Suspension of disbelief a must for Darusman fans

Published in my column in The Nation on April 29, 2012 
By Darshanie Ratnawalli

There is one part in the UN report on Sri Lanka that even should one have passionate crushes on one or all three members of the panel one should find hard to read without wincing. That is when they talk of the Government shelling of the 11th UN convoy. From paragraph 79 to 91, the report details the adventures of this convoy, 50 lorries full of essential goods accompanied by 7 international staff that had travelled from Vavuniya to PTK. When they offloaded and most of the international staff went back, leaving behind two international UN staffers to wait it out with the National staff in the PTK, until the LTTE should permit them to leave, the fun starts. The fun is in the telling of it in the UN report, not so much in the actual happening (highlights include dead babies blown up into tree tops).

“In the early morning hours of 24 January, hundreds of shells rained down in the NFZ. Those with access to the United Nations bunker dove into it for protection, but most IDPs did not have bunkers and had nowhere to seek cover. People were screaming and crying out for help. The United Nations security officer, a highly experienced military officer, and others present discerned that the shelling was coming from the south, from SLA positions…” That is paragraph 84. But almost in the next breath, in para 86, this crux statement that the shelling was discerned by those present to be coming from SLA positions is contradicted; “…The LTTE did fire artillery from approximately 500 meters away as well as from further back in the NFZ…”. This schizophrenia, this almost Hollywoodian manifestation of a multiple personality disorder, this two handed writing, the left hand contradicting what the right writes, is the besetting sin of the Panel report throughout.

An opinion held even among the severest critics of the Panel is that, rather than evidence of bad faith, it could be simple ignorance of warfare, the Panelists being from legal backgrounds. It is believed that their training simply did not qualify them for the insight that if it was being discerned that shelling was also coming from LTTE positions (as revealed in 86) the statement that a highly experienced UN security officer discerned that ‘the shelling’ was coming from SLA positions became farcical, inviting the lowest contempt on heads (of the Panel) that should be held the highest.

“..all we were told about the incident – other than the calls made by the UN to which we responded, and which culminated in the UN Resident Representative sending us a text to say they believed the bulk of firing had come from the LTTE – was the description given by Chris du Toit when we called him in to the Ministry of Disaster Management and Human Rights, to discuss the figures that were being bandied about of civilian casualties over a month’s period. He told us then that they could not be sure from the trajectories where most of the shells had come from, but the one shell of which they could be sure – and he showed us the crater of a blown up photograph – had come from the LTTE.”

– (Rajiva Wijesinha, ‘Inconsistencies and deceit in the Darusman Panel/Weiss account of Convoy 11’)

But I can’t see that it is a matter of legal knowledge vs warfare knowledge. It’s simple composition the rules of which should have dictated to the Panel that when describing a scene which featured shells coming from LTTE positions as well as SLA positions, an act of collation was called for. Such collation would have produced a sentence such as; “So and so discerned that the shelling was coming from SLA positions as well as from LTTE positions”. Throughout the report such collations are conspicuous by their absence. In fact this practice is so the norm in the report that it deserves to be identified as a special ‘Darusman’s Law’: By keeping two co related facts physically separated instead of collating them in a single sentence, you can cook up a credible allegation.

It gets worse. Even when two such factors are present in the same sentence, the Panel obliterates the proper co-relationship of those factors through the use of inappropriate grammatical conjunctions in order to cook up a credible allegation. The Review by Marga Sri Lanka has pinpointed one such ‘incongruous’ instance in paragraph 94 (re PTK hospital) of the UN report.

It reads; “The LTTE also fired mobile artillery from the vicinity of the hospital, but did not use the hospital for military purposes until after it was evacuated. Yet in its eagerness to capture the area, the SLA repeatedly shelled the hospital and surrounding areas.” It should have read; “The LTTE did effectively use the hospital for military purposes by firing mobile artillery from the vicinity of the hospital, though they did not convert the hospital into a military target until after it was evacuated”. Such a composition would have compelled the Panel to make a distinction between collateral damage and systematic and deliberate targeting. If such a compulsion had moved the Panel, they would have been coy about ; “Yet in its eagerness to capture the area, the SLA repeatedly shelled the hospital and surrounding areas.” They would have specially blushed to use ‘yet’. Their report would have acknowledged “a trend whereby the LTTE had merged protected premises to be an integral part of their combat strategy;”(LLRC 4.287- ii). If we had been able to read such words of judicial acumen in the Panel report, we wouldn’t now be speculating on the aggregate IQ of the Panel. And preening and congratulating ourselves about being smarter than a UN appointed panel.

As it was, “None of the persons making representations was able to state with certainty that they were in a position to definitely confirm that the shells which fell on the hospitals, originated exclusively from the side of the Sri Lanka Army or from the LTTE. Civilians who appeared before the Commission stated that there had been shelling from both sides. One civilian stated that ‘when a shell lands, the general anticipation was that it was the Army – cannot state exactly’. Another ex LTTE cadre in the course of his representations had stated that the Puthumathalan hospital was in fact accidentally shelled by the LTTE for which they had subsequently apologized.”- (LLRC 4.292 ii)

Can you forgive her?

Published in my column in The Nation on April 08, 2012 
By Darshanie Ratnawalli

How did the UN Panel report on Lanka affect the local commentators? I say nothing about foreign commentators because all cultures across the world have popular tropes that depict foreigners as credulous fools (the Brooklyn bridge story, the ‘parangiya kotte giya’ story, etc.) and we can draw on this common heritage to come to terms with the acts of some foreign commentators. But what about the natives (who are savvy individuals full of native cunning according to the same tropes)? I suggest that the report made sucklings out of some local commentators and caused them to imprint on the UN Panel as dispensers of absolute wisdom. Just so do animal cubs imprint on the first moving object they encounter as ‘MOTHER’. It has little to do with reason and all to do with blind instinct.

For instance take Tisaranee Gunesekara (http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2011/08/14/lies-agreed-upon-but-whose-lies/ ). In chiding the Government for positioning the Fourth Eelam War as a ‘humanitarian rescue operation’ with a policy of ‘zero civilian casualties’ she says; “The lies were unnecessary and the excessive measures taken to sustain them needless. Truth, with all its scabs and warts, would have served Sri Lanka better…More damagingly, the lie of ‘zero-civilian casualties’ was maintained, against all logic and reason. Assuming perfection was unnecessary; claiming infallibility was unconvincing. These poses were, in the final analysis, far more damaging than acknowledging mistakes and apologising for misdeeds.”

Look carefully and you will find hidden among the words of moral rectitude and good sense, like a gun among lingerie, the UN report’s legacy to Tisaranee. There is an unauthorized item in her chain of reasoning which she has surreptitiously smuggled in. Did you spot it Watson? By unauthorized, I meant not authorized by the normal rules governing chains of reasoning. Such rules would direct a person critical of the denial of civilian casualties, to urge…acknowledging civilian casualties. Instead Tisaranee urges…acknowledging mistakes and apologizing for misdeeds. Probably unknowingly and qualifying herself to be included in a case book for Freudian slips, Tisaranee reveals a conceptualization, which equates acknowledging civilian casualties with acknowledging mistakes and apologizing for misdeeds. Ipso facto categorization of Fourth Eelam War civilian casualties as Government mistake and misdeed is an act of positioning, a market spin, a selling proposition and the lady slips it in such an unobtrusive, taken for granted manner, that one wonders what to do. Sneer and express the wish that some mentor had succeeded early, in encouraging her to find avenues of self expression other than political analysis? Or whistle in admiration and nominate her for the Sri Lankan subliminal propaganda awards?

The last stage of Eelam War IV was a context made impossibly, unprecedentedly complex by the hellish juxtaposition of four irredeemable factors; a civilian hostage situation, a progressively decreasing battle space, an orchestrated merging of civilian and combat spaces and a fraught international situation throbbing with interventionist potential. One day they will invent a proper slot, a correct classification that can comfortably sum up such a unique circumstance. Mistake and misdeed don’t even begin to do it.

Which is the actual Thisaranee? Clever smuggler of presumption disguised as basic reality or a genuine cognitive failure? Perhaps the following long quote (from Godfrey Gunatilleke in 'Truth and Accountability : The Last Stages of the War in Sri Lanka', an evaluation of the UN panel report on SL) will give us some light;

“THE PANEL REFUSES TO CONSIDER THE OTHER CREDIBLE EXPLANATIONS AVAILABLE FOR CIVILIAN CASUALTIES.

As stated earlier the panel’s own account of the fighting on the ground and LTTE’s use of civilians for various military purposes in order to defend themselves were leading to high civilian casualties. At this point the options that were available for minimizing civilian casualties short of stopping the military operation, would have posed dilemmas of inconceivable proportions. The Panel does not grant that the GOSL might have acted on its judgment that if it did not move in to destroy the LTTE’s military and defence capability as early as possible, the plight of the civilians would have deteriorated and the LTTE would have engineered a major humanitarian crisis. On such a premise, issues of intentionality and proportionality take on a different character and would have to be examined in much greater depth than what the Panel has been able to do, given its rejection of the government version and the circumstances in which it had to operate.”

