Archive for the ‘Diaspora’

Eelam experiments: The transnational versus local realities

‘Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize.’[1] Chimamanda Adichie I was inspired by the above words of Chimamanda Adichie talking about the ¨Danger of a single story’ and I reflected on how true this has been and will be in the case of Sri Lanka and its instrasigient history of political misfortune and human suffering. It’s been a year since the decisive end of the military offensive that had succeeded in re-claiming territorial sovereignity of the Sri Lankan state, but it was a victory that failed in claiming the Tamils as an integral and respected part of it is citizenry. The recently concluded elections in Sri Lanka which registered a low voter turn out in the North & East  draws focus to a deeper political malaise. While procrastinations and empty promises along with an impotent Tamil political representation within the country symbolise a crisis in Tamil political…

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Fighting Windmills? Diaspora and Militarism in Post-Conflict Lanka

“Just then they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that rise from that plain. And no sooner did Don Quixote see them that he said to his squire, “Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. Do you see over yonder, friend Sancho, thirty or forty hulking giants? I intend to do battle with them and slay them. With their spoils we shall begin to be rich for this is a righteous war and the removal of so foul a brood from off the face of the earth is a service God will bless.” “What giants?” asked Sancho Panza.”Those you see over there,” replied his master, “with their long arms. Some of them have arms well nigh two leagues in length.” “Take care, sir,” cried Sancho. “Those over there are not giants but windmills. Those things that seem to be their arms are sails which, when they are whirled around by the wind, turn…

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Tamil Diaspora in Post-War Sri Lanka

arun GV 2

One year ago today, the Sri Lankan army brutally and decisively ended its military campaign against the LTTE. The once hoped quiet dissolution of the national question through negotiation, devolution, and constitutional amendments were replaced by the unambiguous nature of the bullet, and the ferocity of the bomb. From firecrackers, and dancing on the street, to quiet celebration, and outright anger and despair, Sri Lankans the world over represented the full spectrum of emotion as President Rajapaksa declared victory on local television stations. But victory, for whom? For many of the one million strong Tamil Diaspora in Toronto, Sydney, London, Paris, and the various other cities and towns they reside in, the images splashed across the international news websites, and Tamil blogs all but confirmed a long held truth of the Tamil community: that the Sri Lankan state will never provide institutional safeguards for the rights of the Tamil people. And the legitimate grievances that have unnecessarily caused a generation…

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Curated list of best Twitter accounts by Sri Lankan bloggers

Visit http://twitter.com/groundviews/sl-bloggers to read updates from Sri Lanka’s leading bloggers. Resident in the country as well as in the diaspora, these Twitter feeds feature updates ranging from the quirky and personal to the incisive and political. This list complements our curated news sources on Twitter. Repost This Article

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In conversation with Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu

Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu is the Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I begin this interview with a pointed question, asking Dr. Saravanamuttu to flag anything the government has done well since it assumed power in 2005, in the domains of governance and human rights. I go on to ask Dr. Saravanamuttu why it is that what he sees as enduring challenges to human rights, peace, development and governance are not issues the majority of voters agree with, or are able to discern. We also talked about the nature of economic activity and development in the North and the East, where Dr. Saravanamuttu noted that “economic development by itself cannot be the sole instrument of national unit, reconciliation, integration”. Sri Lanka’s political culture and the growing intra-party violence within the UPFA, the future of Tamil politics, reconciliation, the role of the international community, prospects for dissent and democratic debate post-war and modes of progressive engagement between the Tamil diaspora…

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  • 19 Apr, 2010
  • 2 Comments
  • Diaspora

Shopping expedition in Little India: of Shalwars, samosas and Bollywood clones

Hanji is the word I picked off the air in Southall where I worked for a firm of solicitors. Travelling the bus 120 I could be in Bombay for hardly a word of English is spoken here. So when I sat next to a Punjabi woman she thought I too must be Indian and she started to chat in Punjabi. Do I tell her I speak no Punjabi, Gujarathi or Marati or do I nod wisely. Not wanting to cause offence I chose the middle way and remembered the word‘Hanji’; the stock response of my Sikh colleague when responding to her boss’s call. Hanji means okay. Rather foolishly I nodded my head and said, “Hanji”. I was well and truly caught this time. She took me for an Indian and carried on talking. Now I kept nodding my head vigorously and prayed the bus would get to my destination. I got off the bus and saw her no more. Southall…

