Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Sunday, April 14, 2013
Saturday, April 13, 2013
Friday, April 12, 2013
Parai and Thampaddam of Northern Sri Lanka!
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AN ENEMY WITHIN !!
BUT ITS VIGOR VIBRATES OVER THE SHELLS OF OPPRESSIONS!!!
SUDALAIAMMA VAKKUMOOLAM
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 Marapachi
Presents
Vakkumoolam
&
Sudalaiamma
Text:
V. Geetha
Direction:
A. Mangai
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In our unjust and cruel society, struggles for
equality, dignity and justice have to reckon
with
violence, sexual torture and death. A majority
of
our poor is
engaged in these
struggles, which they must wage even as they continue with their
everyday lives -
making a living, raising children,
taking care of
the elderly... These two plays
are attempts at understanding lives led in the shadow of state violence and apathy
on the one hand, and in the uneasy yet nurturing glow
of sorrowing affection
on the other. Both plays are
fictional explorations of actual events.
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Contact Details:
Marappachi, 4, Veerasamy Road, Kurinji Nagar,
Perungudi, Chennai - 600 096
Ph: 044-24963079 Email:
marappachitrust@gmail.com
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Vakkumoolam
Author's
Note: V. Geetha
Vakkumoolam
(Testimony) centres around
a peasant woman, Nagamma, who
dares to fall in love with and marry a young dalit man. She is ostracised by
her community, but undeterred she takes
them on, exposing
their many acts of
local corruption, deception
and violence. In the event, she is falsely
accused of theft
and arrested. She
suffers unspeakable acts
of torture and
is made to witness
the continued sexual assault
of her daughter.
All this happens in
early 1977 in
the last months
of the Emergency.
Once she is released, she begins her long journey towards justice.
She is distraught and shocked to find that the
man who is to investigate the crimes against her was one of her torturers.
Drawing on Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden the play deals with
issues of impunity and accountability. We came to know of Nagamma's story
from an article written by Mythily Sivaraman
(of the CPM
and AIDWA) for
the Economic and Political Weekly
and we see
this play as
a tribute to
her politics of justice and empathy.
Director's
Note: A. Mangai
In
our conversations about
violence, emotions tend
to predominate: even as we give vent to sorrow, rage and pain we risk
losing sight of the everyday. This is especially so with discussions of
sexual violence, where symbols,
metaphors and notions of honour take over. As far as state violence is
concerned, the terror
it arouses overwhelms
all else. Yet,even as pain and sorrow prove
insistent, people continue to live. How do we mark the experience of pain,
now resonating as memory, especially memories of sexual violence that are invariably
burdened? What sort of language may we use to express all of this?
Black and white sheets, a revolving chair, the click of a all- point
pen, the sound
of grain being
winnowed - several images unfold
on stage, with
each leading to
the other, and each
adding to the
other's meanings. In
and through these images,
Vakkumoolam unfolds as a tough
and close
struggle between authority and a will to ethical justice.
On Stage: Jeny, Neethirajan, Geetha, Srijith Sundaram
Backstage: Art: Natraj, Guruz.
Stage
Management: Aswini, Senthalir.
Sound: Prema Revathi. Sound Execution: Devendiran.
Lights: Surendar/Bhaskar.
Text: V. Geetha. Direction: A.
Mangai
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Sudalaiamma
Author's
Note: V. Geetha
Sudalaiamma
features a female
graveyard worker who
is determined to grant
a decent burial
to an ‹encountered› young man’s body.
He is a
much loved political
activist, engaged in organizing
agricultural workers, and
taking on caste injustice.
However with the police guarding his corpse, a habitual task turns into a
risky act. Sudalaiamma decides to risk police disapproval and in the event
comes to learn of how even the dead can prove seditious. So much so, she
begins to wonder about what makes for legitimacy and what makes for treason.
