Ranjitha Gunasekaran
www.expressbuzz.com
02.05.2010
Oh, call whenever you like. I am like A R Rahman. I work through the night and don’t sleep till morning,” he chuckles over the phone from Paris. Having just read his new novel Traitor (written in Tamil in 2004, translated into English this year), the levity in Shobasakthi’s voice is like nothing his writing leads you to expect of him.
But that’s the man. Part of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, a former LTTE child soldier, now Parisien and refugee, world traveller, blogger, former dishwasher, supermarket employee and writer.
The stories he tells are the unexamined realities lost over the years in the war of propaganda fought between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Understandably, his views are unpopular with the state as well as large sections of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora.
And yet at a time when, ostensibly, the state has been making attempts at peace, Shobasakthi’s Traitor returns to one of the worst moments in Sri Lankan history: the Welikada Prison massacre of 1983 where more than
50 political prisoners were slaughtered, the focal point in a novel that is, among other things, an exploration of torture and survival. “First of all, I wrote the novel in 2004 when the civil war was still on. But that apart, the Welikada massacre is an atrocity that has gone without justice. It was a planned massacre with government support. And there has been no investigation or attempt to provide justice for the victims,” he says.
The massacre, seen through the eyes of Nesakumaran, Traitor’s protagonist, is stark in its detailing, shocking even today, in a world that has become more accustomed to blood and gore. “My narration is based on first person accounts of what happened in there. I met several survivors, cross-checked the facts, and the time and manner in which events unfolded. This account is as close to reality as it is possible to get,” he says.
One product of propaganda that Shobasakthi tears apart is that of a unified Tamil movement. For years, the civil war has been seen as a battle between the Tamils and a Sinhala state. But the disparities among the Tamils is a story unreported. In Traitor, Shobasakthi explores the issues of caste among the Tamils, even with the Movement. The other forgotten issue of plantation Tamils also comes up. Often, characters speak of communist ideologies to address these issues but the Movement sweeps them aside.
There is another dose of reality. Contrary to the stories of valour and courage heard so often about the foot soldiers of the Tigers,
Shobasakthi characters are hardly the stuff of legend. “People need to understand that just because a guy is a Tiger it doesn’t mean that he’s always ready for a fight. If a Tiger is beaten up by the cops or the army, of course he will talk and betray others. It is necessary to survive,” he says.
So in the context of needing to survive, how does the populace keep alive concepts of bravery and sacrifice? How do they keep their self-esteem? “I don’t think the Tamils have lost self-esteem. But they have learnt to survive and face the endless questions from both the state as well as the Tigers. They have learnt to do whatever it takes to stay alive. Beneath the surface though, the anger at the injustice remains,” he says.
It is the possibility of such an anger that many say may spawn yet another rebellion among the Tamils. But Shobasakthi dismisses such a possibility.
“See, there may be anger but at most they can only lead to stray incidents of violence. Firstly, they are weary after the 25 years of civil war. Then for any political movement to come up, for a revolution to take place, there needs to be political thought among the
suppressed. The Tigers systematically eradicated the possibility of political thought among the Tamils,” he says. “Through years of decimating dissent, and encouraging blind faith, the Tigers have made political ideology an obsolete concept among Tamils.”
The Tigers’ efforts are now being completed by the state, he feels. “The state is working at eradicating any Tamil political movement, beginning with silencing the Tamil politicians, by absorbing them into their mainstream parties. Soon there will be no space for a Tamil voice in Sri Lanka,” he warns.
But Shobasakthi’s concerns are not confined to the Tamils. “The government is receiving loans from foreign powers. That comes with conditions and their policies are creating more poverty and setting health, education and food outside the reach of those poor, both Sinhala and Tamil.” He says the current suppression of freedom affects the Sinhalese as well. “There may be no war, no air strikes and no outward violence but there is no freedom of the press — even Sinhala writers are being killed. There is no justice — a man who writes an essay gets 20 years in prison. And the country is becoming a dictatorship — all key posts are held by the president’s family.
“The size of the army needs to be reduced. But instead of the army stepping out of Tamil lands, their presence in Sinhala spaces has also increased,” he adds.
“There are supposedly 16,000 LTTE prisoners but there is no justice process. The army is still in Tamil lands, and there is no point saying war is over when there are check posts everywhere and people are being killed every day,” he says.
The diaspora, which was so vocal in the last days of the war, is silent on these issues. “The diaspora is settled. They also have lost the
political culture. They accepted the Tigers but educated their kids well. They pinned all their hopes on the Tigers so now one side is very upset but the other has gone back to their daily lives. Most probably they will go to Jaffna as tourists in years to come,” he says.
As for the LTTE presence internationally, Shobasakthi says there is nothing left of it. “The entire organisation was built upon the myth of Prabhakaran. After he died, everything crumbled. All the knowledge of the LTTE’s financial dealings was held among
the top leadership. When they died, all the businesses abroad continued making profit but it stayed there. They have no one to be accountable to,” he says.
“Actually in the whole world, if there is one person who believes Prabhakaran is still alive it is Nedumaran aiya,” he chuckles. “Please make sure to put that in your article!”
Meanwhile, the state has claimed it is
rehabilitating former child soldiers like Shobasakthi. “I don’t think I qualify as a child soldier. It is true I joined as a child but that was out of choice. But today what they call rehabilitation is eyewash. No one knows what is happening in those camps. There are about 4,000 girls whose parents cannot reach them. Also six years ago, 54 people were killed in one such camp. The government has no interest in rehabilitation. It is a fascist government.”
Murder in prison
The infamous Welikada Prison massacre of July 25, 1983, came close on the heels of a deadly attack by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which killed
13 Sri Lankan soldiers. Thirty-seven Tamil political prisoners were butchered by Sinhalese inmates
and guards in the Welikada high-security prison.
It began after the soldiers’ bodies returned to the
capital, Colombo, on July 23 that year. The city also saw massive anti-Tamil riots in retaliation. Sinhala mobs destroyed Tamil property and attacked
people. The violence spread to other parts of the
island. Up to 3,000 people were killed. The riots were said to be planned and government involvement was suspected. July 24 is now a day of mourning and remembrance for Tamils across the world.
Part-time dishwasher, full-time writer
Two years ago, when his Gorilla was released in an English translation, Shobasakthi was a dishwasher who worked for six months and travelled the rest of the year. Currently, he is unemployed. “Well I was working at a supermarket but I had to spend four months in India last year while scripting a movie called Senkadal, so I had to quit my job,” he says. He wasn’t paid for his work on the film (“it was very low-budget”), his advance for Gorilla was Rs 20,000, ditto for Traitor. “Which doesn’t come to much in Euros but I don’t particularly care for the money. I haven’t even read the books in translation or anything. It would be nice if there were royalties but I have never pursued it,” he chuckles. So while he writes and lives on France’s dole (“enough for food and cigarettes”), he’s also back to looking for work in the supermarkets again. “Well, if there is some money I can travel, again.”