Nittewa

A lot of Sri Lankans who live abroad, as well as some who live in the South of Sri Lanka are under the impression that Sinhala persons cannot live in Jaffna.

First let us look at where this idea comes from. It's something that the Sihala Urumaya and other groups led by the likes of Maduluwawe Sobitha have been shouting about for years. None of these people have ever been to Jaffna, and have no intention of doing so. So they have no proof on which to make the statements they make. But they make them anyway, because they know it provides good argument material for all the Sinhala racists who hang on every word they say and salivate when the speakers at these meeting justify their hatred against the Tamil people.

Now, reality check. Sinhala people cannot own land in Jaffna, or anywhere else the Thesavalamai property and inheritance laws are applied. Not only Sinhala people, but also low caste Tamil people, and Tamil christians etc are also not able to own land under these laws. Atv the moment, to the best of my knowledge the laws apply only to the Jaffna peninsula. This custon has nothing to do with race, and everything to do with the upper caste Tamils protecting their turf. It has not been a contributing factor to the ethnic conflict in any way, and though it is a system that encourages inequality and discrimination based on caste, it is no worse than the Kandyan property and inheritence laws that apply to all the people who live in the Kandyan region, and the Islamic laws that apply to all Muslims in Sri Lanka, particularly those living on the East Coast.

But quite a few Sinhala people do live in Jaffna and they have not been hunted down and killed by the LTTE, nor have they been discriminated against by the Tamil people living in the peninsula. If the pro-war groups were to go to jaffna they would see this with their own eyes.

Performances and exhibitions by Sinhala artists are welcomed in Jaffna. Even if the LTTE does not like it they can't do anything about it because the people of Jaffna flock to the scene. In 2002 Prof Sarathchandra's Maname was performed in Jaffna and half an hour before the show there was not a single seat free. I find Maname boring, but the people of Jaffna (being more cultured than me and open to new experiences) obviously didn't.

But that wasn't the biggest hit in the fest. It was a short play directed by Jerome De Silva about a Sinhala soldier who is killed by the LTTE and in his dying moments shows compassion to a LTTE cadre. When preparations were being made for this everyone was worried that the crowd would react badly to the story and we would all be chased out of town, or worse. Some people even suggested against performing it at all, even after having brought the performers all the way from Colombo. But we were very very wrong. During the play the crowd remained silent and no one was able to gauge their response. As the curtains dropped the crowd erupted and gave the performers and the director a standing ovation. I don't think Jerome has ever got such a response in Colombo.

Last year a group of artists from Colombo and the South who went and displayed their work together with artists from Jaffna also received an above-expected response from the people of the region. The purpose of the show was to see how artists from the South and artists from the North viewed the war and the impact of war differently through their work.

So, all you have to do is go to Jaffna, to see that the people there are not hostile to the Sinhalese. But the people who do not need solid proof before shouting about things they don't understand will continue to say what they say, and there's little we can do to counter the misinformation spread by them.

Moving on, there's also a story going around about how Sinhala students were chased away from the Jaffna university. The real story is that in the intake of 2004, there were 10 students who refuse to take the University of Jaffna. They never even went to Jaffna. They just refused to go to the University of Jaffna stating security concerns. Only one of them was Sinhalese. The rest were all Muslim.

The people who were most puzzled by this were the Sinhala students who were already studying at the University of Jaffna. They're still there, and have been there for over 3 years. They did make a press release saying that they faced no security threat in Jaffna and that they were wondering why those 10 students wanted to stay away. The only explanation for th actions of those 10 is that it was a carefully calculated political play encouraged by a group who wanted to create the image that Jaffna is hostile to Sinhala people. Too bad they could find only one Sinhala student to volunteer for their little gimmick.

Actually the only person who would have a problem living in Jaffna would be someone who has issues with an abundence of good, cheap seafood!

posted by Morquendi @  10:56 PM   || 6 opinion/s ||