The mental gymnastics of visiting Sri Lanka

This is one of the hardest blogs I’ve written. I couldn’t figure out how to write about any of this succinctly, because I’m trying to summarize a 30+ year relationship with a war torn island that I love visiting. I couldn’t figure out whether to write anything at all. I landed on writing it because I want to capture my thoughts somewhere so that I can reflect on it. It’s unapologetically long because these dynamics are complicated. 

This blog is mostly for myself and the Tamil diaspora, so it will assume knowledge of things like the LTTE and kothu roti. It is for those of us who grew up tangentially to the war - the children of those who were displaced as immigrants or refugees. This blog is not intended to speak for those with direct, first-hand experiences living through the 26 year civil war in Sri Lanka. Nor is it intended to find answers. It should be read as a difficult flow of thoughts that exist in my mind as I navigate Sri Lanka. 

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I feel like I’m constantly playing mental gymnastics when I visit Sri Lanka. 

There is always this initial tussle, where I’m trying to justify my feelings about Sri Lanka as someone who was born into the displaced Tamil diaspora. I was not born in Sri Lanka, and the stories of riots and war are not my own.  I’m cautious to comment on a war that I did not personally live through, but I also realize that a part of my identity was shaped by the existence of that war, and my observations are an important piece of diasporic Tamil identity. My generation of the diaspora seems to be divided between those who are passionately engaged in the ongoing problems, and those who have little to zero relationship with Sri Lanka - it’s just the country their parents were born in, but they have no interest in visiting it. Most of my own cousins fall firmly into the latter group. Growing up, I think I was one of the only people in my family who both really wanted to see Sri Lanka and also had millions of questions about the war and politics. So my thoughts and feelings about the island have felt isolated for a long time. I wrote a poem about it some years ago, and I frequently come back to that poem as I try to parse through my thoughts. 

The older Tamil generations I’ve been surrounded by are mostly anti-LTTE. That does not mean that they’re against Tamil liberation, but they were against the LTTE.  In talking about the war, they always walked a delicate line of being careful not to sound like their thoughts on Tamil independence meant they supported the way the armed resistance played out. Some of them had first hand experience of the violence of the Sinhalese army, the Indian army and also the Tamil resistance groups. My family was always very firm that I should not get involved in any work related to Sri Lanka. During the height of the war, a lot of journalists in Sri Lanka were kidnapped in white vans and never seen again. Vocal members of the diaspora were banned from entry to Sri Lanka. To this day, vocal Tamil journalists in the diaspora face countless death threats from Sinhalese people. Facebook/Instagram is engaging in ongoing censorship of Tamil journalists. I remember in 2011, when my grandpa’s brother heard that I was involved in “human rights” work, he warned me not to write anything about Sri Lanka when I visited the island - I was told to delete any public posts I might have written, keep my head down and don’t say anything in public.

If I had not asked questions and read so much about the war, my relationship with Sri Lanka could have easily become a superficial one. I would have enjoyed the beaches and hills and remained clueless or careless about the ongoing conflict. I could have stayed at the Cinnamon Grand, seen some elephants, conquered Pilawoos, climbed Sigiriya, sipped on some Arrack by sunset, called it a beautiful country and left. Instead, I come back regularly.  With every visit, I feel more and more at home whilst simultaneously, my mental gymnasium seems to add another obstacle in its course. 

My trips to Sri Lanka always start in Colombo. My interactions with a lot of young Sinhalese people in Colombo as they talk about Tamil people are a hurdle on their own. I’ve heard everything from - “Us Sri Lankans and *those* Tamils”; “Sri Lankans want this to be one nation, I don’t know why the Tamils don’t want that”; “if the Tamils aren’t happy with this country then they should just leave and go to India”; “we are one nation and we should remain as one nation”; “I’m so glad we won, you don’t know what it was like for us living in Colombo during the war,” etc.

I don’t even know if I blame them because they’re all so far removed from life in the north, and they repeat everything they were taught from a young age. While they want this to be “one nation” they also don’t see Tamils in the north as Sri Lankan. A lot of Tamils also draw this distinction, but they do so because that’s part of their struggle for a separate state - whereas a lot of Sinhalese people won’t recognize Tamils as Sri Lankans but they will still insist that everyone has to live as one nation. Meaning, Tamils should just shut up, accept their subjugation, or leave. It’s not just the Sinhalese - I know some Tamils in the south who repeat similar ideas.  And, as for life during the war - they’re correct - I don’t know what it was like to grow up in Colombo at the time. But I did visit Colombo a couple of times during the war, and I know that the Colombo experience absolutely pales in comparison to the experiences of hundreds of thousands of Tamils in the north. 

