June 9, 2014 · 11:02 am

Fashioning History in Sri Lanka

 Michael Roberts

Abstract: Two arrival stories in the long span of the island’s history will provide the foundations for reflections on history-making in the modern era. Episode One will pursue my own intellectual trail in the 1980s in fashioning an interpretation of the story of the arrival of the Portuguese and my subsequent confrontations in print with KM de Silva on this issue in the 1990s. Episode Two essays an interpretation of the advent of Vijaya retailed in the Pali & Sinhala chronicles as a genesis story of the same order as the tale of Adam and Eve: contending that it is not a tale with any factual basis, but one that conveys a mythic truth for its authors and ‘faithful’ listeners. It is, thus, a morality-tale about the magical implantation of civilised culture and state-forms within the island. This interpretation, however, has shortcomings and will benefit from the correctives imposed by Godfrey Gunatilleke’s exposition of the multi-faceted symbolism associated with this myth.**

** This essay was composed at some point in the early 2000s and I am not sure if it was printed or presented in the public realm. However, it seems useful to make it more widely available in the cyber-world because it displays reasoned academic debate based on empirical data as well as imaginative extrapolation in ways that should stimulate readers.

Let me stress that these engagements occurred before Kitsiri Malalgoda recently presented an incisive set of criticisms of my interpretation of the kudugal sapākamin lē bona minissu tale of the Portuguese sailors’ first appearance on the shores of the island. Malalgoda’s work of research ranged far and wide over several lands and also involved (involves) creative dissembling and assembling. So readers are encouraged to visit K.Malalgoda, “1505 and all that: varied views on a first encounter,” in Home and Away. Essays in Honour of Sarath Amunugama, Colombo, Siripa Publishers, 2010 –ISBN 978-955-0564-00-2 Continue reading →

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June 9, 2014 · 9:59 am

History-Making in Lanka: Problems

Michael Roberts … re-presentation of an article that appeared initially in http://www.federalidea.com in April 2008 and is presented here with minor refinements.**

Central themes in the understanding of Sri Lanka’s recent as well ancient history have been fashioned by two occupational categories, namely, schoolteachers and politicians. The school teachers of the first 75 years of the twentieth century were mostly well-meaning personnel trained in the British empiricist traditions. Their tendency was to regard history as a collection of undisputed facts that could be juxtaposed along a chronological line. There was limited attention to the interpretive dimensions of the trade and the potential for debates around these interpretations. This heritage has been implanted in recent decades by what masquerades as an educational system (where I suspect that in practice it is a process of rote-learning that is now twisted by pliant teachers in each language stream to suit ethnic claims).

44-a classroom and its teacher a classroom in the 19th century

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June 9, 2014 · 3:51 am

Cricket as Salve in Limbo Situation for some Tamil Asylum-Seekers in Australia

Phil Mercer, for BBC News in Australia, where the title reads “Australia asylum seekers find refuge in cricket”

a-seekers -Reuters Pic from Reuters

Ocean 12 are sporting warriors like no other. Padded up and steeled for action in a suburban league in Sydney, the team is made up of Tamil asylum seekers competing for a place in the finals of a global cricket competition. The young men arrived in Australia by boat. They have been released from immigration detention on temporary visas and are waiting anxiously to hear if their refugee claims have been successful. Some bear the marks of conflict. Uthayakumar, a promising fast bowler, was hit by gunfire when his school was attacked and lives with vivid scars on his elbow. As well as the physical reminders of a troubled past, for others the psychological wounds also persist. Continue reading →

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June 8, 2014 · 3:31 pm

Multi-Ethnic Young Cricket team introduced to England by Foundation of Goodness

Murali Harmony Cup Unity tour to UK

The Foundation of Goodness confirmed last Friday that it is organising a Murali Harmony Cup Unity tour to the United Kingdom. The Unity squad includes exceptionally talented U-19 cricketers from 14 different schools island-wide, including seven from the previously war affected areas in the North and East.

AA--UNITY TEAM click Pic for enlargement

The young cricketers were invited to participate in the tour after their outstanding performances during the 2013 Murali Harmony Cup, initiated by Sir Ian Botham. The Unity Tour, designed to showcase Sri Lanka’s cultural diversity, while promoting nation building and reconciliation, will depart for the UK on Monday (tomorrow), and play three matches against top English schools. The 50-over limited overs matches will be played against Emanuel School (11 June), Eton College (12 June) and Oundle College (15 June). Continue reading →

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June 7, 2014 · 10:12 am

Bile, Obfuscation & Censorship on Display in the Boxing Bout between GV and CT, Sanjana and Uvindu

PADRAIG COLMAN

Padraig Colman courtesy of  Asian Mirror where the title is ““The Wacky World of Citizen Journalism – An Eyewitness Account”

There is a priceless article on Groundviews by Sanjana Hattotuwa. At the time I am writing this, there have only been four comments. I would like to raise the profile of Sanjana’s article and thereby add to the gaiety of nations. ….  http://groundviews.org/2014/06/03/response-to-article-in-colombo-telegraph/ Sanjana is the scourge of corruption, triumphalism, Buddhist thugs and Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism in general. So, what new crime is he exposing in this article?

sanjana_h  Sanjana H

The article is about a meal at the Gallery Café in 2009, the cost of which Sanjana allegedly claimed from the Centre for Policy Alternatives. Colombo Telegraph sees this as indulgence in lavish living. “Certain prominent Colombo-based ‘human rights professionals’ are making merry, wining and dining in upmarket restaurants, hoodwinking donors by filing expenses under ‘safe’ cost columns.” Our intrepid muckraker, Sanjana, is miffed because that other intrepid muckraker, Uvindu Kurukulasuriya, is turning his muckraking laser on Sanjana himself. This will not stand! Continue reading →

