Michael Roberts
I have recently presented the list of items placed in this site during April 2019 immediately after the shocking events and now commence to present the itmes that appeared in May 2019. I can hardly claim to have provided a comprehensive coverage, but readers will find a wide variety of personnel from different ethnic groups within this list. That it should evoke such wide interest is not surprising: it was a kind of 9/11 in Sri Lankan and Indian Ocean history.
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Michael Roberts
An interesting chat with Mark LaBrooy in Melbourne on the phoe today induced me to re-visit my old SIGNATURE PIECE on “The Sinhala Mindset” in my Thuppahi site ….. Some of the commentary is as enlightening today as refreshing. That inserted by Jane Russell on 1 March 2012 and Chandre Dharmawardena’s response should continue to stimulate our thinking TODAY.
The problems of YESTERDAY still persist today.
Note that Jane is an Oxford graduate who secured her Ph.D in History at Peradeniya under KM de Silva’s supervision in Peradeniya in the 1970s. She has lived for lengthy spells in Sri Lanka since then because of her deep commitment to individuals and places within the land.
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Michael Roberts
On the 27th of January 1985 The lsland newspaper presented a cartoon sketch of a lion being confronted by a cockroach possessing the same physical scale as the lion under the caption “Hoisting the Flag for Lansi Eelam.” The lion denoted the Sinhala people, that is, the Sinhala nation in all its deep history and majesty. The cockroach signified the Burgher people of Sri Lanka, namely the “lansi.” The cartoon was supported by a letter attributed to a “Sharm De Alwis.”
Voila! So, it has come, but sooner than I expected: the call for a unified Lansieelam.
When I anticipated such a move I did tell a friend that were I the President I’d give the Burghers the Bambalapitiya Flats with the sea frontage thrown in for good measure. They would then be free to harness their intrinsic but long-forgotten skills in reclaiming the sea and build derricks to Mozambique or even Rotterdam.
But what bugged me was when my friend took me at my word and produced the next day the visual of the Lansieelam map. Not that I would have any objections to the apt depiction of the cockroach but that the pest had assumed the same proportions of the Sinhala Lion.
My friend re-assures me that what she has in mind is not a separate state but an isolated plot fully integrated with the Sinhala state and the cockroach, large as it now is, gives ample muscle aid to the Lion to combat other opposing factors.
Sharm de Alwis, 82/1, Kandy Road,, Kiribathgoda
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PK Balachandran in Email Note to Roberts, late July 2023, … with highlighting being my imposition
The RSS has begun exploiting the Tamil issue to spread its Hindutwa ideology. The idea is to win over the Lankan Tamils to its side by discrediting the secular Tamil identity in SL. None of the speakers listed has any knowledge of the Lankan Tamil issue. Tamil Nadu BJP leader K.Annamalai has already visited Sri Lanka and is trying to put up an RSS-BJP unit here. Very dangerous development. The Sri Lankan government should make certain that Sarath Weerasekara and the monks don’t do anything anti-Hindu. It is sad that this ís happening when India-Lankan relations are improving thanks to the correct policies of Modi and Ranil. Continue reading
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Michael Roberts
The attacks on Tamils living and/or working in the southern and central parts of island Sri Lanka by elements of the Sinhala population were indefensible, horrible and disastrous for the country. It is not adequate to depict them as “riots.” They constituted a “pogrom” – with all the pejorative colourings attached to that concept.[1]
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Michael Roberts
On re-reading an entry in Thuppahi on the Burqa with two striking illustrations that contrasted
X …..a photograph of a Western woman in a see-through net dress walking stark naked in a busy street ….. WITH …
Y …. Illustrations of the various types of veiled Islamic women, ……
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Rob Harris & Tyrone Francis, in SkyNews 27 June 2023, where the title reads “English cricket condemned as racist, sexist and classist in damning new report“
A Report by the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket says racism is “entrenched” in English cricket; women are marginalised and there is no focus on addressing class barriers; more than 4,000 provided evidence.
Michael Roberts
In re-visiting an assortment of historical episodes in Sri Lanka’s past in unsytematic fashion I have been led to Tarzie Vittachi’s Emergençy ’58 (published in 1958) by Sugath Kulatunga’s detailed and invaluable recounting of his experiences as a government official in Polonnaruwa in the 1950s (an item still being processed).
While Vittachi was an experienced journalist, we cannot take every ‘fact’ that he presents as indubitable. However, this pointer towards his slim volume should, hopefully, bring new generations of Sri Lankans and outside observers into reflections on the consequences of the political currents unleashed in the general election in 1956 — notably the upsurge of the underprivileged classes and the demand for Sinhala Only.
This focus, however, should not promote currents of denunciation which throw the baby out with the bathwater. The inequalities of the pre-existing dispensation must be clinically drawn out as well.
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Uditha Devapriya, whose chosen title was “Martin Wickramasinghe and A. G. Fraser.”
On 7 February 1971, Trinity College, Kandy held its 99th annual Prize Giving. Presided by the then Anglican Bishop of Kurunegala, Lakshman Wickremesinghe, the ceremony featured Martin Wickramasinghe as its Chief Guest. By this point Wickramasinghe had established himself as Sri Lanka’s leading literary figure. A grand old man of 80, he was now writing on a whole range of topics outside culture and literature. His essays addressed some of the more compelling socio-political issues of the day, including youth unrest. His speech at the Prize Giving dwelt on these issues and reflected his concerns.
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Michael Roberts
In presenting a Zoom Lecture relating to the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka in April 2021 for Dr. Geethika Dharmasinghe’s class at Colgate University in USA a month or so back, I deplyed the work that went into one of books: that entitled FIRE & STORM.
I now atempt to schock people around the world with pictorial illustrations of some — note “Some” (with all its partialities) — photographs of the political and Eelam War scenarios in Sri Lanka displayed in Fire & Storm.
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thuppahi
