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Week Ending: Saturday 10 May 2008
On the 10th Anniversary of the launch of
tamilnation.org
on 10 May 1998:
1.
The Relevance
of Aurobindo: Early Political Life & Teachings to
include
Sri
Aurobindo on Unity and British Rule, 1907 "It is a common cry
in this country that we should effect the unity of its people before
we try to be free. There is no cry which is more plausible, none
which is more hollow... The first question we have to answer
is - can this practical unity be accomplished by acquiescence in
foreign rule? ... a state created by the encampment of a foreign
race among a conquered population and supported in the last resort not
by any section of the people but by external force, is an inorganic
state... the tendency of the intruding body is to break down all the
existing organs of national life and to engross all power in itself...
if the middle class (of the ruled) could be either tamed, bribed or limited in its
expansion, the disorganisation would be complete... The organs of middle class political life can
only be dangerous (to the ruler) so long as they are independent. By taking away
their independence they become fresh sources of strength for the
Government...The dissolution of the subject organisation into a
disorganised crowd is the inevitable working of an alien despotism..." together with
Comment by
tamilnation.org
"We felt that it may be appropriate that we should publish
these reflections of Sri Aurobindo on this, the 10th Anniversary of the
launch of
tamilnation.org
on 10 May 1998.
Many Eelam Tamils will ofcourse have feelings of deja vu on
reading that which Sri Aurobindo wrote more than a hundred years
ago..." more
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| 2. Tamil Nation Library
to include |
 The
Charge is Genocide: the Struggle is for Freedom -
Nadesan Satyendra, 2007
Published by the International Federation of Tamils, Geneva,
Switzerland. "...The central theme
of the book is that the conflict in the island of Sri Lanka is not
simply about the systematic violations of human rights of the Tamil
people, or about violations of the humanitarian law of armed conflict or
the violations of the ceasefire agreement - or for that matter genocide.
The conflict in the island is about the refusal of the people of Tamil
Eelam to submit to alien Sinhala rule. The author contends that in the
ultimate analysis, the struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam for freedom
is about democracy and that if democracy means the rule of the people,
by the people, for the people then it must follow, as night follows day,
that no one people may rule another... He calls upon the international
community to seek liberation from the political rhetoric of terrorism
and to support the liberation of peoples..."
more |
Tamil Diaspora: a Trans State
Nation
Tamil Nation Library: Nations
& Nationalism to include
 1.
Cultural Foundations of Nations: Hierarchy, Covenant and Republic
Anthony D Smith, 2008
"...At first sight, the modern secular civic-republican nation
appears to mark a rupture with any earlier historical form of the
nation, just as its nationalism seems so different in tone and style
from earlier covenantal nationalism... But in fact the modern republican
forms and ideologies of the nation build on the examples, and use
many of the symbols, values, and traditions, of earlier covenantal
nations and nationalisms. In this sense, modern nationalisms,
starting with the French Revolution, are best viewed as forms of a
secular religion of the people, alongside or in opposition to
traditional religions..."
more
 2.
Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History (Key Concepts)
Anthony D Smith, 2001 "Nationalism
is an ideology that places the nation at the centre of its concerns and
seeks to promote its well-being. But this is rather vague. We need to go
further and isolate the main goals under whose headings nationalism
seeks to promote the nation's well-being. These generic goal: are
three: national autonomy, national unity and national identity, and, for
nationalists, a nation cannot survive without a sufficient degree of all
three. This suggests the following working definition of
nationalism: 'An ideological movement for attaining and maintaining
autonomy, unity and identity for a population which some of its member
deem to constitute an actual or potential "nation"."
more
 3.
National
Identity (Ethnonationalism in Comparative Perspective)
Anthony D Smith, 1991
"...Through the rediscovery of an ethnic past and the promise of
collective restoration of the former golden age, national identity and nationalism have succeeded in arousing and inspiring ethnic communities and populations of all classes, regions, genders and religions, to claim their rights as 'nations', territorial communities of
culturally and
historically cognate citizens, in a
world
of free and equal nations. Here is an identity and a force with which even
the strongest of states has had to come to terms, and it is one that
has shaped, and is likely to shape, our world in the foreseeable
future..."
more
 4.
ASEN: Association
for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism 18th Annual Conference, April 2008
on Nationalism,
East and West: Civic and Ethnic Conceptions of Nationhood: Abstracts
of Conference Papers "...It has long been standard in the field of nationalism
studies to classify nations according
to which principle serves to unify the
nation. The distinction between the Western, political type of nationalism
and the Eastern, genealogical variety of nationalism as systematised by
Hans
Kohn in 1944 has been used, extended, and adjusted by scholars to
conceptualise a framework of “inclusive” nationalism based on citizenship
and territory and “exclusive” nationalism based on common ethnic ties and
descent. This conference sought to assess the continuing relevance of this
dichotomy in its various forms: its contribution to theoretical work on
nationalism, its usefulness for historical interpretation, and its value for
contemporary policy-making..."
more |
Reflections
"...How do things grow in nature? Do we drive them to grow? Do we say,
‘You must grow five inches a quarter or you're out of here!’. No.
