Krishna Srinivasan’s Address in Colombo in His Capacity as Director of Asia and Pacific Department, IMF, May 15, 2023
What does this challenging global environment mean for Sri Lanka?
Sri Lanka, as you know, has been facing a severe crisis (A) involving back-to-back economic shocks. We have been deeply concerned about the impact of the crisis on the Sri Lankan people, particularly the poor and vulnerable groups, and about the economic costs arising from the delay (B) in the country’s access to external financing.
Professor Gananath Obeyesekere spoke of the dry presentation of Buddhist teachings in abstract intellectual terms that he remembers from his youth. These were in contrast to the experience of going to pilgrimage places where pilgrims and their teachers told stories based on vernacular texts.
Capt. Elmo Jayawardena, in The Island, early February 2023, where the title runs thus: “75 Years – What have they done? It is a paradise misplaced”
Our island was called Lanka in pre-King Vijaya times. Valmiki’s immortal Ramayanaya had King Ravana ruling the land from the city of Lankapura. That was almost four thousand years ago. The Arab traders termed it Jaziratul-Yaqut, island of rubies. Some called it Serendib, some Ceilan, from which the Portuguese picked Ceilao and the European mapmakers coined Ceylon. Many were the names from the many that came. Bar none, everyone agreed and noted in their chronicles that this Island was indeed the complete Paradise.
Judith Betts & Claire Higgins: “The Sri Lankan Civil War and Australia’s Migration Policy Response: A Historical Case Study with Contemporary Implications” …. an article pubd on 16th May 2017 …. see https://doi.org/10.1002/app5.181 **
Abstract: Sri Lanka’s civil war lasted almost 26 years and cost tens of thousands of lives. Since the end of the war in 2009, several thousand asylum seekers from Sri Lanka have sought protection in Australia, but both Labor and Liberal/National Coalition governments have taken a restrictive approach to their arrival and have expressed support for the Sri Lankan government. This article explores Australia’s response to the protection needs of Sri Lankans during an earlier era, at the outbreak of the war in 1983, when a Labor government processed Tamils ‘in-country’ under Australia’s Special Humanitarian Program.
The Annual Report for 2022 presented by ECSAT ... with some of the photographs attached to this report & highlighting emphasis imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
An Award in 2022: The Programme Director Roshan Samarawickrama is seen receiving the award on behalf of ECSAT for The Best Skill Development Centre for Children with Disabilities in Sri Lankafrom the State Minister of Primary Health Care Dr. Sudarshani Fernandopulle. After 16 years ECSAT received this recognition which added great value to the reputation of the organisation.
Dennis B. McGilvray, in India Review 5(2-3) November 2006, special issue on public anthropology, …. where the title reads “Tsunami and Civil War in Sri Lanka: An Anthropologist Confronts the Real World” …. with highlighting in different colours imposed by the Editor, Thuppahi
Recent calls for a new “public anthropology” to promote greater visibility for ethnographic research in the eyes of the press and the general public, and to bolster the courage of anthropologists to address urgent issues of the day, are laudable although probably too hopeful as well. Yet, while public anthropology could certainly be more salient in American life, it already exists in parts of the world such as Sri Lanka where social change, ethnic conflict, and natural catastrophe have unavoidably altered the local context of ethnographic fieldwork. Much of the anthropology of Sri Lanka in the last three decades would have to count as “public” scholarship, because it has been forced to address the contemporary realities of labor migration, religious politics, the global economy, and the rise of violent ethno-nationalist movements. As a long-term observer of the Tamil-speaking Hindu and Muslim communities in Sri Lanka’s eastern coastal region, I have always been attracted to the classic anthropological issues of caste, popular religion, and matrilineal kinship. However, in the wake of the civil wars for Tamil Eelam and the 2004 tsunami disaster, I have been forced to confront (somewhat uneasily) a fundamentally altered fieldwork situation.This gives my current work a stronger flavor of public anthropology, while providing an opportunity for me to trace older matrilocal family patterns and Hindu-Muslim religious traditions under radically changed conditions.
The Dutch Burgher Union’s ‘home’ with a restaurant, bar, billaird tables and meeting rooms has been located centrally in Colombo for over a century at the junction of Bauddhaloka Mawatha (ake Buller’s Rd) and Havelock Rd running south-north across colombo — and thus withina sotone’strow of many faciltiees including the University of colombo, Nomads cricket ground, the SL braodcasting Corporation, Archives, et cetera. I have used it as a meeting spot often and in mid-September 2020 held a THANK YOU party for friends and relatives who had sustained me over a five-month covid-informed stay in Lanka.
So, its is a delight to feature its further growth in pictorial form…. Michael Roberts
Dear Sri Lankan diaspora friends and wider friends and supporters of Sri Lanka
I ask you to please seriously consider , and further distribute to potentially interested others, two matters:
1) FOR SRI LANKA DIASPORA MEMBERS ONLY – A CALL TO ASSIST SRI LANKA AT THIS TIME OF URGENT NEED THROUGH REMOTE USE OF YOUR AND SRI LANKAN COLLEAGUES’ SKILLS . Full details are immediately below..
2) AN INVITATION TO ATTEND AND SUPPORT A MELBOURNE-BASED FAMILY FUN DAY , INCLUDING GAMES AND SPORTS, ON NOVEMBER 13 , THIS IS ALSO AN OPPORTUNITY TO HEAR FIRST HAND FROM BRIDGING LANKA’S JEREMY LIYANAGE OF THE SITUATION IN SRI LANKA AND HOW BRIDGING LANKA IS WORKING TO SUPPORT THE PEOPLE OF MANNAR , IN NORTH WEST SRI LANKA., YOU CAN ALSO MEET LAFIR MOHAMED, AUSTRALIAN VOLUNTEERS’ PROGRAM MANAGER FOR SRI LANKA
Video and Editing by Jeremy Partyka. Made in conjunction w/ final paper for my Independent Study Project during ISLE Fall 2017 🙂 Special shoutout to all the helpful lighthouse staff and locals who assisted me with my project!
.… with still shots of the newer lighthouse at Galle Fort located at its south-eastern corner provided by a person born and bred in the Fort and familair with its beaches and ramparts, one Michael Roberts … and with several of the images being refined for Thuppahi by David Sansoni of Sydney