The Tamil areas of Sri Lanka are a world away from the rest of the island. When people ask me for recommendations for their trips to Sri Lanka, I always recommend visiting Jaffna - or any part of the Tamil area - last, because then you will really get a sense of how starkly different it is to everywhere else on the island - linguistically, culturally, militarily, socio-economically, environmentally, etc. Colombo often feels like endless cocktails at new sea-front bars, brand new luxury high rise apartments popping up everywhere, and ultra rapid developments of places like Port City. Meanwhile, in Tamil areas, there are so many heavily armed Sinhalese soldiers who are scattered all over the place, in towns and villages - an ever-present reminder of death, oppression and, as one local described, “that Tamils live under the Sinhala thumb.” Jaffna is slowly starting to develop as tourism there is increasing, but the lives of locals remain mostly unchanged. 

The more I visit Jaffna, the more I notice the mental, physical and economic violence that continues to be enforced against Tamils. After the war finished, I was told by older generations in the UK that Tamil people in Sri Lanka are done with talking about the war and they do not seek justice, they just want to move on and they don’t want the international diaspora to protest for them. Whilst that might be true in part for some people, there is a significant and vocal number of people there who demand justice for the loss of their loved ones, and they want an end to the ongoing oppression. I’ve heard them say, “We need those who were lucky to leave to speak up for us now.” I sometimes wonder if the opinion that the war is over and everyone wants to move on, comes from a classist and casteist position. The freedom to simply “move on” is usually a freedom afforded to those with a financial and educational privilege, and a lot of those at the upper echelon of that privilege were able to flee. The LTTE leadership was not just about fighting for liberation of Tamils - they also fought for reform amongst Tamils with a vision of completely eradicating the entrenched caste system. The vast majority of their supporters came from “lower caste” communities who fought for a revolution amongst Tamils. When the “upper caste” make comments that the war is over and everyone has moved on - I can’t help but feel like it’s not entirely their struggle to conclude. 

There are so many ongoing protests led by Tamil people. In Mullaitivu, hundreds of Tamil women gather regularly to protest for justice for their missing husbands and fathers. This week in Kilinochchi, people gathered to sign petitions to repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act which is disproportionately used to detain Tamil people indefinitely without charge. Across all of Tamil land, the military has sectioned off and occupied masses of fertile land that is crucial to the growth of the local Tamil economy. They occasionally release some of that land back to the local people but locals say the military continues to hold onto fertile land so that they can stifle the local economy and hold it back. How can life just “move on” when there is a continued military occupation of vital land, or when there’s an army soldier stationed at every turn imposing both a mental and physical threat to your existence, or when huge, gaudy army victory monuments line the highways going through Tamil land, or when so many women have not received justice for the disappearances of their husbands and sons for 20+ years?

With all of this continually unfolding somewhere in one part of my head, a huge part of me holds a true, genuine appreciation for the physical beauty of the rest of Sri Lanka. That view sits at odds with the views of so many Tamil activists whose identity is firmly rooted in resistance, and they refuse to visit anywhere outside of Tamil land because they feel that the rest of the island represents oppression of our people. For me, Sri Lanka - and everything it represents - has become a central part of my complex identity. It’s not the place I grew up, but it is a place where I feel a sense of connection somewhere between the 30 degree heat, the rolling hills, the coconut tree lined roads, and the chance to jump linguistic hoops and practice my Tamil. I cherish memories such as staying at a home in Kandy and eating breakfast made from fruits and vegetables grown in the garden; watching peacocks call out in the paddy fields of Wellawaya as the sun sets; eating crab curry served on banana leaves in Pettah market; driving in circles trying to find the small community of African-Sri Lankans who live near Puttalam, etc. Whilst I hold respect for the activists who are firmly uncompromising on their views, I know that if I went down the path of rejecting Sri Lanka, I would lose a place that has become really important to who I am.

My feelings on Sri Lanka are constantly developing, and I’ll be interested to look back and see where I am in another 5-10 years. I’ve seen a lot of the Sinhalese areas of the island but for many reasons, I am still exploring the breadth of the Tamil areas  (and I would love to visit more of those areas with someone who is looking for the linguistic challenge). Between those of the diaspora who are leading Tamil protest marches and those who have no interest in anything to do with Sri Lanka, there often isn’t much space for another identity to exist. Or perhaps those of us who fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum have not communicated our own thoughts about it. Hopefully amongst the one or two people who got through this long blog, we can start a dialogue that expands and explores our individual relationships to the island.