Midweek Review

Tamil politics is taking a new direction- The Pottuvil to Polikandi pada yatra

Published

4 years ago

2021/02/17

by Dr Nirmala Chandrahasan

For some time now the Tamil political parties and the Tamil polity have been looking to the international community to settle their problems. Thus much reliance has been placed on the Human Rights Council’s resolutions and the Geneva processes. Although this is one avenue it is not the only one. The international processes are also dependant on geo politics and the national interests of the states that are represented in these organizations and hence one cannot always expect a favourable outcome. On the other hand, when the issues facing the Tamil speaking people are taken up by the people themselves and their representatives at the ground level it could have a better outcome, as the majority community and the country at large are made aware of the grievances and issues which are agitating the Tamil speaking part of the country. This requires that the print and electronic media give adequate coverage to these events so that the Sinhala and English reading public are made aware . Unfortunately this is not the case. The news coverage and dissemination of news within the country, is as divided as the communities themselves , and no effort is made to bridge the gap. To give an example I did not see any coverage of the Pottuvil to Polikandy pada yatra in the Sinhala or English news media, although it had unprecedented numbers of participants and evoked great enthusiasm in the northern and eastern provinces. It is in the interest of all communities if the Country’s problems are solved within it and not through external agencies. The need to turn to foreign agencies arises when a community feels they have no recourse to justice or solution to their grievances within their own political system. The recently held yatra or march from Pottuvil in the eastern province to Polikandy in the Jaffna district , from 3rd February to 7th February 2021, was a new approach which included the active participation of the Tamil speaking people of the northern and eastern provinces, ie Tamils and Muslims. Peaceful protest is a part of the democratic process ,and must be encouraged rather than stamped upon as it allows for the peoples’ voice to be heard.

The peaceful Ahimsa Yatra was conducted by the Civil society groups in the Northern and Eastern Provinces to highlight some of the current issues faced by the Tamil speaking people of Lanka. They included the Rs. 1000,wage demand of the Upcountry Tamil plantation workers who have long been denied what other workers in the country have been enjoying; the burial rights of the Muslim Community and the forced cremation of their Covid dead; and the land grabs and attack on the cultural and religious heritage of the villages and farming communities of the eastern and northern provinces, through the actions of the Archaeological Department and the recently constituted Task Force, together with the Mahaweli Authority and Wildlife Department. In the present regime age old Hindu Temples in the villages are under threat of being taken over or destroyed on the grounds that there is evidence of ruined sites of Buddhist Vihares and Stupas in or around them. Archaeological surveys are being conducted and boundary lines and fences put up taking over the lands of the farmers and cattle grazing grounds. Sinhala Buddhist settlers are to be settled in these enclaves. These actions have caused the Tamil speaking people of these areas to fear that they will be dispossed from their own traditional areas in which their ancestors have lived for centuries.

The composition of the Presidential Task force for archaeological sites in the East, is illustrative of the statement in the recently published report of the High Commissioner for human Rights Michelle Bachelet where she says ..”Tamil and Muslim minorities are being increasingly marginalised and excluded from the national vision and government policy.” The Presidential Task Force is mainly comprised of military personnel and Buddhist clergy with a scattering of Archaeologists. When we consider that in a multi ethnic province where the Tamil speaking people predominate there is not a single Tamil or Muslim Archaeologist or linguist or any person at all to represent these communities, the High Commissioner’s words ring true. It must also be pointed out that a large number of stone inscriptions appertaining to these ruined structures are in ancient Tamil script, and form part of the Tamil Buddhist/Hindu heritage of the Tamil people of Sri Lanka who to cite the words of the Indo- Sri Lanka Peace Accord of july 1987, have been the historical inhabitants of the Northern and Eastern provinces. Already this task force is in the field claiming ownership of the sites of ancient Tamil Buddhist Vihares and Stupas , in many instances accompanied by police or army personnel. It is alleged that inscriptions in the ancient Tamil script and stone tablets containing such writings are being destroyed. Tamil farmers see their lands and cattle grazing common grounds being taken over. Statues of the Buddha are being installed at different sites accompanied by army personnel and Buddhist monks. The Buddha is venerated by Hindus and even worshipped as the avatar of the God Vishnu ,but the manner and purpose behind such actions are causing disaffection. Sinhalese settlers are being brought in. Here again what is at issue is not their ethnicity , but the purpose for which and manner in which they are being brought in by the State agencies. Hence this is now the pressure point.