The play is a journey into her consciousness and reasoning: she is keenly
aware of the folly and injustice that attend even death in our social
context. On the other hand, she has a deep existential sense of human dignity
and frailty. Inspired by Sophocles’
Antigone and the exemplary courage of our poorest and most marginal citizens
who yet believe in justice and in tremendous good faith work the law and its
protocols, we would like to dedicate this play to the memory of the late Dr
K. Balagopal.
Director's
Note: A. Mangai
We pride ourselves on
our lineage of honoring the
dead - in
propitiating their memory
from time
immemorial, reading their abiding
presence in crows,
in hero-stones¼ Yet today,
as the state
attempts to secure
its sovereignty by threatening
to 'disappear' its
citizens, the ancient
right to offer obeisance to
the dead is
constantly violated. In a society where graveyards grow by the
day, seeking respect for the dead becomes a crime. For Sudalaimma, the
graveyard worker, witness to
many deaths, to
tend to the
dead is labour well-done and
she sees this labour of love as her way of doing right by the dead. She confronts
the authority of the state in matters of life and death, by continuing to
speak of the value of life from the field of the dead.
Images
of life and
death jostle on
stage, and even
as food reeks of
decay, death is
kept at bay
by everyday acts
of living - water,
a hearth and
a clothes-line frame
this world of the dead. A box
of memories, a bed that is a refuge, and a cluster of voices and forms, accompanies
Sudalaimma in her journeys between the two opposed worlds of violent state
power and the uneasy calm of the graveyard.
On Stage: Prema Revathi,
Janagi, Sampathkumar, Selvi, Sowmiya
Backstage: Art: Natraj,
Guruz. Lights: Surendar/Bhaskar.
Text: V. Geetha. Direction: A.
Mangai
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Braille edition of French classic released
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Thirukkural And Sri Lanka’s Governance
Thirukkural And Sri Lanka’s Governance
By S. Sivathasan“There hardly exists in the literature of the world, a collection of maxims in which we find so much lofty wisdom”. – Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Nobel Prize Winner.
Thirukkural written by the poet and sage Thiruvalluvar around the 2nd century AD is a literary work greatly treasured by the Tamils. With the largest number of translations including in English, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Spanish, Latin, Italian, Sinhalese, Arabic, Dutch, Burmese and next in number to Marxist literature and the Bible, it has become a valued possession of humanity. Mahatma Gandhi said “I wanted to learn Tamil, only to enable me to study Valluvar’s Thirukkural through his mother tongue itself”.
The work consists of 1330 couplets all of which are suffused with sublime thoughts. They convey lofty ethical and moral principles enabling society to anchor its life to. The subjects dwelt on are 133 and each chapter has 10 couplets. Of great contemporary relevance to Sri Lanka are the poet’s thoughts on governance. Machiavalli advises the Prince on the art of successful rule. Kautilya’s dominant thoughts are on glamorous ends whatever the means. The work of Valluvar has dharma for its core value.
King
Two millennia ago the Tamils had a well ordered state and the king was at the centre of governance.
The institution of kingship prevailing at that time applies today to those in vantage positions such as President, Prime Minister, Ministers, Diplomats and officials placed in authority. The poet spells out the attributes needed in the king as well as in those managing the state apparatus. In the lines that follow the current parallels in Sri Lanka may be gleaned.
A ruler is great if he is unfailing in virtue, remains wedded to valour, guards his honour zealously and eschews what is not righteous. His responsibility extends over developing the country’s resources, consolidating the riches so created into the state treasury and ensuring proper distribution of the nation’s wealth. A ruler who protects his subjects according to cannons of propriety and impartiality will be deified by them. He will be extolled by them if he is easy of access and is never given to harsh words.
When the reign is benign and seeks to meet the people’s aspirations, the people will rally round the king and be effusive in their praise.
A king should be circumspect in embarking on a venture or war. Essentially needed are proper reconnaissance and reflection. Meticulous deliberation is needed before a decision is taken. He should not scoff at his adversary as if the latter is inconsequential. The poet makes the point that all the blessings that a country is endowed with come to nought when it does not have the benefit of a stable and benevolent ruler.
