நேற்று கரிகாலனின் வலைப்பதிவில் “Saturday Review சிவநாயகம்” அவர்களின் Sri Lanka: Witness to History என்ற புத்தகத்தின் விமர்சனத்தைப் படிக்கும் வாய்ப்புக் கிட்டியது. தமிழ்நாதம் இணையத்தளத்தில் பராசக்தி சுந்தரலிங்கம்(அவுஸ்திரேலியா) என்பவர் எழுதிய விமர்சனம் அது. மிக அருமையான நடையில் எழுதப்பட்டிருக்கும் இந்தப் புத்தகத்திலிருந்து சில பக்கங்களை வருடி இட நினைத்தேன். புத்தகத்தைப் படிக்க நினைப்பவர்களுக்காக, முதலாவது அத்தியாயத்தை இங்கே பகிர்ந்துகொள்கிறேன். இணையத்தில் வாங்க முடியுமா என்று விசாரிக்க வேண்டும். சொல்கிறேன்.
Srilanka: Witness to History
1956: A JAFFNA-COLOMBO TRAIN JOURNEY & a TASTE OF “SINHALA ONLY”.
In the history of Sri Lanka - or Ceylon as it was known then - the year 1956 was a watershed. It marked a turning point in the relations between the Sinhalese and Tamil peoples in the post-independence period. What happened that year was grandiloquently referred to as a “social revolution”, an ushering in of the age of the common man. It was in part that, but what it effectively did was to separate the “Sinhalese sheep” from the “Tamil goats”, and make both conscious of their separate identities. The author of that social revolution was an Oxford-educated pompous orator called Solomon West Ridgeway Dias (SWRD) Bandaranaike. He was the son of a Sinhala “Maha Mudaliyar” - a title he earned by paying obeisance to the colonial British governors of the day, and naming his son after two of them.
June 5 that year was an important milestone. That was the day the Official Language Bill making Sinhalese the sole official language of the country was introduced in parliament. While making Tamils virtually illiterate overnight in the transaction of public business, the bill proved to be a millstone round the neck of the country as well, dragging it into ultimate tragedy and ruination.
One does not know how to explain it, why events in the country used to impinge on my own life - a mere spectator as I was - in some way or another. That day was the beginning. I was taking train to Colombo, 250 miles away, from my home village in the north. I got into the night mail train at Kokuvi1, complete with pillow and reading material, and got into a comer seat of a 3rd class compartment. I was a law student then, having resigned my editorial staff job in the Ceylon Daily News to satisfy a parental wish. Securing a comer seat was the ambition of every “Gandhi class” passenger. The minor risk of your neighbour falling asleep on your shoulder notwithstanding, a comer seat makes a big difference to the II-hour night journey in a packed compartment. The next station was Jaffna, and hordes of people wait there ready to rush in. As the train pulled into the station I witnessed a strange sight. The platform was full of passengers and belongings, but no one, not one, was making any attempt to get in. It was like being shown a still shot in a movie when you are expecting fast action. I peeped out and asked the nearest person what had happened. He merely mumbled “some trouble in Colombo”. The train showed no signs of moving nor did the passengers show any inclination to get in. The station master, the guard and the engine driver were in a huddle, while the people waited anxiously. Finally, when the train began moving after a long delay, none of the passengers got in. There I was, virtually alone in the compartment, master of all I surveyed, relishing the prospect of stretching my five foot frame on the seat, undisturbed until I reached Colombo. Any so-called “some trouble in Colombo” did not seem to me, in my youthful bravado, daunting enough to put me off my journey.
It was eight in the morning when I blinked my eyes and looked out ofthe window. The train which should have reached journey’s end at Colombo Fort station around five odd in the early hours of the morning was yet at Ragama station several miles away. And then came a rush of passengers. They were all office workers going to Colombo. My sole occupancy of the compartment was no longer there. It was then I heard some commotion. As I looked out, my neighbour, an elderly type in shabby black coat and sarong, possibly a railway worker, motioned to me and said something in Sinhala. I realised he was trying to caution me to sit still. He was obviously warning me against some danger. That danger came soon enough.