The recent Yatra was inter alia (there were altogether ten issues) to voice the concerns of the people and show support to the villagers and farmers of the region who flocked to join the protest in great numbers. It must not be forgotten that it was the ancestors of the Tamil community who built the ruined Vihares and Stupas ( alleged according to some members of the Task force to be amounting to 2000 in number, which are now awaiting excavation,) at a period when they were largely Buddhists, as too was South India inclusive of Tamil Nadu in the early part of the Christian era until about the 8-9th centuries when there was a Hindu revival. Even in the event of these ruins being unearthed it has to be kept in mind that many of these structures were bequeathed by the great Chola rulers from Tamil Nadu, the Emperors Raja Raja Chola and Rajendra Chola. The Cholas made Polonnaruwa their capital city and ruled Sri Lanka for almost a century from 993- 1070 AD .They were the patrons of both religions and built Hindu Temples and Buddhist Vihares and supported the maintenance of them as well, by grants of lands and villages.

In this connection I reproduce a news item from the Hindu newspaper in India dated October 19th 2020, captioned ‘ Efforts on to bring back Chola Royal Charter, Preserved in the Netherlands it was a Sasana issued to a Buddhist Vihara’. “The Charter has two sections one in Sanskrit and another in Tamil , and the 21 copper plates are held together by a massive bronze ring bearing the regal seal of Rajendra Chola. It proclaims that 26 villages bordering Anaimangalam were donated for a Buddhist Vihara in Nagapattnam, Tamil Nadu”. While this Charter is evidence of the patronage to Buddhism in Tamil Nadu even after the Hindu revival in South India , there is evidence of Chola patronage to Buddhist religious institutions in Sri lanka too, as in the Vikkirama Calemekan Perum Palli in the Eastern province also known as the Velgam Vihare or Natanar Kovil by the present day Tamils. The Tamil inscriptions at the shrine record donations made to the shrine and dated in the reign of the Chola king Raja raja Chola. The late Dr Paranavithane, the well known Sri Lankan archaeologist has described it as an ancient Buddhist shrine of the Tamil people. In the Chakesadhatuvansa an ancient manuscript from Burma, which records the relics of the Buddha, the Tamils are mentioned as ” sea faring merchants who built a Stupa over the hair relic of the Buddha in a land which they visited for the purpose of trade”. Interestingly the Digavappi Stupa in the Amparai district is said to enclose a hair relic of the Buddha. The Tamil merchants sailing to Indonesia from Kaveripoompattinam the Port in Tamil Nadu during Chola times , are said to have first sailed southward towards what is now Akkaraipattu town in the Amparai district, as it was believed that there was a current which took the ships across the Indian ocean speedily from this point to Indonesia. During the tsunami in 2004 this theory was proved correct as the tsunami stuck around the Akkaraipattu region first, coming directly from its source off the seas in Sumatra with great force. In an earlier article of mine i have referred to the donations made to Buddhist shrines by Tamil merchant trading communities as evidenced in the various Tamil inscriptions in different parts of Sri lanka. see “. Archaeological sites in the East and the Presidential Task force.” published in the island newspaper of 12th june 2020. Also Article by Dr D.Dayalan, Archaeological Survey of india “Role of Tamil Traders in promoting Buddhism”.

In fact there is sufficient evidence to prove that most if not all the archaeological sites of Buddhist Vihares and Stupas in the East and the North are Tamil Buddhist sites and hence the custodianship of these sites should be with the Tamil communities/institutions of those localities, or at least with the participation of the same. The Tamil leadership should also take up the matter of Tamil and Muslim representation in the Task force and also the appointment of linguists who could read and decipher the ancient Tamil inscriptions found at these sites, as well as persons versed in the ancient Pali and Sinhalese scripts , as these structures largely represent the composite Hindu /Buddhist cultural heritage of both the Sinhalese and Tamil communities. Efforts should also be made to protect these ancient inscriptions from destruction.

As I have indicated above the attacks on their cultural and religious heritage as well as their lands are causing the Tamil speaking people of these provinces to fear that they will become a minority in the areas which they have traditionally occupied. The fact that the Provincial Council system is under threat by certain elements which are attempting to prevent the Provincial Council elections being held and calling for the abolishment of the Councils is fuelling this fear. The Province as the unit of devolution gives the Tamil speaking people some devolved powers in areas where they constitute the majority. It should be kept in mind that the provincial councils are underwritten by the Indo –Sri Lanka Accord of 1987 and furthermore the Treaty specifically denotes the Northern and Eastern Provinces as being areas of ‘ Historical habitation of the Tamil speaking people’. A U.N panel of experts in a recent Conference has taken the view that cultural heritage is a human rights issue, as the destruction of cultural heritage harms a range of human rights. Hence the threat to the Tamil Hindu /Buddhist heritage, can be regarded as impinging on the human rights of the Tamil people of these provinces. The 1954 Hague Convention protects cultural property in times of war. The Statue of the International Criminal Court (ICC) makes , destruction of cultural heritage a war crime. In the 2016 judgement of the ICC namely Prosecutor v Al Mahdi, a Muslim jihadist was convicted for attacks against religious and historical monuments in Timbucktu, in the African state of Mali. Hence we can see that cultural identity is coming to be recognized as an important component of ethnic identity ,and any attempts to stamp it out or undermine it is tantamount to ethnic discrimination, and even akin to ethnic cleansing.

