H. L. D. Mahindapala

Jaffna comes out of the pages of history as a mono-ethnic enclave that produced three of the most unacceptable political perversions: 1. leaders who were torturers and mass murderers, particularly of their own Tamil people; 2. Tamil terrorists banned by the international community and 3. pariahs as categorized by the Hindu casteist hierarchy and defined as such in the OED. No other political culture in Sri Lanka has produced these obscenities. Obviously, a political culture that produces (1) Tamil terrorists, (2) unrestrained mass murderers as Tamil leaders and (3) pariahs, the helpless Tamils oppressed by their own leaders without mercy, must necessarily create mental and ideological blocks that would inhibit its political actors from co-existing peacefully in a civilized, tolerant and pluralistic society. Mono-ethnic extremism that ruled the peninsular political culture militates against multicultural diversity needed for peaceful co-existence.

The Vadukoddai Resolution (1976) is the ultimate expression of not only the mono-ethnic extremism that snuffed out all other “isms”, including Gandhism, but also the ingrained cult of violence that enveloped the peninsula from Sangkili to Prabhakaran. Unlike the other Tamil-speaking Muslims and the Indian Tamils, the Jaffna Tamil leadership abandoned the democratic, non-violent mainstream politics and opted for Vadukoddian violence. They deliberately endorsed a military solution as their preferred way, irrespective of the consequences to all communities. After deciding on the military solution they went along with it as long as it showed signs of achieving the goal of separatism. But after losing the gamble at Nandikadal they launched a massive human rights campaign pointing a finger at the GOSL for ending the 33-year-old Vadukoddai War by eliminating the entire LTTE leadership.

Human rights was used during the war to tie the hands of the GOSL and weaken the military offensive against the LTTE. After the losing the Vadukoddai War the vanquished Tamil separatists and their allies in I/NGOs invoked human rights to accuse the GOSL of not conducting the war according international humanitarian law. The irony is that in any international or national fora today the most vociferous champions of human rights are those who backed the LTTE to the hilt till they sank to the bottom of Nandikadal Lagoon. Example: TNA MPs who never raised a single human rights issue with Prabhakaran have been the most aggressive champions of human rights in Sri Lanka claiming equality, dignity, justice and self-respect — none of which was available to them under the fascist regime of their “liberator”, Prabhakaran. , .

As in the past the corridors of the UNHRC in Geneva were overflowing last March with LTTE agents — from Fr. S. Emmanuel who has compared Prabhakaran to Jesus Christ to “Paki” Saravanamuttu, a crypto LTTE agent — parading as the knights in shining armour of a higher moral order that would save the world. Their moral postures of being high priests of human rights committed to rid the world of violators of human rights are confined only to the democratic south and not the fascist regime of Prabhakaran in the north. They never stepped into UNHRC with a concerted campaign to accuse Prabhakaran and bring him to book. They also dare not touch their partisan paymasters in the West. They in fact suck up to them and urge them to take action against small countries like Sri Lanka. This pleases their Western paymasters because they know that the NGO poodles will come back to them obediently for the next political line on how to undermine Sri Lanka according to the gospel of Bush, Blair, Brown and Obama.

The Tamils are in this game of human rights not because they are committed to these values at any cost. The Tamils are in it to exploit the clichƒÆ’†’ƒ”š‚©s of human right for political gain. There is no other weapon in their armoury, first, to hit back at the GOSL which has crushed their Vadukoddai violence, second, to cover up their war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the name of liberating the Tamils and, three, to white-wash the cult of Jaffna violence that dehumanized their own people. It is the degrading cruelty of socio-religious violence inflicted on the Tamils outside the Vellahla fold by the Tamils inside the Vellahla fold which condemns Jaffna as the hell-hole of Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Though the subhuman treatment of Tamils by the Tamils has been a common feature in the peninsular political culture it gathered momentum as a legitimate political force under the Vellahlas who emerged as supremacist overlords during the Dutch period. The Vellahla fascist culture was not overtly political. They oppressed the Tamils through socio-religious dogmas, customs and laws (thesawalamai) rituals and religious ceremonies. Of course, they never hesitated to use violence if the traditional pressures failed. Prabhakaran, however, oppressed and persecuted his own people through blatant abuse of unrestrained political power. The violent Tamil culture when it reached its peak under Prabhakaran spared no one. The fascist violence of Prabhakaran was a by-product of the preceding Vellahla culture of violence. It was the 20th century manifestation of the traditional fascist culture of the Vellahlas.

