Category Archives: gender norms

September 14, 2025 · 9:10 pm

DOWNTON ABBEY calls it a Night !!

Michael Roberts

This epic and fascinating TV series serial has brought its curtains down and called it a night  [to alter the idiom]. My first  intimation of this event was in reading Ed Potten’s account in The Australian 13-14  September 2025 ….but  I cannot  access this news item because the !@#!$!!! paper demands money for web-access ….even  though  I receive the print-paper daily.

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EXTRA! EXTRA! Read all About It … in  Wikipedia = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downton_Abbey

Downton Abbey is  … {was] ….. a British historical drama television series set in the early 20th century, created and co-written by Julian Fellowes. It first aired in the United Kingdom on ITV on 26 September 2010 and in the United States on PBS, which supported its production as part of its Masterpiece Classic anthology, on 9 January 2011. The show ran for fifty-two episodes across six series, including five Christmas specials.

‘Downton Abbey’ Duo Talk Success And Controversy, But Some Questions Are Off Limits

Tom Branson and Lady Mary return  for the final Downton Abbey movie(Image: Rory Mulvey/Focus Features)

 

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August 1, 2025 · 8:38 pm

For Lankan Researchers: An Oral History Workshop

 

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This interactive workshop, led by experienced oral historian Gaya Fernando, will introduce participants to the principles, practices, and power of oral history. Tailored for researchers, journalists, documentary producers, and writers, it will explore how personal narratives and community voices can enrich social and political research.

 

The formal session concludes at 12:30 PM, but participants who are interested are welcome to stay on for an informal discussion with Gaya until 3:30 PM.

15th August 2025

 

9.30 AM onwards

 

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January 22, 2025 · 12:15 pm

Irawati Karwe: A Female Scholar Confronting Nazi Racism as well as the Wild

Cherylann Mollan, presenting an article entitled “India’s pioneering female anthropologist who challenged Nazi race theories” …..  BBC News Mumbai 19 January 2025

Irawati Karve’s writings about Indian culture and civilisation are ground-breaking.

Irawati Karve led a life that stood apart from those around her. Born in British-ruled India, and at a time when women didn’t have many rights or freedoms, Karve did the unthinkable: she pursued higher studies in a foreign country, became a college professor and India’s first female anthropologist.

She also married a man of her choosing, swam in a bathing suit, drove a scooter and even dared to defy a racist hypothesis of her doctorate supervisor – a famous German anthropologist named Eugen Fischer.

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November 13, 2024 · 8:20 pm

British Colonial Socio-Political Distinctions via Stace’s Revelation of Life in Galle, 1910 et seq

Michael Roberts

Walter Terence STACE was a British man born in Ireland in 1886 who entered the British colonial service after a university education and was assigned to Sri Lanka in 1910. He married a Burgher lady, MM Beven in 1928 – is second marriage this – and then resigned in 1932 and moved on to USA where he pursued a successful university teaching career in Philosophy. Following his retirement, he composed an autobiography in 1964 with the intriguing title FOOTPRINTS ON WATER.   

This work has been edited by Bernd Pflug with an excellent and readable “Critique” at the end of the autobiography and presented in Sri Lanka in a slim volume of 218 pages by the Perera Hussein Publishing House.

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October 31, 2024 · 7:51 pm

Addressing Audrey Maxwell’s Research on Cross-Cultural Marriages in England

Michael Roberts

My elder sister Audrey’s article on cross-cultural marriages & families in England via detailed interaction with several well-educated families in Oxford in the 1990s has been reproduced in TPS in the full … https://thuppahis.com/2024/10/28/not-all-issues-are-black-or-white-some-voices-from-the-offspring-of-cross-cultural-marriages/. It has the potential to inspire comments from British folk of varied backgrounds; and, hopefully, to promote studies in the today which could mark contrasts – or similarities – now some 20-30 years later.

Audrey in an acting role at Peradeniya Uni, mid-1950s ….  & at a church in Oxford in the 2010s

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August 12, 2024 · 3:43 pm

Polyandry, Hierarchy & Rumours Today in a ‘Traditional’ Kandyan Sinhala Village

Jayantha Perera, whose chosen title is “ekagei kaema (polyandry) – a way of life in the Kandyan highlands”  … in The Island, 11 August 2024 

Hingula is a small bazaar 60 miles from Colombo on the Colombo-Kandy Road. A narrow, tarred road starts from there, and a signboard says, ‘To Aluth Nuwara Devalayala.’ The logo of the Archaeological Department on the signboard indicates the devalaya (temple) is a state-protected archaeological site.

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June 20, 2024 · 4:36 pm

ITIHAS Launched …. and Spreads Its Wings

Go to …. https://itihas.lk/contact/    … Note that the presentation here is a re-cast selection by The Editor of Thuppahi who has also imposed his colourings on the text

Mission:  What we hope to achieve

Itihas aims to equip Sri Lankan youth with the ability to think critically about their past, present, and future. It specifically aims to debunk mythological understandings of history that afford to particular ethno-religious groups a sense of superiority or authenticity over others. Rather than acting as a gatekeeper of knowledge, Itihas seeks to empower future generations of students, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers to learn about, research, and make informed decisions on divisive issues such as conflict, discrimination and violence in a manner that advances a more inclusive Sri Lanka.

Photo by Tashiya De Mel

Itihas – Advancing history education reform in Sri Lanka

 

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March 26, 2024 · 12:40 pm

An Essential Service …. By Women …. For Women

Editorial in DAILY NEWS,  26 March 2024, where the title reads  “A Commendable Step”

No one can go against Mother Nature. Women have been created with a womb in order to perpetuate the human race. Women can prevent child birth if they wish but they cannot prevent menstruation. Menstruation can only be delayed for a short time for medical reasons and some other essential reasons with Consultants’ guidance and prescribed medications.

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July 9, 2023 · 7:44 pm

Islamic Women’s Veils: Some Desultory Thoughts

 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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March 13, 2023 · 2:32 am

Confronting Transgender Issues in Sri Lanka

Michael Patrick O’Leary, in The Island, 12 March 2023, where the title reads  “Time to Think Part One”

Transgender Issues in Sri Lanka:

Sri Lanka’s first president, JR Jayewardene, famously boasted that the newly-created executive presidency gave him the power, “to do anything, except make a man a woman, or a woman a man”. Today, there is much conflict in many countries about making a man a woman or a woman a man. The issue recently contributed to the downfall of Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, who had seemed unassailable. In Ireland, the government is under attack because the Equalities Minister, Roderic O’Gorman, has been siphoning money off to trans activist groups that had been earmarked for the Traveller and Roma communities, migrant integration and redress for children who had been abused by the state and the church. There are some who believe that if a man says he is woman – “self-identifies” as a woman – then he is, indeed, a woman. Wishing makes it so. Those who dispute this are labeled “transphobic” and are brutally attacked in the trans wars. JK Rowling has been vilified simply for saying a man cannot be a woman.

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