| by M A Nuhman
Ethnic Conflict and Tamil Poetry in Sri Lanka
( August 20, 2012, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka has had a direct impact on literary production in Tamil, comparatively greater than in the case of Sinhala. This is largely due to the fact that it has been the Tamil-speaking communities who were most directly and severely affected by the ethnic conflict throughout the postcolonial period.
The Tamil language is shared by three distinct ethnic communities in Sri Lanka, namely the Sri Lankan Tamils, the Muslims and the Malayaha (= hill country) Tamils, with their own dialect variations. This linguistic pluralism and the associated ethnic distinctions reflect in literary production too. Hence, when we speak of Tamil literature or Tamil poetry in ethnically divided contemporary Sri Lanka, the term encompasses a multi-ethnic socio-political context and reality.
In my essay, I briefly discuss the historical background of the ethnicity formation and polarization of the Tamil-speaking communities and their literary production, with special reference to poetry.
Sri Lankan Tamils: Linguistic Nationalism, the Separatist War and Poetry
The Sri Lankan Tamils are among the early settlers in this country (Indrapala 2005), coexisting and interacting with other social groups from the beginning of the historical period. Although Tamil has coexisted with Sinhala from the early historical period in Sri Lanka, a continuous Tamil literary history can be dated only from the 13th century. However, a few poems appearing under their author’s name, Eelaththu Puuthan Theevanar (Puuthan Theevan from Elam [Sri Lanka]) are found in the Sankam anthologies that belong to the first three centuries of the Christian era. Even though the author’s Sri Lankan identity cannot be firmly established from his poems, we can assume that there probably would have been Tamil literary activity in ancient Sri Lanka, since we have strong archaeological evidence for the existence of a rich megalithic culture parallel to the one found in South India that produced a rich amount of classical Tamil poetry during that period (Ragupathy1987). Apart from this, a couple of Tamil verses are found among the Sigiri Graffiti that belong to the period from the 8th to the 10th centuries, providing further evidence for the existence of Tamil literary activity in the country before the 13th century (Paranavithana 1956).
Although there is a fairly long history of Tamil literature in Sri Lanka, there is no evidence of an ethnic consciousness or conflict finding expression in Tamil literary works until the late 19th century. Ethnic awareness and ethno-nationalisms emerged in the form of religious and cultural revivalism in Sri Lanka from the mid-19th century (Wilson 2000). Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic revivalist movements were active in formulating and consolidating ethnic identities with political overtones in the respective communities. As far as Tamil writing was concerned, Arumukanavalar and Siddhi Lebbe played a major role in this respect in the late 19th century.
Ethnic consciousness and polarization based on political interests gradually developed in Sri Lanka during the first half of the 20th century owing to the introduction of universal franchise and electoral politics in 1931 under the Donoughmore Constitution (Russell 1992). Political opportunism led political parties to mobilize the people on ethnic lines. The mishandling of ethnic issues by the parties for their immediate political benefit intensified the conflicts and paved the way for the emergence of political militancy, terrorism and civil war in post-colonial Sri Lanka. The Official Language issue was one such mishandling, leading shortly after Independence to the first ever Sinhalese-Tamil riots and ethnic polarization (Kearney 1967). The Sinhala Only Official Language Bill was passed in Parliament in June 1956, and it was a turning point in the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. From the early 1950s, Sri Lankan Tamils were politically mobilized against the Sinhala Only official language policy of the major Sinhala political parties, which, giving into pressure from chauvinist factions, changed their earlier policy of Sinhala and Tamil as official languages.
