Why I gravitate towards the Sinhalese

"There are many issues with the Sinhalese and the depriving of Tamil rights since independence but they come across as very decent human beings when they are not incited by politicians who would use the Sinhala chauvinistic trump card."

by Pearl Thevanayagam 

(October 10, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) What I am about to disclose would ostracise me from the Tamil community both in Sri Lanka and abroad.  I love the Sinhalese Mahinda and his coterie notwithstanding. It was a Sinhalese who gave me my first job as a journalist. It was a Sinhalese, one L.S.S.Perera in the Education Department, a colleague of my father who gave me one of my first names, Asokamala and he was my God-father.

When my mother passed away in a London Hospital it was my friend at the Sunday Leader, Sassanka Samarakkody, who posted the obituary in the Sunday Observer. When we lost everything we owned for generations in the July riots of 1983 it was the Sinhalese who hid my sister in their humble abode in Maharagama for weeks when there was an order from the government to the Sinhalese and Muslims they would be arrested if they harboured Tamils.

Although I wrote vociferously against the injustice to the Tamils the Sinhalese editors  I worked with always listened to me and even allowed me to opine against Sinhala sentiments. When the Independent newspapers folded on the Boxing Day in 1990  I was rendered jobless. But Sunil Rodrigo, chairman of ANCL and H.L.D.Mahindapala ( who I pestered with about 50 telephone calls to recruit me at Lake House) had faith in me to recruit me to the Daily News despite suspicions I could very well be a supporter of the LTTE.

I am forever grateful to Manik De Silva, the editor of Daily News who only saw my potential as a journalist and not as a torch carrier for Tamil separatism and he soon recruited me in the news desk. When I was offered a Journalism Fellowship to study at UC Berkeley in California it was a Tamil journalist at the Daily News who phoned the US embassy the day before I was to interviewed for a visa that I was an LTTE. Luckily the attaché at the embassy phoned me and laughed it off. His grievance was that although he has been working at Lake House for nearly 35 years the furthest he was sent to was India. He also would stay after office hours to remove my byline for the City Edition.

It was the late Lasantha Wickrematunga who gave me carte blanche to report from the rebel strongholds in the North and East  while I worked for him at the Sunday Leader.

Not until I arrived in the UK for the second time did I realize that I am more comfortable with non-Tamil Sri Lankans who do not ask questions about my single status, whether I owned my house or whether I am receiving state benefits. During the times I had to sign in for unemployment benefits when my coffers ran dry due to lack of assignments as a freelance or wearing my other hat of interpreting and translating, when the brown envelope lands on my doorstep, my Tamil landlady would want to know if I am on unemployment benefits. Heck, I pay my rent on time and what business is it of hers whether I am on benefits or downright destitute.

At least I am not riddled with credit card debts or failed mortgage payments and in fear of my property being re-possessed. Ten years since arriving in the UK the pot of gold everyone was talking about has eluded me. Where did I go wrong?  Should I have taken a hefty mortgage and spent my entire life working 24/7 in sandwich factories or packing drugs for pharmaceuticals thus depriving me of one of the many vicarious pleasures of writing?

I do not for one moment say that all Tamils are narrow-minded and are only interested in material wealth. There are those staunch Hindus who practise their religion and live it. Take Dr (Miss) Navaratnam in Colpetty who in the ‘80s and `90s only charged five rupees from a patient to attend her clinic or the Late Senator S. Nadesan who championed Tamil cause without forfeiting his integrity. Incidentally he famously told a Sinhalese friend  who when pleaded with him to renounce his call for the rights of Tamils and that the Sinhalese government would give Tamils their rights, “ There is nothing for the Sinhalese to give us. They are ours by right”.

Incidentally Sen. Nadesan was a neighbour of my parents in Manipay when they first got married. He would walk into mother’s kitichen on Fridays to sample her fish curry since being a Hindu he was only served vegetables in his home. Sen. Nadesan has departed from this world several years ago but his legacy lives on in his only son Satyendra who represented the LTTE, rightly or wrongly, and carries on his fight for justice for the Tamils.

Then we have the mushrooming Tamils in the diaspora and at home who while purporting to champion Tamil cause are indeed raking in funds for their own personal use. Even the Transnational Government and its elected representatives are dependent on the Tamil diaspora many of whom are asylum seekers to fund their elections.

There are many issues with the Sinhalese and the depriving of Tamil rights since independence but they come across as very decent human beings when they are not incited by politicians who would use the Sinhala chauvinistic trump card.