Category Archives: caste issues

January 19, 2016 · 9:59 am

Meeting Daya Master in Jaffna in 2013 — Padma Rao Sundarji

Padma Rao Sundarji, being Chapter 7 in her book Sri Lanka. The New Country, bearing the title “Jaffna: A Former Tiger is a TV Producer” …. while I have taken a few liberties with the formatting and also inserted my emphases for reader attention: Michael Roberts

10155718_10152329598339593_3887767725851885689_n (1)The morning after meeting Ravi Kumar, I sat on the balcony over coffee. As puttering motorbikes announced the arrival of couples for breakfast at the Green Grass’s outdoor restaurant, I mulled over a decision I had to make. During my two-years of ‘sick leave’ from the Sri Lanka story, foreign reporters based in Delhi, who had been in Sri Lanka (some of whom had been admonished and deported) but also some social workers and NGOs in Colombo, had told me that I should be careful and utterly fastidious in my choice of whom I speak to in the north and north east on my first trips to post-war Sri Lanka.

The army, they said, was everywhere. Jaffna was crawling with military intelligence. They tapped phones, they shadowed reporters, they were even capable of knocking on your door late at night to confiscate your tapes and laptop.

FORMER LTTE SPOKESMAN DAYA MASTER IN JAFFNA Continue reading →

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October 19, 2015 · 3:46 pm

About-About: Clarifying the Work on Jeronis Pieris and His Times

Michael Roberts

This account is a clarification of the circumstances inspiring and surrounding the preparation of the book Facets of Ceylon History through the Letters of Jeronis Pieris (1975) in the light of Ian Goonetileke’s review article of 1976 (which I saw for the first time this October). The elucidation does not address Ian’s criticisms of the chapters on British waste lands policy or the role of buffaloes in up country paddy cultivation — for the simple reason that it would require a complex and lengthy exposition . The focus here is on the letters themselves and colonial politics.

1_Alfred House_exterior_Capper-500LR Alfred House during the heyday of the Warusahännädigē de Soysas in the mid-19th century

This book was drafted in 1969/70, but its appearance in print was delayed till 1975 because I took up a Fulbright Fellowship in USA in 1970/71 and we then had production problems with Hansa Publishers. The writing was informed by the British empiricist heritage in historical research that was integral to the Department of History, Peradeniya University where I was teaching in the Sinhala medium from March 1966 after returning from England following my doctoral dissertation. The book is in fact dedicated to Mr. WJF Labrooy who was Head of Department in my time.[1]

While teaching and exam-marking duties were heavy during the late 1960s, the semester-break system provided me with time to pursue my researches in agrarian history. This involved regular visits to the National Archives at Gangodawila where an old University pal Haris de Silva was Deputy Director and an asset in all my endeavours. At this stage these historical labours had been extended by the continuation of my oral history project interviewing and tape-recording Sri Lankan administrators as well as politicians on their life’s work.[2] Continue reading →

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May 19, 2015 · 11:29 am

Reflections on Caste Disabilities in the Jaffna Peninsula in 1973 and Movements towards the Present

Jane Russell  …. Memo to Michael Roberts re Articles to Sri Lanka Guardian from Sebastian Rasalingam (Toronto) and Thomas Johnpulle (London) on the topic of caste in Jaffna and its effect on politics and culture in Sri Lanka

When I first lived and studied in Jaffna in late 1973, there were elderly women who went around the villages, streets and markets with no upper covering over their breasts. I had come from a UK where young women occasionally went bare-breasted as an extreme commitment to feminism. This was different.. yet somehow also the same…these women appeared to have no embarrassment nor shame about their nakedness..their sagging breasts were blatantly exposed to all..I wondered whether Gloria Steinem might even have approved? But also I instinctively felt that Simone de Beauvoir would have immediately recognised an abuse…..of birth, of poverty, of gender which those women had internalised to the point where it didn’t matter to them anymore.

But when they were young? Imagine the society in which these sixty year old women had entered puberty and grown to adulthood in the 1930’s….where their nudity was demanded by upper caste men and (presumably) the wives, sisters and daughters of upper caste men: possibly these upper caste women felt relief that they were excused this dishonouring custom by the Victorian prudery adopted by the English educated class of which they were part. Continue reading →

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May 18, 2015 · 6:49 pm

Debating Tales of Caste Oppression in the North

Michael Roberts

Sebastian Rasalingam and Thomas Johnpulle have been frequent essayists on Sri Lankan and Tamil politics. They seem to be elder statesman of sorts, apparently residing in Canada. The name “Johnpulle” could be Colombo Chetty or Sri Lankan Tamil. While the article by Rasalingam which drew my attention suggested an Indian Tamil background in one spot, elsewhere it seemed that his family had been at the severe end of caste discrimination in the Jaffna heartland. After some detective work Chandre Dharmawardana in Canada has clarified matters on this latter score in his site http://dh-web.org/place.names/rasalingam/

