Sunday Times 2
Rendering two lines of the National Anthem in Tamil
At the Galle Cricket Stadium I saw a family of four fully engrossed in the Test match being played. The most unusual thing was the two children. The elder boy of about ten years was having a large ‘score book’ which he could hardly carry, but was meticulously entering the scores. He was constantly querying from his father details about a run the batsman took, whether it was a ‘bye’ or ‘off the bat’.
The father with tender loving care was instructing his son about the run and telling him to watch the umpire so that he could decide whether it was a run or a bye. So when I saw the young boy having in his possession, not a printed score sheet, but a bound score book, I knew they were aliens, alien to our cricketing culture. So I presumed they were South Africans or Asians domiciled in South Africa. But a little later, I found that the boy was cheering Angelo Matthews and the Sri Lankans.
There was no rational answer I could have come up with when I saw the family, including the mother, cheering the Sri Lankan team. Then I decided to solve this mystery by speaking to the boy’s father.
What transpired in the course of our dialogue inspired me to such an extent that I wondered how much this country has lost due to ethnic separatism and unfounded suspicion of each other’s race and religion. The boys’ grandfather, who happened to be a Sri Lankan Tamil, was a DIG in the Sri Lankan Police and had decided to migrate to Australia with his family, after the bloody ’83 riots. The ugliest memories came to my mind and I was reminded that it was this DIG, who had given me protection from the bloody marauding army of Sinhala thugs who marched the streets inquiring from every household whether they were Tamils.
In my house and in my neighbour’s house, we had to give protection to the Rajasinghams who had been our neighbours from the time I came to Colombo. They were the most lovable, peaceful neighbours as were the other Tamils like the Kandiahs. The Rajasinghams and Kandiah were lawyers who had in many ways helped me as a law student and as a junior lawyer. The DIG to whom I pleaded for protection immediately dispatched a contingent of police officers from Maradana and they were guarding our house and the neighbourhood until the mob dispersed. Thereafter, we were able to transport the Rajasingham family to a safer haven. But, the mob kept on telephoning us and threatened to burn our house as by that time they had already set fire to the house of my Tamil neighbour. Later, my house was guarded by a policeman for nearly three weeks after the riots. The DIG decided to leave his position as a senior police officer and migrate from Sri Lanka as neither he nor any peace loving non-communalist could condone what happened on the blackest day of Sri Lanka’s history. The day entire Sri Lanka was converted from a semi-civilised society to a society of savages.
The story of the young son of the DIG is something that made my heart bleed with passion for communal harmony and integration. We as a country could achieve unlimited, unsurpassed prosperity if the ‘hands of friendship’ were extended to the expatriates living abroad, who abhor the LTTE, and are willing and ready to accept that the ‘unitary’ status of Sri Lanka is not negotiable. There are thousands living abroad, doing extremely well but who feel that what their mother country gave them could not be replicated or be replaced by all the luxuries the host country offers. But, what have we offered them in return? Nothing absolutely ‘nothing’, is the truthful answer.
What makes this young executive, who had Permanent Residency status in US, and citizenship in Australia come to Colombo and decide to educate the two young children in Colombo and live in Colombo? One of the reasons that prompted him was the acute state of one of his children’s health which necessitated that they live in a tropical country. Yet, there are many countries in the world, especially Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore which would easily fit in to his child’s health plan. Yet, that the head of the family, who as an adolescent had seen, felt and undergone the tremendous trauma of morbid racial violence would think of bringing back his own offspring to live in this country, was to me the zenith of reconciliation and harmony.
In Australia, he had met the Diaspora and had disapproved their support of the LTTE. Specially, when their children were born, he was thinking how any person could support an organisation which would abduct and kidnap children to become child soldiers. He denounced every dollar that they gave to replenish the coffers of the LTTE as a grave crime. The present rapid development, which is taking place and the sense of security were matters that he weighed before taking the plunge to come back to Sri Lanka.
There was also an additional factor that Malaysia, Thailand or Singapore could not offer him; Cricket! As a true Royalist and a great cricket lover, Sri Lanka being a Test playing nation, fulfilled his other aspirations. As a person who loves Test cricket he enjoyed watching the Test match, whilst mingling with the crowd. Though he had invitations to sit in the air-conditioned comfort in the President’s Box, he preferred to sit with his son with his score book, mingle with the crowd and feel the match atmosphere around him, hear the vibrant sounds the bat makes when the ball hits the sweet spot and the resonant Sri Lankan cheer, “Ara okata ara, Lanuwa udin ara ………” a matter of great joy to the purist and the connoisseur.
Then he told me what the Government could do to bring back the confidence of the patriotic Tamils living abroad. If the Government would not permit the National Anthem to be sung in Tamil, in Tamil areas, then the Government could at least have two or three lines of the National Anthem translated into Tamil and incorporate it, into the National Anthem. I was reminded of a part of a speech given by a Tamil lawyer living in Houston, who was one of the advisors to President Bill Clinton, when the Sri Lankan Society welcomed President Mahinda Rajapaksa. He said, “The Tamils love their language and are very proud of it”. Most Sinhalese do not know that Tamil is one of the oldest languages in the world. There is a controversy whether Tamil is older than Sanskrit. It is quite natural for any ethnic group to be proud of the fact that their language is the oldest or one of the six oldest languages in the world.
In our National Anthem, the following lines, “Eka mavakage daru kela bavina, yamu yamu vee nopama, prema wada sema beda durerala, Namo Namo Matha” could be translated into Tamil and incorporated into the National Anthem. Every Tamil living in this country would feel they are a part of this blessed nation. This would be the beginning of peace and reconciliation and rapid economy growth will follow with investments from abroad.
I felt ashamed of those Sinhalese who live abroad and had benefitted immensely from the free education this country’s poor had paid for and come for a short holiday and complained about the war, and are now complaining about the dust and the humidity. Never in their wildest dream would they think of educating their children in Sri Lanka. So much so for Sinhala Buddhist patriotism.