Reply to C. V. Wigneswaran’s attack on Prof. G. L. Peiris – Part 3. – Revealing the hidden history of Jaffna
Posted on October 23rd, 2021

 H. L. D. Mahindapala

All Sri Lankans are descendants of migrants. We are a nation of migrants. Even the  Jaffnaites who claim to be descendants of Tamils who arrived in pre-historic times filled the northern strip of land, which they called their sacred homeland, with S. Indian migrants only in the 12th and 13th centuries. There were no significant Tamil settlements before. During the Dutch and the early British periods the colonisers were known as Malabaris since they came from Malabar, not Tamils. They had no links to the Demalas” (Tamils) mentioned in the Mahavamsa. The Demalas” cited in the Mahavamsa  lived in the ancient and middle ages as mercenaries, merchants, marauders and political adventurers. Tamil historian K. Indrapala has labelled the two horse traders, Sena and Guttika as usurpers and Elara as a political adventurer”. (p.46 — Journal of the Ceylon Branch  of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol XIII, 1969). That stream of Tamils dried out. They either integrated with the Sinhalese or went back to India. Though the Tamil mercenaries poured in the seventh century it was in tenth century that we get more definite  literary or epigraphic evidence regarding any Tamil settlement…..The Culavamsa  too has another vague reference to Tamils living scattered here and there at this time.” (Ibid – 49).  The stragglers who stayed behind did not organise themselves into a political unit to establish a separate state or to carve an ethnic enclave of their own. Left to themselves, without any military support from S. India, they coexisted with the majority Sinhalese as peaceful citizens. Besides, they were numerically insignificant, without any power to challenge the dominance of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority. 

What is of  historical significance is that the first Jaffna settlement was established not by indigenous Tamils but by the invading forces of Kalinga Magha in 1215. The Malabaris migrated in waves in the 12th and 13th centuries and colonised Jaffna which was populated by the numerically substantial Sinhala-Buddhist community. The Jaffna Tamils of today are descendants of the Malabaris who migrated during this time from S. India. They are not the Demalas” of ancient and middle ages who could lay claim to political rights based on their historical connections to the Tamils of the pre-Christian era. The Jaffna Tamils of today are descendants of Malabari colonisers who  invaded the Northern strip and colonised it mainly by ethnically cleansing the  peninsula. The insane fury” of the occupying  forces drove the Sinhala-Buddhists out of the Jaffna, after they had massacred the Catholics first. Then they went for the Muslims.

The available evidence points to the fact that Jaffna Tamils of today is filled with the descendants of the Dravidian invaders who colonised Jaffna in 13th century. The ethnic cleansing of Jaffna after their arrival  is recorded in Yalpana Vaipava Malai, the mini-history of history written during the Dutch period. History of Jaffna as a separate political entity began with the influx of new Malabaris from S. India. The numerical strength of Tamils increased after the new waves of Malabari migration flooded Jaffna in the post-12th century. Modern Jaffnaites owe everything to these colonisers and not to the early Tamils who did not establish an settlement. In other words, Jaffna was created by the S. Indian invaders and not by the descendants of the original Tamils who showed no signs of settling down. In the late British period, after the Tamil revival led by Arumuka Navalar and C.W. Thamotherampillai, the new English-speaking Vellala elite dropped the Malabari connection and became Tamils, proud of their new identity derived mainly from the purity of the Tamil language preserved in Jaffna. These new Tamils of Jaffna, in fact, then turned against their homeland. They resisted the S. Indian influences and pressured Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike to ban the import of cheap Indian magazine, literature and films as it was polluting the pure Tamil culture of Jaffna

When Kalinga Magha invaded Jaffna with his colonising forces and established his Malabari colony in Jaffna he opened the gates for mass migration of Malabaris. Yalpana Vaipava Malai states that they came in waves. They had no connection to the indigenous Tamils who lived in scattered pockets. That line had petered out. Kalinga Magha’s invaders established a new colony for the new settlers. Consequently, present day  Jaffna is saturated with the descendants of the Malabari colonisers and not those of the historic Demalas” mentioned  in the Mahavamsa.

