Category Archives: patriotism

Sri Lanka Police: Headless At A Critical Moment

Merril Gunaratne, in morningLK, 11 August 2024, where the headline reads “The Police: A ‘headless’ body for the election” 

Any organisation, be it professional, social, or sports, has to be led. The leader steers the organisation on a charted path to achieve its goals and aspirations. He [or SHE] has a paramount role to guide humans within the organisation towards identified goals and targets. The leader steers it with a mix of inspiration, discipline, delegation of authority, supervision, and monitoring. In an ideal sense, leadership has much to do with its successes or failures. It is a sine qua non or an integral element for any organisation to prosper.

 

Continue reading

2 Comments

Filed under accountability, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, governance, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, patriotism, performance, politIcal discourse, security, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, world events & processes

As Sturdy as Sigiriya: Raja de Silva reaches His Year Hundred

Rajiva Wijesinha, in The Island, 11 August 2024, … where the title reads Raja de Silva at 100″

I have been privileged to have come to know in the last few years the former Commissioner of Archaeology, Raja de Silva. He was at school with my uncle Tissa and last year he came home – as he used to do in his schooldays – to a celebration of what would have been the latter’s 100th birthday. And before that he had been a source of interesting books, for in downsizing his library he passed on to me several books he thought I might like.

Raja …. Cutting birthday cake

Continue reading

2 Comments

Filed under accountability, architects & architecture, art & allure bewitching, cultural transmission, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, patriotism, performance, photography, rehabilitation, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people

Principles to Guide the Choice of Lanka’s Cricket Selectors

Michael Roberts

Rather exceptionally for a lad from the plantation Tamil peoples in the mid-20th century Chandra Schaffter was educated at St. Thomas College, Mount Lavinia. He excelled at hockey and cricket in particular and went on to represent Ceylon in both sports in the 1950s.

He became one of the Cricket Selection Committee headed by DWL Lieversz and others in the 1960s. He went on to found the JANASHAKTHI insurance company in 1994 — an enterprise that has been so solid that it gave him time to serve as the Manager of Sri Lankan cricket teams in the decade 2000s.

Continue reading

3 Comments

Filed under accountability, cricket selections, education, governance, historical interpretation, life stories, patriotism, performance, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, Sri Lankan cricket, sri lankan society

Indian Cricketing Machismo SPEWS OUT in the Field at Khetharama … As They Lose Comprehensively

Andrew Fidel Fernando in ESPNcicinfo, 8 August 2024, where the title runs  “Is this for real? Sri Lanka’s rare glory leaves India shaken” ….. while his report here has had highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

The visitors were left with plenty to ponder after their batting struggled in spin-friendly conditions.

Avishka Fernando cover drives…. & Wellalage celebrates one of his wickets

Mohammed Siraj is fired up. Halfway through his seventh over, the 39th of the innings, he strides down the pitch and sprays a few angry words at Kusal Mendis, who responds in kind. In his next over, Siraj bowls a ball to Janith Liyanage that the batter drives back at him. Siraj picks the ball up in his follow through, and flings it at the stumps, and misses. The batter would have been back safely in any case. Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, cricket for amity, cricket selections, ethnicity, heritage, landscape wondrous, life stories, patriotism, performance, self-reflexivity, Sri Lankan cricket

THE CEYLON JOURNAL is launched: Seeking to Elucidate the Past & the Present

The Ceylon Journal is finally out

On August 2, 2024, the inaugural volume of The Ceylon Journal was launched at the Sri Lanka Medical Association Auditorium. This new publication by Heritage Publications is spearheaded by young historian Avishka Mario Senewiratne, features 15 articles exploring various facets of Sri Lankan history, including politics, architecture, folklore, and more. Inspired by Charles Ambrose Lorenz’s Young Ceylon, the journal aims to deepen understanding of Sri Lanka’s heritage and inspire progress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continue reading

5 Comments

Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, cultural transmission, democratic measures, economic processes, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, human rights, language policies, Left politics, legal issues, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, nationalism, parliamentary elections, patriotism, pilgrimages, plantations, plural society, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, press freedom & censorship, reconciliation, refugees, religiosity, self-reflexivity, social justice, Sri Lankan cricket, Sri Lankan scoiety, Tamil migration, tamil refugees, teaching profession, theatre world, tourism, transport and communications, welfare & philanthophy

A Rollicking Return to ODI Cricket by Vandersay

Andrew Fidel Fernando in ESPNcricinfo, 5 August 2024 –– where the title is “Vandersay brings the vibes back for Sri Lanka” ….  with highlighting imposed by The editor, Thuppahi

The legspinner  Vandersay has had a stop-start international career but produced a remarkable performance.

