WRITING MEMORY, RESISTING THE CONSTRUCTION OF HISTORY: THE SUBALTERN TAMIL VOICE IN MALARAVAN'S WAR JOURNEY

ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 209 WRITING MEMORY, RESISTING THE CONSTRUCTION OF HISTORY: THE SUBALTERN TAMIL VOICE IN MALARAVAN’S WAR JOURNEY KK. Sakiya Fabin Research Scholar, Comparative Literature, University of Calicut [email protected] Dr. NS. Priyalekha Assistant Professor, Department of Russian and Comparative Literature University of Calicut [email protected] https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17283494 Abstract The geo-cultural origin of Tamil ethnicity in Sri Lanka and its continued survival amid decades of ethnic conflict are subjects that literature and cultural texts capture with deep nuance. Among these, War Journey, a diary written by the young LTTE combatant Malaravan, stands out as a raw and intimate testimony of war, loss, and resistance from the subaltern Tamil perspective. Malaravan, who died in battle at the age of twenty in 1992, leaves behind not just a personal account but a counter-memory that resists the grand narratives imposed by dominant state structures. This paper explores War Journey as a site where memory becomes a form of resistance. Drawing on the theoretical framework of New Historicism, the study examines how the diary intertwines the historicity of the text with the textuality of history, repositioning subjective memory as a credible historical force. The paper also considers the socio-psychological formation of Malaravan by engaging with testimonies from his friends and relatives, highlighting how personal memory and lived experience challenge official histories. In doing so, the paper engages with broader questions of subalternity, erasure, and the politics of remembrance in post-war Sri Lanka. It argues that war diaries like Malaravan’s do not merely document the trauma of conflict but reconfigure the way history is constructed by foregrounding voices often silenced or forgotten. Ultimately, this study presents War Journey as a powerful act of writing memory and resisting historical amnesia, offering a more inclusive narrative of Sri Lanka’s troubled past. Keywords: Memory, Sri Lanka, New Historicism, War diaries, Counter-narrative. Diaries are often valuable letters of cultural canons. Carolyn Steedman, the British historian and cultural theorist, aptly observes that, “A diary may be the only trace of a person’s life and thinking that remains, and as such, it offers a unique entry into the historical everyday” (Dust: The Archive and Cultural History, 2002, p. 68). This insight underscores the value of personal writings, especially diaries, not merely as subjective reflections but as vital historical documents. In contrast to official records or state archives, diaries reveal the texture of ordinary life, the emotional undercurrents of historical moments, and the private negotiations of identity and survival. They offer a bottom-up perspective of history, where individual voices, often marginalized or silenced in dominant narratives, emerge with clarity and force. Within the broader framework of memory studies, diaries become more than recollections; they are acts of preservation, resistance, and meaning-making that bridge the personal and the collective. In historical studies, personal writings like diaries and testimonials are not merely subjective reflections but serve as crucial interventions that question and disrupt conventional historical narratives. Diaries often serve as vessels of memory, capturing the personal and emotional dimensions of lived experience that might otherwise be lost to time. Paul Ricoeur, the French philosopher, views memory as a dynamic and interpretive act that shapes the way history is formed, suggesting that individual remembrance can precede and influence recorded history. Similarly, Maurice Halbwachs, the founding father of collective memory studies, ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 210 highlights the social nature of memory, implying that even solitary recollections are anchored in broader communal contexts. From this perspective, diaries become not only personal testimonies but also expressions of shared historical realities. Dominick LaCapra, a prominent figure in trauma studies, argues that the emotional and traumatic dimensions of experience, often excluded from formal history, are preserved through such personal narratives, positioning them as alternative records of the past. Aleida Assmann expands the idea of the historical archive to include cultural and informal memory forms, asserting the validity of diaries and testimonies in contributing to public remembrance. