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‘A Railway to the Moon’: The post-histories of a Sri Lankan railway line*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

SHARIKA THIRANAGAMA
SHARIKA THIRANAGAMA*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, The New School for Social Research, 6 East 16th Street, 9th floor, New York NY 10003 Email: thiranas@newschool.edu
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Abstract

This paper takes as its subject the 1905 opening and 1990 closure of the Northern Railway Line, the major Sri Lankan railway which ran the length of the island from south to north. It argues that it can been seen as a social compact in which the life of the individual, the community, and the state became integrally intertwined. It focuses on two dimensions of what the Northern Railway Line enabled in Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon): first, a physical and symbolic representation of stateness, and, secondly, the pursuit of mundane everyday life. These are embedded within Sri Lanka's landscapes and histories of colonial and post-colonial rule, and the ethnic conflict, riots, and war which inextricably shaped the railway's journeys and passengers. Railways are more often thought of as large-scale, high-tech artefacts rather than the smaller everyday technologies that are the themes of other papers in this special issue. However, this paper highlights the ways in which railways also make particular kinds of everyday life possible and how, in being woven into routine daily and weekly journeys, the Northern Railway Line came to intertwine the changing circumstances and histories of its mainly Tamil passengers within an increasingly ethnicized national landscape. In the aftermath of its closure, the railway has now come to symbolize a desire for a return to the normalcy of the past, an aspiration to an everyday experience that younger generations have never had, and which has, in consequence, become a potent force.

. . . the Northern Railway Line to be opened tomorrow would be a great boon to the Jaffnese in and out of Jaffna. . . it has become possible to travel to Jaffna in a single day. . . At last the railway which was characterized as a ‘tantalising vision’ by a previous Governor and ‘a railway to the moon’, by a quondam Colonial Secretary, has become a fait accompli.1

This line has been completely destroyed between Vavuniya and Kankesanthurai (KKS) a track length of 160km. . . The Northern Railway Line is the main line connecting Colombo with Jaffna. . . the third largest town in Sri Lanka prior to the conflict and the Northern Railway Line was in high demand from both passengers and freight. There is a great sentiment amongst the people of the north for restoration.2

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 1: Everyday Technology in South and Southeast Asia , January 2012 , pp. 221 - 248
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

1 ‘The Northern Railway’, Jaffna Catholic Guardian, 1 August 1905.

2 Asian Development Bank, United Nations, World Bank, Sri Lanka: Assessment of Needs in Conflict Affected Areas, (May 2003), pp. 46–47. Available at: <http://www.peaceinsrilanka.org>, [accessed 27 November 2011] or on request from the author.

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5 Initially (as in Britain) constructed by private companies, in the 1870s the colonial state assumed direct responsibility for the production and management of the railways. The Indian railways represented the largest single investment by the British empire in any colony. Goswami, Manu, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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30 Planters wanted roads and railways that brought in indentured South Indian labour and took plantation goods out. Murphey, ‘Colombo’, pp. 197–98.

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38 Munasinghe, Colonial Economy, pp. 117–51.

39 The first extension line in 1864 ran to Ambepussa.

40 Munasinghe, Colonial Economy, p. 118.

41 Ibid, p. 126.

42 The Jaffna Railway Committee's 1889 memorial launched in Colombo was signed by ‘thirty-three eminent Colombo men’, and included the Ceylon Observer's owner-editor John Ferguson and Ponnambalam Ramanathan, the Tamil member of the Legislative Council. Ramanathan also debated the railway in the Legislative Council and served on the both the special commissions for the Northern Railway Line. Thus, the non-official world, composed of influential men, either from the new indigenous elite or liberal Europeans outside the colonial administration, was beginning to assert itself with the colonial government and civil service.

43 Annexure No. 6, memorandum by Mr Ramanathan, ‘Railway Extension Northwards’, Sessional Papers 1896, pp. 22–23: Colombo, Sri Lankan National Archives (SLNA).

44 ‘Railway Extension Northwards’, Sessional Papers 1896, pp. 22–23, Sri Lankan National Archives.

45 ‘Enclosure 87a, Jaffna, July 1980', Correspondence on Railway, Sessional Paper 1981, p. 94, Sri Lankan National Archives.

46 Ibid.

47 Jaffna Catholic Guardian, 12 August 1905.

48 Ibid.

49 Denham, Ceylon, p. 70.

50 Tracing by Senthilkumaran, the exact date of the poster is unknown. Subsequently, this poster featured in a 2009 Sri Lankan government campaign video for the planned reopening of the Northern Railway Line: see the video on <http://www.uthurumithuru.org/ta/home.html>, [accessed 11 October 2011].

51 There are other minorities but they are not involved in the ethnic conflict on grounds of language or ethnicity.

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54 Ibid.

55 Krishna, Post-colonial Insecurities.

56 Valentine Daniel, personal communication.

57 Interview, July 2003.

58 Krishna, Post-colonial Identities.

59 He, unlike me, was quite unperturbed by the staff's attention to bureaucracy and procedure in the midst of the assault on their passengers.

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61 As the Sansoni Report into the 1977 riots found, a false message was sent from police in Jaffna to others on the radio waves telling of crowds of Tamils waiting to kill Sinhalese passengers arriving in Jaffna. Ibid.

62 Ibid.

63 Tambiah, Sri Lanka.

64 Ibid, p. 12.

65 Stokke, Kristian, ‘Building the Tamil Eelam State: Emerging State Institutions and Forms of Governance in LTTE-controlled Areas in Sri Lanka’, Third World Quarterly, 27 (6), 2006, p. 1022CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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72 Thiranagama, In My Mother's House.

73 University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna), ‘The Exodus from Jaffna’, Special Report No. 6, December 1995; <http://www.uthr.org/SpecialReports/spreport6.htm>, [accessed 11 October 2011].

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76 See University Teachers for Human Rights, ‘Let Them Speak: Truth about Sri Lanka's Victims of War’, Special Report No. 34, 13 December 2009, <http://www.uthr.org/SpecialReports/Special%20rep34/Uthr-sp.rp34.htm>, [accessed 11 October 2011]; United Nations, Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka (2011), <http://www.un.org/News/dh/infocus/Sri_Lanka/POE_Report_Full.pdf>, [accessed 10 October 2011].

77 The President donated his April salary, government employees had one day's pay docked, children donated through their schools, and celebratory tickets were sold for prospective journeys.

78 Accessible on: <http://www.uthurumithuru.org/ta/home.html>, [accessed 10 October 2011].

79 It also shows glimpses of the famous Mihintale Buddhist Stupa and a farmer waving through the window.

80 See, for example, C. Mascarenhas, ‘Robbing from Schoolchildren?’, The Sunday Leader, 16 May 2010; <http://www.thesundayleader.lk/2010/05/16/robbing-from-school-children/> and ‘Where are all the funds collected for ‘Uthuru mithuru’ (Northern friends) railway?’, Lanka e-news, 4 May 2010, <http://www.lankaenews.com/English/news.php?id=9496>, [both accessed 11 October 2011].

81 ‘Letter to the Editor from Major General A. M. B. Amunugama KSV (Retired), Project Director’, Rebuilding Yal Devi Friendship Track; <http://www.uthurumithuru.org/en/news/72-reply-to-the-editor-in-chief-of-lanka-irida-sangrahaya.html>, [accessed 11 October 2011].