With respect to the analogy with Palestine I would like to refer to an article by Dr.Dayan Jayatilleke published in The Island on 28th May 2020 titled ‘Is it the end of Tamil political history.’ He states “the political prospects of the Tamil people are at the dimmest lowest and most challenging that I can remember.”He sees the problems the Tamils face in Sri Lanka as akin to what the Palestinians face in Israel “in that there is an ultra hawkish administration which has decidedly turned its back on the earlier consensus on the nature of the problem and the contours of the solution and is moving swiftly and unilaterally to shape a final geopolitical outcome of a zero sum character”. Further on he refers to the ‘far right bucket list’ which is to interalia “eliminate the problem root and branch and structurally lock down minority assertiveness ensuring an unassailable systemic hegemony of the Sinhalese Buddhist’. He cites the appointment of the Archaeological Task Force in the East as part of this project. There is no evidence that this policy is endorsed by the Sinhalese people ,and for that matter by the majority of the Parliamentarians, even those of the governing party, and that the Prime Minister and the Cabinet members would endorse it. However it could be the policy of a small coterie holding such views who make the policy decisions. The High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet too makes mention of this when she refers to “the present trajectory” in her upcoming report for the Council sessions in Geneva in February March this year. She says ……..” the High Commission is deeply concerned by the trends emerging over the past year which represent clear early warning signs of a detiorating human rights situation and a significantly heightened risk of future violations and calls for preventive action”…..

The civil war was fought already a decade and more ago , but the present threat to the habitat of the people and their religious / cultural heritage is a presently continuing one. In the context of this existential threat it is important that it be communicated to the majority community so as to gain their sympathy and support. Greater publicity to these matters in the English and Sinhala press should be pursued so that with the support of all the communities these issues can be resolved amicably, according to the Buddhist principles of right conduct and compassion.

It should be kept in mind that the guardian Deities of Sri Lanka are Hindu Gods and the entire country has a Buddhist /Hindu heritage. I note that the Ahimsa Yatra stopped on its way from Pottuvil to Polikandi to obtain the Blessings of Mary maadha at the sylvan Shrine of Madhu. In this shrine especially during the church festival large numbers of Sinhalese from the entire western coast of Sri Lanka and Tamils from the eastern and northern coasts and the Vanni, converge to venerate the Madhu Maadha, and the whole Church resonates with the sweet sounds of the Rosary being recited in Sinhala and Tamil. This seems like a confirmation that the country belongs equally to the Tamil and Sinhala speaking people and to all the religious groups. In the interests of all the communities in the island it is necessary that the print and electronic media play their role in giving due publicity to the grievances of and protests taking place in the Tamil speaking part of the country rather than black out this news, as in the case of the Pottuvil to Polikandi protest march while the foreign media takes it up. Peaceful protests if driven underground can take the form of violent and incendiary protests. Ultimately Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and Burghers are children of Mother Lanka /Ilankai, and well intentioned members of the government and other political parties and the people of all communities must come together in an endeavour to reconcile and defuse the issues and grievances of the Tamil speaking people outlined above.

All News Advertisement

Midweek Review

Ranil in Head-to-Head controversy

Published

2 days ago

2025/03/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

Wickremesinghe responds to Hasan during the controversial interview recorded in London

Former Commander-in-Chief and ex-President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s inadequate defence of the war-winning armed forces underscores the failure on the part of successive governments to address war crimes allegations. Wickremesinghe’s responses highlighted Sri Lanka’s collective and pathetic failure to defend its armed forces. The country missed an opportunity to question the absurdity of UN war crimes accusations based on claims by persons who couldn’t be questioned till 2030 as a result of shocking confidentiality clauses in the Panel of Experts’ report. Imagine a one sided trial where you cannot cross examine your accusers for 30 long years. No wonder much of the world is increasingly demanding urgent reforms in the United Nations as much of its system is rigged by the collective West since its formation.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Al Jazeera’s Head-to-Head presenter Mehdi Hasan and former President Ranil Wickremesinghe, in an interview recorded in February but released last week, dealt with the conclusion of the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 without referring to the origins of terrorism here, while prolonging the narrative we were the bad guys throughout and not a word about the LTTE and how it terrorised this country for about 30 years.