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub further propose that testimonies do more than recount events; they become acts of witnessing that carry historical weight. Taken together, these theories affirm the significance of diary narratives as both memory and history: they document lived experience, resist institutional erasure, and give voice to perspectives often omitted from mainstream historical accounts. The diary taken here is Por Ulaa (War Journey; the diary of a Tamil Tiger) written by Malaravan, a Tamil combatant of the organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). LTTE is an anti-government group of Sri Lanka, formed in 1976 under the leadership of Veluppillai Prabhakaran. According to the data of 2021 census, Sri Lankan population mainly includes three ethnic groups: Sinhalese (74.9%), Tamil (15.5%), and Sri Lankan Moor (9.3%). The country has been tormenting in ethnic conflict since its independence of 1948, which culminated in civil war between 1983 and 2009. The scars are still there, and the ethnic division persists in many parts of the country. There are many available perspectives of the decades long civil war supporting the government, Sinhalese, Marxists and Tamil people. Por Ulaa is speaking on behalf of any war affected Tamil, narrating the brutal accounts from the first-person point of view. This brief diary was taken among Malaravan’s belongings when he was killed in combat in 1992, at the young age of just twenty. War Journey: the diary of a Tamil Tiger is the English translation of N. Malathy, published in 2013 by Penguin Books. As the title conveys, this paper investigates how the diary serves as a form of resistance against dominant historical narratives, through the lens of new historicism. This theoretical approach emphasizes that texts are embedded within specific historical and cultural moments, highlighting both the historicity of the text and the constructed, textual nature of history itself. In it, the author and his life as a human is considered equally important for the interpretation of a work. The new historicists conceive that “the literary text is situated within the institutions, social practices and discourses that constitute the overall culture of a particular time and space, and that the literary text interacts as both a product and a producer of cultural energies and codes” (M. H Abrams). So, a work can both shape and reflect cultural change, becoming an important part of the records that form history. New Historicists aim to create alternative histories that challenge or reveal the misleading narratives put forward by mainstream historical accounts. In the literary practice of new historicism, all historical events, myths and perspectives, author’s life as a writer and human should be analysed when bringing historicity of the text. As Louis A. Montrose observes the new historicism as “a reciprocal concern with the historicity of texts and the textuality of history.” The historicity of texts shows us the social and material embedding of all kinds of writing and the historical, social and material embedding of all kinds of reading. (Lyu Xiaotang) Malaravan was born in April 1972 near Jaffna. Coming from a literary background, his maternal grandmother wrote under the pseudonym Kachchaayil Rathnam, and his mother, also a widely published writer, used the pen name Malarannai, the same name as the family’s publishing house. Malaravan gained recognition among Eelam Tamils for his short stories, novels, and plays. His most notable work is the novel Vanniyin Selvi. It was in 1990, he became part of the Tamil Eelam movement. In 1998, his haiku poems were published, followed by a collection of short stories and poems titled Enkallarayil Thoovungal. His novel Puyal Parvai, ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 211 released in 2003, received the Northeast Sri Lankan Sahitya Mandala award that same year. Malaravan is still living in the heart of Vanni’s people. That’s why Malathy wrote, “Malaravan still living in Vanni when I was there in 2007. When I translated Por Ula in 2007, I did not for a moment imagine that the society that created Malaravan would be destroyed. At that time, I was only hoping to inform the world, through his writing, of the nature of the society that created him. Things have changed since I translated this book, but his writing still stands out to inform the world about much that continues to be misrepresented or blacked out” (Malathy 19) She came across Malaravan’s book in the Vanni library during the height of the final Eelam war in 2007. She chose to translate his work because of its distinctive style and the remarkable breadth and depth with which he explored his subject matter. In practice of this analysis, it's critical to examine the writer’s social and psychological contexts as well as any books or theories that may have influenced them. Malaravan’s birthplace Jaffna, is a significant region in the northern part of Sri Lanka, known for its unique geography and cultural heritage. The place is the cultural centre of the Tamil-speaking population in Sri Lanka. The area has a rich history with influences from Tamil kingdoms, Portuguese, Dutch, and British colonisation. In the post-independence period, Jaffna became a focal point in the Sri Lankan civil war. Every individual born and brought up in the Jaffna Peninsula at the time of war had to endure hardships in many forms. New historicists argue ‘that any knowledge of the past is necessarily mediated by the current authorities, and history is textual in many respects. New historicists pay more attention to the conflict and contradiction in suspense, and they take the marginal events and figures in the same way as the mainstream. Instead of praising the existing aesthetics, new historicists focus more on exploring of the formation process of the ideology and the material basis’ (Lyu Xiaotang). 