Tributes to Dr. Neelan Thiruchelvam
CJEPsa
Tributes to Neelan Thiruchelvam
[1] Indian Scholars
[2] Jayadeva Uyangoda
[3] Lawrence Surendra
[4] Teesta Setalvad
[5] Jonathan Spencer
::::[1]::::
From: pbi...@pb.unv.ernet.in
Date: Sat, 31 Jul 1999 18:04:35
Some of us drafted this statement here and faxed it to Kumari this
afternoon, just before the funeral. Romila Thapar, Ritu Menon, Achin,
Zoya, among others, have signed it.
xxxxxxxxx
We are deeply shocked at the assssination of Neelan Tiruchelvan by a
suicide-bomber reportedly of the LTTE, conducted in a manner
characteristic of that group. Neelam was a person of
extraordinary talent, great intellectual refinement, and
unwavering political commitment to democracy, pluralism,
secularism, justice and humanism. His was a voice of reason which
compelled attention and inspired thousands of thinkers, scholars,
activists and political leaders not just in Sri Lanka, but all over
South Asia.
We in India who had the privilege to have known Neelan always
admired him for his outstanding work on peace and conciliation, and
on political devolution in Sri Lanka, his fierce opposition to
ethno-centric nationalism, chauvinism and militarism, his
remarkable courage, as well his as immense personal charm.
Neelam was killed by forces of barbarism and extreme intolerence
because they cannot possibly coexist with reason, democracy, and
liberal and human values. His death underscores the critical
importance of fighting such forces in our entire region, and of
reaffirming our commitment to what Neelan stood for.
We send our deepest condolences to Seethi, to their children, and to
Neelan's countless friends and admirers.
::::[2]::::
From: jaya...@slt.lk
Date: Sun, 1 Aug 1999 21:40:07 +0530
Neelan Tiruchelvam, A Political Tribute
Jayadeva Uyangoda
(Published in The Hindu, August 2, 1999)
Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam, a politician with formidable intellectual
power and personal charm, was assassinated on July 29 at a relatively
young age of fifty-five. It is a cruel irony in Sri Lanka that many
politicians, particularly Sinhalese and Tamil, live with an acute
awareness of the fact that they are less likely to die a natural
death. Dr. Tiruchelvam was not unaware of the threat to his life; but
he did not expect a suicide-bomber to be "wasted" on him. On that
count, this consummate politician and political strategist proved
himself wrong.
The culpability of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in this
brutal act of political violence is not in doubt. It is a sad stroke
of fate that the life of this noble man of non-violence and peace was
snatched away in the most gruesome manner. Neelan may have felt the
pain of his death, perhaps, for a flash of a second. But, Sri Lanka is
certain to suffer, for years to come, the severe pain of his departure
from the political and intellectual world. Neelan was the most active
person in Sri Lanka in a range of spheres - constitutional and legal
reform, peace, conflict resolution, and democratic
institution-building, civil society and legal and social science
scholarship. He was the main political link between Sri Lanka's
Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim communities; the bond that held together Sri
Lanka's human rights community and a key link between Sri Lanka and
the international community. He was also the only parliamentarian who
could initiate an all party-dialogue for a political consensus to
settle the ethnic conflict. In that sense, he had more than the
necessary minimum credentials to be on the LTTE-hit list.
The week in which Neelan was assassinated also marked the sixteenth
anniversary of Sri Lanka's `Black July'. The anti-Tamil riots of 1983,
which began on July 23 of that year, peaked on July 29. Those who made
and executed the decision to kill Neelan on July 29, 1999 may or may
not have been aware of this coincidence. Nevertheless, it provides
some answer as to why Neelan was assassinated on that particular day..
There is another development that completes the political context
against which this killing occurred. Speculation was ripe in Colombo
that the Chandrika Kumaratunga administration was planning to place
before Parliament its draft constitutional proposals in mid-August.
The devolution proposals, which form part of the draft constitution,
address the core political issues of the ethnic conflict within a
semi-federalist framework. By presenting them in Parliament, the
Kumaratunga administration was obviously seeking to gain a new
political momentum over two of its rivals - the United National Party
(UNP) in Parliament and the LTTE in the battlefield. It is no secret
that Dr. Tiruchelvam has been the most active Tamil politician
involved in the framing of the draft-constitution, specifically, its
devolution proposals. He was also perceived as the key political actor
who could effectively mediate a consensus for a negotiated settlement
to the ethnic conflict. And indeed, this quiet man had transcended
narrow ethno-nationalist politics to such an extent that he, and he
alone, symbolized in his person the possibility, however distant it
may have been, for a national consensus on conflict resolution and
peace.
Therein, indeed, lies the uniqueness of Neelan, the politician.
Therein lies the real meaning of that cliché when applied to someone
after death: `He is irreplaceable.' It is difficult to fill the void
created by the assassination of Neelan Tiruchelvam, not merely because
of his formidable intellect, his capacity to strategize political
maneuvers, or his powerful inspiration to colleagues and friends.
Neelan is irreplaceable because, to my knowledge, he is the only
contemporary Sri Lankan Tamil politician who had the capacity and
commitment to re-conceptualize Tamil politics in democratic
emancipatory terms within the framework of a pluralist Sri Lanka.
Perhaps, most of Neelan's friends were unaware of this. But his
enemies knew it. While his enemies in extreme Sinhala nationalism
pilloried him in the press, his enemies in extreme Tamil nationalism
cut his life short.
Neelan's intellectual and political life was intertwined with the path
of post-colonial Sinhala and Tamil nationalisms in Sri Lanka. Although
Neelan was six years older to me, we belonged to the same generation
of Sri Lankans whose biographies were shaped by the idiosyncrasies of
Sri Lanka's postcolonial state. I come from a rural Sinhalese-Buddhist
family of the socially marginalized and Neelan belonged to an urbane
family of Colombo's elite - the contradictions of which are so vividly
captured in Shyam Selvadurai's recent novel, Cinnamon Gardens. But,
our biographies intersected at the site of Sri Lanka's post-colonial
nation-state. I was beneficiary of the Sri Lankan state's social
welfarism and a victim of its blindness to aspirations for political
emancipation among social margins. Neelan was a beneficiary of the Sri
Lankan state's liberalism and a victim of its blindness to
emancipatory desires among ethnic minorities. When we met as
intellectual colleagues in the late eighties, we had a lot of notes to
compare. I had grown up - away from the politics of radical agrarian
authoritarianism and he had transcended the politics of
ethno-nationalist exclusivism. We were searching for an intellectual
framework within which equality, social justice and ethnic as well as
social pluralism could be inscribed as emancipatory impulses in a
democratizing project. Neelan was the first Tamil politician I met who
had developed a conceptual apparatus to critique not only Sinhala
nationalism for its majoritarian hegemonism, but also Tamil
nationalism for the limits of its emancipatory politics. He believed
that the discourse of ethnic victimology, so central to all streams of
Tamil nationalism, could not offer an emancipatory future for Sri
Lanka's Tamil community. Tamil nationalism, as he thought, had to be
re-inscribed through a new framework of ethnic inclusivism and
pluralism. He anticipated Sinhalese nationalism too to find this
auto-critical politics of reflection. I am not sure whether Sinhalese
and Tamil nationalisms are yet ready for such an excruciatingly
painful exercise in critical self-reflection. In that I find some
meaning in the rationally inexplicable killing of Neelan.
It is in this context that one has to understand and assess his
intellectual and political practice. He maintained a live dialogue
with the democratic forces of all ethnic communities and the
democratic community abroad, because he was not a nationalist in the
sense of Tamil nationalism with which we are so familiar. He created
and nurtured the International Center for Ethnic Studies and the Law
and Society Trust primarily to set in motion an intellectual dialogue
so that the Sri Lankan intelligentsia, through research, reflection
and debate, would re-define the terms of their political debate. He
actively took part in the exercises of drafting constitutions and
laws, because he believed that political structures and institutions
were necessary to facilitate the social and political practices of
democracy and pluralism ensuring diversity as a fundamental reality in
the modern nation-state. He wanted to make the state accountable to
its own citizenry. That is why he devoted a considerable share of his
intellectual energy and resources of his legal knowledge to create and
strengthen institutions such as the Human Rights Task Force, the Human
Rights Commission, the Office of the Ombudsman and the Official
Languages Commission. At the time of his death, he was actively
involved in drafting legislation for equal opportunity and
non-discrimination. All these efforts of Neelan reflect his
intellectual realization that nationalism, whether Sinhalese or Tamil,
had only a dated and limited agenda. If I were to paraphrase Neelan's
political thinking, he held the view, which I shared with him, that
contemporary ethno-nationalism, whether majoritarian or minoritarian,
can only highlight the felt grievances of a community; it cannot
provide political emancipation to the community it represents.
In life as in death, Neelan has been described as a `moderate Tamil
politician.' Knowing Neelan for a few years, I find this expression
most insulting to the foremost democratic political thinker who the
Sri Lankan Tamil society has ever produced. In a way, it is a pity
that he had neither the time nor leisure to write a book on political
and constitutional theory in the way Roberto Unger, his colleague at
Harvard did. But, Neelan, the busy lawyer and active politician, knew
his Roberto Unger, Benedict Anderson, John Rawls, Amarthya Sen,
Norberto Bobbio, Avishai Margalit and to mention an old name, Hannah
Arendt well. He also knew his Marx and Foucault. That is precisely why
he was not a nationalist, but a citizen of the world. And Sri Lanka's
extreme nationalism, whether Sinhalese or Tamil, can hardly tolerate a
citizen of the world. In Neelan's tragic death, I find the mirror
image of my intellectual friends and myself. (Dr. Jayadeva Uyangoda
teaches Political Science at the University of Colombo)
::::[3]::::
Date sent: Mon, 2 Aug 1999 19:58:17 +0530 (IST)
From: LAWRENCE SURENDRA <sure...@giasmd01.vsnl.net.in>
Dear Jayadeva,
I do not know where to begin. Maybe I will begin by thanking you for
posting on email the SSA statement on Neelan and to S.P.Udayakumar.
<snip>. I heard the news first on TV during lunch time. I was
shattered and could not believe it and immediately went to call
N.Ram's office. They told me he was abroad and that news of Neelan's
killing had already reached The Hindu. I then called my wife, Pushpa
in Mysore, she also knew Neelan well as also Sithi and we have been
at their house in Colombo.
We felt that something that could and should never happen had
happened. From the time I got the news of Neelan's killing, I started
reading Tagore, a collection in English called, "I won't let you go"
and particularly the poetry of that name is superb. It is a long
poetry, I want to and will send it to you and to Sithi and Neelan's
two children, soon. I want to get it written down and send it to them.
Among the many occasions, Neelan and I have had the time to spend
together, in Hong Kong, the US, Canada, Nepal, Sri Lanka in the past
two decades ( I met him first in Hong Kong in 1982 or 1983) and on one
such occasion, we got to talk about Tagore and I know that he was
knowledgeable as always and had a faiblesse for Tagore's writings. In
the kind of times, we live in South Asia, I have often reached for
Tagore and it was to Tagore again I reached to find some way of coming
to terms with Neelan's cruel assassination. He was such a full human
being, it is difficult to box him in this or that description that
each person who knew a facet of him would mistakenly try to. It will
be surprising that many of my interactions with him, was not only on
issues of ethnicity but very interestingly, after Bhopal, on the
issues of technology and technological hazards and the human rights
dimensions of victimisation by the unbridled use of technology,
without any consideration for worth of the human being. One could go
on. I am trying partly to come through my depression and write these
lines to you, another friend and comrade. Your tribute to him, in The
Hindu, was so wonderful. Yes, A World Citizen. I took happinesss in
the fact that long time back, when I was struggling to set up ARENA,
in the early 1980s and was enthused and encouraged by the support of
friends like Neelan, I used to then write a regular column for a
Bangalore based english daily, called Deccan Herald. I used a chinese
pen name for my columns, the translation of which was World Citizen.
We are in a Gramscian sense a generation that is caught in the
interregnum and an interregnum that is so suffocating, stifling and
anti-human. We cannot lose hope. That is what Neelan and his life and
sacrifice demands us to do. We must keep faith and link ever closer
and see the struggle through for achieving really just and humane
societies in the societies we live in South Asia.
The last time, I met Neelan, was when he was in Madras, for the first
of the millenium lectures that ICES and The Hindu are organizing. We
had a fairly long conversation about many things and the series of the
lectures to come and the speakers he had in mind. Both of us were
concerned that we should reach a larger audience and I had mnentioned
about a research Foundation, called The Asia and Pacific Societies
(TAPAS) Research Foundation that we have recently registered in
Madras, with Dr.Anandakrishnan as Chairman. He was very eager to work
closely. We wanted to work out collobarative work from the year 2000
onwards. We were to meet again in Colombo or in Madras to discuss
further. I had told him that I would come to Colombo towards the end
of the year and we could have discussions in detail. That was not to
be. Yet, we hope that we will be able to do some work in Neelan's
memory.
