“We must never forget the horror of BLACK JULY 1983”
After 42 years of repeating this mantra, it now feels utterly hollow. The origins of the deeply entrenched ethnic problems that caused the eruption on July 23, 1983, still remain and Sri Lankans are notoriously good at forgetting.
There exists a particular kind of selective amnesia in this country, where we never learn from the past. We forget and forgive successive governments and leaders for their bad governance, betrayal, corruption and lawlessness. We disregard incidences of communal violence. We keep inviting thugs and thieves back into our lives at every election cycle.
The events of July 1983 should have been nipped in the bud by the government of the day, and individual politicians who at the time, and in the following years fanned the flames of violence and hatred should have been vilified. Recounting history cannot alter the sequence of events, but documenting the crimes of those who played a role in the devastation of this country can place them on the veracious side of history.
Never have we been able to grasp the concept of studying history to learn from past mistakes, in order to invest ourselves with the analytical skills needed to navigate the future. ‘Reconciliation’, ‘justice’, ‘compensation’ are but empty words in post war Sri Lanka.
Unlearnt history lessons
Remembering or indeed forgetting history and its lessons, depends on the extent to which that aspect of history is written about, discussed and debated in public and most importantly taught as a subject in schools.
Today history is made, transmitted instantly and sustained through social media. Back in 1983 however, we were starved of real time, unbiased information and news. State controlled censorship was brutal. It was always a question of reading between the lines.
In July 1983, Tamils in Colombo had their lives upended overnight, while the native Tamils of the northern province ended up with an uninvited decades-long war at their doorstep. Those who were adults at the time are now middle aged or elderly.
They lived through the trauma of Black July, with the resultant loss of family members, property, dignity, and their sense of identity and belonging. The brutality of it all is etched in their consciousness and will remain for the rest of their natural lives.
There were many who did not subscribe to the war on either side, yet paid the supreme sacrifice. Many non-combatants on both sides were sitting ducks through no fault of their own.
In the months and years following July ’83, many Tamils fled the country, giving birth to what is today the global ‘Tamil Diaspora’. Others stayed on in the north and endured the universal hardships of war – scarcity of food, electricity, petrol, medicine and decades of fear and uncertainty.
The effect on children
Those who were children at the time the war began, are scarred by the psychological trauma of what they witnessed and experienced. Disruption of their education, disappearance and death of family members, life in camps, deprivation of childhood joy.
My son, a 90’s child, though far removed from the war zones, drew detailed pictures of soldiers, tanks and guns. Because this was what he saw on the roads of Colombo, on TV news and in the newspapers. If we hadn’t been a nation at war with ourselves, would these have been his chosen art subjects?
Children of that generation saw and heard the effects of war with their own eyes and ears. But were they ever at any time told why we were at war? Did they wonder who the good/bad guys were? Did they ask why both sides looked the same? Did they understand the term ‘kotiya (Tiger) used to describe the LTTE combatants?
If their parents did not take it upon themselves to explain the origins of the war and the historical Sinhala/Tamil ‘issue’, how was their youthful thinking shaped? How did Tamils parents versus Sinhala parents interpret and justify the war?
Books galore but not in schools
All these decades later, Sri Lankan schools still only teach ancient history, leading up to colonisation, heavily biased of course towards the greatness and glorification of the Sinhala nation.
Black July, the civil war, the rise and fall of the LTTE, none of these aspects of our ‘modern’ history (let’s not forget the war began in the 20th century and we are now in the 21st century) are taught in the Sri Lankan school curriculum. If recent history is not documented and acknowledged, it’s as if it never happened. Is this the logic? If so, this is a whole other level of collective amnesia.
On a somewhat positive note, however, it is estimated that up to a thousandbooks have been written by local and foreign authors, specifically about the civil war. These books encompass the categories of academia, global politics,human rights law, guerilla warfare, counter-insurgency, military strategy, fiction, poetry, memoirs, diaries and more.
The number could be higher if one adds the countless publications in Sinhala and Tamil which have never been translated into English and are therefore not included in international databases.
At the end of the day, the message is clear. If you want to learn about Black July and the ensuing long drawn-out civil war this country endured, you have to conduct self-study through books, archival Sri Lankan newspaper articles and video footage (censored at various periods), foreign media accounts and stories related by elders (oral history). The internet is of course our saviour, gathering all of these sources into palatable bytes of information.
I doubt the day will come when the average Sri Lankan student, whatever their ethnicity, will be able to learn about the island’s modern history in a compact, unbiased way as part of their school curriculum.
Every year we will continue to chant “We must never forget the horror of Black July 1983”.
And every year we will do just that. Forget.
And no history books will be printed to hold us accountable.
