Anonymous author.

(This article has been circulated by an Anonymous author….clearly fearing repercussions against his/her person. It is very interesting and factually accurate in terms of sociological and legislative aspects and the lack of resistance to the 1956 Sinhala Only Act, but intense resistance again the Social Disabilities Act of 1957—————-PLEASE READ:)

The Tamil caste factor is well hidden by Tamils but it holds the key to many of the problems and issues that exist.

The best thing about the two acts was that the 1956 Sinhala Only Act had little opposition by the Tamils, but the 1957 Social Disabilities Act saw a very agitated lot of high caste Tamils who feared that the dismantling of the caste system would affect their political careers.

The elite high caste/class Tamils soon labored their educated minds and came up with the solution – lets campaign against the government. The ‘racial discrimination’ card became the opted slogan. Of course, they needed to show examples for their false flag so Ministers were mobbed, instructions were given to tar Sinhala letters to incite racial discord and various other stunts commenced.

The racial slogan quickly hid from the low caste Tamils the reality that the 1957 Act was to protect their interests which the high caste Tamils were vehemently opposing.

Now you should wonder why the Tamil leaders did not organize mass protests, demonstrations for the 1956 Sinhala Only Act but did so within 24 hours following the 1957 Social Disabilities Act against caste discrimination implementation. You must probe into this and demand answers.

Where was the racial discrimination in bringing an Act granting the following rights to all especially to low caste Tamils who were being denied these rights by their own people? Chief Minister Wigneswaran please take note.

The Act considered the following as an offense

•       Anyone imposing caste restrictions if found guilty would be imprisoned for a maximum of 3 years or a fine of Rs.3000.
•       No business under a license can impose caste restrictions – if so they would face cancellation of license and may even face denial to recommence operations for 3 years.
•       No person can be prevented because of his/her caste from being admitted to school or employed as a teacher in a school or educational institution.
•       No person can be prevented or denied because of his/her caste from buying any item in a shop, market or fair
•       No person because of his/her caste can be prevented or denied entering or being served in any public hotel, resthouse, eating the house, restaurant or any other place where articles of food and drink are sold to the public.
•       No person because of his/her caste can be prevented or denied obtaining any room for residence in a public hotel, resthouse or lodging-house.
•       No person because of his/her caste can be prevented or denied from using water from any public well, spring, water-pipe or any other source of supply of water to the public (this immediately calls to mind the racial segregation in the US
•       No person because of his/her caste can be prevented or denied entering or obtaining services at a hairdressing salon or laundry
•       No person because of his/her caste can be prevented or denied entering any public cemetery, attending or taking part in any burial or cremation.
•       No person because of his/her caste can be prevented or denied wearing any kind of clothes, head-covering or foot-covering at any place to which the public has access
•       No person because of his/her caste can be prevented or denied being carried as a passenger in any public vehicle or vessel
•       No person because of his/her caste can be prevented or denied entering a temple, devale, kovil, church, mosque or any other place of religious worship
•       No person because of his/her caste can be prevented or denied to be engaged in any lawful employment or activity
•       No person because of his/her caste can be prevented or denied worshipping at any place of worship
•       No person because of his/her caste as a public officer can deny to perform his duty which he is legally bound to perform to another because of his/her caste.
•       No person because of his/her caste can discriminate workers or employees because of their caste
•       No person because of his/her caste can corrupt or foul water of any public well, spring, tank or reservoir so as to make it less fit or unfit for those of another caste.
•       No person because of his/her caste can be denied from using water as a teacher, student or employee in an educational establishment or any institution.
•       If above violations do occur assistance of the police can be sought who will provide what the person is being denied. The police officer can even arrest the person without warrant and bring him to the police station and released after being produced to a Magistrate’s court.

IT IS SHOCKING TO EVEN IMAGINE THAT THE HIGH CASTE TAMILS DENIED THESE BASIC RIGHTS TO THEIR OWN TAMIL PEOPLE AND ARE PREACHING TO THE WORLD ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS.

In 2008 G. D. C. Weerasinghe wrote that the very famous Nallur Kovil did NOT permit non-vellalar to enter and when a low caste using the 1957 social disabilities act right did enter, riots resulted in Jaffna. Mr. C. Sunderalingam an ex-Minister went to the extent of sleeping between gateposts to prevent non-vellalar from entering the Kovil.

In reading each of the clauses of the act, one should immediately be asking ‘Are Tamils denying these rights for their own people?” People should wonder how many such low caste Tamils have not been allowed to drink water inside their place of work, how many children were denied education because of their caste, how many wells used by low castes would have been poisoned, how many kovils still do not permit low caste Tamils to enter, how many restaurants refuse to serve to low castes, how many dead Tamil lowcastes are denied last rites in times of sorrow. People should seriously go through these clauses and realize the extent of which discrimination took place by Tamils on Tamils and this whole Sinhala discrimination thing has been an absolute lie not corrected but allowed to be flogged for people’s own personal agendas.

http://www.commonlii.org/lk/legis/consol_act/posd33370.pdf

That the common citizens have been taken for a ride by politicians of all shades and names can be seen in the 1957 Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam pact, signed without the concurrence of either the Parliament or Cabinet (raising the legal binding of it).

Why is it that no one objected to how a fuss supposed to be over the Sinhala language ended up with a secretly devised pact promising to devolve power? Notice the timing, the demand to devolve powers to regions came immediately as a result of the 1957 Act aiming to give all Tamils equal rights. This equality was objected by the Tamil high class/caste who rallied together claiming they were being discriminated but in reality to hide their caste superiority and the ‘we want to rule our own’ is another term for we, the high caste/class will reign over all low caste/class Tamils.

It was this that promoted low caste/class Prabakaran to be enticed by India and trained with a dual objective of destabalizing Sri Lanka while keeping the Tamil leaders in tow. Inferiority complexes got the better of Prabakaran who ended up drawing his men/women and child soldiers from the low caste while keeping the high caste dead scared of even speaking against him. The high caste Tamils all hated Prabakaran but were using him to win by terror the territoriy they failed to achieve politically.

Examples taken from Dr. S. Rasalingam

•       1847 – Arumuga Navalar a hero amongst Jaffna Tamils, left teaching at Jaffna Central College because a low caste Tamil student from Nalavar caste was admitted to the school.
•       1871 – caste riots between Vellala and dhoby & barber castes in Maviththapuram as a result of dhoby caste refusing to wash clothes of barber caste people. Vellala’s were blamed for instigating the riots (1st caste riot between Tamils).
•       1877 – Arumuga Navalar provided food and medicine to only Jaffna high caste Vellala’s during a famine.
•       1923 – Sutumalai, Jaffna – Vellala’s attack Paramba caste people for hiring drummers for a funeral alleging that they had no right to employ drummers for funerals as they were low caste (now you know why this clause was included in 1957)
•       1929 – Caste riots following government directive on ‘equal seating’ enabling low caste students to sit on benches instead of the floor in the classroom. This resulted in many houses of low caste Tamils getting burnt and low caste children were too scared to return to school. The Vellala high castes begged the British government to cancel the directive. Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan led 2 delegations to London to plead with the Colonial Office to encode Caste into all legislative enactments of Ceylon. (refer Communal politics under Donoughmore Constitution 1931-1947 by Jane Russell, Tisara publishers)
•       (How do you like that – begging the British not to allow their own Tamil children to sit on a bench to study – now you know why this clause was included again in 1957 – Tamils did not allow low caste