By Sebastian Rasalingam
(May 04, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) I have cringed with pain and clutched my head in anguish, watching my grand children’s friends in Scarborough, Ontario, going out, with their friends, to join protest marches in the streets of Toronto. These young people are given the Tiger flag which is an insult to the best traditions of Hindu society or the Christian values taught by the prince of peace. These young people shout slogans and talk of the genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka.
Most of them actually believe that they are doing the "right thing". They think they are demonstrating for a "just cause". They think "Our people are being shelled, bombed. Those who escape are locked away in concentration camps and probably gassed like in Auschwitz. We have to pressure the Canadian government to demand an immediate ceasefire". They have seen movies and videos showing exactly that, and they need no other proof. After all, "there are young Tamils immolating themselves in London and Geneva. So all this must be true. Every Tamil grocery has these newspapers telling what is going on". Oh, what a delusion!
These slogan shouting people take me back to another era. In the 1950s, when we were relatively young, the political demonstrations launched by the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi were an attractive line of political action. I certainly felt that "Sinhala ONLY" was utterly unfair by us Tamils. But then, I somehow felt that the cry for "driving out the invaders from the Tamil homelands" was a dangerously racist, extremist cry. I went to live in Hatton and then Colombo. The society that I found in the Sinhalese areas was much more just and equitable than the social ethos of Jaffna and Mannar that I had already seen. The Tamils in Colombo had a dominant position in commerce, banking, professions and every walk of life. I felt that we, too, could easily prosper in Sri Lanka, even with Sinhala only or virtually no Tamil, just as the Jews have done in New York, with no Yiddish recognized as a national language. I began to understand the evilness of individuals like S. J. V. Chelvanayagam and E. M. V. Naganathan. The latter’s pride in announcing that he was a descendant of the Chola aristocracy was particularly repugnant to me as I had seen the hard side of the Manu Dharma. Why didn’t the Tamil leaders support the socialists who supported "Parity of Status" for the two languages? Why are the Tamil leaders living in Colombo instead of relocating to the "Traditional homelands"? Would the Tamils in the North and the East be able to settle down in the south if the "Tamil homelands" policy were achieved? Would the Tamils living in the south be deported to the North if Arasu were achieved? Surely, Sinhalese discrimination against Tamils is nothing compared to what I and my wife, an estate Tamil, had to face within the Tamil society.
I could doubt the political programme that was gaining ground among the Tamils because I happened to be an educated low-caste Tamil with Estate-Tamil connections. The Tamil politicians worked very hard to polarize the people and drive a wedge between the two ethnic groups. The Arasu Kadchi people were actually happy that the Banda-Chelva accord was torn asunder. Ethnic division was necessary for creating the exclusive "Tamil homelands" Given such an inflammatory extra-parliamentary objective, the final struggle had to be war.
Looking at the young men going out to demonstrate in the streets of Toronto, I see them as just a continuation of the delusion initiated by the Chelvanayagams and Naganathans, already in 1949. Communist intellectuals and their young student activists blindly supported Stalin even when overwhelming evidence was presented to show that Stalin was a mass murderer. Today, the Tamil Diaspora is similarly blinded by its own beliefs and fails to accept the truth.
Instead of joining with the Sri Lankan government to defeat and decapitate Prabhakaran, instead of coming forward to help the displaced Tamils, the LTTE-conscripted children, and hostages who have managed to flee, the Diaspora is waving the Tiger flag. If 10,000 Tamils all over the world demonstrated for a week, even at the minimum wage of $8 per hour, this is a capital investment of over $6 million dollars totally wasted. According to Jane’s Intelligence, if we aggregate the collection made from the Diaspora over two decades, there is enough money to pension all the Sri Lankan Tamils, 3 million or more, at a standard of living never dreamed of. Instead, we used that money to supply the Tigers with claymore bombs, RPGs, AK-47s and the likes. Even the Tsunami aid was diverted for war. Meanwhile we created a Mafia to plague us.
