Jaffna Tamil people were very friendly and cooperative but it is our Sinhala people there who are useless..!!!

Rebuilding communal amity

I am saddened and surprised by Devanessan Nesiah’s (DN) opinion on Rebuilding Sri Lanka, in The Island of the 12th March. Saddened, because it reflects poorly on the reported piggish behaviour of visitors to Jaffna from the community to which I am supposed to belong; surprised, because as admitted by himself, DN had not been to Jaffna himself since 2002.

I am aware DN often visited Jaffna when he worked as a UNDP consultant attached to the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Authority of the North, when I was the Chairman of that institution. Having regard to the trials and tribulations faced by passengers travelling to Jaffna during the conflict, I can well understand DN’s failure to go there before 2009.

DN being a true son of Jaffna fully committed to her cause, I would expect him to have rushed to his roots as soon as he was free to do so. May be he had his own reasons not to do so and I have no status to cavil about that. What disturbs me is that DN, a well known rationalist, chose to condemn without first-hand experience or disclosed evidence.

I do not propose to go into details, as Tissa Devendra (TD) has dealt with them in his response published in the Island of the 16th March, except to submit that pollution of the atmosphere by visiting crowds is not specific to Jaffna. That happens in all popular local tourist destinations like Anuradhapura and Kataragama, irrespective of the ethnic background of the visitors. Similarly, teasing young girls is a common pastime of naughty young men everywhere.

I note from TD’s comments that his own children were welcome in Jaffna. Such has been the experience of the son and daughter-in-law of a colleague of mine who were among the visitors crowding Jaffna. They had mixed freely with the local population and found no difference in them from their neighbours. They had not seen a single armed soldier in the peninsula.

In order to check whether this comradeship was confined to class, I asked a tree-cutter who had gone on a tour to Jaffna, how he found the place. He said, "Jaffna people were very friendly and cooperative but it is our people there who are useless". The tree-cutter’s party had gone to a temple to partake of the meal that they had taken with them but they had been asked to come after 2.00 PM. Disappointed, they went to a nearby church and were cordially received and generously accommodated.

It is that attitude of neighbourliness that has to be cultivated if we are to tap the enthusiasm of the South to re-discover the North. The influx into Jaffna is a consummation devoutly to be wished and built upon, not to be despised and grumbled at. The visitors are motivated by a sense of curiosity and the momentum of a new found freedom of movement. It would be unfair to attribute motives of triumphalism behind their visits. They were never at war with the Tamils and are happy that the common obstacle to national integration has been removed.

Even personnel of the armed forces do not appear to have such a superiority complex judging from what I have heard from visitors to Jaffna. I understand that all tourists to Jaffna are stopped by soldiers at the entrance to the District and advised, "You are entering an area that had been under severe stress for a long time. They may be over-sensitive to your words and deeds in the background of what they have suffered and been made to believe. Please be careful in your dealings with them. See that you are not misunderstood".

Pillars of the Tamil community, of which DN is a leading light, have to play a meaningful role from the other side of the Cadjan Fence to maximize towards national integration, the effect of the Sinhala deluge to Jaffna, without leaving it in the hands of market forces. They should devise purposeful ways of introducing Jaffna culture to the visitors who should not be left entirely to discover Jaffna haphazardly.

Let the enthusiastic visitors be introduced to the genuine delicacies of Tamil cuisine like Meen Kulambu, Raal Poriyal and even a glass of unadulterated Pannan Kallu, with Kool as a substitute for the teetotalers. The wayside eateries may give them the impression that the Jaffna man lives by bread and Paruppu alone.

Let the Southerners also have a chance of enjoying the indigenous visual and performing arts and realize the common affinities. Visitors to places of worship should be shown around by knowledgeable guides who have the capacity to stress the common factors in the respective faiths, without leaving them to their misconceptions.

Such positive action, rather than armchair denunciation, should go a long way to build the long delayed bridge between the North and the South.


Somapala Gunadheera



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