Key Points
Hours before India and Pakistan confronted each other on the cricket battlefield of Ahmedabad this weekend,whilethe rest of the world was focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal and Tamil Nadu Minister for Public Works, EV Velu, flagged off aferry service from Nagapattinamto Kankesanthurai in Jaffna, thatwill give people fromIndia and Sri Lankamore options to connect with each other...
After all, the ferry fare is Rs 7,670, almost the same as the airfare from Chennai to Jaffna; moreover,the ferry takes four hours compared to the planes journey under an hour..
Fourth, greater connectivity between people allows both sides to catharsise the trauma that has been building over the last four decades since India trained the Tamil Tigers in the early 1980s (under the Indira Gandhi government), and then fought them in the wake of the India-Sri Lanka accord in 1987, that was followed by a disastrous civil war between Sri Lankans that ended only in 2009...
Onmyrecent trip to Jaffna, that began with a flight from Chennai, a fisherman by the name of Shahjahan and a young Sri Lankan Tamil girl, who sang Hindi songs with total fluencywithoutunderstanding one word, effusively expanded on how wonderful it is to have an option of directly travelling to Chennai instead of first flying to Colombo and then takinganotherplane to India...
For now, its time to celebrate the ferry and to remember the Sri Lankan Tamil fishermen who I met in Talaimannar a month ago.Theywere super excited at the thought of a boat connecting Tamils with Tamils, even if some Indian Tamil fishermenwieldedtrawlersthat scouredSri Lankas fishingseabed...
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