In the general election held in 1956, the Official Language Policy was a major issue and the MEP (Mahajana Eksath Peramuna – Peoples’ United Front) led by S W R D Bandaranaike, who promised to implement the Sinhala Only policy within 24 hours if he came to power, won the election with a great majority, while the Tamil Federal Party (FP) swept to victory in the (largely Tamil-speaking) North and East. Tamil nationalism emerged thereby as a political ideology of the Sri Lankan Tamils. In Colombo and the North and East, the FP organized agitations and hartals against the government’s policy which were violently suppressed by the police. In one such incident, I remember, a promising young poet, Eruvil Moorthy from Batticaloa, lost both his eyes in the firing carried out by police in front of the Kachcheri in 1961.
Increasingly, Tamil literature, especially Tamil poetry, in Sri Lanka began to reflect the ethnic sentiments of the Tamils and linguistic nationalism became a dominant issue in their articulations. Throughout the period from the 1950s to the early 1960s, which includes the race riots of 1958, hundreds of Tamil poems reflecting with verbal militancy the poets’ devotion to their language and the ideology of linguistic nationalism were produced by a number of poets from the North and East, including Mahakavi, Murugaiyan, Neelavanan, Sillaiyur Selvarajan, Rajabarathi and Kasiyananthan. Suthanthiran, the official weekly of the Federal Party, was the main vehicle for this form of nationalist writing. Some of these poems were included in a few anthologies under the titles Thamil Enkal Aayutham (Tamil is our Weapon), Uyir Thamilukku (Life is to Tamil) and Senthamil Selvam (The Treasure of Tamil), published in the early 1960s.
The main themes of these poems were the poets’ devotion to the Tamil language, protest against the domination of Sinhala and the victory and the freedom of Tamil and the Tamils. Some of the titles and lines of these poems given below may give the reader an idea of the content and the verbal militancy of these poems.
1. Urimaik kuralai thirukath thakumoo
Is it possible (for you) to crush the voice of rights?
2. Padaiyoodoru padayaay nada
March with an army as an army
3. Paathi Ilankaiyai aalka
Rule one half of Lanka
4. Saavathu poorinil sarkkarai enroru sankoli keedkuthada
My friend, I hear the sound of a conch
Telling
Death in war is sweet.
5. Parayelaam athirka nam palamelaam thiralkave
Paathinaa denkaluk kaakaven relukave
Let the drums sound, let our strengths gather
Let us rise, to claim our half of the land.
The poet Neelavanan in one of his poems tells his wife, referring to his son by his name, to send him to the front if he dies in the battle to win the rights of Tamils. To many of the poets, the denial of their language rights was equal to the denial of their very existence and it was their duty to fight unto death for them. They used some of the motifs and diction of the heroic poetry of the Sangam age in their poetry. They were also motivated by the language devotion and linguistic nationalism cultivated by the Dravidian movements in South India against Sanskritization and Hindi domination. The poets created an imaginary warfare, and aroused the people using highly sensitive and emotive language and rhythmic verses to induce them to involve themselves in the battle. Thamil Arasu (the Tamil State), the political agenda of the Federal Party, was transformed into an aesthetic image in their poems.
However, the poetry of the linguistic nationalism of the ’50s gradually came to an end after the 1958 riots. The reason might be the poets’ realization of the inhuman and violent consequences of the ethnic political upsurge and the developing progressive trend in mainstream politics from the early ‘60s with the coalition of the left political parties. It is interesting to note that none of the major poets like Mahakavi, Murugaiyan and Neelavanan wanted to include their poems of linguistic nationalism in their poetry collections published later during their life time. This exclusion indicates a change in their political ideology.1
Long before the entrenchment of Tamil nationalism as a political force and the cultural expression of the Tamils in the 1950s, Marxism and left wing politics had enjoyed widespread popularity among the Sri Lankan literati, dating from the ’30s. The Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) was formed in 1935. Owing to ideological differences, a breakaway group, the United Socialist Party was formed in 1940 and it was renamed the Communist Party of Ceylon in 1943. There was a strong left political and cultural tradition among the Tamils from the late 1930s. A. Vaithialingam, P. Kandiah, M. Karthikesan and N. Shanmugathasan were some of the founders of the communist movement in Sri Lanka and among the Tamils.
