Category Archives: social justice

February 10, 2025 · 6:26 pm

Dr Hilali Noordeen’s Lessons From Life

Thuppahi introduces the Amazon.com FLIER for the book by Dr. Hilali Noodeen entitled Letters to a Young Doctor, 2021 whitefox …

https://www.amazon.com.au/Letters-Young-Doctor-Exploring-Surviving-ebook/dp/B08VWVTVLB

 

Letters to a Young Doctor: Exploring and Surviving a Career in Medicine,  …….. by Dr Hilali Noordeen, 2021, Kindle Edition

4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars    8 ratings

Part manual and part manifesto, Letters to a Young Doctor is a timely and passionate book to help future medical students and young doctors navigate and survive medical education and practice, presenting an unvarnished depiction of the profession as it is today and the challenges it faces.
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February 9, 2025 · 2:50 pm

An Inspiring Sri Lankan Anthropologist: Gananath Obeysekere

Laleen Jayamanne & Nammika Raby, in The Island, February 2025

“People were nourished by stories….” (Kathandarawalinne minissu jeewathwune) Gananath

“Man does not live by bread alone” Matthew 4:4

Dimuthu Saman Wettasinghe’s film Gananath Obeyesekere: In Search of Buddhist Conscienceopens with a bravura tracking shot moving past trees, water, a splash of saffron robes. These sunlit images are enfolded in a non-religious, rather melancholy male choral chant, but soon the singular voice of Professor Gananath Obeyesekere cuts through with a kind of Dionysian intensity. He tells us a story about Gauthama Buddha, as the camera encircles, at speed, what turns out to be the Kandy Lake. His tale is about a devastating war waged by the king of Kosla against the Sakya kingdom but of the Buddha’s unshakable belief that if folk get together and discuss matters in good faith (call it diplomacy), all wars could be averted. This carefully and deeply researched, imaginative, ‘Educational Film’ of 142 minutes, with its exhilaratingly dense overture and its subtle montage, is a loving tribute to an exemplary Lankan scholar/teacher and his life work (of some 70 years) as an internationally renowned Anthropologist.

The film shows Gananath’s empathetic ability to pay careful ethnographic attention to a variety of gendered states of mental distress and trauma and their traditional ritualised ecstatic expressions, especially with regard to women, well before some feminist scholars in the West began to be interested in the topic of ‘Women and Madness’ from a Freudian psychoanalytic perspective. Psychoanalytic theory became methodologically important for Feminist Film Theory, which I used in my doctoral thesis on ‘Female Representation in the Lankan cinema’.

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January 23, 2025 · 4:59 pm

In Apprecation of Professor H.A. de S. Gunasekera

Sumanasiri Liyanage, … His Prologue to An Academic Appreciation of Professor HA De S Gunasekera

Prologue …. Vice-Chancellor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Dean, Faculty of Arts, Head, Department of Economics, Members of Prof. H A De S Gunasekera family, colleagues, Friends and students.

It is indeed a pleasure to be in Peradeniya once again, and I felt honored and privileged when I was asked to deliver the Prof H. A. De S. Gunasekera memorial oration 2025 for which I thank Prof Sri Ranjith, Head/Economics and members of the H.A. De S. Gunasekera Memorial Committee.

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January 22, 2025 · 12:15 pm

Irawati Karwe: A Female Scholar Confronting Nazi Racism as well as the Wild

Cherylann Mollan, presenting an article entitled “India’s pioneering female anthropologist who challenged Nazi race theories” …..  BBC News Mumbai 19 January 2025

Irawati Karve’s writings about Indian culture and civilisation are ground-breaking.

Irawati Karve led a life that stood apart from those around her. Born in British-ruled India, and at a time when women didn’t have many rights or freedoms, Karve did the unthinkable: she pursued higher studies in a foreign country, became a college professor and India’s first female anthropologist.

She also married a man of her choosing, swam in a bathing suit, drove a scooter and even dared to defy a racist hypothesis of her doctorate supervisor – a famous German anthropologist named Eugen Fischer.

