Category Archives: Tamil civilians

Caste & Politics in the Sri Lankan Tamil World

Robert Siddharthan Perinpanayagam, in Groundviews, 22 August 2011, where the title reads “Caste And Politics” …. An article that drew 19 comments including some responses from “Sid”… reproduced here with highlighting imposed by The Editor in circumstances where my friend “Sid” from Peradeniya  days is no longer around to dispute matters … as he surely would have.

Over the years, the claims of the Tamil people for justice, equalty and dignity have been rejected with a variety of specious arguments. It is not necessary to go into these exercises here again. However, the latest attempt in this direction is to raise the issue of caste in Jaffna society. Former civil servants, who spent three or four years being de facto kings of the North, have sought to comment on this issue in many recent hero-stories that they have published in the newspapers. In these hero-stories they report not only how they defeated one departmental head or another or humiliated a hapless village headman, but how they vanquished the evil designs of the Tamils as well. Indeed everything seems to become grist to the mill of Tamil-bashing. Even a casual remark made in a cricket match is used by a famous historian to claim that the Tamils of Jaffna are cravenly caste-conscious. Off-the-cuff social commentators as well as the tribalist pundits in the newspapers have also got into this act. The implication of these commentaries is that the Sinhalese do not have the problem of castism and only Tamils do. One recent commentator is so ignorant of the political history of the island as to invoke Ponnambalam Ramanathan’s castism! It was indeed the fear of Karava ascendancy by the Goigamas that elevated Ramanathan to high stature by making him the representative of the “Educated Ceylonese” in the Legislative Council.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, anti-racism, authoritarian regimes, caste issues, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, cultural transmission, discrimination, disparagement, economic processes, education, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian traditions, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power sharing, self-reflexivity, social justice, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, working class conditions, world events & processes

Incisive Strategy & Tactics behind the Defeat of the LTTE in 2006-09

Serge De Silva Ranasinghe …  This article was first available online at jir. janes.com on 11 November 2009, where it carries this title: “Good Education: Sri Lankan military learns insurgency lessons”*++*

A SUMMARY: In May 2009, the Sri Lankan government declared victory in the country’s brutal civil war. Sergei De  Silva-Ranasinghe examines the effectiveness of the military tactics that helped defeat the LTTE. … While The Editor Thuppahi has imposed highlighting to stress some key aspects

Sri Lanka’s victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in May 2009 offers insights and lessons in confronting an intractable and formidable insurgency. To achieve victory, Sri Lanka expanded its army and adopted new tactics for the largest military campaign in the country’s history. Determined leadership and superior manpower were ultimately decisive in a war that killed as many as 22,000 rebels and over 5,000 soldiers.

 

The maps indicate the Sri Lankan military’s advance through the country, the various operations that led to the capture of insurgents and the LTTE’s gradual downfall over the past four years.

 

Continue reading

5 Comments

Filed under accountability, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, Eelam, ethnicity, historical interpretation, insurrections, landscape wondrous, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, performance, photography, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, Tamil civilians, tamil refugees, Tamil Tiger fighters, trauma, unusual people, war reportage, world events & processes

De Silva-Ranasinghe’s In-Depth Studies of the LTTE’s Downfall During Eelam War IV . A Bibliography

From Perth with Incisive Penetration: De Silva-Ranasinghe’s In-Depth Analysis of the LTTE’s Downfall During Eelam War IV …. A Bibliography

 

 

 

 

 

 

De Silva-Ranasinghe, Sergei 2009a “Political and Security Implications of Sri Lanka’s Armed Conflict,” Asia-Pacific Defence Reporter, Feb.  2009, Vol. 35/1, pp. 20, 22-24.