Pushpa and I know, that no amount of words will be able to console
Sithi and their two sons ( I have met only the elder), but try we must
to offer words of consolation, comfort, however incomplete human
beings we are and however inadequate we will always feel in the face
of such tragedy brought upon by a barbarism that we cannot fathom and
in the sadness and grief that it engulfs those dear and near. Please
on behalf of the two of us convey our warmest feelings of consolation
and support to Sithi and the sons. We plan to write to her also. I am
leaving for Mysore tonight, where Pushpa is and we will I am sure live
Neelan again, as we have done almost every night on the phone between
Madras and Mysore, the past few days. I hope that in the coming days
when we are in Mysore or back in Madras, we shall both send a letter
by post to Sithi. I have always valued knowing you and your kind of
intensity about life, today I am grateful to you, that I can
communicate to you and even in the moment of death of a great soul,
celebrate him still as a great and very special human being. We must
forge on with hope, with faith for Neelan, to ensure that ultimately
our societies will be peopled with the persons of the humanity and
nobility like Neelan. This is a struggle more dear than nation, race
and primitive tribalism.
comradely yours, in these moments of sadness and darkness,
Lawrence Surendra
::::[4]::::
Date sent: Mon, 02 Aug 1999 12:37:42 +0500
From: Teesta Setalvad <sab...@bom2.vsnl.net.in>
We were, just as all of you, shocked and disturbed by the callous and
unnecessary killing of Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam. More and more it seems
that violence has become a distasteful part of our lives and violent
means the sole and only methods to express opinions, obscure debate
and blot dissent.
India is charting its own way through such dangerous paths.
More now than ever close alliances and contacts are necessary.
Regards
Teesta Setalvad
Communalism Combat, Mumbai, INDIA
::::[5]::::
Date sent: Mon, 02 Aug 1999 12:16:10 +0100
From: "jonathan spencer" <jonathan...@ed.ac.uk>
Dear friends,
Many thanks for the messages which continue to arrive about Neelan,
his life and work. Here is my contribution, which was published in the
London Guardian on Saturday alongside a very touching obituary from
Alan Phillips of the Minority Rights Group. I assume that a copy of
the obituary has been faxed to Sri Lanka, but if anyone at ICES wants
to see the full thing email me back with a fax number to which I can
send it later today.
Jonathan Spencer
University of Edinburgh
from the Guardian 30.7.99
One of the odder and usually unremarked aspects of the Sri Lankan
conflict has been the quality of academic documentation and analysis
it has generated. Writers on places as far afield as Rwanda, Cyprus,
or the Balkans, frequently cite one or other of the many studies of
ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka for comparative illumination. A
remarkable amount of this work has been carried out under the auspices
of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies in Colombo, where
Neelan Tiruchelvam presided in his own mercurial way for so many
years.
The ICES offices, in a side-street in one of the swankiest
districts of Colombo, have been home to several generations of young
Sri Lankan intellectuals - writers, researchers, human rights
activists - while also providing a space for visitors from every
corner of the world. Side by side, you might find a huddle of people
making last-minute arrangements for a Festival of South Asian
documentary film, an American PhD student borrowing the office
computer to email her supervisors, someone else working over interview
transcripts from a research project on domestic violence, and another
group of young researchers working out their plans for a workshop on
postcolonial theory. In recent years, Neelan1s increasingly high
political profile introduced a new element to this mix, with
bodyguards and security checks somehow increasing the sense of ICES as
an intellectual oasis, surrounded by the constant threat of violence
and unreason. From his base at ICES, Neelan was especially good at
fostering two kinds of dialogue.
One was with other intellectuals and activists in the
region, so that ICES and its work became as well-known in Delhi or
Bangkok, as it was in Chicago or Princeton. The other was between
academic researchers and other, more practically engaged, parties. I
last saw him in late 1997 at a workshop on reconciliation and
reconstruction in Sri Lanka, which he had co-organized at Harvard
University. This brought together an extraordinary mixture of
diplomats, NGO workers, academics from all disciplines, at least one
senior dissident from the Sri Lankan armed forces, and a few
politicians like Neelan. His keynote speech on this occasion combined
a forensic analysis of the many barriers to peace and accommodation in
Sri Lanka, with a characteristically sober assessment of the few
glimmers of political hope that could be discerned at that particular
moment. The audience was spellbound. Neelan Tiruchelvam1s life and
work touched many people in many countries. These people - friends and
colleagues - will ensure that the combination of intellectual rigour
and political hope, equally present in his work as a lawyer, a
politician and an academic, will not die with him.
Center for Justice and Peace in South Asia - An advocacy group for Indigenous
and Minority Rights.
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