The Jaffna I knew
R. Sundralingam
(The writer retired from the Sri Lanka
Police as a Senior DIG and worked for many years at Interpol as a specialist
in narcotics)
I was in Colombo last year for a wedding in the family. My wife and
I were staying at Hotel Taj Samudra. The Tri-Series cricket matches
that were scheduled at that time were a complete wash-out and that gave
us all Taj residents of the day the opportunity to mingle with the cricket
teams who were also billeted in the hotel.
There were a couple of traditional Jaffna Tamil Hindu weddings being
held there and. I observed the new brides and grooms, all in their fresh
wedding finery, catching up with the Sri Lankan cricket heroes and posing
for keepsake photographs; their families scuttled for autographs and
a general spirit of bonhomie and camaraderie pervaded the hotel lobby
even while it was raining cats and dogs outside. Sanath Jayasuriya,
Kumar Sangakara, Mahela Jayawardane were the most sought after for pictures.
Was this something from the past? I say this, because this personified
the spirit of the erstwhile Sinhala-Tamil harmony of which I carry nostalgic
memories, quite different from what prevails today. The very fact that
Tamil couples and their families were scrambling to pose for pictures
with Sinhala cricketers and seeking their autographs show that deep
down, we are all Sri Lankan, proud of our icons, whatever their race
or community. And that gave me so much pleasure remembering the flavour
of what was a more spacious period now past. That was the context in
which my mind harked back to the Jaffna I left in 1972 which is in no
way near to the one I came back to in 2006.
In the background of the ethnic conflict that has been tearing the
fabric of this country for the past so many decades now, I was immediately
taken back to those bygone, not too distant days when such a situation
would have been impossible to ever imagine. It would have been blasphemous
to even think of. That was the golden era of Sinhala-Tamil harmony,
when in the peaceful Jaffna town Tamils, Sinhala and Muslims excelled
in different trading pursuits, all living in harmony. The Sri Lanka
I remember, the Jaffna I knew, were vastly different from today's.
I go back to the days when I served as Superintendent of Police, Northern
Province , from 1966 to 1972 when there was just one senior SP in charge
of each of the country's nine provinces. My charge was what was then
the single Northern Police Division, later separated into the Jaffna
and Vavuniya divisions, through the days of the governments of Dudley
Senanayake (1965-70) and Sirima Bandaranaike (1970- 77).
The national government of Dudley Senanayake led by the UNP came to
power in 1965 on the support extended by the combined strength of the
20 elected Tamil MPs of S.J.V Chelvanayam's Federal Party and G.G. Ponnambalam's
Tamil Congress. The Federal Party member M Tiruchelvan was named the
Minister in the Cabinet responsible for Local Government. His job, clearly,
was to formulate a workable proposition for devolution of power at the
provincial and district levels.
This was the beginning of a conscious conjunction of interests, of
a well defined political reconciliation between the Sinhala and the
Tamil political parties. Senanayake's government with its mandate for
communal amity created tremendous goodwill in the North and the East.
Politically, the biggest talking point of the day was the prime minister's
visit in 1967 to Jaffna to lay the foundation for the model market.
It was an occasion that has been etched in the memory of everyone present
on that occasion or remembers it from that time. The rousing welcome,
the surging applause, the heartfelt reception that greeted the PM has
been scarce repeated and never accorded to any political personality
before. Even as the common man was effusive in his hospitality, leaders
of rival Tamil political parties vied with each other to welcome a leader
who was then the beacon of hope of Sinhala-Tamil harmony, who personified
what all of us wanted for our country. This was the beginning. There
followed a continuous flow of Sinhala politicians and ministers to Jaffna
, something that had only been a trickle earlier. They came on one pretext
or the other, visiting the Tamil areas as a matter of routine. The bond
was palpable and the links continuous.
R. Premadasa who took over later from Tiruchelvam as Minister, Local
Government immediately visited Jaffna and the rest of the province on
assuming office. He initiated several development projects. He was accorded
a welcome that was both warm and welcoming. Five hundred meters of red
carpet was rolled out for him from the Pallaly airport where he landed
to Tinnevelly on the Jaffna road. This trend continued even in Mrs.
