H. L. D. Mahindapala When two distinguished authorities on the history of Jaffna  —  Bishop S. Jebanesan of the Jaffna Diocese of  the Church of South India, and Richard Fox Young who holds a Chair in the Princeton Theological Seminary, USA., – collaborated to translate the novel Mirage (Kanal in Tamil), depicting the plight of […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Starting from the Dutch period to modern times, the Jaffna Tamil leadership, which consisted exclusively of the Vellalas, relied entirely on two fundamental ideologies to retain their power and  privileges in the peninsula. Both ruling ideologies were defined in two separate documents. First was the Tesawalamai codified by Class Isaacksz, Dissawe […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala By a set of fortuitous circumstances Judge C. G. Weeramantry,  his bubbly wife Rosemary and children had become  a part of our little circle in Melbourne ever since he was appointed to a chair in law at the Monash University in the seventies. Like all migrants we invariably gravitated to little […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Part of the crisis we are facing today was caused by either deliberately hiding the realities of history, or by political activists  distorting  it  to suit expedient politics  and partisan ideologies.  Distorted  history indeed  played a central  role in dividing the Sinhala-Tamil communities on ethnic lines. One of the main thrusts […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala After the retirement of the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist mafia in academia – namely, Jayadeva (Marthelis)  Uyangoda, Kumari Jayawardena, Carlo Fonseka, and their fellow-travellers  – the public face of universities that has been  popping up like a bad penny is that of Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri, the Senior Lecturer  in History at the Colombo University. […]

H.L. D. Mahindapala If there is one slogan that swung the political pendulum and placed Donald Trump in the presidential seat it is the one that screamed : MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. It summed up in a simple and digestible pill the pre-election plight, frustrations, and failures of America’s policies – both domestic and foreign. […]