It didn’t take much to win them over. It was only five nights ago that Sri Lanka’s batters tanked what seemed to be an untankable T20I, the middle order collapsing with such seismic ferocity even the batting in the Super Over was shaken. Spectators were incensed, and let the team know it. Hundreds in Pallekele gathered on the edge of the grass banks closest to the presentation ceremony and demanded answers from Charith Asalanka, the only player who emerged from the dressing room. Sticking around until well after the last wicket fell to scream their frustrations. This was after midnight on a weekday – fan feedback driven almost totally by spite.
Jeffrey Vandersay had a night to rememberAFP/Getty Images

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, cricket selections, life stories, patriotism, performance, self-reflexivity, Sri Lankan cricket, sri lankan society, unusual people, world events & processes

That Gathering at Trinco towards Setting Up the ICES ….in Pictures

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Neelan is standing on the extreme right, with CR de Silva on his right and Sam Samarasinghe nex to him

This NOTE is part of Professor KM de Silva’s Account of the Process leading to the Formation of the ICES: ” The Taita Hills conference [in Kenya] was followed by a second cross-national workshop held on 7 March 1982; this time at the then Hotel Club Oceanic in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka.

“The photographs attest the considerable cross-national support for this enterprise, albeit wholly weighted towards  the West in the context of world political alignment then. …” Michael Roberts (while anticipating a Memo or essay from Professor Donald Horowitz which will provide other threads in the processes leading to the setting up the ICES).

Robert Goldmann

 

 Myron Weiner  

the web photos of Donald Horowitz resisted copying

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, atrocities, Colombo and Its Spaces, communal relations, economic processes, education, ethnicity, governance, historical interpretation, insurrections, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, nationalism, patriotism, performance, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil Tiger fighters, terrorism, trauma, unusual people, vengeance, world events & processes, zealotry

A Ceylon Cricket Eleven in Late 1958 …. Its Ethnic Mix

Michael Roberts

Having come across “a drenching cricket story” from late in the year 1958  in my CRICKETIQUE website,  let me place it within THUPPAHI for reflection because the Cricketique site can be visited and read…  BUT is not readily open for comments or visited much.

The LEAD PHOTO is of considerable significance because of the ethnic mix in Sri Lankan team — inclusive of a Malay man and another with Colombo Chetty lineage roots.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under anti-racism, communal relations, cricket for amity, cricket selections, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, patriotism, performance, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, Sri Lankan cricket, sri lankan society, travelogue

Let’s Remove the Colonial Tropes in the Writings on Sri Lanka

Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, whose preferred title is  “Decolonizing July 1983’s Fiction and History for a Post-Ethnic Sri Lanka: Tropes of Violence and Cold War at the end of the American Century”

 “Fair is foul and foul is fair”William Shakespeare, Macbeth

 !@#$!!!! …. The Editor’s efforts to insert appealing cartoons and/or pictures of Macbeth were defeated by the digital world’s capitalist principles & demands for payment

Why are there no Booker Prize-winning novels about mundane multicultural families that inter-married for generations, shared religion/s, language/s and co-existed for centuries, while living in relative harmony in Ceylon/ Sri Lanka? Is the trope of dark natives engaged in endless chaotic violence an international literature prize-winning bestseller that masks white mischief, including sanitized, techno-scientific AI guided drone warfare? Susan William’s brilliant and brave book “White Malice” is subtitled, “The CIA and the Covert Recolonization of Africa’.

Continue reading

1 Comment

Filed under accountability, anti-racism, authoritarian regimes, British colonialism, chauvinism, communal relations, cultural transmission, democratic measures, demography, economic processes, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, island economy, language policies, Left politics, life stories, modernity & modernization, parliamentary elections, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, social justice, sri lankan society, world events & processes

A Meeting of Cultures: The Unique Vernacular Chapel at Trinity College, Kandy

Ranil Bibile … reproducing an old essay without all its pictorial  embellishments because the author does not have the original photos in his computer as .jpegs as the articles were composed 20+ years ago and there have been many computer changes since then.” 

 Kandy! The very name is redolent of history, culture, festivals, dances, caparisoned elephants, and historic rituals. Ancient temples nestle in remote corners of this Cande Udarata – the old Kandyan Kingdom. The architecture, hipped roofs, frescoes, wood carvings and antiquities of these places of worship provide a veritable feast for the eyes, vying for attention with the surrounding vistas of cloud-capped mountains, rivers, waterfalls and verdant plateaus.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, ancient civilisations, architects & architecture, architectural innovation, art & allure bewitching, Britain's politics, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, nationalism, patriotism, performance, politIcal discourse, religiosity, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, teaching profession, unusual people, world events & processes