Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

07 June 2019

MUSLIMS NOW ; TAMILS THEN

I took the coach from Colombo to Jaffna. The travel time was greater than travel by train but the seating as more comfortable than the train seating. Loading my baggage was also easier. It so happened that the tuk-tuk guy was a Muslim. He spoke all three languages. We were stopped on the way - around Puttalam-Kurunagela junction. Some bags were checked. Those who seemed Muslim were checked more rigorously than us. I felt for them but realised that as minorities we have to endure such difficulties to feel more strongly Sri Lankan. From the point of the Sinhalese soldier, common faith was lacking to know whether the Muslim passengers were likely to use destructive weapons in public areas. Hence I consciously urged in my mind, for the soldier to do his duty. The checks in Jaffna are now by civilian officers. I decided to make it easier for myself by carrying only a few items in my handbag. It is indeed very different to the Jaffna I was groomed by.

The cab driver in Sydney said in relation to the Easter attacks, as to why the Muslim leaders did not openly reject the guys who were showing signs of disorderliness. I said they did but that it was not enough. This morning when I received communication about Ms Ananthi Sasitharan leading a group that was lamenting about missing  persons. I have served their parallels within the Vaddukoddai community and hence it was not a new issue. But the ways in which  we deal with the issue are different. Ms Ananthi was blaming Tamil politicians. I helped the women to rely on their strengths after escalating  the matter to the highest level possible. I pooled my own resources towards this. I guess that the lesson learnt through my own maternal uncle who was tortured to death during World War II helped me not feel responsible as a member of the family. The decision was made by my uncle to earn money for my mother’s dowry. That was a noble cause which resulted in premature death. But if not for that decision, my uncle would have been just one of the others and not special. Being special,  he receives ongoing credit through marriages - my mother’s her children’s and grandchildren’s. The credit happens through the Universal system of truth which is not limited by time and place relativities. But we need to invest in that system.

If the purpose of those who joined the LTTE was noble - for the family, community or even to preserve one’s individual dignity - then they would be celebrated exponentially provided we have submitted our pain to the system of Truth and therefore Natural Justice. If they rely on politicians who have not invested in wider world but are often the instruments used by selfish persons - and waste their energies for lesser purposes - then they fail in their duty to their loved ones, through their own local system in which they have invested.

Ms Ananthy Sasitharan talks about Human Rights. As a group, militants who recruited forcibly deprived those recruited - of their basic human right to be with their families until they independently make up their minds.   UN or the Lankan Government cannot restore those rights that the militant leadership that Ms Sasitharan represents took away. One of the ladies said that her husband who was taken away was in the ‘movement’. He then has to pay off his debt to the members who were forcibly recruited znc their families. In our case, our uncle made up his mind as an independent person. Hence his family is clean of negative human rights karma and all of us enjoy the value of noble cause exponentially.

Human Rights are the rights that are based on truth that humans discovered. The investment that the discoverers of truth  made becomes the rights of their heirs, including by birth but not limited to birth. Since I was born to parents who chose to be governed by the common law of Sri Lanka and by the law of Thesawalamai - I have every right to live through that pathway and consciously reject any other pathway. In fact it is a natural duty to the extent my parents invested in that pathway. Children born to militants have the duty to carry on  along that pathway and face the consequences. But not so the children of civilians.

Therein lies the solution which would protect us from getting cheated again and again.