The Malabari descendants and the Mahavamsa descendants are two separate streams who migrated in two different periods. Unlike the Demalas” in the Mahavamsa who came as invaders, marauders, merchants, mercenaries, political adventurers usurpers  etc., the Malabaris came as colonisers or as slaves to the Dutch and Sudra Vellalas domiciled in the Jaffna kingdom. There is no unbroken continuity of one segueing into the other, or passing its heritage to the other. In any case, there was nothing much in the history of the Mahavamsa Demalas to hand over to the Malabaris. The  Mahavamsa Demalas” who were active participants in Sinhala-Buddhist history, either as adversaries or as settlers, had not created anything of their own to be handed to the new Dravidian settlers. The modern Jaffnaites, the direct descendants of Malabaris, belong to the post-12th century colonisers with no connection to the early Tamil settlers.

The Demalas” in the Mahavamsa came as itinerant explorers. They went back home after their jobs or adventures were over.  They did not come en masse as permanent settlers. The Malabaris, or the modern Jaffnaites, came in 12th and 13th centuries solely with the idea of colonising and making the Northern strip their home. The geographical proximity to India made it the natural and the easiest location for the Malabari migrants to hop across. The short 20 km Palk Straits makes it a breeze to cross over. In reality, Jaffna began to make a history of their own only after the Malabaris settled down in the 12th and 13th centuries. K. Indrapala wrote his first thesis on the history of the Tamils based on this historical reality. But he had to recant it as it did not fit into the political agenda of Tamil separatists who needed a history going beyond the 12 the century to the dawn of time” (Vadukoddai Resolution) to boost their political claims.

The history of those who claim to be Tamils today began with the Malabari waves of migration from S. India. It is this mass migration that makes Jaffna the haven of the Sudra Vellalas, the lowest caste in the classical caste hierarchy of India. The influx of Malabaris in the post 12th century gave numerical and political strength to Jaffna to emerge as a formidable political unit. Recruiting the poverty-stricken Malabaris was cheap for the Vellala tobacco planters and the Dutch traders. Besides, the Sudra Malabaris were not restrained by religious taboos. The other three higher castes – Brahmins, Kshatriya and Vaisya – did not cross over because Hinduism tabooed the crossing  of seas. The elite of India adhered faithfully to their religious code and stayed at home. It was the Sudra Vellalas, the lowest caste, that came over to Jaffna. This explains the dominance of the Vellalas who form the majority in peninsula. Their numerical strength went a long way to create the new identity of Jaffna as a separate ethnic enclave. Consequently, the casteist politics of the Malabaris, who were the Sudra Vellalas, came to be the most powerful force in Jaffna. The story of how the lowest caste became the highest in Jaffna is another saga.

The combination of linguistic and mono-ethnic politics with traditional casteism steeped in Saivism was the standard Jaffna socio-political recipe that produced Vellalaism – a unique political dish that was the staple diet of the ruling Vellala elite. Vellalaism of the ruling elite was sold in the Jaffna political market as the best diet for the survival and success of the Tamils. In the political market it triumphed over all other ideological products. Ideologies of liberalism, socialism, or any other ideology based on humanism could not get even a toehold against the overwhelming forces of Vellalaism which crushed rivals with ease. 

In peninsular politics it was the Sudra Vellala interests, decisions and actions that determined the political consequences which flowed collectively to make the post-independent history ofJaffna.  As the ruling masters of Jaffna, it was the Sudra Vellalas who made history and subsequently wrote it, describing it as the history of the Tamils. This was inevitable because no other caste /community had the power or the space to play any significant part in the decision-making process at the highest, or even the middle level in Jaffna – both of which were dominated by the Sudra Vellalas. It is a misnomer to label the politics of the North as Tamil politics when a sizeable segment of the minority Tamils were ostracised and kept out of the political process. The Jaffna political landscape was dominated and determined exclusively by the Sudra Vellalas, leaving the non-Vellala Tamils out of the picture. Which makes the politics of the North Vellala politics” and not Tamil politics”. Some of the ostracised non-Vellalas were not even recognised as Tamils. They had no rights or status in the Sudra Vellala political order. So how could it be Tamil politics” when the Tamils ostracised from Tamil society had no part in the decision-making process of the Sudra Vellalas who ruled Jaffna? From the Dutch period, when the Sudra Vellalas consolidated their power under Thesawalamai as the overlords,  Jaffna remained as the land of the Sudra Vellalas, by the Sudra Vellalas, for the Sudra Vellalas.

