Category Archives: reconciliation

May 26, 2010 · 7:10 pm

Challenges Today: Weevils in the Mind

Michael Roberts

 Courtesy of http://www.groundviews.org where the essay was posted on 22 May 2010 and where blogger comments can be found.

Daya Somasundaram was in Jaffna town in late 1995 when the Sri Lankan army advanced south and eastwards from Palaly. As the LTTE decided upon a strategic withdrawal, they insisted that all the Tamil people should move with them. This enforcement was termed an “Exodus” by some Tamils versed in biblical themes. As Somasundaram relates the tale, many people resented this specific LTTE writ.

Eventually most of the people moved back to their homes in army-occupied territory. Somasundaram was among the professional classes who engaged in their duties in the Jaffna Peninsula in the late 1990s. Within no time army-rule had generated a “collective amnesia” among the Tamils: it was the army that had created the exodus and the Sinhala state was the principal ogre. The role of the LTTE mostly slipped under their retrospective assessments.[i]  

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May 25, 2010 · 6:19 pm

North-East Sri Lanka— Back To Business

By A Sunday Leader Team comprising Dinidu de Alwis, Indi Samarajiva, Arthur Wamanan and Charles Peter

The war ended almost an year back. The north bore the brunt of the carnage. Now it is reaping the benefits, slowly. There is no denying that the biggest boom for the north will come not from handouts, but from the economic and social interaction with the south.

The change for V. Sagadevan (45), comes on two fronts. On one end, he gets more customers now than he did during the days when the town of Kilinochchi was controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. On the other, he wants to know the rules and regulations under which his trade now falls.

“When the LTTE was controlling the area, we had to pay high taxes, and if we were called for meetings, we would have to close our businesses and go for them, or face strict punishment,” says Sagadevan. He is one of many who operate out of a building in the heart of the Kilinochchi town, near the now-famous Kilinochchi water tower.

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May 14, 2010 · 8:04 am

Two Presentations re the Delhi Conference organised by the Observer Research Foundation

Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao’s Address at the Inaugural Session of the International Conference on Sri Lanka organized by the Observer Research Foundation

10 May 2010, New Delhi

Ambassdor Rasgotra,   High Commissioner of Sri Lanka Prasad Kariyawasan,  Distinguished Sri Lankan and Indian participants, Ladies and Gentlemen

 It is indeed a great pleasure to be in your midst this evening. When Ambassador Rasgotra asked me to inaugurate this International Conference on Sri Lanka, I had no hesitation in accepting his invitation since, after having had the good fortune to be posted twice to Sri Lanka – the second time as High Commissioner, Sri Lanka has always been very special to me and indeed to my whole family. In fact, my recent visit to Sri Lanka in February this year brought back wonderful memories.

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May 12, 2010 · 5:20 pm

Children building bridges of friendship across the divide

In this set of articles, I highlight a strand of reconciliation that holds some hope for the future, small though it may be in scale. Anne Abaysekara’s first response to Capt Elmo’s lyrical message of symbiotic growth was presented in the Christmas season in a local newspaper and was  inserted here as well. But it is NOW replaced by her c frecent update courtesy of the Sunday Times of 16th May. Elmo Jayawardnena’s evocative piece follows   Such efforts seem so necessary within a cyber-world where virulent comments from Sinhalese and Tamil extremists spout hate and plot further sorrow for generations present and future.  This critique can be extended to those who concentrate only on a litany of grievances. In a recent comment on an article by Leela Isaac in groundviews, Dr. Rajasingham was moved to exclaim: “Let us not waste our energies on such issues and irrigate our conflicts further to harvest more misery and sorrow.” Michael Roberts

Children building bridges of friendship across the divide

Anne Abaysekara

“Many little people in many little places do many little things that can change the world”, wrote Capt. Elmo Jayawardana in a recent newspaper article entitled, “Peace Begins With Me”[see below]. Recently, I saw an instance of this, here in Colombo – little people – Tamil-speaking children from the East coming to spend a few days in Colombo in the company of Sinhala-speaking children who made them feel welcome and accepted. To quote Capt. Elmo again, “We hate some people because we do not know them, and we will not know them because we hate them.”

 

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March 14, 2010 · 2:59 pm

How does one BECOME Sinhalese or Tamil in Sentiment?

Michael Roberts

with Anne Abayasekera’s response in the spirit of the essay also reproduced below.

 

 

This article was first presented in that pulsating site on current affairs, http://www.groundviews.org, in late April 2008. Major transformations have taken place since then, not least the defeat of the LTTE and the dismantling of its de facto state. Nevertheless, the impasse in the political relations between the Tamils of Sri Lanka and the Sinhala-dominated state, as well as the affiliated issue of the Muslim community and these other two communities, remains unresolved. Note, too, that there are Tamil moderates who have been directing criticism at the hardline stance adopted by the Tamil National Alliance at the present moment.

