Nihal de Alwis, presenting a Memoir on Revd Small, the dedicated Principal of Richmond who became a Ceylonese ….
Rev. Walter Joseph Thombleson Small was born on the 4th of July 1883 in Boston, England. He lived in Sri Lanka from 1906 to 1926 and again from 1953 to 1979. He died in Sri Lanka after an accident on the 28th of December 1979. He grew up during the Victorian era and grew up in a Methodist environment imbued with Christian values.
Cam Lucadou-Wells, in eLanka, 31 March 2020, where the chosen title is “A World of Friends”
The well-travelled Bernard Van Cuylenburg’s worldly interests do not only span five languages, but millennia of history.
For two decades this multi linguist has volunteered as an English language tutor for migrants and new arrivals at AMES (Adult Multicultural Educational Services) in Dandenong. His students hail from as far away as Afghanistan, Vietnam, and China. Each a window to history and culture, and each a friend to Bernard. Such is his dedication that since joining AMES he studied Mandarin to better support some of his students. He says “You get more than you give due to the interaction with diverse cultures. They have so much to teach you, and I always fine tune my antenna when dealing with foreign students” says Bernard of his role.
Uditha Devapriya, whose chosen title was “Martin Wickramasinghe and A. G. Fraser.”
On 7 February 1971, Trinity College, Kandy held its 99th annual Prize Giving. Presided by the then Anglican Bishop of Kurunegala, Lakshman Wickremesinghe, the ceremony featured Martin Wickramasinghe as its Chief Guest. By this point Wickramasinghe had established himself as Sri Lanka’s leading literary figure. A grand old man of 80, he was now writing on a whole range of topics outside culture and literature. His essays addressed some of the more compelling socio-political issues of the day, including youth unrest. His speech at the Prize Giving dwelt on these issues and reflected his concerns.
Shamara Wettimuny in Financial Times, 12 April 2023 … with highlighting added by The Editor, Thuppahi
On a muggy Friday afternoon, the auditorium of the National Library of Sri Lanka slowly filled with an eager audience from Colombo, the Hill Country and beyond. It was the launch of a book by Associate Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Mythri Jegathesan, of Santa Clara University.
Maithir Jegathesan
Her book, a work on and of solidarity with the Hill Country Tamils of Sri Lanka, ‘Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Post-war Sri Lanka’ was originally published by the University of Washington Press in 2019 to widespread acclaim. It was awarded the 2020 Diane Forsyth Prize for the best book featuring feminist anthropology research and in 2021, it won the Michelle Z. Rosaldo Book Prize for its significant contribution to feminist anthropology.
TULANA is a Sri Lanka Jesuit Province Apostolate mandated by the Superiors and founded in 1974 by its current Director, the Asian Jesuit Theologian, Indologist and Buddhist Scholar, Fr. Aloysius Pieris, s.j.
“The name TULANA has its roots in Sanskrit and means four things taken together: elevation, weighing, comparing and deciding for the weightier things – in short DISCERNMENT.”
Revd Aloysius Peiris, s.j.
Its primary founding motivation was as a response to two challenges – the challenge of the spirituality and philosophy of Sri Lanka’s major religion, Buddhism, and the challenge of the socio-political aspirations of the highly educated but marginalised rural youth.
In presenting a Zoom Lecture relating to the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka in April 2021 for Dr. Geethika Dharmasinghe’s class at Colgate University in USA a month or so back, I deplyed the work that went into one of books: that entitled FIRE & STORM.
I now atempt to schock people around the world with pictorial illustrations of some — note “Some” (with all its partialities) — photographs of the political and Eelam War scenarios in Sri Lanka displayed in Fire & Storm.
Mt. Lavinia 1954 Prize Giving-Address by the Right Honourable Sir John Kotelawala, K.B.E., M.P. — with thanks to Harry De Sayrah of Sydney, who added this little preface “When politicians were literate and articulate …………………..” with a few highlights and an arbitrary selection of photographs inserted by The Editor, Thuppahi
1954 PRIZE GIVING. Presided by The Warden, Canon R.S.de Saram, MA , OBE.,St. Thomas’ College, Mt. Lavinia. ……………. *Prime Minister of Ceylon, at the Distribution of Prizes,* …………. *S. Thomas’ College, Mt. Lavinia, Saturday, 31 st July,1954*
When I played for Royal against S. Thomas’ many years ago my intention, which was shared by my team-mates, was to give the Thomians a good drubbing, and, if that was not possible, at least to give them a test of endurance. Much as I value the opportunity which I now have of presiding at your Prize Distribution, I shall endeavour to do neither this afternoon. I mist congratulate the Warden on his Report, which illustrates what opportunities schools like S. Thomas’ have of continuing to play a leading part in the training of our youth and the moulding of their character.
Sri Lanka’s civil war was one of the longest running in modern history. The conflict between the Sinhalese and the island’s Tamils was brutal and terrifying, yet its origins were surprisingly recent. This video examines the forces of populism and population that grew into the horrifying experience that still scars Sri Lanka today.
Sources: -A History of Sri Lanka, K. M. Silva de -Elephant Complex; Travels in Sri Lanka, John Gimlette -The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka and the Last Days of the Tamil Tigers, Gordon Weiss -The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History, Sanjeev Sanyal -This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War, Samanth Subramanian + Various news sources, especially The Economist 00:00 Intro 01:17 Buddhism under the British 01:40 Henry Steel Olcott and Spiritualism 03:10 Dharmapala 04:00 Hindu-Buddhist history 05:02 Other contributing factors 07:18 Cricket in Galle 13:24 Sunday evening in Galle 15:19 Sri Lanka since independence 17:49 1956 Official Language Act 19:22 Was it inevitable? 20:27 Going east 22:19
The Solomon Islands has awarded a multi-million-dollar contract to a Chinese state company to upgrade an international port in Honiara in a project funded by the Asian Development Bank, an official of the island nation said on Wednesday.
The United States and its allies, including Australia, New Zealand and Japan, have held concerns that China has ambitions to build a naval base in the region since the Solomon Islands struck a security pact with Beijing last year.
Michael Roberts … Content of His Talk on this topic at the National Trust in Colombo in June 2018
The National Trust’s brief was for me to present motifs from the book People Inbetween. The Burghers and the Middle Class in the Transformations within Sri Lanka, 1790-1960s,(Ratmalana, Sarvodaya Book Publishing Services, 1989) and more specifically its first chapter viz. “Pejorative Phrases: the Anti-colonial Response and Sinhala Perceptions of the Self through Images of the Burghers”
Many think People Inbetween is a history of the Burghers. Not so. It is multi-faceted. It describes (a) the rise of the middle class in British times, an influential force within which the Burghers were a critical element and a vanguard in the questioning of British rule; (b) the initial strands in the development of Ceylonese nationalism and (c) the development of Colombo into a metropolitan hub that became the island’s hegemonic centre.