Tamil Diasporals In India
Guy checking tickets on the train, by me
One of the first people I met in India turned out to be a Sri Lankan. His name was Felix and he was from near Wattala. He fled in 1984 after mobs burned down his house and turned his family into refugees. He’s originally an estate Tamil (not Jaffna), which they tried to explain to rioters, to no avail. I said I was terribly sorry for his loss, and our loss of him and his family. He lives in Chennai now, he was visiting his kids in Bangalore.
This was pretty much the first guy I met. We were on the train and hadn’t discovered our commonality till the very end. He was really nice. I told him how things had changed and he told me how they had been. He said him and his friends used to ride motorbikes across the whole country. They’re now scattered across the globe. As annoying as the vengeful Tamil diaspora is, calling for boycotts and funding terror, I think people like Felix are the reality.
Good people, forced to leave their home because of a terrible injustice. They’ve moved on, usually well, and they’re not asking for anything. I personally think they deserve a decent apology and reparations, but when I mentioned this Felix just laughed. He’s got his wife and kids in India now, the son has got married, life goes on.
Strangely, the next guy I met in India was also of Sri Lankan descent, also estate Tamil, his mother from Bandarawela. I didn’t get into it too much, but I suspect they because the estate Tamils were disenfranchised and basically booted after the British left. He was my friend’s driver and he had no particular affinity for Sri Lanka and laughed when I suggest that he visit.
It’s a random sample, but there’s a lot of Sri Lankan/Tamil diaspora in India. There’s actually still a lot of IDPs living in camps here as well. It was once terrible reality, but it’s now a sort of historical sediment. If you look deep into anyone’s history there will be injustices, rapes, massacres, forced migration. It gets buried under new lives and new memories, new places that don’t remind us of the old.
Felix had only a passing knowledge of the ‘situation’ in Sri Lanka and he asked me for news. It obviously wasn’t a pressing issue. He’s moved and moved on, seemingly with malice to none. I said very nice to meet you and told him to look me up if he was ever on the island. We got off at Bangalore Central and I turned to orient myself. There were military chaps carrying bags, another train, a pretty girl taking the stairs underground. Another shuffle and he was gone.
Both the people you met were a different sort of Tamil to Jaffna Tamils. The ‘vengeful diaspora’ as you put is made up almost entirely of the Jaffna breed and their hangers on. Even in Sri Lanka upcountry Tamils are much nicer, kinder and simpler folk than the so-called “cultured” and “intellectual” folks from the peninsula.
Indi – You seem like a conscientious guy. How is it that you refer to the activities funded by the ‘vengeful diaspora’ as ‘terror’ but the experiences of these Tamils who had to flee Sri Lanka as a ‘terrible injustice’? What’s the difference between a ‘terrible injustice’ and ‘terror’? Is a terrible injustice like terror-lite?
“Even in Sri Lanka upcountry Tamils are much nicer, kinder and simpler folk ”
You mean they knew their place amongst their Sinhalese masters. One wonders why then some of these ‘nicer, kinder and simpler folk’ had to flee Sri Lanka in the first place. Bad weather was it?
No, I mean they don’t blow themselves up into a million pieces, send pregnant suicide bombers, put bombs on buses and trains and roadsides, slaughter non-Tamils, ethnically cleanse whole areas of non-Tamils, engage in credit card fraud or gang crime, or celebrate terrorism. The leaders of Indian Tamils in Sri Lanka have hardly ever used racism and Tamil nationalism to goad their people into violence. SL Tamils and Indian Tamils are two different people in my opinion. The SL Tamils used to, and continue to look down on Indian Tamils with disdain, even refusing to work in hospitals in the upcountry because they had to touch the “lesser” Indian Tamils. What’s ironic is that the Jaffna Tamil folk had to flee to India and live in refugee camps while they used to call Indian Tamils kallathonis.
perhaps the Jaffna variety were too uppity??
[...] Samarajiva met a Sri Lankan in Bangalore, who happens to be a Tamil diaspora, and writes about him. Cancel this [...]
[...] Samarajiva met a Sri Lankan in Bangalore, who happens to be a Tamil diaspora, and writes about [...]
[...] and train tracks The first guy I met in India was a Sri Lankan, an estate Tamil who’d fled after the riots. I just got off the phone with [...]
There are so many Atrocities, Injustice casused by the Sinhala rulers to the Eelam Tamils , Indian Tamils in the island of Ceylon( aka Lanka )
It is best to conduct a UN sponsored Referendum in which the Eelam Tamils can Vote whether their areas ( North and Eastern Parts ) should be with united srilanka or a free state..
the solution for this Tamil issue is
One Island – Two Nations
One Island – Two Federal Nations ( like USC United States of Ceylon – Sinhala and TAmil states ) -both administrated seperately.
or least solution is like India
One Country – but with two states ( Tamils and Sinhala ) where Land, Police,Education, Jobs given to each area.
Boycott Lanka for their Killings of Innocent Civilians
Prabhakaran is dead as a dodo. Get over it and stop whining.