"...The Tamil national struggle is no afternoon tea
party. The new balances that are being struck in the
emerging multi-polar world are not without relevance to
the struggle in Tamil Eelam.
It used to be said that states have permanent
interests but do not have permanent friends. This may
be even more so in the case of nations struggling to
become states.
Sometime ago, the Harvard University Graduate School
of Business Administration, sent out a letter seeking
new subscribers for one of its publications. The letter
read:
"The professional practise of management is as
challenging and complex as the practices of medicine
and law. Yet we never hear of a 1-minute trial
lawyer. One minute is about how long the physician or
attorney who tries it will last. The quick fix. The
too simple solution. The latest fad. They have no
more place in your office than in the operating room
or the court room."
That which is true in relation to the office, the
operating room and the court is perhaps even more true
in relation to a national struggle for freedom. Answers
to the deeper issues which confront the Tamil national
liberation struggle are unlikely to come from those who
devote a few moments of their undoubtedly busy lives to
suggest the 'quick fix', which they believe has somehow
escaped the attention of those who have taken the
struggle forward on the ground during the past several
years.
A busy expatriate Tamil professional in Australia
once remarked to a Tamil activist: ''You know, the
trouble is that the 'boys' have brawn but no brains''.
The reply from the Tamil activist was perhaps, overly
sharp but it was telling:
''My dear friend, the trouble with you is that you
have neither the brawn nor the brains - neither the
brawn to go to Tamil Eelam and join the struggle nor
the brains to look deeper into the issues that
confront the struggle and make a useful contribution
from outside. If you had done the latter, you would
have hopefully, begun to learn that to a leadership
which has gone through the university of the
liberation struggle on the ground, much of what you
say will seem to come from the kindergarten''.
The 1-minute 'political adviser' is not very
different from the 1-minute brain surgeon or the 1-
minute trial lawyer. One minute is about how long he
will last in the struggle before succumbing to the
forces ranged against it.
Every Tamil, wherever he may live, will need to ask
himself where he stands in relation to the Tamil
struggle in the island of Sri Lanka. He needs to ask
whether he supports the struggle of the people of Tamil
Eelam for self determination.
He needs to ask whether the Tamil people in the
island of Sri Lanka were subject to an ever widening
and deepening oppression under successive Sinhala
dominated governments for several decades and
whether an oppressed people have both the moral and the
legal right to take to arms to resist that oppression.
He needs to ask whether the
armed struggle of the people of Tamil Eelam is not only
just but also lawful.
He may also need to ask himself: ''What does that
struggle in Tamil Eelam mean to me ?'' Is it some
struggle 'out there' unrelated to his own existence? Or
is it a struggle that is inextricably linked with his
own natural identity and that of his children and his
children's children?
If he does not seek to deny his own past; if, on
the contrary, he feels enrichened by his Tamil heritage;
if he shares the pain and suffering of his
brothers and sisters in Tamil Eelam because he has
known something about the nature of that pain
himself;
if he knows that wherever he may live, his
environment will continue to remind him, even on
those occasions that he may forget, that he is a
Tamil;
if he believes that the culture of a people will
die without the political power of a state committed
to preserve it;
if he recognises that to live with dignity
as a Tamil in any land and not as a wandering
nomad without a land, Tamil Eelam must take its place
amongst the nations of the world -
if he knows all this, then he will know that he
has not simply the duty but also the right to involve
himself in the struggle for Tamil Eelam and take it
forward.
He will know that he has not simply the duty but
also the right to support the Tamil Eelam struggle for
freedom. He will know that he has the duty and the
right to support, not blindly, but with eyes open, not
only with his heart but also with his mind, reasoning,
purifying and strengthening the struggle, at every
stage, in its onward lawful progress - but at the same
time bowing his head in all humility before the thyagam
of those on the ground who have given so much of
themselves so that we, as a people, may live in
freedom."
I have sometimes wondered what
Mahatma Gandhi's response may have been if he had been
asked in despair in the 1920's: "You frail little man,
you are struggling against the most powerful empire
that the world has known. I despair. I am at my wits
end. When will freedom come?"
I can only conjecture. Gandhi's
reply may well have been: "I do not know when freedom
will come. But I will continue to struggle for freedom
- and I will continue to match my words with my
deeds."
Or again Gandhi may have repeated
something which he had actually said in 1906
when he was Secretary
of the British Indian Association in South Africa at a
public meeting calling for mass defiance if impending
pass-law legislation became law
-
"... It
is quite possible that.. some or many of those who
pledge themselves might weaken at the very first
trial. We might have to go to jail, where we might be
insulted. We might have to go hungry and suffer
extreme heat or cold. Hard labor might be imposed
upon us. We might be flogged by rude warders. We
might be fined heavily and our property might be
attached and held up to auction if there are only a
few resisters left. Opulent today, we might be
reduced to abject poverty tomorrow. We might be
deported. Suffering from starvation and similar
hardships in jail, some of us might fall ill and even
die. If someone asks me when
and how the struggle may end, I may say that, if the
entire community manfully stands the test, the end
will be near. If many of us fall back under storm and
stress, the struggle will be prolonged. But I can
boldly declare, and with certainty, that so long as
there is even a handful of men true to their pledge,
there can only be one end to the struggle, and that
is victory... Mahatma
Gandhi's Pledge of Resistance in Transvaal, Africa,
1906
And perhaps he may have even used the words that
Sathasivam
Krishnakumar of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam used in 1991
"We are building a road, I do not know whether I
myself will be alive to see the road being completed.
But that does not matter. Others will arise to take
the road further.."
