Untitled Document

By Susantha Goonatilake

Jaffna today is a wasteland
Even in some places in Colombo I get a bit lost. New buildings have replaced those in my memory. This is inevitable in rapidly changing cities. But in Jaffna peninsula, not only have there been no building in decades but those that existed have been blasted out. In the Tiger claimed heartland, war desert supplant past memories.

Decades ago as an engineer in the cement factory I belonged to the Jaffna upper middle classes. But today Jaffna peninsula is emptied of its affluent citizens. Driven out by the Tiger war and keeping to Jaffna tradition, its people have fled to our South and to the world's West. Jaffna, apart from its memory, is today in the Western province, and in the many deprived ghettos in the West. Tiger fighters are therefore drawn from the remaining poorest of Tamils. Once, a top city in the country, Jaffna is a wasteland which requires years to rebuild.

Today Jaffna has virtually no electricity (there is a 20 MW diesel station in the making). In contrast, Colombo appears a flood lit heaven. The 33 KV transmission towers that once crisscrossed the peninsula are empty sentinels, their insulators and wires missing. The roads on the hard limestone remain intact, but with little traffic. Cyclists pedal along with an occasional ancient Austin or a broken down bus overtaking them. Bullock carts, museum pieces in the South, are not infrequent. The three wheeler has come to town, but reflecting depopulated peninsula -tuk tuking is far less than many a remote southern town.

Conservative Vellala Jaffna refused to accept the inevitable democratic changes which the post colonial world brought about. This included the spread of education to Sinhalese reversing the unfair advantage that colonial Jaffna had. It also included depressed castes demanding rights. Interestingly these deprived castes called the Vellalas "Tamils". I well remember the rawness of this social order. Excrement was thrown at our first women clerks. I was reprimanded for sitting with a tapper drinking unfermented toddy. To overcome injustice some of these depressed tried to become Buddhists and learn Sinhala. They were rudely interrupted by the false consciousness which Tamil racism brought.

The mind set associated with this "golden age" of Jaffna was reflected in the material staples of the time - the Singer machine, Raleigh cycle and Austin car, all British in this collaborationist outpost of the Empire. Jaffna man, aspiring to be a white collar Gurkha for the colonials, serviced not only Colombo but also further outposts of the Empire like Malaysia. With decolonization Empire privileges collapsed.

All the towns from Elephant Pass to Jaffna outskirts are almost totally devastated by both Tiger and government guns. Jaffna town centre is bombed out. The old Jaffna cross streets are shell pocked, but still have inhabitants. Once-towns such as Tellipalai, Mavadipuram, have no civilian buildings left - and no civilians. Some youngsters study only in makeshift buildings. Yet sections of the peninsula still manage their lives, as they did, behind cadjan, oil drum sheet and cement wall.

At wayside thosai boutique, asking for directions, at kovils and my old haunts around the KKS cement factory, we speak with many. Long forgotten phrases come to mind. My Tamil rapidly improves. My wife's reaches normalcy. We give a donation for rebuilding the library. Surprisingly, many have connections in the South and speak fair Sinhala. They retain the natural warmth which the urbanized South has now lost. We also speak to army and police. (They deeply resent the MOU.)

The peninsula wears an air of weariness and desolation that only the truly war ravaged countries wear. Their "leaders" have truly shot them backwards. No self-determination or traditional homelands, only a pure longing for mundane normalcy. Their eyes and words tell a very different story from the pseudo jargon spat out at TV talk shows by the NGO lobby and the pseudo Church left. (The only clergy visible on Jaffna streets are Christian).

This must be the only war where through the MOU the losers attempt to dictate terms for settlement. It is time the bluff and bluster of the so-called Tiger conventional army is called. If war breaks out in Jaffna again, what little population remains will be further reduced, and the remaining buildings blown away as multi-barrel rockets exchange fire. What befell Chavakachcheri would engulf the total peninsula. One would have thought that those returning back would be debriefed not to fall into this same mess. But no - our government fails in this most obvious of duties.

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