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| Sunday, 7 September 2003 |
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Mervyn de Silva 74th birth anniversary-Sept 5th The Prophet armed - with a typewriter He was, demonstrably, by far the first (certainly outside Jaffna) to discern the emergence of Tamil youth militancy. He was the first to glimpse its historic potential to understand that it meant something qualitatively new and different.
He was the first to intuitively grasp and empathize with its sense of grievance and alienation, noting not only the similarities with Sinhala youth revolt of 1971 but also the important added dimension of discrimination. He was the first to argue that policy-makers should be sensitive to the incipient phenomenon. He was the first to go against the grain of prejudice and conventional wisdom and run the risk of placing the issue on high-profile public record. Decades before the eclipse of the TULF and in a Sinhala society where (until today) the Tamil youth insurgency is seen as the creation or instrument of the Tamil political elite. Mervyn saw also the radical discontinuity between the conventional upper-middle class Tamil parliamentary politics and the fledgling militant movement. Mervyn's extraordinary discernment is traceable to the combination of his powers as a literary critic, which endowed him with great sensitivity, and his remarkable knowledge of international politics which enabled him to understand the dynamics of emergent movements. His unmatched discernment was rooted in yet another factor while born and bred a Sinhala Buddhist, Mervyn's internationalism had emancipated his mind totally from ethno-religious blinkers and any vestige of traditional cultural prejudice, honing a sensibility that was totally Modern and an identity that was completely Sri Lankan. Reproduced here is a landmark Ceylon Daily News editorial (and as he notes in it not the initial one) he wrote on the subject as early as July 1, 1972. Had his warning and argument been heeded either by the SLFP, LSSP, CPSL administration of the day of the UNP administration that succeeded in Sri Lanka would not have descended into the hell that it did and face the catastrophic prospect that it does. - DJ What's up in the North? Nobody seriously expected the MPs of the Tamil United Front to sacrifice their seats in the National State Assembly. We were equally sure that some ready formula will be duly found to clear the FP's path to parliament of all those argumentative impediments that the FP itself had scattered on the road with studied abandon. The FP's leaders have never been short of sophistry in the service of their own paradoxical positions and ambiguities of action. Among some of the lawyers of the Tamil United Front the passion for Tamil lasts only the few minutes required to call out the cases and quickly evaporates thereafter. Then English comes into its own and reigns supreme. Time will prove what the TUF's somewhat spunky ultimatums actually mean. And we do not need to wait long. But far more interesting in our view is the incident reported by our Jaffna correspondent. The Action Committee could not hold its session at the headquarters of the All-Ceylon Tamil Congress because of a demonstration by hundreds of Tamil youths. They invaded the building and demanded that the MPs continue their boycott of the Assembly. The emergence, however hesitant or faint, of a militant youth group in the peninsula is a phenomenon about which we have written before. If the observation is correct, it is a factor of enormous significance - especially to the government. It is tempting these days to make a fetish of youth movements and youth politics. In Lanka, the temptation is almost irresistible after last year's holocaust. In any case, this is not only a young nation but a country of young people, as the relevant statistics prove. The frustrations of the educated young Tamil at a time when even science graduates cannot find suitable jobs do not require much explication. The fact that these frustrations are universal and that they are shared by his Sinhala counterpart does not make the Tamil youth's psychological load lighter. And if he feels, in fact, that the educational system and system of recruitment to the public sector have been deliberately contrived to reduce his chances, he has more reason for anger. An anger that reaches the limits of tolerance makes inflammable material for a certain kind of politics. Since the TUF's leadership is largely drawn from the upper-middle classes and professional groups and since parliament is the raison d'etre of political movements of this type, we have really no great cause for anxiety over the TUF's threats. The slogan 'Boycott parliament' is a propagandist effort by Tamil parliamentarians who want to retain the support of their constituents and their seats or of Tamil politicians who want to become parliamentarians or win back their lost seats. A movement of militant youth rooted in the soil of Jaffna and nourished by material frustration, a feeling of humiliation and bitterness, could be another kettle of fish. |
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