Remains of the War

I see through houses for they have no windows, I could enter if I dare and look up the chimney but there is no chimney, no roof, just sky for this is what three militant armies have done to Jaffna town once pleasant and prosperous, once the island’s second major city, once alive.

After twenty years of civil war, of being passed around like chewing gum between the LTTE, SLA and the IPKF; after the riots of 1983, the mass evacuation of 1995 when a population of eight lakh dispersed to the south, India and the Gulf, and the ceasefire of 2002, locals are returning to delve through the ash, to unravel the skeins of lives past.

Although there is a Tamil majority in Jaffna, they comprise only 12 percent of the country’s population while the Sinhalese constitute 75 per cent. These numbers appear misleading, for the passions of the LTTE have proved momentous, in both achievement and failure. To this one can attribute financial aid from Tamils abroad to procure weaponry with impunity, and the vocal support of local Tamils who will be silenced not by guns, displacement or the promise of settlement. Asserting this is the LTTE cemetery in Kopai where over 2,000 voluntary victims lie felled, and the family home of Vellupillai Prabhakaran in Valvedditturai-riddled with bullet holes and anointed with graffiti adulations.

As with other ethnic conflicts, it is language and religion that has resulted in Sri Lanka’s fire within. Sri Lankan Tamils, argue the Sinhalese, were unfairly privileged under British rule and continue to enjoy equal status with the natives.

The Sinhalese, sneer Tamils, are bone-lazy. Worse, they have robbed Tamils of their pride, social position and constitutional rights by deeming Buddhism and Singhala the state religion and language respectively.

Says Father Jose (name changed), who works with aid organisation Caritas in Jaffna: ‘‘Without the LTTE, Sri Lankan Tamils would have been annihilated.’’ Describing the assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as a ‘‘historic mistake,’’ the priest says the LTTE should be invited by the government for a roundtable conference to resolve the issue: ‘‘We want what the Sinhalese have; nothing more, nothing less.’’

As a result of this politics of relative deprivation, amidst the confusion of claims, demands and grievances, over one hundred aid workers from Mine Action, Hello Trust, Care International and Save the Children have converged upon Jaffna to rebuild life after war. But this is a task both physically and financially monumental.

A visit to a rehabilitation colony of Caritas International opposite the Jaffna Fort shows shattered walls supplemented with tin sheets, a barbed wire enclosure that states ‘‘intruders will be dealt with minimum force.’’ Father Jose points out that Caritas’ first job remains demining the land. About 50 per cent has been cleared of mines.

Flanking the rehabilitation colony is the Jaffna Public Library, which was burnt down by the SLA in 1981, destroying 90,000 volumes, including irreplaceable palm leaf manuscripts. But what the government burns, it must rebuild, and the reconstruction initiated in 1999 is now complete. Yet, as a team of dedicated people doggedly computerises the filing system of 30,000 books donated by UNESCO and the Ford Foundation, politicos haggle over who will take credit for the work.

The library awaits inauguration and no one is holding their breath. Here, as elsewhere in Jaffna—in mosques, university, hospitals—there is a shared belief. Eelam is a dream. A heroic but realistically unattainable dream. And the next best thing to the dream that led a young man with a penchant for firearms to start a war against the state is reconciliation and unity between the two communities who are one nation.

A coalition government involving the leaders of the LTTE, agree the people of Jaffna, is how the ideals if not the Precious Land itself may be achieved. And this must be done before an impatient army of restless people breaks the ceasefire and ends the peace.

BUT not everything is sullied by war. Nallur Kandaswamy Kovil, one of Sri Lanka’s most significant Murugan temples was spared. St. Mary’s Cathedral offered refuge to hundreds too slow, too optimistic to leave. No one bombed the clock tower, and Hope Hotel and Happy School are portents for the future.

Like elsewhere on Teardrop Island, houses are painted bright blue and mustard, and shaded by gardens of lotus flower and chillies. But I know I am in Jaffna, wounded arm of the state, because unlike elsewhere in Sri Lanka inhabitants of these homes must try hard to ignore the stomp of 50,000 soldiers, hiding behind fortresses, watching the world though a single hole in an indestructible concrete wall.

The writer is a freelancer who visited Jaffna recently