Marginalia :

Future of Lankan Tamils

K S Sivakumaran

This columnist was one of the invitees to attend a special Panel Discussion held at Colombo Ramada Hotel on Wednesday March 24, 2010. The Liberty Ballroom was filled with many Lankan Tamils located in Colombo, some of them were the crŠme of a section of the Tamils intelligentsia in the capital. The theme of the Discussion was: Future of Tamils- Current Concerns and Approaches.

The invitation in Tamil was slightly modified to extend “Approaches in the context of the time” (Kaalathit Keatta Anuhu Muraihal). We were invited by Shan Shanmuganathan, a distinguished person with many credentials and who is also a nominee in the National List for the April 08, 2010 Parliamentary Elections.

Shan Shanmuganathan himself introduced the purpose of his endeavour while introducing four prominent people - S C Chandrahasan (returnee from Tamil Nadu and son of the late S J V Chelvanayagam), K Neelakandan (a lawyer and secretary of the All Ceylon Hindu Congress among other engagements), Prof S. Santhirasegeram (Dean-Faculty of Education, University of Colombo and the President of Kolumbu Tamil Sangam) and Ariya Sriharan (a Solicitor from U K among other credentials).

Four of the members in the podium voiced the opinion that there should be new approaches and rethinking on the subject of the future of the Lankan Tamils in terms of politics in the country.

While one panellist, Kanthia Neelakandan, underscored that while maintaining the Ethnic Identity of theirs the Tamils should also be critical in spotlighting the inadequacies that prevent a harmonious attention towards the marginalized Thamil people in the country giving examples. At the same time he too agreed that there should be new strategies and approaches to solve the practical problems that the Tamils face in the country.

But the main focus was on positive and optimistic approaches that the Tamils should initiate thus disregarding the worn out and unrealistic methods that the politicians had professed during the past 50 years or so.

Shan Shanmuganathan was very clear in enunciating his plan of program that seems realistic in the present context.

Surprisingly the late SJVC’s son Chandrahasan appeared to have changed his stance from confrontational politics which his father, the respected Federal Thinker professed to realistic approaches towards the ethnic problem. In fact he was a defender of the powers that be that had gone a long way in understanding the problems of the Lankan Tamils and had initiated some progressive implementation. From this columnist’s point of view this is indeed a welcome move. Indeed everything is subject to change.

Prof. S. Santhirasegetram’s intellectual presentation was very apt to the needs of the time. He informed that the developed countries in South and South East Asia are thinking of the future of their countries 20 years ahead. Futurology is the key word, he said.

Lankan born British Solicitor Ariya Sriharan suggested that the identification of different stances of the Tamil Diaspora towards their brethren in Lanka. However this columnist would have liked his proposition planned out in a logical manner.

And yet all views were listened to without any uproar and the discussion was conducted in a cordial and decent manner. Electronic media person Yogarajah moderated the discussion when the floor was open to the invitees. A few expressed their views but most of them remained silent. Apparently the diehards of old thinking might not have found palatable the necessity to think new and find new approaches to the question in hand.

Yours truly endorsed the views of Suriyakumari that the Tamil print media in particular is biased to some extent in not taking a positive attitude towards the good things that have been done.

As far as this columnist was concerned the Tamil Press while presenting a balanced reportage of the events unfurling its features columns and political commentaries give a partisan interpretation and thus confusing the Tamil readers perhaps out of fear of militancy. But that element is gradually disappearing. If I may be permitted to say, I wish that the TNA (Tamil National Alliance) should reconsider their confrontational and unrealistic attitudes in understanding of the present context and should move away from emotional outpourings that the uninitiated and na‹ve voters are led to believe. Instead a willingly cooperative measures vis-a-vis the Government in Power should be followed for viable and true harmony.

Again, the East should be allowed to develop in its own way instead of North centric politics.

As far as the electoral system goes, the constituencies from Moothoor to Paddirippu should form one Electoral District.

There are many more things I desire as a pedestrian observer of local politics and we may express them in these columns by and by.