Continue reading

1 Comment

Filed under accountability, australian media, authoritarian regimes, counter-insurgency, historical interpretation, law of armed conflict, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, politIcal discourse, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, sea warfare, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, suicide bombing, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, war reportage, world events & processes

USA’s Double Standards: A Payback Today for Sri Lanka’s Refusal to Kow-Tow in 2009

Item in the DAILY MIRROR, 28 April 2023… with this title “Designating Karannagoda; Russia hits back at US: Says West should not interfere in other countries affairs”

 The United States has designated former Navy Commander Wasantha Karannagoda, for his alleged involvement in gross violations of human rights. The US State Department said that Karannagoda has been designated pursuant to Section 7031(c) of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2023, due to his involvement in a gross violation of human rights during his tenure as a Naval Commander. As a result of today’s action, Karannagoda and his wife, Srimathi Ashoka Karannagoda, are ineligible for entry into the United States.

Continue reading

6 Comments

Filed under accountability, american imperialism, atrocities, centre-periphery relations, Eelam, historical interpretation, human rights, Indian Ocean politics, law of armed conflict, life stories, military strategy, nationalism, news fabrication, patriotism, power politics, propaganda, Rajapaksa regime, sea warfare, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, truth as casualty of war, UN reports, unusual people, vengeance, war reportage, world events & processes

The LTTE and Their Sacrificial Devotion to Cause

Michael Roberts on his Essays on this Theme within the Global Context ………… https://thuppahis.com/2017/07/21/sacrificial-devotion-how-i-entered-this-terrain/…. JULY 21, 2017 · …………..“Sacrificial Devotion” — How I Entered This Terrain

 

 Tiger fighters relax in camp, late 1980sPic by Shyam Tekwani who was embedded with LTTE for a while.

With the benefit of a Teen Murti Fellowship I was collecting data on communal violence in India in 1995 when my readings of news archives indicated that the death of Mrs Indira Gandhi by assassination in Delhi induced a handful of individuals in southern India to commit sympathetic suicide. Since news reports did not indicate similar reactions in other parts of India, I began to reflect on the cultural foundations that promoted such expressions – acting, of course, in contexts that also could provide political and economic inspirations. This eventually led to my first essay on this topic: “Filial Devotion and the Tiger Cult of Suicide,” Contributions to Indian Sociology, 1996, 30: 245-72.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, anton balasingham, atrocities, authoritarian regimes, communal relations, cultural transmission, Eelam, ethnicity, historical interpretation, human rights, Indian Ocean politics, insurrections, life stories, LTTE, martyrdom, military strategy, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, suicide bombing, Tamil civilians, Tamil migration, Tamil Tiger fighters, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance, violence of language, war crimes, world events & processes, zealotry

The Hill Country Tamils of Sri Lanka …. & Their Travails

Shamara Wettimuny in Financial Times, 12 April 2023 … with highlighting added by The Editor, Thuppahi

On a muggy Friday afternoon, the auditorium of the National Library of Sri Lanka slowly filled with an eager audience from Colombo, the Hill Country and beyond. It was the launch of a book by Associate Professor of Anthropology, Dr. Mythri Jegathesan, of Santa Clara University.

Maithir Jegathesan

Her book, a work on and of solidarity with the Hill Country Tamils of Sri Lanka, ‘Tea and Solidarity: Tamil Women and Work in Post-war Sri Lanka’ was originally published by the University of Washington Press in 2019 to widespread acclaim. It was awarded the 2020 Diane Forsyth Prize for the best book featuring feminist anthropology research and in 2021, it won the Michelle Z. Rosaldo Book Prize for its significant contribution to feminist anthropology.

Continue reading

3 Comments

Filed under accountability, anti-racism, authoritarian regimes, British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, cultural transmission, democratic measures, economic processes, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, human rights, island economy, language policies, legal issues, life stories, politIcal discourse, power politics, racism, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, social justice, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil migration, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, working class conditions, world events & processes

Revisiting FIRE & STORM

Michael Roberts

In presenting a Zoom Lecture relating to the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka in April 2021 for Dr. Geethika Dharmasinghe’s class at Colgate University in USA a month or so back,  I deplyed the work that went into one of books: that entitled FIRE & STORM.

