Category Archives: Africans in Asia

August 26, 2025 · 2:14 am

Facing NW Goonewardena’s Racist Comments

NW Goonewardena= Comment in Thuppahi  at THIS ITEM ……………………………. https://thuppahis.com/2018/09/13/anagarika-dharmapala-in-search-of-a-rounded-evaluation/

GET LOST YOU SOB, MICHAEL ROBERTS, THE PRODUCT OF A ONE NIGHT STAND BETWEEN A AFRICAN SOLDIER STATIONED IN SRI LANKA, AND A SRI LANKAN HARLET. HOW MANY TIMES HAVE I TOLD YOU NOT TO SEND YOUR SHIT TO ME. I LEFT YOUR SHIT BLOG ALMOST AS SOON AS I CAME IN TO IT BECAUSE IT IS EVIDENT TO ANYONE THAT YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A SOCIAL PARASITE SUFFERING FROM A DEEP INFERIORITY COMPLEX. NOTE THAT EVEN AFTER 30 YEARS OF SERVICE IN UNIVERSITIES, MOSTLY AT ADELAIDE UNIVERSITY, THIS REPULSIVE PARASITE COULD NOT MAKE IT PAST THE GRADE OF SENIOR LECTURER. THIS PIECE OF SHIT SHOULD BE MADE PERSONAE NONGRATIA TO SRI LANKA. A IDIOT WHO WRITES “RESEARCH PAPERS” BASED ON AN INTERACTION OF AN AUSTRALIAN FIELDER ON THE BOUNDARY LINE AND TWO SRI LANKAN SPECTATORS!!! HIS SO-CALLED “RESEARCH ARTICLES” HAVE A BIBLIOGRAPHY CONSISTING OF 75% OF HIS OWN WRITING. A PARASITE, AN INFERIOR BEING, AND A CLOWN – THAT SUMS UP THIS UNFORTUNATE BIRTH OF AN ILLEGI5IMATE CHILD.

When “NW GOONEWARDENA” injected THIS highly abusive comment alluding to my supposed ancestry in a Comment within the Website that I run, several friends suggested that I should not respond and that I should delete the pejorative comment. That suggestion is well-meaning, but I have decided against such a course.

I am proceeding, here, to present the RACIALLY-PREJUDICED COMMENT as the frontispiece item. Continue reading →

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Filed under accountability, Africans in Asia, Afro-Asians, authoritarian regimes, British colonialism, communal relations, cultural transmission, disparagement, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, politIcal discourse, Portuguese imperialism, Portuguese in Indian Ocean, racist thinking, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, world events & processes, zealotry

February 23, 2024 · 7:50 pm

The “Butterfly Bridge” in Galle

Michael Roberts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dulip Karunaratne of St. Aloysius (as a boarder) sent this to me. As a resident of Galle Fort and a frequent visitor to the playing fields in front of the Fort, this bridge over a canal leading to the Municipal Park was a familiar sight. Perhaps so familiar as to be taken for granted.

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Filed under Africans in Asia, architects & architecture, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, commoditification, cultural transmission, demography, Dutch colonialism, economic processes, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, Muslims in Lanka, photography, politIcal discourse, sri lankan society, transport and communications, Uncategorized, world events & processes

September 28, 2023 · 1:29 am

An “Indian Ocean World Museum” in Sri Lanka?

Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, presenting a proposal with this fuller title “Concept Note for an Indian Ocean World Museum, Researc and Resource Center”

 Sri Lanka is ideally located for an Indian Ocean World Museum in what has been termed the “Asian 21st Century.”  People of diverse cultures, religions, histories, and linguistic communities have mixed and mingled for centuries along the ancient spice and silk trade routes of the Indian Ocean where Lanka is centrally placed.

Map from Arundathie abeysinghe’s article referred to below

 

 

 

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May 26, 2023 · 12:56 am

A Konkani Baila that Crosses the Indian Seas

This lively presentation was sent to me as a venture of “Batticaloa Burghers singing in three languages”. But digital commentary indicates that the words are (mostly?) Konkani … and raises questions as to where exactly this lively collective was located when they sang. SEE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=munAPKRQ0nk So, that means we are definitely in Thuppahi territory! Ole! Ole! Hai Hoyi! ………. Thuppahi. 

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November 24, 2022 · 6:31 pm

The Boers in Ceylon

A NOTE from Wikipedia:  “The Second Boer War (Afrikaans: Tweede Vryheidsoorlog, lit. ’Second Freedom War’, 11 October 1899–31 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, the Anglo–Boer War, or the South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer Republics (the South African Republic and the Orange Free State) over the Empire’s influence in Southern Africa from 1899 to 1902″ … with the collage below.

 

 

 

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November 11, 2022 · 6:12 pm

Sikh Troops as British Punishing Rods during the 1915 Riots

Joe Simpson, in Email Note responding to the Thuppahi Item https://thuppahis.com/2021/05/23/percy-colin-thome-and-the-composition-of-the-book-people-inbetween/

Most interesting, Michael. I’ve had the privilege of periodic correspondence with the estimable Ismeth Raheem in the past, and thanks to the kindness of Vancouver, BC-resident Ranil Bibile who agreed to be courier, once sent Ismeth a Giclée reproduction of a previously-unknown 1840s painting by Andrew Nicholl from his outbound voyage to Colombo, the original of which has been purchased by a British Columbia collector with whom I’d been in touch.
In regards to your attached bibliography, specifically the scholarly article on the 1915 communal riots that particularly affected the Galle-Tangalle area, while I was on VSO teaching at Richmond College (1973-74) some RCG colleagues and I were in Matara on our way to visit a rural jungle primary school in the Moneragala area, when we fell into conversation with an elderly local, who had been a fisherman all his working life [photo taken then].

 

 

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October 3, 2022 · 7:38 pm

Sustaining Cultural Performance Practices across the Indian Ocean

Shihan De Silva Jayasuriya et al

PREFACE to her new book entitled “Sustaining Support for Intangible Cultural Heritage” (ICH)

Sustaining Support for Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) continues the conversations on cultural heritage which commenced at a virtual conference held on August 3, 2020, at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. The conference was spurred by the screening of my film – “Indian Ocean Memories and African Migrants” – at the Social Scientists Association, Colombo. The interest shown by UNESCO Global Network Facilitators, Dr Bilinda Nandadeva and Dr Gamini Wijesuriya, who attended the screening, was a catalyst to convening the conference. The Covid-19 pandemic further exposed the significance of heritage and the vulnerability of intangible culture. The book is a call to value ICH and an inspiration for academics, researchers, stakeholders, civil society, cultural practitioners and policymakers to understand the threats to sustaining heritage.

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