By M. M. Janapriya –

Dr. M.M. Janapriya

Dear contributors to Colombo Telegraph,

When I saw briefly my article has received 127 responses I was pleasantly surprised and indeed excited to meet the ‘new arrivals’ on the CT arena. Great expectations are not infrequently fraught with great disappointments and this event which proved it to me in no small measure was no different. Alas!  It was the same old people exchanging their views multiple times. I must say quite a few of them were attacking each other ‘below the belt’. Clearly these people have known each other for a long time. So much so they seem to know the ups and downs, agonies and ecstasies and even the ancestry of each other. Even so it is so unfortunate that they are unable to engage in an important debate as grown-ups. The importance of the matter being discussed is effectively being subjugated in the atrocious nature of the mudslinging. This is a very sad and a bad omen heralding a disastrous end to our efforts even before we could start making some headway.

One thing crystal clear with the CT forum I am dealing with is that they all seem to be afflicted with what my late colleague par excellence Dr. D. V. J. Harischandra, by far the most erudite Psychiatrist I have ever known used to call ‘entitlement syndrome’. They have used this platform to castigate the Rajapaksas for, in their books, very understandable reasons and considered it their birth right to do so. Reading between lines I feel most contributors appear to be operating from overseas and except for my friend Ken Sangaralingam all of the others seem to be comfortable uttering blustering threats only from behind a pseudonym. If you read through the responses with patience you realize most of them are emotionally charged and with clear evidence of deep seated racism. The regulars seem to believe in only one thing i.e. there is and has always been oppression of the Tamil community and hence birth growth and subsequent conduct of the LTTE and their representatives in Parliament, the TNA are justified. In their minds it is not only the alleged involuntary disappearances, alleged war crimes etc. but just the war against terror itself is unfair, indecent repugnant and repulsive.

All those who are unreservedly sympathetic towards this sentiment, be it Tamil, be it Sinhalese or be it Muslim or indeed any other ethnic group, are their friends they would hug, but for the distance, and allies. Anyone who dares to shake the only stance their comfortable in, is an enemy and a racist needing ‘rehabilitation’. I hold nothing back when I write on any matter to CT and have never worried as to what guys like you over there thought about me. Additionally I don’t use the style and language you would cheer me on from the sidelines if I use, especially when I have to broach sensitive issues like leadership, bungling by administration etc. Successive administrations all over the developing world historically have dealt with journalists harshly not because how much they criticized the governments but because how ugly and personal the criticisms have been quite similar to how you guys exchange ‘pleasantries’ out there. Your inability to engage in a fruitful discussion within the framework of decency might well be the reason for the need to get cover behind pseudonyms.

As I have reiterated already I am my own man. So when I write or indeed when I speak I got to be answerable to one and only one thing and that is my conscience. This article has been read and re-read by me about ten times and passed as fit by my conscience so there is no problem in that regard.

This is a letter I wrote to the US Senate about three weeks ago and sent by email. I got some friends living in the US to download, print and fax directly to Bob Menendez, Chair, Committee for Foreign Relations, US Senate too, which they have done.

The rationale of posting it on CT was to give a chance to all those activists out there to understand every ‘Sinhala goody goody’ cannot easily be hoodwinked to believe as gospel, the spiced up or indeed may be totally fabricated tales they carry to our ‘big brother’ organizations overseas.

Trying to re-educate guys like Ken is an absolute waste of time. (He has the audacity to contest the statistics of my batch and my senior batch which I know like the back of my hand and which is there in black and white in the University Senate for any donkey or even any tiger to peruse) At a slightly lesser magnitude this sentiment goes well for his other brethren out there too. Dr. Sangaraingam (SG) had the courage to say my assertion about the numbers and percentages was wrong. This shows how blinded he is to everything other than the once visible and now a mirage of a separate Tamil State within Sri Lanka. May I remind my friend that `no man is blinder than the one who refuses to see’.

The reason why my response to the 127 replies got delayed is because I had to get information about several batches of Medical Students both in Colombo and Peradeniya from some friends both here in Sri Lanka and overseas, in order to prove the loose cannon SG utterly and miserably wrong. The following are the stats I obtained by talking to a few very honourable people from different batches.

