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Young
Singaporeans on ‘mission wells’ Soon after
the Singapore International Foundation received news of the disastrous
floods, the worst in 50 years, that swept through southern Sri Lanka,
they sent a Singaporean volunteer, a water engineer, to assess the
situation. Based on his
findings, it was determined that an area that the Foundation could
assist with was to ensure that flood victims had clean drinking
water that would prevent them from being affected by diseases. The four-member
team arrived soon after to train and work alongside volunteers of
the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, their local contact, to disinfect
the flood affected wells. Evangeline
Quek, a 20-year-old law student of their team had prior experience
in well decontamination, having participated in the Foundation's
former flood relief operation in Cambodia. Others in the team had
also received training for the task at hand - to educate the people
in the flood-affected areas on the proper techniques and procedures
for well decontamination. “Disinfecting
a well is a relatively simple process,” explains team manager
Chia Hui Yong. All they needed was a hut to set up a diesel pump,
chlorine powder and a chlorine comparator that measured residual
chlorine. Taking with
them the necessary equipment they set about making enquiries from
the locals on what each of the wells were used for - drinking, farming,
etc. and if any treatment had been done earlier. Explains Chia
Hui Yong, “We found that the people were unaware of the precise
amount of chlorine required to effectively disinfect the water.” To develop
safe drinking water, the Singapore Foundation's volunteers followed
the guidelines and standards set by the World Health Organisation.
The simple method of using the specific amount of chlorine for a
certain volume of water was taught to the Youth Wing volunteers
and District Officers of Sarvodaya - an on the job training that
covered well decontamination procedures and specialist water testing
skills, as they would be required to pass on these skills to other
regions and carry out the follow-up programmes. The Team Manager
further explained that they took care of only the microbiological
contamination and not chemical, which would not be an effect of
floods. In Kithalamaga East, the team inspected 85 wells and oversaw
the treatment of 75. The other 10 wells were on higher ground and
hence not affected. Singapore International
Foundation is a non-governmental organization set up 12 years ago
to help Singaporeans and to bring together Singaporeans the world
over. Funded by the government and the private sector, the Foundation
runs various programmes, the Humanitarian Relief Programme being
one. The Asia Pacific
Breweries Foundation provided the necessary grant for this project
with their contribution of 10 sets of chlorine comparators, vital
for the well cleaning procedures to ensure flood victims have clean
drinking water. “The Foundation's
Humanitarian Relief Programme responds to urgent needs resulting
from natural disasters around the world, be it in South East Asia,
South Asia or the world” explains Assistant Director (Corporate
Affairs), Ms. Teo Hung Noi. This was their
seventh humanitarian mission - others being Cambodia flood relief
(2000), Vietnam flood relief (2001), Orissa (India) Flood Relief
(2001), Gujarat earthquake (2001), medical supplies to the Afghanistan
war casualties (2001) and relief to burn victims of a helicopter
crash in Mongolia (2001). The Foundation
has a strong team comprising medical and non-medical volunteers
and hence most of their relief programmes were medical missions
with the exception of Cambodia and Sri Lanka, which were to decontaminate
wells. Evangeline, Sahari and Sivakumar have taken time off from their individual professions and were here purely on a volunteer basis, happy to be of help in some way. Sailing
on ships and a walk with the PM G.J.F. Percival
went to Ceylon in 1911 to learn tea planting on an estate in the
Kalutara district. At the start of World War I in 1914, he gave
up his job and joined the Milward Contingent of the Ceylon Planters
Rifle Corps to return to England, where he joined the Royal Welsh
Fusiliers. He received a Military Cross while serving in France
and Salonica. In 1919 he returned to tea planting. He met, and in
1924 married Eileen Waring, the daughter of Frank Evan Waring. My grandfather,
F.E. Waring, during the general strike in the early 1920s, volunteered
to help keep the country running. Grandfather drove a train, the
Day Mail to Bandarawela. My grandfather was also the proud owner
of one of the first Model 'T' Fords upcountry. He was one of the
first volunteers to the Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps. At the very
serious train crash upcountry in the late 1920s or very early 30s,
when 17 people were killed, he was commended by the Governor for
his work rescuing the wounded. My childhood
on the estate was happy, if rather lonely. I had an old Ayah whom
I loved dearly, after her a governess, and at the age of 9, I went
to school in England, a lovely old school in Kent for children whose
parents were working abroad. We were all happy there, but in early
1939 my parents decided that I was learning very little and a change
of school was needed. I was to have six months home in Ceylon then
go back to England to a girls public school. World War II
started while I was in Ceylon and I was unable to return to England.
