Brutal Periods In Sri Lanka & The Idea Of ‘Responsible Action’

By Harini Amarasuriya -April 30, 2015

Dr. Harini Amarasuriya

Thank you very much for inviting me to speak a few words on the bookPalmyra Fallen – From Rajani to War’s End by Dr Rajan Hoole. What I thought I would do today is to share a few thoughts about certain themes that I found particularly relevant, interesting and provocative. First let me say that I was in absolute awe of the wide range of ideas touched in this book – ranging from Apartheid South Africa, to conflict-ridden Ireland and Nazi Germany; the poetry of T.S Eliot, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman; the Holy Bible, the Mahavamsa, the Mahabaratha, theories of Karl Popper and mathematical formulas. This book is as interesting for what it reveals about the author’s eclectic and varied interests and sources of inspiration as for the actual substance of the book itself and the often tragic events it documents. I certainly can’t do justice to this huge breadth of ideas, thoughts and events expressed in the book. What I am going to focus on in the time that I have today are the questions and ideas that the book provoked in me as I read it. These questions and ideas are not regarding specific events, ideas or the people discussed in the book – but at a broader level what it says about society, politics and civil action.

Rajani

I was an empty-headed, rather sheltered school girl at the time of Rajini Thiranagama’s assassination. Like for most of my peers in the South, the event did not have a particular significance at the time. It was later, that I began to be curious about Rajini’s life – what kind of person was she? How did she do what she did? In the course of my work I met people who knew her well: Saratha one of the first people to get to Rajini as she lay dying on the street; Rajini’s younger sister Sumathy; her daughter Sharika and I just missed each other at the University of Edinburgh – she was leaving Edinburgh as I started my doctoral studies there. I had heard of Rajani’s colleagues Prof Daya Somasunderam, Dr Sritharan and Dr Hoole and her husband Dayapala Thiranagama from my own friends and colleagues who knew them or who had worked with them. All of these encounters made me more curious about Rajini; what was she really like? How do we or can we separate the real Rajini from the legend? What made a 35-year old woman take the risks she did for what she believed in?

This was not just idle or ghoulish curiosity; I became interested in the 1980s, particularly the times when the state was at war with the LTTE in the North and East and with the JVP in the South. It was one of the most violent and brutal periods in Sri Lanka. What also fascinated me about that period was how during this period, individuals like Rajini and others; groups like UTHR and others in the North as well as in the South, got together and at great personal risks stood up against violence, against brutality and repressions, against nationalisms. They provided an alternative voice – an alternative ideological and political space. Many like Rajini paid for their work and their beliefs with their lives. How did they do it? Were they simply individuals with great personal courage and strong convictions or was there something else?Read More