The chosen audience at London’s Conway Hall, too, conveniently refrained from bringing up accountability on the part of India in sponsoring terrorism, beginning early ’80s. The issue is would there have been Mullivaikkal bloodshed if India didn’t step in here to pacify Tamil Nadu sentiments? Separatist terrorism received extensive backing in the West and there couldn’t be a better example than the LTTE being allowed to operate its International Secretariat in London, even after it assassinated former Indian Premier Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, while campaigning in Tamil Nadu.

The discussion covered heavy defeat suffered by Wickremesinghe at the last year’s presidential election, still unfinished investigations into the 2019 Easter bombings, the failure on his part to prosecute the Rajapaksas, as well as why punitive measures weren’t taken against Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and unleashing the military on Aragalaya immediately after Parliament elected him President, in July 2022.

Hasan had conveniently forgotten that Wickremesinghe earlier threw his weight behind Aragalaya . Harin Fernando, who had been a SJB member of Parliament at the time of the Aragalaya, is on record as having said that Wickremesinghe directed him to join the campaign to oust Gotabaya Rajapaksa. One-time UNP MP Prof. Ashu Marasinghe, too, disclosed the UNP’s role in Aragalaya.

UK-born British-American broadcaster Hasan aggressively pushed Wickremesinghe on the accountability issues while the UNP leader, at least ended up defending General Shavendra Silva, the wartime General Officer Commanding (GoC) of the celebrated 58 Division (former Task Force 1) accused by the US and UN of perpetrating war crimes without providing any evidence.

Wickremesinghe should have exploited the reference made by the audience to the 1983 violence directed at the Tamil community to remind the world of the events leading to the unprecedented riots. Let me stress that no right thinking person would condone targeting civilians, under any circumstances. However, the country wouldn’t have erupted in July 1983 if not for the Indian military training Tamil terrorist groups and for some inexplicable reason, most probably out of fear, the failure on the part of JRJ to nip the riots in the bud. There were also some extreme elements of the UNP, led by its notorious trade union arm JSS, that perpetrated some of the violence. Some in the police, too, played a part in encouraging rioters, often to make a killing for themselves by taking part of the looted items. President Jayewardene even failed to address the issue for several days. The 1983 riots should be always examined, taking into consideration how the Indian trained LTTE terrorists successfully attacked an Army patrol at Thinnaweli, Jaffna. Of the 14-man contingent, only one survived. There had never been such a devastating attack on the Army, though there were sporadic small arms attacks on police.

Strangely, Hasan and Wickremesinghe discussed war crimes, atrocities and war-related allegations without once referring to the war waged by the Indian Army in the Northern and Eastern regions as if Indians were sacred cows. The audience, too, remained silent. Those who had been demanding accountability on the part of Sri Lanka never once questioned India’s culpability or the innumerable acts of terrorism resorted to by the LTTE, probably taking more Tamil lives, especially those of its rivals and moderate Tamils, who dared to speak up, than the number of security forces personnel and innocent Sinhalese civilians it killed. The fact that India suffered 1,300 officers and men killed and nearly 3,000 others wounded in encounters with the LTTE during July 1987-March 1990 deployment of its euphemistically called Indian Peace Keeping Force here proved the massive security crisis New Delhi helped to create here.

Have you ever heard of anyone seeking an explanation from New Delhi for the 1988 PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam) raid on the Maldives? Indian trained PLOTE cadres carried out the sea-borne operation, targeting the then Maldivian leader Maumoon Abdul Gayoom at the behest of influential Maldivian Abdulla Luthufee. Would Hasan, born to parents from Hyderabad, and nine at the time of the PLOTE raid, dared to question India’s culpability. We haven’t heard anyone demanding to know the identities of those who perished in the failed Maldivian operation or Sri Lankan Tamils killed in India after the assassination of its one-time Premier Rajiv Gandhi by a teenage suicide bomber in Tamil Nadu.

Seasoned politician Wickremesinghe could have taken advantage of the Head-to-Head ‘show’ to set the record straight in the presence of Frances Harrison, former BBC-Sri Lanka correspondent, Director of International Truth and Justice Project and author of ‘Still Counting the Dead: Survivors of Sri Lanka’s Hidden War,’ and Dr. Madura Rasaratnam, Executive Director of PEARL (People for Equality and Relief in Lanka), that was formed in 2005 in the run-up to the Eelam War IV (2006 August to 2009 May). The other panelist was former UK and EU MP and Wickremesinghe’s presidential envoy, Niranjan Joseph de Silva Deva Aditya whose interventions didn’t help Wickremesinghe at all. Aditya’s declaration towards the tail end of the 49-minute programme that Wickremesinghe caused a devastating split in the LTTE, in 2003, during Oslo arranged talks, seemed absurd.

