Hatreds. Chasms. Bill Deutrom’s Insights on the Political Impasse in Sri Lanka

Michael Roberts, courtesy of Colombo Telegraph, 15 December 2018, where the title is different

    pro-UNP rally

Email Note from Bill Deutrom in Lanka to Michael Roberts, 8 Dec 2018

Thank you, Michael for your amazing collection of articles on the Eelam War and its aftermath as well as the present political impasse. Alas, they will not convince people who have already made up their mind based on emotion, ethnicity or with a hatred for Rajapaksa.

An Ode in the Face of The Terrorist Liberation-Fighter

  Jane Russell

“[This poem was presented] a small pamphlet called “Ganga” published in Colombo in 1978: it was aimed at the boasting men of violence everywhere – the Warriors of Terror whom in the guise of Freedom Fighters were inflicting further violence on already violated communities:

To Aloysius-Ludovico (The Terrorist)

I am tired of hearing you sing
the anthems of Freedom and War…
How joyously you crack the whip
and bellow out the tune above the drums!
But the faces of my friends haunt me
in the mornings when I see Death’s Armada
With its pirate’s flag of torture trailing….
what does it matter, your Freedom?
They are dying, my friends and their children…

Nalliah Thayabharan, thank you for reminding me of this poem written in despair in Colombo 30+ years ago. A whole generation has grown up since then but the same (better) poem is probably being written today in Syria by some unknown idealist…..as the song goes “When will we ever learn?”

Secularism on the Wane in South Asia

P K Balachandran, in Financial Times, 27 October 2018 -where the title reads “Decline of Secularism in South Asia”

South Asia’s multi-religious countries, namely India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, started off with a noble wish to be ‘secular’ and keep religion out of the business of the State. Hindu-majority India, under the leadership of the avowedly secular Jawaharlal Nehru, explicitly stated that it would be secular.

Nehru

Jinnah–Getty Images DS Senanaayke

Sri Lanka’s Withering History. Without a Hattotuwa or a Fukuyama!

Richard Simon, whose preferred title is “The End of History, Again” ……. —  A parody which is presented in this blog viz,……………………………………. http://notesfromceylon.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-end-of-history-again.html — a site which I encourage you to visit …. Note that I have inserted highlighting emphases to assist readers.

Hattotuwa  A Tiger Cub resembling Hattoyama?

A Tiger Lad going on duty -Pic by Shyam Tekwani circa 1989

Someone for whom I have great respect asked me to write my reaction to this essay by Sanjana Hatthotuwa in the Island. I do so somewhat unwillingly, since the kind of writing it represents is ordinarily of no interest to me. This is because I view, historical processes (including, inter alia, all social and political processes) as being beyond human control. It is true that humans, both individually and in groups, can grasp and sometimes make use of these processes to further their own ends, but in doing so they unavoidably change both the process and its results. And these changes and effects are not fully predictable by anyone. Hence my deep conviction that socio-political activism is at best ambiguous in its effects, and at worst downright dangerous.

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THIS ITEM reached me by email and the captions are those within the pictorial display: Editor Thuppahi ….. visit this reference for the item posted on15th Septemebr 2018

http://www.sinhalanet.net/ltte-tamil-terrorists-diaspora-leader-pathmanabban-manivanna-cought-red-hand-in-unhrc-general-assembly-while-distributing-anti-sri-lankan-documents-to-un-ambassadors-on-13th-sep-2018

THE TITLE deployed runs thus: “ LTTE Tamil Terrorists’ Diaspora Leader, Pathmanabban Manivanna caught Red Hand in UNHRC General Assembly while distributing ant

Pro-LTTE Tamil Terrorists leader Pathmanabban Manivannan distributing anti-Sri Lanka documents inside the UNHRC General Assembly in Geneva

Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History: A Book Review

Chandra C de Silva, in book review of Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History, edited by Zoltán Biedermann and Alan Strathern, London, UCL Press, 2017. xiv, 340 p.

The significance of this volume of twelve essays lies principally in its collective effort to reassess the importance of global connections in Sri Lanka’s history up to 1850. Previous historical writing had sporadically dealt with this theme. For instance, in the area of ancient history the writings of Sri Lankan scholars such as Senerat Paranavithane, Senake Bandaranayake, and Sudarshan Seneviratne have placed Sri Lanka in the context of archaeological research in India. Historians of medieval Sri Lanka, notably Sirima Kiribamune, W. M. Sirisena, and S. Pathmanathan paid considerable attention to extra-local linkages. Writing on more recent Sri Lankan history, Jorge Flores, S. Arasaratnam, and John Holt (to name but a select few) have made significant contributions to our understanding on how the external world was perceived and received in Sri Lanka up to the mid-19^th Century. Furthermore, thanks to the scholarship of a new generation of scholars (including the editors of this volume), we now know much more on how Sri Lanka was part of the wider worlds of Sanskrit literature, Buddhist learning, Cola power, Islam, and of Western colonial empires. Nevertheless, with the growth of the nationalist movement against British colonial rule and the first half century of independence, the emphasis by many historians (including myself) has been on the study of Sri Lanka as a unit. As the editors point out, internal ethnic conflict in recent times has also led to a continued emphasis on the evolution of Sri Lanka and its peoples at the expense of how Sri Lanka engaged with the world beyond its shores.

 

The Western World’s Cumulous Clouds of Deception: Blanketing the Sharp Realities of Eelam War IV

Michael Roberts, Courtesy of Colombo Telegraph , October 2018

 

This is a provocative piece on the last stages of Eelam War IV in 2008/09 and on its aftermath of Reports and You Tube cut-and-thrust. It makes specific claims in assertive style. These assertions are founded on lengthier articles with their supporting evidence. So, it is by assertion that I proceed.