Country
Having said that, he outlines the salient attributes that a country needs to have. What are the the beneficent endowments? A country is great where there are men of learning, where wealth has been earned the righteous way and where harvests are bountiful. A nation enjoys peace and stability when it is free of feuding groups, ruinous enemy within and over mighty warlords. The unleashing of para militaries to prey on the people was never heard of. Another great poet who lived a millennium later and who was also a Prime Minister to the king said that “a king should ensure that no harm befalls the subjects either from him or his retinue”. In a nation what are the five embellishments that add zest to life? Absence of disease, wealth, resources to promote wellbeing, life of mirth and sense of security deriving from the king’s protective reign are the ornaments.
Cabinet
Members of the cabinet should be very discerning in the choice of their options, executing them with a sense of pragmatism and expressing their views clearly and forcefully. A minister is well qualified to counsel the king if he is of respectable lineage, is fearless, has the capacity for study and sustained effort and has a propensity to protect the people. A minister may have laudable ideas but when he is irresolute in execution, he fails in his mission and accomplishes nothing. Even though books and treatises may enhance their natural intellectual resources, with the benefit of worldly experience they have to master the art of the possible. A king lacking in wisdom may reject ministerial advice, but it is their duty to press forth relentlessly what is fair and proper.
Nurtured in the Tamilian tradition where the fount of governance was laid by Valluvar, the emperor of poets Kamban author of Ramayana, wrote 900 years later, about the cabinet of king Dasaratha – Rama’s Father – thus: “When it came to matters of state the Ministers did not care even a little bit about their personal security. When the king flew into a rage, they faced it with equanimity and persisted in asserting what was just. They had the fortitude of mind not to deviate from the path of righteousness. Decisions were made with due attention to the past, present and the future. After deliberations, the conclusion was conveyed in one voice”. In this description of Ministers’ conduct and collective responsibility may be seen the epitome of sober governance. The contrast too can be observed now.
Diplomats
Essential attributes of a diplomat comprise birth of high report, a loving disposition and refined conduct agreeable by the king. Capacity for deep study, verbal ability to convey ideas with precision and loyalty to the king are indispensable qualities. An ambassador setting out on a mission should possess erudition, sagacity and a commanding presence. To bring success to the kind he should make his presentation with coherence while eschewing trivia and spice his conversation with humor. To command respect he should be noted for his learning, composure, power of persuasion in speech and should have a sense for appropriateness to befit the occasion. The fittest ambassador will have an eye for time and place, well inducted in his duty and very selective in the words he uses. A diplomat will be considered consummately skilled if he is pure in heart, has fortitude of mind and is engaging in his ways. Such an ambassador will be unremitting in his pursuit and will never swerve from his mission even when his existence is under threat.
Army
There are four armours which are necessary for an army: valour, sense of honour, chivalrous conduct and fortitude even in the midst of disarray and confusion. Before venturing out, it is necessary for the army as well as the adversary to assess carefully the strength and weakness of the enterprise, one’s own power, the enemy’s power and strength of the respective allies. When the importance of the last factor is noted, the wisdom of the kural may be discerned from the outcome in the last phase of World War II and also in the war closer home. Those who do not make a proper estimate of their strength, but who are overtaken by enthusiasm, crash midway. Such instances are many is the poet’s view. It is also emphatically asserted that even if an army may have strength in numbers, decisive leadership is crucial to victory. More importantly the poet says, it is not armaments that bring victory but the scepter and that too when it is upright.
