A popular ballad sung by South Indian Music Maestro Illayaraja (which was ironically released in 1990 - the year of the Muslims’ ethnic expulsion) can often be heard sung nostalgically by the Tamil Muslims of the North: “Sorgame endralum, athu nam oora pola varuma?” (even if it’s heaven itself, will it ever compare to our homeland?)

This is also the one liner the Northern Muslims consistently refer to, to explain why they chose to come back to their homelands in the North despite the many barriers put up in their way. This month, October 30^th marks the 25^th anniversary of their forcible expulsion from the North by the LTTE. Since then, many of the Muslims have put down roots in other parts of the country, mainly in Puttalam and to a lesser extent other areas such as Anuradhapura, Galle, and Colombo. As is their right however, at war’s end in 2009, those who were unable to feel settled in their newly settled areas have chosen to return to their homelands - a process that has not been facilitated for them by either the government or Tamil community, despite the irreparable wrong done to them 25 years ago.

The returnees have many experiences to report on the hardships of resettling in their homeland but supreme love for their motherland they say, overrides all other considerations, to make them persevere.

Of these, the Jaffna Muslims are the worst hit among all the Northern Province Muslims, in terms of receiving little to no repatriation help. Being a minor political constituency, they have neither Muslim nor Tamil politicians campaigning to address their issues. It’s nearly six years now since many of them have resettled in Jaffna after war’s end. In 2009-2010, they were reduced to living in the shelled out skeletal remains of their former stately homes.

There are still many such families continuing to live so but others have also moved into more upscale renovated properties being rented out in the area.

Some of the neighbourhood families living in Colombo have been able to repair their houses adequately and have given them out for rent.

These are however comparatively very few. And this excruciatingly slow process of Jaffna’s Muslim quarters gradually regaining its neighbourhood tone has little to do with government facilitation.

 Tamil politicians

The recurring refrain one hears from the community, is their disappointment at the Government and Tamil politicians, for not reaching out to help.

“In other districts, there are Muslim MPs to see to Muslim constituencies, but in Jaffna we don’t have such a representative. The Tamil politicians play the communal card and do nothing to address our needs though from time to time they pay lip service to it,” lament the Muslims resettled in Jaffna.

They are very careful however not to conflate Tamil politicians with the Tamil people. The Muslim people here, who to this day identify as Tamil-speaking people, magnanimously refuse to hold the Tamils responsible for the doings of either the Tamil politicians or the LTTE.

“In 1990, we were forcibly driven out by the LTTE, not the Tamil people.”

“Even now, it is the politicians who are trying to set us off against each other. The Tamil people are our brethren and treat us well. We have nothing to say against them.”

The above were some of the common refrains heard across the board when interviewing the Muslim returnees for this article. Whether we their Tamil brethren deserve so vigorous a defence however is open to debate.

They were evicted in 1990 at two hours’ notice with only the clothes on their back.

Originally a prosperous business community of Jaffna, many of them were stripped of their land and property titles, jewellery (including what they were wearing; women recall their children’s ear studs ripped off their earlobes) and all their cash before they left. They had been told that they could take Rs.500 with them but in some cases were stripped of even that, after which they were transported like cattle by the LTTE in trucks, to be dumped just outside Jaffna - and from there, told to walk all the way to Puttalam.

“They told us to stamp the dust off our feet as we left, that we could not take even that from their Eelam which belonged only to Tamils. They were that cruel,” reported one returned Muslim lady. The shock of that extreme and unwarranted cruelty displayed by the LTTE is still fresh in the minds of the Muslims.

They had always perceived themselves as having cordial relations with the Tamils and so the sudden ethnic cleansing that was visited upon them took them completely by surprise. They still have no answer as to why this happened other than that the LTTE perhaps wanted to harvest their wealth.

"Due to our religious beliefs, we did not save our money in banks, we saved them instead in gold biscuits.

In one morning, they piled all our jewellery, cash and gold biscuits in front of us and gloated that they had gained the wealth of a mini Saudi Arabia," explained one former businessman who had three vehicles at his disposal in 1990, now reduced to driving a hired three-wheeler for a living.

25 years from the expulsion and six years since resettlement, disappointingly little has been done in terms of outreach and reparation by the Tamil community towards the Muslim community.

 Double standard

While many of the Muslims refuse to call out the Tamils for this, at least one elderly man voiced his hurt on this issue as well.

"I am 68 years old now, I fear I will die without the issue of what happened to us in 1990 ever being addressed - and with my generation will die the pain and knowledge of all that transpired.

There will be no learning or restitution from it. Why though should we brush this under the carpet? Why can’t it be addressed?

“You, the Tamils, ask for your lands returned in areas like Valikamam and Sampur. We support you, that is your right. But why don’t you support us in our endeavours to get our lands back in the North? Isn’t that similarly our right?”You campaign to have July 1983’s riots recognized as genocide. But if we say October 1990’s expulsion of us was ethnic cleansing, why do some Tamil people reject this? Some of these Tamil nationalists repeatedly make an outcry about all the wrongs done to them by the Government but if we try to raise the issue of what happened to us, they say we are repeating the same tired old refrain again and again. Why these double standards?"

