Posts Categorized: Sri Kantha

by Sachi Sri Kantha, December 18, 2012 Unlike the tone taken by many facultative memoirists who had poured out their sentiments on the recent death of sitar maestro Ravi Shankar on December 11th to the Hindu (Chennai) newspaper, strictly I avoid their style of presenting their reminiscences on how they had a brief (or lengthy)… Read more »

Escapist? MGR protested. His films were certainly not escapist, he said. He recognized the link to Fairbanks. But ‘Fairbanks, great as he was, is now forgotten’. An acting career, said MGR, must now have a political dimension, and he himself had found that in the Dravidian movement.

Before this year ends its lap, I have to complete this anniversary posting. Year 2012 marks the 120th birth anniversary and 65th death anniversary of Swami Vipulananda (1892-1947). In his relatively short lifespan of 55 years, Swami Vipulananda (hereafter Swami, in short) accomplished more for Tamil studies than ordinary mortals could perform a fraction even… Read more »

As I have borrowed the main title for this anniversary exercise, from the ever popular Casablanca (1942) movie song‘As Time Goes By’, I opted to transcribe some recorded relevant facts that had appeared in international press on the ethnic cleansing atrocities of Sri Lankan army on Tamils, for the year 1985…
Excluded in these books (for convenience or due to lack of access to the available records) were the ethnic cleansing events that were perpetrated in the Tamil homeland of Sri Lanka by the Sri Lankan army and its abettors(the Home guards) armed and trained by the government…
Among these, Simon Winchester’s recording of the destruction of Tiriyai village in Trincomalee district was a powerful piece.

While on her early morning routine jaunt of street cleaning, this Colombo crow picked up the following memo, casually dumped into a garbage can near the office of Presidential sibling and Defense Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. This secret memo had the 10 top reasons for hiring Tamil women scribbled in pen on it…

In his second term, will President Obama elevate himself to the rank of an admirable statesman? Can Eelam Tamils expect something better than his previous performance?

By design or accident, Weiss has conveniently ignored the contributions of CIA to the Sri Lankan civil war in his book of 342 pages. This is more exasperating, as he was “the United Nations spokesperson in Sri Lanka”! Phew! He cannot claim ignorance.

The tragedy of the Hindu is the tragedy of newspaper editors who allow themselves to be sucked into the decision-making processes of their governments! [Tamil Times, London, October 1988, p.12]

My verdict: Those who read the editorials presented in the Appendix can recognize that Kasturi posed as a wiseacre and his wishy-washy writing style was verbose, pretentious, repetitive, unimaginative and unrealistic to the aspirations of Eelam Tamils. Last but not the least, his written stuff was boring to read!

So, what’s the price for a Ceylon Tamil politician? If you are a keen student of politics in independent Sri Lanka, the answer is a Cabinet portfolio. For the sake of Cabinet positions, two independent Tamils namely Chellapah Suntharalingam (1895-1985) and Cathiravelu Sittampalam (1898-1964) pawned Eelam rights.

That Prabhakaran committed suicide cannot be provable, but is certainly believable, considering the above-listed five strikes against the probability that he was killed by an army sniper. If the Sri Lankan army offers sustainable evidences to negate the five strikes that I list above, then I will buy their version of Prabhakaran’s death.

The malady faced by the Hindu was aptly diagnosed by S. Sivanayagam, while he was residing in Chennai. He wrote in 1988, “The tragedy of the Hindu is the tragedy of newspaper editors who allow themselves to be sucked into the decision-making processes of their governments!” [Tamil Times, London, Oct. 1988].

On September 9, Lakbima (a Sinhala daily newspaper in Colombo) carried a cartoon by HasanthaWijenayake. It featured a plump Jayalalitha Jayaram, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, in an aggressive posture against Sri Lanka. While her right index finger was pointing at Sri Lanka, her left hand holding the lower end of saree to her… Read more »

The shock that an LTTE landmine had decapitated the Sinhalese military leadership of the Northern Province, who had bragged only a week before to the India Today magazine (July 31, 1992) that they were about to humiliate LTTE, was too much to absorb by the Sinhala media and politicians. There was an orgy of breast beating, finger pointing and blame shifting. For popular consumption, these military heroes had died either due to carelessness (as Chandraprema opined recently) or due to internal back-stabbing by President Premadasa who was envious of the popularity of Major General Denzil Kobbekaduwa. Sinhalese military analysts and public found it difficult to gulp that they lost their heroes to the LTTE’s adept reconnaissance tactics.

The Stories of Guru Paramarta: Sixth Story of the Brahman’s Prophecy by Fr. Costanzo Beschi [aka, Veera MaMuni] Front Note by Sachi Sri Kantha, September 29, 2004 sangam.org/articles/view2/568.html The sixth story in the Guru Paramarta series describes how the Guru Paramartha interpreted a Brahman’s prophecy about his impending death, as heard from one of his… Read more »

The Warped Aryans against Peace in Sri Lanka (WAPS) flopped in Oslo by Sachi Sri Kantha, September 17, 2004 Last month there was quite a bit of publicity in the Colombo press and websites (including those handled by some demented Tamils who work against the Tamil interests), about a freak show which was scheduled for… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha For Sinhalese, the word ‘tovil’ symbolizes something very intimate. Some are too ashamed to openly discuss it. Others consider it as a panacea for the ills afflicting them. For foreign tourists, it is a ‘burlesque show of the male natives.’ For foreign anthropologists, it is a ‘notable cultural tradition which is… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, September 8, 2004 In early 1999, I read a humorous syndicated commentary by Gary Borders (then the editor and publisher of the Nacogdoches Daily Sentinel, Texas). It was so thought-provoking for its humor and simplicity, that I put it away safely in my file of notable collections for reference. My last month’s… Read more »

by Sachi Sri Kantha, August 20, 2004 A week ago, the voice of Karuna – the sacked LTTE colonel – was heard again, in the Bangkok-based blog sheet Asian Tribune [dated Aug.10, 11 and 12].  One reader requested me to comment on these interviews.  My one sentence answer is nothing but: “Karuna shows some flare for a… Read more »

Exposing the shameless somersault on the POTA issue by The Hindu editorialist by Sachi Sri Kantha, August 10, 2004 Why does the Hindu newspaper establishment of Chennai spew venom on Eelam Tamil nationalism since 1983?  How about the following answers? (1) By tradition, The Hindu is conservative, and places India’s interests in its head; [which means, they think supporting separatism in a… Read more »