Armed with the political power they wielded with force, if necessary, the Vellalas succeeded in grabbing total power into their hands and running Jaffna according to their norms. But the absence of a priest caste, like the Brahmins, at the top left a huge gap in the Jaffna Hindu caste hierarchy. The vacuum was filled by Arumuka Navalar, the dynamic Hindu revisionist, who elevated the Sudra Vellalas, the lowest, to the highest level of Brahmins. His revision of Saivism resulted ultimately in placing the Sudra Vellalas in the highest rung of the caste hierarchy of Jaffna. In the absence of the Brahmins, the lowest became the highest. When the lowest rose to the highest rung, the power generated by religious authority elevated secular Sudra Vellalas to be the equivalent of the Brahmins – a divine force anointed by Hinduism. Navalar’s act of ritually anointing Vellalas as the equivalent of Brahmins inflated the Sudra Vellala egos with an unwarranted sense of superiority. To be anointed as the Brahmins of Jaffna was the highest social status achievable in the casteist hierarchy. Later the Sudra Vellalas reciprocated by elevating Arumuka Navalar, the Hindu/Tamil revivalist, to the level of an iconic religious guru of Jaffna. He became a revered hero of the Vellalas, though the low castes rejected him. When his statue was taken round Jaffna in 1968 by the high-caste Vellalas the protesting low-castes stoned the statue and the Sinhala-Buddhist state” had to send its Police to save the face of the Vellalas.

Vellala political power was reinforced with religious sanctity when revised Saivism of Navalar elevated Vellalas to the peak of the casteist hierarchy. Vellalaism rose above that of being an orthodoxy. It left the human domain and rose to divine heights. Like Saivism the authority of Vellalaism after Navalar could not be questioned. To question the authority of Vellalism was to question the divinely ordained casteist hierarchy. In India Hinduism made Brahmanism into a divinely ordained force. In the absence of the Brahminism in Jaffna the revised Vellalaism of Navalar placed the Vellalas as the equals of the Brahmins — a formidable force that could not be questioned.  In short, the religious act Arumuka Navalar, the revered  Hindu theologian/priest of the dominant Sudra Vellalas of Jaffna, turned into a political act that empowered the Vellalas to rule Jaffna with divine authority. Invigorated by their belief in caste superiority the Sudra Vellalas assumed that they were the divinely ordained rulers of Jaffna. They came to believe that they were not merely the secular heads under Thesawalamai but also the religious heads under revised Saivism of Arumuka Navalar. Besides, they owned the temples and they could use religion as a political force to keep the low-castes in the place assigned by God at birth. Deluded by the arrogance of caste superiority and political power they assumed that they were born to rule. It was Navalar who white-washed the Sudra  Vellalas with caste purity, blessing them with the power to rule from the peak of the social hierarchy. This made the Vellalas the most formidable force in peninsula politics.

The Vellala dominance of Tamil society is complete,” wrote Prof. Ratnajeevan Hoole. (p. 45,  Heritage Histories, A Reassessment of Arumuga Navalar, a.k.a. Candar Arumuganavan, Prof. S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole, Thesam Publications, U.K.). Vellala laws, customs, rituals, norms controlled every aspect of Jaffna society from the womb to the tomb. Besides, they monopolised power in Jaffna because they were in control of all the levers of politics, administration and religious institutions.  Land, temples, plum jobs in the administration, schools, professions were in the hands of the Vellalas. It was their abuse of power from these commanding heights that turned them into a fascist oppressive force. They took to the pervasive Sankili cult of violence like duck to water and pursued power ruthlessly. The power struggle of the Vellalas to retain their grip on Jaffna made them the cruellest ruling caste/class, with power to determine the fate of the oppressed Jaffnaites from birth to death. Their abuse of power, of course, led to resistance. At the core of major political clashes, whether with the low-castes in the colonial and feudal times, or colonial rulers (Modely Tambi’s rebellion against the Dutch), or the post-colonial rulers in the South, the clashes were essentially with the Vellalas. Their omnipresent power was Ineluctable. Its overwhelming pressures forced even the Churches to succumb to its demands. To preserve the superior status of the Vellalas, the Churches allotted the front pews to the Vellalas and the rear pews to the low-castes.

