Marginality: In-depth vision required

T.M Krishna

29 Sep 2024, 5:00 am

The presidential election in Sri Lanka is over and the parliamentary general election 2024 has been announced on November 14. In the next few months there will be a lot of talk on public platforms about the status of Sri Lankan Tamils and their rights. In Tamil Nadu, Tamil nationalists will take the lead in this.

For those living in India and other parts of the world, ‘Sri Lankan Tamils’ mean that all the Tamils living there belong to the same community. When Sri Lankan Tamils think of Jaffna Tamils, the three-year civil war and LTTE commander Velupillai Prabhakaran come to mind. Apart from these others will be ignored or forgotten.

Sri Lanka is one of the countries where only ethnic and religious identities are common; Therefore, the sections in it are not easily visible and confusing to others. If we look at ‘Hindus’ on the basis of religion, they are also divided on the basis of race. Those who speak Tamil are ‘Tamils’, but the Tamil-speaking Muslims of Sri Lanka do not consider themselves one of them. They call themselves a separate ‘ethno-religious’ group. There are some sects within the Tamils as well.

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We went to the hills

A few months ago I went to Sri Lanka with writer Perumal Murugan, historian AR Venkatachalapathy and Tamil book publisher Kannan Sundaram. The place we went to is the highlands which has the climate and temperature that everyone likes. After participating in the discussion held at Peradanai University, we went to the tea plantation area at the invitation of local Tamil writers. Two hundred years ago, the British rulers forcibly brought and settled large numbers of laborers from Tamil Nadu to work in the tea plantations there.

Unlike the Tamils who lived in the north of Sri Lanka for centuries, they were later settlers. They were called ‘Hill Tamils’. In Sri Lanka they live as a very neglected, disenfranchised and severely oppressed community.

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Denial of citizenship

In 1948, the government enacted a law to grant citizenship to people after Sri Lanka gained independence. It classified the hill Tamils as ‘stateless’ and made them stateless. They had to fight even till 2003 to get citizenship. In response to the incessant demands of the Tamils who were taken away from India and based on the agreements made with the Sri Lankan government in 1964 and 1974, the Indian government offered to bring some of them back to India and give them citizenship.

Even though they have political and parliamentary representation through the political party ‘Sri Lanka Labor Congress’ and the political organization ‘Tamil Progressive Alliance’, ‘Hill Tamils’ live as marginalized people socially and economically. Tamils who returned to India from Sri Lanka are still fighting in India to get their own land as agreed by the government.

What aids to publishing?

We interacted with hill Tamil writers at Hatton near Kandy. Venkatachalapathy asked how they publish their works and how we can help. Aggrieved voices were raised that the Sri Lankan Tamil literary circles were not listening to their voices and were not being recognized. Two of them still resonate in my mind. One said they would accept modern works based on current politics and lifestyle.

Another made it clear that they could not accept the works that brought to light the plight of the hill Tamils because they were told as a slap in the face. Another young writer lamented that calling us ‘Tamils of Indian origin’ was the reason for our demise. The young generation of hill Tamils want to shed this unnecessary burden. They pointed out that there is no gain for us by calling like this, instead we are thrown like orphans into a no-man’s land.

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We discussed among ourselves why these hilly Tamils should not meet publishers who welcome different voices. We have forgotten that independent thinking only comes with the courage to ask. Hilly Tamils are not like Northern Tamils who have education, wealth and political influence, they are oppressed while in India and living in Sri Lanka!

Marginalized people

This is the problem of putting all the marginalized people on the same plate. We do this not only in Sri Lanka but also elsewhere. The voices of the Tamils living in the north of Sri Lanka are strong because they are well educated, advanced and have the strength to fight for their rights in politics. A good example of this is those who fought for the Jaffna Tamils.

Comparing people’s societies in this way also suits the condition of the beholder. In American universities, it is their practice to see everyone as ‘South Asians’ as a general community, without distinguishing them as belonging to different countries, races and communities. At the next level, they are divided by their respective countries. Classifying them more deeply will repair the stigmatization itself in a progressive and straight forward manner.

This shallow perspective also partly helps the upper castes from countries like India to get more seats. In subsequent generations, they persist in the places they got – to be shared with others. Voices about the plight of South Asians are beginning to reverberate in the Indian backdrop as well.

America has a confused understanding of India’s social structure, culture and caste-based discrimination. For those who were able to go to the US for higher education, caste-based discrimination became a talking point there as well.

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Supreme Court Judgment

The disparity of power within the communities that have been discriminated against in general society stretches back to the recent judgment of the Supreme Court of India; The judgment says that internal reservation will also go to the more depressed sections within the Scheduled Castes community.

Let us leave aside the question of whether the ‘Higher Income Sections’ should continue to get concessions in the case of reservation. On the other hand, the fears expressed by the members of the Scheduled Community depending on the socio-political domain must be considered in this matter. Even if the list comes from the communities themselves, rejecting the internal allocations as incorrect will also create problems.

The general view of other sections of the society is that ‘Scheduled castes should be thrown away because they live on the margins’. The assumption in framing is that everyone in that category lives in the same state. It is always the case in societies that the strongest and most influential people in that group benefit the most.

Different sections are oppressed to different degrees and live on the margins. Therefore, corresponding additional or supplementary provisions are also necessary. It is unfortunate that the voices against such an act are similar to those of the casteists who advocate ‘no reservation’.

Some argue that the state cannot operate by sifting through every strata of society to ensure that no one is privileged or disenfranchised. They feel that once their needs are met, it is enough for the government to stop the action. It is not only for the convenience of the administration, but also because of the inability to understand the feelings of those who are still under pressure to not get these things.

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Ambedkar said that caste is inequality at different levels. I mean all inequalities are stabilized to varying degrees. It is those who are established in different positions who say that everything under our gaze is one and there is nothing to dig beyond. Not only discrimination is different, but so are the good intentions and solutions to overcome it.

The view through the long tube to its other end is dangerous. It refuses to see what’s in between. It is necessary to categorize and divide people into different categories. Social justice should also be available to those at the bottom of the queue. Until then, we should not relax our vision and stop our action. We should not allow loud people to distract us.

Briefly in Tamil: V. Rangasari

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