Where do we carry our dead when our soil is stolen and our oceans were turned into impenetrable walls and borders? Where do we take our grief when our kovil bells are forced into silence and our mourners made illegal? Where do we sing our songs of sorrow and resilience when our lips have been sealed? We carry them afar. We carry them in our suitcases across the sea. Five years after the end of war, a new monument for the thousands of dead Tamil civilians and combatants will be inaugurated. The sculpture will consist of a black granite pedestal, a yellow and red-coloured karththigai-poo, as...
Where do we carry our dead when our soil is stolen and our oceans were turned into impenetrable walls and borders? Where do we take our grief when our kovil bells are forced into silence and our mourners made illegal? Where do we sing our songs of sorrow and resilience when our lips have been sealed? We carry them afar. We carry them in our suitcases across the sea. Five years after the end of war, a new monument for the thousands of dead Tamil civilians and combatants will be inaugurated. [ more ]
Paddy Field Words that hold the world together Touches that erupt in vibration Breaths that rip apart air textures Tears that moist the sandy soil Heartbeats that overtake passing vehicles Filled with people, cattle and chattels Passing by our smashed bodies Laying bare on a paddy field In a land filled with fear Our blood soaking our clothes Covering our ripped entrails Recolouring plants and nature From green to red From brown to black From life to death Masses move forward Towns and villages pass us Lives beyond us Run away from us Leaving behind What is left of us Pieces of emotions...
'If Only Sharukh Khan', a play by Raani Moorthy, premiered in London yesterday, November 27th. Framed around three characters' love of the Bollywood actor, Shahrukh Khan, the play allows the audience enter the lives of three South Asian women including a former member of the LTTE. Watching the premier last night and reviewing the play for Tamil Guardian, was Sinthujan Varatharajah...
Writing an opinion about ‘Forgotten heroes of the Eelam war’ for the Weekend Leader, political researcher and member of Tamils Against Genocide (TAG), Sinthujan Varatharajah, outlined the reasons behind the organisation’s forthcoming report, “Silencing the Press: An analysis of Violence against the Media in Sri Lanka.” Sinthujan Varatharajah, works as a London based researcher at Euro-Islam.info and teaching assistant at the University College London (UCL) Political Geography Department. Extracts have been reproduced below. See here for the full piece. "The last period of the war in Sri Lanka...
First published in The Aerogram on 17th July 2013. See here for original article. Text reproduced in full below. Photograph The Aerogram When my Amma calls me on the telephone, she sometimes fills the distance that separates us by reading me her poetry and asking me for translations and opinions. She often wants me to translate her own writing from our shared mother tongue, Tamil, to German or English. This leads to inevitable debates on words, meanings, worlds and linguistic displacements. Many of her poetry and short stories center around themes on war, resistance, diaspora, feminism, her...
In a landmark vote on Monday, the House of Lords voted to outlaw caste-based discrimination amongst South Asian communities in the UK. The bill was fiercely backed by peers from all parties and passed with a majority vote of 225-153. Yesterday’s vote will bring the proposed bill to the House of Commons, where it needs to be voted upon by the end of the March to be passed into law and become the first anti-caste legislative act outside of South Asia. The bill in question, Clause 9(5)(a)of the 2010 Equality Act, has previously been enshrined in the anti-discrimination act but has not been activated yet. The current Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government remains strongly opposed to the bill, having already announced its planned opposition in a forthcoming vote set to take place in the House of Commons. In the eyes of the government, anti-caste discrimination will do little to abolish caste-discrimination amongst British South Asians. Instead, the government relies on widespread educative measures to eradicate caste-discrimination in the UK. However, with twenty-two Liberal Democrat peers and nine Conservative peers voting against their own government’s stance, opposition to the bill remains fractured.