{"id":106371,"date":"2020-09-08T00:02:43","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T06:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=106371"},"modified":"2020-09-07T16:20:07","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T23:20:07","slug":"fires-of-communalism-were-fanned-by-anti-sinhala-buddhist-ideologues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/09\/08\/fires-of-communalism-were-fanned-by-anti-sinhala-buddhist-ideologues\/","title":{"rendered":"Fires of communalism were fanned by anti-Sinhala-Buddhist ideologues"},"content":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The abuse of history has been one of the major\ncontributory factors that led to the exacerbation of the North-South relations.\nIf our political\/social scientists had balanced the mono-ethnic extremism of\nthe North with the Southern forces rising against the provocative\npolitics  of the peninsula (Example: 12% Jaffna Tamils demanding 50% of\npower at the centre) and given both the due weightage, the communal\nconflagration that kept the nation burning for 33 years could have been avoided.\nInstead the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist ideologues in academia and NGOs played foul\nby manufacturing and reinforcing the mono-causal perspective that pointed the\nfinger only at the Sinhala-Buddhists. This  ideological thrust deflected\nthe attention  away from the demonic  juggernaut that came rolling\ndown from the North and destroyed everything in its wake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof. S. J. Tambiah\u2019s Buddhism\nBetrayed?: Religion, Politics  and Violence in Sri Lanka <\/em><\/strong>is a\ntypical example of blaming only the Sinhala-Buddhists. This mono-causal theory\ndoes not fit into a universe consisting of multi-factorial causes. Tambiah\u2019s\nattempt to brush aside the complexities and reduce the North-South conflict to\na  single cause is a cheap exercise that appealed to the partisan\nideologues committed to separatism. Tambiah went overboard to convince the\nworld that all the evils originated only from Buddhism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woven into this was the other theory that claimed\nmajoritarianism is the worst evil under the Sri Lankan sun. They refused to\naccept that minoritarianism can be \u2013 and has been \u2013 an evil worse than\nmajoritarianism. In fact, the current global stability has been threatened by\nminoritarianism targeting majoritarianism and vice versa. It has replaced the\nCold War rivalry that plagued the post-World War II period. Tambiah ignores the\nrise of minoritarianism as a destabilising force driven by mono-ethnic tyranny\nand focuses only on majoritarianism which fought the longest war within a\ndemocratic framework. The one-eyed view of Tambiah questions his claim to be\nmulti-dimensional analyst. His book is such a juvenile exercise that any\nacademic mug could have written a similar book titled Christianity\nBetrayed?, <\/em><\/strong>or Judaism  Betrayed?, <\/em><\/strong>or Gandhism\nBetrayed?, <\/em><\/strong>oreven Marxism \nBetrayed?.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is no great intellectual feat to string together\na few negatives of any given subject and call it This-and-that\nBetrayed?<\/em><\/strong> Besides, history is one big mass grave in which the dry\nbones of noble ideals lie scattered with no one caring two hoots about it.\nClearly, Tambiah\u2019s academic exercise to pick only on Buddhism, ignoring the\nparallel Hindu forces of the North fathered by Arumuka Navalar, a caste\nfanatic, does not elevate him beyond that of a partisan charlatan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The parallel force in the South was led by\nAnagarika Dharmapala who, like Navalar, was an anti-Christian, anti-Western\nreformist whose primary objective was to restore the traditional values of the\nindigenous people suppressed by the colonial masters. The difference, however,\nis that Navalar\u2019s revision of Saivism, which was a political move to anoint the\nVellalas as the Brahmin aristocracy of Jaffna, perverted the political culture\nof Jaffna, empowering the Vellalas as the God-given rulers of Jaffna. The Vellala-approved Tesawalamai<\/em><\/strong>,\nwhich codified the customs of Jaffna, also legitimized the  owning and\nexploitation of slaves. These Tamil  pariahs (outcasts) were reduced to\nsubhuman slaves. The Vellala struggle was to retain the feudal and colonial\nprivileges, positions and perks which they feared would decline with the sun\ngoing down in the British raj.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Vellala power and glory began to crumble\nunder the invasive forces of modernity they took to mono-ethnic extremism as a\nlast resort to survive in the competitive electoral politics, particularly in\nthe post-Donoughmore period.  Vellala casteism, legitimized by Navalar\u2019s\nSaivism, was no longer viable to retain their supremacy. Jane Russell\ndelineates this phase in  her brilliant study of communalism under the\nDonoughmore constitution. ( Communal Politics under the Donoughmore\nConstitution, 1931 \u2013 1947). <\/em><\/strong> Mono-ethnic \nextremism  was the only defence left to retain their grip on peninsular\npolitics.  Eventually, the Vellala devotees of Navalar abandoned the\nnon-violent mainstream \u2013 a path endorsed by casteist Navalar —  and\ndeclared war in the Vadukoddai Resolution (May 1976) to preserve their casteist\nsupremacy. It was this struggle that led them all way, via Vadukoddai, to\nNandikadal, the Waterloo of the Vellalas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As opposed to this, Anagarika Dharmapala\u2019s Buddhist\nrevival advanced all the way to the latest triumph of the Rajapaksas raising\nnon-violent democracy to its  peak. With all its imperfections, the\ntriumph of the democracy in Sri Lanka is attributed to the power of tolerant\nBuddhism to nurture and foster a democratic culture. This was the original\nconclusion of Prof. A. J. Wilson, son-in-law of the father of Tamil separatism.