Addressing a hastily arranged press conference in Colombo, Wickremesinghe alleged that the husband of Executive Director, PEARL and senior lecturer at City University of London Dr. Madura Rasaratnam, had been an associate of LTTE theoretician Anton Balasingham. Wickremesinghe asked her to correct him if he was wrong. It would have been better if Wickremesinghe reminded that the late Balasingham had been a British citizen and his Australian-born wife Adele, who promoted recruitment of child soldiers and appeared in LTTE ‘uniform’ and garlanded LTTE female soldiers with their trade mark cyanide capsule, which they always carried around their necks, as they passed out after undergoing training for propaganda purposes. She is now living in the UK, so perhaps Al Jazeera can interview Adele about her sordid role in marching those girls, many of them being underage, to a certain gory death, especially in the event of being captured, as they had been ordered by the LTTE to bite their cyanide capsules.

Hasan accused the Sri Lankan military of depriving the Tamil people of food, medicine and other basic essentials during the war. Unfortunately, former president and six-time Premier Wickremesinghe pathetically failed to counter often repeated lies. Had Wickremesinghe perused the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts (PoE) report (read Darusman report) released in 2011, he could have comfortably defended the war-winning military. The UN report acknowledged that the ICRC (International Committee for Red Cross)-run ships evacuated the wounded and the WFP (World Food Programme) sent food to Puthumathalan until the very end. Though the programme is headlined Head-to Head, our ex-President pathetically failed to counter Hasan with credible answers on one-sided questions raised by the interviewer.

Forgotten Lord Naseby’s disclosure

It would be pertinent to mention that Wickremesinghe’s UNP never backed our fighting the Eelam War IV. The UNP quite confidently thought the LTTE could never be defeated, militarily. Actually, the UNP humiliated the military and questioned Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka’s suitability to lead the Army. One of its top rung Ministers, the late Mangala Samaraweeer,a even claimed in public that Fonseka was not fit even to lead the Salvation Army, that would have been a case of USAID money disbursed underhand to people like him, working overtime.

Hasan accusing Wickremesinghe of defending the military and the Rajapaksas seemed ridiculous against the backdrop of the latter’s treacherous co-sponsorship of an accountability resolution against one’s own security forces at the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) by his government.

Then Premier Wickremesinghe teamed up with Yahapalana President Maithripala Sisisena to betray the warwinning military. In line with a backdoor agreement with the US and Tamil National Alliance (TNA), the Yahapalana government agreed to establish hybrid war crimes mechanism to investigate alleged war crimes.

The former President could have used Lord Naseby’s disclosure of confidential wartime British High Commission dispatches from Colombo to question Hasan and the audience on war dead. Both British diplomatic cables and a UN report that had dealt with war dead placed the figure between 7,000 and 8,000 whereas the PoE estimated 40,000 dead. Wickremesinghe couldn’t have been unaware of Lord Naseby’s revelation and the much discussed Colombo based US Defence Attaché Colonel Lawrence Smith’s declaration at the first ever Colombo Defence seminar, in 2011, regarding claims of planned surrender by a section of the LTTE. The writer was present at the event when Smith responded to questions raised by Maj. Gen. Ashok Mehta, who had served as the Indian commander in charge of the Barricaloa-Ampara sector during the 1987-1988 period.

“Hello, may I say something to a couple of questions raised. I’ve been the Defence Attaché here at the US Embassy since June 2008. Regarding the various versions of events that came out in the final hours and days of the conflict — from what I was privileged to hear and to see, the offers to surrender that I am aware of seemed to come from the mouthpieces of the LTTE — Nadesan, KP — people who weren’t and never had really demonstrated any control over the leadership or the combat power of the LTTE.

“So their offers were a bit suspect anyway, and they tended to vary in content hour by hour, day by day. I think we need to examine the credibility of those offers before we leap to conclusions that such offers were in fact real.

“And I think the same is true for the version of events. It’s not so uncommon in combat operations, in the fog of war, as we all get our reports second, third and fourth hand from various commanders at various levels that the stories don’t seem to all quite match up.

“But I can say that the version presented here so far in this is what I heard as I was here during that time. And I think I better leave it at that before I get into trouble”, he said.

No point in blaming Wickremesinghe for not exploiting such available information in the public domain when the warwinning team (read Rajapaksa governments) shamefully failed to mount an effective counter attack. The Rajapaksas were always in denial mode and never really wanted to address issues in a methodical way. Instead of using all available information to mount an effective defence, the Rajapaksa government squandered millions of USD for propaganda efforts in the US.

