Category Archives: sri lankan society

December 7, 2014 · 11:33 am

The Impending Slug-Fest: Q and A with Chandrika Kumaratunga

, who also tried to eliminate Chandrika Dharisha Bastians, courtesy of Daily FT, 4 December 2014 where the title is  “Momentum gainst Executive Presidency is unstoppable –CBK”

SRI LANKA-POLITICS-RALLY https://bandaragama.wordpress.com/2008/06/

Chandriak + Ranil Chandrika + Fonseka -blogdzone.lkblog.dzone.lk

Love her or hate her, ex-President Chandrika Kumaratunga is a force to reckon with. Coming out of a nine-year retirement last month, the former Head of State has joined forces with a broad opposition movement attempting to abolish and reform the presidential office that she once held for 11 years.  The declaration of SLFP frontliner Maithripala Sirisena as a common opposition challenger to President Mahinda Rajapaksa has cemented Kumaratunga’s position in the public psyche as polls fever hits the nation. As she struggles alongside Sirisena, the UNP and the civil society movement coalescing around the abolition platform, Kumaratunga is perceived as the leader of the SLFP rebellion that is threatening to crack open the ruling coalition ahead of the 8 January 2015 poll. She remains one of the fiercest critics of the Rajapaksa administration, but the fears of her children held her back from contesting as the opposition candidate in this election.  As she lingered over a late lunch at her Independence Avenue residence, before the elections were declared, President Kumaratunga engaged in a frank and laidback discussion with Daily FT about constitutional revolution, SLFP politics and when the hostility with President Rajapaksa began. The former President laughed about how she sketched the original design of the Nelum Pokuna, her essay-writing skills that she is using towards penning her memoirs and how much she loves being a grandmother. She also shared what aspects she would try to do-over if she could turn the clock back on her two-term presidency. Continue reading →

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December 5, 2014 · 1:22 pm

Tessa Bartholomeusz’s IN DEFENSE OF DHARMA, 2002

Preface by Tessa Bartholomeusz, with Basic Book Details & Table of Contents followed by two book reviews

IN DEFENSE Tessa (1)

I. PREFACE

The “Sinhala Army Song” graces the final pages of the 1999 commemorative volume of the fiftieth anniversary of the Sri Lankan Army (Sri Lanka Army, 50 Years On: 1949–1999, 1999, p. 918). According to this publication, the song was composed by a Buddhist monk, Rambukkana Siddhartha Thero. In view of the identity and vocation of its author and inasmuch as it reflects many of the themes that I explore in the pages that follow, it is worth reproducing the song in full here (in an English translation by C. R. de Silva and myself): Continue reading →

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December 4, 2014 · 12:52 pm

Tessa Bartholomeusz: In Memory of a Scholar Lost Far, Far Too Early

 Jeff Tatum’s FOREWORD for In Defense of Dharma and Florida State University’s Lecture Program in Her Memory Tessa (1) Tessa among her colleagues

I.  Tessa J. Bartholomeusz Lecture Series:  The Tessa J. Bartholomeusz Lecture in Religion has been established by the faculty of the Department of Religion, Florida State University, in memory of our late colleague. Tessa Bartholomeusz (1958-2001) came to Florida State as assistant professor in 1993, following an appointment at Indiana University/Purdue University at Indianapolis and the completion of a Ph.D. from the University of Virginia in 1991. She was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1997, and to full professor in 2001. While at Florida State, Professor Bartholomeusz established a reputation as a leading interpreter of Buddhism through such works as Women Under the Bo Tree (Cambridge, 1994), Buddhist Fundamentalisms and Minority Identities in Sri Lanka (State University of New York, 1998), In Defense of Dharma (Curzon Press, 2002), and numerous articles in scholarly journals. Professor Bartholomeusz also received a number of awards for teaching at Florida State University, served as treasurer for the American Institute of Sri Lanka Studies and as the book review editor for the Journal of Asian Studies. The Tessa J. Bartholomeusz Lecture is supported by the Department of Religion through its account at the Florida State University Foundation. Anyone wishing to join in supporting this project is invited to contact the Department of Religion at 850-644-1020, or to speak with one of the faculty. Continue reading →

