Michael Roberts, … This item was initially presented in my other [now dormant] website CRICKETIQUE in May 2014 as a form of requiem. Buddy Reid’s recent ‘memorial’ to DH prompts me to present this account again. It also provides fuller information on the assassination strike on Hema in Kandy which induced his family to flee from beloved Sri Lanka … albeit without any awareness that a bullet stub remained embedded within his body. This tale also indicates that Hema had been a significant influence in the flowering of Sangakkara’s cricketing skills. Continue reading
Category Archives: cultural transmission
‘Artificial Engineered’ Music in Memory of Professor Fred Bartholomeusz of Peradeniya University
Geethasiri Karunatillake, … from Adelaide, Australia
I have always been passionate about music, but I never had the opportunity to study music or the ability to sing. That’s why when I learned about the capabilities of Chat-GPT, I knew I had to give it a try.
Undoubtedly, Batho was the most popular professor at the Engineering Faculty at Peradeniya University in the 1950s to 60s. I vividly recall how he could captivate us with his lectures, simplifying even the most intricate concepts and recapitulating in the end. 
A Mind For One and All: Jayantha Dhanapala
Tissa Jayatilaka, in The Island, 4 June 2023, … with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
The splendid career and the many glittering prizes won by Jayantha Dhanapala is common knowledge and does not require reiteration here. Rather I wish to focus on the man himself in this tribute to an exceptional person whom I had the privilege of getting to know personally at the tail end of the 1980s – I had of course heard of Jayantha and his many accomplishments long before our first meeting. Having read a newspaper review of North-South Perspectives, an international affairs journal that I edited, which focused on the promotion of greater understanding between the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing’ world, Jayantha telephoned me to ask if we could meet. I readily agreed and thus began a friendship that lasted until his death a few days ago.
Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, human rights, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, patriotism, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, social justice, sri lankan society, theatre world, unusual people, world affairs
Deciphering Buddhism: The Correct Pathway
Ananda Abeysekara’s Academic Article: “On Rewriting Buddhism: Or, How Not to Write a History,” Religion and Society, vol. 13. 1(2022): 39-80.
ABSTRACT: Through a detailed reading of a recent study of medieval Buddhism and politics in Sri Lanka in conjunction with a number of other works, this article explores the troubling legacy of translating the historical questions of subjectivity into the modern language of ‘agency’, ‘autonomy’, ‘innovation’, and ‘creativity’. This legacy cannot easily be separated from the politics of white privilege in post-colonial studies of Buddhism and South Asian religion. The problem with trying to expose creativity, so pervasive in the studies of South Asian religion, is not merely a matter of anachronistic conceptualization of divergent historical forms of religious practice and subjectivity. It is that the very possibility of translating subjectivity into easily digestible aestheticized modes of being (e.g., creativity) is predicated on an uninterrogated assumption about the self-evidence of such concepts independent of temporal forms of power encountered in forms of life. Continue reading
Filed under ancient civilisations, art & allure bewitching, Buddhism, cultural transmission, education, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian traditions, landscape wondrous, life stories, meditations, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, religiosity, religious nationalism, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, tolerance, world events & processes
Estelle Fernando nee Roberts: Vale in Sadness & Fellowship
Michael Roberts
Estelle Barbara Roberts was born as the second child from the second bed of Thomas Webb Roberts (1881-1978) on the 2nd May 1929. She was brought up within the Fort of Galle and received her education at Southlands, Sacred Heart Convent and Richmond Colleges; but was then swept off her feet by an earnest young government servant, Charles Hubert Fernando, who played tennis at the Galle Gymkhana Club (where TW was a kind of institution and a regular).
Estelle standing on left at Sacred Heart Convent
Love Across All Language Barriers
An Item from Wikipedia sent by David Sansoni of Sydney
“Historia de un Amor” (Spanish for “the story of a love”) is a song about a man’s old love written by Panamanian songwriter Carlo
Filed under art & allure bewitching, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, ethnicity, female empowerment, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian religions, Indian traditions, landscape wondrous, life stories, performance, Portuguese in Indian Ocean, transport and communications, travelogue, unusual people
Caste & Politics in the Sri Lankan Tamil World
Robert Siddharthan Perinpanayagam, in Groundviews, 22 August 2011, where the title reads “Caste And Politics” …. An article that drew 19 comments including some responses from “Sid”… reproduced here with highlighting imposed by The Editor in circumstances where my friend “Sid” from Peradeniya days is no longer around to dispute matters … as he surely would have.
Over the years, the claims of the Tamil people for justice, equalty and dignity have been rejected with a variety of specious arguments. It is not necessary to go into these exercises here again. However, the latest attempt in this direction is to raise the issue of caste in Jaffna society. Former civil servants, who spent three or four years being de facto kings of the North, have sought to comment on this issue in many recent hero-stories that they have published in the newspapers. In these hero-stories they report not only how they defeated one departmental head or another or humiliated a hapless village headman, but how they vanquished the evil designs of the Tamils as well. Indeed everything seems to become grist to the mill of Tamil-bashing. Even a casual remark made in a cricket match is used by a famous historian to claim that the Tamils of Jaffna are cravenly caste-conscious. Off-the-cuff social commentators as well as the tribalist pundits in the newspapers have also got into this act. The implication of these commentaries is that the Sinhalese do not have the problem of castism and only Tamils do. One recent commentator is so ignorant of the political history of the island as to invoke Ponnambalam Ramanathan’s castism! It was indeed the fear of Karava ascendancy by the Goigamas that elevated Ramanathan to high stature by making him the representative of the “Educated Ceylonese” in the Legislative Council.
Filed under accountability, anti-racism, authoritarian regimes, caste issues, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, cultural transmission, discrimination, disparagement, economic processes, education, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian traditions, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power sharing, self-reflexivity, social justice, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, working class conditions, world events & processes
Studies of Caste in Sinhala Society over the Centuries
The presentation of an essay in the Sinhala language on “Caste in Sinhala Society”[1] in April 2017 within Thuppahi came to the attention of Thomas Fernando in UK recently. Tommy promptly took up the challenge and is now proceeding to address the article and topic. This is his NOTE to me: “however laborious it is to plough through the Sinhala text, I hope to have a good look at this article on caste in SL as I have not read a good description on this important topic which has a very significant impact on life even today in SL.”
Batgam kulayey nivasak
Filed under accountability, ancient civilisations, caste issues, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, cultural transmission, democratic measures, demography, discrimination, economic processes, education, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, legal issues, life stories, politIcal discourse, power politics, racist thinking, self-reflexivity, social justice, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, working class conditions, world events & processes
The CR&FC Rugby Side in 1965: A Classic Picture
Presented here courtesy of Dr Deepal Lecamvasam of STC, University of Ceylon & Adelaide