Yalpana Vaipava Malai, the first official history of Jaffna, described the cult of violence that held the Tamil community in thrall as “insane fury”. If Tamil violence was not turned inwards against its own people it was turned outward against the “other”, the “asangha” (outsider). In the 20th century this violence is captured in one symbolic horror recorded by Amnesty International (AI). This incident is one of the most chilling episodes of the Vadukoddai violence that still sends a shiver runs down my spine as I write it. The AI report on Children in South Asia documents the case of “Raja” — a pseudonym to cover the real name of a 15-year-old Tamil boy — who joined the LTTE at the age of 11. He was brainwashed and trained in LTTE camps. AI found him wandering aimlessly and when he was taken to the hospital he was somewhat incoherent though he could recall his role in the violence that was unleashed by the LTTE. AI report said: “Soon afterwards (i.e, his training) he was involved in attacks on several Muslim villages near Batticoloa. When recounting one attack he described how he had held a child by the legs and bashed his head against the wall and how he enjoyed hearing the mother’s cry. He said they deserved to die.” (AI Index ASA 04/01/98 — April 22, 1998),

The obscene horror in this mind-freezing episode is unbearably surreal. How could a mere teenager commit such a crime and enjoy it, one may ask? This is not a case of adult American soldier burning the Koran, or urinating on Afghan civilians they had killed. This is a case of a brain-washed kid acting on the impulses of a violent culture based on the dictum that the “other”, the “asangha” “deserved to die”. But are we to blame a teenager who was manipulated by his Tamil minders? No. He is not responsible for the crime he committed. His crime was predictable in that he came out of the womb of the violent culture of Jaffna which, in the Vadukoddai Resolution, urged the youth to take up arms and fight the enemy without flinching. The Vadukoddai Resolution enunciated the deserve-to-die ideology for the cause. Simultaneously, and more importantly, it implied that others, including babies, deserved to die for their cause.

The Vadukoddai Resolution resuscitated and reinforced the the cult violence inherent in the peninsular political culture. It legitimised and provided the ideological force for the latent violence to surface and, like Hindu juggernaut, run down the latter half of the 20th century destroying everything in its path. “Rajah’s” violence goes to the heart of the Vadukoddai violence unleased by the Jaffna Tamil leadership. Of course, as usual, the Jaffna jingoists do not accept responsibility for the Vadukoddai violence that manifested in the shape and form of Prabhakaran. As usual they had to find a scapegoat and their claim is that Prabhakaran was the creation of the Sinhalese. He was the answer to Sinhala violence that erupted in “1983”, they say.

Let us accept this flawed argument for the moment. But how does this excuse explain the behaviour of “Rajah”? If the violence endorsed in the Vadukoddai Resolution is the answer to the Sinhala violence shouldn’t the Tamil violence be directed ONLY against the Sinhalese. Why do the Muslims deserve to die because of something done by the Sinhalese? What had the Muslims done to face the wrath of the Tamils? What did the Muslim baby do the Tamils to be plucked from the breast of a helpless Muslim mother and dashed against a wall? If the Vadukoddai-Prabhakaranist violence was aimed at achieving retributive justice against the Sinhalese why were the Muslims at prayer in Kathankudi targeted by Prabhakaran, the cult hero of Tamil violence? If it is the Sinhalese who discriminated against the Jaffna Tamils why should the 75,000 Muslims be expelled from Jaffna at gun point?