Now hold that light steady and read more of Tiisaranee; “…As a civilian stated, “If the Government openly admitted that it had crushed and injured these people, it would be easier to accept than what it does now. It claims that it rescued the civilians without a single casualty, is caring for them, feeding them, resettling them and looking after all their needs. That kind of lie is the lowest thing you could inflict on another human being” (UTHR Special Report No. 34 – 13.12.2009).” Admitting that there were civilian casualties is not interchangeable with admitting to ‘injuring and crushing these people’. It doesn’t automatically follow Watson. A government can admit civilian casualties without admitting to ‘crushing and injuring these people’. What transforms civilian casualties into ‘crushing and injuring a people’? Not magic. It’s a premise, a presumption that transforms it. This presumption, of murderous intent, of ruthless, criminal disregard of civilian life, flows from the UN Panel Report and is accepted and used insidiously as a fundamental principle by Tisaranee as well as by the civilian proxy of the UTHR report she quotes.

There are serious credible allegations against the UN Panel: viz., that knowingly and deliberately while in the grip of the above presumption and to give credence to such presumption, they have committed gross intellectual misdemeanors including the following;

Failure to correlate in a manner indicating cause and effect, the strategies and actions of the LTTE disclosed in the Panel’s own account, i.e. use of civilians as a buffer, shooting of civilians who were escaping, conscription of civilians and pushing them to the front lines as cannon fodder, fortifying the no-fire zones, using mobile artillery, shooting from proximity of hospitals, with the courses of action open to a government pursuing a military goal.

Omitting or sidelining significant details from the Report that could provide a different explanation of the government’s strategy and actions. Such as the erasure of vital contextual details from the picture of civilian casualties within the NFZs. Thus firmly placing civilian casualties in a vacuum and giving ‘no information of Tiger units coming under fire in close proximity to the civilians, something which many eyewitnesses have admitted to seeing themselves’. Inferring in this way ‘that there was very little or no military activity in the areas around the civilians, and that therefore there was no reason for any shelling by the SL Army’.

Inability to form complete cognitive pathways incorporating such facts as ‘a lot of UAV footage as well as SL military statements point to the fact that the Tiger units were actively fortifying and defending terrain even in the NFZs, often relocating high value weapons and ordnance within the NFZs and in close proximity to the civilians, and that far from the civilians and hospitals being easily recognizable islands in a sea of calm, they were right in the middle of an intensely contested battlefield’. (See http://www.margasrilanka.org/Darusman-Seminar%20Report.pdf Pp. 10-13)

Such cognitive failures are starkly manifest when placed alongside functioning cognitive pathways of contemporary commentators close to the thick of the action, such as the Bishop of Jaffna, who in asking the government to extend the safe zone, ‘declared that he and his colleagues “are urgently requesting the Tamil Tigers not to station themselves among the people in the safety zone and fire their artillery-shells and rockets at the army. This will only increase more and more the death of civilians thus endangering the safety of the people”.(http://www.peaceinsrilanka.org/press-releases-details/press-releases-details/1520 )

Can you blame him?

Published in my column in The Nation on March 25, 2012 
By Darshanie Ratnawalli

I wonder if it behoves me to say something about THE CURRENT ISSUE instead of being so stuck in the past and its different presentations. I could, but then there is very little emotional satisfaction to be had in holding up a spotlight to mediocrity. “To employ Pinter’s language, too many Sinhala wives and too many Sinhala children wanted peace, and so we killed as many Tamils as necessary. We just killed them. And for so many today, that’s ok.” That is Sanjana Hattotuwa providing the mediocrity (in his column last week in this very newspaper). And here’s Godfrey Gunatilleke providing the spotlight (in 'Truth and Accountability : The Last Stages of the War in Sri Lanka', an evaluation of the UN panel report on SL);

“…it is difficult to understand how the Panel ignores the facts given in its own account of the LTTE regarding its use of the civilians as buffer. …all clearly indicating that the LTTE deliberately integrated the civilians into the battlefield. The Panel…describes the army action in breaking into the NFZ and dividing it into two to separate the civilians from the LTTE cadres and freeing about 100,000 civilians. (para 109)It also reports how soldiers rescued civilians who escaped the LTTE killings during a mass attempt by civilians to break out. It also accepts that the eventual outcome of the operation was the release of the vast majority of civilians over 290,000 who were held by the LTTE. And after all this evidence which the Panel itself has collected, it concludes that the operation was aimed at the indiscriminate and systematic killing of a large section of the Tamil population and that the release of hostages was not an objective of government. The panel refuses to consider the government position that the military operation was launched with the objective of defeating the LTTE in order to free Sri Lankan citizens from LTTE control. In the panel’s view the government was operating in total disregard of the civilian population.

…There are significant omissions in the report. The report omits all mention of past actions and polices that may provide a more informed approach and better understanding of the actions of government in the Vanni operation than what is provided by the panel. There is no mention of the transformation the army had undergone and their visible improvement in discipline in respect of humanitarian rules of war. There is no reference to the war in the East immediately prior to the Vanni offensive and the very low level of civilian casualties in that operation which also had a hostage situation in Vakeneri. Such an account would have given credence to the government’s policy of “zero civilian casualties”. There is also no mention of government’s uninterrupted delivery of social welfare services to LTTE controlled areas prior to the commencement of the operation.”

Back to Sanjana; “Accountability is most stridently demanded and advocated today by an international community that tacitly supported the present government to treat collateral deaths of Tamil civilians as inevitable and necessary to end the war.” This is an untruth, the result of retrospective projection. There was no tacit acceptance at the time. The particular international community he means, best exemplified by Hilary Clinton were foaming at the mouth, braying for cease fire and pawning the ground preparatory to charging. They would have charged if they could have but were strategically held at bay and checkmated at every step of the way. The next spotlight (Michael Roberts: Realities of war: Frontline: written end April 2009) is switched on to show how.

“On April 22, Hillary Clinton told the world that “a terrible humanitarian tragedy” was taking place in Sri Lanka and demanded a halt in the fighting so that “we could secure a safe passage for as many of the trapped civilians as possible”.

The lady didn’t know it but she stood checkmated;

“Remarkably, for a superpower leader with access to up-to-date information Clinton appeared to have been some 48 hours behind breaking events: namely, the escape of some 107,000 Tamil “civilians” (doubtless including Tiger cadre who had given up the fight) from their hell-hole situation after a commando operation carried out by the Sri Lanka Army on the night of April 19-20. Alternatively, one must conclude that Clinton read this miraculous tale as something that spelt a humanitarian disaster – hence the use of the egg metaphor.”

Today, it may be convenient to forget the totally unexpected and innovative twists that deterred much awaited responses by challenging the stereotypical base on which they were invited;

“As I arrived in Sri Lanka on April 17, I told Kumari Jayawardena that the ground situation facing the army was labyrinthine. I could not, I said, see how it could move forward without generating disastrous death rates. Yet, today, we know that the commando operation was one for the textbook: it resulted in relatively few non-combatant deaths and created a path for streams and streams of Tamils to cross the lagoon and the beach over the next 2-3 days, roughly 110,000 people making this little epic journey. This, for me, was better than the tale of Moses crossing the Red Sea. It was both elevating and saddening.

It was distressing because of the condition of some of these people, displayed so starkly on camera, bespeaking the privation they had undergone in the immediate past. Indeed, as one or two died of dehydration or starvation while being bussed or airlifted by the military to the nearest hospitals in Vavuniya, one knew, now, why “the people of Tamil Eelam” had turned their back on the Eelam demand and the LTTE.”

Then too, the numbers game itself, as played at this stage, held the interventionists at bay.

“Take Nirmala Rajasingam’s passionate appeal in the British newspaper Independent on April 24. … Rajasingam also insisted that the government’s claim that there were few civilian casualties “defy reason,” and spoke of “huge civilian losses through indiscriminate fire”. …But what exactly is the count of those “civilians” killed as against those who have fled the coop in the past 5-6 months? A U.N. report dated April 24 estimated the death toll among civilians at 6,432, with those injured being estimated at 13,946. These figures must be qualified by two sets of facts: (a) they include individuals who stepped on LTTE mines and those shot by Tigers (or killed by suicide bombers) as they fled; and (b) a few of these civilians would be new conscripts who had not been issued with uniforms. Our adjectives must be relative. So, let us place these numbers in a comparative context beside the figure of 1,75,714 people who reached the government lines by April 24, with roughly 68,000 having escaped before April 20 and 107,000 in that remarkable moment between April 20 and 23.

The dead 6,432 make up roughly 4 per cent of those who have survived. Add the injured, some 13,000 according to the same U.N. report, and one has 20,000 casualties [caused by both sides] set against roughly 170,000 freed. While the figures are not to be laughed at, the death score is not “huge” while talk of “extermination” in “Dark victory”, displays mind-boggling bias and/or credulity… If there had been no restraint at all in the army offensive during the past six months, I can assure her that we would have had a death toll in the 30,000-50,000 range. As caveat let me stress that this claim does not mean that there was no cavalier bombing and artillery fire on some occasions.”

Indeed it was only after the war was over that somebody got savvy about the inadequacy of the pickings accruing from the numbers game and belatedly upped the stakes to 40 000 and more to fit the charge of unrestrained violence.

Talking of proportionality, I am sure to be in violation of its rules in using these particular spotlights on this particular mediocrity. Much too powerful for the task. Instead of merely showing up the mediocrity in the target statements, they also reveal the primary source of that mediocrity and end up exposing the dimensions of Sanjana’s mental equipment. Now did we really need to see that? This is why I prefer looking at the distant past. Much more exciting and the exposures are rarely so indecent.