Bandaranaike's time with ministers Dr. N M Perera, Dr. Colvin R de Silva,
Felix Dias Bandaranaike, Mathirapala Senanayake, Pieter Keuneman and
host of others all being frequent and regular visitors, planning projects
in the North. The visits of the various ministers and Sinhala politicians
created tremendous goodwill and promoted a close Sinhala-Tamil amity
warmer than ever before. This was the Jaffna I left in 1972.
Law and order was at its very best in this period. The Jaffna man,
then, was a peace loving, reticent personality and the Northern Province
recorded the lowest crime rate in the country. The average homicide
rate for the province was 32 a year and this was mainly over land disputes
or domestic discord. Whatever disputes there were, were confined to
minor pockets arising out of localized issues centred on caste based
temple entry and related biases.
Eradication of caste discrimination
One of my accomplished missions during my posting as the chief of police
in the Northern Province and something that gave me immense satisfaction,
was the eradication of caste discrimination in the region - particularly
in terms of temple entry, use of public wells, etc. Of course, it attracted
the ire of the influential, well placed, high caste members of Jaffna
society who misconstrued this process of emancipation.
I recall with pride that during this period there was little or no
premeditated crime and the use of firearms was a rarity. Crime was largely
petty and offences not serious. Interestingly, it was cycle thefts that
predominated in a region where sometimes a family owned as many as three
bicycles. The only crime necessitating a security forces counter, if
at all, was smuggling.
This was again concentrated in Velvettithurai. There was a flourishing
two-way smuggling across the Palk Straits with VVT as the hub. Spices
and coconut oil was moved out of Sri Lanka while India provided textiles
of a bewildering variety ranging from silks from Kanchipuram and, surprisingly,
Manipur, as well as sarongs bearing the Chanku mark and Paalayakattu
brand, joss sticks and perfumes, Tamil film magazines and song books
etc. and worst of all, opium. Indian opium was one the most sought after
commodities that was smuggled into Sri Lanka at that time. In fact,
this has been an age-old practice with the exchange of coded messages
like, 'I am sending Meenakshi, you send Kamakashi.'
These smuggling rings were often broken on information received and
then set up again and broken once more. The cycle went on with crests
and troughs but smuggling was never completely eradicated. This has
now taken a totally different avatar. There was otherwise no militancy,
no insurgency, no organized crime. There were pockets of rebellious
youth activity, particularly over the policy of standardization of marks
for university admission that was introduced in 1970, but there was
no widespread political agitation with violent and fissiparous elements
in them. This is the Jaffna I left in 1972.
The police, nearly 1,000-strong, manned 24 police stations in the six
districts of the Northern Province and was the main law enforcement
agency. Though Pallaly camp was the military base, the army and navy
played a very minor role in the region. The six army outposts comprised
about 700 soldiers while the naval base in Karainagar had 100 personnel
and two patrol boats that had little to do except occasionally patrol
the shore to prevent illegal migration from Tamil Nadu and the rest
of south India .
That is the irony of the situation today. Illicit immigration posts
were set up along the coast of northern Sri Lanka in the 50s and the
60s to monitor and control the illegal people traffic from South India
to Northern Sri Lanka . Now the tide has turned and the traffic is in
the reverse direction.
There was a craze for Tamil films in the 60s and 70s to such an extent
that the Tamil youth would take boats from Velvettithurai to Nagapattinam
or Vedanaranyam on the Tamil Nadu coast to see the 'first day first
show' of new Tamil film releases and get back the next dawn.
Sinhala Buddhist pilgrims flocked in thousands to Nagadeepa (Naina
Tivu), in the Jaffna peninsula once a year during the Poson Festival
in Anuradhapura . This was a regular and revered pilgrimage, akin to
the visit to Bodh Gaya in India . Legend has it that Nagadeepa was one
of the first places that Lord Buddha visited in the three trips that
Sinhala Buddhist tradition has it that he made to Sri Lanka. The other
two are Sri Pada and Kelaniya or Kalyani in the Gampaha district.
JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera
When the JVP uprising in the early 70s took place and the JVP leader
Rohana Wijeweera was arrested in Amparai in 1971, the Security Council
under Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike decided that he should be confined
to the civilian Jaffna prison, within the Dutch Fort, under my direct
custody. This was primarily for security reasons as the Northern Province
was the safest, most trouble free place in the country then. Historically,
the Dutch Fort was taken over by the Dutch from the Portuguese in 1658.