In 1940 it was decided that I and several other children should
be sent to Australia to school. Everything was arranged, our uniforms
bought, baggage sent off and I was to be taken to Colombo. The next
day the south west monsoon started and with it came the terrible
1940 floods. We could not even go down the bungalow drive. The loss
of life in the whole of the Dickoya and Maskeliya area was terrible.
Our baggage went to Australia, but none of us got there. Most of us
ended up at the Hill School, Nuwara Eliya. In 1942 I was called
to the Headmaster’s study at the School one afternoon. There
was my father. He along with many other planters had been called
up to defend Ceylon after the fall of Singapore. He was C.O. of
the Dickoya Company who were acting as the first line of defence
in Hambantota. He told me to get packed at once as we were going
back to the estate to pick up my mother. We were to be evacuated
from the island because of fears of an invasion of Ceylon by the
Japanese. We reached
Colombo early next morning. After a wait with other families in
the G.O.H. while the men went off to sort out paperwork etc., we
embarked in the afternoon. An extremely crowded ship. There were
12 of us in a two bed cabin. We sailed at
dusk with an escort of two destroyers which must have been a fine
sight. Very soon the two destroyers turned away and returned to
Colombo. We were standing at the ship's rail for a last glimpse
of Ceylon and my mother was talking to two merchant seamen standing
next to us. Their ship had been sunk off Malaya and they were returning
to join another ship. Suddenly the ship gave a tremendous lurch
to the right. My mother said, “that was a big fish swimming
down the side of the ship”. Then there was a lurch to the left.
The seamen said nothing. We met the men again later, and they told
us that what we had expericed was a torpedo. Another had immediately
come down on the starboard side. We sailed through a lot of wreckage
the next day - obviously another ship had not been as lucky as ours. Mother and
I settled in Cape Town where I finished my education at Herschel.
In 1945 my father managed to join us for a short holiday. We then
returned to Ceylon. I worked with
the Australian Red Cross as a V.A.D. at Dickoya, which had become
a military convalescent home. I was then transferred to the Ceylon
Army Command, Colombo as a T.W.A. Before long I was sent to the
British General Hospital at Mount Lavinia (S. Thomas' College),
where I worked as a Liaison Officer for returning Prisoners of War
from Japanese prison camps. When all this
finished I was transferred to the Ceylon Army Command then moved
to Peradeniya Gardens, taking over from Lord Mountbatten H.Q. Soon
all of us T.W.As became redundant and we returned to our various
homes. While in Colombo
we led quite a social life. I had become friendly with the daughter
of the Commander-in-Chief, Rear Admiral Ruck Keene and
would spend weekends at Flagstaff House. They would come up to New
Valley with Flight Lt. Alexander (Prince Alexandrov of
Yugoslavia). Not long after
I returned home I met my future husband, John Turnbull who
had just returned to his pre-war job as a planter and senior S.D.
on Norwood Estate. He was a nephew of Col. K.D.H. Gwynn of
Nagatenne Estate, Elpitya and had started planting under
his uncle in early 1939. He had joined the C.P.R.C. and left
Ceylon in 1940 with their 3rd Contingent, going to an Officers Training
Camp in India. From there he joined the 2/8 Gurkhas and served
in the Middle East, North Africa and Italy, ending as a Major with
an immediate Military Cross at the age of 24. He was badly wounded
in the legs in 1944, but after two years in hospital returned to
his tea planting job in 1946. We were married
on August 14, 1947 at Christ Church, Dickoya. Once again floods
seemed to haunt me. The evening of our wedding reception, the rains
began in earnest. We got away to a bungalow in Lindula but many
of our guests were stranded due to the floods and road slips. We
were due in Trincomalee on the 15th but it took us three days to
get there. Once back on
Norwood, life went back to normal. After two years we moved to Sogama
and from there to Meddecumbura. John became Manager of Wevelelle
in Namunukula, then Sogama and finally Rothschild in Pussellawa.
In 1959 while still on Sogama and overlooking Rothschild, we received
an invitation to lunch with the Prime Minister, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike
at the Pussellawa Resthouse. He was to open a new housing estate
in Pussellawa. He was a most interesting and charming person. After
lunch we moved to say goodbye but the Prime Minister insisted that
we walk in procession with him through the town to the place where
the ceremony was to take place. A long walk, with drummers, dancers
etc., he kept us beside him for the ceremony. Tragically Mr. Bandaranaike
was murdered two weeks later. Life on the
whole was happy, though difficulties were beginning with the estate
labour. District and local clubs provided recreation. We went deep
sea fishing from Trincomalee, sailing in our little Heron dinghy.
