Dravidianists and Tamil Nationalists weep and beat their chest during political campaigns about Sri Lankan Tamils. But when it comes to action, they go silent. This is what has been happening as Sri Lankan Tamil Sivarasa Anojan faces a death sentence in Saudi Arabia for a social media comment.
Sivarasa Anojan is a 24-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil from Narpittimunai in the Eastern Province. He is a migrant worker in Saudi Arabia and is facing a death sentence over a Facebook comment that Saudi authorities deemed derogatory towards Islam and Prophet Muhammad.
According to reports, the case began after Anojan responded to a social-media post containing derogatory remarks about Lord Shiva. He subsequently deleted his comment and posted an apology video. The Al-Ahsa Criminal Court initially sentenced him on July 15 to five years in prison and a fine of three million Saudi riyals under Saudi Arabia’s Anti-Cyber Crime Law. The Saudi prosecution appealed, seeking to have the case dealt with under Sharia law, and the sentence was subsequently raised to death. Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath later told Parliament that the prosecution appeal was followed by the capital sentence.
This is not some obscure allegation buried on social media anymore. The Sri Lankan government is involved. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has been pursuing clemency, while Sri Lankan politicians and Tamil organisations have appealed for intervention. Signature campaigns, candlelight vigils and other protests have been held across Sri Lanka.
But look at the contrast in Tamil Nadu.
Where are the people who routinely speak of the Sri Lankan Tamil cause? Where are the Dravidianist Tamil-nationalist voices who describe Tamils on both sides of the Palk Strait as belonging to one larger community? Where are the political and cultural voices that have repeatedly made the suffering of Sri Lankan Tamils a major issue in Tamil Nadu?
Hindu Munnani petitioned the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission in Chennai and sought intervention from the Indian government for Anojan.
But that makes the relative lack of a wider Tamil-nationalist mobilisation in Tamil Nadu even more noticeable.
For decades, Tamil nationalism has spoken of an almost inseparable bond between the Tamil people of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lankan Tamils. The language has been emotional, political and often uncompromising. Yet a young Sri Lankan Tamil Hindu is now facing the gallows in Saudi Arabia, and the case has not produced anything remotely resembling the large-scale political and street mobilisation that earlier Sri Lankan Tamil issues generated in Tamil Nadu.
Why?
Is Tamil solidarity supposed to extend across the Palk Strait only when the political circumstances are convenient?
Does the identity of the victim suddenly become less important when the case involves Islam, blasphemy laws and Saudi Arabia?
And if Tamil identity is genuinely supposed to rise above religion and politics, why has there been so little visible urgency from the very sections that have historically presented themselves as the loudest defenders of Sri Lankan Tamils?
No one has to endorse what Anojan allegedly wrote. No one has to approve of insulting another person’s religion. The question is much simpler: does a Tamil facing a death sentence deserve concern from Tamil-nationalist voices simply because he is Tamil?
That is the standard that their own rhetoric has created.
Today, the case of Sivarasa Anojan has largely remained outside that political spotlight.
Perhaps those who have spent years telling Tamils that their identity transcends borders can now explain why that solidarity appears so much quieter when the Tamil in question is a Hindu facing execution in Saudi Arabia.
If Tamil is truly the bond they claim it is, Anojan’s case should matter too.
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