The Vavuniya Diaries By Neville Jayaweera
Review by B. Skanthakumar –February 12, 2018
This slim memoir spanning a few months in 1971 is noteworthy for its insider view on the failed first insurrection of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP—Peoples Liberation Front), or more exactly its repression somewhere remote from Colombo and the southwest, by a principal participant. The author was then Government Agent, that is the top-most administrative official, in undivided Vavuniya (before Mullaithivu had been carved from it).
Jungle Outpost
This Tamil majority northern district was sprawling and forested and populated by poor peasants and wild animals. It was a punishment station “away from the comforts of home, family and friends”, for public officials out-of-favour with the incumbent government; and is variously described by Jayaweera as a “jungle outpost”, “Siberia”, and even “gulag”!
Their politically motivated transfer was to affect the loyalty and morale of police personnel and other state cadre as news of a daring bid for state power by a shadowy movement of Sinhala radical youth – known colloquially as ‘Cheguara’ (through association with the image and example of the Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara) – trickled in from the Sinhala villages of Madukanda, Mamaduwa and Pavatkulama, to the town.
After his previous roles as Government Agent of Jaffna during the implementation of the ‘Sinhala Only’ Act – narrated in his Jaffna: Exorcising the Past and Holding the Vision (Ravaya Publishers, 2014) – and as Chairman cum Director-General of the Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation, Jayaweera had anticipated measuring the length of his sentence in Vavuniya by “purchasing paddy and looking into corruption in cooperative societies”.
The eruption of armed rebellion from 4th April 1971 and until its eradication (in Vavuniya at least) by mid-August, changed the situation utterly.
