Advertising TAMIL PERSON AND STATE by Michael Roberts

TAMIL PERSON AND STATE – ESSAYS = Rs. 3500/-

TAMIL PERSON AND STATE – PICTORIAL = Rs. 4000/-

This set of books is the latest anthology from Michael Roberts that caters to the reading public in Lanka and elsewhere by collecting his essaying interventions in the public realm, usually on web, within one cover. These articles were written between 2009 and 2012. Two long articles, however, are new products drafted in 2012. One explores the significance of a Karaiyar caste coterie within the LTTE, while clarifying the ideological currents that inspired their opposition to the Sinhala-dominated state. The other clarifies the circumstances of the Tamil peoples within the de facto to state of Thamilīlam from 2002 onwards and especially within the crucible of war in “the Vanni Pocket” in 2009 and thence to the detention centres at Mänik Farm.

This first volume was ready in mid-April 2013. The visual images serving this work took longer to prepare and in the course of its journey fresh developments induced Roberts to pen two essays in late 2013 and early 2014 which comment critically on the pursuits of the Western states and media as well as various humanitarian agencies for their manipulation of facts and a refusal to address existing literature – a refusal that brings their ethics into question. Among the Appendices in TPS: Pictorial is one that reproduces in full the original manifesto of the ITAK or “Federal Freedom Party”.

Rhodes Scholar for Ceylon in 1962, Michael Roberts is a historian by training and has taught at the Dept of History, Peradeniya University (1961-76) and the Dept of Anthropology, Adelaide University (1977-2003). His major works are in agrarian history, social mobility, nationalism and ethnic conflict. Among his major works are Caste Conflict and Elite Formation: The Rise of a Karāva Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500-1931 (1982); People Inbetween(1989); Exploring Confrontation (1994); Narrating Tamil Nationalism (2005); Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period, 1590s -1815 (2004); and Essaying Cricket: Sri Lanka and Beyond (Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2006). He has also edited the several volumes on Sri Lanka entitled Collective Identities (1979, 1997, 1998). More recently, Vijitha Yapa Publications has presented three of his anthologies: Confrontations in Sri Lanka (2009), Fire and Storm (2010) and Incursions & Excursions in and around Sri Lanka Cricket (2011).

August 2014 Vijitha Yapa Publications

TPS: ESSAYS = ISBN 978-955-665-230-7 ….. 423 pages

TPS: PICTORIAL = ISBN 978-955-665-231-4 …. 293 pages incl. of 164 pp of images

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