No flowers bloomed in Jaffna culture
Sunday 12 August 2012
Jaffna is a narrow strip of land sandwiched between two great cultures: the Dravidian culture of S. India to its north and the Sinhala-Buddhist culture of the south. With the gathering of the Tamil migrants from S. India in this strip since the 12 -13th centuries, Jaffna became the glorified centre of Tamil culture and politics. Though, there were Tamil-speaking communities in the east and the central hills, it is Jaffna that gained the elevated status of being the cultural heartland of Tamils, partly due to historical and geographical circumstances and partly due to the peninsula being cut off from the rest of the nation, which enabled it to keep a distance without mixing freely with the other cultures. This isolation helped Jaffna to retain its linguistic archaisms which is rated highly as “purity” in the Tamil language. Other than that there are no striking creative contributions that came of Jaffna to make it the iconic haven of Tamil culture.
The repeated ethnic cleansing from the pre-Dutch period right up to the time of Prabhakaran also helped Jaffna to keep the “other” at bay and maintain, as far as possible, an exclusive ethnic identity based on mono-ethnic, mono-cultural, mono-lingual factors. Its history is also littered with periodic instances of massacres, persecutions and expulsions of those who were perceived as threats to its mono-cultural rule. Consequently, Jaffna, which was a closed society, turned into an exclusive ethnic zone for the Jaffna Tamils, unlike the multi-cultural, cosmopolitan and open society of the south. It was the region that was least open to external influences. Jaffna was somewhat like the touch-me-not creeper (Mimosa Pudica, thuth-thiri (Sinhalese), thotta chinungi (Tamil)) which closes up at the slightest touch.
Tied to the umbilical cords of S. India, Jaffna invariably looked northwards for its cultural sustenance. The geographical proximity to S. India too was also a vital factor in separating the other Tamil-speaking migrants (examples: the Tamil-speaking Muslims in the east and the Tamil-speaking Indian estate workers in the central hills) from the Jaffna Tamils. The Palk Straits that separated Jaffna from S. India also created an ambivalence in the minds of the Jaffna Tamils who developed divided loyalties, one with an endearing attachment to their motherland and the other resisting the invasions of the S. Indian culture polluting the “purity” of the Jaffna Tamil culture.
For instance, during the time of Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike there was a movement among the cultural purists of Jaffna to ban the import of Tamil Nadu magazines and films with critics claiming that the flood of cheap Madras culture was polluting the pure Tamil culture of Jaffna. Prof. Swaminathan Suseendirarajah (SS), an authority on Sri Lankan Tamil linguistics, commenting on this movement to keep the S. Indian cultural invasions out of Jaffna wrote: “Today in Sri Lanka a movement to foster Tamil language in every aspect independent of Indian Tamil is gaining popularity. To achieve this end some of the extremists are advocating cessation of Tamil language-link with India and even urging the government to ban the import of certain category of Tamil literature from India.” (p.21 — Studies in Sri Lankan Tamil Linguistics and Culture, Selected Papers of Professor Suseendirarajah, Sixty Fifth Birthday Commemoration Volume, 1998, Edited by K. Balasubramaniam, K. Ratnamalar and R. Subathini.)
One overwhelming feature of the Jaffna culture has been the obsession to retain its archaic purity. This emphatic claim to be culturally “pure” -purer than the other varieties of Tamil including that in S. India - has been the sole criterion on which Jaffnaites claim superiority over the other Tamil-speaking cultures. Prof. SS states: “The spoken variety of (Jaffna) Tamil seems to have gained prestige over other varieties such as Batticaloa variety, Trincomalee variety, Vavuniya variety, Colombo variety, Moor variety etc. This has given way to a popular view in India that Jaffna Tamil both, spoken and written, is “pure”, “literary- like”, and “grammatical”.” (p/269 - Ibid).
Sense of superiority Full Story>>.
Sunday 12 August 2012
Jaffna is a narrow strip of land sandwiched between two great cultures: the Dravidian culture of S. India to its north and the Sinhala-Buddhist culture of the south. With the gathering of the Tamil migrants from S. India in this strip since the 12 -13th centuries, Jaffna became the glorified centre of Tamil culture and politics. Though, there were Tamil-speaking communities in the east and the central hills, it is Jaffna that gained the elevated status of being the cultural heartland of Tamils, partly due to historical and geographical circumstances and partly due to the peninsula being cut off from the rest of the nation, which enabled it to keep a distance without mixing freely with the other cultures. This isolation helped Jaffna to retain its linguistic archaisms which is rated highly as “purity” in the Tamil language. Other than that there are no striking creative contributions that came of Jaffna to make it the iconic haven of Tamil culture. The repeated ethnic cleansing from the pre-Dutch period right up to the time of Prabhakaran also helped Jaffna to keep the “other” at bay and maintain, as far as possible, an exclusive ethnic identity based on mono-ethnic, mono-cultural, mono-lingual factors. Its history is also littered with periodic instances of massacres, persecutions and expulsions of those who were perceived as threats to its mono-cultural rule. Consequently, Jaffna, which was a closed society, turned into an exclusive ethnic zone for the Jaffna Tamils, unlike the multi-cultural, cosmopolitan and open society of the south. It was the region that was least open to external influences. Jaffna was somewhat like the touch-me-not creeper (Mimosa Pudica, thuth-thiri (Sinhalese), thotta chinungi (Tamil)) which closes up at the slightest touch.
Tied to the umbilical cords of S. India, Jaffna invariably looked northwards for its cultural sustenance. The geographical proximity to S. India too was also a vital factor in separating the other Tamil-speaking migrants (examples: the Tamil-speaking Muslims in the east and the Tamil-speaking Indian estate workers in the central hills) from the Jaffna Tamils. The Palk Straits that separated Jaffna from S. India also created an ambivalence in the minds of the Jaffna Tamils who developed divided loyalties, one with an endearing attachment to their motherland and the other resisting the invasions of the S. Indian culture polluting the “purity” of the Jaffna Tamil culture.
For instance, during the time of Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike there was a movement among the cultural purists of Jaffna to ban the import of Tamil Nadu magazines and films with critics claiming that the flood of cheap Madras culture was polluting the pure Tamil culture of Jaffna. Prof. Swaminathan Suseendirarajah (SS), an authority on Sri Lankan Tamil linguistics, commenting on this movement to keep the S. Indian cultural invasions out of Jaffna wrote: “Today in Sri Lanka a movement to foster Tamil language in every aspect independent of Indian Tamil is gaining popularity. To achieve this end some of the extremists are advocating cessation of Tamil language-link with India and even urging the government to ban the import of certain category of Tamil literature from India.” (p.21 — Studies in Sri Lankan Tamil Linguistics and Culture, Selected Papers of Professor Suseendirarajah, Sixty Fifth Birthday Commemoration Volume, 1998, Edited by K. Balasubramaniam, K. Ratnamalar and R. Subathini.)
One overwhelming feature of the Jaffna culture has been the obsession to retain its archaic purity. This emphatic claim to be culturally “pure” -purer than the other varieties of Tamil including that in S. India - has been the sole criterion on which Jaffnaites claim superiority over the other Tamil-speaking cultures. Prof. SS states: “The spoken variety of (Jaffna) Tamil seems to have gained prestige over other varieties such as Batticaloa variety, Trincomalee variety, Vavuniya variety, Colombo variety, Moor variety etc. This has given way to a popular view in India that Jaffna Tamil both, spoken and written, is “pure”, “literary- like”, and “grammatical”.” (p/269 - Ibid).
Sense of superiority Full Story>>.
