January 18, 2017 · 8:55 am

The First Settlers and Their Claim to Ownership of Terrain/State. A Comparative Excursion

 Michael Roberts, introducing an article entitled “Firstness, History, Place & Legitimate Claimto Place as homeland in Comparative Focus”originally presented in Abdul Rahman Embong, Rethinking Ethnicity and Nation Building: Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Fiji in Comparative Perspective, Panbrit UKM, Bangi, Malaysia, (c. 2003 ) which was then reprinted as abooklet by ICES, Colombo in 2005 –see ISBN 955-580-099-5

I.    The Story of Sri Lanka in Slanted Summary

To summarise the tale of modern Sri Lankan political conflict in a few words is impossible. The principal outlines have been set out in a number of publications[1] and Donald Horowitz has provided an instructive comparison of the divergent stories of accommodation in Malaysia and failure of coexistence in Sri Lanka (Horowitz 1993) in ways that cater to the thrust of this comparative exercise. Let me begin therefore with a specific twist upon a summary. aaveddas-vedda-org Vaddaas aa-oaslai-22 Orang Asli aus-ab-blueswami Aboriginal Folk in Oz

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

January 18, 2017 · 8:04 am

Vale Jim Gair, Sinhala Enthusiast, Linguist Extraordinary

A Valedictory in American Academia

jim-gair-11

James Wells Gair, Ph.D. ’63, professor emeritus of linguistics who throughout a long and distinguished career produced groundbreaking work on South Asian languages and their relation to other languages, died Dec. 10 in Ithaca. He was 88.“Jim Gair was in many ways the paradigmatic Cornell linguist,” said John Whitman, chair and professor of linguistics. “He had a language passion for Sinhala, the language of Sri Lanka, and he threw himself entirely into it, teaching the language, writing textbooks for its learners, and analyzing both the colloquial language and its classical texts.

Continue reading →

3 Comments

Filed under cultural transmission, education, heritage, Indian traditions, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, performance, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, teaching profession, unusual people, world affairs

January 18, 2017 · 3:30 am

The ISLAND Editor smacks Obama’s Bottom

Editorial in The ISLAND, 17  January 2017, entitled “Obama’s Swansong”… with highlighting bing the Editor Thuppahi’s work.

President Barack Obama has, towards the latter part of his second term, shown a tendency to get increasingly maudlin. Tears welled up in his eyes the other day while making his farewell speech. Last year, he refused to speak at his daughter Malia’s graduation lest he should get too emotional. In 2015, he was seen wiping away tears during a fascinating performance by Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul.

obama-22Pic from another tearful occasion Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under accountability, american imperialism, foreign policy, governance, life stories, politIcal discourse, Presidential elections, self-reflexivity, the imaginary and the real, trauma, unusual people, vengeance, welfare & philanthophy, wikileaks, world events & processes

January 17, 2017 · 1:00 pm

Ignorant Oversimplifications in the Theresa May-Obama Characterization of ISIS

Damian Whitworth, in The Times and The Australian, 17 January 2017, with the title in the latter being “The Man who knows Islamic State’s Mindset” … with highlighing being additions by the Editor, Thuppahi

British Prime Minister Theresa May once exposed what she believed to be the basic flaws at the murderous heart of Islamic State. “I will tell you the truth,” she told the Conservative Party conference in 2014, the year that the militant group gained worldwide notoriety. “They are not Islamic and they are not a state.”

aaisia-11-times Pic from Times

Her words echoed sentiments expressed by US President Barack Obama. Today, with Islamic State under pressure from Western-backed forces in Mosul, the debate about whether it has actually succeeded in establishing a caliphate continues. However, on the question of Islamic State’s ­Islamic credentials, May is plain wrong. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under american imperialism, cultural transmission, historical interpretation, jihad, landscape wondrous, law of armed conflict, martyrdom, Middle Eastern Politics, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, power politics, security, self-reflexivity, the imaginary and the real, truth as casualty of war, vengeance, war reportage, world events & processes, zealotry

January 16, 2017 · 2:15 pm

Ajita Rajendra featured in FORTUNE Magazine

News Item   carrying the title “Sri Lankan in Fortune’s 2016 top 50 Business persons of the year

ajita-rajendra-22

To be considered in Fortune magazine’s top 50 business persons of the year is a huge honour considering the weight of the other names like Mark Zuckerberg of Face Book, Jeff Bezon of Amazon, Larry Page of Google, Tim Cook of Apple and so on.Featured in this year’s list at position 34 is a Sri Lankan — Ajita Rajendra. Fortune states “In his four years as CEO of this Milwaukee-based maker of water heaters (A. O. Smith & CO , Rajendra has kept the company boiling hot, doubling profits and nearly tripling the company’s stock price with strong growth in North America and China”. Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under life stories, performance, sri lankan society, unusual people, world affairs

January 14, 2017 · 12:59 am

Gal Oya: Addressing Errors in Ajit Kanagasundram’s Recollections

Gerald H. Peiris

gal-oya-11-the-island

Michael,

I knew Ajit at the time he was an undergraduate at Cambridge, and remember meeting him on and off at the ‘Arts Theatre Restaurant’ at lunch-time. The image that comes to mind is a mild-mannered and gentle youth  ̶-  younger than my circle of post-grad ‘Ceylonese’ pals  like Uswatte, Mahes, Shan, Gunda or Dharmawardena  by, say, 6 or 7 years. I haven’t met him since that time, but it seems from what he has written that he has not lost his gentleness, and has remained almost entirely free of “racial” (ethnic?) prejudices, probably impelled by personal experiences since that time.

