To My Dear Jaffna University Friends
By Pratheep Kunarthnam –July 20, 2016
Pratheep Kunarthnam
My dear university friends,
I am not interested in discussing here what happened at the university on Saturday or how the media and social media reported and responded to it in great haste. I would like to stand away from such exaggerated descriptions as “They raised sticks,” “They pelted us with stones,” “We were injured,” “The Police came,” “We said Sinhalese,” “We said Tamils.” Now it is time for discussion and dialogue.
Riding my bike down the Ramanathan lane last night, I could sense graveyard like silence around the University. The place was cordoned off by the Police. What happened in the morning, the distorted media coverage of those happenings, what I heard on the streets had all overcome my reason. As soon as I reached home, I put up a status post on my Facebook wall only to take it down after 10 minutes. I felt tensed; an emotional crisis was brewing inside me. Many of you would have felt the same last night. But let’s think now and teach our hearts there should be no room for hatred in them.
The ethnic conflict of the long years has made us take refuge in our emotions. The media, many who wrote on the social media and bloggers approached the situation with a divisive agenda. Many want someone or some group to carry arms and stand before them. That is all they want. Such is their desire for revenge.
Those diaspora people inside their safe zones and those with political power want us to take up arms and fight. There are plenty of such selfish folks among all communities.
This is a problem that has occurred at our university. Both Tamil and Sinhala media are using it to fan the flames of narrow-minded politics. In analyzing it carefully, one sees that there are only a few people who are involved in the problem: the ones who succumbed to their emotions and raised their arms first and those who raised their arms in retaliation. Some of them belonging to these two groups are still roaming the campus.
These folks did not emerge all of a sudden. Posters sprang up on the walls calling for the construction of Buddhist temple. The Nandi statutes were recently demolished. The stone benches where enamored couple spent their leisure hours were destroyed. The fuming volcanoes finally exploded on the 16th of July. There was no sudden reason for the violence that shook us yesterday. It was an explosion triggered many sub-events.
The posts that appear these days in the media and social media sound as though their authors want the students to divide themselves into Tamil and Sinhala groups and kick start a war. They want to scapegoat the students to feed their greed for sensational news and racism. Abhorrent men.
There is no question that all communities have the right to articulate their culture-based identities via cultural events and performances. But what we need to ask is when and in what context such articulations happen. When it takes place in a context where the state and majoritarian chauvinism attempt to oppress a community, it will have adverse consequences. Isn’t it ironic that none has pointed their finger at the Buddhist statues that are mushrooming outside the University? Let’s try to understand that there is some force operating behind all of these happenings.
