Mahinda Gunasekera  Canada  

By E-mail    
   February 8, 2014

Prof. Dr. Jochen Hippler, INEF University, Germany
Dr. David Rampton, London School of Economics
Associate Professor Dr. Jake Lynch, University of Sydney
Mr. Ken Macnab, President CPACS Council, Sydney
Mr. Dennis Halliday, Transnational Institute
Prof. Yiftachel, Ben Gurion University
Dr. Shapan Adnan, National University of Singapore
Dr. Andrew Higginbottom, Kingston University, London
Mr. K. Gurupan, University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka

 Gentlemen,

British Tamil Forum Conference – ‘Sri Lanka One Island Two Nations’

I understand that you were invited to speak at the above conference held recently at the British Parliament premises as experts who are knowledgeable on the subject of Sri Lanka.

Firstly, let me point out that the British Tamil Forum is a leading Tamil separatist organization which had links to the internationally designated terrorist group called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), aka Tamil Tigers, banned by 32 countries including India, USA, UK, Canada, the EU and Malaysia. You are probably aware that the head of the BTF, Father S.J. Emmanuel was a close confidant of the megalomaniacal LTTE leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, whom he compared to Jesus Christ drawing the wrath of Christians,vide: http://www.asiantribune.com/node/265. The BTF was a leading spokesman for the Tamil Tigers separatist cause supporting their military aspirations of establishing a mono-ethnic Tamil state in the north and east of the island by carving out this region from Sri Lanka’s sovereign territory by force of arms. Towards this end, the LTTE carried on a violent campaign extending to over three decades by planting bombs in public transit, shopping centres, claymore mine attacks, unleashing nearly 388 suicide bombers, midnight machete attacks on remote villages, ethnic cleansing massacres, and attacks by air, sea and land, resulting in nearly 100,000 deaths and an inestimable amount of damage to valuable property. 

Sri Lanka made six attempts to negotiate a peaceful resolution through direct talks as well as talks facilitated by international mediators from India and Norway to no effect. Finally when the Tamil Tigers launched their so called final war of liberation in December 2005 and cut off water to 30,000 farming families downstream from Mavilaru, Sri Lanka had no alternative but to resort to military means in August 2006 to bring to an end 32 plus years of terrorism on May 19, 2009. The defeat of the LTTE and elimination of their military leaders in battle ushered in peace giving Sri Lanka’s 21 million citizens the Right to Life which was constantly being targeted by the armed Tamil Tigers, at the same time rescuing nearly 300,000 Tamil civilians of the north who had been forced to move with the retreating Tigers to be exploited for their labour, conscripted to replace fallen cadres and to lastly form a human shield as a bargaining tool to seek intervention by western powers and asylum elsewhere to continue hostilities at a later date.  

You are probably unaware of Sri Lanka’s history dating back to over 2,500 years recorded in the Deepavamsa, Mahavansa and the Chulavansa which gives details of the island known in ancient times as the ‘Heladweepa’ or ‘Heladiva’ where four clans of Hela people (Sivuhela) lived before being joined by members of the Sinha clan of India led by Prince Vijaya in the 5^th century BC.  The merger of the members of the Sinha clan with the people of the island of Hela people resulted in the land being transformed into the island of SINHALE which name persisted right up to the time of ceding power to the British in 1815 in terms of the Kandyan Convention or treaty. The events recorded in the Mahavansa have been carved in stone on over 3,000 rock inscriptions found in the island which exceeds that discovered in mainland China, photos of which are available in the archives of the Cambridge University in UK and also published in the journal Epigraphia Zelanica. No mention has been made of any Tamil people living in Sinhale in the early period of the recorded history.

The Tamils of South India who first arrived as invaders held on to small pockets of territory for short periods, till such time as the indigenous people drove them back to their land in Tamilnadu.  They came as settlers around the 11^th century AD, even establishing a sub-kingdom called Jaffnapatam in the 13^th century confined to the Jaffna peninsula and a narrow strip on the northwest coast extending up to Mannar, paying tribute to the main ruler of Sri Lanka situated in Kotte or Kandy, and the Pandyan ruler in South India, which lasted for roughly 150 years, before the Sinhalese King of Kotte regained suzerainty over the territory.  The vast majority of the Tamils were brought by the European colonial powers namely the Portuguese and Dutch from the early 17^th to the 18^th centuries for tobacco cultivation. Lastly, the British brought over one million more Tamils in the 19^th and 20^th centuries as indentured labour , settling them in sub-standard housing in the heartland of the country to work on new Cocoa, Coffee and Tea plantations set up on lands confiscated from the indigenous Sinhala people without a penny in compensation, thus creating a ‘stateless’ underclass of people which adversely affected the existing demography in the region . The issue of ‘stateless’ Indian Tamils was resolved by the Sirima – Shastri Pact of 1964 with Sri Lanka and India absorbing these people as opted for by each individual.  The vast majority of the Tamils in Sri Lanka are those brought in by the European colonial powers with a comparatively short history in the island who are now seeking to carve out a chunk of territory in the north and east to set up a separate state exclusively for the newly arrived Tamils.  

