August 20, 2017 · 4:26 am

Last of Sri Lanka’s Burgher Ladies

A nostalgic tale in You Tube Video composed by Kel O’Neill and Eline Jongsma, here: http://www.vjmovement.com/truth/724…. Published on Aug 2, 2010

The comments over the years within the original website are revealing: a mix of rank prejudice and hate on the one hand and sensibility on the other . Those interested in this dimension of Sri Lankan history set within the development of Colombo as the island’s hegemonic centre” in British times should consult M. Roberts, Percy Colin-Thome & Ismeth Raheem, PEOPLE  INBETWEEN, Colombo, Sarvodaya, 1989.

They should attend in particular to the tables and data in the Appendices on the one hand and the two charts highlighting the prejudices of the Sinhala people in colonial times (for ‘good’  historic reasons) — prejudices revealed for instance in the writings of Piyadasa Sirisena and Anagarika Dharmapala. If readers think the Tamils did not have similar prejudices, re-visit that idea. I assert that counter speculatively albeit confidently. The data in People Inbetween happens to be sourced in the southwest where I grew up.

SEE https://thuppahis.com/2015/08/03/people-inbetween-ethnic-and-class-prejudices-in-british-ceylon/ … The thrust of the tale is that one cannot comprehend thethinking of (some) Sinhalese without attending to the colonial intrusions in the era of European expansion and how that body of sentiments was transposed unto a historical consciousness that goes further back. More recently, I have been guided by Young and Senanayake’s Carpenter Peretaya and other evidence to elaborate upon the Manichean demonization that transposes and equates ancient ogres with more recent and/or contemporary threats –a deadly process of conflation. SEE The Collective Consciousness of the Sinhalese During the Kandyan Era: Manichean Images, Associational Logic”,  https://wordpress.com/post/thuppahi.wordpress.com/26600

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August 19, 2017 · 5:13 pm

MV Sun Sea Prosecutions in Canada: Noughts and Crosses

ONE: Item in THE STAR, 27 May 2017, entitled B.C. Supreme Court jury finds man guilty of smuggling Tamil migrants to Canada””

A prosecutor says a man accused of bringing hundreds of Tamil migrants into Canada illegally in a dilapidated cargo ship nearly seven years ago has been found guilty. Crown counsel Charles Hough says a B.C. Supreme Court jury found Kunarobinson Christhurajah guilty Saturday of human smuggling 10 or more persons. It was a retrial for the Sri Lankan national over his involvement in the voyage of the MV Sun Sea that travelled from Thailand to British Columbia’s coast in 2010.

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August 18, 2017 · 4:00 pm

Travis Sinniah appointed Sri Lanka’s Naval Chief

P K Balachandran, courtesy of Newsin Asia …. https://newsin.asia/sri-lanka-gets-tamil-navy-chief-47-years/

After a gap of 47 years, Sri Lanka on Friday appointed a Tamil as the Commander of its navy. Rear Admiral Travis Jeremy Liyanduru Sinniah, who was made navy chief by President Maithripala Sirisena, is the second Tamil to head the country’s navy after Rear Admiral Rajanathan “Rajan” Kadirgamar who served between 1960 and 70. H ailing Adm.Sinniah’s appointment, President Sirisena tweeted saying that he had served the Sri Lankan navy “with immense loyalty for many decades.”

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August 17, 2017 · 5:54 pm

Under Fire: Pictorials of Sri Lanka’s Cricket Team facing Duress at Lahore, 3 March 2009

Michael Roberts …. aided by varied cameramen mostly unnamed

The stark reality of near-death and its trauma are reflected in the aftermath by Eranga Jayawardena’s image of Mahela and his wife at Katunayake Airport when the team arrived safely on 3rd March 2009 ….. What follows below is a sequence of dramatic images depicting the scenario in Lahore that preceded and precipitated this moment (several courtesy of AFP in Hong Kong) Continue reading →

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August 17, 2017 · 12:07 pm

Sinhala-Tamil Tussles in the Mythical Netherworld of Rāvanā

Ranga Kalugampitiya, courtesy of Colombo Telegraph, dated 20 July 2015, where the title runs ‘Rāvanā & Sinhala Buddhism: A Strained Relationship Ridden With Contradictions”…. The version here being embellished with Editorial highlighting.

Rāvanā, one of the principal characters in the Rāmāyana, emerges as a villain in the mainstream (Hindu) understandings of the text. Given the important position that Rāmā (Rāvanā’s opponent), who is believed to be a manifestation of Viśnu, occupies in the Hindu religious tradition, Rāvanā becomes a symbol of evil in those readings of the text.

