Arantalawa is a temple called ‘Never Again’
There are villages whose names are not known only by residents and a
few others living in the neighbourhood. Twenty four years ago, few or
none in Colombo would have known of a village called Nuwaratenne. Twenty
four years ago, to the day, i.e. June 2, 1987, something happened which
helped carry that name to most households across the country, via
television, radio and newspapers.
The name was mentioned because an abduction took place close to this
village. The name was forgotten because those who were abducted were
killed in cold blood in a different place. That place had a name-Arantalawa.
A bus carrying 34 bikkhus accompanied by four others was ambushed on
that day near Nuwaratenne. It was the LTTE, liberators to some,
revolutionaries to others, called sole-representatives of the Tamil
people by themselves and their lackeys, here and abroad, thought to be
invincible then and right up to the end of 2008. There were about 20 of
them, armed with guns and swords.
The liberators ordered the driver to take the vehicle into the
jungles of Arantalawa. The liberators did their work. At the end of it
all, the four lay persons, 30 young novice bikkhus and their mentor, the
Chief Incumbent of the Vidyananda Maha Pirivena, the Ven. Hegoda Sri
Indrasara Thera, were liberated from their respective corporeal cages
and sent swiftly along to their next sansaric destination. Four of the
novice bikkhus or samaneras, wounded but trapped under the bodies of
those who had been machine gunned or cut and slashed by the liberators,
survived.
Only one thing remained. A name-Arantalawa.
Unarmed civilians
Weeping Buddhist monks. File photo |
‘Arantalawa’ was not an isolated act of liberation. The LTTE carried
out hundreds of such liberation-attacks on unarmed civilians, mostly
Sinhala and Muslim people living in areas the LTTE considered were the
‘historical and traditional homelands’ of the Tamil community. This,
ladies and gentlemen, was long before the term ‘ethnic cleansing’
entered the discourse of conflict resolution.
‘Arantalawa’ is mentioned and remembered not only because the name
has a lyrical ring to it. It is remembered also because it was a
gruesome act. It is remembered because it was, may I say, colourful.
Millions are familiar, after all, with the images from that massacre. A
row of brutally murdered young bikkhus, their yellow robes drenched in
blood makes an eye-catching portrait.
No Tamil with even a drop of humanity in him or her could identify
with the LTTE and its project from this moment onwards, one would have
thought.
Few among those who did, however, would claim they were lesser human
beings, or lacked in humanity. There is, after all, a human tendency to
forgive such excesses if the general thrust of the objective is
identified with. Humanity is framed, then, by convenience.
Political signature
‘Arantalawa’ was not a solitary act, not an outlier in the ‘overall’
that was the LTTE. It was a leadership-call and a follower-execution. It
was not a ‘first’ for the LTTE and it was not the last. It was, indeed,
a kind of beginning to a politics that embraced terrorism as the
favoured methodology. Such butchery became the political signature of
the LTTE. Such acts have considerably lengthened the LTTE’s curriculum
vitae, so to speak. It was not only Sinhala Buddhists who earned the
wrath of the LTTE and were executed thus. Muslims were slaughtered in
their hundred while at prayer inside mosques. That’s how ‘Kattankudy’
became a familiar name. And it was not only the LTTE that perpetrated
such acts.
There have been many instances where soldiers, either under orders
from superior officer or on account of indiscipline, have attacked
villages where Tamil people resided. Villages have fought one another,
extracting eye for eye that was extracted, often by total outsiders in
both cases. Wars are terrible things. Guns don’t think. Testosterone
compromises reason. Twenty four years ago, saffron coloured robes turned
chillie red. Today, we can ask, ‘for what purpose?’ The LTTE did not win
anything for the Tamil people. They only conferred disgrace on that
community and were considerably supported in this by cowardly Tamil
politicians and quack academics who went along with Eelam myth mongering
because they were virulently anti-Sinhala or anti-Buddhist.
Crimes against humanity
Tamil people are not to be blamed for crimes against humanity
perpetrated by a group or person who claim to represent them. Neither
are the Sinhalese to blame for the excesses of undisciplined troops,
their sycophantic commanders.
Today, ‘Arantalawa’ tells us only one thing: we cannot go back to
that time. All communities have been made to un-belong on this land, or
else forced to inhabit characterizations that are either secondary or
irrelevant to their lives. They’ve not been allowed to speak. They’ve
been spoken for and spoken for by demogogues and rogues.
‘Arantalawa’ today is not just a gross reminder of the cloud that was
hanging over this land for 30 years, raining bullets and dread, it is a
symbol of what could happen again if certain paths known to lead to
blood-letting are walked again.
‘Arantalawa’ is a temple to the idea ‘Never Again’. And this ‘never
again’ must include claims that cannot be substantiated, insensitivity
to one another’s doubts and suspicions, tendency to frill grievance and
to ignore grievance in its true dimensions, the deference of resolving
both specific and general citizenship anomalies in favour of eyewash and
endless hair-splitting over things packed with rhetoric and poor in
reason.
On June 2, 1987, the earth in a then unknown piece of earth in a land
whose blessings are ignored or vilified, saffron coloured robes turned
chillie red.
Twenty four years later, we are as a people, have moved on. Moving
on, though, does not preclude going back. If anything ‘Arantalawa’
should serve as a vivid and indelible image that makes us reject the
pathways to madness and bloodletting.
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