Wickremesinghe should have mentioned before the Conway Hall WikiLeaks revelations pertained to the war. WikiLeaks revealed a US dispatch that quoted ICRC Head of Operations for South Asia Jacques de Maio as having told US Ambassador in Geneva, Clint Williamson, though there had been serious violations of International Humanitarian Law, there was no genocide.

Perhaps, one of the most significant declarations that had been made by de Maio was that the Army actually could have won the military battle faster with higher civilian casualties, yet chose a slower approach which led to a greater number of Sri Lankan military deaths. Obviously Wickremesinghe hadn’t been aware of developments he should have been conversant with and as a result the former President couldn’t hit back hard.

How could Yahapalana Premier Wickremesinghe fail to mention two mega lies that had been propagated during his tenure, but subsequently exposed? High profile accusations regarding Mannar mass graves accepted no less a person than UN Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet and the then Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran’s claim of the Army poisoning over 100 LTTE cadres in custody proved to be nothing but lies.

The Fonseka factor

Wickremesinghe could have mentioned conscription of children by the LTTE and indiscriminate use of women in high intensity battles, particularly in the Northern theatre. The ex-President failed to do so. Perhaps, Wickremesinghe should have reminded the Conway Hall crowd that the people of the Northern and Eastern Provinces had clearly disregarded unsubstantiated war crimes accusations by overwhelmingly voting for retired General Sarath Fonseka at the 2010 presidential election. Although Fonseka lost by a staggering 1.8 mn votes, he comfortably won eight predominately Tamil-speaking administrative districts, including Jaffna, just nine months after the conclusion of the war.

War crimes allegations ended up in a wastepaper basket the day the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), one-time LTTE mouthpiece, declared its support for Fonseka. Against the backdrop of the TNA backing Fonseka, whose Army had been accused of human rights violations on a massive scale, often repeated allegations seemed untenable.

Wickremesinghe cannot, under any circumstances, forget that episode as it was his project that brought UNP-TNA-JVP-SLMC and CWC together in 2010. WikiLeaks exposed US dispatches from Colombo pertaining to the US hand in the political project.

We haven’t heard of PEARL or any other organization with similar vision requesting the LTTE to release civilians held during the last phase of the fighting as a human shield by the besieged LTTE. Having forced over 300,000 people to accompany retreating LTTE units, they used them as human shields. The bottom line is that the Diaspora remained blind to civilian sufferings as long as they felt the LTTE could deliver a knockout blow to the Army on the Vanni east front. Canada-based veteran journalist, D. B. S Jayaraj, then considered as an authority on the conflict by many, confidently predicted, in late Dec. 2008, an impending devastating LTTE counter attack and the rolling back of the Army. Then Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who had been a frontline combat officer during his entire military career till he retired in the early ’90s , told the writer at the time that the LTTE was not in a position to reverse the situation. Within two weeks, the Army overran Kilinochchi, the headquarters of the LTTE. That was the end of the story.

Wickremesinghe and none of those seated at the Conway Hall ever anticipated the fall of Kilinochchi in early January 2009 and the total collapse of the Tiger fighting formations, within five months.

RW’s response to Aragalaya

Hasan questioned Wickremesinghe regarding his response to Aragalaya as well as what was known as the Batalanda torture camp that existed in the late’ 80s.

Hasan never sought Wickremesinghe’s opinion on the alleged US role in Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ousting, in spite of recent US declarations about USAID interventions in many parts of the world and accusations the US intervened in support of Aragalaya. Interestingly, Hasan found fault with Wickremesinghe for ordering the military to restore law and order while the former President recalled massive destruction caused by Aragalaya and the bid to storm Parliament. Wickremesinghe reminded Hasan how Aragalaya activists killed SLPP parliamentarian Amarakeerthi Atukorale at Nittambuwa. Atukorale was the last MP killed in violence. The LTTE and the JVP killed over 50 serving and ex-parliamentarians and many lesser politicians.

Batalanda operation, whether we like it or not, had been in line with President JRJ counter insurgency strategy at a time the JVP threatened to overwhelm the UNP-led dictatorial government, taking advantage of the Indo-Lanka accord and the deployment of the Indian Army here to inspire violence. Countries that had been threatened by terrorism adopted controversial measures such as ‘extraordinary rendition’ (apprehending/kidnapping suspected terrorists and detain them in countries where torture is widely practiced. The US-led operation received the backing of many countries, including the UK and Sri Lanka).

The second JVP insurrection had to be crushed, whatever the consequences were, though President JRJ should be held responsible for the catastrophic political measures that plunged the country into turmoil. Wickremesinghe had been a member of JRJ’s Cabinet and should be held collectively responsible for the mayhem the then President caused.

