C. Wijeyawickrema, LL.B., Ph.D.

[hi-story of Transformation of Sinhala Buddhists from victims of whites, black-whites and Marxists to genocidal murderers of Tamils : how Sri Lankan governments succumbed to the Tamil Eelam trap -1923-2026]

(1) The Sinhala nation still remains trapped in the Mahavamsa mindset. They are unable to free themselves from the mythical consciousness that sees this island as the exclusive domain of the Sinhala Buddhist people.

                V. Prabhakaran- Maaveerar Day, 2005

(2) …. during the past two centuries, Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism has gradually evolved through the sanctification of the Mahavamsa. Just as King Dutugemunu killed Tamils in the name of Buddhism 2,150 years ago, Tamils were again massacred in the name of the same Sinhala Buddhism two millennia later…”

….Will Tamil-speaking people continue to be deprived of the right to know their own country’s history? Or will that injustice finally end?….”

                N. Saravanan -January 2026

(3) In order to observe Sil [eight precepts in Buddhism] they come to Jaffna [Tissa Raja Maha Vihara] by passing the Sri Maha Bodhi on their way. This conduct has no [seela] moral virtue,  but revenge… Also on each Poya day [Full Moon Day] they [a handful of Tamils?]  gather around the Temple shouting communal [racist] slogans….”

…පෝයට සිල් ගන්න ජයශ්‍රී මහා බෝධීන් වහන්සේ පසුකර යාපනයට එනවා. එතන තිබෙන්නේ සීලය නොවෙයි, වෛරය. ඒ වගේම සෑම පෝයකටම ගිහින් ඒ පන්සල ළග වට වෙනවා. ඉඩම් වෙනුවෙන් නොවෙයි, ජාතිවාදය වෙනුවෙන්…”

                President AKD in Jaffna celebrating Thai Pongal- Jan 15, 2026

(4) [The purpose of the Ceylon Tamil  Society  is to create] a pan-Tamilian state – to keep alive and propagate throughout Ceylon, Southern India and the Tamil colonies, the union and solidarity of Tamilakkam, the Tamil Land.”

                Arunachalam Ponnambalam -1918/23

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Google Analytics Report on Visitors to tamilnation.org for the month of August 2009

Where Tamils live (Source map: Tamilnation.org website 1/25/2010

If the Tamils’ cry for separatism is given up, the two communities could solve their problems and continue to live in amity and dignity.”

M.C. Sansoni, CJ-(Sessional Paper No. 7 of 1980). 

Albatross around the Eelam neck

Tamil politicians beginning with Ponnambalam Arunachalam (1921/23) have had an albatross around their necks on how to justify that there was a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka, despite the fact that the Island was identified as Sinhale by foreigners (Greek, Roman, Arabic, Chinese; Serendib, Seylan, Ceylon) since time immemorial. Thambapanni (Taprobane) was another name.

Divide and rule

From 1832 onwards, under the colonial divide and rule strategy for his legislative advisory council, the colonial governor nominated , one each for the Sinhala majority and the Tamil minority. Later Sinhala majority was subdivided as low country and Kandyan, thus diluting the majority status of Sinhala people. However, with signs of communal nomination going to be replaced by territorial representation, a need arose to search for a method via history to overcome the disadvantage in population numbers.

This effort  has a history of its own, and Sarvanan’s grievance against the Mahavamsa author Mahanama Thero is an attempt to drop the albatross of a Tamil homeland theory by shifting attention to the root cause behind an imaginary Tamil genocide perpetrated by Sinhala Buddhists. In this job, he has forgotten that the Sinhala Buddhists suffered more under the Sinhala government than the Tamils. In fact it is amazing how a small group of Tamil separatists with the support of some Sinhala black-whites, were able to project and label Sinhala Buddhists who were the victims of discrimination and colonial genocide as murderers of innocent Tamils! Even though the history and geography of Sri Lanka prove otherwise, Saravanan has discovered in 2025 evidence from the 5^th century A.D. Mahavamsa one or two sentences that poisoned the Sinhala mind. He forget that the existence of an Elara tomb  closer to where he was killed by King Dutugemunu negates his theory of a Sinhala mindset to  massacre Tamils then or now.

