SELLATHURAI SIVARASA

Sellathurai Sivarasa was born in Inuvil, Jaffna in 1932. He was raised by his mother after his father was bitten by a snake in his residence. He studied in a Tamil school in Jaffna up to the age of eleven, when he moved to Colombo. While in school, he joined the United National Party’s Youth League, before it was transformed into a pro-Sinhalese party. He later worked as a public prosecutor (Crown Counsel) in Jaffna, where he became a Federal Party loyalist and an admirer of S.J.V. Chelvanayakam and V. Navaratnam. As a supporter of Tamil politics, he ‘used to always wonder whether the Eastern and Northern provinces together would be a sustainable unit.’ ‘I used to always have that fear,’ he says, ‘and to that extent, I never wanted to break away from my Sinhalese friends. So, federation was a possibility. I didn’t think of secession.’ Into the 1960s, he began to notice the impact of discrimination in the government service on his friends and colleagues and as a result, began to change his position on the idea of a separate state. In the 1970s, he became Director of Public Prosecutions. Outside of the public sphere, he considers himself ‘a man of all religions...’ ‘Although I was born Hindu, am a practicing Hindu,’ he continues, ‘I am quite comfortable in a church. I will pray, very happily pray, to Jesus. I will pray to Allah, and also, I will pray on the basis of Buddhism. I don’t, so to say, pray to Buddha, but I pray on a Buddhist basis.’