We also acquired a Land Rover and spent many happy days camping,
staying in the National Parks. We had three
children, a boy and two girls. They went first to the Hill School
and eventually to school in England. Every year they would come
for the summer holidays, which was a very happy time for us all. In 1970, due
to a massive fraud and scandal on Meddecumbura Estate, John found
himself in charge of Rothschild and Meddecumbura, over 4,000 acres,
in different districts, with just three assistants. After eight
months his health began to suffer. With talk of the nationalisation
of the tea industry, he decided to take early retirement. Very sadly,
as our great love was, and still is, Sri Lanka, we left in 1972. We settled
in Hampshire, and both had to find jobs. In 1984 we finally retired
and moved to Devon where we bought part of a old manor house with
a lovely garden. We made two very happy visits back to Sri Lanka
during this time. After John died in 1997, I moved to a bungalow in the same area. I have been to Sri Lanka three times since then. First with my son and his family, we took John's ashes back to be interred at Christ Church, Dickoya. Again with my two daughters and their husbands, and this year with old planting friends. We love returning 'home'. Hopefully I shall be back again in the near future, before I get too old. The
masterplan The Tamils
feared independence as 1947 approached. The departing British were
not interested in them any longer. They feared that their shaky
supremacy would come to an end. New strategies were needed. They
asked for "50-50". When that failed, Alan Rose and Murugesu
Thiruchelvam asked for "50-43". They hung on to their
borrowed culture. In 1959 they asked for a 'university for the Tamil
speaking people in the Tamil speaking areas in order to preserve
their language and culture'. This was refused. The Tamils
had two problems. How to control the newly independent Sinhalese
and how to keep them out of the north and east. They had to ensure
an exclusively Tamil population in the north and east, with total
Tamil control over the area. They cooked up 'Eelam'. Suntheralingam
used the word 'Eylom' to refer to the mythical Tamil country that
had existed long ago. In 1957 Nadesan asked for regional autonomy.
In 1959 Chelvanayakam asked for federalism. He asked for an autonomous
Tamil state as a single geographical unit. The first phase
of Eelam activity, between 1947-1970 was not successful. They tried
to obtain Eelam through the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact (1957)
and the Dudley-Chelvanayakam Pact (1965) but failed. The Tamil separatists
are still bitter about the failure of the BC Pact. It provided for
regional councils. It was the quick way to Eelam. The Sinhala
Only Act was another blow. The public sector now opened up to the
Sinhalese. The second
phase, starting from 1970 was better. Tamil separatists realized
that to obtain Eelam they needed control over the head of state.
The 1977 constitution created an executive President with dictatorial
powers but needing a voter base. In J.R. Jayawardene they found
a President they could manipulate. A.J. Wilson and Neelan Thiruchelvam
were close to him. Thiruchelvam had close contact with all three
Presidents, Jayewardene, Premadasa and Kumaratunga. The District
Councils Act (1980) and Provincial Councils Act (1987) vested land
and all matters relating to land in the Councils. The Provincial
Councils also had the power to merge. Eelam was on the way. The Provincial
Councils Act was based on the 13th Amendment. This was presented
to India by Thiruchelvam. It was thereafter forced upon the Sri
Lankan government by India. A vast number of central government
powers were handed over to the Provincial Councils. The Supreme
Court approved it on a slim majority, five judges out of nine. Tamil separatists
realized that they now needed foreign support. They sold Eelam as
a front for a bigger operation, to destabilize the country and hand
over Trincomalee and its environs to a foreign power. A process
of destabilization and weakening of the Sinhala segment started
from in the 1970s. History disappeared
form the school syllabus. American funded Christian sects came.
Norway did development work. An infrastructure
was set up to cover all aspects and all contingencies affecting
the Eelam project. Paid agents and opinion leaders were hired to
brainwash the public into accepting Eelam. Attempts were made to
demoralize the army. NGOs supporting Eelam were set up within the
country and without. Every conceivable
international organization was tapped. They were induced to peddle
Eelam at the UN and elsewhere. Terms were borrowed from western
jargon, such as 'holocaust' and 'deep south'. Sinhala protests were
dismissed as 'chauvinism'. A vast academic literature emerged, a
sort of tidal wave. It carried prestigious American imprints and
supported Tamil separatist ideology. A literature with preposterous
conclusions, justifying the charge of the 'abuse of the social sciences'. The concept
of 'ethnicity' was bandied about. There were references to Tamil
ethnic identity. Ethnic identity is a nebulous concept lacking any
legal or political validity. Valentine Daniel admitted that in Sri
Lanka "ethnic identities are constructed". The outrageous
notion of an 'ethnic compact' has been invoked, that land settlement
should not disturb the existing ethnic ratio. There is no such thing
as an ethnic compact. Land is a national resource. Dharini Rajasingham
Senanayake found ethnic majorities and ethnic minorities everywhere
in the ethnic picture of Sri Lanka. Sinhala and Muslim minorities
in Jaffna, Muslim and Tamil minorities in Galle, Sinhala and Muslim
minorities in Pottuvil. She refers to 'ethnic unmixing' and 'ethnic
switching'. We could add another term to the collection, 'ethnic
bunkum'. The Tamil separatists
adopted a sanctimonious, highly moral tone. They tried to give the
impression that they had an elevated perspective, high principles.
