SEE Imtiaz Issadeen’s site http://www.ozlanka.com/2011/jul/jaffna.html
Category Archives: reconciliation
Rajiva on Sanga’s tour de force … and pointless juxtapositions
Rajiva Wijesinha, in the Island, 14 July 2011
On going through the papers after I got back home, I noticed a letter which compared the talks given by me and Kumar Sangakkara while we were both inLondon. I was honoured by the letter, but I should point out that Mr Sangakkara’s achievement was by far the more laudable. I was responding to questions about facts I have been studying closely for the last couple of months, and with which I have been closely concerned for the last four years. Mr Sangakkara however, whilst talking lucidly about cricket, which is his specialty, and which he has been engaged in productively over the last several months, also talked illuminatingly about the recent socio-political history of Sri Lanka. He was both informative and emotionally compelling, as in his description of what happened in July 1983. Throughout the talk he presented a Sri Lankan perspective that made clear both the essential unity and pluralism of this country, and also the traumas we have undergone. The need for reconciliation is paramount now, and I could only wish there were more heroes in other fields such as Mr Sangakkara who can also contribute inspiringly to the need of the moment.
Web Editor’s Comment The note by Rajiva Wijseinha as “Adviser on Reconciliation to President” was probably prompted by comparisons of his performance on Hard Talk in response to Stephen Sackur and Sangakkara’s Cowdrey Lecture in some bog comments. I insert two comment on my article on “Kumar Sangakara steps forth like Young Ceylon” in groundviews.org on 12th July by way of illustration. Continue reading
Troubled legacy of civil war in Sri Lanka
James Jupp, reviewing The Cage and Tamil Tigress in the Australian Literary Review, July 2011, taken from http://aap.newscentre.com.au/acci/110706/library/education_3/26050902.html
This controversial review of two controversial books is presented here for the benefit of Lankan aficianados. For some brief comments, see the end of article. Web Editor Roberts.
THE island of Sri Lanka is the same size as Tasmania and has the same population as Australia. As the dominion of Ceylon it gained full independence from Britain on February 4, 1948. It retained the monarchy until 1972, when it became a republic. Hailed by its elected leaders as “the Switzerland of Asia”, it enjoyed a degree of self-government with universal suffrage from 1931. Women gained the vote on the same basis as men only three years after Britain. The island’s economy, based on plantation exports of tea and rubber, prospered with rising prices throughout the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. No former colonial society had a happier start. It was soon talking of itself as “the Singapore of the future”. Everything started to go wrong a few years later. The society described in these two gripping books suffered 30 years of civil war, ending with a massacre of countless civilians, according to Gordon Weiss, who is an experienced journalist. He has written an accurate and depressing picture of the final slaughter that ended the struggle for an independent state by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or Tamil Tigers, just as it ended the life of Tamil leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in May 2009.
The climax of the military conflict makes for disturbing reading. Weiss concludes, after an assessment of ”multiple confirmations from different army sources, senior and Continue reading
Filed under australian media, cultural transmission, Fascism, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, island economy, Left politics, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, news fabrication, Rajapaksa regime, reconciliation, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, Tamil migration, Tamil Tiger fighters, terrorism, war crimes, world events & processes
Kumar Sangakkara’s sentiments as an ecumenical Asokan Lankan
Michael Roberts, 13 May 2011, courtesy of groundviews, where the essay will probably draw some comments
Kumar Sangakkara’s Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture for the MCC this summer was the antithesis of that presented within the same portals in 2006 by Martin Crowe.[1] Where Crowe returned to the medieval archaic within the field of cricket and displayed the sentiments of a caveman, Sangakkara was forward-looking and stepped boldly beyond the confines of cricket to the socio-political dispensation in Sri Lanka. In doing so Sangakkara broke the code of conduct enjoined on him by his contract with Sri Lanka Cricket. He was therefore intrepid. This was boldness in a good cause, the greater cause of the cricketing order inSri Lanka (and beyond) on the one hand and, on the other, the vital cause of reconciliation across the fractured political formation in Sri Lanka.
There are missing dimensions and some sweeping comments in his survey ofSri Lanka’s cricketing history in the last twenty years that call for caveats, issues that I will address separately elsewhere. The focus here is directed towards his erudite and passionate venture into the field of Sri Lankan politics and his insistence that the cricketing arena provides one path towards ethnic reconciliation Continue reading
Jaffna in Limbo: A Muslim Journalist’s Visit
Abdul H. Azeez, in the Sunday Leader, 10 July 2010
Travelling to the North last week, I noticed many changes. Roads are being developed at a rate. And the stretch of tar from Vavuniya to Killinochchi is steadily becoming more motor-able. The increase in traffic and tourists has also been beneficial to the local economy, and small towns have popped up where previously there was only empty stretches of road.
Pic by Roberts in June 2010 These towns are not new, however, and most of them claim to have been reborn after disappearing during the war. Central to these towns are the hotels and small kades that cater to travellers. We stopped at one town called Periyakulam that ostensibly did a disappearing act during the war. It is still only a town by a large stretch of the word.
But the hotel that we stopped at seems to be doing pretty well. It employs 38 staff and has built its own mosque so that they can pray in it. Its owner Dawud (if the hotel’s name is anything to go by) tells me that most of his business comes from people who ply the A9. His priority now is to build toilets. Toilets, he says, are ‘the main thing’. He has budgeted over Rs. 1 million, and is quietly confident of growing business.
