In presenting an article on Duncan White’s achievement at the World Olympic Games held in London in August 1948, I limited my focus to the 1940s. Sachi Sri Kantha in Japan has often entered comments on Thuppahi items and on this occasion ventured a point-scoring set of remarks on this item. At times these comments have proceeded tangentially to topics straddling the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Item in Sunday Times,7 August 2022 …/ taken from AFP and sent to me by Jayantha Somasundaram of Canbera
It is no secret that these days Sri Lankans are trying all sorts of ways to leave the country whether legally or illegally as the economic crisis drags on. The latest is a group of nine Navy sailors who reportedly jumped ship in the US.
The 50-member crew was to join the world’s largest international naval exercise — RIMPAC 2022. Following the exercise, they were scheduled to organise return passage home in a new Sri Lankan Navy vessel, the former USCGC Douglas Munro, which was recently decommissioned and transferred to Sri Lanka under a foreign military aid agreement.
Australia’s Home Affairs Minister has travelled to Sri Lanka after hundreds of asylum seekers have been turned back in recent weeks. The country is struggling with its worst economic crisis in 70 years. Leading to shortages of food, medicine and fuel. And prompting fears of growing social unrest
Frances Mao, BBC News, Sydney 20 May 2022, where the title runs as “Australia election: Why is Australia’s parliament so white?”
Some of Australia’s MPs, pictured here, fail to reflect the country’s diversity, critics say
Australia is one of the most multicultural nations in the world, but it’s a different story in the country’s politics, where 96% of federal lawmakers are white. With this year’s election, political parties did have a window to slightly improve this. But they chose not to in most cases, critics say.
Josh Roose, in The Age, 16 January 2022, where the chosen title runs thus: “Right and left unite over Djokovic – and why they are both wrong”
It is easy to dislike Novak Djokovic. At the height of a pandemic that has claimed millions of lives globally, he has consistently refused to reveal his vaccination status, despite freely travelling the world for tennis tournaments, and has been pictured acting irresponsibly on numerous occasions.For many, he has become the embodiment of the adage that one rule applies for the wealthy and powerful and another for the rest of us.
Dennis B. McGilvray, reproducing an essay presented in April 1982 within Comparative Studies in Society and History 24 (2): 235-263 –– an article that is wide-ranging and draws on ethnographic work as well as historical manuscripts. Note that the highlighting and pictorial insertions are the work of The Editor, Thuppahi.
I: PROLOGUE
Historians and anthropologists in Sri Lanka have tended to migrate in opposite directions, but away from the multiethnic confusion of the port cities. Typically, the heterogeneous, semi-Westernized, postcolonial urban society of Colombo and the larger towns has been only a transit point on intellectual journeys outbound to European archives or inbound to “traditional culture.” This was certainly my viewpoint as I arrived “inbound” in Sri Lanka for my first anthropological fieldwork. I took only passing notice of the clerks of mixed European and Sri Lankan descent who sold me stationery supplies at Cargill’s and mosquito nets at Carvalho’s. These people are given the official designation of Burghers in the government census: they are the racially mixed descendants of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British personnel who occupied the island during four and a half centuries of colonial rule.
Rod Mickleburgh, in The Globe and Mail, 10 November 2021, where the title is “Chinese Canadian Veterans celebrated at Vancouver Museum”
When the Second World War ended, Ronald Lee did what so many other returning veterans did. He shed his uniform, took up civilian life, married, had kids and never talked about what he did during the war. Mr. Lee maintained his silence for 70 years. Beyond a few medals found in his underwear drawer long ago, his six kids knew almost nothing about his wartime experience. Finally, in his mid-90s, he agreed to be interviewed by Catherine Clement, curator of the Chinese Canadian Military Museum in Vancouver.
Ronald Lee’s wallet contained tattered photos of himself in uniform and with his commando comrades…. RONALD LEE FAMILY/CHINESE CANADIAN MILITARY MUSEUMContinue reading →
Michael Roberts ... presenting a refereed journal article from the year 2001** as a foundation for reflection and fresh pursuits because it addresses the work of Edward Said, a renowned social theorist-cum-political scientist.
Edward Said Leslie Gunawardena
Abstract: Disenchantment with the excesses of nationalist and ethnic claims in recent decades has directed the analysis of ethnicity presented in academic writings in recent decades. Ethnicity is seen as pernicious, “primordialist” and “essentialist.” Other scholars as well as nationalist spokespersons are castigated for reading the present into the past. This line of criticism has entered the scholarship on the Indian subcontinent and been extended to surveys of the literature on the pre-British and British periods of Sri Lankan history. Yet these critics themselves are governed by the either/or epistemology of 20th century rationalism. They are unable to decipher the worldview and the political ideology that organised the socio-political order of the Kingdom of Sihale, better known as the Kingdom of Kandy. Their bias is “presentist” and “modernist.” With little patience for historical puzzles, their readings of the pre-British period are simple-minded. For the most part they rely on the severely flawed interpretation presented in Leslie Gunawardana’s “People of the Lion.” This dependence marks their ignorance.
**presented in Ethnic Studies Report, Vol XIX/1, 2001 … ICES and kindly supplied by Iranga Silva
Kokilapathmapriya Nadesalingam (Priya) and Nadesalingam Murugappan (Nades)[1] are two Sri LankanTamils seeking asylum in Australia. The couple married in Australia and have two Australian-born children. Until their detention by Australian Border Force in March 2018, the family was resident in the central Queensland town of Biloela, and consequently referred to as the Biloela family by some media.[2][3] The cause of the couple and their children has been supported by some residents of Biloela as well as asylum-seeker advocates.[4]
