{"id":128017,"date":"2014-07-20T00:02:11","date_gmt":"2014-07-19T18:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=128017"},"modified":"2014-08-27T05:23:06","modified_gmt":"2014-08-26T23:53:06","slug":"the-underside-of-black-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-underside-of-black-july\/","title":{"rendered":"The Underside Of Black July"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Malinda Seneviratne<\/span><\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Malinda<\/a>

Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n

He was at one time the foremost Tamil leader espousing the Eelam cause, a man who fired the separatist imagination of a generation of Tamil youth, a man who went from being referred to \u2018Thalapathy\u2019 (Commander\/General) by admiring supporters to \u2018Thurogi\u2019 (traitor) by the very same one-time admirers and later killed by forces he himself unleashed.\u00a0 He was assassinated on July 13, 1989.\u00a0 Only the inimitable D.B.S. Jeyaraj, provider of the above information, remembered the 25th\u00a0anniversary of his assassination.\u00a0 Everyone else forgot \u2018Thalapathy\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018July 1983<\/span><\/a>\u2019 or \u2018Black July\u2019, a part product of the communalist politics that the likes of Amirthalingam<\/span><\/a> indulged in and benefited from, is annually commemorated on the other hand.\u00a0 There\u2019s politics and commerce in commemoration.\u00a0 Chandragupta Thenuwara, for example, gets mileage for his \u2018art\u2019, claiming unending trauma associated with July 1983, a kind of angst that did not touch him in the far more brutal and mindless violence at the end of the same decade.<\/p>\n

\u2018Black July\u2019 is also a frequent referent used by those concerned with (obsessed by?) peace, conflict-resolution, reconciliation and other such processes\/concepts that have currency in the \u2018free\u2019 market of \u2018activism\u2019.\u00a0 The NGO-economy has thrived and the money that has propped it does not and will not come agenda-free.\u00a0 \u2018No More July\u2019 is therefore an assured fund-bringer in the political economy of commemoration.<\/p>\n

\"1983<\/a>

1983 July | pic by Chandraguptha Amarasingha – A Tamil boy stripped naked and later beaten to death by Sinhala youth in Boralla bustation<\/p><\/div>\n

Let\u2019s not get confused here. July 1983 happened. It should not happen again. Not to anyone. To the extent that commemoration reminds, warns and insures against reenactment, it is certainly a useful exercise, dampened only by the not so innocent politics of the commemorators and other profiteers.\u00a0 This side of the positives, looking back, is an issue which is less colorful and hopeful than what the kites, lamps, candles and other commemorative frills exude.\u00a0 Let us call it the underside of \u2018Black July\u2019.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s more than 30 years since \u2018Black July\u2019.\u00a0 Rarely have those who consider the Sinhalese (and of course Sinhala-Buddhists<\/span><\/a>) as villains (for whatever reason) failed to tag the entire community to that violent political moment and the blame-game pertaining to it.\u00a0 The politics of commemoration and reminder have gone beyond the blaming, in both intent and effect.\u00a0 \u2018July 83 PLUS\u2019 (shall we call it?), that is a moment and violence blamed on all Sinhalese (\u2018anti-Tamil pogram\u2019 implies unanimous intent and involvement by the communal other, the Sinhalese), was thrown in the face of every Sinhalese who thought fit to object to Tamil Nationalism<\/span><\/a>\/Separatism<\/span><\/a> in any of its many ideological forms and concrete articulations including assassinations, explosion of bombs and other acts of terrorism.<\/p>\n

There was a time when affirmation of identity was denied to the Sinhalese and Buddhists through instilled fear of vilification.\u00a0 Instead they were required to affirm and champion a \u2018Sri Lankan identity\u2019 even as identity was not only the flagship political of other communities but was affirmed by gun, bullet and bomb.\u00a0 Proxies of that kind of politics included a deliberate vilification of any political position that championed the unitary state.\u00a0 The Sinhalese, by being constantly reminded of \u2018Black July\u2019 were duly \u2018guilted\u2019 into ideological silence.\u00a0 Communal projects of other groups had a field day throughout the nineties and in the first few years of the new millennium.<\/p>\n

So who benefitted?\u00a0 Certainly not Appapillai Amirthalingam, Vettivelu Yogeswaran, his wife Sarojini or the many Tamil politicians who planted and watered the communalist seeds in Tamil youth. Extremism was empowered and one reason is probably the fact that objection from Sinhalese was muffled or stifled.\u00a0 That empowerment effectively robbed voice of those who advocated saner and in hindsight more pragmatic courses of action. Extremism had a good run, but in the end the entire Tamil community suffered the kinds of violence that put \u2018Black July\u2019 to shame. Abduction of children, hostage-taking, the obvious depravations of armed conflict, assassination, infighting among Tamil groups, you name it, it was the Tamils who lost most and not at the hands of the so-called \u2018Sinhala Buddhist State\u2019 alone.\u00a0 In short everyone lost.<\/p>\n

We are not done with commemoration politics, it seems. \u2018Black July\u2019 was resurrected when \u2018Alutgama<\/span><\/a>\u2019 happened. There\u2019s logic to it that goes beyond narrow communal politics and the by now old and boring vilification of Sinhalese and Buddhists. Few wanted an \u2018Alutgama\u2019.\u00a0 Few want another Black July.\u00a0 But there was over simplification, wild extrapolation and veiled and direct vilification that did not and will not help the cause of national unity. Lost in \u2018Alutgama\u2019 was \u2018Welipenna\u2019.\u00a0 That\u2019s not an accident. That\u2019s political.<\/p>\n

If the politics of reminding forced Sinhala objectors to Tamil chauvinism, separatism and extremism to preface statement with apology and solemn vow not to let Black July happen again, today those who have ideological issues with certain extremist Muslim political positions or even justifiable anxieties of intense identity assertion by that community are forced to first back-foot themselves, apologize on behalf of extremists and for violence they unleashed.\u00a0 It\u2019s post-Black July all over again, one might say.<\/p>\n

There is danger in silencing through vilification.\u00a0 There is danger in taking the majority community out of the equation of identity politics. It will not affect those who are ideologically predisposed to vilify the Sinhalese and Buddhists, among them of course agents of destabilization located strategically in NGOs with fairytale names, adherents of other faiths operating under the cover of \u2018secularization politics\u2019 and thereby winning space for cultural erasure and other kinds of body blows that make control easier.\u00a0 But it will impact the very same communities in whose name and in whose \u2018defense\u2019 this silencing is attempted.<\/p>\n

Today, no one talks about the critical role played by thugs who were part of the then ruling party\u2019s trade union, the JSS in \u2018Black July\u2019.\u00a0 There may very well come a \u2018tomorrow\u2019 when few remember the BBS<\/span><\/a> and \u2018Rev\u2019 Gnanasara<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 There is many a Black July waiting to happen. Theoretically there can be any number of \u2018Nandikadaals\u2019 too.\u00a0 Between these, there\u2019s only one thing possible: tragedy. For all.<\/p>\n

*Malinda Seneviratne is the Chief Editor of \u2018The Nation\u2019\u00a0and his articles can be found at\u00a0www.malindawords.blogspot.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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