What role did the 26 Year War in Sri Lanka play in my life?

We were too small a group to have much influence in the politics of Jaffna, but stories related to our families and friends spread far and wide as our group came from various corners of the Peninsula.

by Victor Cherubim

( June 6, 2016, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) As many will know I was fortunate in some way being away from the island during most, if not all of the 26 long war years in Sri Lanka.

I was most of the time in the United Kingdom, but I visited my homeland almost every two years from London and spent at least one month visiting the places I grew up and meeting the people who I had previously shared my life with.

I was not privy to the bombs and the bunkers, or the immediate destruction and displacement of the vast numbers of people of all communities everywhere in Sri Lanka. I had heard of the body bags, the sirens, the Black Tigers, the Sea Tigers and the suicide squads and I had also seen evidence of this desolation both in the North and in the South, during my short visits to my home.

But I never personally experienced the ravages of war other than eye witness reports during my brief meetings with the people who were involved in the war.

My role before the war

Before the commencement of the war in August 1956, I was a young lad just out of school. I led a Group of 12 Tamil Youth under 25 years from Jaffna, on invitation by Dr.A.T.Ariyaratna of the Sarvodaya-Shramadana Movement, Colombo to build a bridge of friendship between our two main communities by rebuilding a bridge over the river at Pelwatte, a sugar plantation in the Monoragala District.

This was the first collaboration between young Tamil students and Sinhala students of Dr.Ariyaratna of Nalanda College, Colombo – an experiment in village reawakening.

Shramadana or the giving of free labour was a new idea. The use of youth to rebuild relations between the two major communities was also a novel idea. It was fraught with suspicion, if not danger of the consequences of association, if nothing else.

Our first hand experience

Our contingent of students was about to board the night mail train from Jaffna to Colombo in August 1956,when we were surprised to say the least, at the Jaffna Railway Station a protest demonstration outside the platform was drawn up mostly of elders organised we were informed, by the Federal Party operatives to stop us boarding. We were accustomed to many visitors to the station at train times for send off, but this was different. They came prepared to have a confrontation with our group, with Federal Party flags.

Luckily the station staff was able to contain the crowd and no violence took place, nor was Police called in. Naturally, as the train pulled off the station, we were huddled in one compartment, but some of the younger students were visibly shaken.

Fear was created in the minds of these volunteers when we arrived at Fort Railway Station the following early morning. The excitement of being on a mission overtook our anxiety as we were transported by vans from Colombo and on our journey to Pelwatte.

The reception at destination by the Sinhala students compensated for our predicament and the hospitality at Camp site was welcoming as we were escorted to our camp beds. One week of hard labour, clearing the forest and transporting gravel and sand on wheel borrows to and from our man made bridge site was an experience which I cherished, while our team were happy to meet and make acquaintance with our Sinhala students counterparts during evening get together.

This Work Camp experience in Community development was a lesson in rebuilding friendship, through a language many of our group could hardly comprehend. One week was too short an experiment in sharing trust among the Tamil and the Sinhala students of similar age and with the local villagers. But it was Team Shramadana and much later our group referred to it as TS with some nostalgia.

We were not surprised that the local and national media covered our joint effort at the Campsite and stories were relayed to student homes in Jaffna and elsewhere. It was only when we returned back to Jaffna that there was an unspoken unease among politicians of the Federal Party, who viewed our group perhaps, as a hindrance to their “sathyagraha” campaign of non-cooperation with the Sinhala Government in Colombo.

We were too small a group to have much influence in the politics of Jaffna, but stories related to our families and friends spread far and wide as our group came from various corners of the Peninsula.

My contact with the our Team

I lost contact with Team Shramadana and Dr.Ariyaratna as was away in the United on a State Department Student scholarship in 1957, but maintained written communication with some of the student volunteers who were with me at Pelwatte Camp.

I learned that some of them were recruited by the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) which was the amalgamation of Tamil Congress in unison with the Federal Party. I was aware that the climate at that time was to boycott any further contact with their Sinhala counterparts, perhaps a forced animosity later became created, I was told.

To be continued