Category Archives: violence of language

October 13, 2023 · 11:11 pm

Gaza: Glaring Double Standards in the West

Fair Dinkum

It is easy to beat up on a small nation like Sri Lanka. As [Padma Rao Sundarji contends in her article on  Canada’s pro-Tamil Tiger policies], the way the West [did] this [was] to use the threat of sanctions to meddle into the conflict [that prevailed] in Sri Lanka, to undermine the efforts of the Sri Lankan military, and to prolong [Etelam War IV] for as long as possible. Perhaps Canada doesn’t like peace. It is only when you stand up to them, that countries in the West back off.

Pause for a moment to compare the West’s response to Sri Lanka [in the first decade of this century] with what is now happening in the latest war in the Middle East. The West is not calling for sanctions to be imposed on Israel in response to Israel threatening to wipe Gaza off the map, and to cut off food, water and electricity supplies to all three million residents of Gaza. Nor have sanctions been called for after Israel bombed a UN building in Gaza killing 15 UN representatives. That was fine with some Canadian commentators.

Some graphic shots of the scenarios in Gaza after Israel strikes  .… Pix from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-war-satellite-images-reveal-gaza-strip-devastation-hamas-attack/ … & note Map at end of this TPS Item

Continue reading →

9 Comments

Filed under accountability, arab regimes, atrocities, australian media, authoritarian regimes, Canadian politics, centre-periphery relations, discrimination, disparagement, ethnicity, governance, historical interpretation, human rights, jihadists, legal issues, life stories, Middle Eastern Politics, military strategy, politIcal discourse, power politics, self-reflexivity, terrorism, trauma, truth as casualty of war, vengeance, violence of language, war crimes, war reportage, world events & processes

September 27, 2023 · 9:03 pm

How Anthropologists Think: Configurations of the Exotic

  Bruce Kapferer, … being the Huxley Lecture: British Museum, 16 December 2011, subsequently published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 9, 8–86 ..in 2013 … [with the numerals in the publication date references subject to distortion in this version–distortions that will be corrected eventually]

Anthropology has often been criticized for its exoticism and orientalism. They are the paradoxes of a discipline focused on the comparative study of difference and diversity and are at the centre of the discussion here in the larger context of the importance of anthropology in the humanities and social sciences. The emphasis is on the role of the exotic as vital to anthropology’s study of difference and to its overall coherence and significance for the understanding of humanity as a whole.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under Aboriginality, ancient civilisations, British imperialism, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian traditions, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, nature's wonders, performance, politIcal discourse, population, racism, racist thinking, religiosity, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, teaching profession, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, travelogue, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, violence of language, world affairs, world events & processes, zealotry

September 19, 2023 · 1:16 am

Articles on the Easter Sunday Attacks in 2019 presented within TPS in May 2019

Michael Roberts

I have recently presented the list of items placed in this site during April 2019 immediately after the shocking events and now commence  to  present the itmes that appeared in May 2019. I can hardly claim to have provided a comprehensive coverage, but readers will find a wide variety of  personnel from different ethnic groups within this list.  That it should evoke such wide interest is not surprising: it was a kind of 9/11 in Sri Lankan and Indian Ocean history.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, atrocities, chauvinism, Colombo and Its Spaces, communal relations, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, Islamic fundamentalism, life stories, martyrdom, Muslims in Lanka, politIcal discourse, power politics, religiosity, security, sri lankan society, suicide bombing, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, trauma, unusual people, violence of language, world events & processes

September 11, 2023 · 8:54 pm

Articles on the Easter Sunday Attacks in Sri Lanka, 2019: THOSE in April 2019

VARIED…. IMMEDIATE – APRIL 2019

Nirupama Subramaniam 2019 “Nirupama’s Incisive Appraisal identifies Islamic Jihadist Patterns in Easter Sunday Terror,” 22 April 2019, ….. https://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2019/04/22/nirupamas-incisive-appraisal-identifies-islamic-jihadist-patterns-in-palm-sunday-terror/

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under accountability, atrocities, communal relations, cultural transmission, disparagement, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, Islamic fundamentalism, jihadists, landscape wondrous, life stories, Middle Eastern Politics, politIcal discourse, power politics, religiosity, religious nationalism, security, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, vengeance, violence of language, women in ethnic conflcits, working class conditions, world events & processes, zealotry