It had only four principal buildings, the Jaffna prison, the Police
Superintendent's residence, King's House (VIP residence meant mainly
for the Governor and Supreme Court Judges doing the Jaffna assizes)
and the Dutch Presbyterian Church. It's unique layout, imposing ramparts
and designed moat made it a major tourist attraction. Unfortunately,
all that is gone today, having been razed to the ground.
The spin-off for me from the decision to send Wijeweera to Jaffna was
that as the police chief of the Northern Province , I got to personally
interact with him and this helped me understand the JVP thinking of
that time. In fact, this brings to my mind the prescient prediction
of Wijeweera that the Tamil youth will also one day rebel against authority.
Apparently, he could read the writing on the wall, during his stay in
Jaffna prison for over a year, intermingling with the Tamil prison guards
and the Tamil speaking co-prisoners.
The JVP insurgency of 1971 was an eye-opener for the Tamil youth. It
was the precursor of the expression and assertion of the Tamil identity.
As I see it, perhaps, this is where the seeds of Tamil rebellion against
the State were sown.
Education was the life blood of Jaffna . Schools spaced a mile apart
literally spilled over each other. Satchel-carrying school children
rushing for classes at early hours was a common sight. Ambitious adults
drove their children to academic excellence and the rewards that would
bring. This explains the attainment of Tamils in the professions and
many other walks of life. All the MPs from the Northern Province were
lawyers, upright and dedicated men of integrity and honesty, who never
interfered with the administration of the police or other agencies of
the government.
Tamil peasant
This was complemented by the hard working rural Tamil peasant who eked
a hard living from the demanding soil. What they produced was an agricultural
miracle, making their fields bloom in an arid climate. Their hard work
produced a bounty of red onions, bananas, mangoes and much more trucked
in lorries across Elephant Pass to markets in Colombo and elsewhere.
The Jaffna farmer's prosperity was hard earned and well deserved, a
tribute to his spirit of wresting his living from a demanding soil under
extremely dry conditions.
India and Sri Lanka have shared a long and cherished history of harmony
and goodwill, with trade, culture, history, anthropology and religion
all being part of the connection. The efflorescence of religious interactions
in both Hinduism and Buddhism are a matter of everyday life and if Hinduism
found an extended expression in the island, Buddhism came to its own
in this land. The continued and sustained goodwill visits of Indian
luminaries like V.V. Giri, Vijaylakshmi Pandit and Jayaprakash Narayan,
with Jaffna part of their itinerary, nourished these ties.
Even as they visited Sri Lanka as guests of the government, they held
aloft the flag of good neighbourly relations and the undeniable socio-cultural
umbilical cord that binds the two countries together, and Jaffna in
particular. The bonding was so strong that I distinctly recall Vijaylakshmi
Pandit's visit. It was pouring cats and dogs and there was a distinct
possibility of the venue of the meeting that had been arranged having
to be changed from the open air to a confined, closed venue. When the
change was proposed, Mrs. Pandit matter-of-factly retorted, 'When the
Nehru family speaks, rain, thunder or storm, people flock to hear them.'
This proved true. Such was their magic.
Reminiscences can seldom end and I can go on and on. This is more so,
in the context of the present day situation which is a stark study in
contrast with conflict rife and discord the order of the day. My mind
goes back to the days of not so long ago when harmony reigned and the
issues were more esoteric and less existential. Maybe to bring back
peace to Sri Lanka, for Sri Lanka to live up to the dream of being the
ideal democracy, for the country to vindicate the promise of its independence
and be a showpiece cradle of communal harmony, nourishing society and
economic prosperity, there needs to be a more guided vision, a more
motivated political will with no petty fogging on either side.
This is something waiting to happen and maybe from the prevailing chaos,
reason will prevail. It sounds a pipe dream maybe and too idealistic.
But given the education, the exposure, the opportunity, the right of
choice and the right to exercise that choice by free will democracy
will triumph. The Buddhist ideology of harmony, the Buddhist message
of peace and the Buddhist tenet of dharma cannot but prevail in this
land of the Buddha.
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