A RESPONSE From Thiru Kandiah in Perth – to – A Vituperative Verbal Assault on Michael Roberts From A Person who Signed Himself as “N W Goonewardena” **
My horror of involving myself in exchanges in public fora (to participate in which, I recognise, I am in any case ill-equipped) has been increasing considerably across the decades, and this has led me to send my response to your messages mentioned above via your private email rather than through your blog (is that what it is termed?).
The responses made to those messages on your blog are absolutely consistent in their complete rejection/censure of the appalling attack on you by Goonewardene that you forwarded to us in them, even while mentioning a range of reasons for the position they have adopted on it. Perhaps C.R.’s characteristically considered and dispassionate response clearly and succinctly (and without getting on your nerves as I am doing!) sums up the basic issues that underpin the consensus they together all reveal.
First, the total disregard/eschewal in the attack of any acceptable form of human reasoning. And this, mind you, in a purportedly objective scholarly discussion on Anagarika Dharmapala, a highly significant, if controversial, historical figure in Sri Lanka’s more recent history, a form of discussion which of its definitive nature places so sacrosanct a premium on the workings of human reasoning, which, moreover, is among the most significant of those things that, together with the capacity for language built bio-genetically alongside/into it in the human brain, uniquely distinguish the human species from all other species. Not, of course, as anyone will recognise if (s)he follows the exchanges that routinely take place in the comments made once such topics are put on the internet or any such place for discussion, the professed commitment to reasoned argumentation in such discussion is actually respected in practice often. But lets leave that distraction aside for the moment, and move to C.R.’s second point. This is that the blatantly unconcealed choice by G in his attack on you of personal insult and abuse over any recognizable or acceptable form of reasoning, cannot but reflect very poorly on the attacker and his own character and nature (and “thinking”). For, purposefully personalised as they are in the attack, such insult and abuse are of their nature only too evidently designed not just to register dissent from your views but to cause you real pain and hurt, in ways that violate all norms of ordinary, human decency.
These two observations of CR’s taken together guarantee that the attack will be summarily dismissed as something entirely unworthy of any form of attention at all, so that it can have absolutely no impact whatsoever on our assessment either of you as a person or as a scholar, your character, thinking, work, doings, whatever. On this, all alike of the responses made to G’s attack on you are, very evidently, totally agreed. Which in turn, I believe, also constitutes an identification with you in the situation that will, I trust, help protect you from any distress that the vileness of the attack could well potentially cause you.
Best wishes. Thiru
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FOR the COMMENT That has promped Thiru’s NOTE, see https://thuppahis.com/2025/08/26/facing-nw-goonewardenas-racist-comments/
** The signature “NW Goonewardena” could, of course, be a cover-job. That this VILIFIER knew that my lineage roots linked with Africa via Barbados SUGGESTS that he has roots in Galle –for the simple eason that my surname leads most Sri La kans to assume that I am a Burgher.
*** I have taken the liberty of inserting highlights in Thiru’s Memo.
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