Leaving that aside, consider how Prabhakaran, the twentieth century avatar of 17th century Sangkili, the first mass murderer of Tamils, turned against the Tamils. The first to die at his hands was Alfred Duraiyappah in 1975. No Tamil leader in the Federal Party condemned it. The Tamils, including those in the diaspora, tacitly agreed that Duraiyappah “deserved to die” because he was not one of them. There was more than touch of triumphalism in this murder. The Tamils in the diaspora were jubilant that an organiser of the SLFP — a part of the hated Sinhala outfit — was eliminated. The silent nod given to the cold blooded murder of Duraiyappah encouraged Prabhakaran to go on an unbridled spree of killing “more Tamils than all the others put together” (S. C. Chandrahasan, the son of S.J. V. Chelvanayakam.) Prabhakaran was not alone in killing Tamils. He was the scion of the Tamil culture that targeted anyone — even babies — who “deserved to die” because they were a threat to the purity of the mono-ethnic culture which was rated as political desideratum for the survival of Tamils.

Ethnic cleansing began in Jaffna with Tamil racists not only persecuting and slaughtering Sinhalese but also by dropping pig’s bones and flesh into Muslim wells. Even Tamil Catholics who did not conform to the Hindu casteists norms were persecuted and slaughtered. The guilt of crimes committed against the Tamils and non-Tamils by the ruling political culture of Jaffna lies entirely on the venomous, vindictive cult of violence that ruled Jaffna down the ages.

The Prabhakaranist rule was the cruellest period of Jaffna history. It went beyond all known limits. How can the Tamils, for instance, justify the killings of Neelan Tiruchelvam and Appapillai Amirthalingam, two leading Tamil icons who had done more for their cause than the totality of killings committed by Prabhakaran? Did Prabhakaran slaughter them because of Sinhalese or because it was in his Sangkili blood to slaughter Tamils who refused to owe allegiance to him? What had the Sinhalese done to Prabhakaran to kill Mrs. Ragini Thiranagama? If the Sinhalese were criminal gangs out to get the Tamils why did 300,000 Tamils flee Prabhakaran’s concentration camps and walk into the arms of the Sinhala security forces?

Those who invoke human rights brush under the carpet Tamil violence against Tamils which is unpardonable given their claim to be the holy liberators of Tamils from Sinhala oppression. Human rights campaigns against Sri Lanka has been focused on the post-Ponnambalam-Chelvanayakam period where the Sinhalese, provoked deliberately by the Tamil leaders, went on the rampage. Please note that this is not an argument to justify Sinhala violence. This is raised only to show the qualitative and quantitative difference between provoked Sinhala violence and unprovoked Tamil violence against Tamils. In fact, historians have pointed out that Sinhala-Tamil relations were quite harmonious without any violence until the Ponnambalam-Chelvanayakam divisive politics provoked the Sinhalese to react violently from the late 30s.

Tamil violence against Tamils, however, was not provoked by external factors. It was an indigenous force that sprang from the soil of Jaffna — the epicentre of Tamil violence from the year dot. The most obscene aspect of Tamil violence is that it was fostered, ideologically reinforced and directed at all times by the Tamil elite against the defenceless, helpless lower rungs in their casteist hierarchy who had no recourse to justice under feudal or even colonial times. Meaningful action to liberate Tamils from traditional violence was taken only by S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike when he passed Social Disabilities Act of 1957. It was the first ever political and legal act to liberate the Tamils from the yoke of casteist slavery.

Though the Tamil violence against the Tamils was an integral part of the Jaffna Tamil culture it was the sporadic violence against the Tamils by the Sinhalese that was magnified manifold to gain political mileage both abroad and at home. There was, however, no commensurate focus on the violence of the Tamils against Tamils. Why? Keeping the history of Jaffna hidden in the dark went a long way to cover up the crimes committed by the Tamils against Tamils. It was a common trait among the Tamils to turn a blind eye to the liquidation of dissident Tamils. These crimes were excused as those who “deserved to die”. The image of Prabhakaran, for instance, rose to divine status in the Tamil consciousness with the liquidation of the entire Tamil leadership by him. The abduction of under-aged Tamil children gave him heroic status of a leader who can mesmerize the youth to follow him to death. Subconsciously — and sometime consciously — the Tamils in the diaspora in particular accepted that the Tamils who were slaughtered by the Tigers as those who “deserved to die”.