Is there NO LIMIT to hate based on this "Eelam Virus"?
The IDP camps in Vavniya are far better than the IDP camps in India. The Diaspora has not risen to help our Tamils in the IDP camps in Sri Lanka or India. Instead, it chooses to wave Tiger flags in western capitals and use political blackmail by "fasting unto death", immolation and such undemocratic methods.
The Tamil Diaspora has to cure itself of the Eelam Virus. Then and then only can it help the Tamils.-Sri Lanka Guardian
Home Unlabelled The deluded Diaspora and the "Eelam Virus"
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What an eye opener for an average Tamil. I always felt if LTTE ever cared for Tamil people they would not have behaved the way they did. All the money coming in from the Diaspora, as the writer says they would have established a permanent pension scheme for every Tamil in Sri Lanka. What they did was invest that money in Arms and Ammunition to kill. In fact they carried our several prominent assassinations. Now we understand most of the LTTE leadership was not the kind of people philosophically fit to lead the Tamil people. Only the leadership was entitled to high perks, expensive liqueur, schooling for children overseas and all that. The poor Tamil had to sacrifice everything they had also their children for the movement. The Tamils have to open their eyes and help the government to make Sri Lanka a better place to live for everyone.
As usual, this guy writes great articles, always with a fresh attitude. This is perhaps because he is one of the few Tamils linked to the estate sector that writes. WE have to learn from him and discard the hate mongering that Satheesan Kumaran, Pasupathi and other LTTE acolytes are busy spreading.
Its not amazing to see such a foolish post because its not clear why Tamils don't deserve Tamil Eelam. We are not zombies (thats what a typical SL extremist consider us) we are People are we have feelings, we connot live in a place or "adjust" to whatever GoSL hs to say. If I'm right SL is democratic not dictatorship and in all means GoSL has committed various atrocities where LTTE did none. Stop Blaming LTTE for what they didn't do. There are ample evidence for Mr.Kadirkamer's Assassination were bullets used by the security forces has been found. Not only that why is that all the cases were para-military groups are involved are all under blankets. GoSL itself has given higher ranks to Mr.Karuna who is wanted by London police. even right now Mr.Rajapakse has said that they are following a zero casuality policy when 1000s are getting killed. Sri Lanka has money to build 10,000 luxury houses for the security forces which include gymnasiums, shopping malls and theatres but you dont have money to support the Tamil people. No country in the world issues special ID cards for Tamil people who got affected by the war that way your country is separating the people. No country calls its own citizens refugee in its country other than Sri Lanka. We are defnitely not going to fund a terrorist government led by the Rajapakse's because he doesn't allow media, he criticizes countries which support the fact that its genocide its happening in Sri Lanka. lets face it, Tamils and Sinhalese didn't get along for 1000s of years now (Sinhalese extremists even argue how they came first without any scientific and historic evidence, where they only use Mahavamsa as their "accurate" description" . As i mention they didn't get along then and they don't get along now. 70 million people all over the holding this flag which is agitating you and crushing your head. any problem without talk to the Tamil Nadu people. for your information there are no cure for viruses and stop calling 70 million+ people terrorists because it makes you look paranoid.
Oh my god so these people who parade the streets are paid.
What a waste of money and time.
These young girls find this street parades a kind of a way to show off their fashions to the others a kind of competition I guess.
I also knoew that especially tamils in Canada have this notion to show off and the competition among themselves.Two /three cars big houses just a part of competition.
they are been brained washed just like the comment one before who writes a whole bunch of gabage which was never there.
Afterall who would want a man like Lakshman Kadirgama to be killed otherwise not for a terrorist.He was a diplomat Tamils would have been proude to have.This is just news to me to read even that police or the government in involved in the assasination.what a thought?
Since we all have brains we have the right to use it the way we want afterall Canada is the free world untill the next sucide bomb blasts in the Union Station.
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