Ivan left the shores of Sri Lanka in the 1960’s. Before taking his early retirement due to medical reasons, he served in the multi-national petroleum sector (Shell) as senior financial executive.
by Rajasingham Jayadevan
We are deeply saddened to hear of the loss of our well-respected, well-liked, highly-valued and a very- principled colleague, Ivan Pedropillai, who passed away on 28 April. When I informed Mr Barry Gardiner MP of this loss, he said: ‘ This in indeed a great sadness. He was a lovely man and a good comrade in the struggle’.
Ivan was an integral part of the politically active expatriate Tamil community and is an inspiration to countless people in the spectrum of discordant politics. He was kind, extremely talented, witty, and set an example for the retiring fellow community members to step out of the four walls of retirement life to be socially and politically mobile.
Ivan left the shores of Sri Lanka in the 1960’s. Before taking his early retirement due to medical reasons, he served in the multi-national petroleum sector (Shell) as senior financial executive. With the war at its peak in Sri Lanka, he instinctively became an active and passionate advocate to campaign for justice and peace for the war ravaged and yearning Tamil people. It was a challenge for him, as the community he wanted to help was not the well settled stock of the 1960’s and was the product of the two decades of consequences of the degenerating war in Sri Lanka. He soon became acclimatised to the full circumstances of the community.
I befriended him in the outset of 1996, when I was serving as the Co-ordinator of the Tamil Refugee Action Group (TRAG). The first engagement with him was my involvement in the publication of Hotspring magazine and in that Ivan played an interactive role with the editor Late S Sivanayagam.
Our involvement deepened in the political campaign front. In that, I was accompanied by Ivan to meet the Shadow Foreign Minister for South Asia Late Derek Fatchett. The meeting was facilitated and attended by Mr Barry Gardiner when he was campaigning to become an MP in the 1997 General Election. The hour long meeting was so interactive that substantial issues affecting Sri Lanka and the Tamils were discussed. Ivan’s contribution at the meeting was immense as he commanded the discussion very professionally.
Following that meeting, Ivan introduced a wealth of his friends to team work. In addition to my own election campaign work with my local friends for the election of Mr Barry Gardiner, Ivan overwhelmingly threw his hat into the ring that gave the much needed vigour and momentum for the campaign work. Ivan’s campaign work even occasionally transformed him to a foot soldier despite his medical conditions. He drafted in many of his prominent friends to make Barry’s victory an outstanding one. Barry overturned a sizeable majority of the sitting Tory candidate Late Rt. Hon. Dr. Sir. Rhodes Boyson.
Change of government in the UK gave the opportunity for furthering our political campaign work and Ivan played a key role in the number of parliamentary campaign meetings I organised. Our interactive work facilitated Barry to help get down the critically ill LTTE’s Anton Balasingam to the UK from Sri Lanka and that paved the way for the 22 February 2002 ceasefire agreement between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE.
When I spoke to Ivan some six months ago, he expressed his painful feeling that the government of Sri Lanka will not do anything to settle the Tamil issue and that even in post war Sri Lanka, Tamils will be systematically marginalised. He was also saddened by the divisive politics of the Tamils groups in the UK.
Being a Catholic, he was so liberal minded that he respected the other religions. His involvement with Fr Jegath Gaspar to produce the Thiruvasagam in Symphony speaks volumes of his liberal way of life. The Hindu temple Eelapatheeswarar Aalayam I founded and represent made significant financial contribution for the project. Ivan has played an important role to raise the funds needed for the project. The recording of the symphony was planned to be released with big glitz in London.
Sadly, downright greed of the conductor-arranger and Lyricist Isaignani Ilayarajah fouled the massive launch when he siphoned off under duress the funds sent to India for the production. Ilayarajah disregarded the formidable plans of the UK based funding committee and went on to release the recording privately with his despicable, selfish and cheap money making mind-set. At the meeting of the Thiruvasagam Symphony committee, there was expressions of empathic dejection from Ivan and Fr Gaspar and all were numbed to hear the fate of the glamorous project.
Ivan also contributed to the Tamil Guardian I founded and overwhelmingly supported the broadsheet that was reaching all corners of the political spectrum.
When I returned from my captivity of the LTTE from Vanni, Ivan was one of those who expressed his profound sadness with a deep sense of feeling. With my change of focus post captivity, my engagement with Ivan was occasional friendly chats.
Ivan too faced the hate campaign of the gutter media portraying him as a LTTE front man. The infamous one man news inventing gutter Asian Tribune of K T Rajasingam operating from a hideout in Helsinki published provocative and contemptible news about Ivan that he was a LTTE member. In his response, Ivan assertively objected to the slander. Ivan was tolerant enough to accept the flimsy apology (http://asiantribune.com/node/10603) knowing very well the difficulties of hunting down the editor in the hideouts in a Scandinavian country to face libel charges in the UK courts.
Though belated, I also wish to express my profound tribute to Ivan’s wife Indra who passed away peacefully on 22nd January 2020. The idiom: ‘behind every great and successful man there stands a woman’ and Ivan was blessed with his warm-hearted wife in his perseverance of his forward march. I would have visited Ivan at least five times at his residence. Indra was always welcoming, would engage very passionately and we would have meaningful discussions.
She excelled in the Tamil tradition of hospitality, entertaining guests with the noble ‘Virunthombal’. Her gesture was so heartily that we could not simply get away saying no to offer of food. When Indra picks up the phone,I always called her 'aunty' and her husband 'Ivan’. She once jovially asked: ‘Jayadevan why are you calling me aunty and him Ivan and do you think Ivan is a young person’. I had to justify by saying: ‘Aunty, I consider him my buddy to call him with his first name’.
A man with dreams needs a woman with vision and aunty Indra fittingly provided it to Ivan. Let:
‘Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
And let perpetual light shine upon them.
May they rest in peace’.
They will be remembered and their voices will be echoing in my ears forever.
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