History from under the carpet

Published in my column in The Nation on March 11, 2012 
By Darshanie Ratnawalli

In 1984, Gamini Iriyagolla accused C. R. De. Silva of suppressing something. Some evidence. Historical not litigious. Probably because Gamini Iriyagolla was a lawyer, it looked a bit convoluted. So that at first it confounded even me. (And I am quite brilliant). But finally I got it. (I always do). The charge was, on the first count, that C. R. de Silva being a historian and in full possession of all the facts, deliberately set out to deceive the public that the Arya Chakravarthi who ruled Jaffna in the mid 14th century enjoyed suzerainty over the king of Gampola and that this is Senarath Paranavithana’s own conclusion, knowing full well but covering up the fact that Paranavithana’s final word on the matter(1961 The Arya Kingdom in North Ceylon JRASCB Vol. VII (New Series) Part 2) was the exact opposite.

Paranavithana had actually shown 10+ years before C.R.’s intervention that force alone could not change vassal-overload equations, that they were much more entrenched and stable because sustained by de-jure convictions and conventions rather than who had the de-facto power advantage of the moment. Paranavithana, basing his conclusion on the Madavala inscription (1359 according his computation) had said;

"A noteworthy point in the Madavala inscription is that Marttandam, the Arya Chakravarti is referred to as a perumal only, while Vikramabahu is styled Chakravarti Svamin. This indicates that the Arya Chakravarti, though he was powerful enough to dictate terms to the Gampola monarch, had not assumed regal titles. The de jure right of Vikramabahu to the sovereignty over the whole island is recognized by the treaty…The Kotagama and Madavala inscriptions are thus witnesses to the utmost expansion of the Aryachakravartis of Jaffna".

On the second count, Gamini Iriyagolla targeted the following statement by C.R, "However, what Iriyagolla does not mention is that in the mid-fourteenth century 'the chieftain of this remote province' was powerful enough to control the Western coast of Sri Lanka almost up to the Kelani river, and to force Vikramabahu III (1357-74) king of Gampola to accept his tax collectors in the Sinhalese king's domains". Iriyagolla charged that C.R. in a deceptive sleight of hand, cited Rajavaliya as the source for the historical information contained in this statement, knowing full well that the bit about Vikramabahu being forced to accept the Arya Chakravarthi’s tax collectors into his domains did not come from Rajavaliya at all, but from the Madavala inscription (which records Vikramabahu III agreeing to have the Aryachakravarti's tax collectors in some of the hill country districts). C.R. de Silva, charged Iriyagolla, intentionally refrained from mentioning this inscription because doing so would let the Chakravarthi Svamin vs Perumal equation out of the bag. The whole sprawling article by Iriyagolla is accessible here

For a long while I thought Gamini Iriyagolla was being paranoid and ungracious. Didn’t he understand the impossibility of suppressing anything while the twin flowers of print and cyber capitalism were in full bloom? But a recent occurrence (not at liberty to disclose) has convinced me that nothing is impossible, that the list of scholarship on Sri Lanka specially foreign based and foreign to whom the Madavala inscription is a closed book would be as long as it is impressive containing DPhil (Oxon.)s from the 1960s as well as the 2000s. 

This practice of artificially compartmentalizing the time stream into periods; the Portuguese period, the Ancient period, the Kandian period, etc? So not working for foreign and foreign based scholarship on Sri Lanka. Among them, especially those whose interest in things Sri Lankan was sparked by topical concerns, we see too much of this parachuting into a period. Their ‘period’ would exist in a vacuum. In reality, there would be roots and threads mooring it to the previous and subsequent periods. But they would not see. A more distressing problem with foreign scholarship is that, some of them in addition to being short of holistic knowledge, are also a little short of analytical skill.

Let me give a telling example. This is a Dennis McGilvray citation from ‘Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province: Land, Development, Conflict Asia Report N°159 – 15 October 2008’ by International Crisis Group (Working to prevent conflict worldwide);

“That Buddhist remains can be found throughout the east is not necessarily evidence of Sinhala political control. Given its coastal location, Batticaloa and Trincomalee regions “would also have been accessible to immigrant traders and settlers from South India, many of whom would have been Buddhists as well, since both Tamil Nadu and Andhra were major centers of Theravada and Mahayana teaching for the third to the seventh centuries CE”. Crucible of Conflict,: Tamil and Muslim Society on the East Coast of Sri Lanka (Durham, 2008)., p. 57.”

This is an example of a foreign scholar’s mind at its most flexible and nimble due to being unencumbered with unnecessary knowledge. The blocks of knowledge that could have weighted down McGilvray’s mind and cramped its acrobatic style are; 1) this region in addition to the Buddhist remains also manifests a pretty hard to miss embodiment of a centre oriented state apparatus and political control, the extensive irrigation network with all that the concept of 'network' implies 2) Buddhist remains that are to be found throughout the east do not exist in a context less vacuum. There is an accompanying lithic record of who built them and why with extensive cross referencing with the chronicles.

Dennis McGilvray is an American anthropologist specialized on the Tamil and Muslim society (along matrilineality, thus kinship, inheritance, etc.) in the eastern province, that is Batticaloa and further south. Since then he seems to have established himself as an all-round expert on the eastern province and cited as such by the Crisis Group. By 2008, when his ‘Crucible of Conflict’ came out D. G. B de Silva’s ‘New Light On Vanniyas And Their Chieftaincies Based On Folk Historical Tradition As Found In Palm-Leaf Mss. In The Hugh Nevill Collection’ had been10 years in print. He has not glanced at it even once and thought that Vanniyars were Vellalas (Crucible of Conflict, op. cit., p. 9). Dennis is in his 60s so that hot headed imprudence of youth is a non issue.

Tales of fusion under a hegemonic umbrella

Published in my column in The Nation on March 4, 2012 
By Darshanie Ratnawalli

Some historians are good people who are ideologically excited by how harmoniously the multicultural motif lies on the landscape of this country’s past. They contemplate the Nayakkar accession to the throne of Sinhale, the medieval incorporation of South Indian immigrants and religious cults and the whole cultural syncretism thing with uncontaminated delight;

“Dravidian influence on Sinhalese society appears quite considerable…The Sinhalese literature of the period, specially works like the Pujavaliya and the Saddharmalankaraya, bear evidence of Tamil influence in so far as Tamil words are identifiable in these works. Indeed certain whole passages in the Dambadeni Asna are more akin to Tamil than to Sinhalese…..A whole range of personal names in use among the Sinhalese such as those which bear the prefix Tenna, Ponna, Alaha and the suffix peruma, koon and the like are distinctly of Tamil origin…….dictum of the sixteenth century Sinhalese poet Alagiyawanna,….a fool he is who has not mastered the Simhala, Tamil, Sanskrit and Pali languages…Throughout the long history of Sri Lanka Buddhism and Hinduism,…coexisted side by side, literally almost, in an atmosphere of harmony and concord. Hindu deities, particularly Siva and Visnu, in addition to an extensive minor pantheon, were housed in the premises of Buddhist temples and continued to be venerated by Buddhists throughout the island. In the medieval Sinhalese court Hindu ritual occupied the pride of place…”

- (A. Liyanagamage, Society State and Religion in Pre-modern Sri Lanka: 106-107)

When they carry on like this it acts as an incitement for other historians to pour some cold water on their euphoria. For, of course, the whole thing is much more layered and a big part of being an adult is being attentive to layers.

You won’t see the cohabitation of Buddhism and Hinduism in pre modern Lanka in its proper perspective unless you viewed it in the contrasting illumination thrown off by the whole ash thing.

“the sangharajjuruvan (Saranankara) and (other) leading monks, having failed in the attempt to preach and persuade the king to give up his heretical practice of anointing himself with ash, declared ‘we cannot sustain the sasana in cooperation with this heretical Tamil,’ and the monks of (the) Malvatte (temple) and radalavaru (“aristocrats”) taking counsel (decided) ‘Let us place some other worthy person as our king…’”

– (Sasanavatirna Varnanawa/K.N.O Dharmadasa 1979).

This ash episode featured in the 1760 rebellion against Kirti Sri Rajasinha, the second king of the Nayakkar lineage . One outcome of the rebellion was that “… the Sangha were reconciled after Kirti Sri gave up his ‘heretical’ practices and continued with added zeal his policy of being the lavish patron of Buddhism…..The king placed the blame for the rebellion upon himself and not only gave up the practice of anointing ash, but went so far as to ban the use of ash in preparation of ola-leaf manuscripts!...”- (K.N.O.-1979).

 Kirti Sri (as well as all the Nayakkar kings) was probably always in a state of dynamic equilibrium between ‘heretical Tamil’ and ‘amhakam sihalindo’ (this is what the author of the late 18th century installment of Culavamsa calls Kirti Sri, meaning ‘our Sihala king’ and ‘our happy, sublime Sihala ruler’), and after getting over the ash hurdle ruthlessly steered the equation towards ‘amhakam sihalindo’. Apparently as a definitive marker of Saivism, ash was a ricocheting, corrosive motif regardless of how many Hindu gods dwelt inside Buddhist temples. It were to surface again in 1815, attached to Sri Wickrama Rajasinha’s Nayakkar relatives who were all “anointing ash and appearing like matured ash-pumpkins” and “having anointed ash like dogs who had lain in (an abandoned) fireplace”-(Kirila Sandesaya/K.N.O 1979).

