By Mahesan Niranjan –

Prof Mahesan Niranjan

In 1984, in the southern Dutch city of Eindhoven, my drinking partner, the Sri Lankan Tamil fellow Sivapuranam Thevaram, met a Palestinian guy — the very first Palestinian Thevaram has ever met.  Their host in The Netherlands was the electronics company Phillips, well known for having invented the digital compact disc. The two men were at a welcome reception by a director of the company. Phillips, he claimed, was the largest manufacturer of light bulbs in the world. “Next to the sun, Phillips provides the most light,” he boasted. Abdul (not his real name) the Palestinian and Thevaram the Sri Lankan, sitting next to each other, laughed jointly and introduced themselves to each other.

Prior to arriving in Eindhoven, Thevaram, having been a student at HillTop University in Sri Lanka, had decent enough knowledge about the intricate politics of the world. He had read about the Second World War, the persecution of the Jews, the creation of a Jewish State in their “Promised Land,” the connivance of the super-powers in setting up an ever-lasting problem to guarantee a flow of oil wealth from East to West. Years later, when the USA invaded Iraq to teach them democracy, and a comment in the UK Guardian newspaper paraphrased the Bard to have said “Oils well that ends well,” Thevaram understood precisely what all that was about – proof that the 25 year old young man in 1984 had a pretty good idea about the Jews and the Palestinians.

But nothing had prepared Thevaram for what he learned from his new friend on the day of that reception at Phillips. When Abdul was young, his grandfather would take him on walks from the refugee camp they lived in. They would walk to the edge of the barbed wire fence that protected newly established Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and the old man would ask the grandson to look through the fence across the valley.

“Over there, near the water tank, you see, that was where we had our house.”

“Over there, near that sentry post, you see, there was a tall olive tree. Very tall.”

“Over there, where you see the young lady drawing water from the well, it is the same well I had built, long time before you were born.”

The old Palestinian man would go on and on and on, every day they took a walk.

A decade later, at a high table dinner in an ancient university in Bridgetown, UK, Thevaram was in conversation with a guest from an Israeli university. Professor Iceberg (not his real name) was full of energy in defending the ways of the Israeli government and its armed forces. All centred around the Holocaust and of some Arab leaders desiring the total destruction of the Jewish state. “This is the only country we have, Jews have nowhere else to go,” Iceberg had insisted.

After some patient listening, Thevaram told him his friend’s story. “Right now, as we speak, there are Palestinians who can identify land behind the barbed wires which their grandparents farmed,” Thevaram said. “Is it fair to take their private land and build settlements?” That Thevaram had knowledge of a specific private land from which the owners had been thrown out changed the tone of the discussion and Iceberg conceded there were elements of gross unfairness in the way his government behaved.

Let’s look at recent happenings in our country.

We have been through a deadly war. Over half the time since the Suddhas (white folk) left us to mind our own business, guns and bombs have dominated our lives. We have failed in addressing issues faced by our youth, we have waited till they rebelled, and we have killed them brutally in thousands. If we dig the ground in parts of our country, there is a higher probability of finding human skeletons than finding oil, or even water. But the war that ravaged our land is over, and has been for over four years.

Sure, some are celebrating victory eating kiribath (milk rice), and others sulking at defeat and arguing for revenge. But any sensible person would breathe a sigh of relief that the war had ended and at the same time feel an extreme sense of sadness at the enormous loss of life due to the particular way in which that end was played about. That sadness is amplified by attitudes shown post-war — those who govern us systematically sending messages to part of our people: “you don’t belong here.” When these signals are from racists at the fringes of the political spectrum, of course, we should ignore them. But when they are from representatives we have elected to govern us, shouldn’t we, as citizens, be worried?

We have seen during times of war, areas of no-man’s land being established as High Security Zones (HSZ) around army camps, heavily mined and providing the line of sight to shoot at the enemy before they got too close. We have also seen how these defences were breached in the most brutal manner, by waves of teenagers running across, blowing up the sentry posts, land mines and themselves. We saw this tactic practiced to precision in Mankulam, Mullaitheevu and Elephant Pass, executed by kids drawn mostly from poor families in the Eastern province — persuaded, brain-washed, cajoled, or forcibly conscripted into the fighting machine. It is mind-boggling to think that some still regard the planning and execution of all these as necessary acts of heroism, and would want to mark them with a remembrance day. Cynics are entitled to the view that these may indeed be acts needing celebration, given that the one who was expert at all this went on to become a minister in the government of our Democratic, Socialist country. If such brutality is so gruesome to discuss in a civilized forum like Colombo Telegraph, let us not start talking about the lion’s share here (no pun intended).

Family land inherited from grandparents has magical effect, my friend Thevaram once told me. The man was born in the little island of Karainagar, near Jaffna, and has now settled in far-away Bridgetown, UK. On a recent visit to Sri Lanka, he went on a day out at the Karainagar beach with Computer Science students from the University of Jaffna. Thevaram had insisted on diverting the bus, to make a short stop near the land his grandfather had owned. He sat on the well his grandfather had built and took a photograph. That evening, in extreme excitement, he emailed it to his cousin in Canada asking “Acca (sister), can you guess where I am sitting?” The cousin – grand-daughter of Thevaram’s grandfather, as you would have worked out by now – replied instantly in equal excitement recognizing the spot. The well and the background you see in the picture are no different from thousands of wells, yet his cousin who had not been to Karainagar for thirty five years recognized it in a fraction of a second.

Such is the power of your grandfather’s land.

Now WHY, we citizens should ask, four and a half years after the end of the war, a large army camp is still being maintained in the far North of our country, with a huge buffer zone around it?

Now WHY, we citizens should ask, the few remaining houses in that buffer zone are being bulldozed down, as their helpless owners watch from across the barbed wire fences?

Now WHY, we citizens should ask, should there be such arrogance that court cases on the subject can be ignored, confident of favourable ruling from friends in supreme places?

Now WHY, we citizens should ask, is it that we as a society are being so cruel in setting up a framework in which ten years from now, a Sri Lankan Tamil grandfather would take his little grandson for a walk up to those barbed wire fences in Valikamam North and entertain the kid with views through the fence?

“Over there, near the water tank, you see, that was where we had our house.”

“Over there, near that sentry post, you see, there was a tall palm tree. Very tall.”

“Over there, where you see the young lady drawing water from the well, it is the same well I had built, long time before you were born.”

The old Sri Lankan man will go on and on and on, every day they take a walk, just like Abdul’s grandfather had done several decades ago in Palestine.