Numbers of Peradeniya are exact and I stand 100% by their accuracy and authenticity. However the numbers in Colombo which I obtained from a few god fearing members of the senior medical fraternity are approximations but what is important is the gist of it which shows without any reasonable doubt, Tamils were being grossly over represented in the Medical Faculties at that time. I am sure you medical guys over there must have been handed down the famous anecdote by your seniors that the then Professor of Surgery Peradeniya, H.S. Keerthisinghe of international fame walked out of the lecture theatre saying “I can teach a hall full of bloody Tamils” when he realized there were only 8 Singhalese out of a batch of 76 Medical Students.  This detail is only for the purpose of proving loose talking Ken wrong and I harbour no ill will towards my Tamil brethren.

Personally I have suffered as a consequence of the atrocities of the LTTE for many years as I worked for the Sri Lankan people for over 35 years (almost the entirety of the life of the LTTE) before I left for England in 2005, i.e. after retirement from public service. (BTW I am back in Sri Lanka now) Even though they were in the north and we lived and worked in the south we were worried about the possibility of LTTE planting bombs in schools in the south. We made associations of interested parents, at Rahula College, Matara, Mahinda College Galle and Southlands College Galle who were rostered around the week to inspect and clear the whole school as fit for children to be let in, every morning of the week. This went on unabated for the whole of the 15 years from 1985 (when my son entered the lower kindergarten at Rahula) to 2000 (when my daughters left Southlands College, Galle). You should remember LTTE eventually ramming a boat laden with bombs in to the Galle Harbour. So my fears cannot be discounted as totally unfounded or indeed paranoid. Eventually when I came on transfer to Colombo in the year 2000 picture was even worse. We were worried about waiting in traffic jams the possibility of the vehicles in front, behind and on the sides carrying bombs being very high as a bus bomb had already gone off killing tens of school children at Maradana. Also, as those of you who cared to watch the video linked in my letter to the US Senate, I escaped getting blasted in to bits by the JOC bomb in Colombo only by a whisker.

From the foregoing you would understand (or might try not to) why I am deeply indebted to the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime for finishing the war the only way they could, and I am not alone in this regard. However I remain one of the fiercest critics of the Rajapaksas when they have been caught ‘napping’. I have criticized them heavily for not making use of the post war opportunity to bring in law and order to the country which if they did would have ushered prosperity for all. I have written an article to CT over 2 years ago why Gotabaya should not be elected President of Sri Lanka and here is the link for those who doubt me. 

I understand the wrath and the agony of my Tamil brethren over the way the LTTE on whom they rested all their hopes was defeated, degraded and disintegrated. I can empathize with them too. Even though the magnitude was lower this was the same with those who vehemently opposed the antics of the administration when Wijeweera and other JVP leaders who fought an autocratic regime of JR Jayewardene were arrested and summarily executed. Even those of us who cheered from the sidelines were sad. In the first example it is the ethnic identity that united all the well-wishers of the LTTE and in the latter it was those who felt badly, the wrongs being perpetrated by the Government of the day. In both these instances there is a feeling, amongst the affected groups, of being `hard done by’ by the administration. When the administration is mainly of one ethnicity and the `feelers of hard done by’ is of another, a tinge of racism appears in the arena which would be taken advantage of, by interested parties for sure.

Racism is now (since 1960) regarded as Prejudice+Power. Hence it is not un-natural for Tamil people to feel the Sri Lankan Government was racist which may just be a perception or be real. What Prabhakaran did by ‘awakening the Tamils’ and succeeding in instituting a de facto LTTE regime for a time at least was donning power to match that of the Sri Lankan Government and with his prejudices he, his accomplices, sympathizers and supporters all become racists. This is the sad truth. We all seem to be having a little bit of it which we may augment or move away from depending on our background, education and may even be our genes.  

I don’t profess to be a saint being a normal man with only a little of it (bias) with whom any community could work together for common good. Please read the linked articles if possible. You will realize the position of a Singhalese grandstanding as a one hundred percent and unconditional selfless supporter of the Tamil (LTTE/TNA/Diaspora) cause does not exist just as much as ideal solutions in physical chemistry do not. We assume there are ideal solutions (those with infinite dilution) and have built up whole spheres of advanced chemistry based on this. Similarly those of us who are only slightly biased can join hands and forge ahead assuming that we are those perfect Sinhalese comrades ‘coming home to dine with’ if we are practical and pragmatic. This is the message I wanted to convey to my Tamil brethren. 

I hope you remember those children of mine whom I brooded from the possible atrocities of the LTTE by installing `parent teacher buffers’ at school level all those long years ago. They are ardent sympathizers of the Tamil cause where as to be honest I am not. I can understand to some extent the one living in NZ and the other in England harbouring such ethno-smoothing ideology but the one who is with us in Sri Lanka? This only goes to prove they grew up in a liberal household that encouraged free thinking. I have no problem with their stance but am at a loss to understand how they became that. “Whatever you say dad, Tamil people have been hard done by us the Singhalese” is their stock reply to any concern I may raise. Does it show the effectiveness or potency of the propaganda of local and diasporic Tamils or something else I don’t seem to understand?

