Clash At Jaffna University: Conversations On Culture & History – Part II

By Mahendran Thiruvarangan –July 28, 2016

Mahendran Thiruvarangan

Challenging Chauvinism: Alternative Accounts of Political Activism at Jaffna University

In the aftermath of the clash at the University of Jaffna, as a way of justifying the Tamil students’ refusal to have Kandyan Dance at the opening procession, some nationalist commentators are busy crafting distorted accounts of the history of political activism within the campus that favors Tamil nationalism and the LTTE over other ideologies and actors. The history of the University of Jaffna is as complex as the history of any other place. It was driven by various forces that held divergent political views. When it was started in the 1970s, the University housed students from different ethnic communities. It was a center where notable Leftist and progressive intellectuals from various communities and various parts of the island such as Kailasapathy, Indrapala, A. J. Canagaratna, Silan Kadirgamar, M. Nithyanandan, Nirmala Rajasingam, Dayapala Thiranagama, Harsha Gunawaradena, M. A. Nuhman and Sitralega Maunaguru taught. The attacks on the hill country Tamil students in 1976 by a group of students with political links to the Tamil United Liberation Front show that Tamil chauvinism had its presence at the University even in its early days (for an extended commentary on this incident, read Rajan Hoole’s latest book Palmyrah Fallen). A notable aspect of the University of Jaffna in the 1970s was that it had arguably the most progressive Sinhala Department in the country at the time. Sucharitha Gamlath and Dharmasena Pathirajah were on the faculty of this department. When ethnic violence erupted in the South in 1977, the teachers, Tamil students and Tamil families in the neighborhood gave protection to the Sinhala students at the University of Jaffna and took every necessary step to send them safely to their homes in the South. But a section of the Sinhala students, upon reaching the Southern parts of the country, deliberately misinformed the public that they had been assaulted by the Tamils in Jaffna. Giving prominence to the untruthful statements made by the students, the government of that time and Southern media claimed that the ethnic violence against the Tamils in the South had started in retaliation to the attacks on the Sinhala students at the University of Jaffna by the Tamils in Jaffna. Thereafter, the government ceased to send Sinhala students to Jaffna University.

In the months following the ethnic violence of 1977, with the rise in hostilities against the Tamils by the UNP government, many Leftist intellectuals from the Tamil community started to align themselves with the Tamil national cause and even contribute to the armed struggle. Thus Tamil nationalist politics at the University of Jaffna began to gather momentum in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Yet, in the mid-1980s, with the onset of internecine warfare among the different Tamil militant groups, the University became a place where dissenting academics and students courageously expressed their criticism of the armed struggle and the narrow-minded Tamil nationalist politics that the militants espoused. In 1988, taking into account the volatile political situation in the North-East after the Indo-Lanka Accord, 50 academics attached to the University of Jaffna issued a statement emphasizing the importance of the Tamils’ participation in the first election for the North-East Provincial Council. When the violence around the second JVP insurgency led to the creation of collectives called University Teachers for Human Rights at the universities in the South, a similar collective was formed at the University of Jaffna in 1988. Documenting the trials and tribulations of the people in the North under the Indian Peace Keeping Forces, Tamil militants, and the Sri Lankan state during this period, four leading members of this collective the late Rajani Thiranagama, Rajan Hoole, K. Sritharan and Daya Somasundaram brought out The Broken Palmyrah in 1989.

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