H.L.D. Mahindapala Dost thou know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed – Count Oxenstierna, 17th century Swedish statesman. After attending the UNHRC sessions in Geneva, 2012, Dr. Noel Nadesan, novelist and Editor of the Australian Uthayam, and I were hanging around at the airport waiting to catch our  flight back to […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Velupillai Prabhakaran, the sociopathic Rottweiler unleashed by the Tamil Vellahla leadership to fetch their bone of Eelam, is no longer there to bark, bite, or grab Tamil children on their way to school. In the absence of any one else surfacing to replace ruthless Tamil racism and hate politics, C.V. Wigneswaran, […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala I am neither surprised, nor overly worried about the Tamil students of the Jaffna University beating the Sinhala students. Intermittent inter-ethnic conflicts in various locations have occurred in the past and will continue to happen in the foreseeable future which is, hopefully, transiting from Nandikadal to a more rational and settled […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Velupillai Prabhakaran’s brutal violence, firing indiscriminately in all directions, went beyond the mandate of the Vadukoddai Resolution which was aimed exclusively at the Sinhalese. Prabhakaran was the first born child of the Vadukoddai Resolution which urged the Tamil youth to take up arms against the Sinhalese. But his ruthless killing of […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The violence in Sri Lanka raged for 33 years, starting from the declaration of war on May 14, 1976 at Vadukoddai by the Tamil leadership and ending  in Nandikadal on May 18, 2009 when Velupillai Prabhakaran’s body was found floating in the  murky waters of the Lagoon. This war has been […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala One of the main obstacles standing in the way reconciliation, based on a reasonable and lasting solution, is the refusal of the Jaffna Tamils to face the realities of their history. By and large, the average Tamil knows  only two kinds of history : 1. a distorted view of the Mahavamsa […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The very first analyst to see through the veneer of Jaffna and get to the corrosive core of  Jaffna politics was the Dutch Commander of Jaffna, Hendrick Zwaardecoon. (See  Lanka Web : Moddely Tambi – the Father of Vellahlas”). His analysis of the peninsular social structure, dominated exclusively by the aggressive […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The brief history of Jaffna can be explored, analysed and understood only as a by-product of Saivite-Vellahlaism —  the over-determining central force that impacted on every aspect of Jaffna life, from the womb to  the tomb. It is this force that ran through all the phases of peninsula, particularly the first […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The Dutch, British and post-independent administrators have left behind in their records grim accounts of how the Saivite-Vellahla casteists distorted and perverted the Jaffna political culture. Modern scholars (Jane Russell and Prof. Bryan Pfaffenberger etc), who had studied the socio-political conditions of Jaffna, too confirm that Saivite casteism and Tesawalamai endorsed […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala It is hindsight that throws insights to create and illuminate foresight. That is the beauty  and value of history. It gives meaning. It also throws up warning signs for  those with 20-20 vision to read the road map that points the way to destinations. Those who refuse to look back and […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala After the Dutch it was the British who had to police Vellahla violence erupting in Jaffna. Caste wars escalated to a new level. Jaffna under the British was a battleground for mini-wars waged by the Vellahlas against the oppressed Tamils. The British annual administration reports for the Northern Province document faithfully […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Hendri Zwaardecoon, the Dutch Commander of Jaffna, and R. Sunderalingam, Superintendent of Police, Jaffna, lived and worked in Jaffna overseeing the Tamil society, its security and all its law-and-order issues. Though they lived and worked in two different worlds  – separated by around 300 years – they faced the identical crisis […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The status and power of the Vellahlas took a dramatic turn with the coming of the Dutch. The Vellahlas were elevated officially by a foreign power to the top of the caste hierarchy when the Dutch recognised them as the ruling caste of Jaffna. This status was officially confirmed in the […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala I wish to forward the following e-mail I received from Mr. Ramachandra Sunderalingam, the Police Superintendent of Jaffna when the Maviddipuram revolt of the low-castes was at its peak. I think this letter has value for research students digging deep into the caste issue in Jaffna. It  is an insightful first-hand […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala In the  two preceding articles I traced the crisis faced by the Vellahla ruling elite of Jaffna in the sixties. The low-castes staged organised threats for the first  time challenging the supremacy of the Vellahlas. They not only threatened to enter the sacred domain of the Maviddipuram Temple – a domain […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala After enduring the indignities and humiliations of oppression and persecution of the Vellahla supremacists, the Minority Tamils” – a euphemism for the  untouchables — launched their  first organised revolt in 1968 at Maviddipuram Temple. Earlier attempts during British rule to  resist the  oppression of the Vellahla fascists were quashed ruthlessly by […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala In 1968 Jaffna was facing an  internal caste war which was threatening to tear it apart.  The simmering caste conflict in Jaffna exploded with the  low-castes, spurred by N. Shanmugathasan, head of the Peking-wing of the Communist Party,  threatening to enter the Maviddipuram Temple – the segregated religious domain preserved exclusively […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Chelvanayakam and Prabhakaran are two sides of the same Tamil coin : Chelvanayakam laid the ideological and the political foundations for  the Vadukoddai war and Prabhakaran executed it. Chelvanayakam was acclaimed as the father of the Tamils” (Thanthai”) and the separatist movement and Prabhakaran became the first born son of the […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The Tamils have a great culture. One of the best. But that is not found in Jaffna – the so-called heartland of the indigenous Tamils. Though they crow about their culture loudly and interminably, there is no significant evidence of great cultural achievements in Jaffna because they have been, at all […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The controversy with Ms. Sharmini Serasinghe began when she initially challenged the Sinhala-Buddhists to show what they had achieved which the others haven’t. In reply it was pointed out that the Sinhala-Buddhists had made three great contributions : 1. a new language; 2. a new culture and 3, a new civilization. […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala The loud bravado with which Ms. Sharmini Serasinghe challenged the Sinhala Buddhists to give a valid answer” to her question – a question which was aimed deliberately at denigrating  the Sinhala-Buddhists – stands in stark contrast to the silence that prevails after the answer was given. (See Colombo Teleraph….) She asked […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Instead of emotional discussions as to our historic origins and glorious pasts, let us come into grips with what we during the last 68 years after Independence have lived and suffered. By reflecting on the past sufferings and our own mistakes, we all can learn a lot and prepare for the […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Without any reservations I must concede that the Buddhist clowns must be reined in, as stated by Ms. Rumpay Sera-singhe (a.k.a, Sharmini Serasinghe). In this survey of her version of Buddhism, I wish to state that I am ready to join her campaign this minute if the reining in of Buddhist […]

H. L. D. Mahindapala Long after his death, the macabre shadow of Velupillai Prabhakaran continues to stalk the peninsula, darkening the neck of Jaffna with the coagulated blood of those Tamils who sacrificed their lives for a cause that failed. In the end, their sacrifices turned the North into one mass graveyard that buried practically […]