There’s no way around it. Richard will be remembered. He will be remembered and others will be forgotten or rather remain forgotten. Aruni Walker put things in perfect in the following elegant and thought-provoking poem titled ‘Remembering Richard,’ which she posted on Facebook:
Let the dead be dead
And not become topics for debate!
Rest in peace, with untold narratives,
Like the first draft of a book—
Unpublished.
Their story, shall only be known
On the tombstone
By crows,
And occasional May beetles.
Richard, as in Richard De Zoysa, abducted and murdered during the tenure of President Ranasinghe Premadasa. Aruni was probably inspired to write the poem by the noise regarding Richard produced by Ashoka Handagama’s film ‘Ranee,’ which was about Richard’s mother Manorani Saravanamuttu, who, after her son’s death, came into prominence as a human rights activist.
I responded by posting an article written more than ten years ago titled ‘Remembering Richard and forgetting Ranjithan,’ Ranjithan was the Convenor of the Inter University Student Federation back in the late eighties. He was captured, tortured and killed.
Aruni responded: ‘You’ve written about selective remembrance. I feel nothing is needed. Just let that vacuum be there, that’s it.’
It is an option worth considering, I told her, because ‘the dead, after all, have been unburdened of memory,’ but observed nevertheless that such a choice tends to serve the interests of the powerful.
Portraits are painted that may or may not resemble the person being portrayed. There’s been criticism, for example, of Handagama’s portrayal of Manorani Saravanamuttu. He has responded saying that it is his piece of fiction and that others are welcome to their personal narratives. The problem is that we are not talking about fictional characters. So, in a sense, if narrative is not in the very least prompted by an honest effort to do justice to the subject, then letting it remain untold has some virtue.
The problem is that vacuums get filled, whether we like it or not. Events and personalities are remembered. They are written and they are read. There’s history and there are histories. Some are privileged, that’s the problem. Historiography is a competition where some versions get privileged and some are not.
Aruni posted the poem on the 23rd of March. Coincidentally, as I learned from another Facebook post, the 23rd was also Ranjithan’s birthday. His sister, Niranjani, who mentioned the fact, also wrote the following:
Yesterday was [the] 23rd of March. If my elder brother Ranjithan Gunaratnam would have been alive , he would be 64 years. But he was tortured and killed during the dark period in 89 by the Premadasa Ranil regime along with thousands of other dear ones. I personally know that my brother was abducted and held at the Wahara Camp in Kurunagala because we, myself, my mother and my father, were too taken to the same camp. The army personnel confirmed [to] us that my brother was under their custody. We were kept separately and we were shown to him several times. But unfortunately we couldn’t see him as we were blind folded. Definitely he would have seen us. We were detained there for five days. I could still remember how my mother wrapped me with her saree and held tightly closer to her. No words to express the fear the agony the mental torture that we went through. But above all we lost our dear “Periya.”
A few days ago I visited an old friend in Doratiyawa, Kurunegala, who I hadn’t seen in almost 40 years. I asked him about one of his friends who I had met just once. Gamagedara Prematillake joined the JVP after a bomb was thrown at his house. His last words to my friend was, ‘You will most probably never see me again.’ He was killed in the jungles of Sigiriya. He had passed the SLAS Examination, the results being released after he was killed. I remembered Prematilleka. My friend could not forget him, for Prematilleka had mentioned him in several diary entries, thanks to which he, my friend who had actually urged Prematilleka to leave the JVP, was arrested and held for several months. In fact he hadn’t been home when the police arrived. His father and brother were proxy-arrested and released only after he handed himself in. Prematilleka’s family, if still alive, would remember. Maybe other friends too. That’s about it.
Why Richard and why not Ranjithan, we can ask. Why a film on Manorani Saravanamuttu and nothing on Rajamani Gunaratnam? Freedom of choice? Is that a sufficient enough plea?
I was searching for things written about Ranjithan and Richard and came across an article I had written seven years ago titled ‘No movies on the collective dead, ladies and gentlemen.’ Interestingly, I had forgotten about it. Anyway, I asked:
Do we talk about how there are certain names remembered while the nameless are numbered? Do we ask how value is attached to certain victims while others are ‘disappeared’ into a collective, marked by a number?
And I suggested:
Ask 100 readers of English newspapers about those who were killed in 88-89 by the security forces, the police or state-run vigilante groups. Ask them to name victims. Check how many can come up with even a single name apart from Rohana Wijeweera and Richard de Soyza. Therein lies a story, therein lies a narrative about selectivity, the politics of forgetting, the downsizing of guilt.
I also mentioned that a well-known literary critic and poet Chulananda Samaranayake, in a collection of poems titled ‘Glimpses of a Shattered Island’ had recounted his experiences in one of the many camps for suspected JVPers. He had been asked if he had ever seen a mass grave. He was informed that he would be buried in one. In one of the poems, he wrote what he did not say that day:
‘Dear Sir,
no point of asking such question
from a man who has already been buried
in a mass grave.’
I opined that perhaps Chulananda has the last line on the condition of amnesia we’ve discussed here. For him, I observed, everyone is buried in a mass grave, ‘some in uniform and some in rags’. He puts it thus:
‘This is a country
buried in the silence, injustice, betrayal.’
It’s all selective and this selectivity is no accident but a deliberate product of political convenience, he would no doubt agree. Death is a leveller, they say. Remembrance also levels, in a sense. It elevates some and re-slays and buries others. No films for the collective dead.
Aruni’s assertion reminded me of something that Shiran Deraniyagala is supposed to have said about archaeological artefacts, ‘if we can’t ensure protection, it is better to let them remain buried.’ So, if we can’t recreate to some degree of accuracy, it is better to let the dead remain buried.
They won’t be, though. Pillage is not the preserve of treasure-hunters or maybe it is, for there are all kinds of treasures that can enrich in all kinds of ways. If desecration is inevitable, justice demands that the desecrators be called out. Then again, one could argue that any excavation is a form of pillage. Why soil our hands, one could argue.
Aruni, inadvertently I believe, has created a topic for debate. I wish I was endowed with the composure that enables equanimity, let’s say. I just found it hard to look the other way when those murdered are re-murdered, sometimes even in the name of keeping their memory alive. She would forgive me, I think.
[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']
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