By S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole –

Prof. S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole

Buddhist temples are sprouting all over with government sponsorship. Tamil heritage is being erased while our Provincial Council has no interest. Lack of democracy is encouraging only the uneducated and murderous militants to contest and win. MPs play communal politics. Batticaloa TNA MP, Yogeswaran, says only Tamil speaking Hindus are Tamils while the rest of us are merely Tamil speakers. The PM and President play the same communal card promoting Buddhism as if the rest of us do not count.

Government’s perfidious postponement of elections keeps us without representatives locally. Our MPs have no shame, continuing even after exposed for corruption. Tamils can expect no help from the Sri Lankan state, or our Tamil representatives and church elders to solve our problems. Whether the change from under the LTTE to government was from frying pan to fire or vice versa is not clear.

Heritage is felt and preserved only by people whose heritage it is. We need elections to elect caring, clean representatives.

Feast of St. James (27 July 2017. 199th Anniversary of St. James’ Nallur)

Contemporary society promotes the values of individualism and mobility. However, human lives are enriched by participation in a social community that is integrated into the natural landscape of a particular place.

William Vitek and Director Wes Jackson (Editors), Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place,

Yale University Press, 1996

Few things bind me more than the land I grew up on. Today in Jaffna, most people I knew as a boy are gone, but my old haunts remain. My ancestor, Srinivasam from Point Pedro, upon baptism as Elijah Hoole in 1845 by the Rev. Peter Percival, moved to Nallur (then Nellore). His house by tradition passed down the female line and was bought back by my father. Likewise I bought back a part of the ever diminishing portion for my son as it had again gone out of Hoole hands. I was elated on seeing a 1905 adjoining church deed showing our land as belonging to “Mrs. E. Hoole.”

My father was Vicar of St. James’ Church Nallur. I lived in the Mission House which was once the Dutch Governor’s Mansion. St. James’ had once been King Chankilian’s main temple with guardian temples in his agamic architecture with Chattanathar Kovil, Veyyil Viluntha Pillaiyar Kovil, Mootha Vinayagar Kovil and a now-gone temple close to the Nallur Kandasamy Kovil built since, to its North, East, South and West. Agamic rules confined people to caste-specific streets – Chiviar Theru, Paraiyar Theru, Thattar Theru, Kaikulanj Chanthai, Nattuvar Theru, Parangi Theru, Chonakar Theru, etc. Many of these names have disappeared as people hide their caste. However, the 5^th Century AD Silappathikaram records its hero Kovalan walking along a street not permitted to goldsmiths.

The Portuguese had erased King Chankilian’s palace and the central temple. All that remained was the entrance and his bathing pool, Jamunari which is said to be connected by underground caverns to Keerimalai. The pool survived because it would not burn. The palace lands in my time were called Chettiar Thottam. We used to jump over the church fence for games of hide-and-seek until Chettiar would give us chase. Strangely, the Minister’s majestic house 100 yards from the palace entrance was untouched and remains in good preservation but dilapidated with graffiti and is a lorry park.

Chankilian and family converted to Roman Christianity but that did not save Chankilian from beheading to pay for his many killings. His Queen built a chapel on the temple’s ruins. Named after Our Lady of Immaculate Conception, the Portuguese word for conception was soon corrupted to Konji-enji Matha, the mother who kisses and upholds. In time, the Dutch took it over and expanded it. The Chapel contributed the altar and the Vestry (the loft of which had the Anglicans operating the American Mission’s printing press banned by the colonial authorities). The British then added the roof and majestic tower.

Jamunari has been restored but it does not look the way I remember it. The rest of the land, it is rumoured, has been occupied by people who include government high-ups without any deeds. So nothing is being done to preserve our heritage. Chankilian’s palace entrance is near collapse with shrapnel and bullet pockmarks.

St. James’ was beautifully architectured with a road going from the entrance to Muthiraichanthai on Point Pedro Road. Note it is not Muthirai Chanthi (junction) as people today wrongly say. It was a market (chanthai) when I was a boy and our deeds list it as chanthai. From there the glorious tower could be seen with Mahogany-lined Chemmany Road going to the church entrance, turning to the right and then immediately to the left to run along the church wall.

