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| Wednesday, 17 November 2004 |
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Sivasegaram's fiery poetry Searing indictment on a world gone madly wrong by Carl Muller Sri Lankan Tamil poetry began in the Sangam Age and has continued uninterrupted through the centuries, absorbing the impact of South Indian Tamil poetry, growing with a distinctive voice to become as a mirror reflecting the conventions and traditions on both sides of the Palk Strait. We saw a renaissance of this in the 1940s and, two decades later, it became evident that our Tamil poets were determined to develop a true Lankan-ness, become a voice that would emphasise, shout of the ways of Tamil life, love and labour, a voice that carried in it the rhythms of speech, verse-drama and imagery that would tell of the true Tamil quality of a Lankan existence. In 1977, there rose, as A.J. Canagaratna says, a resonant Third World voice-the voice of Prof. S. Sivasegaram - a political voice, electrifying, full of withering sarcasm, snapping at a jugular of a world where tyranny and oppression comes upon us, fists flailing. The force of Prof. Sivasegaram's delivery has been widely appreciated, and his poems have been published in Sinhala, English, Kannada and Malayalam. He is also one of this country's few serious Tamil literary critics and has opened to the world (and not just the Tamil world,) a tall and wide casement, inviting more exploration, more understanding, more awareness of its universal significance. His 2001 poem "Their Politics" is one of bitter repugnance: The row of plastic banners hanging across every street, But even as they are destroyed Female militants In the 1980s, we saw how the Tamil poetry of Sri Lanka took on state terrorism and the barbarity of military operations. Poems flowed out of the minds of many female militants too, and above all, translations and transcreations began to impact on the minds of many, both here and abroad. It is not only this country, teeming with ills, that Sivasegaram takes on. As a committed Marxist, he knows how tyranny and oppression are today's greatest and most horrific pandemic. Even as ethnicity has overpowered class and caste in this island, it is a manifestation of this same borderless disease that has wrapped tentacles around the globe. In his poem "About Another Matter" we see how global his writing is: The man who went missing in Chile remains buried in Chemmani. The mass graves in Mirusuvil and Sooriyakanda were dug as one pit. (Mass graves in Chemmani and Mirusuvil held the remains of Tamil youth killed in the late 1990s. The Sooriyakanda mass grave held the remains of Sinhalese schoolboys, also murdered in that same year). And the crowbars that demolished Babri Masjid were forged in the fire that engulfed the Jaffna Library, the heat of whose flames blasted the statues of the Buddha in Afghanistan. Was it not with the rope that hanged Kattabomman that the heroic Bhagat Singh was hanged? Is the memorial in Katchilaimadu merely for Pandaravanniyan? (The anti-British South Indian Tamil Chieftain, Kattabomman, was hanged by the British. They also hanged Bhagat Singh, a Marxist fighter for the freedom of modern India. Pandaravanniyan was the Tamil chieftain of the Vanni who also fought British oppression and was killed in Katchilaimadu. Today, a memorial to his valour stands in that town). Does the one who declares that 'There is little in similarities and it is the difference that matters' know the difference between Manamperi of southern Lanka and Padmini of Tamil Nadu is that Manamperi is dead and that Padmini was married? Brutally raped (The young woman insurgent of the 1971 JVP uprising was raped and killed by soldiers in southern Sri Lanka. In the mid 1990s, Padmini was brutally raped by the police in Tamil Nadu when she went to a police station to inquire about her husband who had been killed while in police custody). The signboard that denied entry to a South African in South Africa stopped a Tamil from entering a Tamil temple. People were burnt alive in their huts in Keel Venmani with The torches carried by the Ku Klux Klan. (Keel Venmani is a village in Tamil Nadu, peopled to a small extent by Tamils of a depressed caste. One night, when a large group of these low-caste people had gathered in a hut, all exits were barricaded and the hut set on fire by thugs at the command of upper caste land owners). ...can one writing about one, avoid writing about the other? When the cloth that bound the feet of the Chinese woman was cut loose, the Indian woman who ascended the funeral pyre to perform sati walked away alive. (Sati, suti or Sutee was the Indian Hindu custom that forced a widow to be cremated alive alongside her dead husband). As Sivasegaram says: "The world is divided in two/with one roll of barbed wire," and he insists: "when one speaks about any one thing/it is possible that it is also about something else-/really, about everything." In 1983, he wrote "To the Victims of Welikada". A powerful poem, it refers to the killing of 53 Tamil political prisoners by Sinhala inmates during the two successive nights at the time of the anti-Tamil violence in 1983. To this day, no one responsible for this slaughter in Welikada has been identified. Like the Nandhi stepping aside to make way the tall iron gates of Welikada prison open on their own. Murder in the prison cells surrounded by stone walls, unknown to jail guards. Sacred bull (We have here the legend of Nandhi, the statue of the sacred bull, who blocked a Dalit devotee of Shiva not allowing him to enter the Cithambaram shrine. Then, on the orders of Shiva, Nandhi stepped aside, allowing the devotee, Nandhan, to enter. But when inside, the Brahmins of Cithambaram conspired to throw Nandhan into the sacred fire). Also in 1983, Sivasegaram gave us "Hitler's Diaries" - a general comment on the violence of 1983 - but the story of the riots was manipulated, as he says, by an opportunist state, either shedding crocodile tears or rubbing salt into the wound. Like the Hitler Diaries that were later exposed to be a hoax. His 1989 poem "Kelani '89" tells us: In these troubled days when corpses without fail drift daily on the waters... We are reminded of the state-sponsored violence against youth where between 50,000 and 100,000 political killings were committed between 1987 and 1989. A significant number of killings was also carried out by the JVP. In the first JVP insurrection, an estimated five to twenty thousand youth were killed by the armed forces. Another 1989 poem, "A Tribute to Trees, Tall and Erect" voices his protest over the killing of Rajini Thiranagama of the Jaffna medical faculty by the LTTE. He likens Rajini to a tree, tall and erect and calls the LTTE fools who "sword in hand...cut them down." And he reminds: The day your weapons weigh you down and metal yields to make a rope that binds your hands and wrings your neck the fallen will rise- like a forest around you. Eye-opener His 1993 poem "A Death" is an eye-opener. It refers to the Premadasa assassination. At the same time, we know that many of Premadasa's critics held him responsible for the deaths of a number of his political opponents: My friend's mother saw the pictures in the paper. She did not cry. The man who caused her son's death is dead. She did not laugh. No death will bring back her son. The death of a killer is not the end of killings. However the sound of firecrackers in the neighbourhood heard through the night still rings in my ears. Life has little to celebrate so they celebrate a death. Perhaps the grimmest of his poems is his 1995 "The Faces of War". Written in 40 stanzas, let's look at a few: Stanza 9: The Government has two faces. The face of war declares: "War before peace!" The face of peace declares: "Peace after war!" Stanza 11: When the peasants wear the faces of refugees war is sown and disaster is harvested in paddy fields wearing the faces of bush land Stanza 13: Statistics of those who died of hunger and illness carry humane officials of charitable organizations in air-conditioned cars to feasts and festivals. Stanza 21: The answer to question: "Whose is the war?" is "Whose is the peace?" Stanza 31: We could talk of peace, we could talk of war. Those talking of peace could peacefully Sell arms to those who talk of war. It is fortunate for us that Dhesiya Kalai Ilakkiyap Peravai has just published a collection of Sivasegaram's poems in translation. This is a book everyone must reach for, especially those who have been stultified by the hypocrisy of leaders who, as the poet says hold so much as sacred... The sacredness of religion, history, war, even death. Such a sacred land! Everything but human life is sacred! **** Back **** |
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