Sudra Vellala politics centred on the fear of them losing their power over the low-caste minority in Jaffna in feudal and colonial times first, and then losing power to the Sinhalese majority in the South in the post-independent era.   It is the excessive and aggressive power of the Sudra Vellalas that was under threat, not that of the Tamils, or the Tamil-speaking people. All demands that were put forward as that of the Tamils were framed and pursued intransigently to its bitter end by the Vellalas – political strategy that has boomeranged on them. Their relentless pursuit of the politics defined in the Vadukoddai Resolution – the ultimate political manifesto of the Sudra Vellalas — ended in Nandikadal.   It is their aggressive and excessive demands that bedevilled North-South relations. Historian Dr. G. C. Mendis wrote : The real problem arose not because the Sinhalese were not prepared to compromise, but were not prepared to concede as much as the Tamils demanded.” (p.12 – Journal of the Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol XI, 1967.) A typical example of Vellala extremism is G. G. Ponnambalam’s 50-50” demand. The demand of 50% power by a minority of 11% is tantamount to insane extremism. Despite that the Sinhalese offered 45 % to the Tamils which was rejected by Ponnambalam who refused to budge from his 50-50 demand. This validates the argument that it is the disproportionate and excessive Tamil demands that exacerbated the North-South relations.

Later Tamil political judgments realised the mistake of not taking the offer of 45%. Nevertheless, it is the Sinhala-Buddhists who are blamed for not giving into the Tamils demands.

The Vellalas disguised their sectarian mono-ethnic extremism as an ethnic issue affecting the entire Tamil-speaking community. But the issues of the Vellalas were not relevant either to ostracised Tamils of Jaffna or to the regional Tamils. This is why the pan-Tamil movement of S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the father of the separatist movement,  failed to take off. Besides, the Sudra Vellala contempt for the rest of the Tamil-speaking communities – the low-castes, the Batticoloa Tamils, and the Indian Tamils – is well documented. Overall, the dominant Vellala politics lacked the binding force to hold all the non-Vellala Tamil communities together. They were hoping to hang on to their grip on Tamil leadership by claiming to be the founding fathers of the Tamil nation. They even traced the origins of their mythical history  to the dawn of time” in the Vadkoddai Resolution. This historical positioning was to claim a superiority over the non-Vellala Tamils who, as latter-day migrants, would be reduced to a lower status. Fabricated history was used extensively and intensively by the Vellalas to boost their imagined political status and power. History was essential for them to be make their aggressive and excessive demands. The arbitrary and unwarranted elevation  of the Sudra Vellalas to the level of Brahmins gave them a false sense of superiority. The disproportionate share of government jobs gained with British patronage gave them the illusion of being intellectual geniuses. Their minds were saturated with concoctions of fabricated political myths. The Vellala arrogance and their sense of superiority came out of myths fabricated by their politically perverted imagination.

What is valid, however, is that they had acquired, especially through the learning of the English language in the missionary schools of Jaffna, a higher degree of knowledge, experience and power to be in the forefront of Tamil political movement. Even the colonial masters recognised the Vellalas as the leading political force and they were consulted and accommodated as far as possible to keep the natives quiet. For instance, when the Dutch codified the laws and customs of Jaffna they consulted the 12 Vellala mudliyars and it was with their advice and consent that Thesawalamai came into force as the law of Jaffna  – an act that legalised Tamil slavery.  Besides, after the riots of Modeli Tamby – the Vellala rebel who rioted against the Dutch for not giving the job of canakepulle in the Dutch administration  to a Vellala – the Dutch tilted the proportion of government jobs in favour of the Vellalas, playing down the claims of their rivals, the Madapallis. With legalised slavery the Vellalas had all the powers and privileges of feudal casteism to rule Jaffna with an iron-fist, suppressing and oppressing the low-caste Tamils. The powerless low-castes were ostracised and kept aloof, outside Tamil society, as the virtual enemies of the Vellalas. Before the Vellalas turned against the South, the Vellalas were engaged in a low-intensity battles with the low-castes who were sporadically resisting Vellala oppression. The low-castes did not have the organised power to challenge the Vellalas. The fascist Vellalas, however, used all the power they had to keep the low-castes in their caste-assigned place.  The Vellalas,” wrote Prof. S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole, dominate intellectual life. They control what is taught in schools. ….. The Vellala dominance of Tamil society is complete. ….. When Vellalas dominate intellectual life, it is natural for them to twist history. It is the human condition to not accept anything negative about ourselves….” P. 45-46,  Heritage Histories, A Reassessment of Arumuga Navalar, a.k.a. Candar Arumuganavan, Thesam Publications, UK.)