Hindu children gathered at the field south of the boulevard to play. The Education Department planned to shift into the field around 1965 but my father gathered the parents and the project was halted. The department then went against the provisions of the take-over bill and converted the Church’s Nallur Teachers’ Training College of which my father had, pretakeover, been manager and put up their buildings, illegally altering the purpose for which the college was built.

Tragically, some philistines not subject to the pleas of the people being governed, shifted Chemmany Road southwards and built an ugly area on the vacant field they called Kittu Park. The church now has no entrance road and is invisible from Muthiraichanathi. Kittu Park is in ruins, its only remnant being the two donkeys they had in their zoo and now braying at my gate as my dogs Kadiyan and Khalafi, and they seem to enjoy a private game. In this chaos, a shrine at the edge of the park in 1970 has expanded into a temple occupying a part of Kittu Park.

Life was wonderful learning history where it unfolded. Our Sexton Nalliah would find Dutch VOC and Chankili’s Nandi (Bull) coins while sweeping the church grounds and give them to me. I had these carefully kept in a cigarette tin (such tins also becoming rare by the 1960s) and these were looted when the LTTE evacuated Jaffna in 1995.

As boys we imagined ourselves to be Dutch or Nallur soldiers fighting with swords. I recall digging the grounds for buried treasure and even having dreams of the Dutch and Portuguese sword fighting while asleep in the governor’s mansion. The beautiful tiled floor was cemented over by a subsequent Vicar who found it easier to sweep the cemented floor. In this era of decentralization, church records of marriages and burials have been sent to Colombo. The poorly maintained mansion itself collapsed in time. The Dutch wanting to preserve their memories have redone the boundary wall. The restoration of the Governor’s Mansion is under discussion.

We walked to school in Chundikuli by the mahogany-lined Kachcheri-Nallur Road, the trees having been planted by the Dutch Governor for his journey to work from Nallur to the Kachcheri. The trees were plundered by the “boys”, making a mockery of the line in St. John’s College’s hymn saying “fringed with rich mahoganies.”

There was a tunnel from the Kachcheri to the Jaffna Fort in case the besieged fort had to be evacuated. This fired our imagination. We could see the entrance at either end but as we entered would soon be forced to retreat as bats came flying out. When the St. John’s cricket pitch collapsed one day, we knew from the general direction that there really was a tunnel.

The hole under the pitch was filled up. A GA, Vittachi I believe, had the Kachcheri end of the tunnel from an ancient pool sealed, and the water pumped. I remember seeing on my way to school the GA and his wife with others in western swimming clothes for just a week or so and then abandoning the pool. Today, in Tamil hands, Old Park is sprouting buildings all over. The beautiful Park which served the annual Scouts Jamboree is no more.

The Fort Chapel too is gone. The beautiful marble tablets were looted by the LTTE for their graveyards. After Jaffna was retaken by the government, a soldier sensing the unused gravestones’ importance and realizing they were church-related, took them to the Cathedral at Vaddukoddai. The demolition of the Fort Church put an end to the annual Christmas services there by the Jaffna Christian Union which now operates off the radar after some Rs. 7 million (an Anglican priest tells me that it is really Rs. 30 million) for refugees from the World Council of Churches was stolen by priests and the National Christian Council in Colombo decided to look the other way to save itself the embarrassment of its priests being jailed.

The same is true all over. Mannar Fort is another prime example where people walk over wearing out tablets whereas in the south we cannot photograph or touch heritage artifacts.

Summary: Buddhist temples are sprouting all over with government sponsorship. Tamil heritage is being erased while our Provincial Council has no interest. Lack of democracy is encouraging only the uneducated and murderous militants to contest and win. MPs play communal politics. Batticaloa TNA MP, Yogeswaran, says only Tamil speaking Hindus are Tamils while the rest of us are merely Tamil speakers. The PM and President play the same communal card promoting Buddhism as if the rest of us do not count.

Government’s perfidious postponement of elections keeps us without representatives locally. Our MPs have no shame, continuing even after exposed for corruption. Tamils can expect no help from the Sri Lankan state, or our Tamil representatives and church elders to solve our problems. Whether the change from under the LTTE to government was from frying pan to fire or vice versa is not clear.

Heritage is felt and preserved only by people whose heritage it is. We need elections to elect caring, clean representatives.