Language and National Identity: The Sinhalese and Others over the Centuries

Michael Roberts, reprinting an article published in 2003 in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Summer 2003, 9: 75-102.**

 ABSTRACT: The collective identity of Sinhala-speakers over four centuries dating from the 1590s is analyzed with due attention to the structural form of (a) the Kingdom of Kandy and (b) the British colonial regime that took control of the whole island by 1815/18. The analysis dwells on the modes of oral, visual-iconic and written forms of cultural transmission that pre-dated print technology, while drawing attention to the relative uniformity of the Sinhala language in both geographical and temporal scale. A semantic pattern of political alliances based on the opposition of inside to outside which works contextually like a nestling Chinese-box is one dimension of this linguistic order. This supported the tendency of Sinhalese representations to adopt an associational logic which merged past enemies (the wicked Tamils) with contemporary enemies (the Portuguese, the English) during the liberation struggles of the Kandyan state and its militia in the pre-1818 period. Such tendencies and the continuation of disparaging epithets coined during the period of Portuguese imperial intrusion into the vocabulary of the twentieth century must inform any theoretical efforts to distinguish the collective consciousness of the Sinhalese after the substantial transformations initiated under the British from that which is expressed so powerfully in the war poems of the pre-British period.

Elephantine Frolics at Yala

    What FUN !

 SEE no Fun! Smell no Fun !    What a Folly!

Terrific PICs by Willy Thuan — Courtesy of a Fanatic Chain-Mailer

Remembering Tissa Abeysekera

Sunalie Ratnayake, in The Daily News, 18 April 2013

Today (April 18, 2013) is the fourth death anniversary of a legendary man of unparalleled faculty, whose life encompassed a sheer, rich versatility. The world of Sri Lankan screenplays, movie directions, performing/acting, political activism, writing and analysis was undeniably enriched by this startling human being, that possessed knowledge in each of the aforesaid spheres, and much more, in a manner that surpassed that of a routine intellectual. The man who was fearless to dream of even the most impossible, and remained zealous in turning the same impossible dreams into reality was none other than Tissa Ananda Abeysekera Guneratne de Fonseka, more often than not known as Tissa Abeysekera.

Prisoners of the Past — says Dayan Jayatilleka

Elmo Jayawardane, reviewing Dayan Jayatilleka: Long War, Cold Peace

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka has not stopped at merely hitting the nail on the head; he’s gone a lot deeper! The man has taken a Black and Decker and drilled the skull of the reader and carefully pushed in 498 pages of faction and action (shameful and laudable) that relate to our “Long War” of almost three decades.

It is a timely publication too. The International Tambourine Men gathered in Geneva flaunting their lily white innocence in attempts to barbecue us. At least, we the ordinary habitants of this land should know how the cookie crumbled while we suffered the consequences of divisibility for thirty grisly years. Of course the ‘mea culpa’ rests with none other than the leadership. They festered the wound of ethnic divide and titillated political maggots that nearly annihilated us as a nation. We need to know some truths that have been gagged and swept under the carpets by both sides, ably assisted by the good Samaritans who sat on the third seat preaching negotiated peace. ‘Long War, Cold Peace’ is the answer. Dr. Dayan is punching hard, in a ring where he knows the rules, and he is not holding anything back. There is a good possibility that the book may take him to the mouth of a long menacing serpent in the political game of ‘Snakes and Ladders.” But then, with his historically valuable contribution in ‘Long war, Cold peace’, he will walk tall among people who really matter. 

The Sri Lankan Republic at 40: Reflections on Constitutional History, Theory and Practice

Type of Publication: Edited Collection…..Publisher(s): The Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA), and the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung für die Freiheit (FNF) 

Place Publication: Colombo, Sri Lanka ….. Date of Publication: 21^st December 2012…….

Size of Publication: 1168 pages in two volumes (Vol. I: pp.1-660; Vol. II: pp.661-1168)

ISBN: 978-955-1655-93-8 ………..Bar Code: 9 789551 655938

Editor: Asanga Welikala

Website: http://republicat40.org (entire contents downloadable in complete volumes or as individual chapters)

 Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu of CPA

Purpose and Scope of the Publication: In 2012, Sri Lanka marks the fortieth anniversary of the founding of its republic. With the promulgation of the first republican constitution on 22^nd May 1972, Ceylon severed its remaining constitutional links with Britain that had survived the grant of independence as a dominion in 1948. Both the process adopted in the making of that constitution as well as its substance were historic – a decisive ‘constitutional moment’ – reflecting dramatic political currents that had dominated the late-colonial and post-independence period, and establishing a constitutional order that has, despite being replaced by a second republican constitution in 1978, retained its essential substantive character as a highly centralised unitary state to the present.

