The presentation of an essay in the Sinhala language on “Caste in Sinhala Society”[1] in April 2017 within Thuppahi came to the attention of Thomas Fernando in UK recently. Tommy promptly took up the challenge and is now proceeding to address the article and topic. This is his NOTE to me: “however laborious it is to plough through the Sinhala text, I hope to have a good look at this article on caste in SL as I have not read a good description on this important topic which has a very significant impact on life even today in SL.”
Category Archives: racist thinking
Studies of Caste in Sinhala Society over the Centuries
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Confronting Sacrificial Devotion Worldwide, 2004-2012
Michael Roberts
Within the contemporary (2020) context of a few killings in European cities by Islamic jihadists on a journey to martyrdom at the feet of Allah, I happened to see Stephen Sackur’s grilling of a French politician in one of his “Hard Talk” presentations on Channel Four. I was critical of his narrow focus and my reflections led me on a comparative journey where I indicated that the cry of “Allahu Akbar” indicated a sense of self-fulfilment in this their final journey on earth for the perpetrators of such attacks.[1]
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Murali’s Epic History: Facing Many Powers …. A Bibliography
Compiled by Michael Roberts …
Murali is ’embraced’ by Tamil fans in Jaffna in 2004
Dr. Barclay “Buddy” Reid 2022 “Muralitharan: the arm that did not chuck,” 21 December 2021, https://thuppahis.com/2022/12/21/muralitharan-the-arm-that-did-not-chuck/
School of Human Movement, UWA 2004 “The Murali Report,” 15 May 2004, https://www.rediff.com/cricket/2004/may/15murali.htm …. signed by Daryl Foster
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Adolf Hitler’s Logic
Courtesy of Richard Koenigsberg in New York
HITLER: “If I don’t mind sending the pick of the German people into the hell of war without regret over the spilling of precious German blood, then I naturally also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin.” …..

circa 1933: German Dictator, Adolf Hitler addressing a rally in Germany. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
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Working on the Book PEOPLE INBETWEEN
Michael Roberts
The ‘discovery’ of the Lorenz Cabinet in the Royal Asiatic Society in the 1980s led me to combine with Percy Colin-Thome[1] and Ismeth Raheem in working up this material into a four-volume book.[2] The first book in this projected series was drafted by me and came out in 1989 courtesy of Sarvodaya Publishing Services (within the limitations of book production in that period).[3] This book has been out of print for quite a while. Though the opening segment of the book, decoding the famous Sinhala story about the first sight of the Portuguese on their shores, a tale that that has been passed down over the centuries, was presented to the world way back in time as an article,[4] the rest of People Inbetween – dealing with (a) British racial prejudices and practices; (b) the process of Westernization, competition and jostling among the emerging middle class families and (c) the introduction of census data collection by the modernizing government and the implications thereof, has not seen wider circulation (though some items in Thuppahi in 2022 have focused on some of these activities – see Appendix A).
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From Ceylon to Australia: Migrant Journeys, 1860s-to-2010s
Earl Forbes, whose chosen title in The Ceylankan is “Ceylon/Sri Lanka to Australia: Arrivals and Survival”
Ceylonese/Sri Lankans have entered Australia for a variety of reasons during the past one and a half centuries. The far greater number of these arrivals occurred in the second half of the twentieth century and first two decades of the 21st century. Early arrivals go as far back as the last two decades of the nineteenth century.
Figure 3 Queensland sugarcane plantation workers. … [placed as frontispiece because of its striking character
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Thumbs Up for Sri Lankan Tamil Epic at Edinburgh Festival
Allan Radcliffe, a review essay … 10 August 2022 — with highlighting here imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
A stage epic is a rare beast in Edinburgh, where audiences are accustomed to shows of one-hour tops in makeshift venues. Counting and Cracking is novelistic in its scope and ambition, featuring several storylines that sprawl over two continents and nearly half a century. Its three-and-a-half-hour running time goes by in a blink.
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Leonard Woolf: Innocent Imperialist turned Pragmatic Internationalist
Jane Russell
Leonard Woolf & Arthur C Clarke
Foreword: “When I’m in the Strand or 42nd Street, or at NASA Headquarters or the Beverley Hills Hotel, my surroundings are liable to give a sudden tremor and I see through the insubstantial fabric to the reality beneath…” These words by Arthur C. Clarke, the sci-fi writer, are quoted at the end of Roloff Beny’s photographic chronicle “Island Ceylon”. But where does Clark’s reality reside? He writes, “No other place is so convincing as Sri Lanka,” and as he spent almost fifty years there, we are tempted to believe him. Continue reading →
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Sri Lanka as A Paradise blighted by Extraordinary Political Violence
Razeen Sally, in an article presented in November 2020 at NIKKEI ASIA, with the title “Rediscovering Sri Lanka through a travel memoir” …. & with highlighting superimposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
The Island paradise mixes beguiling charm with an astonishing record of violence. Foreign visitors have for centuries rhapsodized about Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as it was called until 1972: its seashores and landscapes, its governing religion, Buddhism, and its majority ethnicity, the Sinhalese.
Colombo’s Mount Lavinia Hotel in the 1960s. One of Asia’s legendary colonial hotels, it was managed by the author’s father through the political upheaval of the 1970s. “It was a turbulent time, much of which my father spent in remand and jail.” …… Photo courtesy of Razeen Sally Continue reading →
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Booklet on Sri Lanka’s Cricket History reviewed by Jon Gemmell
Jon Gemmell reviewing in 2019 a booklet from Michael Roberts pubd in 2006

Sri Lankan academic Michael Roberts has issued a booklet charting the key events in the island’s cricketing history. Forces and Strands in Sri Lanka’s Cricket History starts by telling us that cricket is the one game in Sri Lanka that has penetrated the world stage in a consistent fashion. As the national pastime for a large section of the population its purpose is beyond the mere aesthetics of leather on willow.
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