Attesting the ‘wounded land’

To revisit Sri Lankan Tamil poetry at a time when Sinhala majoritarianism is making an emphatic return to the island's mainstream politics, could mean reopening old wounds with renewed vigour. It could mean fresh bleeding from dying scars. It could mean a new sense of fear slowly enveloping a community that had been growing resigned to its fate. It could also possibly portend an outbreak of new voices that would stand witness in history. Sri Lankan Tamil poetry stood in for history, when history itself failed. It remained a singular, powerful document of one of the most striking tragedies of our times – even as most mainstream media turned a blind eye, for as long as it could.

A modern Tamil poetry in Sri Lanka was established by the 1960s, but began to gain prominence in the 1980s when the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka intensified. The 1970s produced poets like Jayapalan and Yesurasa among others, who spoke about the fear that permeated the Sri Lankan Tamil community. Early witnesses of war, displacement, pain and fear, their voices were ridden with despair.  Jayapalan writes,

The Sri Lankan radio says:

The affected Tamils are safe

In Refugee camps.

Will the refugee camp

Become our new nation?

…Where is my motherland?

Where is the ground on which I could hold my head high?