Blowback

Blowback PDF Author: Neil DeVotta
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804749244
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
In the mid-1950s, Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese politicians began outbidding one another on who could provide the greatest advantages for their community, using the Sinhala language as their instrument. The appeal to Sinhalese linguistic nationalism precipitated a situation in which the movement to replace English as the country’s official language with Sinhala and Tamil (the language of Sri Lanka’s principal minority) was abandoned and Sinhala alone became the official language in 1956. The Tamils’ subsequent protests led to anti-Tamil riots and institutional decay, which meant that supposedly representative agencies of government catered to Sinhalese preferences and blatantly disregarded minority interests. This in turn led to the Tamils’ mobilizing, first politically then militarily, and by the mid-1970s Tamil youth were bent on creating a separate state.

Blowback

Blowback PDF Author: Neil DeVotta
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804749244
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the mid-1950s, Sri Lanka’s majority Sinhalese politicians began outbidding one another on who could provide the greatest advantages for their community, using the Sinhala language as their instrument. The appeal to Sinhalese linguistic nationalism precipitated a situation in which the movement to replace English as the country’s official language with Sinhala and Tamil (the language of Sri Lanka’s principal minority) was abandoned and Sinhala alone became the official language in 1956. The Tamils’ subsequent protests led to anti-Tamil riots and institutional decay, which meant that supposedly representative agencies of government catered to Sinhalese preferences and blatantly disregarded minority interests. This in turn led to the Tamils’ mobilizing, first politically then militarily, and by the mid-1970s Tamil youth were bent on creating a separate state.

Islanded

Islanded PDF Author: Sujit Sivasundaram
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022603836X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
How did the British come to conquer South Asia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Answers to this question usually start in northern India, neglecting the dramatic events that marked Britain’s contemporaneous subjugation of the island of Sri Lanka. In Islanded, Sujit Sivasundaram reconsiders the arrival of British rule in South Asia as a dynamic and unfinished process of territorialization and state building, revealing that the British colonial project was framed by the island’s traditions and maritime placement and built in part on the model they provided. Using palm-leaf manuscripts from Sri Lanka to read the official colonial archive, Sivasundaram tells the story of two sets of islanders in combat and collaboration. He explores how the British organized the process of “islanding”: they aimed to create a separable unit of colonial governance and trade in keeping with conceptions of ethnology, culture, and geography. But rather than serving as a radical rupture, he reveals, islanding recycled traditions the British learned from Kandy, a kingdom in the Sri Lankan highlands whose customs—from strategies of war to views of nature—fascinated the British. Picking up a range of unusual themes, from migration, orientalism, and ethnography to botany, medicine, and education, Islanded is an engaging retelling of the advent of British rule.

Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness

Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness PDF Author: Kē. En. Ō Dharmadāsa
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472102884
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
For nearly four decades, Sri Lanka has been the scene of an escalating ethnic conflict between the majority Sinhalese and the Tamils, who form the largest minority. Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness traces the development of Sinhalese nationalism by paying particular attention to the Sinhala language and how it relates to Sinhalese national identity. After Sri Lanka became independent from Great Britain in 1948, an official national language had to be chosen - either "Sinhala only" or "parity of status for Sinhala and Tamil". The victory of the "Sinhala only" proposition that won in the general election of 1956 started the antagonism between the Sinhalese and the Tamils that persists to this day. Using hitherto untapped primary sources, K. N. O. Dharmadasa delineates some of the peculiar features of the linkage between state, religion, and ethnicity in traditional Sinhalese society, providing insight into a tragic conflict that has a long and turbulent history. The book has much to offer historians, political scientists, anthropologists, and sociologists of language and religion, as well as students and scholars of South Asia, postcolonialism, ethnicity, cultural identity, and conflict.

Exile in Colonial Asia

Exile in Colonial Asia PDF Author: Ronit Ricci
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082485375X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
Exile was a potent form of punishment and a catalyst for change in colonial Asia between the seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. Vast networks of forced migration supplied laborers to emerging colonial settlements, while European powers banished rivals to faraway locations. Exile in Colonial Asia explores the phenomenon of exile in ten case studies by way of three categories: “kings,” royals banished as political exiles; “convicts,” the vast majority of those whose lives are explored in this volume, sent halfway across the world with often unexpected consequences; and “commemoration,” referring to the myriad ways in which the experience and its aftermath were remembered by those exiled, relatives left behind, colonial officials, and subsequent generations of descendants, devotees, historians, and politicians. Intended for a broad readership interested in the colonial period in Asia (South and Southeast Asia in particular), the volume encompasses a range of disciplinary perspectives: anthropology, gender studies, literature, history, and Asian, Australian, and Pacific studies. In addition to presenting fascinating, little-known, and varied case studies of exile in colonial Asia and Australia, the chapters collectively offer a sweeping, contextualized, comparative approach that links the narratives of diverse peoples and locales. Rather than confining research to the European colonial archives, whenever possible the authors put special emphasis on the use of indigenous primary sources hitherto little explored. Exile in Colonial Asia invites imaginative methodological innovation in exploring multiple archives and expands our theoretical frontiers in thinking about the interconnected histories of penal deportation, labor migration, political exile, colonial expansion, and individual destinies.