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January 21, 2025 · 12:51 am

Victor Ivan, RIP: …. The Wikipedia Memo on Victor

Michael Roberts,

 I got to know Victor at a convivial session at Ananda Chittambalam’s house in Bambalapitiya in 1989. Our common interests in the island’s history and its tempestuous present meant that we kept in sporadic touch. I have his illustrated book PARADISE IN TEARS  …. and I will present a Vale as well as items referring to his articles and work in Thuppahi. His demise at a relatively early age is a blow to all Sri Lankan patriots.

WIKIPEDIA

Majuwana Kankanamage Victor Ivan (Sinhala: මාජුවානා කන්කානම්ගේ වික්ටර් අයිවන්; 26 June 1949 – 19 January 2025) was a Sri Lankan journalist. He was a Marxist rebel in his youth and later became the Editor of the controversial Sinhalese newspaper Ravaya. He served as the Editor of Ravaya for 25 years consecutively from its inception. Victor was an investigative journalist, political critic, a theorist, social activist and also an author of several books.

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January 6, 2025 · 8:02 pm

Remembering Karen Roberts Who Chose Writing …..

Renuka Sadanandan, whose original title runs thus: “Karen Roberts Writing. Her Way of Staying Close” **

Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara

It was probably the single most frightening thing that happened to her. Having to walk alone from the advertising agency in Kollupitiya where she worked part-time to her home in Dehiwela, through the streets aflame. Those terrible scenes stayed imprinted in her mind though it was many years before she would think of putting them down.

“On twenty-third of July 1983, the day the world went mad, was how Karen Roberts would later write about the ethnic violence in her book ‘July’. Her world changed that day, she says sombrely. “Until then my life was great…..my only concern was what to wear on Saturday night!” Her father was abroad, her mother had to fetch her younger sister home from school and her brother was stuck somewhere and the 17-year-old Karen had to fend for herself amidst the mayhem and madness that saw the familiar Colombo landscape turn into killing streets.

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December 24, 2024 · 7:17 pm

Chandra Schaffter in Q-and-A with Rex Clementine

Rex Clementine ... article on 23rd October 2018 entitled ”Sri Lanka’s oldest living cricketer – Chandra Schaffter”  … with highlighting emphasis added by The Editor, Thuppahi

Q: Who, in your opinion, is the Greatest Sri Lankan Batsman?

“I tend to agree with statements made by Frank Worrell and Gary Sobers. In their assessment Mahadevan Sathasivam was the best batsman that they had ever seen. Particularly in the case of Worrell, he played against Sathasivam when he scored 96 on a very bad wicket against top bowlers, who did extremely well on poor conditions.

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December 20, 2024 · 4:04 pm

UN Agencies That Deployed False Death Figures re Eelam War

Palitha Senanayake, in The Island, 20 December 2024 …… ‘UN fudged Lankan casualty figures’ – Lord Naseby

The United Nations Human Rights Council at its 57th session adopted a resolution extending the mandate of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Project on Sri Lanka Accountability by one year. Babu Ram Pant, Deputy Regional Director for South Asia at Amnesty International, has commented extensively on this resolution.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (L) arrives at a hotel for a joint press conference with Sri Lankan Minister of Foreign Affairs Rohitha Bogollagama in Kandy on May 23, 2009, after Ban visited Menik Farm camp, home to thousands of civilians who fled the war zone. UN chief Ban Ki-moon came face-to-face with the despair of Sri Lanka’s war-hit civilians as he toured the main refugee camp and flew over the devastated war zone. AFP PHOTO/ROSLAN RAHMAN (Photo credit should read ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

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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 15, 2024 · 2:03 pm

Vale = An Appreciation of Professor Padmasiri De Silva

Revd Mahinda Deegalle from London, in The Island 15 December 2024

The year 2024 is rapidly drawing to a close. This year marks the personal losses of many helpful academics, monks, family members, and friends. I place this brief note of appreciation here to pay tribute to the late Professor Padmasiri de Silva (1933–2024), one of my teachers at the University of Peradeniya in the 1980s, who was just about to celebrate his 92nd birthday on January 18, 2025 with the publication of his most recent contribution The Moral Psychology of Buddhism, which is currently under preparation for publication posthumously in Melbourne.

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