Category Archives: modernity & modernization

December 19, 2024 · 3:37 pm

Beyond Imagination – Chandra Schaffter’s Life of Service

Ravi RUDRA has composed an extensive web-item describing Chandra Schaffter’s services to Sri Lanka,  S. Thomas College, cricket, hockey, the Tamil Union CC’, insurance services in the island and humakind in general. The account includes photographs and is so extensive that it is best presented in segments. THIS is the first instalment. As this segment includes heaps of photographs, it will take me time to insert all of them…. so the present version is incomplete .…. Editor, TPS 

Compilation by Ravi RUDRA …. with this title ‘The Phenomenal Journey of Mr. CHANDRA SCHAFFTER 94* Story of Vision, Resilience, Disappointments and Success” …. 1 December 2024 

Mr. Chandra Thomas Adolphus Schaffter (born 3 April 1930) ‘The Father of Sri Lanka Insurance & Much, Much More’

“If you cannot do something for those who work for you, but you seek to get the best out of them and not worry about them, then, I don’t think life is worth living. What I am today, I owe it first to God and then to my School”– Chandra Schaffter

 Legendary Thomian (Jan 1937–March 1950)

“I was very fortunate to attend S. Thomas’ College because I had a good education and a good foundation. I lost my mother when I was only 3 and my father when I was 11, so I never had real parental guidance in that sense.But my school masters, especially in my early years, and some of my relatives were very helpful in making me find my way around.

S. Thomas’ was a great place to be in, as you learnt a lot of good values which you don’t see in the outside world. This up-bringing has stood me and many Thomians in good stead.”– Chandra Schaffter

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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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December 5, 2024 · 7:32 pm

The IMF’s Vice-Like Grip on Sri Lanka’s Testicles … Continues

Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, whose chosen title runs thus‘ ‘The IMF’s Remarkable Timing and a President’s Mandate for Debt Justice” …. with highlighting imposed by The Editor Thuppahi**

At Annual Meetings in Washington in October International Monetary Fund head, Kristalina Georgieva claimed Sri Lanka as a debt restructuring ‘success’ story.[i]  Left unsaid was that Sri Lanka’s external debt had apparently ballooned from $26 billion to a purported whopping $100 billion during two years of “reforms’ under the IMF’s Extended Fund Facility (EFF)![ii]

A month later, the island’s newly elected Cabinet led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayaka signed off on an official “bond exchange” with International Sovereign bondholders (ISB). The President had done a U-turn on election pledges to re-negotiate agreements with the IMF and ISB that were widely perceived to be detrimental to the county.

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December 2, 2024 · 5:36 pm

Politics of Identity in Lanka: Mithran Tiruchelvam’s Introduction in 1997 to his Book

Introduction by Mithran Tiruchelvam …. a son of Neelan Tiruchelvam of the ICES [who was tragically assassinated by the LTTE in front of the ICES offices one year later]

The present collection of essays arose out of a symposium held at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES), Colombo from 13-15 March 1997, where researchers and scholars presented some of their recent research interests. This volume seeks to gather the threads of a hybrid collection of essays and weave them together in their shared historical moment. An anthology of this nature seeks organizational cohesion based on the papers’ common origins at the symposium, thereby sacrificing some degree of thematic or disciplinary unity. It is intended that such a collection make available to the general reader and to the scholar alike, a sense of the variety of social science pursuits being undertaken in Sri Lanka today. As such its purpose is to flavour as much as to nourish the reader’s palate, providing a sampling of the eclectic diversity of topics, methodologies and critical perspectives. engaging the social scientist today.

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December 1, 2024 · 12:33 am

In Felicitation of Vincent Goonawardena -A Teacher Extraordinary at Richmond, Galle

Nihal De Alwis 

MR VINCENT GOONAWARDENA PATRON OF THE RICHMOND 60-CLUB (2024) ON YOUR BIRTHDAY Of SUNDAY THE 27th OCTOBER….

Dear Sir, It is with a heavy heart that I decided to express a few words in gratitude towards you as one of the few, or maybe the only, surviving teacher of my batch at RICHMOND COLLEGE. It has been a long time since we had a teacher of your repute who has been perpetually dedicated and committed at RICHMOND. You were of the class of our Late Mr E.R. De Silva (the first Sri Lankan to succeed the missionaries), and of the teachers of the calibre of Shelton Wirasinghe, Revd Shelton De Silva, Dunstan Fernando, A. Ariyaratnam, J.H. Gunasekera, & S Manawadu….. And few others whom I cannot recollect.

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November 25, 2024 · 1:25 pm

THOMIA now on Sale: A History of S. Thomas’ College in Colombo

Richard Simon to Michael Roberts, Editor, Thuppahi

Thomia, as you know, is a comprehensive history of S. Thomas’ College presented in the wider context of Lankan history and focusing on the influences between the two. In this sense it resembles my previous history of the Ceylon tea industry, which you were kind enough to praise when it was published in 2017. It is very different from a typical school history and its appeal is certainly not confined to Old Thomians.

 Now on sale: Thomia is available for advance purchase from today, 25 November 2024. I hope to finance printing of the book partly through advance sales; I am happy to say I have already received a number of pledges.

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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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November 7, 2024 · 10:40 am

Walter Stace in British Ceylon, 1910-1932

Michael Roberts

 Walter T. Stace was a British citizen born in 1886 and educated in private schools in Wales and Scotland before completing his undergraduate degree at Trinity College, Dublin. He was therefore of middle-upper class background. His philosophical leanings did not deter him from signing up for the Colonial Service. He was sent to Ceylon – reaching the island with his wife … and being posted to the town of Galle*** in 1910.

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November 2, 2024 · 7:23 pm

British Ceylon Through A Family Lens 1850-1950

Prof Naren Chitty …. an article in THE CEYLANKAN vol 27/4 November 2024

 Introduction
​British Governors relied on mostly unsalaried Mudaliyars (leaders) from select families who exchanged service for land grants.[1]  Educated in public schools Mudaliyars’ Anglophile sons increasingly inhabited a Jane Austenian lifeworld, particularly as they donned European attire in the middle of the nineteenth century. Unfolding around them was a countervailing Buddhist revival associated with Sinhala cultural resurgence. [2]

Chitty Family in 1899 … Standing L-R = Christian, Wilfred, George Snr, Marian, Charles ….. Sitting L-R = Mitzi, Rose, Maude, Laura, James

 

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October 29, 2024 · 8:00 pm

A Major Political Transformation in Sri Lanka on the Horizon?

Merril Gunaratne,** in The Island, 27 October 2024, where the title runs “A revolution without violence” … with emphasis added by The Editor, Thuppahi

The total absence of violence before, during, and after the Presidential election has deeply impressed all sections of the population. Such exemplary discipline and conduct of the NPP took many observers by surprise, putting to shame established parties which, when they alternated in power, invariably let loose their goons to inflict pain and misery on opposition ranks. Serving in the police from 1965 to 2000, and in retirement for two and a half decades thereafter, I was witness to violence which followed every election with monotonous regularity.

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