The impact of Marxist ideology on Sri Lankan Tamil literature can be seen from the late 1940s. A.N. Kandasamy and K. Ganesh were the pioneers of progressive writing in Tamil. The Progressive Writers’ Association was formed in 1946 on the initiative of K. Ganesh and P. Ramanathan and it was reactivated in 1954. Ilankeeran, S. Ganesalingam, K. Daniel, Dominic Jeeva, N. K. Ragunathan and Neervai Ponnaiyan were the prominent writers who wrote fiction in the ’50s and ‘60s on the themes of class and caste contradictions from an avowedly Marxist perspective.
There was an important change in the political content of Sri Lankan Tamil poetry during the 1960s and 1970s. Marxist or Socialist ideals were in the foreground of the literary activities in Tamil during this period owing to the change in the political climate in the country. Marxism and Maoism were playing a prominent role in the post-colonial Third World during this period, in the struggle against imperialism and its local allies. Sri Lanka was not an exception to this political trend. In the ’60s, the left parties that chose the parliamentary path to socialism joined the major Sinhala nationalist party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) to form a coalition, and this came to power in 1970. The numerically minority Maoist groups which rejected the parliamentary path to socialism adopted Mao’s concept of New Democracy and propagated a revolutionary path to achieve socialism through uniting workers and peasants across ethnic boundaries. It was during this period that thousands of Sinhala youth, mainly from the rural poor in Sri Lanka, took up arms to topple the government, many sacrificing their lives for their revolutionary idealism.
Most of the writers and poets were under the influence of socialist ideals in varying degrees and aligned with or were sympathetic to the left movements. They identified themselves as progressive writers. The Sri Lanka Progressive Writers’ Association played a leading role in propagating Marxist ideals in Tamil literature. They believed in social equity, ethnic integration and national unity. They also firmly believed that socialism was the only solution to the ethnic conflict. Social issues such as caste oppression, class contradiction and economic exploitation were some of the main themes in Tamil fiction and poetry during this period. Pasupathy, Supaththiran, Puthuvai Ratnathurai, Saarumathi, Shanmugam Sivalingam and S. Sivasegaram were the prominent poets of the communist movement of this period. They thought that the proletariat would unite across ethnic boundaries on the basis of class consciousness and fight for their liberation. The following poem by Puthuvai Ratnathurai is an example of their writing.2
Podimenike will take up the gun in Matara
Kandiah will take up the rod in Mathakal
Cassim Lebbe will take up the knife in Nathandi
The unwilting philosophy of Karl Marx will guide them
The toiling proletariat will reach the heights
Definitely, wait and see!
Here the personal names Podimenike, Kandiah and Cassim Lebbe symbolize the working class of the Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim ethnic groups, respectively, and the poet proclaims that they will join hands to establish the socialist state.
However, Tamil nationalism in politics did not fade away during this period. In fact it was alive and some times burst into flames because of the failure of successive governments to address the ethnic issue and because the Tamil nationalist party wanted to keep that issue alive for its political survival. Parliamentary opportunism played a major role in activating Sinhala and Tamil nationalisms during this period. The parliamentary left parties also compromised their socialist ideals, allying with Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism for their political survival. The 1972 constitution, drafted by the leftist Minister, Colvin R de Silva, was patently discriminatory with regard to religion and language. For the first time in the post-colonial Sri Lankan history, Buddhism was constitutionally elevated to the status of state religion, transforming the secular nature of the earlier constitutions; Tamil was not afforded the status even of a national language. In the same year, the Government adopted a policy of standardization for university admission, which severely affected the Jaffna youth. These developments paved the way for the emergence of Tamil militancy in the North and separatism among the Tamils. In 1976, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) was formed and declared its policy of a separate Tamil state, Eelam. In the general election of 1977, the Tamil nationalist TULF swept to victory in the North and East and became the main opposition party in parliament. The incumbent left-oriented United Front government was severely defeated, obtaining only 8 seats, not because of their ethnic policy but because of their economic failure, and the right wing United National Party (UNP) overwhelmingly won the election, with 80% seats in parliament. This was the first and last instance when the rival Tamil and Sinhala nationalisms were in opposing positions in parliament.
