Sri Lankan exiles and emigrants: Some thoughts
Still from the movie Silenced Voices
Prof. Charles Sarvan-18 Jul, 2013
But when you arrive in Ithaca, don’t expect to find jewels… Without Ithaca, you would not have set out… And through this journey… Such things have you learned.
(Cavafy. Translated from the Greek)
(Cavafy. Translated from the Greek)
By way of a preface, I mention the perception in some religions that we all are exiles, sojourning through a foreign land, amidst a people more or less alien to us. I recall taking my mother to the British High Commission in Lusaka (she had come to us consequent of the savage anti-Tamil pogrom of July 1983) in order to get her a visa to visit my sister in London. The official at the Commission studied her application and said, “I fear once you are in London, you will apply for permanent residence.” My mother smiled gently at him and replied, looking upward, “Young man, my permanent residence is elsewhere.” He signed the papers. (Mother died in Sri Lanka, 1988.)
The dictionary defines “emigrants” as those who leave their own country to settle permanently in another, and “exile” as the state of being banned from one’s native country, typically for political or punitive reasons. While “exile” implies compulsion, “emigration” suggests choice, but the instance of Frederica Jansz illustrates that the distinction is not always clear.
