Category Archives: ethnicity

May 20, 2022 · 7:41 pm

Full Spectrum Dominance enmeshing Sri Lanka in USA’s Web?

Dr. Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, in LankaWeb, 19 May 2022, where the title reads  “Masks of democracy and energy geopolitics: Is Full Spectrum Dominance the endgame?”  ….. with highlighting beng the intervention of The Editor, Thuppahi

“For the faction that controls the Pentagon, the military industry and the oil industry, the Cold War never ended. It went on ‘below the radar’ creating a global network of bases and conflicts to advance their long-term goal of Full Spectrum Dominance, the total control of the planet: land, sea, air, space, outer space and cyberspace. Their methods included control of propaganda, use of NGOs for regime change, Color Revolutions to advance NATO east, and a vast array of psychological and economic warfare techniques, a Revolution in Military Affairs as they termed it. The events of September 11, 2001 would allow an American President to declare a war on an enemy who was everywhere and nowhere, who justified a Patriot Act that destroyed that very freedom in the name of the new worldwide War on Terror. “ ……. William Engdahl in Full Spectrum Dominance; Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order

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May 20, 2022 · 1:34 am

Gerd von Dincklage: Snorkeller & Traveller Extraordinary

Michael Roberts

Gerd von Dincklage-Schulenburg seems to have been a world traveller and adventurer with daring do.  Of German stock he was in Ceylon in the 1950s  and cut quite a figure in Royal College and at the Kinross Swimming Club at Wellawatte beach according to Hugh Karunanayake  (a Royalist now living in Melburne) who had this to osay: “He cut quite a figure with his long hair and riding his motorbike bare bodied through the streets of Colombo.  He lived somewhere near Flower Road and attended Royal College for a couple of years.”

What is more, von Dinklage and Hugh Stewart were “were the first to introduce  snorkelling and spear fishing into Sri Lanka. I think their base was the Kinross Swimming Club in Wellawatte” according to my niece Barbara Webster nee Stewart (of Perth now). Hugh, certainly, stoked my interest in snorkelling around Galle fort.

Be that as it may, we are fortunate that Barbara was able to supply a photograph, a faded one, of the two young adventurers at Kucheveli when the Stewart family were on holiday there.

Barbara adds: “It was taken when the family were holidaying at Kuchevali. The two men were very good friends, excellent swimmers and adventurers. ”

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May 19, 2022 · 11:55 am

Full Frontal: Confronting Diaspora Tamil Canards in Canada

Legal fund for fighting against Bill 104 TGEWA

https://www.gofundme.com/f/legal-fund-for-fighting-against-bill-104Sri Lankan Canadian Action Coalition is organizing this fundraiser.

Campaign to repeal Tamil Genocide Education Week Act (TGEWA), for the sake of all Sri Lankans

Dear Friends,
The Ontario provincial government of Canada passed a law on May the 6th to educate all Ontarians on a Tamil Genocide in Sri Lanka. The bill 104 that was passed is titled Tamil Genocide Education Week Act (TGEWA). Now, the schools in Ontario have no choice but to teach Tamil Genocide in Sri Lanka as a curriculum element, especially during the week ending May the 18th, every year. This is a myth propagated by the Pro-LTTE Tamil diaspora, which despite not having a single shred of solid evidence keeps on repeating a lie, hoping that it would be established as fact.


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May 16, 2022 · 8:39 pm

Marriage Prejudices in Ceylon in Decades Past

A Well-travelled Sinhala Octogenarian**

Hi Michael, I am not sure whether people despised persons of mixed race. I really don’t think so by my own experience. However, when it came to marriage, it was an entirely different matter.

In my growing years I have heard the term Thuppahi, but I thought it
referred to low caste people, not to persons of mixed race. But what was apparent to me is that they, the people in the 1940’s and 50s’and even 60’s, did not permit mixed marriages. This was taboo.

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May 14, 2022 · 1:39 am

Alagu Subramaniam ….The Unfolding of a Ceylonese Author

Premila Thurairatnam,  an essay that will appear in THE CEYLANKAN of May 2022 ….. with highlghting imposed by the Editor, Thuppahi

Further to my article in the November 2020 issue of The CEYLANKAN  entitled The Extraordinary Alagu Subramaniam, I present the findings from my research into how this short story writer formulated some of his stories almost a century ago.  He was commended in the Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English as an exemplar of professionalism in the short story and that he wrote fiction of merit1. So, I think my effort on his work is worthwhile.

Alagu in 1947 aged 37 when he returned to Ceylon from England

 

 

 

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May 13, 2022 · 1:10 am

A Sri Lankan Arthur C. Clarke: Nigel Kerner

Michael Roberts

Arthur C. Clarke came out to Ceylon in the 1950s and went adventuring in the jungles and seas of the island with the Brit, Mike Wilson and a local Burgher named  Rodney Jonklaas. He took to the island and its peoples – aided no doubt by its easy-going lifestyle and the widespread scope for homosexual relations. He settled down in Colombo and became a member of the Otters Club where he could swim and indulge in table tennis. His commitment to the island was such that he deployed his international links to ensure that a satellite was placed in the skies to service Sri Lanka among its many capacities.

 

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May 11, 2022 · 1:00 pm

Nigel Kerner: An Unique Note on Web well before he passed away

Studied at Saint Aloysius College during 1950/1960s.

Nigel Kerner is an author and freelance journalist. He was born in Sri Lanka, his mother from a British planting family and his father an officer in the British Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm.

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May 11, 2022 · 1:24 am

Introducing the Ceylon National Congress: Its Agitation & Its Context

Michael Roberts

The four-volume edition of DOCUMENTS OF THE CEYLON NATIONAL CONGRESS was presented by the Department of National Archives in 1977 and has been out of stock for some time now.

Haris De Silva — Deputy Director, DNA in the 1970s

Volume ONE contains a book within a book written by me and entitled ELITES, NATIONALISMS and the NATIONALIST MOVEMENT IN BRITISH CEYLON – in seven chapters and running to ccxxii pages.

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May 6, 2022 · 4:03 pm

Reviewing the Past with KP …. Pirapaharan’s Best Man & Organisational Genius

Sri Lanka Guardian interview with KP, 4 June 2021, where the title runs thus “Selvarasa Pathmanathan alias KP speaks after years of silence”

The story of a man who transformed his life to shelter and educate hundreds of kids affected during armed conflict and due to social disparity in Sri Lanka. He is widely known as KP. Selvarasa Pathmanathan is now a social activist and founded the North-East Rehabilitation and Development Organization

When the world’s one-time most wanted man is given the chance to speak, what does he say? When he is given the chance to walk freely, where does he go? When he is given time and freedom, what does he do?

 KP in Kilinochchi ( Pic by Lakshman Dias for Lanka Courier) 

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April 30, 2022 · 6:40 pm

Nationalisms in Ceylon: Origins, Stimulants and Ingredients

Michael Roberts, … reproducing Chapter III in Volume I of Documents of the Ceylon National Congress and Nationalist Politics in Ceylon, 1929-1950, Vol I, 1977, Department of National Archives, 1977 , pp. lxviii–lxxviii **

While the political activists of the first half of the twentieth century were drawn from both the national and the local elites, the political leadership (at significant island-wide levels) was largely composed of individuals who could be ranked among the national elite. As indicated earlier, the national elite was a small segment of the Ceylonese population. Its levels of wealth, power and status, its lifestyle, and its value-system marked it off from the rest of the population.

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