It is the politics of the Sudra Vellalas that over-determined the overall politics of the peninsula. They used the power they derived from their dominance of Jaffna to determine  the North-South relations. Their power, intransigence and arrogance spilled over from the North into the South and ruined all possibilities of peaceful co-existence. With their intellectual prowess and command of the  English language they defined the Tamil demands which, incidentally, came down to the basic interests of the Vellalas.  What was presented to the world as demands of the Tamils was nothing but the demands of the Vellalas. The Vadukoddai Resolution which declared war against the nation in urging the Tamil youth to take up arms until they achieved Eelam was purely a Vellala demand. The upper-caste Tamils were expecting the low-caste Tamil to pull out their political chestnuts from the fire. The Vellalas were hoping to ride into power on the backs of the low-castes. So, they backed the Vadukoddai War” (a.k.a. Eelam War”) to the hilt. Weaponising the Tamil youth was the last card they played to win power for themselves. The ageing Vellala leadership lacked the ability to engage in a physical battles. They either sat comfortably in the Parliamentary seats in the Sinhala-Buddhist South or migrated overseas and financed their war, hoping to come back to rule Jaffna once again according to their agenda. But their grand dream ended in Nandikadal.

With the decline of casteist Vellalaism as a legitimate ideology to sustain their grip on power, Hinduism and the Tamil language became the most formidable forces of Jaffna. Prof. S. Pathmanathan says that the Hindu tradition, along with the Tamil language, forms the basis of the Tamil identity.” (Quoted by Prof Ratnajeeevan H. Hoole in p. 28 of Nethra Ibid). In the same page Prof. Ratnajeeevan Hoole  says that the belief of the many Tamils (is that) unless one  is a Saivite, he is not a Tamil and unless one is a Vellala, he is nothing.” The Vellalas continued to exploit both Hinduism and language to maintain their dominant place in  politics. These two forces were hijacked by the Vellalas when they realised that casteism, the divinely ordained order, was losing its power to sustain them in power. It is these two factors that bonded all layers of the fragmented Tamil communities together. The Sudra Vellalas were able to bring the non-Vellalas under their political wing by weaving the new Tamil identity under the cover of these two ideologies. But power did not slip out of the Vellalas until the arrival of Prabhakaran. The first time that power slipped out of the Vellalas since they took command of Jaffna from feudal times was when they asked the Tamil youth to take up arms in the Vadukoddai Resolution of May 14, 1976. The armed youth not only took up arms they also took command of Jaffna with the gun. And they turned their guns first on the Vellala fathers who legitimised their violence and gave them guns. Other than brutal violence and the ideology of Vellalaism the Vellalas had not offered the Tamils any other liberal, democratic, socialist alternatives to the Tamil electorate. They succeeded in surviving as a caste elite under Hinduism in feudal and colonial times. They added linguistic politics to casteist Hinduism in the post-colonial period. But modernity undermined casteism as a political force. So they clung on to linguistic politics desperately.

As the force of casteism declined in the 20th century the Vellalas turned to language for political survival. Tamil language became the most exploitable issue in national politics because the  Vellalas found it to be the most unifying force of Tamils that can cut  across caste divisions. It even appealed to the Westernised Sinhalese and the English-speaking elite in Muslim and Burgher communities. But it was the Vellala leaders who, in the absence of any progressive political programme,  went all out to exploit the language issue. It was also an issue confined mainly to the elitist Vellalas in the professions. It was not an issue that affected the Tamil traders because those running shops communicated without any difficulties with the Sinhala customers. It was not an issue that affected Tamils who had settled in the South to live in Sinhalese neighbourhoods. As neighbours the Muslims and the Tamils communicated with the Sinhalese without any linguistic problems. It was not an issue at the highest elitist level because they communicated with each other mainly in English, with Sinhalese thrown in.  So, language was not really a divisive issue that threw communities apart. It was really a class issue that brought the elite of all communities together against the use of Sinhalese.

The dead hand of history lies heavily on the present and there is no way of escaping it unless you are prepared to renounce the past. The politics of the past comes down in many forms. It is the distorted history that wreaks havoc on the present. The Tamils became the victims of their distorted history. It is their fake history that led them all the way to Nandikadal. Their inflated arrogance blinded them to the grim realities of history. The alien Malabris who became Tamils of Jaffna believed that they were even superior to the Brahmins. The Jaffnaites thirst for history is to cover up their Malabari origins. So, they skip the Malabari invasion, which does not give them any historical legitimacy,  and leap to the dawn of time” to claim nebulous historical legitimacy. The manufacture of history became a huge industry in the post-independent era because the Jaffnaites were desperately in need of some sort of history, or anything that sounds like history, to legitimise their bogus claims.

