Devika Brendon, in The Sunday Times, 18 February 2024
‘And gladly would she learn, and gladly teach’
My mother, Yasmine Gooneratne, passed away on Thursday night this week. She was 88 years old.
Category Archives: literary achievements
‘Made’ in Australia: The Journal SOUTH ASIA
SEE … https://southasianstudies.org.au/journal/
South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies ranks as the leading academic journal in South Asian studies. It provides a forum for scholarly research, comment and discussion on the history, society, economy, culture and international relations of the South Asian region, drawing on a range of disciplines from the humanities and social sciences. South Asia publishes cutting edge, innovative, conceptually interesting, original case studies and new research, which shape and lead debates in the field.
Professor Kama Maclean: a key figure in the history of the journal
Filed under architects & architecture, art & allure bewitching, Australian culture, australian media, British imperialism, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, cultural transmission, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, Left politics, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, nationalism, Pacific Ocean issues, Pacific Ocean politics, politIcal discourse, Portuguese imperialism, power politics, religiosity, teaching profession, terrorism, theatre world, war reportage, working class conditions, world events & processes, World War II, World War One, zealotry
Anzac Day Outdoes Australia Day in the Scales of Dinky-Die Australian Nationalism
Michael Roberts
A week or so before patriotic Sri Lankans marked and celebrated “Independence Day” on 4th February denoting the day on which the imperial British order of the modern era relinquished its formal colonial hold on “Ceylon,” Australians marked “Australia Day” with commemorative ceremonies on 26th January. In fact, at the ceremony in Adelaide marking our Sri Lankan independence, I came across a former naval officer in resplendent out with medals marking his service in the Sri Lankan Navy who had received his Australian citizenship a week or so earlier.
Filed under art & allure bewitching, Australian culture, australian media, authoritarian regimes, British imperialism, cultural transmission, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, martyrdom, military strategy, nationalism, patriotism, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, unusual people, war reportage, world events & processes, World War One
A Jewish Virtual Library on Sri Lanka
Jewish Virtual Library on Sri Lanka ………….. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/sri-lanka-virtual-jewish-tour … with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi**
Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) is an island nation south of India…………Legend and tradition, Islamic and Samaritan in origin, connect Sri Lanka with biblical personalities and events. Adam is said to have descended on the island after his expulsion from Paradise, and Noah’s Ark allegedly rested on the mountains of Serandib, which tradition equates with Mount Ararat. The Sri Lankan city of Galle is said to be the city of Tarshish, to which King Solomon sent merchant ships.
NOTE …… Al-Idrisi’s Masterpiece of Medieval Geography ………….
Posted by: Carissa Pastuch, on 13 January 2022 ………………… https://blogs.loc.gov/maps/2022/01/al-idrisis-masterpiece-of-medieval-geography/
Remembering Ian Goonetileke: A Doyen of The Arts & Sri Lankan Publications
Gamini Seneviratne, in a set of profound reflections entitled “Ian Goonatileke, A Memory” and presented previously …. but now subject to a change of title and highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
Browsing through various writings that had to do with Ian, I came upon the following paragraphs that seem to merit a fresh airing in the light of the literary awards recently made under the Gratiaen Trust. Regardless of his spell of scepticism (as mentioned below) that made him turn away from his commitment to advancing his friend Michael Ondaatje’s hopes and intent in funding that Trust it came to establish another award in Ian’s name, one for translation.
Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, British imperialism, cultural transmission, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, meditations, nationalism, patriotism, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, unusual people, world affairs
JLK Van Dort’s Vibrant 19th Century Sketches of British Ceylon
Ismeth Raheem, in the Sunday Times, 24 December 2023, where the title reads “A Christmas sketch among the many 19th century social events captured by J.L.K. Van Dort” . … An Item conveyed to me by David Sansoni of Sydney and now sibject to my=highlighting emphasis (Editor, Thuppahi)
J.L.K. Van Dort who flourished in the latter half of the 19th century in Sri Lanka could well be described as the ‘Hogarth of Ceylon’. He was undoubtedly the best-known painter and illustrator working in the country at the time. From 1850 up till to his death in 1896, he recorded almost every social event of importance with his deft quick sketches, including religious festivals like Christmas.
Filed under art & allure bewitching, British colonialism, citizen journalism, communal relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, patriotism, performance, photography & its history, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, taking the piss, theatre world, unusual people, working class conditions, world affairs
People Inbetween: Ethnic & Class Prejudices in British Ceylon
Michael Roberts …. presenting a talk which he delivered at the National Trust in Colombo in June 2018 following a brief to the effect that he should 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.
Filed under anti-racism, art & allure bewitching, British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, citizen journalism, communal relations, cultural transmission, disparagement, economic processes, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, language policies, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, nationalism, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, press freedom, racism, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, unusual people, world events & processes
Early Writing: The Evidence from Sri Lanka
Darshanie Ratnawalli, here reproducing an article presented in the Colombo Telegraph and The Island in June 2016, where the title runs “Sri Lanka’s role in South Asia’s earliest writing controversy”
A few years ago someone came up with the campaign line ‘small miracle’ as a unique proposition to promote Sri Lanka to tourists. The Rajapaksa Government took exception to the ‘small’ and scrapped the campaign midway. This was a pity. The country has genuine small miracle credentials, tending sometimes to raise eyebrows by producing phenomena usually deemed too big, too grand for a country of its size. It can for example claim ownership of the oldest surviving, reliably dated samples of writing to be found in the whole of South Asia.
Another Time, Another World: Social Science in Postwar Sri Lanka
Uditha Devapriya & Uthpala Wijesuriya, … with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
Background: In Sri Lanka, social science research witnessed an expansion in the 1950s. Various scholars, including Stanley Tambiah and Gananath Obeyesekere, found their calling in anthropology, and went on to introduce and popularise the subject in local universities. This period also witnessed an increasing interest in Sri Lankan and specifically Sinhala society from Western scholars, including Edmund Leach, James Brow, and Richard Gombrich. While many local scholars active in that period have commented on how social science research evolved at Sri Lankan universities, no proper study of this has been done yet.
Filed under architects & architecture, British colonialism, Buddhism, centre-periphery relations, Colombo and Its Spaces, commoditification, communal relations, cultural transmission, demography, economic processes, education policy, Eelam, electoral structures, ethnicity, female empowerment, fundamentalism, governance, historical interpretation, immigration, Indian Ocean politics, insurrections, Islamic fundamentalism, island economy, landscape wondrous, language policies, Left politics, legal issues, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, Muslims in Lanka, nationalism, NGOs, parliamentary elections, patriotism, photography & its history, plantations, plural society, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, Presidential elections, press freedom & censorship, Rajapaksa regime, religiosity, riots and pogroms, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, suicide bombing, Tamil migration, tamil refugees, Tamil Tiger fighters, tourism, transport and communications, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, war reportage, welfare & philanthophy, women in ethnic conflcits, working class conditions, world events & processes, zealotry