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November 28, 2014 · 1:01 am

A Pragmatic Evaluation of the Sirisena Challenge and Lanka’s Political Issues

Neville Ladduwahetty, courtesy of The Island 28 November 2011 where the title reads “A reality check on the common candidate’s pledges”

The coalition that Mr. Sirisena represents has diverse interests. The formulation of the new Constitution has to be undertaken by this diverse group. Therefore, it would be reasonable to expect the process of formulating a new Constitution to take more time than the 100 day time frame he has pledged if he is to repeal the Executive Presidency. This was the case too with others who ran for this office and who had pledged to repeal the Executive Presidency.

MIAHTRIPALA Maithripala Sirisena Continue reading →

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November 25, 2014 · 4:38 am

Story-Telling in the Past: A Critique of Benedict Anderson and Post-Modern Conceits

Michael Roberts ….. This essay appeared as a booklet under the auspices of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, in 2002, ISBN: 955-580-068-7, one that took up  46 pages. A modified version became chapter 2 in Roberts, Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period, 1590s-1818, Colombo, Yapa Publications, 2004. It has also appeared in Colombo Telegraph where readers will be entertained by the blog comments.

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The word “media” connotes a great deal today: it suggests a powerful force, a pervasive influence, a job market and much more. These connotations mark the technological force of the television set and the computer in the contemporary global order. Among academics in the 1950s and 1960s, a similar power was attributed to the written word, that is, to the word in print form (as distinct from palm-leaf). Both phenomena can be treated as signs of modernism. In the 1950s and 1960s this imprint of modernism within the social sciences was embodied in “modernisation theory.” This theory was one of the ruling models in social science literature and was rooted in the distinctions between “modernity” and “tradition,” and the related differentiation between “modern societies” (invariably Western) and underdeveloped “traditional societies.”[1] In questioning the rigidity of this distinction in their book The Modernity of Tradition (Chicago: 1967) with reference to South Asia, the Rudolphs implicitly emphasised the force of such forms of conceptualisation.

Continue reading →

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November 24, 2014 · 3:35 pm

Treachery and Ethnicity in Portuguese Representations of Sri Lanka

ALAN STRATHERNAlan Strathern a reprint of a chapter in Richard Roque And Kim Wagner (eds.) Engaging Colonial Knowledge, London, Palgrave, 2012, pp. 217-34.

Writing from the imperial capital of Goa in the 1630s, the official chronicler of the Portuguese East, António Bocarro, turned his attention southwards to ‘the enemy that we have in this island of Ceylon’. This bountiful island was the only place in Asia where the Portuguese had launched a successful project of extensive territorial conquest. They were now directly ruling the lowlands and engaged in a ceaseless attempt to defeat the island’s last independent kingdom, the highland bastion of Kandy[i]. Bocarro’s verdict was not flattering: ‘all the Sinhalese are by their nature treacherous and inconstant and for any advantage they would kill their own father’.

He was not only referring to the recalcitrant inhabitants of Kandy but also the lowland people who were considered vassals of the king in Lisbon. He lamented the ease with which these vassals would ‘cross from us to the enemy, and return from the enemy to us’. He went on to say, ‘But with a big difference, because when on our side they never refrain from being ready for any treachery against us, however obligated they may be to us for benefits received from the Portuguese. And also, so strong and firm are they in their hatred of us and their subjection, that even those who have showed themselves always faithful and have proved it with their own lives [in our service], confess that even unto the grave, they will not be able to give up that hatred…’[ii] Continue reading →

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November 23, 2014 · 9:58 am

Sacrifice Lost and Found–Colonial India and Postcolonial Lanka

Masakazu Tanaka, courtesy of  ZlNBUN 1999 No. 34(1) 127-146 …… http://www.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~shakti/%20preSacrifice.html — Readers should atend to the date of publication. The article is re-presented here because this essay is not widely known. Note, too, that Tanaka is the author of Patrons, Devotees and Goddesses, Kyoto, Kyoto University Institute for Research in the Humanities, 1991.