The UNP, with its vast majority in parliament, had a good opportunity to address the ethnic issue and resolve the conflict. Unfortunately, this did not happen and the conflict developed into a protracted separatist war that took thousands of human lives, displaced nearly a million people internally and externally, and seriously damaged ethnic relations, economic development, democracy and human rights in the country.
1977 was a turning point in the ethnic conflict and Tamil literary production in Sri Lanka. Tamil nationalism became the dominant ideology in politics and literature, marginalizing the leftist ideology that was prominent in the 1960s and early 1970s.
1977 was the beginning of a second phase of the frequent anti-Tamil riots that took place after 1958. Jaffna town was set on fire and looted by government security forces. The riots spread to the South. Tamil refugees were sent to Jaffna by sea. Sinhala students and lecturers from the University of Jaffna and the Sinhala civilians who were settled in Jaffna were moved to the South. The physical separation of Tamils and Sinhalese started. The Government introduced the repressive Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) in 1979, giving the armed forces unlimited power to finish off terrorism in Jaffna by arresting, abducting, torturing and killing hundreds of youths and terrorizing the people in a short span of time, events that fertilized the ground to grow militant movements in the North and East. The 1977 riots were followed by further riots in 1981. Violence directed against Tamils reached its peak with the 1983 pogrom. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and other militant groups emerged as strong separatist forces after 1983, with training and arms provided by India. Ultimately, through suppression of the other militant groups, the LTTE became the strongest force, starting after 1985 to control certain “liberated areas” and entering into a war with the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in 1987. For more than the past two decades the war between the LTTE and the Government forces has continued, resulting in hundreds of thousand of deaths and the displacement of millions internally and externally.
This was the political background for the emergence and development of a new genre of poetry of political protest in Sri Lankan Tamil literature from 1977 onwards, different in form and content from that of the poems of linguistic nationalism written in the 1950s.
The literary landscape changed drastically in the 1980s. Tamil nationalism took over Marxist ideology in literature. Some of the extreme left poets transformed themselves into extreme Tamil nationalists. For example, Puthuvai Ratnathurai, a ‘revolutionary poet’ of the ’70s became a bard of the LTTE, the extreme Tamil nationalist militant group, in the ’80s. Some of them became frustrated and even committed suicide. Subathiran, a committed poet of the communist movement was depressed by the changed political environment, became an addict, got involved in a petty family dispute and ultimately committed suicide. Others, for instance Sivasegaram and Shanmugam Sivalingam, managed to keep a balance and wrote poems critical of nationalism, ethnic chauvinism, violence and war.
I wrote two poems in Tamil entitled The Devil of the Gun and the Fate of Man and Yesterday’s Evening and Today’s Morning immediately after the atrocities committed by the security forces in Jaffna in 1977. These were some of the very first instances of the genre of the poetry of political protest in Sri Lankan Tamil literature. Following these, during the past three decades thousands of poems and more than a hundred poetry collections were published in Sri Lanka and abroad, leaning towards a mixture in varying degrees of the ideology of Tamil nationalism with Marxism. A large number of poets of the younger generation, male and female, emerged from the late 1970s on. V. I. S. Jayapalan, Cheran, K. P. Aravindan, Balasooriyan, Urvasi, Selvi and Sivaramani are some of the prominent names among them. Writers and poets also emerged from the militant movements.