If you are partial to the incorporation motif present in Lankan history, however you’d like it served, with layers or without, you will always enjoy the Vanniyars. If you are a genuine multicultural fetishist, their story in Lanka will make you writhe in ecstasy. They came;

“It is significant that in the late thirteenth century some of the Sinhala kings appear to have induced a few immigrant chiefs to move across from southern India in order to re-settle specific districts that had been abandoned. The Malavara dignitaries, for instance, are described in one of the documents as having “cleared the jungle when there was no one else” (D G B de Silva 1996: 158, 172-73, 177). The Sinhala kings granted them land rights to these areas or, alternatively, responded to requests for land in this manner. Parakrama Bahu II (1236-70), in particular, pursued a programme of irrigation works and resettlement that attempted to recover the Nuvarakalaviya and Tamankaduva regions so that this migratory influx seems to have been linked with such policies.”

– (Michael Roberts: Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period: 74).
They fused;

“What language the Vanniyās used; or customs they followed; and private laws they used could have varied according to circumstance; but as Vanni chieftains they had received Sinhalese names on their investiture. They were supported by a hierarchy of local officials in the Rata Sabhās, when they adjudicated over matters concerning violations of local custom including failure to oblige with duties in respect of maintenance of irrigation work and agriculture. Some of them like the Malalas had fully assimilated into the local social and cultural milieu as seen from the positions they held at the Court and outside; one of them as the leading Vanniyā at Kaluvila; and two of them as the prelates of important places of learning. However, one also finds the Vanniyās retaining their original language (as Knox found at Nuvara väva); and some of their laws of succession, (as Hugh Nevill found existing among the chieftains of Hurulla which were similar to those of Malabārs and the Mukkuvās).”

- (D. G.B de Silva 1996: 190-191).
They remained distinctive;

“… Vanniyās formed a single class or caste intermarrying within their families, irrespective of whether they lived in the king’s territory or outside, whatever language they spoke; or what laws and customs they followed, the only exception being the Mukkuvās of Puttalama area and on the eastern coast.”

- (D. G.B:1996: 191).
And they were loyal;

“The “väddan” and “vannilayō” were among the forces of Rājasinha I of Sītāvaka (SH 1999:v.565); and in describing Rājasinha II’s preparations for battle against the Portuguese in the year 1638, for instance, the Rajasiha Hatana describes how he assembled forces from various regions, including

From Ratdala, Kitulāna, Yāla, Panama and Māgampura; from Wellawāya, Pālugama and Tirukkōvila from the Vädipattu and the great harbour of Kottiārama; and from many a land of the famed Vanniyäs.

P E Pieris’ reference to the “King’s Vanniyās,” albeit a passing remark, is in line with this information (1995a: 45).”

- (Roberts: 74-75)

And Jaffna belongs to…

Published in my column in The Nation on February 19, 2012 
By Darshanie Ratnawalli

Sometimes a geographical space acquires an equation of predominant association with a certain identity and when this happens it enables an alien motif to come into existence in the plane of perceptions and take the other identities under its shadow. For example;

"The inhabitants of Jaffna consist of a collection of various races. The greatest number are Malabars of Moorish extraction, and are divided into several tribes, known by the names of Lubbahs, Belalas, Mopleys Chittys, Choliars, and a few Brahmins… There is also a race of Malabars found here somewhat differing in their appearance from those on the continent. These different tribes of foreign settlers greatly exceed in number the native Ceylonese in the district of Jaffna. The Malabars are employed in manufacturing cotton cloths, &c. The Chittys and the Lubbahs trade in cloths, calicoes, handkerchiefs, &c. The Lubbahs are Moors and Mahometans. The Choliars. and Chivias do the hard work; are porters, palankeen bearers, and water carriers; All these in some measure partake of the Ceylonese habits and customs of life, mingled with their own " (p.47) .... Those that I mentioned first were induced many years ago, by the encouragements held out to them by the Dutch, to pass over from the Coromandel coast and carry on here a variety of manufactures..." (p.48).

-Robert Percival; An Account of the Island of Ceylon (London, 1803)-

I detect two pulse spots within this passage. One is an insidious and powerful tendency to treat Ceylonese and Sinhalese as synonyms. The other is the taken for granted, thus insidious and powerful manner in which the alien/foreign motif is inserted into ‘the district of Jaffna’ to encompass the 'Malabars of Jaffna'. The first one is pretty commonplace in the colonial narrative both British and pre-British; whereas the second one is much more intriguing. Less than 200 years ago from Robert Percival, ‘the chronicler of Portuguese Sri Lanka par excellence’ Fernao de Queiros writing about Jafanapatao was guilty of the same hegemonic act of alienation. What Queiros did was to see all the other collective identities of Jafanapatao under the shadow of an alien motif or through a glass darkly of un-belongingness while seeing the Chingala identity more vividly in the powerful aura thrown off by that dominant brand.

This caused him to commit the fairly significant slippage of treating Jaffnese and Chingala as synonyms, equating part of Jaffna (the Sinhalese part; e.g. Boccaro writing in 1632 notes that the Portuguese in Jaffna employed two interpreters, one Tamil and one Sinhalese) with the whole. In page 366 of ‘The Temporal and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon’ (Trans. 1930), the Portuguese walk into a fortalice, which the king of Jafanapatao had just abandoned to find among other things a block with12 heads, which are of course not just any heads but Chingala heads. Just 3 pages before, in page 363 those heads had been12 Modeliares who the King had had arrested because they ‘had represented to him the complaints and losses of the natives’. In fact Queiros seems unable to mention nonspecific characters in Jaffna without calling them Chingalaz. In Chapter 28; ‘The Conquest Of Nelur Described’ “…the Prince of Jafanapatao instructed a Chingala and he came to have speech with the Viceroy and…” as a result of that speech two Portuguese sailors go ahead as scouts and “…landed with all precaution, but were at once surrounded by the Chingalaz within sight of the Manchua in which they went…”

This didn’t mean that Queiros was blind to other identities or that there was no discernible distinctiveness between the different ethnic identities. He could totally classify. He could and did register the gradations of power and dominance presented by the different identities; “As for the character of the Chingalas, they are generally proud, vain and lazy…because of the antiquity of their Kingdom and nation and the liberty in which they were always brought up…In obeying their native Kings they have always been various and inconstant, but most stubborn in not admitting foreign domination, and when the Portuguese entered Ceylon..they did not hesitate to submit to any bold rebel, in order to recover their liberty…their greatest occupation is soldiering, and they enjoy peace only as an accident, and war is the custom.” (Vol 1, pg 21-3). Now compare; “They are very poor people and extremely weak, because they are Balalaz, a race different from that of the Chingalas, and they are said to originate from Bramenes of the continent a people who never fared well at arms, because they never professed them … and neither in language nor in religion are they at all like the Chingalas, though they are equally superstitious…”. (Bk I, Chap.7, p.50).

Hegemony is a nice word but still it does not explain everything. When a certain identity is disassociated from a geographical space, it is also because there is a lack of bonding, an absence of belongingness in that identity’s equation with that geographical space. For, not all Portuguese treated Jaffnese and Chingalaz as synonyms. Some of them committed an au naturel act of hegemony and equated part of Jaffna; the majoritarian part in its demographic configuration, with the whole of Jaffna. And said that the Jaffna man was fraco. “The defence arrangements the Portuguese made for Jaffna were greatly influenced by the assessment made by the leading Portuguese officials in that kingdom on the nature and character of the native inhabitants of Jaffna. Oliveira considered the Jaffna man as generally passive or weak (fraco). His successor as captain-major, Lancarote de Seixas, came to the same conclusion: he found the Jaffna man “quiet and mild, without any military training” and therefore unlikely to rebel unless instigated by outsiders. To them, the post-conquest history of Jaffna bore this out clearly. Luis de Freitas de Macedo, with many years of experience in Jaffna, came to a similar conclusion about the Jaffna man’s nature, as did the chronicler Fernāo de Queiros, basing himself on the observations of those who knew Jaffna well. The result of this assessment was that in Jaffna fortification was begun later, proceeded more slowly, and when it was completed, Jaffna, for its population and area, had fewer forts than was the case in the southern territories the Portuguese held in the island.” – (Jaffna under the Portuguese, T.B.H Pg. 17)

Now watch the sands of time. Watch the transformation of this identity. Watch the emergence of a powerful brand. Watch how this has caused the alien motif to undergo total transmutation in this region within the relatively short span of about 300 years. 200 years after Percival, 330 years after Queiros, watch Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka in 2010 June 13 Lakbima, not because it’s the loudest or the most strident expression of the transformed alien motif but because it’s so taken for granted and thus insidious and powerful. “In respect of the North-East the Rajapakse Government is committing in toto the same mistakes George Bush committed re Iraq. We don’t have a clear program of action regarding the salvaged areas of the N/E or the people there….. The world sees the GOSL as an alien invader.” (my translation).

In this critical conceptualization, the aftermath of an intervention, which was indisputably foreign is equated with the government of Lanka’s intervention in the ‘North-East’ aftermath. This act of lumping together is presented in a taken for granted manner thus creating the alien motif insidiously and powerfully. The world is then brought in as an impartial attester to confirm and endorse the alien motif. Neat.

A Sri Lankan celebrates Sri Lanka’s Independence from Chechnya

Published in my column in The Nation on February 04, 2012 
By Darshanie Ratnawalli

Being Sri Lankan means different things to different people, which I think is totally fine. The only aspect of Sri Lankanness worth insisting upon is that all persons, stories, theories and analyses should place their contexts within the actual, real Sri Lanka which exists in reality not in dimension –X. A lot of people are simply not acquainted with this Sri Lanka as evidenced by the analogies they deploy. For example, Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka is fond of talking about the Chechen solution. He’s made himself much clearer in 'Hostage to the past. The Devolution Debate and Historicism'.