Can we eat history?

There was a demand for a separate Dravida Nadu state in India from 1938, similar to the demand for a separate Pakistan state under the two-nation theory espoused by Ali Jinna and surreptitiously promoted  by the colonial master. In 1916 the justice Party was formed against the Brahmins (Aryans) and the Hindi language. In  1925 E. V. Ramasamy (Periyar) joined the Justice Party transforming it as Dravidar Kazhagam in 1944. In 1941 he had a meeting to align with Ali Jinna’s project with his Dravida Nadu plan consisting of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andra Pradesh and Karnatic regions. Jinna backed off  when he realized he could fight it alone. C. N. Annadurai formed the DMK party in 1949, and the demand for a Dravidasthan was dropped with the Sino-Indian war in 1962. The 16th Indian Constitutional Amendment in 1963 made secessionist designs illegal, and the DMK elements moved to Ceylon to continue their illicit operations in the Kandyan plantation areas.  They were branded as Kallathonis (illegal migrants).

Since the 1840s Christian missionaries interfered in creating a Dalith-Aryan Fault line between south and North India (a Balkanizing plan to break India). This was both similar and different from what is happening these days in the Northeastern part of India bordering China/Burma etc. Within Tamil Nadu itself two Dalith groups wanted their own separate states thus dividing it into three regions.

There were failed attempts to promote a Tamil state idea in Malaysia and more recently in the Fiji Islands. For example,  SJV Chelvanayagam born in Malaya was brought to Ceylon via the South Indian Christian Church because of the growth of the Boomiputhra movement there. In Singapore a shanty bog then, Tamils did gain a strong foothold (The purge of Indians from African states (1972) was a phenomenon took place with dictators like Idi Amin).

History and Geography

The  historical data above  indicates the double or treble jeopardy  SJV Chelvanayagam faced after he and few others rebelled against G. G. Ponnambalam for his joining the  D. S. Senanayake’s UNP cabinet (1948). They  formed the Tamil State Party (FP) in 1949. At that time GGP’s ACTC did not support the federal idea (now in 2026 DBS Jeyaraj, who began his life as an FP youth tries to use what a juvenile  SWRD said in 1926 to give oxygen to an Eelam promoting the federal ladder).   GGP was branded as a Tamil traitor, but later under Dudley Senanayaka, FP joined the UNP coalition  government in 1965 and quit in 1968. The tipping point was the refusal of Prime Minister Dudley to declare the Koneshwaram temple precincts in Trincomalee a “sacred area,” a demand made by the FP. But the ACTC continued to support Dudley.

Tamil Moses  (Tamil Che Guevara?)

With no hope for a separate state for Tamils in Tamil Nadu, SJVC thought that the ideal place to try for a Tamil state on a world map, his Kosovo dream, was Ceylon which was politically weak, a monkeys given razor blades kind of failing democracy (Dudley’s 1947 Dedigama electorate mayhem  and John Kotalawala’s role in that was the first ominous warning  in this regard). Added to  this was the existence of  a strong Marxist present supporting both the fifty-fifty demand of GGP and the federal demand by SJVC.

At the funeral of SJVC in 1977, a Christian Sinhala priest Lakshman Wickramasinghe described SJVC as the Sri Lankan Tamil Moses. The truth was that his Gandhian style struggle ended garlanding a murderer’s statute, thus handing over the failed liberation fight to a Tamil terrorist, Prabhakaran. P did not listen to Anton Balasingham, a moderate American-friendly, theoretician, and killed Rajiv Gandhi + R. Premadasa, Lakshman Kadirgamar and bombed Mrs. Chandrika. He massacred Buddhist monks, attacked Sri Maha Bodhi tree and bombed the Dalada Maligawa. If P was reasonable and wise, he could have easily achieved the mission SJVC passed on to him. If SJVC was a real copy of Gandhi, he would not keep a blind eye about the suffering of the so-called low caste  Tamils in Jaffna . As a Christian he did not oppose discrimination inside Jaffna churches against the non-Vellala castes.

