Posts Categorized: Sri Kantha

by Sachi Sri Kantha, October 28, 2013 Vo Nguyen Giap NYT article 1964 Aug 16 by Max Clos Mr. Villa Anandaram, currently residing in Canada, is a good friend of mine. Our friendship goes back to our classmate days at the Colombo Hindu College, Ratmalana, in mid 1960s. Though we disagreed (and still disagree) on… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, October 18, 2013 ‘Better late than never’ is one of my favorite English proverbs. Early this year, when I published my thoughts on T.L.B. Bastianpillai (1941-1978), the sadistic Tamil cop, in April, I remembered Dr. P.R. Seermaran again. He was my freshman student at the Medical Faculty, University of Peradeniya, in… Read more »

Gen. Giap’s victory over Americans had a positive and negative influence on how Prabhakaran conducted his war against the Sri Lankan army. General Giap’s prime strategy was to ‘wear down the enemy’, despite heavy losses. Prabhakaran successfully incorporated the guerrilla warfare from General Giap’s book to Sri Lanka and caused much pain in the crotches of his Indian and Sri Lankan enemies. Prabhakaran also firmly believed that with severe handicaps (in personnel and military budget), he could eventually win against the Sri Lankan army. But, he failed to take into his calculation the aid provided by Soviets and Chinese to General Giap’s army. Secondly, Prabhakaran also failed to realize the truth in the adage, ‘Time and Tide waits for no one’.

Someone has to say it straight, and let it be me. Cho’s knowledge on Eelam Tamil affairs is gibberish…

To disprove Cho’s repeated faulting of LTTE for the breakdown of Rajiv-Jayewardene Accord of 1987, I provide Dixit’s reasons why it failed.

Reason 1: “ Intelligence agencies, armed forces and the Ministry of External Affairs, including myself told him (Rajiv Gandhi) that the initiatives being taken for signing the agreement were valid and practical….That the advice was wrong and the political judgement on which this advice was based was erroneous has to be acknowledged with the benefit of hindsight.”

by Sachi Sri Kantha, September 27, 2013 Part 10 Mythologies in the movies of India and Hollywood There is a derisive Tamil idiom which pokes fun at half-baked scholarship. It is, ‘Kundu chattikul irunthu kuthirai ootuvathu pola’ [translation: Like horse riding within a hollow pot]. One cannot ride a horse with the narrow confines of… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, Septermber 5, 2013 Farmer front pages Anniversaries are regularly celebrated and remembered for their impact on the society. Last month Americans remembered the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a Dream’ speech. In November this year, another 50th anniversary (the assassination of President John F. Kennedy) will be commemorated…. Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, August 21, 2013 Recently I completed reading a wonderful biography on C.N. Annadurai (1909-1969), the founding leader of DMK, by R. Kannan. It’s title was simply ‘Anna’ – appearing palindromic in English. This led me to study the semantics of this endearing Tamil word. This essay is also a sort of… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, August 11, 2013 Part 9 Last few months had seen the deaths of quite a few Tamil movie personalities who were involved with MGR during his film career. The obituary list includes actoresses Rajasulochana and Manjula, playback singer T.M. Soundararajan, lyricist Vaali, and music director T.K. Ramamoorthy of the Viswanathan-Ramamoorthy duo…. Read more »

“The article did a fine job of highlighting what’s already been in the news recently, but it said nothing about the history of Buddhist fundamentalism. It’s not a new thing. Beech spoke of the Bodu Bala Sena that formed in Sri Lanka less than a year ago, but it is worth pointing out that ethnic Sri Lankan Tamils have been aware of hate-inciting Buddhist monks for decades. While the world holds to its idealistic illusions about the one major religion that appears to be free from the violent and toxic fundamentalism that seems to afflict all the rest, Buddhist extremism was there, alive and well, free to fester and gain momentum for decades.”

by Sachi Sri Kantha, July 14, 2013 Anti-Tamil riots of July 1983 Eminent bibliographer H. A.I. Goonetileke (1922-2003; long affiliated to the University of Peradeniya as its chief librarian) was one among the handful of contemporary Sinhalese scholars whom I respect very much. His bibliography on the anti-Tamil riots of July 1983 appeared in the… Read more »

Tribute video by Sangam. by Sachi Sri Kantha, June 20, 2013 Poets or lyricists provide the substance to their poem or lyrics. But, it is the singer’s voice (and to an equal extent the music director or the one who arranges the score) who offers the form for those poems or lyrics. Good examples were… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, July 3, 2013 In light of the recent death of Bahukutumbi Raman (1926-2013), I offer the following sentiments from an Eelam Tamil’s angle. What humorist Andy Rooney wrote once, “Spies are, generally speaking, maladjusted social misfits who can’t make a living at anything else”, fits perfectly to B. Raman who promoted… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, June 13, 2013 Part 8 Number of Tamil movies released between 1936 and 1947 MGR’s rivals for action roles during 1936 to 1947 Two of MGR’s pre-hero movies, namely Harichandra (1944) and Salivahanan (1945) deserve mention in tracing MGR’s ascend as a movie icon. In both of these movies the hero… Read more »

Thirty years ago, the name Kuttimani made waves in Sri Lanka. His given name was Selvarajah Yogachandran, and he was one of the Tamil militant leaders in Sri Lanka in 1970s. On July 25th 1983, he was one of the Tamil prisoners who were killed inside the Welikade jail. As such, it may be appropriate… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, May 30, 2013  To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Jaffna Public Library bibliocaust, seven years ago (in 2006), I contributed a four part series under the caption ‘Perversity of Pyromaniacs’ to this website. It could be accessed easily if you simply google the caption of this series. This year being… Read more »

Book in Review: Traitors: Suspicion, Intimacy and the Ethics of State Building, edited by Sharika Thiranagama and Tobias Kelly, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2010, 272 pp. As a prelude to my review of this book, I offer the following definitions taken from The New Oxford American Dictionary (2001), as the co-editors in their introduction… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, May 3, 2013 Part 7 In Love with Temperance theme The Sathi Leelavathi (1936) movie, in which MGR debuted, had temperance in its plot. One thing which became certain was that MGR, for the whole 40 years of his movie career which spanned 133 movies, made the temperance theme as his… Read more »

The editor and the cover designer of the Economist weekly (April 13, 2013) have a load of gall and a crooked sense of humor to tag, late Margaret Thatcher as a ‘freedom fighter’ in its homage to ‘The Lady’. If Thatcher was a ‘freedom fighter’, where does one place the likes of Nelson Mandela and… Read more »

Not only Tamil militants and IRA, Thatcher also labeled African National Congress (ANC) under the leadership of Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo as ‘terrorists’. Now, some of her acolytes and sympathizers are attempting to cover up her vitriolic criticism of ANC during the 1980s…

Several British MPs were opposed to Thatcher’s government offering high-speed gunboats to the dictatorial Sri Lankan regime in 1985. But she overruled this opposition, with her conviction of fighting ‘terrorism’.