A gang of thugs stormed into my compartment making threatening noises against all Tamils, and there I was, the only Tamil around, an obvious sitting target. They came for me. The ruffian in front barged in, swept my glasses off my face, and began dragging me. My determined resistance apart, the thugs faced another disadvantage. The 3rd class carriages were Rumanian imports that did not provide much leg space between passengers on opposite sides. To the thugs it meant knocking against the knees of other Sinhala passengers before pulling me out from my comer seat. Except my blackcoated neighbour who was trying to reason out with my attackers not to harm me (who was immediately silenced with a blow on his face) the others merely watched, the women with sullen disapproval, but all of them fearing to come to my defence. The intention of the ruffians was very clear; they had a brilliant thought in their heads, to push me out of the moving train! Despite my desperate struggle, they managed to drag me near the open door. For a moment, Death stared me in the face. But some hand of Providence that looks after people in such situations, interceded at that point. The second thug who was helping the first who had his hands on me, stumbled and fell over the latter making him lose his grip on me. That was my rugby scramble chance. I crawled my way out and fled towards the guard’s compartment in the rear; which could not have helped much except gain a little time. But the moment of reckoning had passed. There was no sign of pursuers. The train was slowing down and Maradana station loomed into view. I ran back to my compartment, some of my fellow passengers helped me with my things, some good Samaritan found my glasses for me, and seeing police officers on the platform I quickly descended. Colombo Fort was my intended station, not Maradana, but that was a negligible consideration.
The police inspector to whom I complained looked a harassed man, but he asked me to stay around anyway. I was then put into a police van surrounded by armed policemen, and the vehicle finally made its way towards Khan clock tower at Pettah. A small mob was there, and no sooner they detected my presence in the van, they got into action. A hail of stones hit the wire mesh on one side of the van, and the inspector ordered the driver to make a quick getaway. I then realised why the poor police inspector was looking harassed. Hours later, after a long wait at the Fort police station where I was given a welcome cup of tea, I was deposited home at Wellawatte safely. That was the monring after June 5, and I was beginning to get a taste of the mood in Colombo. Looking back at my train experience that morning, it dawned on me, at the 25th year of my life that bitter truth - I was a Tamil! What I had failed to realise for myslef, those thugs taughts me. It was the kind of experience that changed my outlook in life forever. It set me thinking. I tried to re-live that experience; the humiliation at the hands of fellow humanbeings to whom I had done no harm. that near-brush with Death. Why did they want to kill em? they did not know me, who I was. I was no one in particular as far as they were concerned. Tge only, and the only reason for their intended act of murder was that I happened to be born a Tamil, and identified as one.
But the enormity of the humilation heaped on the Tamil people and the Tamil leaders on that day - June 5 - was something I was to learn leater. Eight years after independence, that was the first of many subsequent mob attacks on Tamils. In attacking the Tamil leaders who sat in silent protest over the introduction of the “Sinhala Only” bill in parliament that day, the pro-government mobs made two things clear: that Tamils cannot claim language rights, but what was worse, they did not have even the right to protest!
The Tamil Federal Party under the leadership of that gently christian, Samuel James Velipillai (SJV) Chelvanayakam believed in the philosophy of non-violent action as a way of protest against injustice. Tamils had tradionly come under the influence of the Indian Chandhian movement for independence from the time of the Jaffna Youth Congress of the 1920s and 30s. The value of the concept of Satyagraha was, unlike in the case of the Sinhalese, ingrained in the Tamil mind. It is this that led them to organize what they believed was a peaceful Satyagraha at the parliament end of the GAlle FAce Green (but disallowed) on that momentous day. IT was like the silent sit-ins that were part of the anti-nuclear campaign in England headed b British philosopher Bertrand Russell. When about 200 Federal Party volunteers led by Mr.Chelvanayakam and other M.P.s gathered for the protest, a violent mob gathered round and set upon them mercilessly. Mr.v.Navaratnam, an important functionary of the party and then M.P. for Kayts, recounting the incidents of the day wrote in his book - THE FALL AND RISE OF THE TAMIL NATION (1995) - excerpts:
The moment the volunteers and leaders reassembled at the (Galle Face) hotel end, a waiting mob of more than a thousand Sinhalese toughs fell on them like a pack of wolves in a most inhuman and cowardly attack. They (the satyagrahis) were thrashed and felled prostrate on the ground, Their placards were seized and the wooden poles used as clubs. Some were trampled upon, kicked, beaten and spat upon.
Not a single satyagrahi raised his hand in retaliation, except Dr. Naganathan. Five ruffians singled him out and chased him to the end of the promenade. He turned and met them alone with his fists and legs.. …satyagraha or not. Naganathan by nature was one who would never brook an insult to his manhood.
The police arrived on the scene and sent mobs off the Green to the Galle Face Centre Road. The beleagured-and exhausted satyagrahis regrouped and marched towards Parliament House under a hail of stones, hoots, and filthy abuse. To add to their misery, the clouds burst and a heavy downpour of rain soaked them to their bones.