Nevertheless, the conceptualizations of Rāvanā within the context of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism point to alternative perspectives on the character. One such perspective that has emerged in the post-2009 Sri Lankan context shows a tendency to idealize Rāvanā as a national hero. The present paper argues that the relationship between Rāvanā and Sinhala Buddhism that this conceptualization suggests is ridden with certain contradictions that Sinhala Buddhist nationalism fails to address successfully. Continue reading →

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August 16, 2017 · 6:43 am

Imminent Disasters? Exploiting Sri Lanka’s Mineral Resources

Ashley de Vos, in The Island, 16 August 2017, where the heading runs thus: “The exploitation of minerals of Sri Lanka”

If there is an asset, should it be exploited to the fullest in the shortest period of time? The traditional view would be based on very careful and controlled use. Today, in the global market place an asset is viewed very differently. As most investors in a business are interested in an ever increasing the bottom line question of eventual sustainability raises questions that need answers. Unfortunately, all exploitation has limits and if profit is the only criteria, whatever the pontification, it cannot and is not sustainable in the long term. It will always be a short term solution, to what could be a long term disaster.

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August 15, 2017 · 3:39 am

A Tale of Resistance: The Story of the Arrival of the Portuguese in Sri Lanka

Michael Roberts, a reprint of an article published in 1989 in Ethnos, vol. 55: 1-2, pp.69-82.

  This essay decodes a sixteenth century folktale which records the Sinhalese reaction to the arrival of the first Portuguese. Where the historiography has interpreted this tale as benign wonderment in the face of exotica, a piecemeal deconstruction of the allegorical clues in the ‘story is utilised to reveal how the Sinhalese linked the Portuguese with demons and with Vasavarti Mārayā, the arch enemy of the Buddha. In this fashion the Portuguese and the Christian sacrament of communion were represented as dangerous, disordering forces. The piecemeal reinterpretation of this short text, however, must be overlaid by a holistic perspective and the realisation that its rendering in oral form enabled its purveyors to lace the story with a satirical flavour: so that the Portuguese and Catholicism are, like demons, rendered both disordering and comic, dangerous and inferior—thus ultimately controllable. In contending in this manner that the folktale is an act of nationalist opposition, the article is designed as an attack on the positivist empiricism which pervades the island’s historiography and shuts out imaginative reconstructions which are worked out by penetrating the subjective world of the ancient texts.

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August 15, 2017 · 1:40 am

The Arya and Hela Schools of Sinhala Song

Garrett Field, abstract of   article entitled “Music for Inner Domains: Sinhala Song and the Arya and Hela Schools of Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Sri Lanka”, in The Journal of Asian Studies November 2014, vol. 73(4):1043-1058 ·

In this article, I juxtapose the ways the “father of modern Sinhala drama”, John De Silva, and the Sinhala language reformer, Munidasa Cumaratunga, utilized music for different nationalist projects. First, I explore how De Silva created musicals that articulated Arya-Sinhala nationalism to support the Buddhist Revival. Second, I investigate how Cumaratunga, who spearheaded the Hela-Sinhala movement, asserted that genuine Sinhala song…

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August 14, 2017 · 4:31 pm

Honouring Sarath Amunugama through Essays in Home and The World”

Dhammika Amarasinghe, in The Island,  5 February 2011

The book mirrors the man. The man is Dr. Sarath Amunugama, eminent public servant of yester year, sociologist, scholar, writer, orator, poet, dramatist, connoisseur (of many things – including the fine arts) and at the end of his career, perhaps unfortunately – politician. The volume has been brought out by his ever-loyal daughters Ramanika and Varuni to celebrate their hero’s 70 years of ‘a full life’ (the title of another of their filial tributes in a different genre). The book is a festschrift in honour of Sarath Amunugama. The list of contributors reads almost like a Roll of Honour of contemporary Sri Lankan intellectual life, ranging as it does from Gananath Obeyesekere and Stanley J Tambiah through Siri Gunasinghe, J. B. Dissanayake and Carlo Fonseka to Jayantha Dhanapala, H. L. Seneviratne and Saman Kelegama (and many more of the same vintage). The standing of the contributors, almost all of whom are incidentally long-time friends and associates of Amunugama, and the wealth of high quality material encapsulated in this volume of 400 pages, makes the writing of a ‘review’ almost a daunting task. Therefore, what can be done is only to give some flavour of a selection of the contributions. The range of contributors mirrors not only the standing of the man being honoured but also the wide spectrum of his interests and accomplishments. Continue reading →

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August 12, 2017 · 5:53 am

Kataragama, Yala and Festive All That

Juliet Coombe in Daily News, 12 August 2017, where the title runs “Hidden Rituals

Juliet Coombe joined the exciting procession of regal elephants dressed in silk drapes, dancing girls and fire jugglers at the Kataragama Temple, where she learns about some of the mysteries that lie within these ancient temple walls.

As scented flower petals were thrown in the air, and incense smoke billowed in all directions, baskets of food were being loaded up to be taken inside as offerings to be given at the Kataragama Temple. I took off my shoes, out of respect, at the entrance step, which was already so covered in a sea of footwear that it had become totally hidden, and yet the colourful array of left-behind flip-flops and shoes was a clear demarcation that we were about to enter sacred grounds on a very auspicious day. I had come with a team from EKHO Tissa Safari who has created an exciting portfolio of curated experiences ranging from the deeply spiritual to hands-on plot-to-plate foodie safaris.

After the main ritual the big tusker covered in garlands of flowers makes his way back through the temple grounds

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