Talk:Black July


Ronnie de Mel's caste

@Oz346: could you explain why Ronnie de Mel's caste and its success is relevant? To me, Piyadasa's remark was supposed to be a semi-humorous one. To be honest, I felt it was inappropriate to include it in a Wikipedia article. It seems unfair to use against him a communal identification that he might not have emphasized. One could equally say that he made those remarks despite his gender, male, being overrepresented in leading positions in the economy, society, politics and the church, but that would be irrelevant to what was said. His remarks were made in the context of ethnicity - his own and the Tamils' - and that's all that should be mentioned here. SinhalaLion (talk) 02:45, 4 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Can't speak for that user but it's clear the author is using that to highlight the hypocrisy of crying about overrepresentation based on arbitrary criteria like ethnicity. Those successful Tamil businessmen in Colombo might not have emphasized their ethnicity either but prioritized their individual merits.---Petextrodon (talk) 04:18, 7 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Correct, but is this alleged hypocrisy relevant? Would de Mel's claim hold more water if Karavas were underrepresented? SinhalaLion (talk) 02:06, 8 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are other RS which also support this statement, see "Caste Conflict Elite Formation: The Rise Of A Karava Elite In Sri Lanka, 1500-1931" by Michael Roberts. Oz346 (talk) 09:00, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's a 400-page book, so please point out the page and passage that you believe substantiates the inclusion of de Mel's caste. SinhalaLion (talk) 02:56, 13 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Before I trawl through the 400 page book which I read a long while ago, what the content corroborates is that there was Karava overrepresentation. It does not comment on de Mel specifically. Piyadasa's comment is relevant to black July, otherwise he would not have mentioned it himself. Oz346 (talk) 17:31, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As the other user mentioned, it could have simply been to highlight an alleged hypocrisy. I say alleged as he might not have been speaking on a personal capacity when he made his remark, but rather what he saw as the predominant feeling of Sinhalese. Even if he was a Karava enthusiast and was hypocritical, how is it relevant? Would his point be more valid if Karavas were underrepresented? SinhalaLion (talk) 02:09, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see the relevance of what De Mel thought or not regarding Karavas. It is irrelevant whether he was a Karava enthusiast or not. It is a third person comment said by the author on De Mel's statement, and that is what is being cited. And yes it is to highlight the hypocrisy of calling a certain population over privileged, when the same could easily be said for the segment of the population that De Mel is from. It is relevant because it highlights that many of the motivations of the pogrom were suspect, and this is why Piyadasa thought it was worth noting in his book. If it was worth noting in a book dedicated to black july, I don't see why it's not worth noting in a wiki article about black july.
/Would his point be more valid if Karavas were underrepresented?/
If Karavas were underrepresented, then Piyadasa's statement would be false and definitely it would not be deserving of inclusion. But that's not the case at all. Scholarly sources indicate that they were overrepresented. Oz346 (talk) 18:11, 17 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think a comment like that should be on Wikipedia, even if it comes from a source on Black July. In informal logic, calling out de Mel's caste would be a tu quoque. It would have been more appropriate to leave it at: "de Mel was a cabinet minister and it was unbecoming of him to make such a remark" (regardless of his caste). I don't know Piyadasa or anything about him, but there's a non-trivial chance there was casteism behind his remark on de Mel. In any case, I'm against such a comment being included because it sets a bad precedent - a precedent of using one's communal identities as counterarguments. This is not the most severe form of it, but I can see it one day being used to unfairly delegitimize someone's opinion (even if it's an RS doing the delegitimization). SinhalaLion (talk) 01:41, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Caste and class analyses of political elites are common features of sociology regardless of whether these figures personally identified with such classifications.
"a precedent of using one's communal identities as counterarguments."
There's no Wiki policy against describing that such a critique has been made as long as there's in-text attribution.---Petextrodon (talk) 02:21, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"describing that such a critique has been made" what was done earlier was hardly a mere description of the critique, but rather tantamount to an implementation. That said, I can accept the current revision. SinhalaLion (talk) 13:50, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

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