“Mr. Sebastian Rasalingam has declined our attempts to meet with him. He has communicated with us by e-mail and sometimes sent us his articles (that we had missed) by e-mail. He has stated that Prof. Hoole, and many other distinguished Tamil academics have also communicated with him, and that he is in no position to meet with anyone, especially because of his advanced age.
It is believed that he lives with his children who have immigrated to Ontario, Canada. Based on his writings, we surmise that, unlike most Tamil-speaking writers, he is an educated, vocal “low-caste” Tamil. He seems to have grown up in the Donoughmore era (1930s), lived in Jaffna, Mannar and Hatton. We discern his wife to be an “Indian Tamil” from Hatton. Their arrival in Colombo is said to have opened him the possibility of further self-education in night schools etc., unhindered by the caste restrictions and threats that he had faced in previous locations.”

The claims presented by Rasalingam about the discrimination encountered on trains taking Indian Tamil peoples to India via the Mannar rail route struck me as questionable and I decided to draw on Victor Melder’s long and loving experience with the Ceylon Government Railway[1] to test one facet of Rasalingam’s tale. Likewise my initial readings of both articles suggested a measure of stridency and overkill in their assertions. Continue reading →

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May 18, 2015 · 5:11 pm

Rasalingam and Johnpulle on Caste Discrimination in Tamil Society in the Past and Its Pertinence Today

Two old articles penned in 2011 by Sebastian Rasalingam and Thomas Johnpulle on alleged caste oppression in Jaffna Tamil society turned up in my email letter box a few months back. Because of my long engagement with caste issues in the Sinhala south and more recent explorations of the caste factor within Tamil nationalist politics and in the story of the LTTE, I embarked on a project of arousal. The procedure will be clarified in another post alongside this one. Here I content myself with reproducing the two essays with my thanks extended to Nilantha Ilangamuwa and the Sri Lanka Guardian for their original sponsorship of these writings. Michael Roberts

ONE: SEBASTIAN RASALINGAM –  “Keeping Tamil culture and uprooting the caste system from the North,” July 2011, http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2011/07/keeping-tamil-culture-and-uprooting.html

My article published in the Sri Lanka Guardian, entitled “Sinhalizatioon of the North and the Tamilzation of the South” was provoked by a response to D. B. S. Jeyaraj’s article on Kokachchankulam by Prof. Dharmawardana who maintains a detailed website on place names. My article was followed by a very compassionate and hopeful article by Pearl Thevanayagam and Dr. Narendran. We also see Jeyaraj taking up the same theme within a different script under the title “Tamil destiny is inextricably intertwined with that of the Sinhalese“.

rasalingam JP coast Continue reading →

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October 16, 2014 · 1:50 pm

Devanesan Nesiah’s Reflections on Tamil Circumstances via Jayaweera and the Scottish Referendum

Nesiah ONE: Reviewing Neville Jayaweera’s Book on Jaffna, viz., Exorcising the Past and Holding the Vision

NEVILLE Jayaweera

When I was asked by Marshall Fernando whether I would review the above, I readily agreed. Neville was several years senior to me in the Ceylon Civil Service. He also served as the Government Agent (GA) Jaffna but 18 years before my turn. I know him well and have some familiarity with his career till he left the Island prematurely. Further, during his three months as GA Badulla, I was his deputy. He is widely regarded as one of the most distinguished of many eminent members of the Ceylon Civil Services. His tenure in Jaffna was particularly well appreciated, even by many who were deeply distrustful of him when he first arrived in there. Continue reading →

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September 24, 2014 · 9:26 am

Reviewing Neville Jayaweera’s Account of a Critical Phase in the Sinhala Tamil Conflict

Jaffna- “Exorcising the Past and Holding the Vision” An autobiographical reflection by Neville Jayaweera

I> REVIEW ONE by R. M. B Senanayake, courtesy of The Island,  24th September 2014

We may ask the question what it is that Neville Jayaweera wants to convey to the public and to posterity through his autobiographical reflections? Direct or first-hand experiences of events impart a special depth as opposed to the third hand reports of the same events. Those of us who were Jayaweera’s contemporaries in the CCS in the 1960s, such as I, can confirm that his narration of those experiences in Reflections is generally a correct portrayal of the history of those times. One might not share all of his views, but his work is a sparkling revelation, full of spiritual substance, candour and intellectual depth.

