Things certainly didn’t end in May 2009 in Sri
Lanka. There ‘thereafter’ of that ‘end’
has been full of allegation and counter-allegation. There have been no gunshots heard but there’s
no end to saber-rattling. It is almost
as though some would want Sri Lanka to return to the days of child abductions,
suicide bombers, the exchange of fire, human shields and such, even as they vow
that such a throw-back is not possible and even abhorred. Perhaps this is because we are in throes of
the battled down the alleys of memory.
As is typical, it is those who believe they ended on the
losing side that shows signs of being in denial. At best they seem to think that the victors
should suffer one way or another. The
focus is less on addressing alleged grievances that are said to have sparked a
three decade clash of arms than on getting some people on the other side
hanged. That’s revenge intent and could
indeed yield closure on the memory-war to some.
The past few weeks have seen a lot of memory-wars. There’s the Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC) and
its courtroom victory over Prof Rohan Gunaratne, the CTC’s considerable
connections with the LTTE’s arms procurement, fund-raining and propaganda
operations notwithstanding. That
decision will probably be appealed.
There was also the deportation of a key ‘money-man’ of
the Nediyavan Group, one of the key outfits that emerged in the post-LTTE
break-up, Jeyakumaran Muneeswarakumar and the impending deportation of Tharmaratnam
Arumaithurai a Tiger who went as Velu and was the last of the 492 MV Sun Sea
‘migrants’. They, like others, plead
harassment and discrimination, even though it is reported that more than 75% of
Tamils who have used the war to obtain Canadian residency have visited Sri
Lanka thereafter. A ‘war’ or post-war
‘trauma’ of one kind or another is a ‘fact’ that needs to be constructed and
sustained. The end of such a memory-war would rebel against the good-life
aspirations of many. This has to be
understood. Even if it were not
understood it is a reality that feeds Sri Lankan politics, both in Sri Lanka
and in the international arena.
Last week also
saw three condemned to death over the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi being
granted the reprieve of a life sentence. The Tamil Nadu state government moved
quickly to get the three offenders released. This is election year in India it
must be remembered. Be that as it may,
the open snub of the Supreme Court underlines the fact that India is an
artificial aggregate, ready to break into constituent parts or more. Tamil Nadu
has a memory issue too, apparently and that’s a long recollect, going back to
pre-India times, i.e. before the British conquered its many fiefdoms and gave
the composite a name.
The war we are
talking about has an Indian element that goes beyond that country’s
interference in the form of arming, training and funding terrorists. The Indian
Peace Keeping Force is another element in the alleyways of memory. The IPKF’s crimes against humanity constitute
a ghost that will be made to fight in that narrow corridor of memory.
There’s another
dimension to the memory narrative. The
play of the United States, Britain and Canada in post-war memory-wars,
code-worded ‘Geneva’ shall we say? What
wars are they worried about here? It
cannot be some abstract love for humanity, considering these nations happen to
be the worst violators of human rights over the past two centuries (and they
are not done yet, let us not forget!).
British High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, John Rankin says
he is noting ‘continued challenges’ and that he had heard about ‘problems faced
by single women and women heads of households, including from sexual
violence’. This was after visiting
Jaffna last week. The man could have
been speaking about any town or district or province in any part of Sri Lanka
or in any member state of the United Nations.
What’s his problem?
He’s upset also about ‘military presence’ although ‘making the British
military present’ in other countries that have no quarrel with him does not
seem to bother him at all.
Rankin talks of those other must-do things in
post-conflict situations: accountability, reconciliation and respect for human
rights. He talks as though is not aware
that politicians and defence officials in his country stand accused of war crimes. He talks as though he is unaware that there
are allegations that half the mosques in his country have been attacked, that
religious-intolerance in Britian is a political fact that cannot be swept under
the carpet, and compared to which, the inter-faith clashes in Sri Lanka are but
kindergarten quarrels.
It is strange that Rankin doesn’t chide his Prime
Minister (or Queen) and the President of the United States (and of course
Harper of Canada) for crimes of omission and commission. The US and UK after
all invaded Iraq on a lie (acknowledged by Rankin’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick
Clegg). Asoka Weerasinghe puts it best:
‘The Yankees, to kill
one man in Iraq, Saddam Hussein, invaded that country on a lie and dropped
88,500 tons of bombs by 2,800 fix-winged aircrafts during 109,000 sorties, as
well as used 2,095 HARM missiles, 217 Walleye missiles, 5,276 guided anti-tank
missiles., killing 1.2 million innocent Iraqis’. He adds, ‘Canada has lacked the guts and
gumption to ask the mighty US for accountability!’ Rankin is
lacking too.
So what’s all this got
to do with memory-alley battles? This
has nothing to do with Sri Lanka, one must conclude. It’s about a memory-issue about a different
war or let’s say different wars, for some are still being fought in
Afghanistan, Pakistan and in proxy-manner in the Middle East. It’s systematic memory-displacement. A denial syndrome of a different kind. It’s not about ostrich-like gaze-turning but
a more sinister and let’s admit it more convenient and effective dealing with
memory-angst. It’s called ‘Let me not
only not think about it, let me think about other things and make others also
think about those very same ‘other things’.’
If it was only a
matter of reconciling ourselves to our tumors, our handicaps, frailties and
such, and therefor acquire for ourselves the power to see those incapacities in
our self-named ‘others’, it would be so much easier, one feels. But the second (and necessary or rather
inevitable) war is dearly fought and in a sense more tenaciously than the
first. In Sri Lanka’s case, this land
(read ‘territory, people, ideologies, cultures, histories and imaginations’) is
battleground not just for Sinhalese and Tamils, but other identity collectives
and, worse, for forces that have nothing ‘Sri Lankan’ in them.
Some might say ‘let’s
develop and that will sort it out’. Others say ‘devolve’. Still others, as we pointed out, might say
‘hang the Rajapaksas’. Then there would
be those who say ‘let’s change the regime; that will get us to the finishing
line fast’. We would be naïve indeed to
think that one or all of these would deliver us to a Sri Lanka that gets beyond
post-war-memory-alley-war.
Let us return to the questions we began with.
When do wars
end? Do they end with surrender, with
military annihilation of protagonist, the recovery of livelihoods,
reconstruction of houses, hospitals, schools, return of the displaced, erasing
off things with military signature, free and fair elections and a shaking of
hands all around? Do wars end that way,
ever, though? Isn’t it true that the
wars that have truly ‘ended’ for all practical purposes those which are beyond
recall and whose identity-ties have been smudged by the movement of people and
dwarfed by event after earth-shattering event?
Let us be sober about the challenges ahead of us.
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