Thuppahi's Blog

About ITHIHAS ….https://itihas.lk/

ITHIHAS CALL PIX    Itihas is a non-profit organisation that promotes a more inclusive Sri Lanka through a better understanding of its recent history.

It was founded in October 2022 by Sri Lankan historian Shamara Wettimuny in the midst of a new wave of civic and political consciousness among Sri Lankan youth in the context of the 2022 protest movement. The organisation’s roots, however, predate the protests, and stem from the founder’s research on the severe shortcomings of Sri Lanka’s public-school history curricula and the lack of proper resources for meaningful historical research.

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Dr. SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda, in  The Sunday Times, November 2025, reviewing a new book on Geoffrey Bawa, ‘Geoffrey Manning Bawa- Decolonizing Architecture’ by architect-historian Shanti Jayewardene. The book, a landmark publication for the National Trust launched on November 30.

The golden afternoon seeps across the black and white tiles, lighting up the corridor of the Galle Face Hotel. It settles on a woman, standing by a door. She is locked in impassioned debate with a foreigner. The words “colonial,”  “imperialistic” and “orientalist” hang like daggers in the air. The speaker had just come out of a conference on the decorative arts. A Sri Lankan living in England, she spoke with the heightened sensitivity and fervour that expatriates sometimes bring home.

The Parliamentarians’ aerial garden: Parliament of Sri Lanka

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Lionel Bopage in GROUNDVIEWS, 26 January 2026, where the title runs thus “The Promise of Change and the Reality: A Balance Sheet”

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NAREN CHITTY in Sydney has kindly and helpfully responded to my QUERY and provided a list of COLOMBO CHETTY SURNAMES/LINEAGES that can be found in Sri Lanka over the past few centuries. Quite a revelation!! Many  more names than I was aware of. I anote m also appending the DIGITAL Webnote re this collective identity….. Michael Roberts

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Naren Chitty

Introduction: The Coromandel Coast milieu of 17^th century Chetty migrants to Zeylan is addressed here in relation to Udayappa Chetty (d. 1693). He was an ancestor of the Chetty family of Christian S. Chitty (1841-1891), as well as others self-identifying as Tamils. C. S. Chitty’s son James is described in 1900 as belonging to “an old family” evoking a timeframe of some centuries. (Lethbridge 1900, 350). In my view the collocation “Colombo Chetty” firmed up after 1930, decades after Christian Chitty’s death. Anthony Aserappa (1930), in the title of his book A Short History of the Ceylon Chetty Community, and throughout his monograph, uses the descriptors Ceylon Chetties and Christian Chetties.

Brahmin

Colombo Chetty

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Richard Simon, reviewing … The Many Faces of the Kandyan Kingdom by Gananath Obeyesekere &  The Doomed King: A Requiem for Sri Vikrama Rajasinha by Gananath Obeyesekere

In the deepening twilight of his career, the anthropologist and historian Gananath Obeyesekere published three books about the Kingdom of Kandy based mostly on lectures he had given earlier at the Sri Lanka branch of the Royal Asiatic Society and elsewhere. All are works of frank historical revisionism, seemingly designed – as was often the case with Prof. Obeyesekere – to stir controversy.

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C. A. Saliya  in The Island, February 2025, where the title reads “The hollow recovery: A stagnant industry – Part I”  …. with pictorial illustrations now inserted because of the wizardry of my old Aloysian comrade KK de Silva

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Andrew Miller  in ESPNcricinfo, February 2025 where the title runs thus: “Curran, spinners star as England defend 129 to seal whitewash”

Chameera’s five-wicket haul in vain as slow bowlers thrive on turning Pallekele wicket.

Jacob Bethell celebrates with Jos Buttler  •  AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena

England 128 for 9 (Curran 58, Chameera 5-24) beat Sri Lanka 116 (Bethell 4-11, Jacks 3-14) by 12 runs

Will Jacks led the way before Jacob Bethell sealed the deal with a career-best haul of 4 for 11, as England closed out a 3-0 series win over Sri Lanka with a remarkable spin strangle on a turning track at Pallekele.

Their defence of a sub-par target of 129 was their lowest in T20I history, and in the end they did it with room to spare, as Bethell rounded up the tail with all four of his wickets coming from his final eight balls, including the winning moment – a skied slog from Maheesh Theekshana to Liam Dawson at short third.

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Hitting the Airwaves with “SINHALA CONSCIOUSNESS” in Kandyan Times-by Michael Roberts ….Source:Thuppahis

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VISIT THE FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY OF POLITICAL PATHOLOGY….. located in New York ….but able t probe far,wide and deep

The Foundation for the Study of Political Pathology brings together in a single place significant papers and essays—and distributes these works of scholarship widely.

Unlike typical journals, to which authors are required to “submit” papers, articles and essays, the Foundation  selects publications by the most prominent and influential scholars.

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