We came, we saw, we were horrified,  and intervened(1).
Notre societe n’est pas celled du spectacle, mais de la surveillance(2).

goat asacrifice ar Kamakhya temple a goat sacrifice at ar Kamakhya temple

1. The underlying viewpoint in the colonial and the postcolonial

This article analyses how the colonial government and the post-independence state viewed and dealt with rituals involving violence that were rooted in the regional community(3). I refer to these rituals as “sacrifice” for the reasons that I will give below. These rituals, of which animal sacrifice is a typical example, have almost always been negatively characterized as “savage”, “brutal” , “violent”, “unhygienic” and “superstitious”. Here I will consider the cases of hook-swinging, fire walking and animal sacrifice in South India (the Madras Presidency) as a 19th century British colony and in Sri Lanka (Ceylon) shortly after independence. Continue reading →

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November 23, 2014 · 5:08 am

Reconciliation and National Intergration demands the Widespread Use of Tamil

Eran Wickramaratne, from The Island, 22 November 2014, where the title is “Tamil must be more widely used for true national integration”

ERAN WDuring the colonial period the Sinhala speaking people were disadvantaged by the obstacles to communicate in their mother tongue. After independence and the adoption of the ‘Sinhala Only’ policy we disadvantaged the Tamil speaking people. This country has remained divided primarily due to the non recognition of the Tamil language. This situation was corrected when this assembly adopted Sinhala and Tamil as the official language of the country. Constitutionally it was a progressive move to put right that which was wrong.

Despite the official language policy there is little visible signs of improvement in the implementation of the policy. Continue reading →

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November 21, 2014 · 7:49 am

The Poet Richard Murphy’s Account of Killings in the 1980s in Sri Lanka

Padraig Colman, Extracts from his “Rambling Ruminations of an Irishman in Sri Lanka,” at http://pcolman.wordpress.com/2014/11/20/richard-murphy-long-version/

MURPHY 2 ………. I was surprised to learn that Murphy spent a great deal of his childhood in Ceylon where his father, Sir William Lindsay Murphy was the last colonial Mayor of Colombo (and first Municipal Commissioner from 1937 to 1941). Richard was taken to Ceylon at the age of six weeks, having been born in a damp, decaying big house in the west of Ireland. The young Richard Murphy spent holidays in Diatalawa, which is not far from my home. After leaving Ceylon, Sir William succeeded the Duke of Windsor as Governor of the Bahamas. Continue reading →

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November 18, 2014 · 2:15 pm

The War in Sri Lanka and Post-War Propaganda

Michael Roberts, courtesy of Groundviews where it appeared on 7th Nov. 2014.    

Mike at great WALL This Memorandum was sent to Geneva on 14th November and again later and its receipt was acknowledged. The reproduction here contains additional hyperlinks – that is more than the original Memo/GV version. It is also embellished with specific cartographical and pictorial illustrations at one remove: the Cross-References marked “Pics” can be found in the sister-posting in Thuppahi. In my reading, no study of the last phase of Eelam War IV can be conducted by armchair-intellectuals or lawyers with no experience of battles and limited visual and geographical sensibilities. My emphasis on visual aids in the two-volume Tamil Person and State (Colombo, Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2014) is an attempt to overcome my own shortcomings in this area of expertise.

Issapriya and soldies -white flagIsaipriya captured –– Pic from http://white-flags.org/

Dear Sandra Beidas and OISL Team,  

As a Sri Lankan Australian and academic I have been collecting and analysing the material on the last phase of the war in Sri Lanka for six years now. I come across new evidence regularly in the midst of misinformation and dis-information that is a facet of the propaganda war that has been sharpening since the LTTE began to retreat in 2008. Since the volume of data is huge, a thorough investigation calls for assiduous work by a team which includes those who are culturally competent and able to discern manipulation. They must transcend the clever tactics of misinformation and fabrication from both sides, with the additional awareness that the Tamil migrant networks outdo the government (GSL) on this front by a proverbial mile.[1] Continue reading →

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