As one of the normal individuals with only a slight bias, I strongly feel, Tamils and Singhalese have a lot in common that should unite us than the few that should repel us apart. Therefore my dream of a one nation country should come true one day, the only impediment being the intransigent position of Diasporic Tamils asking for their `pound of flesh’.

This is what Amarnath Amarasingam, researcher has written on the very first page of the introduction of his Research Paper II titled, A History of Tamil Diaspora Politics in Canada; Organizational Dynamics and Negotiated Order, 1978-2013

On 10 January 2012, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s brother and Secretary of the Defense and Urban Development Ministry, delivered a lecture to the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute and Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Limited. The President’s brother, arguably the second most powerful man in the country, began his lecture by stating that Sri Lanka still faces ‘several threats’ following the end of protracted civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE, or Tamil Tigers) in May 2009. The very first threat mentioned and discussed at length by Rajapaksa was the “reorganization of the LTTE in the international arena” (Rajapaksa 2012). Mentioning several Tamil diaspora groups by name, he argued that even after the defeat of the LTTE, “the rump of the LTTE’s global establishment is still active.” Rajapaksa argued, for example, that the ‘unwavering intent’ of LTTE-linked groups overseas “is the division of Sri Lanka and the establishment of a separate state.” He went on to note: “Most of them say they engage only in political activism and not violence. Almost all of them pretend to have a democratic face. But make no mistake. The Tiger has not changed its stripes” (Rajapaksa 2012).

While the Defense Secretary’s remarks should not automatically be seen to reflect the views of mainstream Sri Lankans nor the broader international community, it is true that with the end of the war in Sri Lanka, many have expressed uneasiness and uncertainty with respect to the activities of the Tamil diaspora around the world. Indeed, such a stark verdict on diaspora activism by someone as powerful as the President’s brother and Defense Minister is worrisome to say the least. However, in addition to the Sri Lankan government, state officials and media organisations in numerous countries, accustomed to viewing the Tamil diaspora through the lens of national security, were also not entirely clear what the defeat of the LTTE in Sri Lanka would mean for the often sizable Tamil community within their borders.

Much of this uneasiness arose, needless to say, because the LTTE’s tentacles stretched far beyond the tiny island of Sri Lanka, and were a constant presence in the lives of diaspora Tamils. As Bandarage (2009:171) has noted, “Operating like both a multinational firm and an intelligence agency…out of the main centers of its global network in London, Toronto, New Jersey, and Norway, the LTTE utilizes the vast resources extracted from the Tamil diaspora and from its illegal and legal enterprises to influence policymakers, media, academia, and other influential sections in the state and Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) sectors within the international community.” It was also evident throughout my research that the Tamil diaspora, for the most part, did not have an enviable reputation in governmental and policy circles, and is widely believed to have been overly radical and fundamentally corrosive to the prospects for peace in Sri Lanka

I am back again to my own view from here on. One thing is very clear. That is, the Sri Lankan Administration will never betray a single soldier for alleged ‘war crimes’ because as a soldier himself Gotabaya knows jolly well doing such would make the morale of the forces come crashing down. Unlike in quelling a Southern insurrection for which a few thousand soldiers would be enough, crushing a well-trained and an extremely determined bunch of terrorists like the LTTE ably supported by a rich and a diaspora as ruthless as the LTTE itself and from time to time by Tamil Nadu, would test the might, skill, grit and sustenance of the entire tri-forces.

Keeping the morale of the tri-forces up becomes paramount as attempts at re-staging of the separatist arms struggle many times over in the future is more than likely judging from the inflammatory blusters that keep emanating from the speeches that are regularly being made by the Tamil leaders. So, the country needs to be in the ‘locked and loaded mode’ to fire almost semi-automatically and for this, the morale of the forces should be sky high. Call me a racist if you wish which I will accept gracefully because you guys out there are all racists too and worse.

Whatever the vociferous Tamil activists say and do, they must realize their ‘barking would not bring the size of the mountain down’. There can only be a political solution if Tamils can stop asking for an eye for an eye.

Diaspora might do well to remember this. “Having been borne across the world we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in the translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained. We will not be capable of reclaiming precisely that was lost; we will, in short, create fictions not actual cities or villages, invisible ones, imaginary homelands, Indias of the mind” ~ Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands