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1. Sivaram Dharmeratnam: A Journalist’s life
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Date: Sat, 30 Apr 2005 17:17:17 -0000
From: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Sivaram Dharmeratnam: A Journalist’s life
Sivaram Dharmeratnam: A Journalist's life
[TamilNet, April 29, 2005 21:11 GMT]
Mark Whitaker, an associate professor of anthropology
at the University of South Carolina, Aiken, U.S.A, is
completing an intellectual biography of Dharmeratnam
Sivaram's life and work in a book entitled "Learning
Politics from Sivaram." Prof. Whitaker summarizes
Sivaram's life and work in this feature.
Sivaram Dharmeratnam, the well-known and controversial
political analyst and a senior editor for
Tamilnet.com, was born on August 11, 1959 in
Batticaloa, Sri Lanka to Puvirajkirtha Dharmeratnam
and Mahesvariammal. His was a prominent family with
significant land holdings near Akkaraipattu, though
his immediate family later lost much of their
inherited wealth. Nicknamed "Kunchie" as a child,
Sivaram was educated at St. Michael's College in
Batticaloa, and later at Pembroke and Aquinas Colleges
in Colombo. He was accepted into the University of
Peradeniya in 1982 but soon dropped out due to
tensions associated with the first phases of Sri
Lanka's civil war.
In 1982 Sivaram joined the Ghandian Movement, then a
front organization for the People's Liberation
Organization of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE). After Sri Lanka's
ethnic conflict erupted into civil war in 1983,
Sivaram, under the alias "SR", soon became a prominent
PLOTE militant. Sivaram's role in PLOTE was unique
because he played an important part in both the
organization's military and political wings at a time
when PLOTE kept those functions, to its eventual
misfortune, completely separate from one another. In
1988, a year after the Indo-Lankan accords were
signed, Uma Maheswaran, PLOTE's leader, appointed
Sivaram General Secretary of the Democratic People's
Liberation Front (DPLF), the organization's registered
political party. Sivaram left PLOTE in 1989, however,
after arguing against Maheswaran's attempts to
establish firmer relations with the JVP and due to his
distaste for the group's involvement in an abortive
coup in the Maldives.
On September 8, 1988 Sivaram married Herly Yogaranjini
Poopalapillai of Batticaloa. They eventually had three
children: Vaishnavi (16), Vaitheki (13), and
Seralaathan (10).
In 1988 while still General Secretary of the DPLF,
Sivaram met the newscaster, journalist and actor
Richard De Zoysa. De Zoysa, impressed by Sivaram's
ability to produce off-the-cuff political analysis,
asked him to write articles for the UN-funded Inter
Press Service (IPS), for whom De Zoysa was a
correspondent. In 1989, when The Island newspaper
found itself in need of a Tamil political analyst, De
Zoysa suggested Sivaram. The Island editor, Gamini
Weerakon, proposed tharaka (or `star') as Sivaram's
pen name but a sub-editor accidentally printed
"Taraki" instead, giving birth to Sivaram's famous nom
de plume. Sivaram's Taraki articles were an immediate
success. They combined a dispassionately, ironic style
with accurate, inside information, and took care to
explain in crystal clear prose the military,
political, strategic and tactical assumptions of all
sides in Sri Lanka's complex conflict. Moreover,
Sivaram's wide reading in military science and
political philosophy (especially in Marxism and
post-structuralism) allowed him to bring intellectual
tools to his articles that soon made them more
powerful than mere punditry.
(Photo: BBC)
In 1990 Sivaram helped identify Richard De Zoysa's
body after De Zoysa was abducted from his home and
killed.
By the early 1990s Sivaram's Taraki column had become
a `must read' for anyone interested in Sri Lanka. In
1991 fans of his writing among the Tamil community in
France published a collection of his work entitled The
Eluding Peace (An Insider's analysis of the Ethnic
Conflict in Sri Lanka). As a free-lance journalist,
Sivaram, eventually wrote for many newspapers
including The Island, The Sunday Times, The Tamil
Times (London), The Daily Mirror, and Veerakesari. In
1997 Sivaram helped Tamilnet.com reorganize itself
into a Tamil news agency with its own string of
reporters, and remained a senior editor there until
his death. He filed his last story for Tamilnet.com at
7:30 PM on the night he was murdered.
Sivaram's work was not limited to journalism.
Sivaram's grasp of Tamil politics and literature and
Sri Lanka's complex history made him a magnate for
scholars. Hence, Sivaram collaborated and argued with
historians, political scientists, anthropologists,
policy experts, and geographers from many of Sri
Lanka's universities and think tanks, as well as with
foreign and foreign-based scholars from (among other
schools around the world) the University of Colorado,
the University of South Carolina, and Clark
University. As recently as April 2005, Sivaram
provided a purely scholarly introduction to the
Mattakkalappu Poorva Sariththiram (Ancient History of
Batticaloa), a recently released definitive edition of
an ancient Batticaloa palm leaf manuscript.
Beyond this, in the mid-1990's many governments and
Human Right's NGOs turned to Sivaram for advice on
political and military matters. He soon became widely
traveled in Europe, Asia, and North America and
equally well known to governments, the diplomatic
community, and human rights activists. Indeed, his
death arrived just ahead of a scheduled trip to Japan
to consult with the Japanese government.
As opposition to his reporting mounted, and as death
threats began to multiply, friends and colleagues from
around the world frequently begged Sivaram to move
himself and his family out of Sri Lanka. He always
vehemently refused to leave. "Where else should I die
but here?" he often declared. Yet in 2004 the police
twice searched Sivaram's home, and various groups in
Sri Lanka publicly threatened him. Given the
uncompromising nature of his reporting, his death by
violence was no surprise.
"He will be an irreplaceable loss to the academic and
human rights community around the world," said Dr.
Jude Fernando, of Clark University, a sentiment echoed
by many.
I should add a personal note here. I am an associate
professor of anthropology at the University of South
Carolina, Aiken. I first got to know Sivaram in 1982
while I was conducting cultural anthropological
research in Batticaloa. We became friends because we
discovered a common interest in philosophy, and
because we also shared some horrors during the 1983
riots. My own work in Sri Lanka initially focused on
Batticaloa's local politics and religion, as can be
seen in my 1999 book Amiable Incoherence: Manipulating
Histories and Modernities in a Batticaloa Hindu
Temple. But as the conflict in Sri Lanka grew more
complicated and intense, and as Sivaram's role as its
primary chronicler and analyst loomed ever larger, I
felt it my duty to try, in some way, to record his
thoughts and efforts – especially since I grew worried
over the safety of his life almost since I first met
him. In 1997, therefore, we decided to collaborate on
an intellectual biography of his life and work. It
should, we agreed, be entitled Learning Politics from
Sivaram; and he insisted also that the book be as
uncompromising as he was. I hope to have this
biography completed shortly; I only hope as a memorial
it can even partly do him justice. I shall mourn for
him, my lost best friend, for the rest of my life. I
ask all of you who knew him well, friend or foe – for
he would talk with anyone – to raise a glass and toast
him. And may those that killed him look on in shame.
www.tamilnet.com
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