Source: Daily News, 22nd September 1999
Ensuring the right to life & expanding the democratic environment:
Remembering Rajani Thiranagama:
Assassinated 10 years ago on the 21st of September 1989, in Jaffna, Sri Lanka.
Why Rajani?
This question will arise in everybody's minds. So many others have died
too.
When we remember Rajani, lecturer, the Head of Department of Anatomy,
University of Jaffna, we are also remembering others who were killed in
similar ways and for similar reasons. Remembering too all those
children, women and men who were innocent victims of the militarisation
and brutalisation of our societies.
Rajani identified herself in the deepest sense with her people: a people
that she loved and served. The following excerpt from her writing
illustrates this:
A state of resignation envelopes the community. The long shadow of the
gun has not only been the source of power and glory, but also of fear
and terror as well. The paralysing depression is not due to the violence
and authority imposed from outside, but rather to the destructive
violence emanating from within the womb of our society.
Rajani bravely stood up against the insane adherence to the gun. It
speaks of how much she cared for the welfare of the people. She feared
that they may be submerged without resistance into "the slime of terror
and violence". She wanted to awaken the consciousness of her people to
understand and act. She fervently believed that people should organise
themselves, in order to shake off the fear that paralyses them and to
create the much needed democratic space.
In her deeds, speech and writings she continually strove to do this.
This proved too much of a challenge to those who wanted only the passive
and placid inertia of the people. So what is special about Rajani is
that she consciously braved all the dangers which follow from open and
outspoken resistance in a society where its custodian regard such
dissent as subversive and treacherous.
She paid the price for nurturing courage:
I want to prove that ordinary women like me also have enormous courage
and power to fight alone and hold our inner selves together.
Rajani's story is more relevant than ever, in the present context of Sri
Lanka. There is a need for children, women and men to come together to
reconstruct life. To reject assassination, murder and militaristic
campaigns (killing and displacing thousands) as political tools to
subjugate and terrorise.
Yes, she always stood for the rights of the oppressed people, and
wherever she was whether in the university as a student, or in London
during her post graduate work or back in Sri Lanka, she emotionally
involved and identified with the oppressed.
She lived in a generation when many youths felt a need to protest
against a corrupt political establishment and supported many forms of
militant revolutionary activity.
Being a sensitive member of her generation she too was caught up in this
wider movement but then saw from within even more insidious forms of
corruption and cruelty. When she began to comprehend the dominant
ideological milieu of the Tamil struggle, which was both narrow and
totalitarian, she grasped the dangers ahead. She felt an added sense of
urgency in informing and protecting people against such dangers. It was
this that impelled her to return to Jaffna in the face of danger. It
owed to her sense of responsibility and not mistaken idealism.
Today on the one hand, people have grown comfortable with corruption,
elitism and political violence. But among the people who are powerless,
there is much potential for political causes which mobilise their anger
and hatred in a self destructive manner, that would leave the people in
a far worse situation. This is what both the LTTE and JVP have done. So
there is a constant need for the kind of responsible activism by which
we should preserve whatever is edifying in the present so as to create a
new order entering around the people. This is what Rajani had stood for.
She realised from her experience that the struggle for right of
self-determination cannot have any meaning when it negates and
suppresses every aspect of humanity and demean the community. How can we
tap the higher instincts of the people with a greater vision which
respects freedom of thought, the freedom to live without fear, freedom
to live in dignity, and the freedom to make one's voice heard? When
people lose their self and become subservient to a leader or a movement
in an environment where right to protest is debarred then the whole
notion of right of self determination becomes meaningless for them.
Yes, she understood the reason why many young ones are blindly taking a
self-destructive path.
However, she could not justify such cynical use of children of the poor
as many others do and at the same time take different options for their
own selves and their kith and kin. Such hypocrisy is the order of the
day in all quarters in this country today. Those who are espousing war
and the continuation of the armed conflict feed the poor and
marginalised into the machinery of war while talking eloquently about
patriotism and nationhood.
'There are also those among the Sinhalese and among Tamils who go on
explaining and justifying every heinous act of the LTTE with the simple
notion of reactive violence. They indirectly condemn the Tamil people as
a whole as an innately a dehumanised community and that there is nothing
healthy left in it that could be appealed to. But Rajani has shown how
absurd this notion is in her activities in the University by
rejuvenating the university after a total paralysis for some years.
During the IPKF presence she with others were able to open the
university and try to make it a vibrant institution again with the
participation of all sectors of the university. They were actively
involved in maintaining it as an independent institution as far as
possible against all terror from within and without in the community.
Creating a democratic space as she called it began to take root and
students and staff were beginning to regain their self esteem. Of course
for the sections who had compromised and connived with the powers that
be felt threatened by her activities. But it did not stop her from
documenting the suffering of the people, especially the women and
getting involved in a variety of activities which were geared towards
strengthening them. Does it not show that the Tamil people are capable
of looking for alternatives and that when they are given options they
will choose a saner course rather than destroy themselves. But that
right of the people was snuffed away again by killing Rajani. She was
murdered by the same forces who had arrogated to themselves the right to
determine the future of the whole community.
Hence the people again got trapped in a political environment which is
self destructive and totalitarian. Any one who wants to work for peace
needs to tap that potential which is simmering underneath in both
communities and which strives towards more a humane and healthier form
of existence. That means valuing life and condemning the ideologies
which make people narrow, insecure and paranoid. By legitimising forces
of destruction we cannot achieve peace. If we value Rajani's work which
grasped the role of people as self articulating, creative and looking
for healthier alternatives, then it is time we do justice to her
sacrifice by bringing back the role of ordinary people of all
communities to the front stage by defending their right to speak freely
and fearlessly.
(Mothers and Daughters of Lanka & Other Organisations)
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