I FIRST VISITED SRI LANKA in July 2010, months after the first anniversary of the official end of the civil war. In the south, the Sinhalese—the dominant population—had celebrated the anniversary with firecrackers. The north, home to Tamil nationalists who had been fighting for a separate Tamil state, had observed the day in tears, lighting candles to remember what they had lost. That month also marked 27 years since the Black July massacre of 1983, when Sinhalese mobs killed thousands of Tamils and attacked, burned and looted homes and properties. Official figures put the deaths at close to six hundred, but activists have estimated the deaths to be in the thousands.
At that time, the Sri Lankan government was not granting access to either local or international journalists. I had approached the Sri Lankan high commission in Chennai, seeking permission to enter northern Sri Lanka. After getting clearances from the Sri Lankan defence ministry, I boarded the “Chariot of the North,” a luxury bus full of Tamil civilians headed to Jaffna, the capital of the Northern Province.
I settled into my seat. “Hi!” someone called out to me. Gowry Sivanesan, in her early fifties now, was returning home after 22 years. Her mother had sent her away in 1988, not long after Indian peacekeeping forces occupied Jaffna as part of the Indo–Sri Lankan Treaty of 1987, wresting Jaffna from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Her brother stayed back, fighting for the LTTE. He had died fourteen months earlier, just at the end of the war. She told me she was going to Jaffna to commemorate his life by building a portion of a school at Manipay. She invited me for the function. All of sudden, she stopped talking. “I hope you are not from India’s RAW,” she said. “I don’t care, though, even if you are.”