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Life is no better for many migrants in UK

When I came to Britain for the first time in 1976 there were hardly any Sri Lankans except those who came to study. If ever I saw a Sri Lankan I was more than thrilled and I never turned down an invitation to a meal since I was surviving on fish and chips and the occasional long-grain rice and curry with green pepper instead of chillies and throwing in papkrika for chilli powder. This time round in 2001 I could not walk the streets without spotting a Sri Lankan shop selling everything from spices to Karuthakolumbu, from dried fish to fresh seer fish. You are practically at home in London. But all is not well with the Tamils in the UK. Having lived my younger days in Jaffna where divorce was unheard of, domestic violence only among a very few, I was shocked to find that quite a number of Tamil women are subjected to beatings and verbal abuse on…

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The Revenge of a Tamil Man

Screen shot 2010-03-22 at 6.18.42 PM

Some months ago, I arrived in Colombo on a trip to London from the Far East with Sri Lankan Airline. When the transit is more than eight hours, they put you in an overnight hotel with basic facilities, but good food, Lion Lager and sea breeze to go as extras. On the drive back from the hotel, the taxi driver starts a conversation: “Sir from India?” Statistically speaking, his is a good guess. Almost a quarter of humanity being Indian, the average Sri Lankan having no reason to stop in Colombo on transit and no obvious visuals on me that distinguish me as Sri Lankan, it is a good way to get a conversation going. His wit was at odds with my other similar experience. At the first formal dinner as a graduate student at Bridgetown University in England, the academic sitting next to me opened the conversation by saying: “You must be from Sri Lanka”. I was quite pleased,…

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Saying what I want, when I want…

Five years have gone by since my entrance to the western hemisphere. Earlier inroads were always temporary; this time around it was reason to obtain citizenship. Which is done and dusted, the fat lady has sung. I am now supposedly a world citizen, no that’s not right, I don’t hold an UN passport, and sorry I digress. But please do try to read between the lines? Recent Christmas holidays in my motherland, the Paradise Isle, and actually relaxing more than getting blind drunk enabled me to think a lot. Yes, I do occasionally think. Most of the thinking came from a question raised by a Paradisian of Dravidian descent on New Years Eve. Her question to me was if I were enjoying my newfound freedom of expression in the western world. I smiled and just nodded my head, as the Galle Face Hotel terrace was not the forum for it. This week at lunchtime other than the usual Ham and…

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Post-war Sri Lanka: A conversation with Shanthi Sachithananthan

Shanthi Sachithananthan, the Chairperson of Viluthu has been featured on Groundviews during the war. This interview, conducted late 2009 after war’s end, considers significant developments over the course of the year including the demise of the LTTE. Shanthi talks about the need to change the timbre of political interactions between the South and the tamil peoples. She also speaks about the Tamil diaspora, noting that their tactics at the time pandered to the mindset of the Tamil people in the country. She noted that in the future, more constructive engagement was necessary, pegged to treating Tamils in Sri Lanka as agents of change, and not just as helpless victims. Noting that post-war, there is greater space for civil society in the North and East in comparison to the South, Shanthi observes that the dominance of large political parties in the South leave no place for independent groups or smaller political parties, leading to elections where the winners are not necessarily…

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Interview with Prof. Kumar David

Prof. Kumar David, an electrical engineer by training, regular columnist in traditional print media and a frequent commentator on Groundviews, talks about what’s left of leftist politics in Sri Lanka, the end of war and its impact on Tamil diaspora juxtaposed against th autocratic and essentially one-party rule in Sri Lanka. I also asked him about the growing web and Internet censorship, which in a recent column he had referred to as a disturbing retrogression into a Lanka Internet Dark Age (LIDA). Repost This Article