July 24, 2023 · 2:27 pm

The Agony and Ecstasy of A Pogrom: Southern Lanka, July 1983

Michael Roberts … reproducing an article that appeared initially in a collection of my essays in 1994 under the title above in EXPLORING CONFRONTATION, Readng, Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994,  pp. 317-27. It was subsequently reproduced in Nethra, vol. 6, 199-213.  …. and then placed on web  in Groundviews (without its footnotes) .… https://ground views.org/2019/03/28/the-case-for-foreign-judges-in-a-judicial-mechanism-in-sri-lanka-countering-falsehoods/. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bystanders after the burning and assaulting: also at Borella Junction area, 24-25th July 1983, picture by Chandragupta Amarasinghe. There is a suggestion here that popular participation in attacks were also initiated and/or facilitated by state functionaries. It is also likely that some of those described as ‘bystanders’ were perpetrators of some of the destruction, burning and killing. I had not discovered whom the photographer was when Exploring Confrontation went to press in 1994. Let me use this occasion to record my greatest respect for the bravery and ingenuity revealed by Chandragupta Amarasinghe in extremely dangerous and trying circumstances. 

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under anti-racism, atrocities, centre-periphery relations, Colombo and Its Spaces, communal relations, cultural transmission, disparagement, ethnicity, fundamentalism, heritage, historical interpretation, life stories, performance, photography, politIcal discourse, power politics, racism, riots and pogroms, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, trauma, unusual people, vengeance, violence of language, world events & processes, zealotry

June 23, 2023 · 8:29 pm

Errol’s Sarcastic Condemnation of Abusive Send-Offs on the Cricket Field

Errol Fernando in Email Commentary to Amba Yahalaluvo aka Pals, 22 June 2023

Let me give you the cricinfo report on the ‘Robinson incident’, L….. After dismissing Khawaja for 141 Robinson’s send-off was,’ F…off you  f…ing prick’. When he was interviewed later Robinson stated that he had absolutely no need to apologise.  His justification was,  ‘We’ve all seen Ricky Ponting and other Aussies do the same to us’.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, anti-racism, atrocities, cricket for amity, cultural transmission, disparagement, heritage, landscape wondrous, life stories, meditations, performance, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, tolerance, unusual people, violence of language, world events & processes

June 16, 2023 · 1:27 am

Revisiting Tarzie VittachI’s EMERGENCY ’58

Michael Roberts

In re-visiting an assortment of historical episodes in Sri Lanka’s past in unsytematic fashion I have been led to Tarzie Vittachi’s Emergençy ’58 (published in 1958) by Sugath Kulatunga’s detailed and invaluable recounting of his experiences as a government official in Polonnaruwa in the 1950s (an item still being processed).

While Vittachi was an experienced journalist, we cannot take every ‘fact’ that he presents as indubitable. However, this pointer towards his slim volume should, hopefully, bring new generations of Sri Lankans and outside observers into reflections on the consequences of the political currents unleashed in the general election in 1956 — notably the upsurge of the underprivileged classes and the demand for Sinhala Only.

This focus, however, should not promote currents of denunciation which throw the baby out with the bathwater. The inequalities of the pre-existing dispensation must be clinically drawn out as well.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under accountability, anti-racism, atrocities, centre-periphery relations, chauvinism, democratic measures, discrimination, disparagement, economic processes, education policy, ethnicity, governance, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, language policies, Left politics, life stories, power politics, propaganda, racist thinking, riots and pogroms, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, social justice, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, the imaginary and the real, tolerance, trauma, vengeance, violence of language, world events & processes

May 9, 2023 · 4:18 pm

BBC rendered impotent by Azerbaijan President

An Observer from the Black Sea

This interview is why the BBC stands for British Bullshit Corporation. The journalist from that ‘august’ agency claims the higher moral ground – just read it in her facial gestures; but she can’t provide a single source and is then speechless when the President of Azerbaijan asks her a question.

The BBC do the same on China,  HK, Iran, Russia and any country that chooses their own destiny independent of Anglo-Saxon control.

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, British imperialism, centre-periphery relations, disparagement, education, foreign policy, governance, historical interpretation, legal issues, life stories, patriotism, performance, politIcal discourse, power politics, self-reflexivity, taking the piss, truth as casualty of war, Ukraine & Its Ramifications, violence of language, world events & processes

April 26, 2023 · 10:50 am

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 1980s—Pic 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

April 8, 2023 · 10:25 pm

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 deployed the work that went into one of books: that entitled FIRE & STORM.

I now atempt to shock 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