What impressed me most in Neville Jayaweera’s (NJ hereafter) Reflections was his inherent sense of justice and fair play and, as Susil Sirivardena says in his Preface, his granite-hard commitment to conscience and humanistic values, He was influenced entirely by the Buddhist concepts of avijja (ignorance of things as they are) the yatharthaya and maya (illusions) and concludes that “within Buddha’s epistemology there is no room for ethnic divisions, for nationalisms or even for patriotism.” Continue reading →

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September 15, 2014 · 2:04 am

Tamil Person and State: Pictorial … Images Listed

Michael Roberts

     Contents

Acknowledgements v

Preface vii

List of Pictorial Items xvii

Abbreviations xxxiii

Prologue xxxv

Visual Imagery within Political Struggles and Manoeuvres …. pp. 1-44

Photographs …. pp. 45-208

Postface: BBC Blind …. pp. 209-29

Bibliography …. pp. 230-51

List of Appendices … pp. 252-92

Appendix I: Media Personnel transported to battlefront by Min-of Defence … pp. 252-63

Appendix II: Estimates of the Death Toll among the Fighting Forces of the LTTE and Government of Sri Lanka …. pp. 264-66

Appendix III: NGOs providing Relief at the Mānik Farm Detention Centres …. pp. 267-70

Appendix IV: US Ambassador Robert Blake’s Secret Despatch, 19 March 2009…. pp. 271-72

Appendices V: Inaugural Meeting of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi, Colombo, 18 December 1949 … with Presidential Address by SJV Chelvanayagam …. pp. 273

List of Pictorial Items

Illustrations for introductory chapter

  1. Ecstasy and a karate kick before the kill, 24/25 July 1983
  2. A killing victim at Varanāsi, 23 December 1992
  3. A Muslim shot by police during Seelampur riots, Delhi, 1992
  4. Hindu mob assembled at night during Bhagalpur pogrom, 28 October 1990
  5. Massive crowd of White Americans assembles to watch thelynching of a Black American, Henry Smith, at Paris, Texas, 1 February 1896
  6. A case of torturing: two interpretations

F1: The image and its tale in The Cage

F2. The unmodified image discovered by GSL sources … with tell-tale slippers suggestive of Tiger troops

  1. DiManno’s slanted pictorial pick: a weak attempt to fool the public about the scenario of the Last Redoubt

H1, 2. LTTE video of auxiliary mobilisation for belligerent activity

  1. David Cameron’s visit to Jaffna draws world attention to the anguish of kin seeking the “missing”
  2. Tamils greet Cameron with demonstration depicting photographs of missing kin
  3. Tamil women seeking their kin in public expressions of grief and anger
  4. Tamils abandon Thamilīlam and walk through jungle at night to safety of Army terrain, February 2009

M1, 2. Mobilisation in search of the “disappeared” kin, 2012 and 2013

PONNA CHELVA  GG Ponnambalam, SJV Chelvanayakam and C Vanniasingham, of the Tamil Congress in 1947

2b-Chelva hustings  Chelvanayakam campaigning 13c--Prabha with pistol-2 the talaivar Pirapaharan with automatic handgun … probably a Glock Continue reading →

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September 11, 2014 · 9:27 am

Advertising TAMIL PERSON AND STATE by Michael Roberts

59- VP signs peace accord 2002-BBC  53- Pongu Thamil Geneva 2003

TAMIL PERSON AND STATE – ESSAYS = Rs. 3500/-

TAMIL PERSON AND STATE – PICTORIAL = Rs. 4000/-

This set of books is the latest anthology from Michael Roberts that caters to the reading public in Lanka and elsewhere by collecting his essaying interventions in the public realm, usually on web, within one cover. These articles were written between 2009 and 2012. Two long articles, however, are new products drafted in 2012. One explores the significance of a Karaiyar caste coterie within the LTTE, while clarifying the ideological currents that inspired their opposition to the Sinhala-dominated state. The other clarifies the circumstances of the Tamil peoples within the de facto to state of Thamilīlam from 2002 onwards and especially within the crucible of war in “the Vanni Pocket” in 2009 and thence to the detention centres at Mänik Farm. Continue reading →

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May 19, 2014 · 5:58 am

Engaging Issues of Caste in India and Sri Lanka

Devanesan Nesiah, courtesy of The Island, 19 May 2014

Caste is observed by the overwhelming majority of Sinhalese and Tamils but the subject remains virtually taboo in public discussions. If it is mentioned in public, it is often either to hurl abuse or to negotiate a marriage. The latter is because for many of us caste is the most important factor in marriage. The former is because caste is yet widely accepted as a measure of social status; the latter because for many caste is the most important factor in marriage, even more important than character. I am not suggesting that the individuals should be identified by caste but I do think that the subject should be freely discussed as is done in India, although caste oppression there is much more severe than in Sri Lanka. Continue reading →

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