June 1, 2021 · 3:20 pm

Sir Hugh Clifford’s “Some Reflections on the Ceylon Land Question” — 1927

This is a rare booklet and is one item in a lively debate on the agrarian sector in the political economy of Sri Lanka in the period extending from the 1920s to the present… BUT NOTE that the file is over 300MB in size and that it is likely to occupy a very large part of one’s computer’s memory capacity.

Michael Roberts — See

Gerald H Peiris = https://thuppahis.com/2021/06/01/51959/… AND

Chandre Dharmawardana = https://thuppahis.com/2021/05/31/addressing-a-criticism-of-ds-senananyakes-dry-zone-colonization-schemes/ ….. AND

Michael Roberts = https://thuppahis.com/2021/05/29/under-fire-sri-lankas-colonization-programmes-and-economic-policies-1920s-to-2020/

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June 1, 2021 · 11:47 am

Fostering the Peasant Sector of the Economy: Misconceptions

Gerald H Peiris

This whole pretence at applying serious scholarship to a study of land policy in SL since the late 1920s is becoming almost intolerable.[1] The author of this article[2] might well have impressed you with whatever he had done earlier. But this piece does not deserve the attention which you have sought to give,[3] even by way of a kick-off for a scholarly discussion on the subject. That is why I decided to confine my previous comment on just one item in your list of references. This morning I have enough time to send you a longer note – now that an almost total curfew has been imposed throughout SL and all of us are pleasantly home bound.

DS Senanayake, OEG, Dudley et al receiving official inputs

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May 31, 2021 · 9:52 am

Oh Mein Gott! Lanka’s West Coast suffocated by Plastic!

News Item in The Island, 30 May 2021: “Sri Lanka battles waves of plastic waste from burning ship”

Tonnes of plastic pellets from a burning container ship swamped Sri Lanka’s west coast Friday, prompting a ban on fishing as international efforts to salvage the vessel dragged into a ninth day.

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May 31, 2021 · 2:01 am

Addressing A Criticism of DS Senanayake’s Dry Zone Colonization Schemes

Chandre Dharmawardana, 28 May 2021, with this title “Criticism of D.S. Senanayake’s Dry Zone colonization schemes”

Would Sri Lanka have been better off if not for the fetishization of rural peasant life and its connexion to the Sinhalese Buddhist nation-myth?

Why do people talk of “colonization schemes” when a government  facing bulging population growth, for one reason or another, opens up land for its people to settle?

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May 30, 2021 · 11:32 am

People Inbetween and Professor K. M. de Silva’s Diehard History

Michael Roberts, in Daily News, 27 March 1991 … reproduced here with highlighting emphasis added

Professor K. M. de Silva’s review of the book People Inbetween Volume I in the Daily News on the 19 and 20 September, 1990 has come to my notice. My response here to seeks to raise issues regarding the way in which history can be written.

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May 29, 2021 · 3:44 pm

Under Fire: Sri Lanka’s Colonization Programmes and Economic Policies 1920s-to-2020

Michael Roberts

An Excursion in Mid-May 2021

In mid-May I received a short note from a Sri Lankan [SR] in Colombo which contained potentially severe criticisms of the colonisation programmes initiated by the colonial and post-colonial government in the course of the 20th century. Insofar as this comment arose from his reading of my interview with the British CCS man Dyson (within the Roberts Oral History Project[1] of the 1960s), it embraced events and processes that commenced in the 1920s and centred on the programmes fostered by DS Senanayake.  His thoughts on the agricultural policies were far-reaching, albeit brief.

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May 29, 2021 · 3:04 pm

Covid: Ominous Tentacles in All South Asian Lands

Smriti Mallapaty, 14 May 2021 in an Article ….. where the opening lines run thus: “From Sri Lanka to Nepal, scientists with limited resources are working feverishly to discover which variants are driving outbreaks.

https://jwp-nindia.public.springernature.app/en/nindia/figures/1665 Health workers administer SARS-CoV-2 tests at a railway station in Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo. …. © Xinhua/eyevine

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May 25, 2021 · 2:51 pm

Vesak: The Emergence of Buddhism in the Indian Subcontinent

 Uditha Devapriya … an original essay with the title ppreferred by Uditha being “Some Reflections on Vesak”

 By the 6th century BC, the centre of Indian civilisation had shifted to the Ganges Valley. Social and economic conditions made possible the rise of several religions that posed as alternatives to the rigid orthodoxy of Brahmanism. By the end of the 5th century BC, the number of these sects had come down, and among those that survived were Jainism and Buddhism.

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May 24, 2021 · 11:33 am

The Power of Poetry: Learning from Ashley Halpé

Aparna Halpé, in The Island, 23 May 2021, where the title reads  “Learning from My Father, Five Years After his Passing”

I was mingling with the audience at a poetry reading in Toronto, where I had been reading some of my new poems, when I was approached by an audience member. He asked me a question that I’ve encountered before in some form or another throughout my entire artistic and professional career… “Excuse me, are you by any chance related to Professor Ashley Halpé?” When I answered that I was his youngest daughter, the gentleman proceeded to tell me this story.

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May 23, 2021 · 3:41 pm

Deadly Covid Abyss looms in Si Lanka: Two Grounded Essays by Peiris versus Peiris

The recent article presented by medical specialists Malik Peiris and Kamini Mendis  has led to informed ethnographic set of comments by Gerald Peiris of Kandy**.…a nd drawn a Response from Dr Malik Peiris that is exrtemely disconcerting. The situation in Sri Lanka is DIRE …  and going to plunge to further depths.

 

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