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| Sunday, 03 August 2003 |
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by FACTOTUM The title may seem cryptic out of context but it was not so in the context of the studied rendition of Prof. Valentine Daniel delivered in memory of that eminent peace and human rights activist Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute Auditorium last Tuesday. The hardest punches were reserved for the politicians who fiddle and harp - pulling strings to better themselves! was how Prof. Val saw it all. The asides were equally directed at others - newspaper editors, intellectuals, as well as academics on both sides of the ethnic divide. But Neelan was the exception. The black events had taken their toll but there was hope that 20 years hence a new generation will celebrate two decades of peace and not reminisce two score years of strife. And that hope was based on observations of the latest developments. "I gather that the LTTE has finally seen, among other things, its folly in having evacuated the Muslims from the North. That is a good start. The LTTE and the Sri Lankan government have begun talking to each other. This is another good start. I see the day when our public's opinion will no longer be constituted by the prejudiced voice and a prejudging ear of politician, priest, private citizen or press. I see some monks in saffron robes opting for the dhamma of the Buddha and not the dharma of war. This is encouraging. I have taken note of the fact that Tamils and Sinhala exiles in Europe, North America and Australia have found common ground in so many aspects of their lives that has undermined their differences. That some times this common ground lies in the realization of the fact that Europeans cannot tell the difference between Aryan and Dravidian, Tamils and Sinhalese, and to some of whom, all the denizens who hail from this isle of splendour are but "niggers". There was a concerted attempt at rescuing commonplace words "Terror", 'terrorism' and 'terrorists' from their state of clicheness. "If terror is to be hunted down, it must be banished from cliche. We need to rely not on the told, but in telling. We have heard it told and told ourselves of acts of terror in ways that incite rage and revenge, hate and pride, pity and compassion, action and stunned repose. But we need to find new ways of speaking of terror so as to hold terror itself at bay, to check its advance into the general and the commonplace, to restrict it to the particular. If terror is not to become cliche, it must be remembered in the details of its manifestations, the details of face. I hope that some day, the Indian soldier who shot the mother who was holding her baby will come to know terror, know it as it was in that mother's face; or come to know all that is unnamable - which, for want of another word, could only be called "divine" - as it was in the baby's face that he never looked at before shooting it in the back of its head. In Neelan's face, I never saw fear, let alone terror, but what I did see was faith, hope and love. If there were only three antidotes to terror that one could choose, one couldn't do better than ask for faith, hope and love. If, however, faith, hope and love themselves were not to become cliches, they must be remembered in and learned from the details of face. For me at least, such details appear and reappear in the memory of Neelan Tiruchelvam's face." He was clearly 'remembering the unfallen' of whom so much has been said and written and whose contribution to constitution making as a means of a non-violent settlement of this country's predicament is grudgingly acknowledged by even those who labelled him a traitor and caused his violent end. |
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