2022 Booker Prize winner Shehan Karunatilaka has stated in an article titled, Reading Guide: The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka that “1989 was the darkest year in my memory, where there was an ethnic war, a Marxist uprising, a foreign military presence and state counter-terror squads. It was a time of assassinations, disappearances, bombs and corpses. While the author narrates the anti-humanitarian actions of the Sri Lankan government’s army, we, as readers, may consciously begin to sympathise with the minority Tamil population, finding their actions to be justified in some sense. It has clear-cut evidence that they have been neglected by the Sinhalese, the majority population in Lanka. Public discrimination against Tamils was rampant, with instances such as being chased off buses. Sri Lankan army men abducted their women, often invading their homes. They burned and shot civilians, dear ones of the Pooralis, sometimes in front of their very eyes. In fact, the ruling government was constantly harassing mentally and physically, and when the army men became a threat to their lives, Tamils decided to attack back with revenge. Later incidents were discussed globally and labelled them as terrorist by the watchdog authorities”. The idea of the textuality of history has two key meanings. First, we can never fully know the real, lived past, our understanding of it comes only through the written records that remain, which are often incomplete or altered. Second, historians and scholars in the humanities rely on these limited records to create their own versions of the past, choosing what to include and how to interpret it based on the texts that have survived. When coming to this text, Malaravan started to write the diary on November 9, 1990. Vasantha, a friend of his, is speaking about the brutal actions of the Sri Lankan army. His father was arrested by the army on the suspicion of concealing weapons in a tobacco field. After six or seven days, the family discovered and identified his body. The army had killed him using burning tyres. His Amma (mother) was paralysed below his waist after the Indian army shot her, and his Akka (sister) had to work at the vegetable plot for money to survive. ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 212 Jaffna’s economy was heavily dependent on fishing and farming. They burned boats and fishing nets. The extent of poverty is evident in such villages. Testimonies of several school children of Kumulamunai village have been narrated in the diary. One of the children said that his uncle and grandpa were shot by an army man when he was little, lying in the lap of his mother. The army stormed into their house and began shooting, during which his Amma sustained injuries to her hands. His uncle was killed by the army while he was going outside to buy sweets for himself. Malaravan writes,” Yes, I cried a lot. Amma used to tell me not to cry. Amma said when 1grow up I must shoot the army”. (Malaravan 16). When they were about to continue their journey through the forest without having a meal for a day, an old lady with a little girl came towards them and offered yoghurt and ghee. It was heavenly for them. That lady’s eldest son had joined the LTTE. Malaravan and friends heard a conversation between a boy and his grandpa. Grandpa was telling the boy, “If I die, you must shoot them. If you don’t, they will take or destroy all our things. You will then be living at the mercy of someone else”. (Malaravan 33) According to Louis A. Montrose, ‘history is not a set of fixed, objective facts, but the conceived and interpreted texts. Furthermore, all the texts are conceived as discourse which consists of the verbal formations of an era’ (Lyu Xiaotang). But War Journey is hard to read as a conceived and interpreted text, for its narration and content. While writing, the writer wasn’t in a conscious attempt to bring their voices to the world. Whatever is the social situation depicted in the pages, are absolute picturization of an era of conflict. “In 1960s and 1970s, the poststructuralist intellectual revolution challenged the old historicism on several aspects and established a new set of assumptions: Firstly, history is always “narrated” and the past is always in the form of “representations” so the first sense is untenable; Secondly, there is no single “history”, only discontinuous and contradictory “histories”; Thirdly, the past is not something which confronts us as if it were a physical object, but is something we construct from already written texts of all kinds of which we construe in line with our particular historical concerns; Fourthly, “history” is always a matter of telling a story about the past, using other texts as our intertexts and literary works should be regarded as texts among other texts”- ( Lyu Xiaotang) New historicist literary analysis allows to read War Journey as a text among other texts. The boundary sets in the limit. Even though, it is certain that the ‘narrated’ history and ‘represented’ past in the work would serve as partly history, “as critical method and language adequate to describe culture under capitalism participate in the economy they describe”. (Xiaotang Lyu) Particularly, when the historical concern of the work stands with the minority Tamils. Malaravan recalls an event he witnessed in Oddusudan police station, under the control of the government’s army. In 1989, his brother was arrested and kept there. There was a bed made of barbed wire. A boy was forced to lie face down and tied up. Shortly after, a group of seven or eight men arrived. Among them a large man who placed his boot on the boy’s back. The boy screamed in pain as the man stood on him, yanked his hair, and mockingly pretended to ride him like a horse. Then, grabbing the boy’s