As the day advanced, and the Colombo harbour workers were let out, the mobs swelled until about mid-day and an estimated 10,000 crowded the entire length ofthe Galle Face Centre Road and around Parliament building, Tamils spotted on the road were beaten up and thrashed. Chelvanayakam’s two sons, Manoharan and Vaseeharan were caught and roughly tossed in the air repeatedly, Many prominent Tamil professionals and others were caught, stripped and thrashed. The violence spread throughout the city of Colombo, to the roads, public transport, shops, business houses; wherever Tamils were seen, they were attacked.
The police stopped the satyagrahis at the northern end of the Galle Face Green and blocked their way to the precincts of Parliament House. The volunteers sat down peacefully where they were stopped, and remained there for the rest of the day. A prominent Sinhalese lawyer of Colombo, Mr.Paranavitane of the law firm of De Silva and Mendis, and a Roman Catholic priest, Father Xavier Thani Nayagam, the famous Tamil Scholar, emerged out of the crowds and sat down with the satyagrahis. The gesture did not pass unnoticed by the Press.
Shortly before Parliament sitting was due to commence at 2 p.m., the Prime Minister appeared on the steps of Parliament House and addressed the crowds. He looked up at the skies and remarked that the rains were going to come down again and the demonstrators would cool off. He asked the people to go home peacefully.
Mr.Amirthalingam, M.P. for Vaddukoddai was struck on the head by one of the stones thrown by the mob. At 2 p.m. Mr.c.Suntharalingam, M.P. for Vavuniya took him with his bleeding head and entered the chamber of the House of Representatives where the Official Language Bill was being introduced. They were greeted with derisive laughter and cries of ‘wounds of War’ The satyagraha was called off at 5 0′ clock in the evening. About 18 injured volunteers and Mr.Y.N.Navaratnam, M.P. for Chavakachcheri were warded at Dr.Rutnam’s Private Hospital at Union Place, Slave Island.
Elsewhere, in the Eastern Province, in the Gal Oya valley where the first planned Sinhala colonisation took place, there were ten days of sporadic rioting in which an estimated 150 people died. (B.H.Farmer, A Divided Nation, London Institute of Race Relations, Oxford University Press, 1963). In Batticaloa, also in the East, a hotel was burned down and two Tamils were shot dead.
On June 15, 1956, the “Sinhala Only” Bill was passed by 66 votes to 29. The Left M.P.s from the Lanka Sarna Samaja Party (LSSP) and the Communist Party, all Sinhalese with the sole exception of Mr.P.Kandiah, (CP), M.P. for Point Pedro, voted against the Bill, along with Tamil M.P.s of other parties. But even these parties of the traditional Left were to capitulate in later years in the face of an assertive Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism.
Two divergent views expressed during the language debate by two notable Left politicians of that time are worth recalling. Dr.S.A.Wickremasinghe, leader of the Communist Party pointed out that parity of status was accorded to all languages in China, and also in the Soviet Union, where there were sixteen official languages. He appealed to the Government to encourage the minorities by giving them the right to use their own language. In reply to that argument, Mr. Philip Gunawardene, Minister of Agriculture and Food, observed that in Wisconsin in the U.S.A. 80 percent of the inhabitants were of German origin and spoke German in their homes, while in New York there were more Jews than in Israel, yet there was no demand in the U.S.A. for official status for the German or Hebrew languages. (Keesings’s Contemporary Archives, July 28 - August 4, 1956, p.15012). There was no comparison in both situations as cited by Mr.Gunawardene, but then he was a freakish kind of politician. Once acclaimed in his home country as the “Father of Marxism”, he went to Wisconsin University in the U.S. to do a degree in Agricultural Science. On his return he had not only outgrown his Marxism, but also developed a taste for Sinhala chauvinism.
As far as the Tamils were concerned, it was not simply a question of language rights, or the fear of a loss of job opportunities. Their identiy as Ceylonese was being questioned. In beginning to lose their sense of belonging to the country in which they were born and bred for centuries, a feeling of alienation had to set in. As for me, used to english as the spoken common language - a middle class advantage no doubt - and having studied and owrked with Sinhalese without any feeing or seperateness it was hard reconciling oneself to a new unpleasant reality. One way of escapism was to clutch at old memories.
Sri Lanka: Witness to History - A Journalist’s Memoirs, 1930-2004
by Subramaniam Sivanayagam
ISBN 0-9549647-0-5
hard cover, 700 pages
- published, 2005, by Sivayogam, 180-186, Upper Tooting Road, London, SW17 7EJ
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