[monsoonjournal.com] It is perhaps easy to compose an epitaph or a farewell note for a person who has been ill for the past six years, detached from the struggle he really lived for, but more difficult when the person is the one whose ideas and passion had gripped several generations of his people, driving them to an onward march for the restoration of their full democratic rights.
Comrade Ratna (23.11.1938 – 12.12.2006) was man of many talents. First and foremost he was an intellect and a visionary with an audacity to match. It was not through traditional education he reached such lofty heights, but by his sheer ability to combine his insights with raw experience. If there is an example of a man from an ordinary walk of life rising to perform extra ordinary feats, then Comrade Ratna was definitely among them.
His first intellectual feat was to correctly identify the Sinhala-chauvinist state and not the Sinhala working masses as the true enemy, of the all three Tamil communities, the Tamils of the Northeast, Muslims and the Plantation people; the state oppression and a common language are the link that have helped to evolve the cultures of these peoples who have more in common than differences. He then followed this line of reasoning and courageously stated that it is only when these three communities strive to fight together for a collective existence, as one people, endeavouring to belong to one nation, a modern nation based on an empowered people, individual communities can be fulfil their own aspirations.
He called this collective Eelam and the community members Eelavar. At the same instant when such an empowered people are born, he said the Sinhala masses will be set free from the bondages of their past and the inherent chauvinism of the ruling classes. To achieve these ends he founded EROS. Acronym of EROS stands for Eelam Revolutionary Organisers, which is associated in Greek mythology as a ‘Unifying Force’.
His second feat was to accept and become the strongest proponent of the ideology that proposed the toiling Tamil masses as the vanguard of this collective struggle, a strand of thinking at variance with his Federal Party traditions. Only a versatile and of courageous minds could accept new ideas or concepts and assimilate them into a whole system; Comrade Ratna could easily do that. The upshot of all these mental process was to use his creative abilities to coin simple phrases to express vibrant ideas that still echo in the minds of the masses even today.
The phrase, “A rigorous Saivar or an orthodox Christian of any tradition, religiously pious Muslim or unyielding Hindu, we are all Eelavar” is a unifying call, in his poetic Tamil is more of a command for all of us that argues well for that collectiveness, especially today.
For all his talents and skills, and his powers of reasoning and wit, he was neither able to establish EROS as a permanent organisation on the ground nor the meaning of the last letter ‘S’ in EROS among the political pundits. The institution Comrade Ratna wanted to establish may not be there, but its concepts still remain in the air, lingering on to find the right time to materialise.
However, he did achieve one of his aims, through the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord. Participating in the Thimbu talks, Butan, as part of the Tamil delegation, as the only group to champion the Plantation Tamils’ cause, without any others representing that section of the Tamil speaking people on the table, EROS and in particular Ratna was successful in establishing one of their goals as the fourth point in the Thimbu Proclamations. He did not live to see the fate of all the points in the Thimbu Proclamations. However, at his death Comrade Ratna is at least entitled to carry to his grave the satisfaction of championing the plight of the Plantation Tamils and the subsequent enfranchisement of them all.
We are Eelavar! Our language is Tamil! Our land is Eelam!