The Bracegirdle Incident. How an Australian Communist ignited Ceylon’s independence struggle

Alan Fewster

 Bracegirdle beside Colvin R. de Silva and other Trotskyite leaders at Horana in 1937 – Pic from Victor Ivan, Paradise in Tears, Plate 164.

The Bracegirdle Incident is the true story of how an Australian communist labour agitator almost brought down the British colonial government in Ceylon in 1936. Unknown in Australia, the case of Mark Anthony Lyster Bracegirdle became a cause celebre in Ceylon’s independence struggle, and his name remains revered among the Left in Sri Lanka today. The son of an artistic English blue stocking, Bracegirdle arrived in Australia in 1927. He joined the Communist Party of Australia and quickly became a ‘bagman’, or financial organiser, attracting the attention of the Commonwealth security service. In 1936 Bracegirdle sailed for Ceylon, ostensibly to become a tea planter.

Sri Lanka and the Defeat of the LTTE by KM de Silva reviewed

Colonel Hariharan

KM de Silva’s Sri Lanka and the Defeat of the LTTE (Penguin books, 2012 ISBN 9780143416524) looks at the rise and fall of LTTE in the context of  South Asia and the India-Sri Lanka relationship, says R Hariharan. The story of Velupillai Prabhakaran’s rise from the backwoods of  Jaffna to build the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), one of the most  dreaded terrorist organisations, and his fall in the battlefield can be told in  many ways. Sri Lanka historian KM de Silva in his latest book looks at the rise  and fall of the LTTE in the larger context of South Asia and the India-Sri Lanka  relationship.

AP de Zoysa: Fascinating glimpses of a unique personality

Leelananda de Silva, reviewing Kumari Jayawardena’s biography of her father

For the common man, politics began only in 1931. In 1931, men and women over the age of 21 were given the right to vote for electing members to the new legislature – the State Council. 1931 should be seen as the year that liberated the common man from the oppression of centuries, whether it be under local authoritarian monarchies, Portuguese, Dutch or British rule. About this time, two new and distinct strands in politics and in intellectual life could also be discerned. A new class of English educated men was emerging, drawn from village backgrounds, of moderate affluence, Buddhist in religion, and imbued with Eastern and Western values. They were people like G.P. Malalasekara, Senerath Paranavithana, P. de S. Kularatne, Martin Wickramasinghe and many others of that ilk. Many of them came from the Southern seaboard. A.P. de Zoysa belonged to this category of intellectuals.

Not Shirani! Not Mahinda! The Real Issue is the Independence of the Judiciary

S. L. Gunasekara, in the Sunday Leader, 23 December 2012

The current imbroglio relating to the attempt to dismiss the present Chief Justice has obscured the real issue facing the country which is whether the independence of the judiciary and hence civilized governance will prevail or not. What the people must understand is that Mahinda Rajapaksa is unimportant as are Shirani Bandaranayake, and the other actors in this sordid drama – for they all fade into wholesale insignificance when compared to that real issue. The independence of the judiciary connotes a buffer between the government and the people: between the rich and the powerful on the one hand and the poor and helpless on the other. The judiciary is the last resort of the citizen when he is oppressed whether by governmental authority or by the power of money, connection or wealth. That presumably is why so many attempts have been made by successive governments to subdue and destroy the independence of the judiciary. Can one imagine a country where the judiciary is like our public service including the police, and subservient to those in the corridors of power, their kith and kin, the wealthy and the influential? The country will surely be then a lawless place where order and discipline are unknown; where ‘might is ‘right’ and where the poor, the powerless and the law abiding are trampled upon.

Glimpses of the Real University Crisis

Gerald H. Peiris, in The Island, 31 October 2012 … drafted 24 October 2012

Three months of agonising wait is finally over for tens of thousands of youth in the higher strata of our educational system, now that the so-called ‘university crisis’ is deemed to have ended, and our dons have decided to resume their routine duties. Many among them would like us to know that had it not been for their patriotic zeal they would have left Sri Lanka to sell their brains in far more lucrative markets. Mighty decent of them.

In fairness to this fraternity I should say that it has seldom resorted to politically confrontational trade union action, and, until a few weeks back, never took to the streets to win their demands.  This time around they mobilised considerable public support for their cause, mainly by misrepresenting their case and camouflaging their objective. They appear to have been so persuasive that even some of the sternest critics of higher education including those of the media did not (as far as I am aware) really challenge the legitimacy of the FUTA agitation for higher salaries, leave alone its other demands and claims relating to imperilled free education, inadequacy of government spending on education, university autonomy, and the brain-drain.