Category Archives: anti-racism

Arrowheads directed at AUSTRALIA DAY…..Today

Item in THE ADVERTISER Newspaper in Adelaide … web-reference gone walkabout … But see ………………………… https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/cricket/cricket-australia-boss-nick-hockley-left-speechless-after-grilling-from-radio-host/news-story/199aa83d0e60b1da470ce4721b05b861

The issue that’s reaching boiling point today is the Australia Day debate. Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins has added his voice to calls to change the date from January 26:

“My personal opinion 

INSERTION: photos of typical Australia Day displays in Sydney in 2023 as  concurrent ceremnies occurred in all cities, town and villages

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Reviewing Chatterjee’s Book on Anti-Muslim Riots in Gujarat in 2002

Nishkula Suntharalingam, presenting a book review in Asian Affairs 2023  …..  https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raaf20 …. of the book by Moyukh Chatterjee. Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities. Duke University Press, Durham, 2023. pp. 166. Notes. Bibliog. Index. Ackmts. Hb. $94.95. ISBN 9781478017028. Sb. ………….$24.95. ISBN 9781478019664

Moyukh Chatterjee was an eyewitness to the aftermath of the 2002 riots in the west Indian state of Gujarat; three days of communal violence during which Hindu mobs attacked Muslims, their businesses and homes, leaving over a thousand people dead. This book focuses on how and why, in multi-ethnic, democratic states like India, targeted violence and anti-minority politics persist. In doing so, the author suggests an alternate approach to understanding violence against minorities while raising disquieting questions about the formation of modern states and the ways that ideas of “minorities” and “majorities” are produced and reproduced.

401733 08: Indian state police patrol the streets of Ahmadabad, India after rioting between Muslims and Hindus March 1, 2002 in Ahmadabad, India, two days after a Muslim mob attacked a train, killing 58 people in the Indian state of Gujarat. Indian troops arrived in the riot-torn western state of Gujarat but were unable to quell the Hindu-Muslim violence that has claimed the lives of 251 people. (Photo by Ami Vitale/Getty Images)

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People Inbetween: Ethnic & Class Prejudices in British Ceylon

Michael Roberts …. presenting a talk which he delivered at the National Trust in Colombo in June 2018  following a brief to the effect that he should present motifs from the book People Inbetween. The Burghers and the Middle Class in the Transformations within Sri Lanka, 1790-1960s, (Ratmalana, Sarvodaya Book Publishing Services, 1989) and more specifically its first chapter viz. “Pejorative Phrases: The Anti-colonial Response and Sinhala Perceptions of the Self through Images of the Burghers.

Many think People Inbetween is a history of the Burghers. Not so. It is multi-faceted. It describes (a) the rise of the middle class in British times, an influential force within which the Burghers were a critical element and a vanguard in the questioning of British rule; (b) the initial strands in the development of Ceylonese nationalism and (c) the development of Colombo into a metropolitan hub that became the island’s hegemonic centre.

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Pro-Palestinian Rallies on US Campuses

Daniel Arkin, in NBC News,  26 October 2023  where the title runs thus: “Israel-Hamas war continues to roil American colleges, sparking walkouts”

The war has raised the temperature on some campuses, giving rise to social environments that mirror the country’s similarly polarized politics. Dozens of U.S. colleges and universities are increasingly riven by tensions over the war between Israel and Hamas, offering a window into how a rising generation perceives the conflict in the Middle East and the U.S. government’s foreign policy in the region.

                    Pro-Palestinian demonstrators protest at Columbia University in New York on Oct. 12… Yuki Iwamura / AP  

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The Renewal of Fighting over Palestine on 7th October: How Come?

Camel Rider, responding to a general inquiry raised by Thuppahi in his Email Circuit

With regard to the mystery of why Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, I think the reason goes like this. The issue of a Palestinian state has been fading for many years due US foreign policy and the Abraham Accords sought to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states. If left unchecked, that process would have seen the death of Palestine, even among Arab states. Hamas gained an extraordinary strategic victory on October 7th in the sense that the issue of a Palestinian state is back on the table, the Abraham Accords are in tatters, and the majority of the world is demanding a solution.

