SEE …. LISTEN …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2e1xOcGpDc
Category Archives: land policies
Port City Colombo 2014-2040 Clarified
Filed under accountability, centre-periphery relations, China and Chinese influences, economic processes, energy resources, environmental degradation, Indian Ocean politics, land policies, landscape wondrous, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power politics, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, transport and communications, travelogue, truth as casualty of war, world events & processes
Bracegirdle and the Early LSSP in Anti-Colonial Thrusts
Vinod Moonesinghe, courtesy of Roar, 21 May 2017, where the title reads “Bracegirdle: The Young Anglo-Australian Behind Sri Lanka’s Independence Struggle”
After the Matale Revolt of 1848, the independence struggle in Sri Lanka was quiescent until the 1930s. Only in 1931 did the short-lived Jaffna Youth Congress call for total independence (poorana swaraj) and boycotted the general election.However, in far-away America, a young Sri Lankan student, Philip Gunawardena, had already joined the League Against Imperialism and For National Independence, an international organisation committed to the complete national independence of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples, including Sri Lankans. He later went to Britain and worked for the League. He belonged to a Sri Lankan group called the “Cosmopolitan Crew”, mainly students such as himself, including N. M. Perera, Colvin R. de Silva and Leslie Goonewardena.
Bracegirdle with L.S.S.P. leaders in Horana. Image courtesy Victor Ivan
Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, British colonialism, disparagement, economic processes, governance, historical interpretation, island economy, land policies, landscape wondrous, Left politics, legal issues, life stories, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, press freedom & censorship, racist thinking, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, working class conditions, world events & processes
Edmund Leach: Biographical Studies from Tambiah and Others
Adam Kuper in London Review of Books Vol. 24 No. 10 · 23 May 2002
- Edmund Leach: An Anthropological Life by Stanley Tambiah
Cambridge, 517 pp, £60.00, February 2002, ISBN 0 521 52102 5 - The Essential Edmund Leach: Vol. I: Anthropology and Society by Stephen Hugh-Jones and James Laidlaw
Yale, 406 pp, £30.00, February 2001, ISBN 0 300 08124 3 - The Essential Edmund Leach: Vol. II: Culture and Human Nature by Stephen Hugh-Jones and James Laidlaw
Yale, 420 pp, £30.00, February 2001, ISBN 0 300 08508 7 
Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, British colonialism, cultural transmission, education, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian traditions, land policies, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, teaching profession, the imaginary and the real, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes, World War II
Millennium Challenge Compact — A Distilled Picture from Welikala
Aswin Welikala*
I am shocked and saddened by how gullible my own people are to the manipulations of politicians and their lies. I am also shocked by the complete inability of people to read a public document instead of deciding to trust fake YouTube videos designed to spread lies. Since I took the effort to read the #MCC Agreement, I thought of summarising it for those who haven’t been bothered to do so but have an opinion on it.
*What is the MCC?*
The MCC is a US grant giving organisation set up in 2004. It’s purpose was to change the way aid was given by making the countries receiving aid to have more control over their grant and to design projects around what those countries actually need.
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, centre-periphery relations, charitable outreach, economic processes, island economy, land policies, legal issues, politIcal discourse, power politics, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, transport and communications, truth as casualty of war, welfare & philanthophy, working class conditions, world events & processes
DS Senanayake’s Life and Times by KM de Silva … hits the island roads
Press Release from the ICES at Kandy
The ceremonial launch of two publications of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES, Kandy) titled, respectively, as The Life of D. S. Senanayake (1884-1952): Sri Lanka’s First Prime Minister, by Prof. K. M. de Silva, and its Sinhala version, D.S: Sri Lankaway Prathama Agraamaathya, by Professor K. N. O. Dharmadasa, was held in Kandy on 3 October 2019 in the presence of a large gathering invited by Prof. Upul Dissanayake, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Peradeniya, who sponsored the event in collaboration with the staff of the ICES.
Filed under British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, constitutional amendments, democratic measures, economic processes, electoral structures, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, island economy, land policies, landscape wondrous, language policies, Left politics, life stories, modernity & modernization, nationalism, plural society, politIcal discourse, power politics, power sharing, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, tolerance, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes, World War II
The Force of the Moors. Reflections Historical and Ethnographic
Wilfrid Jayasuriya
“The Portugese, the Saviours of our Culture?” = This is the title of a scholarly article written in the Ceylon Historical Journal in the 1950s by B. J. Perera BA (History) University of Ceylon who was our teacher in the University Entrance class. It was of course “dead against” the version given by nationalist historians after independence. However his interpretation simply put was that the Mughals had conquered Hindu India and ruled it for a couple of centuries and converted a large part of the Hindu population to the Muslim religion as had happened in countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia and the Maldives, which had been either Hindu or Buddhist. The evidence in Bali and Java of the existence of Buddhist and Hindu relics supports this view.
