Category Archives: sri lankan society

July 18, 2016 · 4:12 pm

No Ball. Has Yahapālanaya no-balled Sri Lanka Cricket?

Michael Roberts

Towards the end of last year several newspapers and sports writers supported the elections that have produced the present power-bloc ruling Sri Lanka Cricket. No better illustration of sycophancy and the weight of money can be found. The catch-cry of a return to democracy should have fooled no one. What one has seen for over two decades when clubs elect a board is an oligarchic process of wheeler dealing — with governments (for example that of Mahinda Chinthanaya) occasionally weighing in.

Cricket is big business. How such a business can develop long-term plans when its  principal executives  are elected every year does not seem to have entered the present government’s thinking. In short, that reasoning is as dim as dumb.

SIDATH Sidath Wettimuny hqdefault Prasanna Jayawardena Continue reading →

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July 18, 2016 · 3:09 pm

Social History within Cricket

Michael Roberts

Aubrey Kuruppu’s ode on the Asgiriya cricket grounds and its role in the promotion of international cricket in the hill-country prompted me to remark on my experiences as a bystander of international games there in the 1960s and 1970s. This included a reference to the facility it provided for agile males and youngsters to watch the matches for free from the branches of some trees in the surrounds.

That remark triggered a memory. Not something witnessed, but re a treasure of a picture in my stock: namely, a photograph of Sri Lankans watching the Australians playing a one-day whistle-stop match in Colombo in 1938. One does not see any famous Aussie cricketers in this image. Here, too, one sees blokes perched on trees. But that is not the main point. It is the varied forms of garment and head-covering displayed by the avid cricket-watchers that is the beauty of it. It is a revealing glimpse of the cross-class character of this particular segment of the crowd.

It is a priceless social document. It also anticipates the cross-class and cross-ethnic dimensions of cricketing enthusiasm that reached its apotheosis on 17th March 1996.

03-Ceylonese watch Aussies-1938 Continue reading →

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July 17, 2016 · 4:56 am

International Cabal’s Double-Standards castigated by Lord Naseby

Neville de Silva from London,  in Sunday Times, 17 July 2016, where the title is “Lord Naseby accuses UK, US of double standards over Sri Lanka”

Lord Naseby, president of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Sri Lanka, has accused Britain and the United States of double standards in asking the UN Human Rights Commissioner to investigate allegations of war-time abuses by Sri Lanka whereas Britain’s role in the Iraq war was investigated by British judges and privy councillors with no foreign involvement.

aa=NASEBY-news.bbc.co.uk Pic from news.bbc.co.uk

Speaking at the House of Lords debate on the recently released John Chilcot report that was largely critical of Britain’s role in the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, Lord Naseby said Britain and US had called for Sri Lanka’s war against the “terrorist” Tamils Tigers to be investigated by the UN Human Rights Commissioner in Geneva along with foreign judges while in the case of the Iraq war domestic investigators were considered sufficient. Continue reading →

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July 16, 2016 · 8:40 am

Double Standards in the International Football Game with Sri Lanka

Fr. Vimal Tirimanna, CSsR, in Rome, in The Island, 16 & 17 July 2016, where the title is “Western hypocrisy and UN call for accountability in Sri Lanka”

aa-vimal t Tirimanna -Pic from www.cssr.news

These days the media all over the world is buzzing with various news items, commentaries and articles on terrorism that is gradually stretching its ugly claws all over the world, almost like an epidemic. While acknowledging the obvious fact that terrorism is not born inside a vacum, but rather that it surely has its own particular socio-economic causes and factors, the point that no conscientious person could deny is that terrorism in itself is an intolerable evil, because it intentionally hurts innocent people, often costing them their very lives and destroying public and private property. Continue reading →

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July 15, 2016 · 3:45 pm

Royalists at Loggerheads: Indrajit Eviscerated

Gamini Seneviratne

Those here and overseas who scan our English language media would have read or heard by now that Indrajit Coomaraswamy  was the compromise candidate arrived at  for the post of Governor of the Central Bank. The President had accepted it in the face of the Prime Minister’s insistence on extending the tenure of Arjuna Mahendran a man as incompetent and shameless as Ranil Wickremasinghe.

GAMANI Gamini Seneviratne Indrajith Coomaraswamy Indrajit Coomaraswamy

That of course is a load of hogwash. Coomaraswamy was Ranil’s key advisor during his previous, and infamous, spell as Prime Minister which saw Wickremasinghe set up his own Green Channel for the LTTE to acquire arms to wage war against Sri Lanka. He was also advisor to Milinda Moragoda whose ‘Regaining Sri Lanka’was a blue-print for transferring this country to external capital. Moragoda though had sufficient conscience to baulk at the proposed take-over of Eppawala by corporate predators: ‘There are people there’, he said. For this Coomaraswamy that clearly is not a factor. Continue reading →

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July 14, 2016 · 4:04 pm

A Sensitive Prisoner Memoir: Commodore Boyagoda’s Captivity in LTTE Heartland

Sunila Galappatti in conversation with Commodore Boyagoda, courtesy of The Wire, 14 July 2016, where the title is “The Risks of Testimony: ‘Memories of Captivity with the Tamil Tigers”

It takes a long time to tell this story to friends: to say that I have a book just out; that I worked on it for five years without speaking openly about it; that it is a memoir written in the voice of a naval officer who was held captive for eight years during the Sri Lankan civil war and that he speaks of that experience in an understated and accepting way.­

SUNILAThis acceptance is the most surprising thing about the story and, almost immediately, people ask, “Did he go Stockholm?” I tell them it is a joke the commodore makes. “Maybe I have Stockholm syndrome,” he will say, and laugh. How is he to know, or I? We are not able to make a diagnosis, any more than the people who ask the question.