An Eelam by pen (and vote block bribes)

Prabhakaran began his killing spree with the murder of Jaffna Mayor Alfred Duraiayappah in July 1975 for working with the Sinhala government,  Prabhakaran was killed in  May 2009  and the war ended, and C. V. Vigneswaran was elected Chief Minister of NP in October 2013.

Tamil politicians preferred continuation of the colonial rule and SJVC said he was prepared to handover the Trinco harbour to India. Indira Gandhi supported Eelam boys because of her vendetta against J. R. Jayawardena. So many misfortunes happened and the IPKF became another albatross on the Indian necks. With Tamil Nadu as a secure base separatist Tamil politicians in Sri Lanka played double games to save their skin.

Where is the evidence?

During the  30+ year terrorist war for a Tamil Eelam, the need to justify a  distinct Tamil nation with a traditional homeland in the Northern and Eastern districts of Sri Lanka was limited to items such as The Cleghorn Minute, written in June 1799 by Sir Hugh Cleghorn, the first British Colonial Secretary of Ceylon and the Sinhalese ethnologist Paul Peiris’ description of the five Saivite shrines on the four cardinal points of the compass, located on the shoreline of Ceylon predating the birth of Buddha. Cleghorn mentioned about Malabar Inhabitants and the Sinhalese, and only in 1911 Ponnambalam Arunachalam was able to change Malabar Inhabitants as Ceylon Tamils  when he was handing Census data.

The problem was that history and geography (history is past geography of a land) of Sinhale did not support evidence for a Tamil homeland in the land. There are no archeological evidence  except indications here and there of Tamil  presence. Tapassu-Bhallika could be Tamil traders or Arabic/Persians. King Elara’s  and King Dutugemunu’s armies had both Tamil and Sinhala soldiers. The custom of Chola-Pandi-Kerala royal families exchanging brides as a strategy of maintaining the balance of power with the Sinhala kings, and later with need to obtain soldiers for hire no doubt there were lots of Malabar Inhabitants just like the last Sinhale kings were Tamils from Malabar with many wives. Ancient Shiva Devala found in Polonnaruwa Sri Lanka were built on top of older Buddhist temples!

Money Order Economy

Malaria mosquito was another enemy preventing permanent settlements in the Wanni. Attempts by the British to create Tamil settlements in the Wanni had also failed. On top of that the limestone geology of Jaffna prevented any surface running water supply. American missionaries invaded Tamils in Jaffna and Batticaloa after 1815 providing Christian English schools which was available to Sinhalese only after 1880. This advantage resulted in Tamils occupying high percentage of administrative and professional jobs in the country.  Hard working Tamils went south to Sinhala areas for government clerical and other jobs and as traders with shops in towns larger and smaller. Their income earning from the South went to Jaffna households by way of regular monthly postal money orders. Before 1978, Jaffna vegetable growers benefitted by sending produce to Colombo taking the advantage of import restrictions during 1960s and 70s.

Vigneswaran, a failed  experiment

It is said that Tamils in Sri Lanka enjoy more rights than those living in Tamil Nadu! However, after the end of the terrorist war  Tamils got an opportunity select their own leaders in 2013. The new Chief Minister  Vigneswaran, promoted by government advisors like Christian Marxist Dayan Jayatilleka as a moderate Tamil, became a bull in a China shop demolishing all the bridges for reconciliation. Travelling from Colombo he passed resolutions about Tamil genocide, did not want to see Buddha statutes, instigated anti-temple protests and did not use funds allocated for the Province. He wanted land and police powers. Failed to help the so-called low caste Tamils to come out of abject poverty. Discrimination by the Vellala Hindus continued. Thus, the 1987/8 Provincial Council system did not work for the benefit of the so-called low caste Tamils,  who are the majority even within the Jaffna municipal limits! Vigneswaran tried to get the myth of Tamil homeland albatross from his neck, talking about  another story of Tamil Buddhists in the past, hanging on to Sunil Ariyaratna’s book, Tamil Buddhists, five Shiva lingams in the Island, all the time looking for oxygen from the West and Eelam Tamil diaspora. He even tried to meet the Mahanayakas’ for support! After all, his two sons married Sinhala women ignoring genocide threat! So was Sumanthiran’s son. For Vignes,  King Devanam Priyathissa was a Tamil king by the Tamil name,  Devanam Piyatheesan!

