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
