Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

24 September 2018

Burying the Terrible past ?

I looked over treetops in the direction of our rented home – when I was in High School – Holy Family Convent – Jaffna. I stayed at Valampuri Hotel which I thought was more within my Budget during this high season. Jetwing where I stayed previously – was more structured but Valampuri was more ‘homely’. The Nallur festival time is high season for Jaffna. I met a few families from Sydney there at Valampuri. The best part was the feel of the Energy from my past in that area – my home-area.  I therefore identified with most of the following :

[Swami Vivekanantha and Mahatma Gandhi in the early part of the twentieth century along with several foremost artistes and academics in the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies had visited Jaffna and praised the intellectually sound civilization which existed in the Northern region.

The late Indian President Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, the nuclear genius was the first dignitary to visit Jaffna following the end of the war in 2009. Dr. Abdul Kalam visited Jaffna in 2012. Thereafter, it was the Indian Prime Minister who visited the North in 2009.

Therefore, Tamil Nadu Minister Sengottaiyan’s recent visit to Jaffna highlights in every way that the region should regain its lost glory as the region of civilized people in every way, burying the terrible past.] Ceylon Today article ‘Tamil Nadu Minister in Jaffna’

I do not however identify with ‘burying the terrible past’. The difficulties that we experienced during the war – are part of our experience in Jaffna. We need to escalate it to Energy level and not abandon it. That is the way of the Intellectual. I was able to ‘connect’ to my investment in Jaffna through my education – because I had raised some part to Energy level. I did that largely by attributing credit to those who facilitated my education – starting with my parents and teachers. It’s that ‘thanksgiving’ that completes the experience and raises it to Energy level. One could therefore conclude that those of us who failed to complete that cycle remained at outcome level – including in education. Such folks who did not plough back also became the reason for the pain and losses suffered by us during the war.

The war happened due to many interactive forces. How it affects us is as per our own level of investment. We are now feeling for the parents and siblings of those who have gone missing during the war – especially in 2009. But how many of us felt for the parents and grandparents of those children who were hijacked from schools and/or brainwashed to leave education to become physical fighters? The author of Tamil Tigress is one of them. Her father’s two sisters were our (my sister and I) class mates and accepted good order of the school without question. To that extent the young heir of LTTE ‘lost’ connection with her ancestral investment in law and order.

Since I stay within the boundaries of my own investments, I look for other ways in which to replenish this ‘loss’ of investment value through the intellectual pathway. To me that is how I practice the core value of the Doctrine of Separation of Powers.

The separate pathways between brawn and brain – was recently demonstrated by Sri Lankan Parliament – where heirs of JVP (rebels) demanded immediate action against Mrs Vijayakala Maheswaran – as in ‘an eye for an eye’ practice. But the speaker keeps passing the matter through structures that would include our ancestors from whom we inherited that structure with all its weaknesses. Those of  us who sacrifice immediate outcomes to develop common structures would naturally empower the speaker and others in support of that pathway. Under that system the Speaker’s responsibility is limited to the Parliament and primarily what happened within the Parliament house. Mrs Vijayakala Maheswaran manifested her thoughts outside the Parliament and her expressions are the responsibility of the Common Administrative system. THAT is the way of the intellectual pathway.

We need to learn from our pain and losses – to raise our current investments to the higher level – where all pathways merge in Truth.