“His diagnosis of why the bulk of the international community urges a solution of territory based political autonomy, leads him to three conclusions: Eelamist agit-prop, Marxist intellectual influence and politicians with a “here-and-now” perspective. None of these explain India’s secular state, quasi federalism and linguistic regions, Chechen autonomy, Spain’s autonomous Basque region, or Mindanao’s autonomy in the Philippines, to name just four disparate examples.”

In this critical conceptualization countries that incorporate into their polity regions that are powerfully, undeniably, unambiguously, unmistakably, inalienably and historically associated with a particular collective identity are equated with Lanka. This act of lumping together is presented in a taken-for-granted manner, thus, insidiously and powerfully in an attempt to impose on Lanka, an equity dictated obligation for political autonomy via forced association. Sri Lanka’s remarkable points of divergence from this segregated territory model (these areas-these people, those areas-those people) are ruthlessly denied mental house room. 


While a Chechen may have much to celebrate in his historically entrenched, uniform and consistent association with Chechnya, I hold that he is also poorer because he is deprived of the experience of being part of a region with diverse and multi-cultural associations such as our Northern Province. He will never know the experience of living in a land whose identity exists in layers, where the earlier layer still peeks through the current layer as enticingly as a camisole does through a sheer blouse. (“The place-names in the peninsula indicate that it was held by Sinhala inhabitants at no very remote date”- Chapter VI, A Short history of Ceylon by H. W. Codrington)- 


Conditions of severe multiculturality that can cause the terms Chechen and Russian to be used interchangeably and as synonyms by informed and specialist sources will forever be outside the cultural legacy of a Chechen. Not so our Northern Province or more specifically the region corresponding to the kingdom of Jaffna. On 15 March 1634, the King of Portugal addressed a letter to his viceroy laying down the decision of Lisbon regarding certain innovations suggested for Jaffna. This was based on their conceptualization of the Jaffnese as Sinhalese and as such their assessment of the character of the Sinhalese. Remarkably this decision was preceded and influenced by consultations with “two old Asia hands, one of them being Belchior Botelho da Silva, who counted at least a decade of experience as a captain in many parts of the island”. “A principal factor they took into consideration in arriving at their decision was the possibility that the implementation of the two proposals would lead to rebellion. This is clear from a statement in their letter of 15th march 1634 “…se nāo deve fazer novidade….porque de outro modo escandalizar junta tanta gente e de animos tāo inquietos e pouco fieis…” (no innovation ought to be tried…because otherwise people of such restless spirit and little faith will be scandalized…) But in referring to people of restless spirit and little faith, the Lisbon authorities were thinking of the Sinhalese of the Kotte Lands and not of the Tamils of Jaffna, as the phrase “como sāo os chingalas” (as are the Sinhalese) which follows the extract quoted above makes clear. Three decades of rebellion in the Kotte lands had implanted among the Lisbon authorities a wholesome fear of attempting anything likely to cause unrest among the Sinhalese.” Apparently “such misintelligence was not confined to Lisbon. The Count of Vidigueira, after serving as viceroy at Goa for 7 years (in two terms) and after a term as President of the India Council in Lisbon, still believed in 1626 that the inhabitants of Jaffna were Sinhalese”.– (See 'Jaffna under the Portuguese', T.B.H Abeyasinghe pages 24, 25, 26, 27). 


I hold that a Chechen’s horizons are narrower because his life world holds no frame of reference to enable him to comprehend conditions that led ‘the chronicler of Portuguese Sri Lanka par excellence’ to use Chingala as a generic term for Jaffnese, a term of primary reference to be used when describing Jaffnese contexts (much the same way he would use ‘Negro’ when describing Africa). So we have “These terms [written] in the Portuguese and the Chingala languages, were signed and authenticated and the Prince was handed over and sent in a ship with the Modeliar in good custody…..” in page 371 of Queiros’ work describing a treaty between the Portuguese and the King of Jafanapatao. 


There is nothing intrinsically superior (nothing intrinsically inferior either) about the Chechen experience in relation to the Sri Lankan experience with the region centred around the Kingdom of Jaffna. They are just different. Let Chechnya celebrate the homogenous uniformity of the Chechen association with Chechnya within Russia. Let us celebrate an association which is infinitely richer, more exciting and diverse (more intellectually challenging too to judge from the inability of certain people (who shall remain unnamed) to comprehend it.). There is no reason whatsoever to resort to naked lies to establish cultural homogeneity in the region along a temporal axis like Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka did in his Lakbima interview of 13 June 2010. Lack of cultural homogeneity is nothing to be ashamed of. It may render the Chechnya analogy facile. But so what?

Some extra honesty about ‘Sri Lankaness’ and ‘Sri Lankan identity’

Published in my column in The Nation ‘The Painted Goose’ on January 29, 2012 
By Darshanie Ratnawalli

Sometimes, certain sentences lodge in my head until I have to exorcise them by an act of writing. The following are from an essay titled ‘Back to Basics: The Need for an Honest Conversation About ‘Sri Lankanness’ and ‘Sri Lankan identity’ by Achcharya published in Groundviews last year.

“But when those who take part in the Sinhala Buddhist hegemonic project assert ‘Sri Lankanness’, as Rajapaksha did in his end-of-the-war speech (the no-minorities in Sri Lanka speech) many quite rightly suspected the motives behind such an agenda. To assert Sri Lankanness within the present political status quo (without challenging it) is to sign up to this agenda of Sinhala Buddhist hegemonism.”

That last sentence presents an interesting idea. What interests me is how it links ‘present political status quo’ with ‘Sinhala Budhist hegemonism’ in a mutually nourishing equation. I think one may be excused in concluding that, in the writer’s conceptualization, the present political status quo (bequeathed by the departing British) placed the entire socio-political space of sovereign Lanka under Sinhala Buddhist hegemonism; a novel state of affairs not at all reflecting the pre- colonial political status quo prevailing at the time of the Portuguese advent. The political status quo the Portuguese encountered here being (I am still guessing the writer’s reasoning process) the result of centuries of political evolution and restructuring powered by the time honoured medieval mechanisms of warfare, invasion, trade, migrations, pestilence and jungle tide, it was uniquely suited to the socio-political landscape of Lanka. The pre colonial political equation was in fact a home-grown status quo, springing from the very soil of this country and by departing from it the Brits created a rip in the space-time continuum of this country leading to chaos. 

Pre-colonial equation
Let me say that there’s nothing in his essay to commit Achcharya in a concrete way to this chain of reasoning. He does not talk about the pre-colonial equation at all. (except for a tell tale, taken for granted posit he lets slip- “In fact for reasons that I hope that are obvious the Sri Lankan identity is historically a later creation”) I am only trying to reconstruct the synaptic junctions in the writer’s deductive pathway, which may have lead him to come out with the interesting duet of sentences quoted at the start. I don’t think mine is a preposterous or a far-fetched reconstruction because even a casual upward glance into the ideologisphere of this country will reveal this idea floating around like a large and pregnant cloud casting its shadow very far and wide. 

The Sinhala Buddhist hegemonic overtones present in the current collective identity brew of this country was illustrated subsequently by Dr. Michael Roberts in a complementary (and complimentary too in subtext) article to Achcharya’s; ‘Ancestry and Ethnic Identity in the Australian Census… and thus to Sri Lanka’ also published in Groundviews. (However please note that Roberts’ contains a footnote “However, I would place caveats around Aachcharya’s claim that “[the assertion of] Sri Lankanness within the present political status quo (without challenging it) is to sign up to this agenda of Sinhala Buddhist hegemonism.”) 

 It seems that Dr. Roberts has been trying for the past so many years “in deadly seriousness” to initiate a project of his own to counter the Sinhala Buddhist hegemonic project. This lovely project involves causing hyphenated Lankan identity labels (Sinhala-Lankan, Tamil-Lankan, Muslim-Lankan, Mixed-Lankan) to take root in local vocabularies. This project is intended “as a means of undermining the insidious, but powerful, tendency among some Sinhala people to treat “Sri Lankan” and “Sinhalese” as synonyms”. Dr. Roberts “spotted this tendency initially in some of the Anagarika Dharmapala’s writings in the early twentieth century”. 

 My gut feeling is that after this initial discovery he did not spot this tendency at all in a Sri Lankan context at a time post dating Anagarika Dharmapala. Incidentally I spotted a similar tendency within a USA context. The following is from ‘Sins of the Fathers’, one of my all time favorite novels (first published 1980) by Susan Howatch;

“At the age of nine I had walked into my school classroom to find that someone had written on the blackboard: HANS-DIETER KELLER IS A NO-GOOD GERMAN PIG. Then a gang of older boys had beaten me up and I had run crying all the way home…. Anti sentiment had been common in 1917 and my family had probably suffered less than other German-American families since my father had refused to be intimated. After the incident in the classroom he had hung a large American flag on our front porch and announced to the principal of my school that my constitutional rights as an American Citizen would be violated unless steps were immediately taken to reprimand my assailants. The principal, a fair-minded man, had responded satisfactorily and the rest of my school days had passed without incident. It was my father who had suggested that it would be better if I had an American name. He had favoured Hank, since it was similar to Hans, but I had insisted on Sam, the cowboy hero of a popular comic strip.”

