Why Kadirgarmar was more Tamil than most Tamils

Lakshman Kadirgarmar wanted nothing more than to travel to the North and East of the country, and talk to the people he left behind since his childhood. Some laughed when he made that somewhat famous assertion that he was not a tribalist.

Last week, Kadirgarmar's death anniversary was commemorated with a Buddhist monk preaching the laws of impermanence at the late Minister's Wijerama residence. An almsgiving followed. Sometimes, impermanence permeates one's consciousness in an almost mocking way ---- as if life was a tease. I felt a bit of that, figuring out that everybody who was there the year before at Lakshman Kadirgarmar's memorial 'bana' was not present this time around.

Some had voiced their displeasure that Kadirgarmar had declared himself a non-tribalist, and across the Diaspora, while Kadirgarmar himself was speaking of the back-channels he had built with his enemies (in his usual trusting kind of way) a considerable number of them had their daggers drawn at him.

Kadirgarmar would have surely had the last laugh.

He knew the nature of impermanence, and shrugged it off. That's probably why he said '' of course I'm their number one target,'' and shrugged that off too, even as he believed that some back-channels had been built with the enemy.

But yet, he knew the nature of impermanence, which is why he shrugged off the threat to his life, took his daily swim, and did all of that, when Douglas Devananda had said ''I continue to live because I draw the curtains.'' Devananda had thirteen lives, because his military instincts told him a normal life was not possible as a prime target.

But back to the diaspora.

Why did so many diaspora Tamils have their (imaginary) daggers drawn at Kadirgarmar? One reason was that Kadirgarmar had not only declared himself a tribalist, he was living his life as if he was not a tribalist. He embraced Buddhism -- which to the diaspora meant one thing. He had embraced the enemy's way of life. But this is where Kadirgaramr had his most silent belly laugh He knew that the culture of Tamilnadu was suffused with the Buddhist experience. The roots of Tamil literature trace their way back to the time Buddhism was more than just a sub-culture in the vast Tamilian empire. No Tamil had entirely left the Buddhist part of him behind -- there was always more than the trace of Buddhism appearing in Tamil literature, culture and way of life.

So, Kadirgarmar embraced nothing alien, a fact unbeknownest to those in the dispora, who didn't know Buddhism or the history of Buddhism. His vastest expression of benign scorn -- -and his most aching belly laugh - - therefore was reserved for the Tamil diaspora which saw him in black and white as a hate figure.

But what if Kadirgarmar had stopped over at a small house or hut, say, in Mutur? Security imperatives made certain that an opportunity of this kind was a luxury he couldn't afford. But if Kadirgarmar had some backchat with the people of Muhamali or Mutru instead of leaving behind a good back story of how he had faith in certain back channels to the enemy, then he might have realised that he was no hate figure in the land that he wanted to be free from the clutches of the Tiger.

The Tamils in Sri Lankan Tamil country, though mostly Hindu are steeped in a symbiotic Buddhist ethos, in a certain way, and are open minded. They have Tamilian genes, coming down from the ages when Buddhism was so intertwined with Tamil life in the old country - in India....

-- Rajpal