forehead, he pulled him backward. The boy let out a faint cry, “Ammaaa,” before his neck gave way, hanging limply like that of a rooster with a broken neck. Blood began to drip beneath the barbed wire. Nearby, about fifteen others were confined within a barbed-wire enclosure, being brutally beaten with logs. This kind of torment not only cost Tamil lives but also shattered their ability to communicate and function. The Sri Lankan government army imposed tight control over the economic conditions of civilians. Displacement led to severe financial hardship, forcing people to rebuild their lives from scratch in unfamiliar places. Vast tracts of fertile land remained uncultivated due to these displacements. Repeated upheavals made it impossible for people to continue or ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 213 develop agricultural skills. The army even restricted transportation routes. Many military camps were established near temples. Mankulam Mahavidhyalam, once largely undamaged, now lies overgrown with grass. Lacking adequate military infrastructure and resources, the army seized key public institutions like the police stations, hospitals, community halls, churches, temples, banks, post offices, milk distribution centers, and paddy storage facilities, effectively paralyzing civilian life. “How can you understand that it is the occupier who creates a Poorali? You once dealt the blow. Now you are imprisoned. When a fox tries to eat the goat, the goat must turn into a tiger and leap. That is the edict of the times”- (Malaravan 31) An Indian military chief, who has engaged with the author, acknowledged as “we estimated the manpower of the LTTE, but we failed to estimate their mental and spiritual strength; for that failure, we are now paying” (Malaravan 72). The Army displayed utter disregard for the bodies of the Pooralis. One fallen fighter, with a gunshot wound to the forehead, had his abdomen gruesomely slashed in a criss-cross pattern and was pierced by multiple bullets. Even amid fierce fighting, it was an accepted norm that the body of a government soldier would not be violated. Both warring sides were expected to bury government troops with a sense of respect and duty. It is evident from the words of Malaravan that they had possessed guns to shoot and other weapons also. To move on, they had to cut forest paths, and that was a tough task. All the Pooralis would soak in sweat as the work is under the burning sun. Master would order them,” We are not a state military. We are Pooralis. We do not have a lot of resources. We must be very frugal. Every bullet we use must kill an occupying enemy soldier. We must avoid wasteful use of weapons”. (Malaravan 21). Lyu Xiaotang has pointed out in his paper An introduction to New Historicism that ‘although New Historicism is not a unified practice, all the new historicists usually have the same literary criticising mode. They, at first, find out an anecdote from the ignored resources, such as part of the history event, a poem, the pictures and the architectural design, and then explore the deep insight and meaning of them to relate them with their research. Finally, the new historicists focus on the connections between the custom, cultural situation and the ideology of the literary works in the composing period and the texts to touch the real traces of the event. Since history is full of textuality, the past can never be available to us in authentic and pure form’. (Lyu Xiaotang) The diary is melancholic and poetic in tone. Most of its chapters show how they believe in the signs and images around. The author encompasses after the description of loss as, “the day the cow’s calf was taken by a crocodile. A mongoose kills a peacock. The peacock rips a snake. The Alakaaddi, which warns everyone, also loses its eggs to something in the fields. The mother rabbit is swallowed by the python, and baby rabbits search for their mother. This is the struggle for food among all living beings. Humans are different. Of course, he has to show that he is above all the other living things. Humans kill their own kind, not for Food, but to dominate” (Malaravan 75). The lyrical quality of the work is brilliant as he juxtaposes war and nature, nature and human etc., and the weight of his emotions is enhanced by the narrative technique. He chose metaphors from nature, like the bird Alakkadi, symbolising an impending danger. This type of poignant rhetoric style evokes the responsibility of a civilian. With a vivid description of violence, the work share philosophy of life, and conflict between morality and ideology. In War Journey, memory operates not as passive recollection but as an active means of reclaiming narrative agency in the face of dominant historical erasure. By documenting the lived experience of war from a Tamil militant's perspective, the diary resists the homogenised accounts of the Sri Lankan conflict typically found in state-sanctioned histories. Through intimate recollections and affective detail, memory in this text becomes an act of political ICSSR Sponsored One Day National Seminar on Literature, War and Memory: Narratives of Trauma and Healing in 20th and 21st Century English Literature 214 assertion, challenging the silencing of subaltern voices and preserving truths that official narratives seek to obscure. Works Cited Assmann, Aleida. Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives. 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