I now atempt to schock people around the world with pictorial illustrations of some — note “Some” (with all its partialities) — photographs of the political and Eelam War scenarios in Sri Lanka displayed in Fire & Storm.

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, atrocities, centre-periphery relations, chauvinism, communal relations, cultural transmission, demography, discrimination, disparagement, economic processes, Eelam, electoral structures, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, insurrections, island economy, jihadists, landscape wondrous, language policies, life stories, LTTE, martyrdom, meditations, military strategy, modernity & modernization, nationalism, performance, photography, politIcal discourse, power politics, religiosity, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, suicide bombing, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, trauma, truth as casualty of war, vengeance, violence of language, world events & processes

Chandra Schaffter: A Sturdy Sri Lankan Sportsman and Administrator For All Seasons

Michael Roberts

Sri Lanka has been blessed with generations of talented cricketers over the decades: from

  • the Kelaarts and Saravanamuttus of the 1920s and 1930s … to
  • the Macarthy’s, de Sarams and Heyns of the 1930s and 1940s …
  • the Gunasekeras of the 1950s
  • the Lieversz, HIK Fernandos and Reids of the 1960s
  • Anura Tennekoon, Michael Tissera of the 1960s-1970s
  • Duleep Mendis and the Wettimuny’s of the 1970s/80s
  • Ranjan Madugalle and Arjuna Ranatunga of the 1980s
  • the Aravinda-Ranatunga-Jayasuriya-Kaluwitharana-and-Vaas dynamos of the 1980s and the 1990s
  • the Mahela Jayawardena and Sangakkara duo of the 2000s …..
  • while not losing sight of that unique phenomenon we know as “Murali” in the 1990s-to-2000s.

Continue reading

1 Comment

Filed under accountability, anti-racism, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, cricket for amity, Eelam, ethnicity, Fascism, historical interpretation, life stories, LTTE, martyrdom, meditations, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, S. Thomas College, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, Sri Lankan cricket, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, unusual people, world events & processes

For Reflection: Sir John Kotelawala’s Speech at STC Prizegiving in 1954

Mt. Lavinia 1954 Prize Giving-Address by the Right Honourable Sir John Kotelawala, K.B.E., M.P. — with thanks to Harry De Sayrah of Sydney, who added this little preface “When politicians were literate and articulate …………………..” with a few highlights and an arbitrary  selection of photographs inserted by The Editor, Thuppahi 

1954  PRIZE  GIVING.  Presided  by  The  Warden, Canon  R.S.de Saram, MA , OBE.,St. Thomas’  College,  Mt. Lavinia. ……………. *Prime Minister of Ceylon, at the Distribution of Prizes,* …………. *S. Thomas’ College, Mt. Lavinia, Saturday, 31 st July,1954*

When I played for Royal against S. Thomas’ many years ago my intention, which was shared by my team-mates, was to give the Thomians a good drubbing, and, if that was not possible, at least to give them a test of endurance. Much as I value the opportunity which I now have of presiding at your Prize Distribution, I shall endeavour to do neither this afternoon. I mist congratulate the Warden on his Report, which illustrates what opportunities schools like S. Thomas’ have of continuing to play a leading part in the training of our youth and the moulding of their character.

Continue reading

2 Comments

Filed under accountability, anti-racism, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, demography, economic processes, education, education policy, electoral structures, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, language policies, life stories, nationalism, parliamentary elections, performance, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, unusual people, world events & processes

Cricket & Galle in Rothman’s ‘Potted’ History of Sri Lanka

VIEW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNJyW-rdZPQ …. entitled The Modern Origins of Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict”

Continue reading

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, British imperialism, centre-periphery relations, Colombo and Its Spaces, communal relations, cultural transmission, demography, doctoring evidence, economic processes, European history, governance, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, Indian traditions, island economy, Kandyan kingdom, language policies, life stories, Muslims in Lanka, performance, politIcal discourse, population, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, riots and pogroms, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, Sri Lankan cricket, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, transport and communications, trauma, truth as casualty of war, war reportage, world events & processes