34a - Black Tigers Marching 36b-T-tigresses

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July 14, 2016 · 12:14 pm

USA’s Imperial Embrace marked in 2015 … and Now Continuing

Natasha Gooneratne, writing on 29 June 201 5, courtesy of  the Peace and Conflict Monitor, where the title reads “Under the Guise of Protecting Human Rights and Establishing Democracy: US Intervention in Sri Lanka” … In the present context where two Assistant Secretaries of State from USA are in amicable dialogue with key members of GSL, this reading of American foreign policy by a young academic with some international experience is pertinent  — and should be meditated upon in the light of articles on R2P and the either/or epistemology of “people of righteousness” referred to at the end. Editor, Thuppahi

AAA External Affairs Minister, Mangala Samaraweera in ‘media hug’ with Nisha Biswal (US Asst Sec-of-State) and Tom Malinowski (Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour) –Pic from Daily news, 2 days back

The paper argues that strong US intervention in Sri Lanka after the end of the island’s armed conflict in 2009 is not based on altruistic efforts to protect human rights as presented in mainstream sources, but stems from deepening US geopolitical and ideological interests in the Indian Ocean region.

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July 12, 2016 · 5:43 pm

Reflections of a Maverick Tamil Intellectual about Politics amidst OEG, DS, Banda and Others

From the Daily News, 12 July 2016

suntharalingamOn the land like unto ocean, I assume the form of a wave, And trusted dreams as a lifeI was trapped in the whirlwind of three desires, Ensnared day after day For the mound of my body I searched for food Without rest night or day I eat, eat and sleep seeing nought else, I get no gain On the shore of sorrow, I erect a tent of five virtues, I regarded thou as my mother, my son Yet thee treat me in this fashion Without interceding on my behalf Standing in-between and questioning meIs it good to remain so? Oh! My Lord! The Lover of Sivakami!! Thou who created me, oh! Natarajah of Thillai!

This poem from the Natarajapathu was translated by Suntharalingam on January 14, 1978 (Thaipongal Day) and annotated in his mother’s copy of the Kandapuranam from 1930.

What does a grandfather’s letter mean to you? Boring… pedagogical… jam-packed with advices? For C Anjalendran, his grandfather’s letters reveal a bygone grand era of Ceylon. His grandfather was a strange combination of being a professor of mathematics, lawyer and – most interestingly – a politician walking shoulder to shoulder with D S Senanayake, S W R D Bandaranaike, J R Jayewardene, Sir John Kotelawala and Sir Oliver Goonetilleke.

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July 12, 2016 · 11:57 am

Disquiet remains between Sinhalese and Tamils in the North

Frances Bulathsinghala, in The WEEK, 10 July 2016, where the title is “War over, conflict on”

Sitting next to a small poultry farm that she maintains in a garden in her house in northern Killinocchi, Rajini talks about the death of her father, brother and husband in the Sri Lankan civil war, which lasted for almost 30 years. The 46-year-old former company commander of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam breaks into tears as she recounts the tale of death and destruction. At times, she winces in pain, caused by the shrapnel still stuck in her body. Her daughter sits next to her, listening to the story of her struggle.

FB 4=79Soldierspatrolling.jpg.image.975.568Cycle of violence: Soldiers patrolling the streets of Killinocchi. As many as 16 of 19 brigades of the army are based in the Northern Province | Getty Images

“This child does not remember anything of the war,” says Rajini, pointing towards the ten-year-old. But it was the little girl, who was just three then, who saved Rajini’s life by bringing her food, water and medical attention, when she was lying in a pool of blood in a hospital compound after suffering injuries from shelling in the final battle of May 2009. “Hundreds of people were lying covered in blood. The hospitals were overflowing with people,” she says.

Rajini joined the LTTE in 1987 and remained an active member till 2000. A year later, she married Sudhan, also an LTTE member. Sudhan surrendered to the army just a few days before the end of the war. But even after seven years, Rajini has no news about her husband. She now thinks that he is dead. Continue reading →

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July 11, 2016 · 12:27 pm

Magical Vignettes on the Sri Lankan Unknowns from an Intrepid Adventurer

Stefan d’Silva’s Isle of Mystique- Isle of Legend – Glimpsing Eclipsed Sri Lanka is an apt title for a publication that illustrates, in vivid colour images and informative text, the wonder of Sri Lanka. The book explores places far from the routine travel agenda of most people. Mysterious rock paintings only recently discovered, cave inscriptions, rock art, old British military fortifications, remote lifestyles of nautical communities, the lost wealth of the Mannar Pearl Banks, the theft of the last Sinhala King’s crown and legends of lost races – and more, are all a part of this 247 page publication with revealing historical facts.

Me 1 Continue reading →

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