 Poor infrastructure

We didn’t really have an answer to give him. We thus put the question to our Tamil readers. Can you answer? Why is there this double standard by the Tamil community towards the Muslim community, in the North? Why do we seek reparations for the wrongs done to us as a community whilst endeavouring at the same time to brush under the carpet, the wrongs done to the Muslims as a community, by our community? Why do we hold the central government and Sinhalese politicians to task for not addressing Tamil issues adequately but not hold the Tamil provincial politicians to task for not addressing Muslim issues adequately?

 Indian government

Why have we left our Muslim brethren alone to fight lonely fights, often losing fights, for their rights? When they were evicted from Jaffna, many of the Muslims here were some of the wealthiest people in the land. Stripped of all their money and property before they left, they have returned to live in hovels in most cases.

Yet of the thousands of houses granted to war-affected people in Jaffna by the Indian Government, only 45 houses have been allocated to the Muslim community.

“The Tamil Government Officials in Jaffna are openly prejudiced against us. They make us run from pillar to post for every little thing, deliberately exhausting us in the process. In the case of this housing scheme, they initially allocated only 25 houses for our community. We had to campaign long and hard before they made it at least 45 houses. We were fed up with the amount of protests we had to carry out before achieving even this small concession. Now the scheme is over. They afforded us a few houses only in its last stages,” says an activist in the J88 area of Jaffna, where many Muslims are resettled.

The government officials for their part give various excuses, such as the Muslims already having been given housing in Puttalam (though only a few of them actually were), and that many of the Muslims don’t live permanently in Jaffna and are instead a floating population between Puttalam and Jaffna. There are various sociological and economic reasons for this floating pattern of existence which the Muslims have been reduced to, that are not being addressed as they should, and has instead become a convenient stick to beat them with. If there are not enough facilities in Jaffna to live permanently, and there are many family members left behind in Puttalam who have chosen to remain there, why would not the Jaffna Muslims be a floating population? What the Muslims are employing for their social and economic survival is being negated as duplicity by the Jaffna officials who say that they do not deserve allocations and benefits from Jaffna if they are going to be residents of Puttalam. This conveniently does not address the fact that not enough has been done in Jaffna to enable families to feasibly settle permanently here.

Yet, despite all these odds there are about 3000 families permanently settled in Jaffna now, who have not received much benefit due to it. “A high ranking Tamil government official, in a bid to prove that we were not actually living in Jaffna as we said we were, came on a personal visit to check our houses. All those dwellings that were locked when she visited in the middle of the day were marked as unoccupied. The implication was that these residents had lied when they said they were living in Jaffna. This was one of the ways they reduced our numbers eligible for the Indian Housing Scheme. Did she not think that at that time, the man of the house would be out working, the children would be at school and the lady of the house marketing or on some other errand? This same process was not carried out for Tamil households. How do they get to arbitrarily decide to treat us so differently?” ask the Muslim community.

 Not many job opportunities for women

Their families have lived in this area of town for generations, but they remember that even this was not where their ancestors originally settled. 1990 was by no means the first time expulsion had been forced on the Muslim community of Jaffna.

“Our ancestors used to live in Nallur and Musali from which they were driven out in 1838. That is when they came and settled in this area, which has now become part of Jaffna town,” explained one of the community elders.

Living in the middle of town as they are, without adequate urban planning or facilities, they grapple with many frustrating problems that are not being addressed effectively either.

“It took years to get electricity and running water to this area though it is in the heart of Jaffna town,” says one lady asked specifically on the issues women and children face while resettling, within the community. “There are not many job opportunities for women here. Wealthier members of the community who have repaired their houses have rented them out to us but this being a town area, we can’t earn through rearing poultry or livestock. Meanwhile, in nearby abandoned properties that have been left to grow wild with shrubbery, snakes and mosquitoes are breeding and we fear for our children’s safety.”

The men of the community engage in small-time business or drive three wheelers to support their families. A few are government officials. "Most of our men have taken loans to buy motorcycles or three-wheelers to facilitate their businesses.

Now they are gone from early morning till late at night, trying to earn back enough money to pay off those loans. Many of our children are thus growing up without knowing their fathers.

The fathers are gone by the time they wake up and return only after they have fallen asleep, such is our lot," laments another woman.

Having come through all these hardships, some in the community are determined to stick it out but others are considering returning to the areas they had relocated to post their expulsion in 1990.

“We never felt at home in any of those places. We always remembered Jaffna as our homeland with so much nostalgia and returned after the war ended with so much hope. Now however, we are being slowly driven out. We have been made to feel as if we don’t belong here either.”

This is a sad reflection of what the Muslim people feel, along with what the Tamil people have made them to feel. 25 years since their expulsion, after all that our two communities have been separately through, have we the Tamils, nothing to offer in terms of solidarity to the Muslims?

Thulasi Muttulingam

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