“How did our people get here?”
“How did our people get here?”
This question always comes up repeatedly. “This is the question that was asked during Surya Prakasam 1, when the people were jumping with their hands tied up in a cloth. The Sinhala government closed its mouth and remained silent.
The same question is being asked even now. But the difference is that now, the Sinhala people are shouting. They are jumping into the sky and the earth. They are making the people who have returned to Yarlpanam the headlines of their newspapers. They are making the heroes and heroines of colorful films. Whatever our people do there, whether they bake and sell dosa or graze a flock of sheep, they make it a miracle news.
The people who return to Yarlpanam are like the dead returning while they are alive,” and the land of Yarlpanam, which was a dead city under the control of the LTTE, is coming to life as if the Sinhala army has raised its flag. It also boasts of rebuilding the city of Yarlpanam and completely immersing the people of Yarlpanam in the ocean of education and agriculture once again. How much compassion… how much love… how much concern.
Therefore, the Sinhalese say that the Tamil people are like this. The world is within the fence, they have their own family, their own garden, their own government job, and among the people who lived in oppression, terrorists like the LTTE appeared as an accidental accident. Now, everything has been fixed. These people are simple people who consider receiving free food rations for two weeks, riding in the modern bus of the B.O.C., buying goods at subsidized prices and occasionally seeing the electricity that goes away as a permanent solution to the ethnic problem. That is why the Sinhalese say, “They have abandoned the LTTE and come to our side.”
“No, no. This is not true. The people of Yarlpanam are not like that. They are middle-class people who want to live peacefully and comfortably in their own gardens and houses that they have earned through their hard work. That is why they returned to Valikamam.” Says T.V. Sivasithambaram, who is still leading the coalition despite his age. “Did the people come to Valikamam, who only hate and deny the LTTE?” Not only Sivasithambaram, but also the Tamil groups opposing the LTTE refused to answer the question of a Sinhala journalist. Not only is it not true. They are also very afraid that the answer they give of “yes” will make them lose their only remaining bargaining power. That is why even those who want to destroy the LTTE are relying on the LTTE to keep their political lives alive and not become political orphans. Whether this is a strange jewel is another matter. Therefore, the question arises again. “Is this how our people are treated”?
Or, as those who call themselves researchers, scholars, and intellectuals claim, they follow a caste-based social hierarchy that has the foundations of a landed society. Are our people the kind of people who want to maintain their social power through it and who are inclined to go along with the ruling power, no matter who it is?
From the novelists to the well-educated Ponnambalam Ramanathan, they are the ones who first established the preservation of tradition, both then and now. Some other historians, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the English, explain how they expressed their impressions of our people in their time: “The brainpower of the Tamils and their diligent work were very useful for the good governance of this country in the past. Similarly, they will play an invaluable role in the future as well. They generalize what a British officer said in the 1930s that the British will always seek the help of the Tamils for the good governance of the country and say that there is room to think that our people are like this. Therefore, what is the real face of our people – the true face? Is it impossible to find an answer to the question of what kind of people our people are, whose roots are unknown to any outsider?”
Why did they come from Valikama? Why did they return?
To get closer to the most accurate answer to these questions, we must undertake a historical journey spanning several centuries. Only then can we know what strategies our people used to face the great historical crises of foreign domination whenever they were faced with it. What is the expression and counter-action of the rejection of the slave life that has been imprinted in the subconscious of our people as an indescribable symbol of shame—a scar of inferiority complex—a scar on self-respect?
Our people have seen how many flag-raisings have been carried out by our people during every ups and downs, as a means of preserving tradition through various strategies – as a proactive act against foreign domination, as if they were adapting to it, as a tactic of getting along with foreigners and then going their own way, and have been using so many methods, and have been saving their happiness, their own face, and the soul of their nationhood without losing it to anyone else.
Our people have realized that the main reason for being enslaved by the Portuguese in 1621, the Dutch in 1658, the English in 1796, for becoming a nation in 1948, and for being defeated in 1956, 58, 77, 81, 83 was the lack of a strong national liberation army. As a result of this, the history of the LTTE movement, which emerged as the Tamil liberation struggle group in the 1970s, developed and evolved because they kept the flame of freedom burning in their hearts. The background of this new history is in Sangiliyan, Bhootha Thambi, Bandara Vanniyan, whose names are still unknown and whose faces are still unknown. The truth is that it is in the soil that was washed away for liberation. This is the story of the past. What is the recent story?
In the days after the war began in 1990, when no sound was heard except the sound of gunfire, when there was darkness everywhere, with pieces of scattered muscle and flowing green blood, how did our people live? How did our people overcome the extremely difficult and material obstacles of the war that had appeared before them like never before? As an expression of unwavering determination, the Tamil people reached the limit of their inner strength, the peak of their endurance. What can anyone do to such people? Our people are the honorable ones who lived and kept their fighters and homeland alive!
That is why, even when a massive invasion was faced, and when it did not go well, the enemy changed the story and engaged in deceit, our people followed the path indicated by their wisdom according to the respective circumstances. What was the result of the strategy used by our people? In Valikama, in Vadamaradchi, in Thenmaradchi, along the borders of Southern Tamileelam and in Vanni region – everywhere – our people have set foot and spread out. Wherever our people are, there are also LTTE!
Now Vanni region, which is the potential territory of Northern Tamileelam, is proud. There is no new population influx into Tamileelam.
Therefore, until the LTTE fully develop into a strong national liberation army, how will the Sinhalese understand the strategies that our people are devising while migrating and settling down? The result of miscalculating our people, who have a deep and subtle mentality, is that the Sinhalese will inevitably be caught in a great dilemma.
As Bharathi sang, our people are not those who “make a good torah veena and throw it in the dust of good and bad. “The world will soon learn that those who are “with fiery intelligence” “will never live as a burden on the earth”!
– K. V. Balakumaran
– Liberation Tigers Magazine, May1996.
-Edited by: Tamilarasan Abdulkadhar
(Translation by Tamilpriya)
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