Supra identity

I hope it’s clear that my intention is not to take a crude swipe at USA. The relevant part is the interesting juxtaposition of the American with the German-American while the other sentences are quoted just to create context. This interesting juxtaposition showcases the presence of the non-hyphanated supra identity, which enables (in the case of America) the Part (the Anglo-Saxon part) to equate itself with the Whole (American). In this critical conceptualization a part of America, the Anglo-Saxon people (actually their brand identity more than their corporeal selves), is equated with the whole of America. This (ideological? Nah I’d say natural and subliminal) act of merger is present throughout the American mosaic in a taken-for-granted, insidious and powerful manner causing even a German American to treat American and Anglo-Saxon as synonyms as in the above example. This is why one hyphenated category; English-American is obsolete in America. 

 Actually I am paraphrasing Dr. Roberts’ sentences. Let me reproduce his original sentences because a) it is unethical to paraphrase without doing that b) his sentences are crafted so masterfully to illustrate the part-whole relationship and the hegemonic overtones in the present day Lanka that by slightly paraphrasing them I can illustrate the hegemonic overtones that existed in the political unit called the Kingdom of Jaffna at the time of the Portuguese advent.

“… the insidious, but powerful, tendency among some Sinhala people to treat “Sri Lankan” and Sinhalese” as synonyms….I spotted this tendency initially in some of the Anagarika Dharmapala’s writings in the early twentieth century…..This type of slippage enables the Part (Sinhalese) to equate itself with the Whole. It is a hegemonic act, even when working without aforethought below the surface…In this critical conceptualization a part of Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese people, is equated with the whole of Lanka. This ideological act of merger is presented in a taken-for-granted manner, thus, insidiously and powerfully”

Dr. Roberts does not know it (or maybe he does) but proving that destiny sometimes creates bizarre parallels in people’s lives, Professor T. B. H Abeyasinghe spotted(see ‘Jaffna under the Portuguese’ pgs 24, 25, 26, 27) the same kind of slippage in some of the 17th century Portuguese writings on Jaffna. This was a tendency to treat Jaffnese and Chingala as synonyms. Among those who suffered from this slippage was Fernao de Queiros, ‘the chronicler of Portuguese Sri Lanka par excellence’ (T.B.H, Jaffna Under the Portuguese). In pages 356, 357, 366, 371, 374, 375, 376, 377 of his text ‘The Temporal and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon’ (Trans. 1930), this type of slippage enables Queiros to equate the Part (Chingalaz) with the Whole (Jaffnese). So in page 377, we are told that the reason for abandoning a certain fortalice is “…because it would necessarily remain in a continuous state of siege, on account of the tenacity of the King and of Chingala courage,…” . The king here is the king of Jaffna. In page 374, in a confrontation that takes place in Jaffna “Vincente Carvalho, Captain of a foist” is attacked by 200 men who become “the delighted Chingalaz” in the next sentence. So it goes. 

Hegemonic act
 In this critical conceptualization a part of Jafanapatao, the Chingalaz , (not a majoritarian part in this region’s demographic configuration according to conventional historiography), is equated with the whole of Jafanapatao. This act of merger, which is perceptual rather than ideological, is presented by Queiros in a taken-for-granted manner, thus, insidiously and powerfully. In other words Portuguese (For it was not only Queiros but also the Lisbon authorities and the Count of Vidigueira too) identified the idea of Jaffneseness with Chingalaness, the dominant identity of Ceilao. This is an example of how natural hegemony exercised by a dominant brand influences perceptions and shapes communications. This was a hegemonic act. It did not involve those committing it buying into any ideology. Nor did it involve the present political status quo.

…THOUGH NOW I WAS DATING NOT ONLY AJITH BUT AJAY TOO.

(Actually I was not dating Ajith then, but can’t a girl dream?)
Published in my column in The Nation ‘The Painted Goose’ on January 22, 2012

By Darshanie Ratnawalli

In the afternoon of 10 October 1987, sound of shelling was once more heard in Jaffna barely three months after India enforced peace in Sri Lanka with the Indo-Lanka Accord. Most Jaffnese (records UTHR) couldn’t believe that it was the IPKF shelling them and thought it must be the SL army. But it wasn’t. It was the IPKF. On 4th October, 17 tigers travelling in a fishing trawler to or from Tamil Nadu were apprehended by the SL Navy. On 5th October, 2.00 p.m., those 17 men, who had been taken by the IPKF from the Naval base to the Palaley air base, were visited by Balasingam and Mahattaya. At the exact same time, Major General Harkirat (Harry) Singh, Commander of the IPKF, who was in Trincomalee (under orders to ‘deny the airport to the SL forces’), was getting a message; “At 2 o'clock I get a message, why is the G-o-C IPKF interfering in the 'constitutional activities of Sri Lanka? These were the exact words. This message came all the way from the force headquarters in Madras. And, 'Please lift your siege in Jaffna, let the Sri Lankans do what they want to.'”

Avenging

By late evening that day, the message bore fruit; “Our troops withdrew, the Sri Lankan troops charged, and these fellows swallowed cyanide. Those who chewed, they died on the spot, those who swallowed were saved.” According to General Harry, 13 chewed that day. Only 4 swallowed. That night the LTTE started avenging those who chewed. During the night of 5th October, the LTTE liquidated one Sinhalese baker (poor, elderly, forced to leave Jaffa in ‘83’, had come back with the dawn of the ‘87’ peace to restart his only livelihood in Chunnakam), two Sinhalese cement makers (the GM and deputy GM of Lanka Cement Ltd., come to restart the cement plant at KKS ), 8 Sinhalese soldiers (been in LTTE captivity, hopeful appeals had been made to the LTTE for release with the dawn of the ‘87’ peace) and one Sinhalese cop (serving in the VVT police station re-opened with the advent of ‘87’ peace, beaten to death with a wooden pole by Soosai and another while having a drink in the local bar). The liquidating just continued in the following days until a civilian (Sinhalese) death toll of around 200 was achieved according to BBC reportage. This included 4 Rupavahini crew members, who having been abducted in Jaffna went AWOL presumed dead, 35 long term Batticaloa (Sinhalese) residents who were gunned down, Chief of STF, Batticaloa, Nimal Silva and GA Batticaloa, Mr. Anthonymuttu killed in a landmine explosion while travelling in the same vehicle.

Operational parameters

Meanwhile, in yet another part of the forest, J.R was urging the Indian Defense Minister and the Indian Army Chief of Staff to act. Some say he even dared to articulate the possibility of re-deploying the SL army in the event of no action by the IPKF. On 7th October the IPKF had been issued directives defining their operational parameters. On 10th October 1987, ‘the war resumed, just as Prabhakaran had predicted’, though now the LTTE was fighting the peacekeepers instead of the government troops. I have paraphrased Niromi de Soyza to show up the other worldly relevance of her 2009 Telegraph statement.

“The war resumed, just as Prabhakaran had predicted, though now we were fighting not only the government troops but the peacekeepers, too.” may indeed have relevance and drip with truth in some world other than this one. The bit about Prabhakaran predicting the resumption of war however, has relevance even in this world. To every 100 inept astrologers, who wait passively for their predictions to come true, there is one enterprising astrologer who predicts something and immediately proceeds to kick destiny into shape to make that prediction happen. Prabha was one such.

Prediction

When he predicted in the early days of the Accord, that the war would resume, did he also envisage the government troops joining in? It’s possible. Prior to October before the war resumed (just as Prabhakaran had predicted) there had been scenes that were simply throbbing with potential. On 18 September 1987, the IPKF looked on while a mob attacked and set fire to the Point Pedro police station. The festivities ended with the policemen being made to walk to the nearby camp with their belongings on their heads, trailed behind by a crowd shouting abuse. That same day, the abusive crowd scenario had been duplicated in front of the SL Army camp in VVT and a single drunk soldier had stood in front of the crowd returning the abuse before being dragged inside by an officer.

Given this latent, simmering hostility to the Sri Lankan Forces and given that in a very real sense the SL state and the SL forces were the ultimate enemy of the LTTE, the IPKF being just an interlude and a fling, could it be…isn’t it possible that…of course that’s it! Eureka, Niromi de Soyza’s Telegraph statement and the Throsby statement can totally be justified!

Look at them statements; “The war resumed, just as Prabhakaran had predicted, though now we were fighting not only the government troops but the peacekeepers, too.” and “when I joined, the Indian forces had arrived and the tigers had chosen to fight the Indian forces as well as the Sri Lankan forces”. When Niromi joins the government troops with the IPKF in a single harness via the ‘not only-but also/as well as’ construct and subjects these two harnessed entities to the common verb ‘fight’, she is merely trying to convey the ultimate and enduring adversarial equation between the tigers and the SL forces while at the same time expressing the new equation with the IPKF. Whew, what a relief!

Not only-but also/as well as

But is it? All you Niromi defenders on the web, who genuinely bought into this explanation need to catch the earliest time machine into your pasts and get your younger selves better English teachers (who can correctly lay down the parameters of the not ‘only-but also/as well as’ construct) together with memberships in good libraries (where you can read those parameters demonstrated in living language across the whole gamut of human experience). Or, alternatively you could look at the model situations below and savour the existential absurdities and the internal contradictions caused when the above parameters are deployed by the linguistically challenged.

“Ajith was the ultimate love theme in my life. I have always loved him and probably always will.. But then suddenly we were …drawn asunder by outside forces. Not that I ever stopped loving him but we were not an item anymore. I was lonely and Ajay was …there. He was Ajith’s friend, reminded me of Ajith and I dare say, I even saw him as a stand in for Ajith. I dunno, whatever, the inevitable happened.
My love life resumed just as my mother had predicted though now I was dating not only Ajith but Ajay too.”