The road networks in Jaffna have shown fast improvement, though they are still a far cry from what you may find in other developed towns. Development in Jaffna is just starting in earnest. And even though the town was still under government rule during the war, it seems to be only now that it is being given anything more than step-motherly treatment. I’ve always heard stories about the prosperous land of Jaffna, but have only seen little more than sparse greenery in its arid landscape on my visit. Now, however, the results of some Continue reading
Rajiva Wijesinha’s Q and A with Sunday Leader
Janith Aranze, in Sunday Leader, 10 July 2010
Last week Presidential advisor, Rajiva Wijesinha, embarked on a journey to Britainand other parts of Europeto defend the Sri Lankan government against increasing international pressure regarding war crimes committed during the last stages of the war. Below are excerpts of an interview he gave The Sunday Leader regarding his visit and how the government is responding to international pressure.
Q: You are in the UK currently to defend serious war crimes charges against the Sri Lankan government. How successful has your visit been?
A: It has been very successful; both in terms of the diaspora reactions, especially the moderate Tamils, and talks with officials and politicians in London andBrussels, apart from the very generous coverage the BBC gave.
Q: 40 MP’s attended an event facilitated by the Global Tamil Forum in Parliament this week, where they called for ‘truth, accountability and justice’ in Sri Lanka. How does the government respond to such support?
A: We must bear in mind that people believe what they want to believe. The attacks will continue from people who refuse to look at evidence. If a report commissioned by the Secretary Continue reading
To be truly Sri Lankan
Rohana R. Wasala, in The Island, 7 & 8 July 2011
The Sinhala word ‘jathiya’, has been rarely used as an exact equivalent of the English word ‘nation’ which, in terms of its modern meaning, refers to all the people living in a country with their own government. Nowadays, however, ‘jathiya’ is occasionally used in the same sense without any ambiguity, for example, in a sentence like: “janadhipathi jathiya amathai” (The President addresses the nation), in which ‘jathiya’ embraces all Sri Lankans as citizens of one country. But ‘jathiya’ usually means ‘race’. The English term ‘nation’, also used to mean race originally. It entered the English word stock somewhere between 1250 and 1300 CE as a derivative from Old French ‘nascion’ from Latin ‘nationem’ meaning “nation, stock, race”; it literally means “that which has been born” from ‘natus’, which is the past participle of ‘nasci’ “be born”. At first ‘nation’ denoted “a body of people with a common language, culture, and history occupying a territory under a government of their own.” Over the centuries, this racial meaning has been gradually replaced by the political notion “all the people living in unity as inhabitants of one territory/country”. The Sinhala term ‘jathiya’ has a similar etymology. It’s a word with multiple meanings: it can mean the same as race, e.g. Sinhala jathiya, Demala jathiya, etc., or kind or type, for example, ekama jathiye sapatthu (shoes of the same type); ‘jathiya’ can denote birth as in “me jathiyedi berinam labana jathiyedi” (if not in this birth, then in the next birth, a phrase that might be used by lovers who pledge undying faith to each other amidst insurmountable opposition); jathiya in some contexts is the same as “caste”. Out of these various meanings of the word ‘jathiya’ the one relevant to this essay is ‘race’. That is the meaning it usually carries. Therefore it cannot always be offered as a translation for ‘nation’ in the non-racial sense, except in a sentence like the one given above. However, today, it’s common knowledge that the adjective ‘jathika’ , though derived from ‘jathiya’ has no connection with its racial meaning; instead it means ‘belonging to or relating to all the people of the country, making it identical with ‘national’. Again, we can talk about a ‘Sri Lankan nation’ in English, but cannot translate the term into Sinhalese as ‘Sri Lanka jathiya’ for then it will mean ‘Sri Lanka race’ which is non-existent. The proper translation of ‘the Sri Lankan nation’ is something like ‘srilanka janathawa’ or simply ‘lankika janathawa’, which are equivalents of ‘Sri Lankan public’ or ‘Sri Lankan people’. It is possible that the political meaning of ‘jathiya’ will gradually substitute for the racial, as in the case of the English word ‘nation’. (Readers please note that I am using the neutral adjective ‘racial’ not ‘racist’) But we call Sri Lankans (or Sri Lankan nationals) ’lankikayo’ (singular: lankikaya) in Sinhala. So, the adjective ‘lankika’ is today completely race-free.
Kumar Sangakkara’s Ecumenical Lankan Nationalism
“Fans of different races, castes, ethnicities and religions who together celebrate their diversity by uniting for a common national cause. They are my foundation, they are my family. I will play my cricket for them. Their spirit is the true spirit of cricket. With me are all my people. I am Tamil, Sinhalese, Muslim and Burgher. I am a Buddhist, a Hindu, a follower of Islam and Christianity. I am today, and always, proudly Sri Lankan” …. Kumar Sangakkara’s concluding sentences at his 2011 MCC Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture, 4 July 2011…. for which see http://www.scribd.com/doc/59318468/2011-MCC-Spirit-of-Cricket-Cowdrey-Lecture
Roberts: Note that this wonderful comment was preceded by two other quotable quotes during his long peroration that mesh neatly with this concluding emphasis;
A] “Cricket played a crucial role during the dark days of Sri Lanka’s civil war, a period of enormous suffering for all communities, but the conduct and performance of the team will have even greater importance as we enter a crucial period of reconciliation and recovery, an exciting period where all Sri Lankans aspire to peace and unity.”
B] “A week after our arrival in Colombo from Pakistan [after the attack on our bus at Lahore] I was driving about town and was stopped at a checkpoint. A soldier politely inquired as to my health after the attack. I said I was fine and added that what they as soldiers experience every day we only experienced for a few minutes, but managed to grab all the news headlines. That soldier looked me in the eye and replied: ‘It is OK if I die because it is my job and I am ready for it. But you are a hero and if you were to die it would be a great loss for our country’.“