Mattayaas in the Gal Oya and Eastern Province interiorFiled under arab regimes, British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, colonisation schemes, communal relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, Indian religions, irrigation, Islamic fundamentalism, land policies, landscape wondrous, life stories, Muslims in Lanka, population, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people, women in ethnic conflcits, world events & processes
Remembering SBD de Silva: A Scholar in Every Fibre
Krisantha Sri Bhaggiyadatta, in Sunday Island, 16 June 2019, where the title reads “One Thing Leads to Another – Memories of a Great Guru”
SBD de Silva, at 92, acted like he would live forever. To the very end, he kept drafting in almost imperceptible scribble – with pen or pencil, whatever being handy, glasses falling off his nose, peering over some text or daily/weekly newspaper – filling an A4 until no blank space was left, and then, so as not to break his concentration or the sentence, without looking, reach for another blank…
Like Scheherazade of the 1001 Nights who had to keep narrating to save her life until each dawn, so did SB, by day and by night, keep writing as if fresh insights, expressed in perfect words, would make him immortal. Yet, ambushed he was by impermanence. But such dedication to his craft and to the country was sheer dream to witness, let alone to hope to emulate, yet must be upheld as a beacon of scholarship for future generations.
SBD de Silva (1926-2018) at a diplomatic reception in the 1950s. His classic, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, tracks our own economic history midst that of the world.
Filed under accountability, British colonialism, British imperialism, centre-periphery relations, commoditification, disparagement, economic processes, historical interpretation, island economy, land policies, landscape wondrous, Left politics, life stories, modernity & modernization, transport and communications, unusual people, working class conditions, World Bank, world events & processes
The Epitome of Scholarship in British Migration History and Much More: Eric Richards’ Publications Galore
PUBLICATIONS OF ERIC RICHARDS: A LISTING up to November 2018 provided by Robert Fitzsimons of Flinders University
Publication forthcoming:
* “Migration at Extremes”. Keynote address at the conference Colonial and Wartime Migration, 1815-1918, Amiens, France, 12-14 September, 2018.
* “Migrants in Crisis in Nineteenth-Century Britain.” In The Oxford Handbook of Migration Crises, edited by Cecilia Manjvar, Marie Ruiz and Immanuel Ness. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Filed under accountability, asylum-seekers, Australian culture, australian media, British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, colonisation schemes, cultural transmission, economic processes, heritage, historical interpretation, immigration, land policies, legal issues, life stories, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, transport and communications, travelogue, welfare & philanthophy, working class conditions, world events & processes
Sri Lanka’s Political Story from 1948-2018 in a Slash-and-Burn Nutshell
Qadri Ismail, in Groundviews, 3 November 2018, where the title is “WHAT, to the minority, is democracy?” ….with emphasis insertedby the Editor, Thuppahi
Maithripala Sirisena violates the constitution, stands to destroy democracy itself. Liberals, overwhelmingly Sinhalese, are aggrieved, appalled, aghast.
As a minority, I laugh. Not the happy laughter of someone enjoying a good joke. But the bitter, mirthless cackle of someone forced to read this script many times before – like every full moon, when the temple speakers blare its bana and you can’t blot out the noise with sleep because the liquor stores are closed.
All postcolonial Sri Lankan heads of government, all of them Sinhalese, have consistently violated the constitution and/or “threatened” democracy – usually by practicing it – and/or oppressed minorities. One could deem it a job requirement.
Just a few months after independence, Don Stephen Senanayake denaturalized, then disenfranchised ‘Indian’ Tamil citizens, already alienated from this country by their naming. Constitutional? Probably not. Democratic? Absolutely – passed by a majority of Parliament. Continue reading
Filed under atrocities, centre-periphery relations, colonisation schemes, communal relations, disparagement, doctoring evidence, economic processes, electoral structures, governance, historical interpretation, human rights, island economy, land policies, landscape wondrous, language policies, Left politics, legal issues, life stories, military strategy, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power politics, Presidential elections, Rajapaksa regime, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, taking the piss, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, violence of language, world events & processes
