DB Dhanapala on LH Mettananda in his book Among those Present, 1962
OF COURSE, L.H. Mettananda is a fanatic. Anybody who dares to talk of Buddhist’s rights in a Buddhist country is bound to be called a fanatic bent on disturbing the peace and rousing up religious feelings.
Mettananda seated alongside Banda
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David Sallach, reviewing John Richardson: Paradise Poisoned: Learning about Conflict, Terrorism and Development from Sri Lanka’s Civil Wars. Kandy: International Center for Ethnic Studies, 2005. xvi + 764 pp. $25.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-955-580-094-5…. way back in 2007 …. https://networks.h-net.org/node/3180/reviews/6309/sallach-richardson-paradise-poisoned-learning-about-conflict-terrorism
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Leelananda De Silva, in Island, 28 April 2020, and 11 August 2018, where the title is “Godfrey Gunatilleke – A Life of Quiet Achievement”
Godfrey Gunatilleke is one of the leading intellectuals in the latter half of the 20th century in Sri Lanka. Never a man to be confined by disciplinary compartments, he straddled across many academic and administrative fields in his long career. An English scholar to start with, he was one of the finest products of the University of Ceylon which lasted in its pristine form (as envisioned by its founding fathers) for 20 years from 1943 to the early 1960s.
A= Godfrey Gunatillake (c) and Gen. Anton Muttukumaru, Ceylon’s High Commissioner in Canberra, at a 1965 ECAFE meeting in Wellington …. B = Godfrey clarifying a point
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Eranda Ginige, on in Lanka News Web, 6 January 2020, where the title is “The Language of the National Anthem”
The Dominion of Ceylon was formed on 4 February 1948 with the singing of Britain’s national anthem “God Save the King” and it continued to be the anthem for another four years
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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
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Fr l-to-r= Philip, Colvin R, NM and Reggie Perera
ABOUT Nathan Sivasambu: Nathan Sivasambu is an old-school Trotskyite and a Sri Lankan to the core. After his undergraduate degree from the University of Ceylon in the 1950s he migrated to England. He has sustained his interest in island politics as well as the literary world associated with the Bloomsbury Group and Leonard Woolf. His batchelor-flat near Russell Square placed him close to the Bloomsbury arena in London… and the British Museum as well as SOAS and its Sri Lankan stock of books.
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Malinda Seneviratne, in his Blog where the title runs thus: “The flooring of ideologies and ideologues”
Labour gaining ground. One in ten still undecided. Jeremy Corbyn is much closer to becoming Prime Minister than voters think, according to a Conservative party memo. Hung parliament will see Boris Johnson removed from No 10 Downing Street. Labour minority government likely. Opinion polls tightening — Corbyn might just become Prime Minister.
These were headlined claims in the run up to the British Parliamentary Elections.
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Kumar David, courtesy of Colombo Telegraph, 4 December 2019 where the title is “Ethnic conflict -The Problem is the People”
Today’s column is of an academic nature, where names are used it is for illustration, not to bestow praise or blame on an individual. If a reader thinks a name inappropriate, substitute another and read on. Though most examples are Sri Lankan the argument is general; it is true mutatis mutandis all over the world. The dynamic may be race, religion, language, caste, colour or tribe or any such separator of a society into identity groups. The key word is identity, charged by history and circumstance.
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DCP Amarasekere[i], in Island, 28 October 2019, with this title “Beyond the story of doom: the social base of ‘new authoritarianism’ in Sri Lanka”
With only a few weeks left for the 2019 Presidential Election, two questions seem to dominate our social conversations and news coverage: “who will win?” and “what will be Sri Lanka’s political destiny?” In the absence of country-wide scientific polling, the first question is typically answered by using anecdotes, quasi-scientific, social media or social network specific speculations or gossip. The second question, which categorically stems from the liberal quarters of society, is a long-winded lament about the “cruel dilemma” of having to choose between a “neo-conservative” coalition and weak political formations putting up a brave fight to hold on to the last straw of the country’s democracy.
NM Perera at hartal 1953 and SWRD for Sinhala Only in 1956
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thuppahi