Gardeners attend to the host of conditions that could prevent growth
from occurring. They ensure that the seeds have adequate nutrients in
the soil, ample water, a suitable temperature, and, once the plant
starts to poke over the surface, sunlight and space to spread its
leaves. We all know how to support growth, and yet we typically operate
in exactly the opposite ways in our organizations. We try to force
growth instead of creating the conditions for genuine growth and change"
- Peter Senge, Author of "The
Fifth Discipline : The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization
(contributed by Satyendra Chelvendra)
 "..Oratory
is empty if it has not been field-tested on the battlefield of
experience. And I have little use for those who write beautifully and
live sordidly; or those who withdraw from the world and issue
instructions for how to live in it; or priesthoods that deny the
realities of the flesh but wish to control the appetites and activities
of those who live as whole human beings. If you don’t play the
game, you can’t know enough to make the rules. If you are not engaged
in the sweaty work of the world, you should not be in charge of the
deodorant concession. And if you cannot find a way to aid progress
in human affairs, then know that the smirking cynicism of the sideline
critic is a form of plaque – and to be one of those is to be a carrier
of death instead of a preserver of life. Strong words? Yes, and deeply
felt..." -
Robert Fulghum author of
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (contributed by
Satyendra Chelvendra) |
Week Ending: Saturday 3 May 2008
Tamil Nation
Library:Nationalism to include
 Banal Nationalism by Michael
Billig "... (the) accepted use of the word
‘nationalism’... always seems to locate nationalism on the periphery.
Separatists are often to be found in the outer regions of states...The
guerrilla figures, seeking to establish their new homelands, operate in
conditions where existing structures of state have collapsed, typically
at a distance from the established centres of the West...This is where
the accepted view becomes misleading: it overlooks the nationalism of
the West’s nation-states... the term banal nationalism is
introduced to cover the ideological habits which enable the established
nations of the West to be reproduced... All societies that maintain
armies maintain the belief that some things are more valuable than life
itself..."
more |
Tamil National Forum
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15th
Anniversary of President Premadasa's Assassination - The Puzzle Revisited
"The assassination of Sri Lanka’s second executive President Ranasinghe Premadasa
(born 1924) on May 1, 1993 serves as a tell tale example
(of the Challenge in Suicide
Bomber Studies)
... '
...when Lalith Athulathmudali was
killed by a suspect LTTE gunman in a public part in Bambalapitiya on the 23rd
of April, one week before Premadasa’s own killing, a wave of hatred against
Premadasa had begun in which slogans were scrolled on the city’s walls that
it was Premadasa or his friends who had murdered Lalith Athulathmudali. The
question, that some people were asking at the time, had to do with the
connection, if any, between
Lalith’s
assassination and that of Premadasa’s? In the absence of a public
commission…Premadasa’s killing will continue to be regarded as another of
the unsolved murders of this particularly murky period of our modern
history...'
Bradman Weerakoon: Rendering Unto Caesar. Vijitha Yapa Publications,
Colombo, 2004, pp. 300-304."
more |
Tamil Diaspora - a Trans State Nation
to include
Reflections
| "... Hope, like anything of value, must be earned. Hope comes not
from believing but from doing. If we want to feel a sense of hope, we
should study the world and come to our own conclusions about the systems
and structures of power in which we live. We should decide whether
those systems and structures are compatible with justice and
sustainability. If they are not, then we should work to build
alternatives on the ground where we live..."
Robert Jensen,
University of Texas at Austin in 'The
sorrows of race and gender in the 2008 presidential election' |
Comments to include
|
Thedum Manithan, Tamil Eelam, 25 April
2008 On Peace
and 'Getting to Yes' "...The process of peace, Prof
Noam Chomsky seems to think, is designed to be
duplicitous, and its objective is to serve the
grand plan of the
international players. Kosovo got its independence. You, among others, quite
rightly, were cautious in your comments. It was indeed a
SUPERVISED independence. Many were
of the mind that that could create a domino effect and eventually it would act as
a catalyst and Eelam would be 'given' its independence. The problem is we
are yet to overcome our slavery mentality. We still believe that some one
else is going to 'give' us what we need. Bull shit!.."
more
together with response by
tamilnation.org |
Reflections
| "..if
intellectuals do not hold the flag of analysis high, it is not likely
that others will. And if an analytic understanding of the real
historical choices are not at the forefront of our reasoning, our moral
choices will be defective, and above all our political strength will be
undermined..."
N
Barney Pityana in Liberation, Civil Rights &
Democracy
"...It is not enough for journalists to see
themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas
of the message and myths that surround it..." -
John Pilger
"...At the outset, we may need to be mindful that to label a conflict
resolution process as a 'peace process' may cloud our thinking. A 'peace
process' suggests that somehow everything will be solved when 'peace' is
secured. We all love peace. But peace comes in many different forms. We have
the peace of the graveyard as well. If it was simply peace that the Tamil
people wanted they may have been well advised to willingly submit to alien
Sinhala rule - many years ago... In truth, a conflict resolution process is about resolving the conflict which
led to the war. The conflict was anterior to the war. The conflict that is
sought to be resolved is not the
war. In fact, the war itself was an attempt to resolve a conflict which had not been
amenable to resolution by peaceful means. In this sense, war is a part of
the conflict resolution process - a war persuades parties to reconsider their
earlier positions and hopefully, move them to settle their differences...We need, therefore, to strip ourselves of the 'peace' rhetoric adopted by the
'international community', facilitators and international non government
organisations. If it is said that the path to peace is peace, it may be said with equal validity
that the path to peace is also war..."
Nadesan Satyendra in Sri Lanka - Tamil Eelam: Getting to Yes |
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