The role of solidarity when all you've known is scarcity

Hi friends, it's Sam here - I'm the founder of On Canada Project and a proud Tamil-Canadian. Today, on this auspicious day for the Tamil community (Happy Thai Pongal!) I thought I'd take a second to write about the importance of solidarity, even when all you've known is scarcity. [You don’t have to be Tamil to read this post! And for more like this, see our OCP guide called  Diaspora Healing ]

Growing up, my relationship with my culture and religion was forced. My well-intending parents tried to get their daughter, who was determined to fit in, to care, but I just didn't. I went through the motions of religious holidays, festivities, and samathiya veedu's with what I can now name as a substantial amount of internalized racism.

I craved so desperately to be white, and of course I did - on TV, I saw Black and white people, and I knew that between the two, I’d rather be white (it would be years before I would understand why I felt this way). 

In my mid-twenties, I had a quarter-life crisis. I was dealing with a lot of personal stuff - including, but not limited to, my mental health journey. So imagine my own surprise when, in the affectionate words of a friend from high school, part of this healing process resulted in me ‘finding my brown’. After a lifetime of rejecting my culture, I was eagerly reclaiming it.

It was a plot twist that I didn’t see coming because through establishing my own relationships with my heritage - rather than accessing it through my parents -  I’ve been able to better connect my amma and appa, my culture, and - to my therapist's delight - myself.

And I share this because today is Thai Pongal, and in reflecting on this day, I asked myself what I want my relationship with it to be. 

You see, Thai Pongal is a Tamil harvest festival, or to put it, colonizer-speak ‘the Tamil thanksgiving’. And while I’m not sure if that means you are supposed to get introspective and write an Instagram post, I’ve chosen to combine my Tamil heritage with my Canadian identity and offer that up anyways.

My parents came to Canada as a Sri Lankan immigrant and a refugee, which gave me the great fortune of being born in Canada. Tamil is a language, and for Tamils from Sri Lanka (or Eelam Tamils), Tamil is also a culture and identity.

You might be wondering what the difference is between Eelam Tamils and Tamils from Sri Lanka. The more connected I became to my heritage, I considered myself an Eelam Tamil (though I say this hesitantly because there is quite a bit of gate-keeping around “what is Tamil enough” within our own community). 

Sri Lanka is a tiny tropical island off the coast of India - shaped like a teardrop! There are a variety of ethnicities and religions that live there, the largest being Buddhist Singhalese people, and the largest minority group being Hindu Tamils.

However, because of the crimes against humanity Tamils faced by the Sri Lankan government, many Tamils don’t want to be associated with the country, preferring to refer to themselves as Eelam Tamils instead. 

You see, Sri Lanka, like most land ancestrally occupied by Black, Indigenous and People of Colour around the globe, had the great misfortune of being colonized by Europeans - three times via the Dutch, Portuguese and British. 

Much like India and Canada, Sri Lanka was once comprised of different kingdoms that co-existed with each other until European colonization, and its need for “administrative efficiencies” resulted in the Sri Lanka we know today.

This, of course, isn’t a rare occurrence. Colonial powers often leave behind these artificial borders, which are largely created without the slightest concern for the interests of the populations, whether in terms of natural resources, geography, language or ethnic cohesion (which, conveniently, results in “civil unrest” after the colonial power leaves). 

Sri Lanka’s most recent colonizer, the British, were proficient in what we here at On Canada Project refer to as The Colonizer Playbook. The Colonizer Playbook is a list of tried and true techniques to oppress people native to the land you are occupying and exploiting. The goal of the Colonizer is to extract resources, lives and wealth from a country that isn’t theirs before leaving with the least amount of blame. 

Colonizers, like the British, exploit the country they are colonizing (under the guise of “civilizing” them) and using them to grow their considerable wealth, power and global influence. At some point, the math just doesn’t math anymore, and it is no longer financially lucrative to continue to occupy a country, so they leave - granting “independence” after stealing it.

And the way the British have always been slick with their Brexits.  The British ensured that their exit was overshadowed by intentional political, social and economic instability that they manufactured. This way, the country's people focus on infighting rather than holding the colonizer accountable. 

