Category Archives: Africans in Asia

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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Filed under Africans in Asia, British colonialism, British imperialism, centre-periphery relations, cricket for amity, cultural transmission, economic processes, ethnicity, governance, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, politIcal discourse, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes

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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