Clearly, then, political engagements of this sort are central to the processes that reproduce ethnic consciousness. But, here, I wish to move readers towards developing reflective self-consciousness about the mundane processes of upbringing that instil communitarian sentiments within one’s hearts and minds. It is towards this end that I re-insert this old essay together with another by Anne Abayasekara that took up the baton on her own initiative in an essay published in the Island on 30th June 2008. I am grateful to Anne for such a perceptive response on the basis of her own biography. We should all be grateful to her. Continue reading →

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February 24, 2010 · 5:46 am

History-Making in Sri Lanka and the Sinhalese

The following short essays have been posted within this site. It is feasible for readers to pen comments, though this site lacks the vibrancy of such media outlets as transcurrents and groundviews.

Lanka without Vijaya by Michael Roberts

Writing History and Myth by Shanie’s Notebook of A Nobody

Sinhalaness and Sinhala Nationalism by Michael Roberts

Primordialist Strands in Contemporary Sinhala Nationalism in Sri Lanka: Urumaya as Ur by Michael Roberts

Burden of History: Obstacles to Power Sharing In Sri Lanka by Michael Roberts

These pieces were penned several years back and did not have the benefit of a thoughtful article by ALAN STRATHERN entitled “The Vijaya Origin Myth and the Strangeness of Kingship,” Past & Present, 2009, No.  203(1): 3-28.

We hope to present a summary version of this article for the benefit of readers who do not have access to the journal on web at some point in the near-future.

A renovated stupa at Dakkshina Vehera a few miles south of Sigiriya — also dating from the latter part of the first millennium AD.

Photos by Michael Roberts, August 2008

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February 23, 2010 · 10:35 am

Writing History and Myth

Shanie — in Notebook of a Nobody

This essay appeared first in the Island, sometime back — alas, date misplaced

Many years ago, I remember reading Professor A F Pollard’s Tudor England. One statement by this eminent historian in his Preface to the book still remains etched in my memory. He stated that a Headmaster of a school had once made a statement to the effect that any classical scholar, with common sense, would be able to teach history. Pollard’s comment was that statement probably explained why history was taught so badly in schools and produced such poor results at public examinations. Professor Michael Roberts in an excellent essay in The Island this week (Mid-Week Review 16 April) makes the same point. He says that it is not only classical scholars but any Tom, Dick or Harry feels capable of writing history. He refers to nondescript charlatans, including academics, inventing history to suit a particular political agenda, and in today’s context, to re-write the history of the Sinhala and Tamil people. One academic, a teacher of Mathematics, finds no compunction in venturing into a discipline other than his own and making definitive historical assertions, without a shred of empirical evidence to support them.

The professional historian generally tends to confine his writing to that aspect of history where his academic training lies. But there is certainly a case for a scholar to write a more general history for the lay reader. Professor Lyn Ludowyk, a scholar but not in history, has written a book which narrates the story of two thousand years of our history. But he makes no pretence to it being a work of historical scholarship. His task in The Story of Ceylon, he says, was that of a humble narrator, depending on the work of the scientist for the facts.

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January 5, 2010 · 9:01 am

Muralitharan’s Reflections on the Recent Cricket Scene

This reprint is courtesy of cricinfo.com where the interview was posted on 2 Janaury 2010. Go to http://www.cricinfo.com/ for the comments that this item drew. Our thanks too to Sa’adi Thawfeeq for his initiative and the range of issues he covered. Murali the man shines forth in his thoughts.

‘I don’t want to be selfish about staying on’

Sa’adi Thawfeeq

Why is it difficult to beat India in India?
It has never been an easy ride for any team in India. In the 1997 Test series in India, we drew all three. At the time we were at our peak but India managed to hold us. It has always been tough to play in India because the conditions are different and their players know how to play in their own conditions. Therefore for any team to go and succeed in India is very hard. At home, we are a powerful side, like India.

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January 3, 2010 · 1:48 pm

Symbolic Postscript: A Terrible Violence

Michael Roberts

 Courtesy of http://www.transcurrents.com. This essay was first drafted on 23 Dec. 2009, as a sequel to the short note on “The Eelam Struggle,Tamil Tigers and Their Commemoration of Māvīrar (Great Heroes)” under the thuppahi cover.

The photographic images that have been deployed on web in my essay on “The Tamil Tigers and Their Practices of Homage” (httt://thuppahiwordpress.com) as well as a host of less accessible academic articles convey the importance placed on the commemoration of the fallen by Pirapāharan and the Tiger leadership. The institutionalisation of mortuary rites of burial for their fallen from circa 1989 – in a radical move away from the cremation for those of Saivite faith[i] – was a way of sustaining meaningful bonding between Tiger personnel and those who had sacrificed their lives for the cause of Eelam.[ii]

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