Punsara Amarasinghe is a post-doctoral researcher affiliated with Scuola Superiore Sant Anna, Pisa. He is a PhD holder in Public International Law from the Institute of Law, Politics and Development at Scuola Superiore Sant Anna (Sant Anna School for Advanced Studies) in Pisa, Italy. He holds LL.M. from the South Asian University, New Delhi, and completed his undergraduate studies in law at the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

He completed another master's degree in international relations from the HSE, Moscow. He has held two visiting research fellowships at the Global Legal Studies Centre at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Sciences PO, Paris. He was affiliated with the Minerva Center for Strategic Studies at Hebrew University, Jerusalem for a brief period in 2019.

The indomitable spirit shown by Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (commonly known as JVP) since its inception, even after the total eclipse of its initial political leadership, is remarkable. Unlike many of the leftist political parties that swayed and assimilated into the mainstream spectrum of party politics in Sri Lanka, JVP survived and flourished. After a half-century of its survival before two insurrections, JVP stands as a catalyst factor in the coming presidential election of Sri Lanka.

Embittered by the cascade of failures attributed to the major political parties, essentially the nepotism of the Rajapaksa regime until the ousting of Gotabaya in 2022, the people seem to have developed trust towards JVP’s charismatic leader, Mr. Anura Kumara Dissanayake. Yet JVP’s intriguing history is twisted by the complex relations it carried out with various actors, mainly its antagonistic stances against India, which played a vital role in the early years of JVP’s formation. Thus, examining what JVP confronted in the past and how they are likely to affect the ascendency of JVP into the power vacuum becomes indispensable in fathoming the current dynamics.

Historically, JVP was known for its vehement hostility towards India as JVP’s........

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