The first collection of such poems, Maranaththul Vaalvoom (Let Us Live Amidst Death), consisting of 82 poems by 31 poets, was published in 1985 (Cheran, et al). The main editors of this anthology, R. Cheran and A. Yesurasa, were two of the prominent poets of the younger generation that Tamil nationalism and the ethnic conflict produced. Of the 31 poets included in this anthology, only three are from the East, one is from Malayaham and one from the Muslim community. The others are from Jaffna. This shows that the poets from the North dominated the production of protest poetry.
Below I give few examples of the poems of political protest.
The first one is by A. Yesurasa, an important poet from Jaffna who started writing in the late 1960s. He also edited, for more than a decade, a Tamil literary journal Alai (Waves) promoting Tamil nationalism in literature which had a pronounced impact on modern Sri Lankan Tamil writing. His poem Your Fate Too tells the reality under the reign of the PTA in the North and the feelings of the people.3
Your Fate Too
You stroll back home
from the beach
or may be from the cinema.
Suddenly a rifle cracks
boots scamper away.
You’ll lie dead
on the road.
In your hand
a dagger sprouts
a pistol too may blossom.
“A terrorist,”
You’ll be dubbed.
No one
dare ask questions.
Silence freezes.
But
deep in the people’s mind
indignation bubbles up.
(trans. A J Canagaratna)
Cheran is one of the prominent poets of the younger generation who emerged in the ‘80s. His was among the strongest poetic voices of protest against state oppression in the 1980s. He was also critical of the internal conflicts among the militant groups and of their violations of human rights. His poem, Amma, Do Not Weep, expresses the angry mood of an oppressed people. The inter-textual reference to the anklet and the Pandyan king from the Silappathikaram, a classical Tamil epic, gives the poem a Tamil nationalistic texture.
Amma, do not weep.
There are no mountains
to shoulder your sorrow
no rivers
to dissolve your tears.
The instant he handed you
the baby from his shoulder,
the gun fired.
On your tali, lying there in the dust,
blood spread.
In the heat of the splintering bomb
All your bright dreams withered.
What splattered from your anklet
were neither pearls
nor rubies:
there is no longer a Pandiyan king
to recognize blood guilt.
On sleepless nights
when your little boy stirs restlessly
screaming out, “Appa”.
what will you say?
When you pace the night, showing him the moon
and soothing him against your breast,
do not say,
“Appa is with God.”
Tell him this sorrow continues
tell him the story of the spreading blood
tell him to wage battle
to end all terrors.
(trans: Lakshmi Holmström)
Another prominent poet of protest, S. Vilvaratnam, has recorded many of the violent incidents against the Northern Tamils in his poems. The Grief-stricken Wind, a somewhat longer poem by Vilvaratnam, narrates the story of a lonely, deserted village, left with the corpse of an elderly person after a military strike. It is a narration about the confused wind searching with desperation for the human smell in the village. Here are its last few lines.
……..
How could the wind know
The people
Had sneaked out of the village
Their belongings bundled in gunnies
In the dead of the night
When it was slumbering?
Sighing deeply
The wind went back inside
And hunching like a corn
Sat beside the corpse.
Then it came out
Burying its face
A thorny bush peeping into the street
The wind walked slowly
Like a grief-stricken mother
Searching for her runaway son.
(trans: A J Canagaratna)
The well-known poet, V. I. S. Jayapalan, began to write in the mid-1970s. He started within the left movement and became a Tamil nationalist with leftist ideals in the 1980s. His voice for Tamil-Muslim unity, and against violence directed against Muslims is very strong. He became a wandering Tamil diasporic poet in the late 1980s. The Song of a Refugee is one of his collections of poems about his refugee life. The lines given below are taken from his poem The Memory of Autumn and poetically depict the agony of the displaced life of the Tamils.
……..
My son in Jaffna
My wife in Colombo
My father in Vanni
At this old age
My mother in Tamilnadu
Relatives in Frankfort
One sister in France
But me
In Oslo
As a camel that has strayed to Alaska losing its way.
What is our family?
Is it a cotton pillow
Torn and flung into the wind
By Fate the monkey?
To be continued ...........
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