hatton

Back in the muck again. Spent days on the Eastern border, in Trincomalee which was surprisingly violence-free, although tense, with checkpoints every five minutes and we were carrying cargo too. Then we went into the tsunami-hit town of Kinniya, a predominantly Muslim village and visited a local NGO there, who had scouted some schools for us, and spent the day going up and down. Met heads of mosques, muslim boy’s schools and the lot, all whom were surprisingly polite to me (I don’t know why I find that surprising). I guess it matters to have some authority after all, although I find titles abrasive. I spent Valentine’s day in this awful hotel with a male colleague who was new to the job and completely silent as a result, and a bizarre hotel manager with broken, taped spectacles,who had been there when the hotel was washed away by the tsunami and related to us the story of how he had lost everything and how he had to go to Colombo to get certificates of birth etc. in a sarong only with no slippers. Then we left the strange haunted place (there were a few foreigners there, some strange Germans who cornered me to talk to me about the state of the roads (bad) and how I should ensure there is some investment in road infrastructure there) and sped onto Nuwara Eliya, the hill country populated by over a million Indian Tamils, brought here since the late 1800s as slave labour by the British. Political Parties still carry the Indian flag as their symbol, despite having been in Sri Lanka now for over a 100 years. The Plantation tamils are ethnically, linguistically and culturally different from Sri Lankan Tamils, and have no political representation by Sri Lankan/Northeastern Tamils, who disavow any link with them.

They are also neglected by the Sinhalese population and as a result, have little political voice, little representation and little aid. Conditions are terrible, with alcoholism, incest, rape prevalent. Forced family planning a la Indira Gandhi has been instituted and as a result schools are shutting down due to dwindling enrolment. (As someone said in a movie: Just because they’re poor, they can’t have children?). Preschools are nonexistent, taking place in rusting corrugated iron sheds with close to no materials. But the country around the area is beautiful. Women are the major tea pluckers. The men run shops, or work as construction labour, on coolie wages. Managers are always men, and they pay salaries by cash to women. As a result, sexual harassment and poor human rights education prevail. The value of education, can never be discounted. We all take it for granted, but it can change, really change someone’s life, not only in terms of economic capacity, but in terms of knowledge, of self-esteem, of confidence, of the right to lead a free life and the ability to do so.

The sites are next to mountain temples and at every curve and bend of the road, there is a little stone altar, with a statue of Ganesh or Hanuman. Despite the lack of housing, sanitation or health or education facilities, the Minister of Plantation Industries has deemed it fit to allocate taxpayer money to a huge expansion of stone temples, cutting away rock and hillside to build. Who said god and politics would never meet? Such is south asian politics, and just ahead of local elections here, are how votes are bought. We saw trucks of supporters going to rallies (last day of nominations here), paid a 100 rupees, lunch and alcohol to wave a few flags and yell a few slogans. And it will never change.