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An open letter to the Remote Control Diaspora

Note: Contrary to what you might assume from the title, this is not a general onslaught on the diaspora at large. This is based on two recent incidents that really ‘got my goat,’ in a matter of speaking. Therefore, I’d like any readers who’d fall into the bracket of the ‘diaspora’ to please take the contents of this letter in that context, and not as an attack on anyone who’s ever stepped off the shores of sunny Lanka. Also, I’d like to add that I have absolutely no political affiliation or agenda to achieve by writing this. It was just two pieces of news that really got to me, so I just had to write this. That’s it. Dear RCD, I was having a meal at home recently when I heard this piece of news repeated on the radio. “…two men caught while trying to buy missiles and hundreds of AK-47 automatics rifles for the now routed Tamil Tigers in…

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  • 7 Jan, 2010
  • 5 Comments
  • Diaspora,
    Kandy

Don’s Diary: One week in Sri Lanka

Strict Instructions – where is the “please”? (Avoid taking the drink bottle out of the canteen)

Saturday: Fly from Heathrow to Colombo; uneventful journey; drink gin and tonic, take long sleep. Hear that an aunt passed away just before departure. Sunday: Catch up on sleep and go to funeral. My cousin goes through religious rituals, with the priest dragging on. He is a nice guy, my cousin, meticulously following all instructions from the priest. When in his position, at my dad’s funeral a few months ago, I had a quiet word with the priest: “Itupaththu Oraam nootaaNdu aiya, vEhamaahap pOngO (it is the twenty first Century, priest, go faster)”, and he obliged. Doesn’t matter though, because the only person at the event with good knowledge of Sanskrit was my dad, and he was dead. At my aunt’s funeral, I think of her amazingly peaceful life. “Wouldn’t hurt a fly” is most appropriate. Monday: Email from a friend inviting me to an event on Sunday afternoon in memory of Kailasapathy, the founding President of the Jaffna University….

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Engage the Diaspora

As all issues pertaining to ethnicity in Sri Lanka the role of the Diaspora Tamils has become a point of contention in Sri Lanka. As usual this group is defined in monolithic terms by most commentators within Sri Lanka and its diversity of opinion is overlooked. There is little effort to understand the diversity within this group or to engage them in a constructive manner for the benefit of long-term peace and prosperity in Sri Lanka. The divergence of political opinions/beliefs within the Tamil Diaspora ranges from supporting a separate state in the North/East of Sri Lanka, to a fair political solution within the framework of Sri Lanka that addressed the legitimate grievances of the minorities. There are also many who are not active on issues regarding Sri Lanka and are more preoccupied in making a life for themselves in the countries they have emigrated to. If you were to add the layers of the second and the third generation…

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The Relevance of Human Rights – A Lankan Perspective

[Editors Note: Prof. Rajan Hoole, co-founder of UTHR (J) and co-author of the Broken Palmyra, presents this piece exclusively to Groundviews for Human Rights Day 2009]. One important indicator of Human Rights protection in modern society is successful enforcement of the rule of law. Human Rights activism in Lanka came about as a response to special challenges arising from progressive deterioration of the rule of law. The law is technical in its workings. Good laws and good law enforcement advance human rights, and their opposites lead to conflict and crisis. The strengthening of institutional aspects of human rights, the promotion of a human rights culture and the ambient political mores in which these operate, interact with and influence one another. Deterioration of one will undermine the others. Sinhala Only was bad in law and was a reflection of the changing political culture. It resulted in communal violence in 1956 and 1958. Law enforcement did not go so far as to…

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About Groundviews

Located at the Centre for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Groundviews is a citizen journalism website that uses a range of genres and media to highlight critical perspectives on governance, reconciliation, human rights, the arts and literature, democracy and other issues. The site has won two international awards, including the prestigious Manthan Award South Asia in 2009. The grand jury's evaluation of the site noted, "What no media dares to report, Groundviews publicly exposes. It's a new age media for a new Sri Lanka... Free media at it's very best!"

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