Part 2 – Surviving During the War

Part 2

Survival

Tamils knew the war was around the corner even though the Indian army left the country. Because the discrimination against Tamils continued; Sri Lankan governments’ bombing and killing continued and there were no changes what so ever.

Soon after Indian army left the country, all the railway tracks had been removed in Jaffna to make bunkers; and we could hardly identify if there were any Railway tracks in Jaffna. Slowly there were small shops appeared on the road sides. The bombing continued, and it became our daily life, but we all learnt how to survive. Tigers had their video documents to educate the people about how to make effective bunkers and how to escape from shelling and bombing.

Until I started year 9, I/we have only seen bombers, but then we started seeing more and more fighter jets, such as P(B)ukkara and Sakada and other fighter jets. These were the planes used for carrying tons of bombs; they also used them for carrying armies. Sri Lankan army often used Sakada and Bukkara to bomb the town with toilet wastes and other poisonous chemicals. People usually became ill soon after they breathe this air.

I get up around 5ish most of the days, then go to tuition and then come back home to get ready for school ( Starts at 8.20am – Chavakachcheri Hindu College) and then I finish school at 3.20pm and then I go to tuition and come back home before 6pm, my parents never allowed me to go anywhere after 6pm. It was very common for any Tamil kids to stay at home after 6pm, who grown up there during this time. Our only aim was studying harder. Otherwise we know we can’t get into university or get a decent job.

“The Tamil students received two serious blows. The Sinhala Only act of 1956 made it difficult for them to secure employment. A policy of standardisation made it much more difficult to get admission to a university. In the original form in 1971, discrimination was on the basis of language and the region the student came from. The system that has prevailed since 1977 is as follows: 30% are filled on island-wide merit; 55% by allocation to revenue districts in proportion to their population, and filled within each district on merit; 15% are given to districts deemed educationally underprivileged. How this operated against Tamil students can bee seen from the following quotation” 1


“Students in the North (almost certainly Tamils) and those in Colombo (two-thirds Sinhalese and one-third Tamils) continue to suffer serious discriminations. In 1983/4, 530 students who had the necessary grades for admission to the Faculties of Medicine, Science and Engineering were excluded, to accommodate 519 who had lesser marks. Of the excluded students, over 50% were Tamils." 2

Such discrimination contradicts U.N policy.
Article 26.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "Every one has the right to education - higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit."

Our schools had science laboratories, but we haven’t had anything there. We just had to learn everything through text books. We never saw how Potassium looks like, or Nitrogen, or Sodium was like but we all learnt it through text books. Government never distributed any educational apparatus to Tamil areas (Tamil Schools). We struggled but, that only made us stronger.

These incidents can relate to this story (my father told me this story when I was a kid). Kamal and Kumar were studying at this school. Kumar was the servant boy and Kamal was Boss’s son. Kumar asked his boss to send him to school instead of paying him money; boss didn’t want to spend too much on him so he gives him one foolscap paper (that’s how they say A4 size in Sri Lanka) a day and then a pencil and a rubber per month. Boss also sends his son to the same school, but he bought him everything he wanted. What happed Kumar had to reuse one paper for the whole day so what he did was he studied everything before he rub them off and then he go to the next class. But the Boss’s son kept his books home until the exam comes, so he couldn’t be able to cover everything they taught him at school. So he failed the class and Kumar aced all the subjects with over 90%.

Even though there were no schools on regular basis and we had to go through all these war horror, Jaffna was leading in education in all Island level. We were proud of it and none of us took education for granted.

Our life was just shut into a dark hole; to encourage this darkness in our life army bombed electricity towers and they also introduced economical embargo on Tamils, Kerosene were smuggled in Tamil areas and they were sold for more than 50 Rupees per bottle, where you can buy Kerosene in Colombo for less than 10 Rupees a bottle at this time. Sri Lankan government banned any iron products, oil, soap, match boxes, battery, ect.

This is where they made us even stronger. We invented certain things to accommodate our needs. For example, Palmyra fruits were used as soap to wash cloths. Instead of iron box we put our cloths under our mattress and also we used the old charcoal iron box to keep our cloths wrinkle free. There was no electricity for us to listen to the radio, so what?? We made electricity from fans/ dynamos and used radios. Instead of petrol we used Kerosene on motorbikes. Coconut leaves and Palmyra leaves became our roofs. Our people learn to farm even better. Agriculture and farming became life saving jobs. Even then, to do farming you need these chemicals to protect them from bugs and pests, but they were also banned in Tamil areas by the Sri Lankan government so what we did was we invented our own pests killers, these were made from plants, and this was the time that some people even used cow dung to protect their plants from certain bugs and also cow dung, plant’s wastes were used as fertilizer.

Ref:

1 - Brian Senewiratne: Sri Lanka, A Synopsis Of the Racial Problem", p 3

2 - Brian Senewiratne: Sri Lanka, A Synopsis Of the Racial Problem", p 3