{"id":83257,"date":"2023-12-08T01:11:59","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T05:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=83257"},"modified":"2023-12-08T23:49:12","modified_gmt":"2023-12-09T03:49:12","slug":"83257","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=83257","title":{"rendered":"A Voice for Palestine: How M.A. Nuhman\u2019s translations of poems on the Palestinian cause have resonated with Sri Lankan Tamils Fighting State Oppression"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nBy<\/p>\n

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

Lankan poet and linguist M.A. Nuhman is deeply pained by the bloodshed and mass killings that ravage Gaza, sparing no one \u2014 not even infants.<\/p>\n

His anger at the brutal violence against civilians, and his solidarity with the people of Palestine, have found familiar expression in Tamil verse. Last month, he wrote a poem, \u2018Oru Palestina Kural\u2019 (A Palestinian Voice), as he watched the violence escalate, from his own war-scarred island, tens of thousands of miles away.<\/p>\n

Only weeks earlier, the Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant had said: \u201cWe are fighting against human animals,\u201d and later, the Israeli prime minister remarked that \u201cIsrael is fighting with the enemies of civilisation,\u201d as he sought to cast the ongoing war as one between the \u201cforces of civilisation and forces of barbarism.\u201d
\nDisturbed by this framing of the conflict, Nuhman wrote in one of the opening verses:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Do not insult animals,
\nanimals are friends of human
\nbeings,
\nyou and I cannot live in a world
\nwithout animals,
\nanimals do not occupy,
\nanimals do not throw bombs and
\nkill people,
\nanimals do not snatch away a
\nnation,
\nanimals do not chase away people
\nfrom their homes,
\nanimals do not annihilate villages,
\nanimals do not make people
\nrefugees,
\ndo not insult animals.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

The subsequent verses throw a series of difficult moral and political questions at the Israeli state, using a Palestinian voice.
\n\u201cThis cannot just go on like this,\u201d Nuhman told The Hindu at a meeting at his home in Kandy recently. The 79-year-old writer and his wife now live just outside the hilly town in Sri Lanka\u2019s Central Province after retiring from their academic careers some years ago.
\nA groundswell<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica talks about protecting human rights in Ukraine while supporting Israel that is unleashing unspeakable violence in Gaza. Arab countries have also become stooges of the U.S., they are unable to do anything,\u201d he said. Yet, despite big powers backing Israel\u2019s war, he finds the groundswell of support for Palestinians across the world heartening. \u201cPeople are taking to the streets in large numbers in so many countries, including Israel, to show their solidarity.\u201d He makes the point in his poem too: \u2018The world\u2019s biggest terrorists are supporting you, but open your eyes and look around, people with a sense of justice world over are rising against you\u2026\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Nuhman has been following the Palestinian question for some 60 years now, from the time he was a student and later, as a young school teacher. His intellectual curiosity and political persuasion as a leftist led him to the works of several Palestinian poets. \u201cI found their voice, their resistance to oppression coming from deep within very powerful.\u201d <\/p>\n

He began translating some of their works for Sri Lankan newspapers and magazines in the 70s, and eventually wrote enough for a collection. \u201cForever Palestine, a collection of Palestinian resistance poems, brought out by P.S. Sharma of the PLO India Office in the 1970s was a very important source for me,\u201d said Nuhman.<\/p>\n

Three editions of Nuhman\u2019s anthology have been published in the last four decades. It includes poems by Palestinian poets such as Mahmoud Darwish, Fadwa Tuqan, Samih al-Qasim, Hanan Ashrawi, and the Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, who wrote evocatively in support of the Palestinian cause. The first was self-published in 1981, featuring nine Palestinian poets and 30 poems. <\/p>\n

The second came out in 2000, also published in Sri Lanka, with 30 poets and 71 of their poems; and the latest, in 2008, was published in India by Adaiyalam Publications, featuring 30 poets and 109 poems. Following Mahmoud Darwish\u2019s passing in 2008, the same Indian publisher also brought out a collection of Nuhman\u2019s translation of his works.<\/p>\n

New vistas<\/strong><\/p>\n

His translations during those years, all from English to Tamil, found many avid readers among Tamils in Sri Lanka, who were facing violent discrimination by the state. \u201cNuhman\u2019s translations of Palestinian poets opened up a new vista to young Sri Lankan readers,\u201d University of Jaffna academic and literary historian Karthigesu Sivathamby wrote in Frontline in 1999. <\/p>\n

The poems are said to have expanded their imagination, offering a new language of liberation to Tamil readers. \u201cI was not the only one, there was Prof. Sivasegaram, and Pannamathu Kavirayar, and several in Tamil Nadu too, who translated Palestinian poetry to Tamil,\u201d said Nuhman. \u201cAt the time I translated them, I was not thinking of anything other than solidarity for the Palestinian cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nuhman was also resisting the Sinhala majoritarian state\u2019s oppression of Tamils around the same time. His poems took a progressive political line, in accessible language. His iconic poem \u2018Buddharin Padukolai\u2019, or \u2018Murder\u2019 as its English translation was titled, written after Sinhalese mobs set fire to the Jaffna Public Library in 1981, is a bold and moving response to one of the most malicious acts of Sinhala chauvinism in the island nation. He was teaching at the University of Jaffna at the time. The incident proved a major provocation to the then-nascent Tamil militancy to grow in strength and resolve, to take on the state\u2019s oppression.<\/p>\n

Last year, Nagercoil-based publisher Kalachuvadu brought out a collection of Prof. Nuhman\u2019s anti-war poems titled Tuppaakkikku muulai illai (The gun has no brain). In a compelling preface to the anthology, Prof. Nuhman tells critics, who tend to disregard simply written verse with profound political messages, that poetry has always accorded an important place for political views and resistance
\n.
\n\u201cIf they [the poems] can invoke in readers a feeling that is sympathetic to peace and social justice, that is good enough,\u201d <\/em>he writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not have to take those who fall for cryptic or pretentious language or mere wordplay seriously. These poems are against injustice and oppression, they are against wars and guns. If they can invoke in readers a feeling in favour of peace and social justice, that is good enough,\u201d<\/em> he writes.
\nThat has been his position all through. When everything is political, his poetry too will be.<\/p>\n

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

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Meera Srinivasan Lankan poet and linguist M.A. Nuhman is deeply pained by the bloodshed and mass killings that ravage Gaza, sparing no one \u2014 not even infants. His anger at the brutal violence against civilians, and his solidarity with the people of Palestine, have found familiar expression in Tamil verse. Last month, he wrote …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘A Voice for Palestine: How M.A. Nuhman\u2019s translations of poems on the Palestinian cause have resonated with Sri Lankan Tamils Fighting State Oppression’ »<\/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\/83257"}],"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=83257"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83257\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83260,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83257\/revisions\/83260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}