A new Tamil Eelam - why and why not.

Do Tamils have a legitimate right to a separate Tamil eelam?

This is the question being asked on www.judgeandjury.com which is
where tamil.co.uk will take you.

Apparently, a lot of Tamil people are still protesting in Westminster
in the UK, and a few other places, no doubt. What exactly can the UK
government do about the Sri Lankan government and its actions? And
what exactly does the UK governmeent have to do about securing a
separate "Tamil eelam", whatever that means to someone who isn't
directly in the line of fire?

First of all, who are Tamils? Most of them are Tamil speaking
migrants from the Indian land mass, many of them having left several
generations ago to many different countries. Today Tamilnadu is the
state in India that has the most number of Tamil people, but they are
Indians first, and have absolutely no political cause to subscribe to
any notion of a separate country for Tamil people, in Sri Lanka or
anywhere.

If there are any, it is our business to ask them if they are Indians
first or Tamils? If they are Indian, then they are already well
represented by Indian leadership in asking for a proper settlement
plan for all the displaced Tamil people in Sri Lanka, and should take
heart in the Rs. 500 crores that India has given the Sri Lankan
government to deal with the crisis on their hands.

It isn't as if Sri Lanka created this crisis. If the LTTE had worked
towards bringing prosperity to Tamil people instead of holding them in
impoverished and helpless conditions for so long, we wouldn't have
refugees today. We'd have people with assets simply going back home
to their sweet, secure lives.

The biggest Tamil population in the world, in India, the original home
of the language and the people speaking it, have no grouse big enough
to ask for a separate country. They are enjoying the prosperity of a
big, unified, diverse, vibrantly democratic India, and are playing
their industrious part in making India even more economically
competitive. They are highly unlikely to be swayed towards anything
revolutionary.

Tamil people living in far off countries like the UK, British Guyana,
Cyprus, the USA, and so on have, unless they're preparing to move to
Sri Lanka to live in a separate Tamil Eelam, no reason to demand
anything from anyone, leave alone their country of legal residence.
If all migrants in all countries started demanding their own country,
we can imagine the chaos. That is simply not on.

Are these protesting Tamil people ready to move en masse to this new
country they suppose they will be gifted by the government of Sri
Lanka? Very unlikely. There are Tamil people all over the world, but
the notable generations of settlers range from Malaysia to South
Africa and some former British colonies. Do they all want to move to
this new Tamil Eelam, or do they all want little Tamil Eelams in their
own countries? There is no evidence of either scenario evolving.

So, who the heck are these fools trying to raise a hue and a cry for
"Tamils", as if they're a whole different species? Logically, whoever
is kicking up this new mayhem in the media is a remnant supporter of
the LTTE. It is rather strange of them to not mention "Sri Lanka" in
their demand for a Tamil Eelam. For it isn't as if India is willing
to carve up a piece of its territory to create this new country, if
indeed, that is what they are asking for. By not mentioning Sri
Lanka, they are hoping to somehow sneak into public consciousness that
all Tamil people all over the world want a separate country. Very
cunning, but it isn't going to work.

The Sri Lankan Tamils have a predicament. For a long time, they have
either supported the LTTE or lived under its threat. If they have
supported the LTTE, they have no bloody right to demand anything,
because the LTTE is a terrorist organization. If they had lived under
threat of the LTTE, then that clearly shows the LTTE was not a
pro-Tamil welfare organization, and now that the Sri Lankans have
rescued the Tamil population from the LTTE, deserve to have their
chance of rehabilitating the victims. After all, it is their country,
and they routed the LTTE, not Tamil people fighting for their own
freedom from the oppression of the LTTE and its fat, overrated dead
leader and his dictatorial ambitions.

People of the world, beware. Let Sri Lankan Tamils not lead you into
believing that the whole Tamil speaking population of the world is
interested in a separate Tamil Eelam, whatever that means. We are
not. But if you insist on our opinion, we think the Sri Lankan
Tamils, in their lousy ability to pick a leader, and in their
economically weak condition, are in no state to run their own country.
They should get some fair rehabilitation in Sri Lanka, and be
properly assimilated into the population as Sri Lankans, not Tamils or
Sinhalese or Buddhists or Christians or Muslims. If they want an
example of how this works, all they have to do is look at India.

But for now, all you protestors, especially in wealthy countries,
please shut up and go home. It isn't as if you'd risk your butt for
anything Tamil. If you really cared, you'd sell everything you have,
leave right now, and start living in Sri Lanka, not hide in another
country.

The Sorrow of Saroja

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I agree. I thought this site owner actually far exceeded his bandwidth limit when he made this sorrowful movie called "Saroja", which is neither story driven, nor character driven. In fact, it is like it is not driven at all! I just couldn't bring myself to care about anything in this overrated movie. To top it all, it is a copy of another movie! How bad could you be as a copycat that this one ends up in the miserable bottom of the heap?

To write a review would be to somehow give credit to a piece of work that attempts to be some kind of artistic endeavour. Saroja is not. So, if you are expecting this to be a kind write up about a movie that has its plus points, please excuse yourself.

For all the hype surrounding how "different" and "cute" this movie is, the latest tributes coming from someone as cerebral as Suhasini herself on Jaya TV, it is a miserable and highly forgettable piece of directionless, artless, tasteless garbage unleashed on hapless masses done in by a marketing machine.

Make no mistake - Saroja has no personality, no identity, and indeed no idea what it is trying to be. A thriller? A comedy? A caper? It is none of the above. In fact, it is an attempt at all the above in pieces, made by a pretentious, over confident, jackass-of-all-things-cinematic director who has not studied the basics of the art form, has no respect for any of the norms of storytelling, and has had the audacity to hit us with computer graphics that go far enough to tell us who is a "driver" and who is a "servant"! There should have been one pointing to the director telling us in no uncertain terms who the "idiot" is.

This is clearly not a director who has had to come up the hard way. His earlier debut movie was a runaway success and he apparently comes from a lineage that reeks of quality involvement in Tamil cinema. This movie is the one where the monkey came out of the sack and showed its true colours. If this is what this fool is about, I don't want to see any more of his movies.

This is the kind of movie that would result from picking up a camcorder, rounding up a bunch of your friends and neighbours and going on a trigger happy "shooting spree" around the neighbourhood, and then getting to an editing table to see how much more fun you could have with it. This is the kind of movie that should be released on cell phones and You Tube, not in theatres where people spend precious time and money.

When a movie wants to be a "thriller" it should have something to thrill us with. If it wants to be a comedy, it needs to have better than mediocre comedic situations and actors, and it cannot be begging for the audience to forgive mediocrity all the time, especially when it wants to repeat things that didn't work the first time. The writing was terrible to start with, and no good movie ever came out of a bad script. This guy is no writer. It is as simple as that. That apart, you cannot have a jackass directing a movie that would take a genius to get right. Even copying another film takes some talent!

By no means am I suggesting that this movie could somehow have been rescued from the bowels of abject negligence of script, and an outrageous disrespect of audience sensibilities. It just winds its way tortuously through terrible scenes, half baked sequences, unconvincing events, utterly crappy music, all the way to an end that was a relief and escape from this unforgivable mess.

There are too many lows to list but one should sum up the quality of this movie experience I had - there were a total of nine people in the balcony section of the theatre before the intermission, and only five after! A lady walked in during the second half and made sure she switched off the fans below which there were nothing but empty seats!

If there is any way we could cut off the resources that flow to empty heads like the clown who made this stupid movie, that would be a huge service to humanity.