Which is exactly what happened in Sri Lanka. In 1948, when the British decided to pack it up, hundreds of years of scarcity, competition and the need to ensure one's own community was protected and resulted in the systemic discrimination of Tamils living in Sri Lanka by the majority Singhalese population (who formed government). 

So despite the British leaving, Tamils continued to be second-class citizens on their own land. 

Globally, of course, the way that this is reported by Western media (in the rare occurrence they choose to cover it) is that Sri Lanka is uncivilized, underdeveloped, barbaric, unstable, and has “civil” unrest. 

The West, while sipping on their Ceylon Tea, fails to speak to the fact that all of this is a direct result of hundreds of years of European colonization and the intentional economic, social and political instability that left Sri Lanka strife with conflict, inequities and violence. 

This reporting style was recently displayed when in 2022 when mass protests by Singhalese and Tamils led to the ousting of then-president and always-war criminal Gotabaya Rajapaksa. 

I’ll be honest, seeing the protest and the ousting of Gota brought up complex feelings. On the one hand, I’ll take this genocidal (my parents are going to read this, so I won’t use profanity) man being kicked off his self-appointed throne anyway I can get. I relished the idea of him fleeing Sri Lanka, not unlike the thousands of Tamils who had to. 

But on the other side of it, I found myself super frustrated with the Singhalese people who were protesting for change. Oh, so now you want system change? 

Because the truth is for decades upon decades, the Singhalese population in Sri Lanka accepted the codified inequities that allowed for the army and police to treat Tamils differently, the way universities had different grade requirements if you were Tamil, and the way there were always extra barriers to get the same opportunities the Singhalese easily had access to. It was inequitable and violent. 

And yet, the Singhalese population in Sri Lanka did nothing for so long while my family, my community, my people were massacred. And clearly, they could have, look at how they showed up and demanded change when their own lives and livelihood were at risk.

To be clear, I know that the Singhalese people aren’t an inherently evil group. And I am not here trying to absolve them or the Singhalese government of what they did/do.

But what I'm beginning to realize and work through, is that hurt and anger is ...a bit hypocritical of me.

Because here in Canada, where Tamils have privilege, I know that we, and other non-Black and Indigenous people of colour, don’t show up in solidarity with Indigenous and Black Canadians who are presently, covertly and overtly, being treated like second-class citizens.

It's not like we don't know what's going on - because even as a child watching TV, I knew being white would be "better" than being Black - we're just looking away, much like the Singhalese did to us.

Most Tamils here are all about Black culture (hip hop, rap, fashion, AAVE, etc.,) and yet the anti-Black racism in the Tamil community runs deep.

Tamils quite literally share a colonizer with the Indigenous peoples of this land, and yet we don’t demand progress on Indigenous justice.

In fact, so much of the privilege we have in Canada is the result of activism and advocacy done by Black and Indigenous people.

And look, I know that a big part of this is that our community here is still stuck in that scarcity mindset with the trauma that we inherited from several generations of oppression - first by European colonization and then by the Sri Lankan government.

But that scarcity mindset has served its purpose; our ancestors survived, and our parents got out, so we don't need that mindset in the countries our families sought refuge in.

In fact, we need to let go of that scarcity mindset of the past because we have privilege here, and with that privilege comes the responsibility of solidarity in the present.

(And of course, our privilege here doesn't mean we don't face systemic inequities, but we still have more privileges than many living in Canada.)

And the truth is, the same forces that originated the inequities in Sri Lanka, and so much the world, are what continue to cause the disproportional inequities Black and Indigenous people face here.

Tamils, and other people of colour, spend so much time striving towards whiteness that we allow ourselves to be complicit and participate in the oppression of Black and Indigenous people in Canada.

I've been guilty of this. I've seen this. This needs to stop.

Because the liberation we seek doesn’t come from some of us “achieving” whiteness, it comes from the collective liberation of all of us.

So on this auspicious day of Thai Pongal, I hope this post offered Tamils (and anyone whose ancestors were colonized) a reminder that we get to define our relationship with our culture in Canada.

Part of how I am choosing to do that is to pay respect to our ancestors and families by choosing to show up in solidarity with other communities in a way that no one ever showed up for us.

Perhaps this is something we can all do together?