It is with profound sorrow that we share with you the passing of Prof. Stanley (Sam) Samarasinghe on Monday, Nov 22, 2021. Our husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle, teacher, colleague and friend fought his illness with relentless courage and undiminished fortitude for several years. His enthusiasm to live his life to the full did not abate. Except family and close friends, no one else had even the slightest inkling that he was battling an invasive enemy within.
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Sarah Kabir and ROAR on “A Journey of a Demcracy: The Sri Lankan Story”
ROAR is embarking on the generation of a documentary thatseeks to create awareness and understanding of Sri Lanka’s post-independence history…… SEE INITIAL NOTICE: https://thuppahis.com/2021/11/19/imaginative-explorations-of-sri-lankas-history-on-the-cards/#more-56776
Project Intervention
It has been over a decade since the end of Sri Lanka’s protracted conflict, but what we have today is ‘negative peace’ – which is the absence of overt violence. Limited understanding of Sri Lanka’s history, politics, democracy, ambition, intent, and the refusal to acknowledge acts of intolerance and discrimination that destroyed lives and led to bloodshed makes it increasingly difficult to avoid the recurrence of violence and we risk repeating the same mistakes. Today, we are confronted with choices that could lead to positive peace or a resumption of cycles of violence. Even now, the difficulties of dealing with COVID-19 and the resulting economic fallout could lead to social unrest that may morph into inter-communal violence if manipulated. Continue reading
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Dennis B. McGilvray, reproducing an essay presented in April 1982 within Comparative Studies in Society and History 24 (2): 235-263 –– an article that is wide-ranging and draws on ethnographic work as well as historical manuscripts. Note that the highlighting and pictorial insertions are the work of The Editor, Thuppahi.
I: PROLOGUE
Historians and anthropologists in Sri Lanka have tended to migrate in opposite directions, but away from the multiethnic confusion of the port cities. Typically, the heterogeneous, semi-Westernized, postcolonial urban society of Colombo and the larger towns has been only a transit point on intellectual journeys outbound to European archives or inbound to “traditional culture.” This was certainly my viewpoint as I arrived “inbound” in Sri Lanka for my first anthropological fieldwork. I took only passing notice of the clerks of mixed European and Sri Lankan descent who sold me stationery supplies at Cargill’s and mosquito nets at Carvalho’s. These people are given the official designation of Burghers in the government census: they are the racially mixed descendants of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British personnel who occupied the island during four and a half centuries of colonial rule.
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Michael Roberts
The conquest of the island of Ceilao by the British between 1796 and 1818 was an outcome of their imperial conquests in India and underpinned by their sea power. The presence of their troops and other personnel in British India was so extensive that in time a new ethnic category-cum-group emerged in the localities (usually towns) with British personnel: namely, the Anglo-Indians.[i] By the late 19th century these people of mixed descent spawned by British personnel in India stood as a distinct community of Christians speaking Indian English as their mother-tongue and oriented to both India and the United Kingdom.
An Anglo-Indian being washed and coiffured
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This Item appeared in Dilshy Banu’s Facebook post and I have borrowed it and its photographs for circulation via Thuppahi – in part because it marks a little “outpost activity” in the course of the war and largely because I have met Dilshy and respect her courageous career choices and her lines of philanthropic endeavour….. Michael Roberts, 18 November 2021
Dilshy Banu: “Kokkadicholai in Batticaloa: Traversing Tension during Eelam War IV”
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VISIT …. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsBVx_8oFm0
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Chandre Dharmawardana, writing from Canada (see below)
Sri Lanka is heading towards an agricultural disaster similar to that created by Stalin who was guided by a so-called “Dialectical Materialist” version of agricultural science announced by Lysenko, a “party scientist”. Sri Lanka’s leaders also have ideologues who have various scientific and medical backgrounds and are ready to present “justifications” for the push for 100% organic agriculture. Here we trace this pseudo-science movement back to some of its roots and discuss some of the pseudo-science that is being presented as “science”.
Dr. Jayasumana and Dr. Sanath Gunatilleke confronting a farmer in an unequal discussion.
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Over the last 12 months, researchers and visitors at the Cairns and District Family History Centre would have seen a sprightly, bespectacled, grey haired gentleman, peering intently into the microfilm reader screen. He is busily transcribing films that have nothing to do with his own Anglo-Scandinavian Heritage.
Larry Andresen, [sic?] in Cairns Family History, at https://cdfhs.org/ancestry-in-british-ceylon-vital-records-research/ with this title “Ancestry British Ceylon – Vital Records Research,” 3 March 2017
My name is Larry Andresen [sic?], and I am researching British Ceylon birth, marriage and death records.
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Capt Elmo Jayawardena … whose preferred title for this tongue-in-cheek essay is “Rata Yana Grandmothers”
Remember the bygone years! Daughters got married and became pregnant a few rounds more than the current rate. The average production line extended to a foursome. Some even went further, “A” team types and came close to two-digit figures of adding new inhabitants to walk the planet.
Today the story is different. “One is enough, and he will get all we have,” is quite a common comment and a few over-step the planned reproduction limitations purely by accident and reach the second round. Either way the count is kept low relative to the statistics of the previous generations.
Thank God.
Let’s make a few comparisons, I do recall the yesteryear, same show, as common as grass blades. The drum major of a mother-in-law invaded and took over the whole show, lock stock and cradle. Of course, she did not come alone but with Asilin or Cicilin who was her lifetime faithful in the domestic department, Mary and the little lamb type who accompanied her everywhere.
Retd Brigadier Hiran Halangode** has told me about a schoolmate from Ananda College, one Kumar Weerasuriya, who has donated over 15 houses with funds from friends and labour from the Army in Jaffna. He indicates that Weerasuriya is “a true son of Sri Lanka who gives back to all Sri Lankans with all his mite. You may be able to share his story in Australia and globally.”
Halangode has also sent the three images presented here of houses donated by 3 different individuals to the homeless in Jaffna. Their stories can be extracted from this website, which is the Jaffna Security Forces website on Civil Affairs. [www.cimicjaffna.lk Continue reading
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