“The cancer in my rectum was in remission. But I was smoking a lot. I couldn’t seem to get through the day without twenty cigarettes. My doctor was expressing grave doubts about my ability to continue in a state of wellbeing while smoking so heavily. And so it came to pass.

My physical sufferings resumed, just as my doctor had predicted, though now I was fighting not only the cancer in my rectum but emphysema, too. Thankfully my cancer was still in remission and did not contribute to my physical sufferings. I don’t think I could have managed to fight emphysema of the lungs and cancer of the rectum at the same time.”

Someone who says ‘When I joined, Monica had arrived and my boss had chosen to date her as well as Jane’ is unmistakably painting ‘my boss’ as a minor Casanova. Protesting much later that boss was no Casanova, that Jane was his steady girl friend who was temporarily unavailable/estranged when the Monica thing was on, will only make you look silly. Similarly the 2009 Telegraph and the 2011 Throsby statements unmistakably label Niromi as an IPKF war virgin who has no awareness of the most unique aspect of that unique episode in our country’s history.

Occupational Force

Between 1987 and 1990, for the first time after the British left, part of this country was under a foreign Force. It was a palpable reality. When president Premadasa presumed to order the IPKF about in December 1989 with his ‘please be confined to your lines or else we will consider you an occupational force and deal with you’, Lieutenant General Kalkat had flashed this reality at him in the same way a cop flashes his badge; “So when the ultimatum was conveyed to me, I conveyed back that as per the Accord, the North-Eastern province is under the IPKF. I am responsible here for the safety of the entire region and if there was militant activity by anyone, any force I would respond. And that if my forces are attacked by anyone I would respond. That is as far as you can go, but it conveyed the meaning of what it meant.”. Even much earlier on in his tenure, Lt. General Kalkat had been compelled to flash his badge when he discovered unscheduled SL army presence in his territory; “…Israeli assistance was for the Sri Lankan special force. Their training camp was on the edge of Batticaloa district, my soldiers had discovered it. And I straight away took up the matter, if they don't leave in 24 hours, my soldiers will deal with them. And in 24 hours they left the place lock, stock and barrel, both Israeli trainers and Sri Lankans.”

Defining the side

It is into this occupied landscape that Niromi de Soyza blunders in with her Telegraph and Throsby statements, her weird pre-publicity blurbs raving about the Sri Lankan Army 'ruthlessly ambushing small platoons of young girls' two days before Christmases of 1987, her book with ‘government forces’ enticingly emblazoned on the back cover and her one-on- one interview accounts carrying tales of playing ‘catch me’ with government forces in the jungles of Wanni and having to deal with the viciousness of the Sri Lankan armed forces together with the brutality of her fellow Tigers in the course of the violence she’d become part of by picking up a gun.

Among a sea of web comments trying hard to insist that bull-shit is icing, there was one commenter called Vijayaraghavan Sakthivel who said; “…Is this what all that academic achievement, all that culture and all that poetry described by DBSJ has produced? A 40 something individual, who would go in front of the world and say things about a highly documented period even a kid would be able to prove wrong? Where is the intellectual sophistication, the general knowledge or the good sense education is supposed to produce?” Ageist and sanctimonious perhaps. But bracing and refreshing too.

The overwhelming impression I have of Niromi de Soyza is as someone who urgently needs some robust good sense shaken into her. When she cries in public(as she is reputed to do without fail), ‘get a grip’ are the words demanded by a context where there are tigresses who lost limbs much more recently than 23 years ago (one such is now playing disabled volleyball for Sri Lanka). So Niromi, it has been fun doing research on and around you. We will be watching your future career with considerable interest. No one expects you to play ball for Sri Lanka, but whichever side you play for, it’s imperative to ‘get a grip’.

References-
• India’s Vietnam. The IPKF in Sri Lanka: 10 Years On
• http://www.uthr.org/BP/volume2/Chapter2.htm
• http://www.uthr.org/BP/volume2/Chapter1.htm
• http://www.uthr.org/BP/volume1/Chapter9.htm

Are you saying the LTTE weren’t a Sri Lankan Force?

Published in my column in The Nation ‘The Painted Goose’ on January 8, 2012

By Darshanie Ratnawalli

The LTTE were technically Sri Lankan Forces too. They are on record in non- Sri Lankan sources as having had amputations performed on people to stop them from leaving no-fire zones. A book, which announces that Sri Lankan forces amputated people’s limbs to stop them from leaving no fire zones will be technically correct too. One can issue statements explaining how the author did not write ‘Sri Lankan Government Forces’, merely ‘Sri Lankan Forces’ and what’s wrong with so and so’s comprehension that he fails to see that the LTTE were Sri Lankan Forces too.

Luckily perhaps for our sanity, Niromi’s story in Sri Lanka stops in 1988 (in her own account she was shot of the LTTE as well as Sri Lanka by 1988). If the saga had gone on past 1989, we’d have to endure arguments that ‘for a young LTTE cadre to describe the LTTE as Government Forces would not be unusual at all as given the collaboration between the LTTE and the SL government against a common undesirable; the IPKF, the LTTE either considered themselves as an extension of the SL Government forces (or far more likely) considered the Government Forces as an extension of themselves.’ (The collaboration started somewhere in October 1989 according to General Kalkat in ‘India’s Vietnam’ )

Even though Sri Lanka was deprived of Niromi’s colorful presence in 1988, before the meaning of ‘government forces’ could ‘branch out’ too much, we are not scot free of creative interpretations. The Tamil people it seems saw the IPKF as doing the dirty work of the Government and there’s nothing incongruous in describing the IPKF as ‘government forces’ as the back cover of Tamil Tigress does.

“Two days before Christmas in 1987, at the age of 17, Niromi de Soyza found herself in an ambush as part of a small platoon of militant Tamil Tigers fighting government forces in the bloody civil war that was to engulf Sri Lanka for decades…”

Lot of people I know checked into private mental homes on the day this argument hit the cyber space, so that they could bang their heads on the padded walls and scream in relative privacy and safety. They have now come out all calm and point out that, though the major players of the Elam wars during the various temporal phases were bound to each other in ever changing relationship equations dictated by expediency, no merging of identities ever accompanied these changes; that the contexts involved were too hugely incompatible and irreconcilable for these identities to ever merge in living, natural language. The IPKF was too much the instrument of an overlord, meting out a client dispensation to a subjugated state to ever become ‘Government Forces’ in Sri Lanka, while the LTTE had rejected their Sri Lankanness and the ‘Government’ far too irrevocably (collaboration notwithstanding), to ever become a Sri Lankan or a government force .

Another argument rolled out to sanitize the ‘Government Forces’ on the back cover is that while Niromi’s honest hand produced the words ‘ Indian government Forces’ for the back cover copy, some other hand belonging to a less informed Allen and Unwin editor deleted the word ‘Indian’. On this one most people were able to do without the padded cell and state with the aid of a tranquilizer only, that ‘Indian government forces’ were a linguistic anomaly for the IPKF in Sri Lanka. ‘Government’ was a superfluity after the word ‘Indian’, which never appeared in actual communications because a nongovernmental Indian force was never part of the equation.

The best one so far is that ‘the government forces- guerilla forces dichotomy’ allowed the term ‘government forces’ to be used for the IPKF when they were the adversaries of a guerilla force. However in language, the key is context, context and context and ironically it’s Niromi herself, who hands us the contextual key to interpret the words ‘government forces’ when she wrote in 2009 that “The war resumed, just as Prabhakaran had predicted, though now we were fighting not only the government troops but the peacekeepers, too.”

Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, D. B. S Jeyaraj (if he has published this Saturday’s installment) will now have hit the 15 000 word count in his Niromi saga. Pitted against this abundance are 47 measly words in simple, straightforward English written and uttered in Niromi’s own hand and voice respectively.

“The war resumed, just as Prabhakaran had predicted, though now we were fighting not only the government troops but the peacekeepers, too.”

-2009, Telegraph

“…when I joined, the Indian forces had arrived and the tigers had chosen to fight the Indian forces as well as the Sri Lankan forces”

- 2011, interview with Throsby

They are so unobtrusive and so easy to overlook. In that respect they are like all slips. In detective stories, people only make one critical slip (which is nevertheless enough to alert the clever detective). If you are Niromi de Soyza however, you make one monumental slip in writing and two years later make the identical slip verbally. If your attention had wandered (as it will) while reading through the 4521 words of the 2009 Telegraph story or between the points 18.45 and 19.02 in the 2011 Throsby interview, you would miss these slips (In fact no one in my acquaintance did spot these slips before I pointed them out). But once spotted they (the slips) sing. They sing out pure like the ring of genuine Waterford crystal and grab your attention amidst the tin clatter of words produced by Monsieur D. B.S Jeyaraj.

For a long while, the Telegraph statement and the Throsby statement (as they will go down in history) were dodged and remained unacknowledged by all Niromi defenders on the Net and Press, reminding me of a historical novel about Charles II I had read in school. In it, there’s a scene where Catherine of Braganza, Charles’ Portuguese bride is advised, before she sets sail for England, by her mother, the queen of Portugal, on how to deal with Charles’ mistresses. “You must never acknowledge these women or let on that you know about their relationship to your husband” or words to that effect. Similarly write reams and reams validating and affirming Niromi, cover all other contentious issues, but…silence on the ‘IPKF alongside the government troops’ motif, as if it was sotta beneath their notice.