Saravanan, a smart Aleck in Vigneswaran’s shoes

Mr. N. Saravanan, a human rights activist living in Norway, who translated the 1978-2010 portion (vol. 6) of the Sinhala chronicle  Mahavamsa  in to Tamil (in 2025?) is like a Vigneswaran ghost. He thinks he could use the Buddhist Card to cut pork on pig’s flesh.  All the other older separatist Tamils had abandoned old strategies used to justify a Tamil homeland. Now in 2025/26 they have a Sinhala Marxist government taken hostage by the Eelam Tamil diaspora and the Modi of India. With or without India the long term American plan of using Sri Lanka as a military outpost is secured politely by an American ambassador Julie Chung with IMF backing.  It is only a short step now to Full implementation of the 13^th Amendment opening the door for an Eelam country with a UN flag. President AKD not only giving moral weapon to separatist Tamils to prevent Buddhists visiting historic temples in Jaffna and Trinco while removing even the military headquarters from Jaffna. He says he will not allow extremism and racism but silent about separatism!

Tamil Che Guevara

Boy M.P. Rasamanikkam from Batticaloa had the nerve to declare in Canada that during his life time Tamils will have their own country in Sri Lankan land.  This is a clear violation of his constitutional oath and JVP/NPP government is the oxygen  for his mouth. Saravanan’s use of the occasion of a Tamil translation to reveal his discovery that it was Mahanama Thero who was behind all the sufferings and massacres of Tamils for the past two thousand years is a cunning attempt to become another cardboard Tamil hero like Rasamanikkam among the dollar generating NGO-Eelam lobby in Canada, EU etc. These two  and Gajendra Ponnambalam- M. A. Sumanthiran cannot face the Tamil Che Guevara in Jaffna, Arun Siddharth. Arun is educating the non-Vellala Tamils to fight for their rights despite all kind of obstacles including from the RAW agents in Jaffna.

උතුරේ දෙමළ මන්ත්‍රීවරු බෞද්ධ විහාරස්ථාන නාමපුවරු ඉවත් කිරිම ගැන උසාවියේදී අරුන් හෙලිකරයි/ Arun Talk

Professor Chandre Dharmawardana’s reply

Professor CD living in Canada, provided  a  detailed answer to Saravanan’s accusation that  Mahanama Thero, the author of the Sinhala Mahavamsa  wrote in the 5^th Century A.D., was behind two interrelated phenomena: (1) sanctification of the Mahavamsa and (2) massacre of Tamils.

(LankaWeb – Historical context of politicisation of Mahavamsa, and Tamil translation of the last volume  (Jan. 7, 2026).

Citing examples from other Indian historical documents such as the Mahabharata/Ramayana, Prof. CD clarifies that  Mahavamsa was not a Buddhist religious book. It was not about Tamils, but who did what in protecting Buddhism and the Sinhala Dviipa (island) from South Indian invaders (Just Wars). The answer mentioned in Mahavamsa  that Saravanan thinks engrained in Sinhala Buddhists psyche for thousands of years  did not deal with killing Tamils as Tamils. It was about the Tamil king Elara’s (Ellalan) [205-161 BCE] army, which had two Buddhists, one full and the other a half Buddhist. I believe both Kautilya and Machiavelli espoused the same concept. Thus, Mahavamsa author thought the killing of non-Buddhists to save a Buddhist kingdom was not a sin.  This was similar to the duty that Lord Krishna expected Arjuna to perform (to kill his close relatives) recorded in the Hindu sacred book, Bhagavat Geetha. The invasion of Iraq to kill Sadam Hussein was projected as a just war by the American president. But, Saravanan forgets how many hundreds ( thousands?) of innocent Tamils and rival Tamils Prabhakaran killed during his terrorist war excluding the IPKF soldiers and Sinhala සොල්දාදුවන් and innocent Sinhala/Muslim people.

