Category Archives: electoral structures

Sinhalese & Tamils Locked in Prejudice?

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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Reflections on Eustace Rulach’s Satire of January 1985

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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Remembering Lakshman Kadirgamar: Sri Lanka First

DBS Jeyaraj, inDaily Telegraph,16 August 2023 .. where the title reads Lakshman Kadirgamar’s Jaffna Tamil Christian heritage”

Lakshman Kadirgamar’s 18th death anniversary was observed last Saturday. The former foreign minister fell victim to a Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) sniper in Colombo on 12 August 2005. Kadirgamar was one who defined himself first and foremost as a Sri Lankan. This endeared Kadirgamar to a very large number of Sri Lankans. However the fact remains that he was by ethnicity a Tamil and a Christian by religion. His parents hailed from Jaffna. This article focuses on Lakshman Kadirgamar’s Jaffna Tamil Christian heritage.

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David Pocock: From Rugby Scrums to Parliamentary ‘Scrummaging’

Christine Middap in The Weekend Australian, 15/16 April 2023, where the title is “Pocock’s Progress”

He tries to start the day with some quiet contemplation.

David Pocock in the Senate..Pix by Martin Ollman

Pocock with a redneck rock wallaby , …. Pix by Rohan Thomson

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Revisiting FIRE & STORM

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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For Reflection: Sir John Kotelawala’s Speech at STC Prizegiving in 1954

Mt. Lavinia 1954 Prize Giving-Address by the Right Honourable Sir John Kotelawala, K.B.E., M.P. — with thanks to Harry De Sayrah of Sydney, who added this little preface “When politicians were literate and articulate …………………..” with a few highlights and an arbitrary  selection of photographs inserted by The Editor, Thuppahi 

1954  PRIZE  GIVING.  Presided  by  The  Warden, Canon  R.S.de Saram, MA , OBE.,St. Thomas’  College,  Mt. Lavinia. ……………. *Prime Minister of Ceylon, at the Distribution of Prizes,* …………. *S. Thomas’ College, Mt. Lavinia, Saturday, 31 st July,1954*

When I played for Royal against S. Thomas’ many years ago my intention, which was shared by my team-mates, was to give the Thomians a good drubbing, and, if that was not possible, at least to give them a test of endurance. Much as I value the opportunity which I now have of presiding at your Prize Distribution, I shall endeavour to do neither this afternoon. I mist congratulate the Warden on his Report, which illustrates what opportunities schools like S. Thomas’ have of continuing to play a leading part in the training of our youth and the moulding of their character.

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People Inbetween: Ethnic & Class Prejudices in British Ceylon

Michael RobertsContent of His Talk on this topic at the National Trust in Colombo in June 2018 

The National Trust’s brief was for me to 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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The Marga Institute: Debating Sri Lanka’s Way Forward …. From Way Back

 Uditha Devapriya, in The Island, 10 March 2023, where the title reads “A visit to Marga” …. and where the highlighting embodies editorial intervention by Thuppahi

 Sri Lanka’s oldest development think-tank, Marga Institute was formed in 1972, at a time of deep social unrest.

“The ideological direction of the journal will be radical in that it will unremittingly question the values and systems that hinder development. It stands for an equitable and humane social order which will eradicate social and economic privilege and which will leave no room for the concentration and arbitrary exercise of power in any form.” ………. “About Marga”, Marga Journal, Volume I, 1971

photo by Uthpala

A random jaunt in Borella took me and my research assistant to Marga Institute, in my old hometown at Kotte. Sri Lanka’s oldest development think-tank — and Sri Lanka’s oldest such institution — Marga was formed in 1972 to promote and facilitate research into the island’s socioeconomic problems. That its founding coincided with the first JVP insurrection is not fortuitous: as Gamini Samaranayake would point out, the insurrection proved for the first time that an armed group could threaten the State. Among other commentators, Gamini Keerawella, Gananath Obeyesekere, Fred Halliday, and Hector Abhayavardhana grappled with the JVP’s origins, what it was doing, and where it intended to go. It was in the midst of these often-fiery debates and discussions that Marga came to be. This essay is an attempt at framing and understanding these debates, and how Marga emerged from them.

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Reviewing Horowitz’s Analysis of the Aborted Coup D’etat of January 1962

Michael Roberts, presenting his review article on the study of the abortive 1962 coup plot by elements in the Sri Lanka officer corps by Donald Horowitz: namely, Coup Theories and Officers’ Motives. Sri Lanka in Comparative Perspective, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. This essay was entitled “Brown Sahibs in Universal Suits” and went through a refereeing process and appeared in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 1983 vol 6, pp. 62-77 …………… while the pdf version was converted/retyped for me by Nadeeka Pathuwaaratchchi in the Colombo metropolitan area.

The year 1956 is rightly regarded as a major junction in Sri Lankan history. At the general elections that year, a coalition of parties known as the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (MEP), in which the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led by S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike was the major partner, achieved a landslide victory. This victory marked a populist upsurge of the vernacular educated and under-privileged mass of the population against the privileged few- a minority which was regarded as being both Westernised and conservative. In particular, the SLFP saw itself as the vanguard and instrument’ of “the common people of [the] country, the rural people” – that is to say, the rural Buddhist Sinhalese-speakıng masses.[1] Interlaced with this movement against privilege was a virulent expression of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism. Its demand for a rapid switchover to Sinhala as the language of administration was at once a symbolic statement and an instrumental blow against the old structures of discrimination.[2]

 Mrs B and Felix Dias Bandaranaike                                                                                                                                            

 

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From The Eyes of a 103-Year Old Sri Lankan: 75th Year of Independence!

DL Sirimanne from Kohuwela has reached his century and proceeded another three years beyond. From the vantage of age, he is quite scathing in his concluding summary …. in the Sunday Observer 22 January 2023 … where the title is A bit of Ceylon History. Pass it on to you children”

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