Heritage

By P. K. Balachandran COLOMBO - UNESCO has set February 21 as the International Mother Language Day to stress the importance of the mother tongue and and multilingualism for achieving Sustainable Development Goals without leaving any…
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By Rebecca Conway RUMBUR, Pakistan — In a remote valley in northern Pakistan, hemmed in by sheer rock walls and high pastures, members of a tiny community gathered. The Kalash are a group of about 4,000 people who live in the mountains…
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By Sophie Haigney Anxiety sweat. Horsehair. Wet grass and soil after a rain. Sulphuric compounds from gunpowder. Eau de cologne containing rosemary, bergamot and bitter orange. A touch of leather. This might have been what Napoleon’s…
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By P. K. Balachandran When the famous Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta visited Sri Lanka between September and November 1344, the island was fabled for its wealth. It was a hub of international trade in the Indian Ocean, welcoming foreign…
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By P.K. Balachandran COLOMBO - When the British ruled Sri Lanka, peasant agriculture, with paddy as the main crop, was systematically destroyed to yield place to plantation-based commercial agriculture monopolized by them. Sri Lankan…
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By P. K. Balachandran COLOMBO - Friday November 20, 2020 was the 270th birth anniversary of Tipu Sultan, South India’s greatest anti-British ruler and military leader who died fighting the British in Srirangapatnam near Mysore in…
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By P. K. Balachandran COLOMBO - On Tuesday (13), Reuters reported from Amsterdam that a beautiful ornate cannon, painted in blue and gold, which had been taken away by the Dutch from Kandy in 1765 could be brought back to Sri Lanka, at…
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BERLIN - Berlin's ethnological museum has returned two mummified Maori heads to New Zealand, marking the occasion with a ceremony and prayers in the German capital on Monday (12). The move was "a signal of reconciliation to the societies…
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By P. K. Balachandran Like many other post-colonial States, modern Sri Lanka is a divided country where ethnic entities and religious groups are pitted against each in bitter rivalry fostered by politicians indulging in competitive mass…
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