Proscription of the JVP in the run-up to the 1982 presidential election and the postponement of parliamentary election that was to be held in 1983 to 1989 caused resentment among all communities and set the stage for terrorist campaigns in the North and the South. The UNP that had caused so much political destruction is today represented in Parliament by just one MP (CWC member as the party contested under the Elephant symbol).

Wickremesinghe should be grateful to Hasan for not asking him to explain how under his watch the UNP deteriorated to such an extent that it was reduced to zero in Parliament. It would have been better if Hasan asked Wickremesinghe to explain why the Yahapalana administration from 2015 to 2019 borrowed billions of dollars from the international bond market, at high interest, and contributed to the economic bankruptcy of the country in 2022.

Midweek Review

Guru Geethaya:

Published

2 days ago

2025/03/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

A Melancholic Song for Public Education and Social Enlightenment

by Liyanage Amarakeerthi

Guru Geethaya , the song of a teacher, the Sinhala version of Chingiz Aitmatov’s famous novel, The First Teacher, is one of the most inspirational novels among Sinhala readers. Rendered to Sinhala by the veteran translator, Dedigama V. Rodrigo, the novel entered the Sinhala literary scene through the admirable efforts of the Progress Publishers of the former Soviet Union. And like many other Russian and Soviet classics, Guru Geethaya was available at a cheap price. Progress Publishers must be commended for that service. With the fall of the Soviet Union, one of the phenomenal entities that shaped our literary knowledge and taste, the Progress Publishers fell apart. Now, those Russian classics are not easily available, certainly not at an affordable price. Perhaps, a separate essay must be written about the progressive contribution that the Progress Publishers made to enrich Sinhala literary culture. And of course, those Russian classics were translated into Tamil as well.

Sinhala film of a Soviet Novel

Upali Gamlath has made a Sinhala film out of Guru Geethaya, and after waiting in line for many years, the film was recently released. It was heartening to see a sizable audience attended an evening show of Guru Geethaya last weekend at Kandy. I came to know that the film was doing well. Guru Geethaya, the film, regardless of its quality as a work of art, must continue to attract audiences, and it has potential to contribute to the rebuilding of the Sinhala film industry.

As a work of art, I have mixed feelings about Guru Geethaya. After all, it is the first film by the director. Here and there, there are glimpses of cinematic excellence. The actors in the leading role make an admirable effort to create the Duishen and Altynai, one of the best-known fictional couples in the Sinhala literary world. The Sinhala film version of the novel focuses mostly on the latent romantic relationship between the central couple. When Duishen arrives in this remote Kirgiz village in 1924 to establish a school, Altynai was just fourteen years old, and Duishen is, perhaps, in his late twenties. Just seven years after the Russian Revolution, the Soviet Union is in the process of propagating modern education even to distant villages in massive Soviet Russia. This idealist young teacher from the communist party wants the children of these backward hinterlands to receive modern education. When he arrives there, both parents and children of these mountains are illiterate and trapped in a tribal mode of existence. If there is anything called ‘education’ they have received, it is the religious dogma passed on to them by Islamic mullahs.

Youthful Idealism

In an extremely patriarchal world, a fourteen-year-old girl, an orphan, living under the oppression of distant relatives, Altynai has no hope for a happy future. And there is no hope for modern education. Right at that moment, Duishen arrives at the village as an agent of the Russian revolution and as a harbinger of revolutionary modernity. He is passionate about establishing a school there. By the third decade of the twentieth century, education is a right, and every child born into this world must be educated. In Soviet Russia, educating the Russian population was a goal of the revolution. ‘Abolition of illiteracy’ was a revolutionary goal often articulated by Lenin himself.

Among those village kids, only Altynai can share the idealism of Duishen. She has never known a school. But she instinctively knows that education is something desirable and the only way to get out of the trap of ignorance and poverty. In that male-dominated world ruled by Mullah-ethics, she is sold to be the second wife of a much older man. Duishen must liberate the girl from those uncultured men before she is sent away to Moscow for an education institute newly established by the Soviet government. The teacher manages to get her away those men but not before she was abducted and raped.

This slim novel, less than one hundred pages, captures the essence of what the agents of revolution had to face when modernising distant Soviet lands. Of course, they had to engage in this process of social development while the liberal West led by the US, and the religious West, led by the Catholic church, were unitedly working to defeat the revolution. Ironically, the Russian revolution shared many ideals of Western modernity. For example, the liberal West could have supported what people like Duishen were doing in these remote Kirgiz villages in the 1920s. But geopolitics did not work that way, especially during the cold war. It may be cold, but it was certainly ‘war’, and the West was so sure of it. We may have all kinds of issues about the brutality of Stalinist Russia, but the early idealism of the Russian revolution represented in this slim novel, The First Teacher or, Guru Geethaya, has been so inspirational for many of us in the developing world.