Even Michael Colin Cooke, apparently Lionel Bopage’s biographer, who wrote ‘The singer might change but the song remains the same: A critical look at Roberts and Sarvananthan ‘outing’ Niromi de Soyza’ was no different. Having dissected the back cover ‘government forces’ he gets struck by curious amnesia about the Throsby statement, which was certainly available to him through the one article by Dr. Michael Roberts, which he seems to have perused in replying (there was a newer article by Roberts, which had he read it would have presented him with the Telegraph statement too and the 2009-2011 consistency.) But, deadlines, you know. You just can’t afford to read everything.

But eureka, around 30th December, 2011, finally, the Throsby and Telegraph statements were acknowledged and a feisty defense mounted. Only I can’t tell you this week. The word count you know. Wait till next week, it’s good.

The Amazing Bulls In Our Bullring

Published in my column in The Nation ‘The Painted Goose’ on January 1, 2012

By Darshanie Ratnawalli

Ernest Hemingway was passionate about bullfighting and wrote two books revolving around it. When I was in school or just after, I read one, ‘The Dangerous Summer’ it must have been not ‘The Sun Also Rises’ or I would remember the plot. What I remember is Hemingway being disdainful and scathing about periodic moans by aficionados that the bulls are getting smaller. He was such a persuasive author that I came away from the book determined to always believe in the bulls of my time.

Looking into the metaphorical bullring of Sri Lanka’s ethno-political intellectual space and watching the leading bulls in action, this belief helps me not to despair of the sport when the smaller bulls come charging in and it looks as if they are the overwhelming majority and one may have to accept certain really small bulls as the current gold standard of their category. You need to remind yourself that the bigger bulls are out there, they will eventually come into the ring and there’s no need to prune down your expectations and settle for a lesser and lower sport. So many bulls exposed to the force-field of our ethno-political intellectual space turn out small because there is an inbuilt blight, almost a curse on it. A bull has to have exceptional potential for bigness to withstand the enormous pressures exerted by this resident blight and turn out be of even a reasonable stature. I have (at least) three metaphorical bulls in my sights (I use the bull metaphor irrespective of gender as you will see). Let’s give each of them a connoisseur’s once over. This week’s selection is Dr. Jehan Perera.

In 2010, Dr. Jehan Perera inspired me to write the following paragraph;

“One of the saddest features characterizing Sri Lanka’s Peace process was the widespread infestation of blight and decay afflicting its front guard. The key symptoms were downright lying, the shoddy, almost illiterate nature of the construct building and the inability to display enough intellectual vigour and research ability to support a B gradable school project report, let alone communications worthy of National change agents and opinion leaders.”

Yet, it was not his overall performance in the ring that inspired it but a single incident. It all started with a footnote;

“When a highly educated Sinhalese scholar like Jehan Perera, one who is a genuine grassroots worker for multi-cultural accommodation, is unaware (personal comment in late Jan. 2000) that the eastern coast of Sri Lanka was an integral part of the Kingdom of Kandy from the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the gaps in information—and the success of Tamil propaganda—are starkly manifest.”

-ESSAY
Narrating Tamil Nationalism: Subjectivities and
Issues Michael Roberts April 2004- (Footnote 57)

I was immediately deeply skeptical of such historical virginity and did some sniffing around and hit gold one day on the Tamil Canadian, where Dr. Jehan Perera was cited as an authority. In an article entitled, "Balanced compromise on the north-east unit" published in the Sunday Island in the late 90s, he had said the following;

"The fact is that in the census of 1920 only 4 percent of the population of the Eastern Province was Sinhalese. The Sinhalese settlements in the east were small and scattered, even though there is historical evidence that most of the east came under the umbrella of the Kandyan Kingdom. But while the ultimate rulers were in the Sinhalese Kingdom of Kandy, the people of the east were mostly Tamils and Muslims. It is only in the past fifty years that there has been a substantial influx of Sinhalese settlements through state intervention."

This made me write an article with the purple heading (purple headings my specialty) “Why did Dr. Jehan Perera lie to Dr. Michael Roberts? A Sri Lankan Horror Story” . My article also contained the following paragraph;

“Therefore what was starkly manifest to me reading the above footnote in Narrating Tamil Nationalism: Subjectivities and Issues, Michael Roberts was not ‘the gaps in information—and the success of Tamil propaganda’ but the incredible naiveté and innocence of Dr. Michael Roberts.”

This was clearly a mistake. A stony silence greeted my mail to Dr. Roberts asking for a review. Another mail elicited the following reply; “I could not work out who was saying what and found the topic esoteric and pedantic”

When the dust had settled, Dr. Roberts explained that when Dr. Jehan Perera confessed his ignorance his manner was absolutely genuine and nothing would induce him (Dr. Roberts) to believe that he (Dr. Jehan Perera) was only pretending ignorance. Apparently at that seminar or conference, after the statement linking the eastern coast with the Kandyan Kingdom was made, Dr. Jehan Perera sidled up and said sotto voce words to the effect “is it true?” and it was this bashful innocence of manner, which convinced Dr. Roberts.

It is a mystery. If the corporeal Dr. Jehan Perera was whispering in 2000 that he was unaware of any relationship between the East and the Kandyan Kingdom, who wrote "Balanced compromise on the north-east unit" in the late 1990s?

Holmes... I know…a ghostwriter!. Yes Watson, a ghostwriter whose writings, opinions and selective snippets of knowledge form no part of Dr. Jehan Perera’s waking consciousness. But Holmes!... an opinion leader whose opinions (at least some of them) are formed and articulated without his awareness based on knowledge unfamiliar to him? Moreover a research and media director who refrains from research? Where does that leave us? That leaves us Watson back in the bullring watching a very small bull in action and pining for the bigger bulls.

So frankly, I think there need to be bigger bulls to represent the reconciliation circuit and I believe they are out there. I myself know at least one and perhaps I will even write about him. But not next week. Next week we will run our connoisseurs’ hands along the flanks (metaphorical) of that new bull Niromi De Soyza and assess her.

D.B.S.JEYARAJ finds some fatal slips in Niromi De Soyza’s narrative

And treats them like pustules in a delicate anatomical region (quietly ignores them hoping they will just go away)

(Also published in The Nation 18 December 2011 and The Sunday Leader 18 December 2011 and in LankaWeb)

Darshanie Ratnawalli MONDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2011

From 2009 to 2011 consistently, faithfully and in a variety of digital media which can be easily retrieved Niromi de Soyza has been making the same fundamental and monumental slip, which doesn’t bode at all well for the authenticity of her memoir ‘Tamil Tigress’.

Duped either by his willingness to be duped or through inadequate attention to what has been written on the subject, D. B. S Jeyaraj wrote this delectably provoking passage in his From Shenuka to Niromi: True tale of a ‘Tamil Tigress’,

“Moreover the charges themselves do not seem to be grounded on sound basis. Mistaking is not faking. Blunders and errors of minor detail are signs of sloppiness not fraudulence. The discrepancies and doubts pointed out do not in anyway affect the structure and content of her book. They are not basic or fundamental mistakes that drastically alter the scope and scale of what has been stated.”

Such real or affected innocence just cried out to be deflowered and I responded to that urge and sent him the following comment. All very respectful, solid and even stolid. It was sort of an experiment to find out how DBSJ would defend the indefensible. I have the answer now. He is too shrewd to try. What can’t be defended and explained away should be covered up. The comment never appeared there but here it is.
****
Dear Sir, allow me to express my surprise that an eminent, investigative and analytical journalist such as you has missed the most fundamental error of them all. It’s a fighter’s tale sir and what is the most fundamental pillar of any fighter’s tale? The identity of the fighter’s adversaries. If you had really done justice to your journalistic eminence and conscientiously read the material produced by Niromi’s critics you would have spotted this fundamental error. From 2009 onwards even before Niromi de Soyza got her book published, she has been consistently displaying her ignorance of who she fought during her fighting tenure. Maybe it’s just ignorance born out of not having fought or even being in the country during the relevant period. Maybe it’s the intention to mislead a non-cognoscenti Western audience, which again points to ignorance and unfamiliarity with context. With familiarity would have come the realization that the lies distort the very bedrock of the late 80s post IPKF reality and she could not get away with them even given a non research oriented Western media corps. Whatever it is sir, here are the lies with the relevant links for your journalistic perusal.

“Two days before Christmas in 1987, at the age of 17, Niromi de Soyza found herself in an ambush as part of a small platoon of militant Tamil Tigers fighting government forces in the bloody civil war that was to engulf Sri Lanka for decades…”

-Blurb Tamil Tigress- (2011)

“…when I joined, the Indian forces had arrived and the tigers had chosen to fight the Indian forces as well as the Sri Lankan forces”

-Niromi’s Margaret Throsby Interview- Thursday 21 July 2011 (between 18.45 and 19.02)-

“The war resumed, just as Prabhakaran had predicted, though now we were fighting not only the government troops but the peacekeepers, too.”

-The Telegraph. Life as a female Tamil Tiger guerilla relived by one of first female soldiers (by Niromi published in 2009 May)-

"She cries for reasons as complex and tragic as the conflict itself, even though it has been more than two decades since the former rebel put down her gun and fled the violence she'd become a part of, unable to deal any longer with the brutality of her fellow Tigers or the viciousness of the Sri Lankan armed forces."

-Tigress interrupted. By Nikki Barrowclough 09/07/2011 covering her interview with Niromi-

“She maintains that while she was involved in some combat, the very nature of guerilla warfare meant that most of her time with the Tigers was spent running and hiding from government soldiers.”

-Ibid-

Now let me roll out that old saw. “You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”