Toronto Tamils and Sinhalese commemorate Upali Cooray

By Sankajaya Nanayakkara

(November 15, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) The life of Upali Cooray, the barrister, lecturer, human rights activists, trade unionist and revolutionary, was celebrated by an enthusiastic crowd of Tamils and Sinhalese at the Scarborough Civic Centre, Toronto, on Nov. 14, 2009. The gathering was organized by the Canadians for Peace Sri Lankan Alliance, a diaspora organization composed of Tamils and Sinhalese working for peace and inter-ethnic solidarity.

Upali Cooray joined the pioneer Marxist party in Sri Lanka, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) in 1962. But he soon left the party with other radicals after it entered into coalition politics with the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). Cooray was a founding member of the Movement for Inter Racial Justice and Equality (MIRJE) that was formed in 1979. In the United Kingdom, Cooray took the initiative to form the Committee for Democracy and Justice in London in the late 1980s. To the very last, he fought for the rights of the downtrodden and oppressed. His favourite song used to be Bob Marley’s “get up, stand up, stand up for your rights.”

The gathering was addressed by Chandrarathna Bandara, the editor of the Toronto based Sinhala newspaper, Yathra; Thangavadivel, a retired teacher from Jaffna; Ajith Jinadasa, the former Sri Lanka Mahajana Party Provincial Councillor and political commentator Rajan Philips.

With the fall of the Communist Block, said Bandara, the political agenda of the left had to be restrategized to defend democratic rights and freedoms. In defending democracy and freedom, Upali was an exemplary fighter. Speaking on the topic of Diaspora and the IDPs, Thangavadivel said that there is an unfortunate tendency to demonise the other community. He recounted how he and his brother were saved by Sinhalese in Ampara during anti-Tamil riots in the 1950s. Furthermore, he urged all communities to work together. Jinadasa said that he considered Upali as a brother-in-arms as he was able to transcended narrow ethnic boundaries and engage in class-based politics. By restricting, kidnapping and torturing Tamils, he asked whether the Sri Lankan government was creating the groundwork for the next Tamil uprising. Philips attacked primodialist conceptions of Sinhala and Tamil identities and pointed out they were 19th Century constructions that took root in a context of widening mass literacy. Having won the war, the ethnic problem still persists. Philips said that the left ideas of the 1950s and 1960s are still valid and could make a great contribution in creating an inclusive state. He dismissed the Tamil secessionist project of Transnational Tamil Government in exile as a “children’s wedding game.”

After the talks, there was a lively discussion by members of the audience on themes such as, national unity, identity politics, subaltern history and the current political situation in Sri Lanka.

-Sri Lanka Guardian