In the Midst of the Worthy
Securing the devotion of men of worth is among the rarest of fortunes that a king or anybody in high position can seek. The world considers the learned and the wise as its eyes. Therefore a king should be very selective in the choice of his advisors. When he is surrounded by men of worth the morale of his foes will weaken. It is well known that without capital no profit can accrue. Likewise strength and repose in a state are not for those who do not have the support of the wise. It is therefore infinitely more harmful to lose the friendship of the good than to enlist the enmity of the many. Water acquires the characteristic of the earth from where it is drawn. In like manner one’s mind is conditioned by the quality of the company one keeps. The poet’s advice about those in vantage positions and even to the people at large is that they should seek after men of virtue wedded to norms of morality, are constant in righteousness and win their friendship. In Valluvar’s reckoning scholars are mighty. He advises the king, even if you incur the wrath of the army, do not enlist the displeasure of the learned.
Moving with Kings
Cannons of propriety are called for from those privileged to move with the mighty. The poet draws a very instructive analogy by taking a leaf from how one keeps oneself comfortable before a hearth. Not too close and not too far is a prudent course. As all would know, too much closeness would be scorching and a far distance will leave one in the cold. What is literally true of the hearth applies figuratively for dealings with the powers that be. A strong word of caution is struck and we are inducted to the realities of the way power works, when the poet says “do not covet what the king desires to have. This is the path to win his favour and to consolidate one’s position”. To put it plainly, if the ruler desires the kudos for a military victory, a military leader is advised not to covet the same. This particular Kural couplet was better understood after 2009.
Uprightness
Birth is alike to all. What distinguishes one from the other is the reputation that one builds up through a life of honour. In Valluvar’s view, rectitude and revulsion to shame come naturally to those of a respectable background. Men of such high station will not do anything disreputable even if tens of millions are thrown across their way. Even as a scale balances the weights evenly, so should a man of rectitude act with total impartiality, never leaning to one side. One who leads a life of impeccable probity will reside in the hearts of the multitude. The poet pronounces a home truth–the words that come off a person’s lips bespeak his breeding and character. Men of character anchored in a sea of rectitude will remain unmoved even in a cataclysm.
Financial probity is an ultimate value with Valluvar. With keen observation he said that ill-gotten wealth flows in at a speed to match the gathering of spectators for a recital and its disappearance is swifter than the dispersal of the crowd after the event. Even when one stands to profit, one should eschew it if uprightness has to be sacrificed in the process, is the poet’s injunction.
Retributive Justice
Even as the shadow that follows unstoppably, so also evil deeds will cause one’s inevitable destruction. Another ethical work of the Sangam period says that when a calf is unleashed among several cows, it unerringly reaches for its mother. In like manner retribution makes no mistake in meting out its judgment. An epic of the same period says “ Dharma is the terminator of evil rule. …..Retribution will unfailingly take its course”. Valluvar in his wisdom says that it is abysmal ignorance to treat the impermanent as enduring. Tears of wrath brought out by irrepressible agony is the force that will destroy the evil doer’s wealth. Sri Lanka is witness to the agony. It awaits justice.
Courtesy: Colombo Telegraph
There is no one to remember the first woman Thavamanidevi
K Thavamani Devi, coming from a Jaffna Tamil family: the first film artist who went from the island of Ceylon to Madras Presidency to act as heroine right in the first film in 1936. But a Ceylon Today feature’s perception of the two-way traffic and what is ‘Sri Lankan’ was restricted to Bhanumathi singing a Sinhala song in 1958 and Malini Fonseka acting with Sivaji Ganeshan in 1978.
Ernest Macintyre
Monday, April 8, 2013
Life and Times in Old Jaffna: A Review By Prof. R.S.Perinbanayagam
Life and Times in Old Jaffna: A Review
By Prof. R.S.Perinbanayagam
The Yaal Players by Vimala Ganeshananthan (Colombo: Kumaran Books Ltd) 2013
Life and Times in Old Jaffna. A Review.
Life and Times in Old Jaffna. A Review.