They peppered their speeches with references to Aung San Suu Kyi,
Nelson Mandela, Foucault and Rawls. Significant organizations in
the country were infiltrated quietly with Eelam agents, in order
to ensure support for Eelam when the time came. Muslim separatism
is an offshoot of Tamil separatism, the SLMC parrots the same empty
slogans of homeland, rights, aspirations. Catching the fever, Muslims
elsewhere started to say that Akurana, Mawanella, Beruwela were
Muslim homelands. The TULF had come to an agreement with the SLMC
to grant them a Muslim sub-council in Ampara with control over land
and religion. In 1988 the Muslims were asked to negotiate with the
TULF and the LTTE. In the same year they signed an agreement with
the LTTE in India. The Muslims
declared a separate Eastern Muslim identity to go with the sub-region
offered. The South-Eastern University has set up a museum with a
collection of 'ancient' items depicting Muslim culture, especially
of the eastern province. This includes domestic utensils, a mammoty,
and Muslim arts and crafts "exclusive to the Eastern Province".
The Muslim Fine Arts Panel of the Arts Council even had a Muslim
fine arts festival in Dickwella. Separatist
Muslims now find themselves stranded in the east. Support for Eelam
only led to the repeated killing of Muslims. Izeth Hussain has stated
that Muslims have no right of self-determination, that the Oluvil
declaration that said so, was a student affair. There is now a call
for the demerger of the north and east. It has been pointed out
that the merger is anyway illegal and cannot be made permanent.
Muslims have a Sinhala ancestry. There is now a call for all Muslims
in the country to unite, across party lines. The Muslims should
drop separatism - join the Sinhalese and call for a return to national
unity. The tea estates
were originally Sinhala lands, taken from them by the British. Indian
Tamils (estate Tamils) were immigrant labour. They had family links
in South India. They came and went. When S. Thondaman died, his
ashes were taken to his native village in Tamil Nadu. These Tamils
have taken the name 'Malaiyaha Tamils' and argue that they have
a separate sub-culture. Certainly they do, but it's merely the South
Indian caste culture they brought with them from India. There is
no indigenous Indian Tamil culture here. The Ceylon Workers Congress,
the estate Tamil trade union, has emerged as a political force due
to its large bank of captive votes. CWC supports Tamil separatism.
There is a calculated move to keep the estate lands Tamil. When
land from Raigamyaya Estate, Ingiriya was to be given to Sinhala
villagers in an earthslip area, Thondaman objected. He also objected
to resettling Sinhala villagers displaced due to the Kothmale reservoir.
However estate Tamils are now given deeds to the apartment houses
which replaced the line rooms in estates in Hatton, Dickoya and
Lindula. There is a
sort of plan to declare the Central, Uva and Sabaragamuwa Provinces
as a part of the Hindu culture of Sri Lanka. Under the leadership
of Rev. Harry Haas, Uva was turning into the haunt of King Ravana.
Harry Haas was a Dutch Christian priest who had settled in Bandarawela.
Ravana is a mythical character appearing in the story Ramayana by
Valmiki. Ravana's Lankapura, even as fiction, cannot be located
in Sri Lanka. They have found it in India. Therefore this whole
approach should be carefully observed and questioned. The Hindu
temples at Ramboda and Sita Eliya have been enlarged, and turned
into tourist stop-overs. At the 2nd World Hindu Conference held
recently in Nuwara Eliya, there was a resolution that these temples
be declared "ancient and historical areas" and "sacred
places". Muslim and
Tamil leaders have sought and obtained Cabinet portfolios, which
enable them to enrich their communities. Arumugam Thondaman has
control over housing. It must be pointed out that affirmative action
has its limits. The UN Convention against Racial Discrimination (CERD) declares favouritism also as racism. Local government delimitation is affected by the presence of Indian Tamils. Since the Tamils in the estates outnumber the Sinhala villages, local government elections are now dominated by the CWC. Ambagamuwa Korale Pradeshiya Sabha, Nuwara Eliya District contains hundreds of traditional Sinhala villages, but is now under the control of CWC. This is also the situation in Welimada, Uva Paranagama, Haliela, Avissawella and Balangoda. |
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Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
