Tamil activists have to reject outright any suggestion of ‘partnership’ with genocidal Colombo in the international ‘development’ agendas. They should insist and wage a struggle for a direct deal, writes an academic in Jaffna cautioning against a current move of the Establishments in linking development with the PC-LLRC process, aimed at the annihilation of the identity and territoriality of the nation of Eezham Tamils. Development doesn’t come without justice. Every generation has to be provided with the struggle of its own times, as a righteous struggle only brings in true social progress and development. Genocide-facing Tamils have to conceive and design strategies of their own for a paradigm of “Struggle and Development,” he further said.
A former Peking Communist, now devoting his time in caring a Tamil orphanage of war-affected children in the island, was lamenting recently that out of hundreds in the institution only a very few care for education or for even listening to advice at all. The rest of them are aloof, astray and are becoming even unruly, he said.
This is a situation in not one institution alone, but a general picture of such institutions as well as formal schools too in the genocide-affected society of Eezham Tamils, he was commenting. Many other sensitive social workers in the island also have come out with the same observation.
The younger generation of the Eezham Tamil nation in the island, even the pre-teens among it, has witnessed and is witnessing a culture of blatant impunity actively practised and patronised by major Establishments of the world, especially the ones in New Delhi, Washington, London and Beijing, as well as by the UN and the Commonwealth that have practically become nothing but the United Establishments and the Commonwealth of Establishments.
The younger generation has a first hand experience in witnessing how the genocidal criminals are patted on the back and are allowed to proceed unhindered in the subjugation and structural genocide of the Tamil nation, in the name of ‘reconciliation’ and ‘development’. Losing faith in the justice of the planet we live in is the worst of the genocides.
How to expect the growing generation to be free from the inspiration of this impunity culture?
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Every generation of a people should have the struggle of their own times and should have the ideology for its own struggle, if social progress and development are to be genuinely owned by that people or nation. Otherwise, it is not their progress or development.
A nation that is not designing and facilitating a righteous struggle for its younger generation cannot save that generation or eventually the nation from decay. In certain circumstances, some forms of struggles are more powerful than an armed struggle.
If due justice is not forthcoming from the Establishments responsible for the genocide of Eezham Tamils, if they continue to prove that they are the ones sitting on the delivery of due justice for the sake of their geopolitical game which general humanity need not care, and if hoodwink only continues, then those very Establishments becoming the focal point to cite for the mobilisation of the righteous struggle of the next generation cannot be prevented.
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An orchestrated effort is now being undertaken especially by New Delhi, Washington and the West, including Norway – the bandwagon that architected and implemented the genocide – to link a ‘development’ process with the PC–LLRC model that has been primarily conceived to erase the identity and territoriality of the nation of Eezham Tamils in the island.
Showing legitimacy for this process by roping in all gullible sections of Tamils is in the current agenda. Sections that shun any mobilisation of Eezham Tamil nationalist shade as ‘sectarian’, do not hesitate to cast their weight to the sectarianism of the genre of Quisling-ism.
Sections that habitually uphold the ‘unity and integrity’ of the Sri Lankan State, however genocidal it is, playing roles summing up the course for such ‘development’ processes is understandable. But it is dangerous for Eezham Tamil national activists to enter into the process without a concrete stand and strategies for “Struggle and Development.”
The Tamil activists should not wait for anyone to ‘convene’ them to conceive and implement the process of “Struggle and Development.” No others will do it, as they are all keen only in entering into the island without antagonising the genocidal State. Tamils have to think of it on their own and take a firm and farsighted stand.
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‘Culture and development’ was a paradigm designed in the academic institutions of the West to accompany globalisation. ‘Multiculturalism’ was another that was conceived by the New Nations in the West to manage their own problems.
In the case of Eezham Tamils and in many other instances, the West not only failed in justifying the paradigms but also has demonstrated how dangerously the paradigms could be interpreted.
The Nobel laureate Amathya Sen’s discourses on Culture and Development of peoples have been reduced to individual freedom and individual human rights that too as hoodwinks. Perhaps Sen himself has provided space for it in his thesis.
That’s why a nation facing genocide needs a “Struggle and Development” agenda of its own.
Immediately after the genocidal war, a psychiatrist identifying the collective feeling in the nation of the affected people suggested them to engage in folk theatre. For him it was a painkiller. But the genocidal State backed by ‘counterinsurgency’ forces thought of pornography, gala dances and carnivals.
Tamil activists have to realise that dances, festivals, folk theatre, musical instruments etc., may help to temporarily diffuse the focus, but in the instance of a persisting genocide and political injustice, they are not going to extinguish the fire unless the struggle of the times is given to the people.
While the Struggle and Development of a people needs to be based on a different set of characteristics, many development activists are just carried away by the fad of the NGO cultures and think of coming out with art paper brochures for the thatched huts they have built.
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A veteran Eezham Tamil historian Professor S. Pathmanathan wrote the following in a recent publication edited by him in April 2013:
While writing on development in trade, maritime activities and education in Jaffna and in Batticaloa in the beginning of 20th century, Pathmanathan said, “After the establishment of the railway connection between Jaffna and Colombo there was a flow of population to the metropolitan capital. A parallel development, which had some adverse effects on the native economy, was the decline of shipping and trade in the Jaffna Peninsula. It was slow and imperceptible but it had a long term impact. It had a connection with the distortion of local identity, a fact that was beyond the imagination of intellectuals in the community in those days.” (Life and Times of R. Namasivayam, 2013, p. 62)
One of the long-term impacts that may ultimately affect Eezham Tamils today from within, is the exploitation of the section having confirmed Colombo-centric interests by the imperialist Establishments that harp on upholding the ‘unity and integrity’ of the Colombo-centric genocidal State in the island.
Tamil activists have to reject outright any suggestion of ‘partnership’ with genocidal Colombo in the international ‘development’ agendas. They should insist and wage a struggle for a direct deal.
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