This work contains notes written by
a woman, Emily Gnanam, who lived in Karativu, an islet off the coast of Jaffna
in the early years of the last century. It is also interspersed with
commentaries by her daughter Vimala Ganeshananthan who also is the editor of
the volume. Emily Gnanam,it appears, spent her early life in a large farm in
Karativu before getting married and moving to Trincomalee. Her descriptions of
her life in the farm reveals the existence of a semi-feudal system in Jaffna
with various castes living in or around the farm and providing services to the
landowners and receiving compensation in kind and cash.
Emily Gnanam’s notes give us a
fascinating account of the lives of the various people of the household as well
as the life of the village in rich detail. She describes the procedures and
customs observed in everyday life as well as the nature of the marriage
alliances contracted by the members of the household. It describes the
ceremonies connected to the weddings, the nature of the arrangements that were
made to consummate these contracts etc. It appears that cross-cousin marriage
was still the preferred form. Further, since the family were Christians living
among Hindus, and having of course inherited some Hindu customs as well, had to
make various amalgamations in their rituals. For example a Christian wedding
was conducted in church but nevertheless they also used the Hindu ritual of
tying the golden chain with the sacred pendant—the thali kodi– around the neck
of the bride by the groom. In the Hindu customs the pendant was inscribed with
sacred Hindu symbols but Christians inscribed the image of the Bible on it. She
describes the clothing and the jewelry worn respectively by the young girls as
well as the different styles worn by the more mature ones and their grooming
before the wedding ceremony and so on.
All in all, it’s the work of an
astute observer of the social scene, and has given us, without much
aforethought, a wealth of information about the life of a particular segment of
Jaffna society at a particular time: a wealthy, landowning, socially and culturally
dominant and high-caste segment, that is. Equally significantly they were
Christians living in harmony in a Hindu culture and with a deep commitment to
education. Further, it is written in a very simple style without unnecessary
elaborations and ponderous analysis. The teachers at Vembady High School for
Girls,where Emily Gnanam studied, do seem to have taught her a thing or two
about writing too.
It is however the sociological and
economic implications of the life of the family as an index of the Jaffna
community that is the most valuable contribution of the work. The Gnanam family
were converts to Protestant Christianity but seems to have had many Hindu
relatives with whom they had not only cordial relations and even at times
intermarried with them. They appear to have taken full advantage of the
increasing opportunities provided by the schools that were opened by Christian
missionaries. Emily Gnanam’s father was in fact a teacher in the school run by
the American mission in the neighborhood after having been educated in one such
school earlier. Emily Gnanam herself studied here and then transferred to
Jaffna town to study in the school run by the Methodist missions called Vembady
School for Girls. She didn’t just study and learn the feminine and domestic
styles of life that the Christian missionaries tried to impart to their women
students but went on to pass the Cambridge senior examination. She was perhaps
one of the first among women in Jaffna to have obtained that distinction. The
family in fact moves to Jaffna town so that she and her siblings could be
educated in the city schools, she and her sisters at Vembadi, and her brothers
at Jaffna Central College. The architectural styles of houses in Jaffna town
favored by Dutch over that of the Portuguese too merits the attention of Emily
Gnanam. These two occupying powers, besides their architecture,left their
genetic footprints too in the light skin and blue eyes that some people in
Jaffna sport and even this does not escape comment from the Gnanam!
While that the girls were given an
education uncommon at the time in Jaffna society was significant enough, it is
the story of her brothers and cousins that is of distinct sociological and
economic significance. They were educated in these Christian schools–either at
Central College or at Jaffna College, the premier school established by the
American mission, and they seem to have obtained various qualifications: the
Cambridge Junior certificate or the Cambridge Senior certificate or what was
called the first-in arts –later to be called, I believe, the intermediate in
arts, which was a prelude to the bachelor of arts degree. It not clear from her
notes however which of these qualifications were obtained by which member of
her family but they all seem to have dedicated themselves to getting an English
education.
With one or more of these
qualifications in hand the brothers and cousins went forth looking for jobs and
wealth to the south of Ceylon but above all to Malaya and Singapore. These
qualifications that the young men obtained made them eligible for service in
the bureaucracies of the far-flung British Empire as well as in its railway
systems. Some of them as far as I can fathom from Emily Gnanam’s notes also
went on to become doctors and lawyers too.