While I particularly like the ‘autobiographical’ segment of his essay, I have to refer to several errors  ̶  some, important, others trivial  ̶  that could be attributed to excessive reliance on memory and ignoring what serious researchers have documented. These I specify below under sub-headings numbered 1 to 7, referring in red to highlighted extracts from his essay.

gal-oya-44 Pic from Sumal Fernando Blog wordpress

 

Continue reading →

4 Comments

Filed under colonisation schemes, economic processes, governance, growth pole, historical interpretation, island economy, land policies, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, unusual people, world affairs

January 13, 2017 · 11:25 pm

Looking Back at DS Senanayake and the Gal Oya Project

Ajit Kanagasundram, courtesy Sunday Island 18th & 25th September 2016, where the title is “The Gal Oya Project 60 years on” … an essay supported by personal experiences and his father’s key role in this pathfinding development project. ALSO  go to http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2016/10/10/the-gal-oya-project-60-years-on/ for the same essay and significant blog comments therein. … Emphasis by highlights is my imprint Editor, Thuppahi

Not many people today remember the Gal Oya Project but for 20 years it was the showpiece of modern independent Ceylon. It was later overshadowed by more grand (grandiose?) projects like Mahaveli where billions more were spent but the Gal Oya Project remains the standard by which all other projects should be judged. The Gal Oya Project, moreover, stands as an exemplar as to how things should be done under ideal circumstances. The project was done and paid for within our own resources, managed by local administrators and completed on time and all major objectives relating to the clearing of forest, settlement of colonists and irrigation of land were accomplished.

kanagasundramK. Kanagasundram Continue reading →

8 Comments

Filed under accountability, British colonialism, economic processes, energy resources, historical interpretation, island economy, life stories, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, riots and pogroms, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, working class conditions, world events & processes

January 13, 2017 · 12:36 am

Ceylon in the Rainer Schickele Papers

Rainer Schickele served with the Dept of Agricultural Economics  Peradeniya University in the 1960s and lived in Kandy. He was committed to the agricultural development of the island. On the 21st January 1969 he presented a paper on Land settlement Policy in Ceylon: A Tentative Proposal,” I note here that all the cyclostyled CSS papers are available at Peradeniya University >Librar and several university libraries in USA. 

Alas I do not have a photograph of Rainer (1905-1989). But it is with considerable pleasure that I note the availability of the SCHICKELE PAPERS at  NDSU, Institute for Regional Studies and University archives,  the North Dakota State University Libraries.  Note the followiing summary.”The Sri Lanka (Ceylon) Series consists of reports and papers Schickele wrote while helping the university and government build agricultural economic departments. The series consists of twelve progress reports that Schickele wrote in order for the ADC to monitor the progress of the program.The series also contains papers Schickele wrote regarding the current agricultural situation in Sri Lanka and how to rectify some of the problems.” Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under cultural transmission, economic processes, education, heritage, land policies, life stories, performance, sri lankan society, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy

January 12, 2017 · 2:52 pm

Sinhalaness in the Middle Period and in Wars Against Colonial Intrusions

Chris Speldewinde, in the The Australian Journal of Anthropology, vol. r19, No. 1, 2008, reviewing  Michael Roberts. Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period 1590s to 1815. Colombo 4, Sri Lanka: Vijitha Yapa Publications. 2004. Pp.xx +274, bibliog., index. US$60.00 (He), ISBN 955-8095-31-1.

Having spent a considerable period during my undergraduate studies of anthropology concentrating on cultural aspects of Sri Lankan society, I was enthusiastic to have been given the opportunity to read and review this work by Michael Roberts. In this latest addition to his many volumes of work on his native Sri Lanka, Roberts, has provided a rich tapestry of the period pre-dating the formalisation of British colonial rule on the island of Sri Lanka. He examines the forms of reaction of a society affected by migrating Indians from the north and European colonial expansion, beginning with the arrival of the Portuguese in the mid-sixteenth century and later, the Dutch and the British. This book provides a considerable amount of both historiographical and ethnographic material, from a wide range of sources to keep the reader engrossed in the development of distinct ethnic identities on this island nation. The use of verbal history passed on through poems and songs from the period is used extensively to substantiate Roberts’ theories of the development of a definitive Sinhalese ethnic identity.

p1

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under authoritarian regimes, British colonialism, British imperialism, cultural transmission, economic processes, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, law of armed conflict, life stories, literary achievements, military strategy, modernity & modernization, patriotism, politIcal discourse, Portuguese in Indian Ocean, power politics, religiosity, security, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, transport and communications, world events & processes

January 12, 2017 · 1:32 pm

The People’s War in Nepal and Martyrs, Living and Dead

marie-lecomte-tilouineMarie Lecomte-Tilouine, courtesy of http://samaj.revues.org/3018, where the title is “Martyrs and Living Martyrs of the People’s War in Nepal

Abstract: In Nepal, the Maoists’ armed wing (PLA) developed as a collective of martyrs-to-be, whose example was disseminated as soon as they fell through tributes, poems and ceremonies. Its dynamic relied on self-sacrifice rather than any heroic prowess, and acquired a strong power of attraction in that it fundamentally asserts that anyone, whether illiterate, poor or of the lowest status, is of ‘priceless’ value, and can contribute to the project to change the order of things by putting their lives at stake. The People’s War also brought about a wave of ‘Living Martyrs’, who survived the war and who are now busy recording their past experiences. They combine all the ingredients in terms of pathos and achievement to become historical figures and models for the future, while fallen immortals have already lost their individualities and play a collective and anonymous role.nepal-maoists-22-revo-in-asia  nepal-maoists-globalsecurity-org Pic from Global Security Org

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under atrocities, governance, Left politics, life stories, military strategy, modernity & modernization, patriotism, political demonstrations, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, security, self-reflexivity, suicide bombing, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, war reportage, world events & processes