Thirty plus years of terrorist violence funded by the Tamil diaspora residing in western countries was unleashed in Sri Lanka by Tamil militant groups trained and armed by Sri Lanka’s neighbor India. The LTTE liquidated the rival militant groups and became the self-proclaimed sole representative of the Tamil people which claim was even endorsed by the shameless politicians belonging to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) which became a proxy party for a group designated as terrorists.in terms of UN Security Council Resolution 1373 of September 2001.

The name chosen for the mono-ethnic separate state for Tamils to be carved out of Sri Lanka’s sovereign territory was “Eelam”. Even the word “ILAM” (Eelam) chosen by the Tamils for their separate state that they sought to carve out by force of arms has been mistakenly chosen, as the Tamil lexicon published by the University of Madras, the highest seat of Tamil learning, states on page 328 that the word “ILAM” (Eelam) has been derived from the PALI word SIHALA, meaning Sinhala, Tamilized as  ‘SINGALAM’ or ‘SIHALAM’ and later shortened to ILAM, also spelt as “Eelam”, which means the land of the Sinhala people.  This fact is again confirmed by Prof. S. Krishnaswamy Aiyangar of the Madras University, a well known Tamil historian, writing the foreword on August 29, 1926, to the book titled ‘Ancient Jaffna’ by Mudaliyar C. Rasanayagam, stated that the word ‘ILAM’ had been derived from the PALI word SIHALA meaning Sinhala and that it was being misconstrued as a Tamil homeland.  The homeland of the Tamils lies in the State of Tamilnadu in South India where over 72 millions Tamils live. 

The blogsite notes of Malinda Seneviratne, Editor of The Nation newspaper of February 8, 2014, refers to the Chola leader of South India, namely Raja Raja 1 who invaded Sri Lanka, large swaths of the sub- continent as well as parts of South East Asia in the 10^th century AD acknowledged that the territory that he attacked was known as “Ila-Mandalam” ( Ila was a corruption of the word Hela ) belonged to the Singalas. The Archaeological Survey of India includes references to inscriptions at various Hindu temples built with the wealth looted from lands conquered by Raja Raja 1 such as in Tanjavur and Ukkal about treasures brought from ‘Ila Mandalam’ which the Chola leader said was the ‘land of the Singalas’.The LTTE which adopted the Tiger emblem from the flag of the glory days of Chola domination have been ill advised about seeking a separate state called “Eelam” which is none other than the land of the Sinhala people. The complete article in Malinda’s blogsite could be accessed at the following link: http://malindawords.blogspot.ca/2014/02/raja-raja-chola-1-and-quicksand-of.html.

Nothing further need be said to establish the fact that Sri Lanka is the homeland of the Sinhala people which has been known as the Nation of Sinhale.  The homeland of the Tamils is in Tamilnadu, South India, and they cannot have any claims to a second homeland within the homeland of the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka. The vast majority of the Tamils were brought over from South India by the European colonial powers as indentured labour from the 17^th century to 20^th century AD to cultivate tobacco, tea and other crops on lands confiscated from the indigenous Sinhalese people. Tamils, Moors, Malays, Chettys and others who were brought by the European colonialists or came and settled peacefully are welcome to share the island of Sri Lanka as equal citizens, but they should not try to tear this land apart to create separate ethnic homelands based on falsehoods as it will be resisted by the Sinhalese who have no other homeland other than Sri Lanka. 

You should therefore refrain from propagating the myth of a Tamil Nation which never existed in the island of Sri Lanka, and lend your support to the divisive aims of the extremist groups of the Tamil diaspora that seek to open up the wounds of three decades which are presently being healed after the elimination of the LTTE terrorists through a multi-pronged reconciliation process undertaken by the Sri Lankan people.  Please give us the time and space to resolve our internal affairs without interference from outside with bogus theories in exchange for handsome fees offered to you with the extorted funds and illicit loot available to the pro-Tamil Tiger diaspora groups. Come visit Sri Lanka and see the ground situation for yourself without going by secondhand tales reaching you from prejudiced sources.

 Yours sincerely,

 Mahinda Gunasekera