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Sivaram Dharmeratnam: A Journalist’s life
Mark Whitaker, Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of South Carolina, Aiken, U.S.A
29 April 2005
Mark Wittaker, is completing an
intellectual biography of Dharmeratnam Sivaram’s life and
work in a book entitled
“Learning Politics from Sivaram.”
"I shall mourn for him, my lost best friend, for the
rest of my life. I ask all of you who knew him well, friend
or foe – for he would talk with anyone – to raise a glass
and toast him. And may those that killed him look on in
shame..."
Sivaram Dharmeratnam, the well-known and controversial political
analyst and a senior editor for Tamilnet.com, was born on August 11,
1959 in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka to Puvirajkirtha Dharmeratnam and
Mahesvariammal. His was a prominent family with significant land
holdings near Akkaraipattu, though his immediate family later lost
much of their inherited wealth. Nicknamed “Kunchie” as a child,
Sivaram was educated at St. Michael’s College in Batticaloa, and
later at Pembroke and Aquinas Colleges in Colombo. He was accepted
into the University of Peradeniya in 1982 but soon dropped out due
to tensions associated with the first phases of Sri Lanka’s civil
war.
In 1982 Sivaram joined the Ghandian Movement, then a front
organization for the People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam
(PLOTE). After Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict erupted into civil war in
1983, Sivaram, under the alias “SR”, soon became a prominent PLOTE
militant. Sivaram’s role in PLOTE was unique because he played an
important part in both the organization’s military and political
wings at a time when PLOTE kept those functions, to its eventual
misfortune, completely separate from one another. In 1988, a year
after the Indo-Lankan accords were signed, Uma Maheswaran, PLOTE’s
leader, appointed Sivaram General Secretary of the Democratic
People’s Liberation Front (DPLF), the organization’s registered
political party. Sivaram left PLOTE in 1989, however, after arguing
against Maheswaran’s attempts to establish firmer relations with the
JVP and due to his distaste for the group’s involvement in an
abortive coup in the Maldives.
On September 8, 1988 Sivaram married Herly Yogaranjini Poopalapillai
of Batticaloa. They eventually had three children: Vaishnavi (16),
Vaitheki (13), and Seralaathan (10).
In 1988 while still General Secretary of the DPLF, Sivaram met the
newscaster, journalist and actor Richard De Zoysa. De Zoysa,
impressed by Sivaram’s ability to produce off-the-cuff political
analysis, asked him to write articles for the UN-funded Inter Press
Service (IPS), for whom De Zoysa was a correspondent. In 1989, when
The Island newspaper found itself in need of a Tamil political
analyst, De Zoysa suggested Sivaram. The Island editor, Gamini
Weerakon, proposed tharaka (or ‘star’) as Sivaram’s pen name but a
sub-editor accidentally printed “Taraki” instead, giving birth to
Sivaram’s famous nom de plume. Sivaram’s Taraki articles were an
immediate success. They combined a dispassionately, ironic style
with accurate, inside information, and took care to explain in
crystal clear prose the military, political, strategic and tactical
assumptions of all sides in Sri Lanka’s complex conflict. Moreover,
Sivaram’s wide reading in military science and political philosophy
(especially in Marxism and post-structuralism) allowed him to bring
intellectual tools to his articles that soon made them more powerful
than mere punditry.
In 1990 Sivaram helped identify Richard De Zoysa’s body after De
Zoysa was abducted from his home and killed.
By the early 1990s Sivaram’s Taraki column had become a ‘must read’
for anyone interested in Sri Lanka. In 1991 fans of his writing
among the Tamil community in France published a collection of his
work entitled The Eluding Peace (An Insider’s analysis of the Ethnic
Conflict in Sri Lanka). As a free-lance journalist, Sivaram,
eventually wrote for many newspapers including The Island, The
Sunday Times, The Tamil Times (London), The Daily Mirror, and
Veerakesari. In 1997 Sivaram helped Tamilnet.com reorganize itself
into a Tamil news agency with its own string of reporters, and
remained a senior editor there until his death. He filed his last
story for Tamilnet.com at 7:30 PM on the night he was murdered.
Sivaram’s work was not limited to journalism. Sivaram’s grasp of
Tamil politics and literature and Sri Lanka’s complex history made
him a magnate for scholars. Hence, Sivaram collaborated and argued
with historians, political scientists, anthropologists, policy
experts, and geographers from many of Sri Lanka’s universities and
think tanks, as well as with foreign and foreign-based scholars from
(among other schools around the world) the University of Colorado,
the University of South Carolina, and Clark University. As recently
as April 2005, Sivaram provided a purely scholarly introduction to
the Mattakkalappu Poorva Sariththiram (Ancient History of
Batticaloa), a recently released definitive edition of an ancient
Batticaloa palm leaf manuscript.
Beyond this, in the mid-1990’s many governments and Human Right’s
NGOs turned to Sivaram for advice on political and military matters.
He soon became widely traveled in Europe, Asia, and North America
and equally well known to governments, the diplomatic community, and
human rights activists. Indeed, his death arrived just ahead of a
scheduled trip to Japan to consult with the Japanese government.
As opposition to his reporting mounted, and as death threats began
to multiply, friends and colleagues from around the world frequently
begged Sivaram to move himself and his family out of Sri Lanka. He
always vehemently refused to leave. “Where else should I die but
here?” he often declared. Yet in 2004 the police twice searched
Sivaram’s home, and various groups in Sri Lanka publicly threatened
him. Given the uncompromising nature of his reporting, his death by
violence was no surprise.
“He will be an irreplaceable loss to the academic and human rights
community around the world,” said Dr. Jude Fernando, of Clark
University, a sentiment echoed by many.
I should add a personal note here. I am an associate
professor of anthropology at the University of South Carolina,
Aiken. I first got to know Sivaram in 1982 while I was
conducting cultural anthropological research in Batticaloa. We
became friends because we discovered a common interest in
philosophy, and because we also shared some horrors during the
1983 riots. My own work in Sri Lanka initially focused on
Batticaloa’s local politics and religion, as can be seen in my
1999 book *
Amiable Incoherence: Manipulating Histories and Modernities in a
Batticaloa Hindu Temple.
But as the conflict in Sri Lanka grew more complicated and
intense, and as Sivaram’s role as its primary chronicler and
analyst loomed ever larger, I felt it my duty to try, in some
way, to record his thoughts and efforts – especially since I
grew worried over the safety of his life almost since I first
met him. In 1997, therefore, we decided to collaborate on an
intellectual biography of his life and work. It should, we
agreed, be entitled Learning Politics from Sivaram; and he
insisted also that the book be as uncompromising as he was. I
hope to have this biography completed shortly; I only hope as a
memorial it can even partly do him justice.
I shall mourn for him, my lost best friend, for the rest of
my life. I ask all of you who knew him well, friend or foe – for
he would talk with anyone – to raise a glass and toast him. And
may those that killed him look on in shame.
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