{"id":70160,"date":"2020-09-04T21:38:16","date_gmt":"2020-09-05T02:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=70160"},"modified":"2020-09-04T21:38:16","modified_gmt":"2020-09-05T02:38:16","slug":"visakesa-chandrasekarams-sinhala-film-paangshu-zooms-into-the-trauma-of-enforced-disappearances-by-foregrounding-the-struggle-of-a-missing-persons-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=70160","title":{"rendered":"Visakesa Chandrasekaram’s Sinhala film “Paangshu” zooms into the trauma of enforced disappearances by foregrounding the struggle of a missing person\u2019s family."},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/p>\n

Meera Srinivasan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Like many Sri Lankans, academic and filmmaker Visakesa Chandrasekaram has been struggling to come to terms with the civil war\u2019s gory end in 2009. The graphic visuals of the bloodshed, which some \u201cshared like trophies\u201d, made him question what he\u2019d thought were basic human norms.<\/p>\n

When he decided to give it creative expression, he chose to tell the story of a mother\u2019s quest for justice, after her son was forcibly disappeared by soldiers. Except, the story is not from the war zone where armed forces fought the LTTE for three decades. It is from an earlier chapter of brutal violence and state repression in Sri Lankan history<\/p>\n

Mr. Chandrasekaram\u2019s recently-released Sinhala film Paangshu, or Earth, zooms into the agony of dealing with an enforced disappearance of a loved one. It follows an aged mother from the marginal dhobi caste group in the island\u2019s Sinhala-majority south, looking for her son, who, like scores of rural Sinhala youth, is drawn to the leftist-nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led armed insurrection in the late 1980s.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The period connotes the second JVP uprising \u2014 the first was in 1971 \u2014 against the widening inequality in the decade after economic liberalisation in Sri Lanka, mass youth unemployment, widespread state repression and Indian \u201cexpansionism\u201d, at the time of the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 and intervention of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF).<\/p>\n

Having drawn acclaim at many international film festivals, Paangshu is perhaps the first mainstream Sinhala film to foreground the struggle of a missing person\u2019s family. Enforced disappearances in Sri Lanka have a long and dark history, beginning well before the period shown in the film. They continued well after, especially in the island\u2019s Tamil-majority north and east, during and after the civil war years. Hundreds of Tamil women are agitating for years, braving intimidation, demanding the truth about their disappeared loved ones, including those who surrendered to the Army and never returned.<\/p>\n

Reluctance to speak up\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sri Lanka has one of the world\u2019s highest number of disappearances, Amnesty International notes, pointing to an estimated 60,000 to 1,00,000 alleged disappearances.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe trauma of 2009 is engraved in my mind. But there is a silence in Sri Lanka around the 2009 massacre, in which scores of civilians died. It is as if the country is in denial. There is mass amnesia. I thought about it and felt may be a country that was silent in one instance, cannot break it in another,\u201d says Mr. Chandrasekaram, speaking to The Hindu. He turned the spotlight on the 1980s, as there was a \u201csimilar refusal\u201d to talk about what happened at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, the J.R. Jayewardene government turned its guns southward, against the insurgent youth, and when the Indian Army left the country in 1989, the government [subsequently led by R. Premadasa] turned its guns 180 degrees against rebels in the north. Much of the Sinhalese society was silent all through.\u201d<\/p>\n

All the same, an ethnically charged narrative didn\u2019t speak to him. Raised by a Sinhalese mother and Tamil father, and having spent 17 years in Australia before returning to Colombo two years ago, the filmmaker saw how any conversation about the country\u2019s turbulent past tended to further polarise people on ethnic lines. His work as a human rights lawyer took him closer to the individual stories of the most vulnerable and he saw similarities \u2014 in their pain, helplessness and relentless quest for justice. \u201cI began questioning the ethnic construct,\u201d says Mr. Chandrasekaram, who teaches law at the University of Colombo.<\/p>\n

Over time, he also began reflecting on the dynamic between the JVP and its support base, or the LTTE and the Tamil society that the movements\u2019 critics deem hegemonic, with little room for any questioning, and even less for dissent. \u201cI have a strong critique of the JVP of the past,\u201d says the filmmaker, who is currently an activist with the JVP-led political alliance, the National People\u2019s Power. \u201cThere was a dilemma, but as a liberal artiste, academician and activist, backing the NPP seemed the only prudent choice at this point, especially since they were the only one to take up the rights of women, the LGBT community and persons with disability.\u201d<\/p>\n

The JVP of today is aware of the discomfort some feel about its past. In addition to leading cinemas, the film was also screened at the party’s headquarters for discussion. \u201cThe party should not avoid confronting its past, we must reflect on our path,\u201d says Bimal Rathnayake, former JVP MP. At the same time, while the film tells the story of an individual, it doesn\u2019t capture the \u201ctrue nature\u201d of the struggle or the socio-political context that led to it, in his view.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the different views on the insurgencies, appreciating the context of the uprisings, the filmmaker notes, is crucial, particularly in this political moment in Sri Lanka, when the Rajapaksas \u2014 whose earlier government faces accusations of grave rights abuses \u2014 are back in power, with a super majority in Parliament. \u201cI worry that the current context is not too different to those that sparked past conflicts. I am not predicting another armed struggle, but knowing the government\u2019s authoritarian tendencies, I am very concerned about those on the margins of our society and the minorities,\u201d says Mr. Chandrasekaram.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:The Hindu<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Meera Srinivasan Like many Sri Lankans, academic and filmmaker Visakesa Chandrasekaram has been struggling to come to terms with the civil war\u2019s gory end in 2009. The graphic visuals of the bloodshed, which some \u201cshared like trophies\u201d, made him question what he\u2019d thought were basic human norms. When he decided to give it creative …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Visakesa Chandrasekaram’s Sinhala film “Paangshu” zooms into the trauma of enforced disappearances by foregrounding the struggle of a missing person\u2019s family.’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70160"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70160"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70160\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70161,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70160\/revisions\/70161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}