There Are No “Pro-Tamil” Sinhalese
Prof. Charles Sarvan
Many may stand apart from the general current (because they are distracted, bored, indifferent or disdainful) but few actually have the independence of mind and courage of spirit to go against the powerful and destructive torrent.
Neville Jayaweera recently sent me his tribute to Adrian Wijemanne who died in July 2008 at the age of 81, and it serves as a kind of prolegomenon to what follows. Jayaweera takes note both of Wijemanne’s distinguished public career, and lauds him as a person who was “remarkably modest and devoid of ego, neither talking about himself nor ever deliberately seeking public profile or visibility”. He was one who lived modestly, “never accepting payment either for lecturing or for writing” and having only his pension for an income. Yet, Jayaweera observes, such a human being was distanced by former colleagues, by most former close friends, and by some relations. Why? Because of his stance on Sri Lanka’s ethnic question: he was seen as a Sinhalese who was pro-Tamil. If colleagues, friends and relations did not understand him, then it’s not surprising that others heaped abuse, often intense and vulgar, on him; threatened and futilely tried to intimidate him with dire physical consequence. (In another communication to me, and with reference to Wijemanne, Neville Jayaweera writes of “closet racists”: seemingly cultivated, liberal-minded and progressive in public but “troglodyte in private”.) Jayaweera, employing a Biblical reference, describes Wijemanne as a voice in the wilderness. One may add that it was, by and large, an unheard and certainly unheeded voice. But lines from Robert Frost’s poem, ‘Bereft’, come to mind: “Word I was in the house alone / Somehow must have gotten abroad / Word I was in my life alone / Word I had no one left but God.” The last would have more than sufficed for Adrian Wijemanne because he was a deeply religious man whose ethics and morals (they are not the same) were drawn from, and based on, his religion. But would it be accurate and correct to say that the few Adrian Wijemannes of Sri Lanka, both male and female, are pro-Tamil? This is what I seek to address here. Read More
