Category Archives: world events & processes

July 30, 2025 · 1:26 pm

From Kamburupitiya … Malkanthi’s Multi-Faceted Journey

Fazli Sameer in Those Fuzzy Days, July 2025 … presented in fazli@substack.com with a slightly different title and the sub-title: “A trek through days of milk, honey, and roses”

In the small southern village of Kamburupitiya, nestled amidst the mist-covered hills of the southern coastal city of Matara, a determined teenage girl named Malkanthi prepared for a journey that would alter the course of her life. At sixteen, she was the pride of her village school, a bright, kind-hearted girl who had earned a scholarship to pursue her higher studies in Colombo.

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Filed under centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, meditations, migrant experiences, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, tolerance, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes

July 28, 2025 · 3:00 pm

Featuring Andrekos Varnava’s Swathe of Political Studies

Andrekos Varnava is a Greek Cypriot and it has been the privilege of Flinders University in Adelaide and Australia-at-large to have him researching and teaching in their various reaches. CYPRUS is in a strategic location in the Eastern Meditteranian and has beenat the centre of many invasions and tussles.

Books by Andrekos Varnava

Exiting War: The British Empire and the 1918-20 Moment
by Andrekos Varnava and Michael J . K . Walsh
Exiting War: The British Empire and the 1918-20 moment, 2022
Exiting war explores a particular 1918-20 ‘moment’ in the British Empire’s history, between the F… more 
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July 25, 2025 · 7:17 pm

Cold War Proxies in Conflict: Ceylon & Palestine

Darini Rajasingham Senanayake,** at IDN-InDepthNews,… 24 July 2025, …. being Part II of an extended article with this title “From Ceylon to Palestine: Ethnic Conflict and Its Role in Cold War Proxy Dynamics” …. This is the second of a two-part series. Click here to read part one  .. .. with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

There are remarkable patterns of history, organised violence, and disinformation between events leading to the pogrom and forced population displacements in Sri Lanka in 1983, and British occupied Palestine 35 years earlier as the Nakba unfolded amid Cold War escalating in Europe between the Allies and Soviet Union or Axis Powers.

Map indicating locations of Palestine and Sri Lanka. CC BY-SA 4.0 – Photo: 2025

 

 

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July 20, 2025 · 2:17 pm

Political Complexities in Jaffna & the Killing of Rajani Thiranagama

BEING Chapter 3 of Palmyra Fallen, from Rajani to War’s End, by Rajan Hoole ….. Published 2015 …. a book printed and bound by Global Printing Works, 5 Stork Place, Colombo 10 …. a chapter entitled “Some Crucial Pieces of the Jigsaw” … [with the highlights here –– except for those in black — being impositions by The Editor, Thuppahi]

 “To everything there is a season…A time to be born and a time to die…A time to weep and a time to laugh: a time to mourn and a time to dance…I know that whatsoever God doeth it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from it”- The Book of Ecclesiastes

Dayapala & Rajani Thiranagama in 1984 .. . well before her assassination in late 1989

Dayapala in later years

 

3.1 The Sands Run Out

More recently, we have been able to put together more detailed information about Rajani’s killing. Given that much water has since flowed under the bridge, we felt that while placing the truth about her murder on a record that adequately traces its manner, purpose and the parties involved, it would also be appropriate to bring out a publication that allows today’s reader to see her relevance to the present. As is evident from our account, Rajani’s killing was well planned, mobilising a network of LTTE contacts and agents. Here in Chapter 3, we detail the cold-blooded murder and cover-up by the LTTE and the names of those who were involved at the time. In Chapter 4, we discuss who within the LTTE was involved.

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July 18, 2025 · 4:08 pm

Wind Power in Lanka: India’s Imperial Grab

Chris Dharmakirti n Facebook, July 2025

India has overstepped its ambition by grabbing Sri Lanka’s 50 giga watt wind power asset valued at over 40 billion dollars and then for having obstructed Sri Lanka’s Bay of Bengal extended continental shelf claim that is estimated to possess 200 billion dollars of resources. India has weaponized her 4 billion debt assistance in 2022 to ride rough shod over a weak Sri Lankan political and civil service administration that bent over backwards to appease Modi.

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July 18, 2025 · 2:21 am

How the ICES – the International Centre of Ethnic Studies – Arose

A Note by the Late SWR de Samarasinghe penned in 2021 and presented now in his Honour, albeit against his wishes then.

 Dear Michael:

I will have a look at the document when you place it on Thuppahi.

BTW, I noticed that you mention the names of KM, Neelan and Radhika as the three people responsible for the establishment of ICES. Factually, Neelan got the initial grant from the Ford Foundation, KM got permission from JR to set it up. JR also instructed the then Finance Minister Ronnie de Mel to facilitate the process. Neelan invited Radhika [Coomaraswamy] to join as Associate Director and KM invited me to join as the Associate Director.  

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July 15, 2025 · 10:05 pm

In Maureen Hingert’s Memory via Paul Robeson

Charles Schokman

It was in the early fifties at the age of twenty-one I used to ride my bicycle from Dematagoda all the way to Bambalapitiya to visit friends living down Lorensz Rd. It was quite a distance but worth the ride.

Vale Maureen Hingert – mrober137@gmail.com – Gmail

Down that street lived Maureen Hingert and whenever she saw me pass her home, she never failed to greet me with a smile or say hello.

She, though a mere stranger, was happy to make her acquaintance with me. This kind gesture of hers and endearing ways left a lasting mark in my life.

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July 10, 2025 · 9:21 pm

Professor Sinnappah Arasaratnam: Historian Outstanding

Michael Roberts

Sinnappah Arasaratnam was one of my inspirational teachers in History at Peradeniya University in the late 1950s. In chancing upon a printed copy of one of his articles — entitled “Sri Lanka’s Tamils under Colonial Rule,” (date ??), I have been inspired to remind new generations, as well as older ones. of his contributions to scholarship in Lanka, Malaysia/Singapore and Australia.

It was to my benefit that I was able to interact with him on occasions after he moved to Malaysia and Australia. Alas, the details of these exchanges have not taken root in my fading memory.

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July 8, 2025 · 8:23 pm

Prussian Lutheran Migration to Australia in the 19th Century

Keith Conlon in Linked In

A momentous exodus of ‘0ld Lutheran’ religious refugees to South Australia began OTD 8 July 1838. Families from Klemzig in Prussia (now Poland) sailed down the Oder River to Hamburg, their departure point for the new reformist colony of South Australia. The ‘Paradise of Dissent’ offered freedom of religion.

A 1938 memorial for their leader Pastor August Kavel at Langmeil Church in the Barossa Valley credits him as‘The founder of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Australia’.

Kavel Memorial Monument Australia

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July 8, 2025 · 8:01 pm

THE GUARDIAN in UK seeks reader-support

“From Minute Hands can an Ongoig  ‘Edifice’ be built”– Thupphiyaaa

AN APPEAL ON EMAIL from THE GUARDIAN

 

 

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