James Burns of the New York Times (May 28, 1995) in his article titled Latest Pol Pot of Asia wrote: “He (Prabhakaran) has shown a bloodthirstiness that has compared with some of the cruellest figures in recent Asian history, including Pol Pot of Cambodia.” Prof. Rajan Hoole, the head of UTHR, asked, wringing his hands: “How did this evil come out of the womb of Jaffna?” But the Tamil propagandists got away with the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the name of elusive Eelam by diverting attention to the “Sinhala state”.

The history of Jaffna, on the contrary, was hidden to project the peninsula as the home of the innocent Adams and Eves who lived in a paradisiacal haven from time immemorial until the Satanic Sinhala-Buddhists, the late comers, discriminated and victimized the Jaffna Tamils depriving them of the fruits of their trees which, according to their gospel, were planted by their pre-historic ancestors who were the first arrivals to land on Sri Lankan soil. This was the narrative that was propagated successfully until it became a part of the common folklore both at home and abroad. This gave the Jaffna Tamil leaders the false image of being the victims of the majority who had denied them their basic rights. They underplayed the status of being the most privileged community in Sri Lanka and overplayed the image of being the underdog to the nth degree which enable them to gain the sympathy of the bleeding hearts abroad.

They continue to trade on this image manufactured and packaged neatly to appeal to the naive consumers mainly in the West and India. Victimology was the ideology that they pursued relentlessly to gain the upperhand in anti-Sinhala state propaganda war. Consequently, the Sinhala south was demonized as “chauvinistic”, “racist”, “majoritarianistic”, “discriminatory”, “anti-minority”, “ill-liberal”, “anti-pluralistic” state whose legal framework enshrined in the constitution must be changed to give the Jaffna Tamils a separate state to establish a mono-ethnic, mono-cultural, mono-linguist enclave with borders drawn from the concocted geography and fictitious history.

The “insane fury” of the Jaffna jingoists has crossed the Palk Straits and gripped the minds of Tamil Nadu leaders too. Attacking Christian pilgrims and punishing customs officers for giving permission to hold a football match is the giddy limit of Tamil insanity. Imagine for a moment if President Mahinda Rajapakse did that to a Tamil team from Jaffna! Won’t “Paki” Saravanamuttu dance an incensed kavadi on the streets of Colombo with Sanjana Hattotuwa beating the goo-ooo-rung / goo-ooo-rung drums for his master to invoke the wrath of gods on the GOSL?

Their silence so far is deafening. The politics of human rights cannot be stretched beyond its just limits. It is the limits of provocative actions/politics that are raised in the famous lines of Shylock: “If you prick us, do we not bleed? / if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison us, do we not die? / and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” — Merchant of Venice

The mono-ethnic extremism of the peninsular politics has poisoned the Sri Lankan polity beyond the powers of endurance of its victims. And if the northern politics wrong the other communities will it not lead to reactive defence? The horrors of the Vadukoddai violence are still too fresh in the mind of the nation. Knowing this, is the TNA leadership, in the guise of claiming “justice, dignity equality and self-respect “, dragging the Tamil people back to square one located in Vadukoddai?

Tamil politics is based on a mythical right that the whole world must coalesce to satisfy their Jaffna-centric “aspirations” at the expense of all other communities. Their assumption is that the three other communities — the Sinhalese, Muslims and the Indians — must collectively /individually sacrifice their aspirations to fulfil the insatiable demands of one community consisting of Jaffna jingoists. Jaffna Tamils, who claim to be very good in maths, should know that the arithmetic does not add up.

ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ CASTE VIOLENCE IN TAMIL NADU
Law students of Tamil Nadu beatingƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ low-caste students under the watchful eyes of the Police. It is this Tamil Nadu which is demanding equality to the Tamil Vellahlas of Sri Lanka who committed worst crimes against the low-castes of Jaffna.ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abXf_RamTCc&feature=related