Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

10 February   2021

 

 

MISLEADING THE TAMIL COMMUNITY

 

The Hindu leader to the Pottuvil to Polikandy march which is claimed by many as a victorious event is identified as Velan Swamigal. IBC Tamil TV interview with this person is at-  https://www.ibctamil.com/srilanka/80/159552

I do not know this person personally but on 29 January 2021, I shared my article ‘MEDITATING FOR UN POLITICAL POWER?’ under the heading ‘ISIS in the making?’. This was on the basis of this person’s signature to the submission by Tamil Political leaders to the UNHRC.  The role of Political Opposition is to express alternate forms of belief on a particular issue before the Parliament. Whether the Government registers it or not, such expressions purify the true listener of distracting deviations and clears the pathway to self discovery. Where there is no such alternate pathway, one is entitled to use belief to identify with  the rights and wrongs of government propositions.

Mr Velan declared during his interview that it was Nallur Kanthan who named him Velan Swamigal.  As a deep believer in the power of Nallur, I am not able to identify with that claim. There are many indicators that confirm to me that we are following different pathways to share our belief in Nallur.

First of all – Mr Velan claims that he is an engineering graduate of University of Moratuwa.  This means that he has benefited from Common Resources of the Sri Lankan education system.  Mr Velan claims also that he settled his dues to Chinmaya Mission where he was a disciple. Mr Velan claims that such settlement to ‘guru’ requires 12 years of service – after which one was free to practice as an independent. The 12 year period is based on the time taken by Jupiter who represents ‘guru’ to go around the sun. My question is then what about serving Sri Lanka was an engineer? Given that Mr Velan did not fulfill this role for 12 years as an Engineer, does he not owe the Common Sri Lankan before he is independent to follow and lead as a Tamil Politician? Did his spiritual learning not lead him to find the spirit of Engineering?

Another example of such indebtedness is Mr Sugash Kanagaratnam of Vaddukoddai who also claimed to be a leader of the Marching group. In his interview with IBC Tamil TV at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuE2-rjOjBU&feature=emb_rel_pause  Sugash confirms his education at Jaffna College about which Wikipedia presents the following:

[Jaffna College is a private school in Vaddukoddai, Sri Lanka.^[2] It was founded in 1871 as a successor to the Batticotta Seminary which had been established by American missionaries…..

The Batticotta Seminary was an educational institute founded by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM)'s American Ceylon Mission at Vaddukodai, in the Jaffna Peninsula north Sri Lanka in 1823. It was founded as part of the medical mission of John Scudder, Sr. and was subsequently led by Nathan Ward. In 1846 the mission experienced a significant cholera outbreak. Emerson Tennent judged the Batticotta Seminary equal in rank with many European universities. ]

But in the above interview Sugash attributes only to Mr Kumaravel – as his guru at Jaffna College. The Missionaries promoted the translation from English to Tamil but the beneficiaries  like Sugash failed to honor such founders of global education in Northern Sri Lanka. In contrast I attribute to Mrs Margaret Saverimuttu who taught us the ‘logic’ in English language.

It is also interesting that Sugash did not attribute to Mr Rajasingam –Vice Principal, Jaffna College – who according to my husband was his English teacher. It is pertinent that Mrs Rajini was killed by the LTTE:

[The Rajasingams were sticklers for quality and the ability of a society to lift itself back to quality depends on the presence of families strongly rooted in it. Rajini was killed because she would not compromise with puruda in politics that claimed the divine right to purify the ‘nation’ through murder….

The war being over, farce has assumed the dominant role in puruda. Why do our leaders who had the best of education and held responsible public office, feel impelled to praise the LTTE leader as a great man of genius and commitment, who failed to liberate the Tamils only because of traitors in our midst? Why not tell the truth that the ‘genocide’ at Mullivaykkal owed as much to the missiles of the Sri Lankan forces as to senior Tamil leaders lying to the world that the people held hostage by the LTTE were staying with them of their own free will and devotion? Why do these bankrupts lie about Thileepan who, under the watchful eye of the Leader’s men, thirsted to an excruciating death, as showing most nobly the Gandhian way of Ahimsa; when many ordinary members of the public who witnessed the event spontaneously exclaimed, ‘They killed him’?.....

Rajini was a member of Jaffna’s Christian society killed by the LTTE for answering the call of her civic duty.

The dead lose all meaning except as numbers bandied before the UN by Tamil nationalists to vilify the Sinhalese, while ignoring the pertinent context. The Tigers were truthful in that to them the death of civilians in large numbers was a religious sacrifice, where large numbers would hasten the birth of Tamil Eelam. Nothing is said about the thousands of unnamed children, mainly oppressed caste, conscripted and forced into battle with scant training.] Dr Rajan Hoole in The Rajasingam Legacy: A Quest For Quality published by the Colombo Telegraph

It is our lack of gratitude or respect for our gurus that leads to disorderliness in the mind and action. Disorderly minds jump from senior to senior as per current popularity in her/his environment. Sugash has claimed publicly that LTTE leader was his god and his political leader Mr Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam ranked next to the LTTE leader.

The more we focus on blaming others before correcting ourselves – the more we get divided within. Both of the above who led the march are bogus and hence the march is without consolidated purpose.