Noelnadesan's Blog

Forward

This memoir draws on memories that have lingered with me for more than four decades. What follows is not merely a personal recollection of events but an attempt to understand how lived experience gradually shaped my political consciousness. The incidents I witnessed and the people I encountered during those formative years later influenced the trajectory of our collective politics. Recording them in writing is, therefore, both an act of remembrance and a form of reckoning.

Between 1984 and 1987, I spent three years in South India—a period marked by intense political activity surrounding the Tamil Eelam struggle. During this time, I met and interacted closely with those engaged in armed resistance. I witnessed their sacrifices, their suffering, their losses, and the betrayals they inflicted on one another. These encounters revealed not only the cost of struggle but also its moral ambiguities.

In my early years, when I believed in armed resistance, I felt unable to remain a passive observer as people from the society into which I was born and raised endured profound suffering. I was equally unwilling to benefit from the outcomes of a struggle paid for with the blood, sweat, and lives of others. Motivated by this conviction, I sought to contribute in whatever way I could—particularly through refugee relief and medical service. I was fortunate that my wife was a medical doctor and that her elder brother, Dr Arul Ranjithan, shared a commitment to public service.

The struggle exposed me to contrasting human qualities. Alongside individuals of deep compassion, I encountered those who disregarded people, were enamoured of weapons, and treated the struggle as their personal possession. I met politicians of that era and others who would later assume political power. By mid-1987, recognising that our struggle had increasingly been staged as a tragic spectacle, I left for Australia.

My years in South India offered lessons beyond Sri Lankan Tamil politics. They helped me understand Indian Tamil political life and broader social and economic realities. I formed friendships that endured. Just as my education at the University of Peradeniya trained me in veterinary science, those three years in India educated me about the realities of Sri Lankan politics.

Unbound by rigid political ideologies or instrumental agendas, I approached these developments as a student rather than a partisan. The insights gained during that period continued to shape my thinking. While living in Australia, I eventually rejected armed struggle entirely and, through Uthayam, the newspaper I edited, and my later writings, spoke without hesitation about the devastation it inflicted on our people. I believe these South Indian experiences made such clarity possible.

This English translation of my memoir is dedicated to Dr Arul Ranjithan, my brother-in-law, who provided the funds to establish the Tamil Medical Fund and thereby played a decisive role in enabling the experiences that gave rise to these reflections.

Nadesan