Journalists take cover behind cars as Israeli soldiers take position during clashes with Palestinian fighters near the Gevim Kibbutz, close to the border with Gaza.

 

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Khawaja ‘cartooned’ by Johannes Leak

Johannes Leak is one of the cartoonists for The AUSTRALIAN newspaper. To receive his attention in whatever form is to reach the mountainearing heights of political commentary. Usman Khwaja is one of the rare sportsman to receive this áccolade’. Joining Australia’s Prime Minister [on Albanese] as a target is reach the cumulous clouds of public prominence.

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Debating the Value of Tangential Historical Forays

Michael Roberts

 A FEW DAYS BACK, on 28th November 2023, I circulated this item among Lankan aficianado…. [ Let me add, here, that I was prompted to do this by the burgeoning world debate on the Palestinian-Israeli War that has been raging since August]. ………………………………………………………………….. https://thuppahis.com/2014/11/18/cartographic-photographic and -illustrations-in-support-of-the-memorandum-analysing-the-war-in-sri-lanka-and-propaganda

ROHANTHA GUNARATNA in Canada responded in critical fashion. …. So I circulated his Memo to some personnel  with this NOTE: “I encourage responses [to his Memo] from interested personnel – here, quite deliberately, reaching out beyond Lankans to Indians and Brits familiar with the Lankan scene in that period past.”

 

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High-Profile Burghers & Other Exotic Personnel in Olde Ceylon

Rodney Vandergert, whose title reads thus: “Random Musings of A Senile Mind,”. an article which appeared on web on 4th March 2006 at https://kermeey.blogspot.com/2006/03/random-musings-of-senile-mind.html …… reproduced with selective highlights in this version … & brought to my attention by Charles Schokman of Australia

“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven” Wordsworth: Preludes

In the Nineteen Forties and early Fifties, Bambalawatte was the centre of the universe. It was where all the meaningful action took place and where the principal actors were mainly Burghers and a group of expatriates drawn from half a dozen nationalities.

This was brought most forcibly to my mind after reading the recent obituaries which appeared in the local press – one to Zoe Jayatilleke by Tita Nathanielsz; the other to David Gladwin Loos , C.C.S.. by Bradman Weerakoon.                                                             

Rodney Jonklaas, Mike wilson  & Arthur c. Clarke at seaside in Ceylon 1950s

 

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Just DESSERTS for India at Cricket World Cup …. & Modi’s Curtness

Tunku Varadarajan, in The Wire, 20 November 2023  where the title reads thus: “Cricket Mata Ki Jai: Jingoism Lost in Ahmedabad on Sunday” ... while highlights in blue have been imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

 

That India lost in the final was karmic payback for the BCCI’s sins against the game, and also for the Ahmedabad crowd’s unwillingness to be sporting and civilised.

 Prime Minister Narendra Modi walking away from Pat Cummins after handing him the trophy. Photo: Screengrab from video Tunku Varadarajan

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The Humanitarian Social Commitment of Lakshman Wickremesinghe

Professor Rajiva Wijesinha, item taken from Daily News, 24 October 2023, ….. with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

 Bishop Lakshman Wickremesinghe died on October 23 forty years ago. He was my uncle, and I had a special affinity with him with regard to both intellect and emotions. When I came back from Oxford, where he had studied a couple of decades before me, he was the family member who was most supportive of my resignation on the issue of the deprivation of Mrs. Bandaranaike’s Civic Rights, for unlike most members of the elite he understood early on what that meant for the future of democracy, a blight that has never left us since it was followed by a premature Presidential election, the ghastly referendum, and then the attacks first on Supreme Court Judges and then on Tamils.

one moment during Black July 1983

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