Growing up as a son of a working-class family in rural Sri Lanka, I would not have become a professor at a university without the free education system of our country. When I first read Guru Geethaya as a teenager in the mid 1980s, I literally fell in love with the novel. Of course, like many others, I too idealised the teacher, Duishen. Many years later, I learned that there were greater novels. Even among Russian novels, this is not the greatest. I would rate Doctor Zhivago, a critique of revolutionary violence and idealism, much higher than Guru Geethaya. Aitmatov himself has written greater novels- many of which have been translated into Sinhala. But people adore this slim novel about a devoted teacher. Perhaps, the love for our free education system is unconsciously projected onto Duishen. Sinhala people often liken good schoolteachers to Duishen.

As I said earlier, the focus of Upali Gamlath’s film version of the novel is on the unexpressed romantic love between Duishen and Altynai. In the novel as a man of revolution and as an adult, Dushen controls his emotions about the pretty and intelligent Altynai. In the Sinhala film, his love is much more pronounced though never expressed in words. In the novel, Altynai from her Moscow school writes a letter to Duishen expressing her love. We do not get to know whether he ever received it. By this time, World War II was around the corner, or the war had already arrived, and the counter-revolutionary forces in Russia were also creating troubles. Stalinist state machine is doing all the bad things that we now know. So, Duishen must have been preoccupied with other things. Or being an ideal teacher, he did not want to accept her love.

Creative Readings and a slim novel

It may be slim in terms of number of pages, but Aitmatov’s novel offers so much to an inventive reader. One could even argue that it is implicitly critical of the Soviet education endeavor. For example, with all due respect to the idealism and kindness of Duishen, he is an extremely limited first teacher. Except for his idealist loyalty to the communist party, he does not have any serious idea of education. In that sense, the novel can be read as an implicit critique of the kind of education the Soviet government established in distant villages. Except for just one girl, we do not know how many others were freed from illiteracy. During much of the early decades of the twentieth century, Lenin wrote extensively about the need for ‘proper education.’ Many of those writings have been collected as On Public Education (1975), again, by Progress Publishers. Writing to safeguard the revolution, by education Lenin meant, a kind of indoctrination aimed at liberating people from ‘bourgeois ideologies’ and getting them under the dictatorship of one party. For me, it is an extremely limited understanding of education. But when he firmly believed that “Russia is the country assigned by history the role of trailblazer of the socialist revolution(p. 77)”, it was easy for Lenin to see education as a huge propaganda programme intended to establish the dominance of a single party, by extension the dominance of a single ideology. When Duishen starts his school in the Kirgiz village, he pastes a photo of Lenin on the wall. There Duishen is an instrument of spreading the ideology of a single party. But with all those ideological limits, the revolutionary government was trying to make the Russian population literate. In a short essay called, “About our schools” written in 1913, included in the book mentioned above, Lenin explains how badly funded and poorly administered Russian schools were under the Tsar administration and religious authorities. It was clear that for the Tsar regime illiteracy was a tool of ruling. The role of teachers such as Duishen needs to be appreciated in that context.

By now history has given Guru Geethaya its proper place. It is a simple, short novel, about a teacher who attempted to live an ideal life within his own historical context.

In the novel, Aitmatov does not tell us what Dushen teaches. The content of that education is not known to us. Reading the novel now, and of course watching the movie, exactly one hundred years after Duishen arrived in that village, we are experienced and theoretically equipped enough to see beyond the context of the novel’s original context. The Sinhala movie, however, does not provide us with such rich artistic experience.

Saving the Girl/Women

When the revolutionary guards arrive in this remote village to assist Duishen, Altynai has been abducted and raped. If the education system was better planned the girl would have had a much more dignified life without going through that humiliation. Her traumatic experience is so much that she does not return to her village until after she becomes a professor, and she is invited to attend a function.

The Sinhala film industry seems to be making a comeback. And it needs a wide variety of movies to regularly attract a diverse audience. In that sense, I am more than happy that Guru Geethaya is doing well. At the same time, in the context of recent political change, where the need for revitalising our free education system is voiced from many quarters, this film is a melancholic song for an uplifting education. Not to get everyone under the ideological will of a single party, our education must be one that liberates us from all forms of dominance and authority.

Though written in 1962, the novel is set in 1924, which was also the year of Lenin’s death -an incident beautifully described in the novel. There he is represented as a visionary man who wanted to create a better future for these rural children. Within a very different context those who initiated the free education system in Sri Lanka also envisioned a better future for us. That is perhaps why Guru Geethaya has been a beloved piece of literature that draws crowds even to its film version.