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June 5, 2014 · 1:41 pm

The Carpenter-Prēta: An Eighteenth-Century Sinhala-Buddhist Folktale about Jesus

Richard F. Young, courtesy of Meiji Gakuin University in Japan and where it appeared in print in 1995

Abstract: A Sri Lankan folktale presenting Jesus as a delusory emanation of Mara is discussed here for its significance in understanding how Christianity was seen by the early-modern Sinhalese. By depicting Jesus as demonic and his teachings as inimical to Buddhism, Sri Lankans situated Christianity in the context of the cosmic rivalry between the Dhamma and the disordering forces of Mara. The Hindu background of certain motifs in the folktale is considered, as are its probable origins in the religio-political milieu of the eighteenth-century Kandyan kingdom and its relevance to later Buddhist revivalists. This study also questions empiricist approaches to Sri Lankan historiography, and pro­poses that folklore provides scholars with an invaluable supplement to Western docu­mentary materials and the island’s official chronicles when attempting to reconstruct the indigenous perception of European Christianity.

Keywords: Buddhism and Christianity — Jātaka— Jesus — Māra — Milinda —Rājāvaliya

SEE https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/140 Continue reading →

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June 5, 2014 · 10:14 am

The European Union as a Mess of Pottage and Deceit

Padraig Colman, courtesy of http://pcolman.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/the-eu-as-moral-tutor/ where the title reads “The EU as Moral Tutor”***

 

POTTAGE On May 9 there was a court hearing concerning a domestic-violence case in the eastern region of Gegharkunik, one of Armenia’s most socially conservative areas. Activist Robert Aharonian condemned two women’s rights advocates operating under the auspices of Open Society Foundation, part of the Soros network, for promoting “European values”. A man in Armenia “has a right to slap his wife,” he claimed. He opposes all those diaspora Armenians who use NGO grants to operate in Armenia, and “advocate European perversion.” Allowing wives to report their husbands to the police, he asserted, ultimately breaks families apart. Armenia wants to join the EU so has to pay lip service to “European values”. Continue reading →

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June 4, 2014 · 1:20 pm

Leonard Woolf’s forgotten Sri Lankan novel

BBC and Nick Rankin

The Bloomsbury Group and Sri Lanka are rarely spoken of in the same breath, but that is partly because Leonard Woolf’s groundbreaking first novel, The Village in the Jungle, is unjustly ignored, argues writer and broadcaster Nick Rankin.

WOOLF AT HOME--_getty624She was born Virginia Stephen, daughter of the Victorian bookman Sir Leslie Stephen, but when she married in 1912, her name changed to Virginia Woolf, and she went on to become the best-known woman writer of the 20th Century. Her lesser-known husband, Leonard Woolf, however, wrote and published a novel first. That almost forgotten book, first published in 1913, is called The Village in the Jungle and it is a remarkable work because it is the first novel in English literature to be written from the indigenous point of view rather than the coloniser’s. It’s not a book about the white chaps at the club who run the show, but about those at the very bottom of the imperial heap, the black and brown fellows who don’t even know they’re part of an Empire, but who just survive day by day, hand to mouth, as slash-and-burn agriculturalists. Continue reading →

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June 4, 2014 · 4:10 am

Poetic Reflections against Violence: Burning, Nightmare, Trauma

Godfrey Gunatilleke…… Three poems from Time’s Confluence and other poems (Colombo, Unie Arts, 2014 … ISBN 978 -955-41102-0-5)

GODFREY G 22

            BURNING ……(Elegy on a body seen burning by the roadside during the violence in 1989)

There was no one, none at all to weep for him

Dead, lying by the roadside, quietly burning;

No friend, no brother, just some strangers, fearful

And silent. No love was left for mourning. Continue reading →

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June 3, 2014 · 5:06 am

FIVE YEARS AFTER: Reviewing Sri Lanka after the end of War, May 2009-May 2014 … in Groundviews

SEE http://groundviews.org/category/issues/end-of-war/

Articles published in the Special Edition, in order of appearance,

First week

  1. Launch of Special Edition: The end of war in Sri Lanka, five years on, Sanjana Hattotuwa
  2. PLATO’S CAVE IN THE INDIAN OCEAN: ELITE FAILURE IN SRI LANKA, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka
  3. Is reconciliation achievable without separation in Sri Lanka?, Lionel Bopage
  4. Sri Lanka’s Quiet Heroes, Gibson Bateman
  5. Badiou’s Event and the defeat of the Tigers: A Brief Response to Dayan Jayatilleka, Vangeesa Sumanasekara
  6. Five years on, where we are now: Reconciliation, the Rule of Law and governance, Ravindra
  7. Opened letter to His Majesty Mahinda Rajapakse the Lord of Sri Lanka and the Universe also (translated into Sinhala by Vikalpa here), The Silva
  8. The Silly Idealist, Marisa de Silva
  9. A new phase of mediation to get from post-war to post-conflict Sri Lanka, Jehan Perera
  10. Political settlement or regime change!, Kumar David
  11. THE WAR, PHILOSOPHY, POLITICS, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka
  12. Kasturi’s Progress, Nalaka Gunewardene
  13. Five Years Later, Indran Amirthanayagam
  14. A Brief History of the United Peoples Freedom Alliance from 2004 to 2014: Statistics and Real Politics, Khana
  15. Keep Off the Grass, Subha Wijesiriwardena
  16. The failure of the media, civil society and the ‘moderates’, Heejaz Hizbullah
  17. Re-visiting the Rajapaksa Hegemonic Project, Dayapala Thiranagama
  18. 5 years after: Reflections as a mother, women and a citizen of Sri Lanka, Visakha Dharmadasa

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