War of Wombs (produce more children)

Why migrants from (South India, Dravidasthan) did not or could not create a Tamil civilization in the island of  Sinhale (later Ceylon) after 1505 is a question of geography. There are no Tamil ruins of historical significance.  The Western Ghats mountains prevent the benefit of the Southwest Monsoons, most of South India was without adequate supply of water. Those who came to live in Jaffna found no surface rivers. For the British, South Indian Dalits became a source of semi-slavery supply of cheap labour that they transported to all their colonies (see Map above). Living in abject poverty their world was very different to the world  Yasar Arfath or Mohamad Gaddafi promoted to have more people to fight the Israelis, which is now taking place in Sri Lanka as human factories supported by Arab-Sharia dollars (two or three males and more than a dozen females in one duplex).

The history of Sri Lanka has been a story of how the Buddhist Temple (concept of guardian angels) saved its Sinhala Buddhist civilization from foreign invaders (Indian and Western), for thousands of years, and from local anti-Buddhist elements of all sorts, gradually rooted on the Ceylon colony as Black Whites,” since the 1840s (Colebrooke-Cameron Reforms 1833; Macaulay’s 1835 Indian Education Minute). The Great Panadura Debate (1873 ) was a landmark in this struggle for the survival of  Sinhala Buddhism”  compared to what had happened to natives in British and other Christian colonial investments. For example, after 450 years of white domination,  Christian population in Sri Lanka is about 10-15 percent. There was no such rivalry with Hindu Tamils. At least 10 percent of the sacred space in a Buddhist temple is dedicated to Hindu gods and goddesses.

Transformation of Tamil terrorists from Culprits to  Victims!

I tried to understand this systematic and organized assault on the Sinhala Buddhist civilization by arranging historical data  under five interrelated topics: (1) Anti-Mahavamsa Movement in Sri Lanka (led by Sinhala Marxists and Tamil Christians);  (2) Dravidasthan movement in South India and Tamil Separatism in Ceylon;  and (3) History of the concept of guardian angels in Ceylon/ Sri Lanka; (4) How Sinhala politicians helped Tamils and Muslims at the expense of Sinhala Buddhists; and (5) Examples of JVP anger/hate against the Buddhist Temple.  

What I found  in this history/geography exercise was an evolving process of victims projected as murderers, by a growing NGO dollar lobby with backing from some western politicians, unable to separate truth from myth, because they have become prisoners of  Eelam block vote battalions  in their respective electorates, notably in Canada, USA, UK and the EU. The harassment, discrimination and genocide Sinhala Buddhists had to face from the colonial master from 1798 onwards, and step-motherly treatment they received from local black whites since 1948, which continues now in 2026 as a deadly sin under an adulterated and bankrupt Marxist ideology. One can see this by reading between the lines of what president AKD  said in Jaffna. It reminds the mythical Kuveni’s curse. In other words, AKD and Saravanan are like two sides of the same coin!

You cannot legislate against geography.’

Wilfrid Laurier,  Canadian Prime Minister (1895)

The geography (history is past geography) of Sri Lanka has been the greatest obstacle faced by SJV Chelvanayagam and the Tamil separatist ever since. Geography professor G. H. Peiris documented how the federal idea cannot work in this Island. Simply stated, more Tamils live in the south than in the northern and eastern  provinces. A kind of federal border demarcation submitted by Mrs. Chandrika’s Package Deal of 2000 broke Sri Lanka into ethnic pieces of unimaginable headaches. What to do with the Planation Tamils, Colombo Tamils,  Ampara Tamils and Muslims and Sinhalese chased out by Prabhakaran? Tamils live amicably in  all cities and villages in the seven southern provinces. This is population geography.

The physical geography of the country would result in a federal system of fractions in war for water rights. Already Vigneswaran gave a warning about an HR complaint to Geneva relating to Mahaveli water transfer.  The 103 rivers are running to the sea radially from a central mountain massif; there is a wet compact west side and a broader  eastern side with lesser amount of rain during the N-E Monsoons.

Feeding a cancer

Knowing all this JVP>NPP President AKD is promoting ethnic unrest with words and actions. He knows Tamils promoting 13A+ which is one step below the federal idea (promoted by DBS Jeyaraj in 2026  as one hundred years of SWRD’ s juvenile plan in 1926) will be the platform for an Eelam sooner than later. Really speaking AKD has no choice now other than agreeing to Tamil Diaspora’s demands.