The young men of the Gnanam
household seem to have taken full advantage of the educational opportunities
and made good in Malaya. However once they settled in Malaya they don’t seem to
have settled for good. There was a constant traffic between Malaya and the homeland
and the hometown. The young men came home to get married or brides were sent to
Malaya to get married to eligible young relatives. Some young boys were also
invited by their relatives in Malaya for further education and they too settled
in Malaya but they returned to get married to one cousin or another.
Furthermore, the older relatives seem to have gone on long visits to Malaya
too. These were no doubt arduous journeys: there was the boat ride from the
island of Karativu (there was no causeway between the island and the mainland
at the time and after the causeway was built it changed its name to
Karainagar!), and then a ride in a bullock cart on rough terrain to the city.
From there they had to take a trip in a cargo boat to reach Malaya. Yet many seem
to have gone back and forth: the call of kinship-loyalties on the one hand and
the call from hometown on the other seem to have been too strong to be offset
by the difficulties of the journey.
This family’s story is in fact a
fine microcosm of what happened to Jaffna society once the Christian
missionaries began arriving in the peninsula. It nicely particularizes some
general features of Jaffna society of a particular time. The Americans came
first to be followed by the Methodists and the Anglicans. Catholics too had
established their own outpost. In any case the Protestant missionaries, for one
reason or the other, seem to have converged on Jaffna and opened up schools in
practically in every nook and cranny of the territory. Originally they were meant
to educate only the Christians but eventually they accepted Hindus and the
schools soon became institutions that educated mostly Hindus. Again, for one
reason or the other, that I don’t want to go into here, the local population,
after some reluctance, took to these schools with enthusiasm and soon–at least,
in a few decades — Jaffna was awash with young men educated in English looking
for employment and careers both within the island and in the far-flung British
Empire, mainly in the Malay Peninsula but also in Burma and some of them even
went to Madras to work. The American mission established the premier
educational institution in English in the remote and dusty village of
Vaddukoddai and called it, somewhat arrogantly “Jaffna College” the Methodists
built Jaffna Central College and the Anglicans had St.John’s College” andS the
Catholics St. Patrick’s College. The education of women was not neglected
either: the Americans established the Uduvil Girls School, the first of its
kind in South Asia, the Methodists started Vembady soon after and the Anglicans
started a school for girls in Chundikuli–all in the 19 century. The Hindus, not
willing to be outdone by the Christians started their own institutions. This
proliferation of educational opportunism in the peninsula accounts for the
large presence of Jaffna Tamils in the administrative services and the
professions not only in Ceylon but in Malaya too and not because the British
rulers favored them in some way– as some ignorant scribes and racist
propagandists and internet charlatan have claimed. They were given employment
because they obtained the necessary qualifications. These young men worked
outside their ancestral villages but came home to marry and build houses and
buy land and contributed immensely to the prosperity of the peninsula. These
moneys they brought back or sent home trickled down to the carpenters and
blacksmiths and the masons who built the houses as well the goldsmiths and
silversmiths who made the jewelery and so on and so forth. Indeed the economic
impact of the work of the Christian missionaries on Jaffna society is yet be
explored by scholars.
The work depicts a way of life of
the old north that has gone with the wind, never to return. It has been
lovingly edited by Ganeshananthan. It however is not without a major flaw: the
commentaries that Ganeshananthan has inserted between her mother’s narratives.
These comments, while adding some context to the narrative, should have been
separated from the Emily Ganam notes, either typographically or put in as an
appendix. Indeed they are quite unnecessary and we should have been allowed to
enjoy Emily Gnanam’s words by themselves. I may add that a genealogical table
of the family and dates of birth etc would have enhanced the value of the work.
Still, this book is of great value
to the social historians of Jaffna and one must thank Ganeshananthan for giving
it to us.
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