The exiled Tamil poet. Professor R Cheran, speaking to the Alignist on his poetry and submission to Amnesty International’s poetry contest, stressed that without genuine acknowledgement of Tamil grievances by the majority community of Sri Lanka, nothing could move forward.
Extracts of his interview with writer and Lawyer Gowri Kneswaran reproduced below.
See full interview here.
Highlighting how poetry can be used as a tool to discuss injustices, Professor Cheran said,
“In the case of Sri Lanka, literary organizations in Sri Lanka and South Asia have been inactive. There’s been an unwritten rule to not discuss or talk about these [human rights] issues. So, when Amnesty International proposed this idea, we welcomed it. Disappearances in Sri Lanka is a mind bogglingly huge issue but it hasn’t received the attention and care it deserves. More than 75,000 people [have been] disappeared and the culprits are still [out] there. In that context, [the poetry contest] is crucial even as a small gesture.”
On the issue of being labelled as “Sri Lankan” the poet said,
“I have never identified myself as a Sri Lankan because my political activism started in 1972 when the state promulgated the new constitution and renamed Ceylon as Sri Lanka and we were all forced to become “Sri Lankans.” The state sponsored, nurtured, and facilitated "Sri Lankan" identity is exclusive. In the current understanding, “Sri Lankan” means a Sinhalese and to a great extent a Buddhist person who lives in Sri Lanka. It never included Tamils in terms of political representation, cultural representation, and even symbolic representation. Whenever you locate a Sri Lankan association, it will largely be Sinhalese. That is why, in most cases, you see Tamil organizations. That is one point I’d like to make strongly.”
Stressing that true reconciliation can only start with true acknowledgement of what happened to the victim communities, Professor Cheran added,
“I’m not familiar with the [Write-To-Reconcile] program; however, any program or project on reconciliation should start from acknowledgment. So first it’s the responsibility of the perpetrators and majority community to acknowledge what happened to the Tamil people in the last stages of the war. Without that acknowledgement, nothing can move forward. I would be asking, “How are these programs facilitating acknowledgment?” That is the question I would be asking everyone.
I’m also asking if the government of Sri Lanka or any [of the country’s] southern civil society organizations are willing to show the “No Fire Zone” documentary. There is [now] a Sinhala version available. That would be an ethical, critical step in the direction of solidarity and acknowledgment. It’s not only a good documentary but also recorded our anguish. It would begin the project of acknowledgement. They could show this documentary to the Sinhalese public. So far, no one has initiated doing that.
The other thing is that the Sinhalese journalists and writers that acknowledged that what happened to Tamils at the end of the war was genocide are all in exile. They wrote in Sinhala and have contributed enormously to revealing what happened during the final stages of the war.”
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