Mahavamsa written in the 6^th century A.D. is recognized as a rare historical document about a Sinhala Buddhist kingdom, and it was neither a Ramayana nor a Mahabharata. It was not a school textbook. It was not discussed in Buddhist Sunday schools or  monks did not preach chapters from the Mahavamsa (or Deepawamsa) in sermons. I do not think it had anything to do with the university-level history courses. I do not know how many Buddhist households have a copy of Mahavamsa  as a cherished object. If a Sinhalaya develops a conflict with a Tamil he does not get any oxygen from the Mahavamsa!

The big question then is, how  a human rights advocate living in Norway, who translated the volume 6 (1977-2010) of the Mahavamsa Project in to Tamil, who finds defects in that volume and the entire editorial process per se, blames  Mahanama Thero, author of the old Mahavamsa, alleging that he was the culprit who poisoned the minds of the Sinhala race that killing Tamils is not a sin! This great discovery” is similar to what Machael Roberts of the Thuppahi’s Blogg once said  the origin of Sinhala extremism that Sri Lanka belongs to the Sinhala race [only] could be traced back to what the Anagarika Dharmapala mentioned in a letter written in 1912, i.e. We Sinhalese.”

Sinhala Buddhist leaders, even Sinhala politicians, never said what this son of a West Indies (Jamaican?) parent visualized. Like Vigneswaran he had the best one could get from the Sri Lankan state. Prime ministers  DSS, SWRD and JRJ  had their origins in South India and have had close Christian affiliations by birth and/or marriage.

Hammering Mahavamsa with falsehood was a favourite past time for both Tamil separatists and their Sinhala sympathizers, but it lost gas as a propaganda  weapon with the growing success of the Eelam diaspora to get Sinhala politicians bribed and caved in to most of their demands. Why is it then under such favourable circumstances someone like Saravanan taking about the Mahavamsa author Mahanama Thero? Is he smarter than the boy M.P. Rasamanikkam who boasts about winning an Eelam during his life time while Ponnambalam and Sumanthiran living in Colombo add fuel to LTTE remnants shouting near the Tissa Vihara?  The reason has to be that Saravanan is part of a larger conspiracy to snatch maximum from a weak government bringing unbelievable hypothesis to the table to demoralize  Sinhala Buddhists.

There were  no Tamil massacres and there is no evidence to consider that Tamils were treated as enemies by Sinhala Buddhists. Thus, in trying to use the incident of his translating a section of Mahavamsa in to Tamil Saravanan disclosed to the sane world that he is a Tamil Separatist hiding his head in the sand. He ought to come out of his sand castle and meet Arun Siddharth, Che Guevara of Jaffna Tamils.

For example, Arun points our (1) Thesawalamai law was against non-Vellala Tamils (2) Prevention of Social Disabilities Act 1958, which made imposition of social disabilities on persons by reason of their caste to be an offence was opposed by the Vellala Caste.

Just like Jeyaraj Tambiah, a Christian, went to Thailand to Study Buddhism forgetting the plight of the Jaffna non-Vellala Tamils, Saravanan (Christian?) is digging the Mahavamsa of the 6^th Century A.D.!

The Buddhists wish—and quite rightly—that in this country where they form 70 percent of the population, Buddhism should be recognized as the predominant religion of the people. In the rest of the world, Ceylon is regarded as essentially a Buddhist country, and they want this claim established here as well…They will not be content to remain in the position of inferiority to which they have been reduced by 450 years of foreign occupation… They have no desire to make Buddhism the State religion—in spite of the cry raised by self-seeking politicians— but they want the State to help them rehabilitate themselves and undo some, at least, of the injustices perpetrated against them during the days of their subjection.”

(quoted from a speech by Professor Gunapala Malalasekera, President of ACBC reproduced in Times of Ceylon, January 15, 1956, and referenced on page 196 of the book, Ceylon: Dilemmas of a New Nation,”  by W. H. Wriggins, Princeton Univ. Press,1960)

[cc: editor@Jaffnamonitor.com]