The books “Aarip Pona Kayangalin Vali” (The pain of healed wounds) and “Poraliyin Kathali” (The lover of the militant) by Vetrich Chelvi, a former LTTE woman activist who lost an eye and a hand in the war, no doubt have been authoured with a deep literary insight of life.
Their teachings and arguments as an Opposition party before assuming power were mostly theoretical and attractive, but now as a party in power they have begun to feel that some of the theories they have been stressing are impractical and most of them need practical knowledge and strategies to implement them. They promised to abolish the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) but now have awakened to the fact that there are no legal provisions in any other law to detain and question hardcore criminals and terrorists for long. And drafting a new law is also a complicated issue due to protests by the rights groups.
They also wanted a new Constitution when they were in Opposition, but have now realised that finding a common ground in many issues in that process, especially in the thorny ethnic problem, is going to be a challenging task. The latest gap they found between theory and practice was in implementing freedom of expression.
Sri Lanka Customs detained over 360 copies of five books authoured by Kilinochchi-based school teacher cum Tamil writer, Balendran Piratheepan, better known among literary circles as Theepachelvan Piratheepan on March 17, this year, on the grounds that their content threatens national unity. The writer had printed these books in Tamil Nadu due to the relative law cost there.
However, unlike Ahnaf Jazeem and Ramzy Razeek who were arrested and detained for writing what they felt right in a turbulent time for their community, Theepachelvan was fortunate enough not to face a similar fate, despite his books were detained under the Penal Code of Sri Lanka.
Ahnaf Jazeem, the Muslim poet and teacher, was arrested on May 16, 2020 under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) on the allegations of sowing Islamic extremism through his anthology ‘Navarasam’ penned in Tamil. Ramzy Razeek, another Muslim writer, was arrested under the ICCPR Act, the Penal Code and the Computer Crimes Act in April of the same year for writing a Facebook post with the words “ideological jihad” (struggle). Following the detention of Theepachelvan’s books a serious debate is going on in social media about freedom of expression with journalists, social media activists and leftist politicians championing total freedom for writers and artistes while the apologists for the government cautiously citing the fact that there should be limitations for that freedom of expression.
However, Sri Lanka Customs released 130 copies of three detained novels written by Theepachelvan including widely discussed “Cyanide” and “Payangaravathi” (terrorist) on the recommendations of the Arts Council of Sri Lanka. The Customs had later informed Theepachelvan that the 230 copies of the other two books “Eluththal Nan Yuddam Seikiren” (I am fighting with letters) and “Ippothum Inge Irandu Thesangal Than” (Even now there are two nations here), said to be a collection of interviews the writer had had with various media outlets in Sri Lanka and other countries. He had been informed that some of the contents in those two books are punishable under the Penal Code and the Customs Ordinance.
Predicament of minority writers
The detention of these books has brought forth once again the predicament that Tamil and Muslim writers encounter in presenting in literary form the experiences they undergo or have undergone during times of ethnic turbulence. When it comes to the literary works of Tamil writers, the large majority of them are harrowing tales of the three decades long war between the armed forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that fought for a separate state within the territory of Sri Lanka.
It is no secret that the long duration, over thirty years, of the war with different narrations and interpretations imparted by two warring belligerents in two different languages has created two different mindsets with different perceptions in the two main communities – the Sinhalese and Tamils. Thus, as the saying goes, one man’s terrorist has become another man’s revered freedom fighter or war hero. Everything that one party had said and done about the war is rejected by the other party as false, inimical and sometimes treacherous.
This can be witnessed next month in the Tamil and Sinhala media when the commemorations of the end of the war are held by both parties in the south and the north. This is the backdrop against which Tamil writers of northern and eastern war theatres have to write their experiences, which is inevitably a story as to how they endured the horrors of war – aerial bombing, shelling, intense surveillance, disappearances, kidnapping of their children to be used in the war, using them as a human shields, arrests, detention, torture, scarcity of food, water and medicine and lack of transport and lighting facilities.
Their story is a far cry from that of the people in other parts of the country, one those outside of these experiences can hardly comprehend. Death of a family member or a close relative in the war is common to every family. A large number of families have been separated, with sometimes family members dispersing into various countries.
Theepachelvan himself has told the senior journalist Sulochana Ramaiah Mohan: “From the time I was born, I have experienced hardship and distress in one form or another. As a child, I lived in fear of the sound of gunfire, often unable to sleep. Later, as a young boy, I hid in bunkers in fear of aerial bombardment. As a university student, I continued to face uncertainty and fear amid ongoing violence.”
He had further told that his books – Nadugal, Payangaravathi, and Cyanide detained by the Customs, “are not fictional, but rather grounded in lived experiences, reflecting the psychological trauma, political realities, and historical memory of the post-war Tamil community.”
His first novel, Nadugal, tells the story of a mother who lost her son — a fighter in the war — and her painful journey, along with her younger son and family, to search for his memories.
This experience and perceptions of northern and eastern Tamils is the reality on the ground a few years ago. The books “Aarip Pona Kayangalin Vali” (The pain of healed wounds) and “Poraliyin Kathali” (The lover of the militant) by Vetrich Chelvi, a former LTTE woman activist who lost an eye and a hand in the war, no doubt have been authored with a deep literary insight of life as actually lived, and an appealing aesthetic value.
Yet, they would probably not be enticing tales for those whose mindset has been shaped in a different way by different interpretations of the war narrative. This is where the authorities fear backlashes, apart from the intrusion of their own prejudices, against such literary works by Tamil writers. However, censorship is counterproductive in a digital era as it only heightens curiosity of the people who in turn would turn to digital versions of censored material if the books are not available.