Citizenship and Statelessness in Sri Lanka

Citizenship and Statelessness in Sri Lanka PDF Author: Valli Kanapathipillai
Publisher: Anthem Press
ISBN: 1843317915
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
'Citizenship and Statelessness in Sri Lanka' analyses the context of the agreement between the Sri Lankan and Indian government that led to the loss of citizenship of Indian Tamil estate workers in Sri Lanka. Kanapathipillai broadens the focus of scholarship in this area by examining the economic, political and ideological issues that had a bearing on policy decisions.

A History of Sri Lanka

A History of Sri Lanka PDF Author: K. M. De Silva
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 9789558095928
Category : Sri Lanka
Languages : en
Pages : 804

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Book Description
The History Of Sri Lanka From The Earliest Times To The Present Sri Lanka Is An Ancient Civilization, Shaped And Thrust Into The Modern Globalizing World By Its Colonial Experience. With Its Own Unique Problems, Many Of Them Historical Legacies, It Is A Nation Trying To Maintain A Democratic, Pluralistic State Structure While Struggling To Come To Terms With Separatist Aspirations. This Is A Complex Story, And There Is Perhaps No Better Person To Present It In Reasoned, Scholarly Terms Than K.M. De Silva, Sri Lanka S Most Distinguished And Prolific Historian. A History Of Sri Lanka, First Published In 1981, Has Established Itself As The Standard Work On The Subject. This Fully Revised Edition, In Light Of The Most Recent Research, Brings The Story Right Up To The Early Years Of The Twenty-First Century. The Book Provides Comprehensive Coverage Of All Aspects Of Sri Lanka S Development From A Classical Buddhist Society And Irrigation Economy, To Its Emergence As A Tropical Colony Producing Some Of The World S Most Important Cash Crops, Such As Cinnamon, Tea, Rubber And Coconut, And Finally As An Asian Democracy. It Is A Study Of The Political Vicissitudes Of Sri Lanka S Ancient Civilization And The Successive Phases Of Portuguese, Dutch And British Colonial Rule. The Unfortunate Consequences Of Becoming A Centre Of Ethnic Tension And Sri Lanka S Long-Standing Relationship With India Are Also Discussed. Exhaustively Researched And Analytical, This Book Is An Invaluable Reference Source For Students Of Ancient, Colonial And Post-Colonial Societies, Ethnic Conflict And Democratic Transitions, As Well As For All Those Who Simply Want To Get A Feel Of The Rich And Varied Texture Of Sri Lanka S Long History.

The sigiriya paw

The sigiriya paw PDF Author: Priydarshi Thakur Khayal
Publisher: Redgrab Books pvt ltd
ISBN: 8194845262
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
The sigiriya paw' Based on 'Maharana', the great Buddhist chronicle of Sri Lanka, “is truly like one of the Puranas. But the style is so uniquely endearing that you don't realise when the Purana entered the present, transiting seamlessly through history. The anxious characters of ancient past, driven into a vicious circle of lust and excesses, rivalries and conspiracies, consumed by their fears and need for revenge; and the Intimacies and heartbreaks of their relationships – all blended together into such a compelling narrative of abuse of power and human anguish that we can see the present day world reflected in it every step of the way.

Dutch and British Colonial Intervention in Sri Lanka, 1780-1815

Dutch and British Colonial Intervention in Sri Lanka, 1780-1815 PDF Author: Alicia Schrikker
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900415602X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This study of Dutch and British colonial intervention on Sri Lanka in the period 1780 - 1815 provides a new over-all characterisation of the functioning and growth of the colonial state in a period of transition.

Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History

Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History PDF Author: Zoltán Biedermann
Publisher: UCL Press
ISBN: 1911307835
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
The peoples of Sri Lanka have participated in far-flung trading networks, religious formations, and Asian and European empires for millennia. This interdisciplinary volume sets out to draw Sri Lanka into the field of Asian and Global History by showing how the latest wave of scholarship has explored the island as a ‘crossroads’, a place defined by its openness to movement across the Indian Ocean.Experts in the history, archaeology, literature and art of the island from c.500 BCE to c.1850 CE use Lankan material to explore a number of pressing scholarly debates. They address these matters from their varied disciplinary perspectives and diverse array of sources, critically assessing concepts such as ethnicity, cosmopolitanism and localisation, and elucidating the subtle ways in which the foreign may be resisted and embraced at the same time. The individual chapters, and the volume as a whole, are a welcome addition to the history and historiography of Sri Lanka, as well as studies of the Indian Ocean region, kingship, colonialism, imperialism, and early modernity.

Parliamentary Debates

Parliamentary Debates PDF Author: Sri Lanka. Pārlimēntuva. Senate
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 952

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Book Description