the Sinhala and Tamil languages as it main medium of communication. The English language publication program, which is at present in its initial phase, is designed to take the activities of the Institute beyond the borders of Sri Lanka into the South Asia region and beyond.

The South Asia Journal for Culture was designed specifically with this regional and global interest in mind. This initiative has been funded by the Ford Foundation through Theertha International Artists’ Collective.