C.V. Wigneswaran has suggested the  formation of a Commission to probe and write a true history of this Country.” His idea of a true history” is one that confirms his beliefs of Tamil superiority. According to his gospel history was made by the Tamils and the Sinhala-Buddhists had hijacked it by Sinhalacising the names of the kings and places to glorify their past.  For instance, he says, the Sinhalese had rechristened Devanampiya Theesan as Devanampiya Tissa. This is what Tamils did to Bata Kotte. They changed it into Vadukoddai. In his history he changes Dutugemunu to  Dushta Kaamini, a Tamil Buddhist. He is hoping that a new commission will write history according to his version. The Tamils have two universities and not a single has produced a history of Jaffna – a project that should have been prioritised by any one of them since history is at the heart of the burning politics of the day.  They, however, cannot produce a  history because they do not know how to hide the demonic Sankili cult in Tamil history. Besides, an objective history will not substantiate their claim for a separate state. The only way out for the Tamil separatists is to rewrite a history that would  fit into their political agenda. This is why Wigneswaran wants a commission to produce his version of history.

It is time that the Tamil intellectuals realised that history is unforgiving. They cannot liberate their Tamil people by distorting reality. For instance, the history they wrote in Vadukoddai on May 14, 1976 did not redeem them because it was fake. It ended in Nandikadal. The time has come for them to write a new history of Jaffna acknowledging the truth. They can begin by asking a fundamental question vital for the peaceful coexistence of all communities: Why did Jaffna fail to produce a democratic, liberal and humane society that blessed all Tamils with dignity, justice and equality? Also, there is another simple question that Wigneswaran has to answer to sustain his thesis of Tamil superiority: If the Tamils came first and if Tamil language was here before Sinhalese why did Tamil language go down and why did Tamil history decline making Sinhalese the superior force in history? Those who triumph in history are superior to those who lose or come second. All of Sri Lankan history prove that the Sinhala-Buddhists triumphed all the way. For instance, the Sinhala-Buddhist triumphed in building a tolerant, liberal democratic society though with infirmities. They even fought the longest war within a democratic framework. The Tamils of Jaffna never in their history built a democratic , liberal and tolerant society. On the contrary, their war was fought under the ruthless leadership of a Tamil Pol Pot who killed more Tamils than the others.

It is the inability of Tamils to read and understand history that led them to Nandikadal. The hard lesson to be learnt from Nandikadal is that those who fail to  read and understand history will end up in more Nandkadals.

One Response to “Reply to C. V. Wigneswaran’s attack on Prof. G. L. Peiris – Part 3. – Revealing the hidden history of Jaffna”

  1. Mr. Bernard Wijeyasingha Says:

    The need for a Tamil Homeland cannot be determined in Sri Lanka between the Singhalese and Tamils. It has be determined in India between the Tamils and New Delhi. India is a construct of the British, while Sri Lanka is not. Sri Lanka has an unbroken written history of itself. India doesn’t have a unified history or culture

    The British Empire brought together disparate populations each with its own history under one administration beginning in 1857. There were two independence movements. One was against London and other was against the British viceroy in New Delhi. Only Pakistan achieved both by freeing itself of London and New Delhi.
    Other movements that failed or stopped included the Nizam of Hyderabad. Operation Polo ended the emergence of a Telugu based nation. Over 200 thousand died in that Operation. Periyar Ramasamy and the Justice Party desire to form Dravidistan (Dravida Nadu) on the basis that British India would be divided into Dravidistan, Pakistan, Bengalistan and Hindustan got tacit approval from the British but was sidelined

    Other well known movements include Khalistan for the Sikhs, Goa, Nagaland for Christ, and Kashmir. If the Tamils had a homeland freed from India the issue in Sri Lanka would be mute. Diplomacy between Colombo and a Tamil Nation in the peninsula would be preferable to the power politics of New Delhi who is distanced from both Tamils and Singhalese and sees its geopolitics over both.

    A Tamil Homeland in South India would favor good relations with China, Pakistan and other nations of the region. The economy and stability of Sri Lanka and South India in a symbiotic manner while New Delhi is not. Its focus is with Pakistan and China

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