Category Archives: land policies

September 14, 2025 · 11:50 am

Tony Peries: First Lankan Director of George Steuarts

Being  CHAPTER ELEVEN of The George Steuart Story  1835-1985 ++

THE FIRST SRI LANKAN CHAIRMAN

When a young Sri Lankan walked into the office of George Steuart on February 1, 1953, no one is likely to have imagined that he would become not only the first Sri Lankan Chairman of what was then essentially a British firm, but also the youngest man to hold that important office.

The young man, whose name was John Francis Anthony Paul Peries, and was generally known as Tony Peries, had been edu cated at St. Joseph’s College, Colombo, and had applied for a post as a trainee Tea Taster. His father, ·W. Peries, a Director of Mackwoods, was held in the highest esteem in agency circles.

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August 5, 2025 · 7:21 pm

Global Economics & Sri Lanka over the Recent Centuries

Sunil Bastian: “Sri Lankan state in a changing global context”  … a 2025 article presented  here with highlights  imposed by The Editor,  Thuppahi.**

This short article emphasises the need to analyse the Sri Lankan state by placing it in the global context. This means not confining our minds within the borders of the Sri Lankan state. To emphasise this point I would like to point out that the formation of the Sri Lankan state itself was a product of a global phenomenon – British colonialism (see Bastian Sunil (2025) State formation and Conflicts in Sri Lanka. London: Bloomsbury Academic for an analysis of Sri Lankan state formation).

Under British colonialism the entire geographic space of the island was covered by a single unit of territorial power. To administer the territory, the island was divided into spatial units using the directions of a compass. In this way cartography became an instrument of British colonialism. Other techniques of state formation were establishing an administrative structure, a judicial system, a system to collect taxes, regular census and the coercive power of the state to cover the entire island.

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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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July 10, 2025 · 9:21 pm

Professor Sinnappah Arasaratnam: Historian Outstanding

Michael Roberts

Sinnappah Arasaratnam was one of my inspirational teachers in History at Peradeniya University in the late 1950s. In chancing upon a printed copy of one of his articles — entitled “Sri Lanka’s Tamils under Colonial Rule,” (date ??), I have been inspired to remind new generations, as well as older ones. of his contributions to scholarship in Lanka, Malaysia/Singapore and Australia.

It was to my benefit that I was able to interact with him on occasions after he moved to Malaysia and Australia. Alas, the details of these exchanges have not taken root in my fading memory.

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June 22, 2025 · 7:02 am

Territorial Claims: First Settlers & Their Primacy

Michael Roberts, presenting an article published in 2005 as a pamphlet by the ICES, Colombo with this title “The First Settlers and Their Claim to Ownership of Terrain/State. A Comparative Excursion” … an essay originally presented in Abdul Rahman Embong, Rethinking Ethnicity and Nation Building: Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Fiji in Comparative Perspective, Panbrit UKM, Bangi, Malaysia, (c. 2003) which was then reprinted as a booklet by ICES, Colombo in 2005 – see ISBN 955-580-099-5 I.

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April 6, 2025 · 1:10 am

Fermenting Divisions, Favouring the Mighty … in the North & the East of Lanka

Tisaranee Gunasekara in Financial Times 2 April 2025 …. where the title reads “Cauldron-stirring time, again?” … while the highlighting is the work of The Editor, Thuppahi [with a caveat noted at the end of this presentation]

 “Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble…

For a charm of powerful trouble,

Like a hell-broth, boil and bubble.” – Shakespeare in Macbeth

In the run up to the 2019 Presidential election, there was Muhudu Maha Viharaya. While Candidate Gotabaya, reassuring in his moderate mask, did the kovil and mosque rounds, his official and unofficial surrogates busied themselves stirring the extremist cauldron. In the Pottuvil Muhudu Maha Viharaya, Muslim extremists are destroying statues depicting the Buddha’s eighty great disciples, social media posts claimed. These statues, built by the Rajapaksa administration in 2013, are being razed to the ground under the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration in 2019. If that Government is re-elected, the same horrendous fate will befall the Samadhi statue, the Tholuwila statue and the statues in Gal Viharaya.

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April 5, 2025 · 7:33 pm

Introducing A Cutting Edge Journal: SOUTH ASIA

Michael Roberts

SOUTH ASIA has been a form of Australian exploration — in the plural form of manifold journeys and investigations — in South Asia for several decades. I was a small cog in this cluster of activities some 20 years back; but, alas, fell away. Some old partners in arms are still part of the Editorial Advisory Board; but its a fresh and bright team that is bringing the Indian subcontinent into the Aussie arena. Sri Lankan scholars and readers need to take note of this work and chip in with their own ‘commentary’ — whether in article form or as avid readers.

Check https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/csas20 …. AND/OR write to ……….. OR ……………………….. priya.chacko@adelaide.edu.au

Cover image for South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Volume 47, Issue 6 Continue reading →

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March 26, 2025 · 10:05 pm

An Epitaph for Gananath Obeyesekere

Chandra R. De Silva, … with highlighting emphasis added by The Editor, Thuppahi

I write to add a few words to the outpouring of appreciations of Gananath Obeyesekere, a scholar whose research in anthropology, religion, myth, and cultural practices  has won him accolades across the world. I will not comment on the advances in knowledge and the discussions he provoked by his many scholarly works of which among the best known are Land Tenure in Village Ceylon, The Cult of the Goddess Pattini, Buddhism Transformed (co-author), The Work of Culture, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific, and The Doomed King. There has been much written on this world renowned scholar, and there will undoubtedly be more comments by experts in the years to come.

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December 14, 2024 · 12:14 am

Sri Lanka’s Tea Plantation Industry As Featured in Thuppahi aka TPS

A PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

https://thuppahis.com/2017/02/18/james-taylor-and-the-ceylon-tea-industry/

https://thuppahis.com//2017/02/21/the-tea-business-in-ceylon-and-the-life-and-times-of-tony-peries/

https://thuppahis.com/2017/07/18/ceylon-tea-and-its-surrounds-richard-simons-tour-de-force/

 

 

 

 

 

 

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November 20, 2024 · 9:35 pm

Gerald Peiris: A Lifetime of Wide-Ranging Research & Service

These are but some of his publications over a career spanning the 1950s to 2020s — with eyesight deterioration blighting his last platform of life. No more table tennis, but much to remember. So, here. let me doff my cap to thee, Gerry Machang, …. Mike

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