\n(See below).  Going against this reality, after the Tamils took to separatism,\nProf. Tambiah manufactured a mono-causal history partly to demonise the\nSinhala-Buddhists as the prime cause of the raging ethnic conflict, partly to\ncover up crimes committed by the Tamil Vellalas against their own people in the\nfeudal and colonial times, and partly to legitimize the fascist regime of\nVellala supremacists, born out Hindu ideological distortions, indoctrinated by\nArumuka Navalar. Manufacturing a mono-causal theory to point the finger only at\none side in a conflictual situation where the ubiquitous opposites in history\ncollide is, in the first place, against the known laws of history. Second,\nhistory happens only as a dialectical clash of two or more conflicting forces.\nThe reverberating sounds of history do not echo in the passages of time with a\none-hand clap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The traumatic and the catastrophic events that\nshook the nation from the declaration of war at Vadukoddai in May 1976 to\nNandikadal in May 2009 need not have occurred if the Vellala leadership had\ngreater concern for the Tamil people. The tragic ending in Nandikadal exposes\nthe short-sighted politics of a leadership that used its people to achieve\ntheir  goals. Their strategy was to create a bogeyman in the South and\nmarket mono-ethnic extremism as the only way out for the Tamils. They never\noffered the Tamil people alternative ideologies — liberal, socialist or any\nother  varieties of Marxism \u2013 that prevailed in the South. The ideologues\nwho ganged up to manufacture their version of history constructed only a\none-eyed narrative of blaming only the Sinhala-Buddhists. According to them the\nYal Devi went only to the North and never came down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Take, for instance, the case of Dayan Jayatilleka\nwho never fails to advertise that he is a political scientist\u201d. If Prof.\nTambiah is at the high-end of anti-Sinhala-Buddhist gang Dayan is at the very\nlow end, parroting what his gurus had told him. Wearing his tinted blinkers\nmade in Gramsci\u2019s factories in Italy, he is wont to attack the\nSinhala-Buddhists, naming in particular Anagarika Dharmapala, the anti-colonial\nreformist who awakened the Sinhala-Buddhists to the corrosive effects of the\nChristianized, Westernized and alien forces imposed by the imperial masters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dayan has failed to give equal weightage to the\nparallel forces unleashed in the North by the Saivite revisionist, Arumuka\nNavalar \u2013 the most pernicious casteist fanatic who is the demi-god of the\nVellalas. He fathered Vellala casteist fascism that turned his devotees in\nJaffna into relentless and merciless oppressors of the Tamil people. This high\npriest of Vellalaism told his Saivite followers that it is their duty to kill\nthose who revile\u201d Siva. And if they can\u2019t kill they should hire someone else\nto do it for them. (p. 80 \u2013 The Bible Trembled, The \nHindu-Christian Controversies of Nineteeth Century Ceylon<\/em><\/strong>, R. F. Young\nand (Bishop) S. Jebanesan). Imagine, for instance, what Dayan Jayatilleka and\nhis fellow-ideologues would have done if Anagarika had told the Buddhists to\nkill those who had reviled\u201d the Buddha. Wouldn\u2019t he have danced the kavadi <\/em><\/strong>to\nthe drum beat of goo-ooo-rung, goo-ooo-rung<\/em><\/strong> in the\nstreets of Colombo condemning it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dayan\u2019s pseudo-political science is yet to give due\nweightage to the Vellala factor that over-determined the North-South relations\nfrom the colonial period. He has, in his abysmal ignorance, failed to weave in\nthe decisive and destructive Vellala factor that collided with the Southern\nforces reacting to the Vellala grab for power in the dying days of colonialism.\nAt the centre of the North-South conflict has been the Vellala thrust to grab\ndisproportionate power at the expense of other communities. Dayan was blinded\nby various shades of Eurocentric theories, particularly Marxism, that hardly\nworked at the grassroot level in Sri Lanka. He could not get out of that box\nand come to grips with the mono-ethnic extremism of the North \u2013 the sole source\nof power of the Vellalas — winding its way inexorably to the Vadukoddai\nResolution and, consequently to Nandikadal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like all anti-national political pundits, he fancies\nthat if he throws in a few quotes from Gramsci, Althusser, Marx, Lenin etc., he\ncould lasso the multifarious forces that  had bedevilled Sri Lankan\npolitics and keep them under his control in his ideological stables. He\nbelieves that the solution lies in theoretical mumbo-jumbo spun in Eurocentric\nideological factories. But how many Gramscis, Althussers and Lenins marched all\nthe way to the polls that swept the Rajapakses into power? Which theory of our\npundits predicted the annihilation of the UNP, or the rise and rise of the\nRajapaksas? The presidential and the Parliamentary elections debunked the\ntheoreticians parading as political scientists\u201d. The Eurocentric theoreticians\nwere among the victims of the Rajapaksa tsunamis that swept the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is only one example of how our\npolitical\/social scientists blacked out the destructive forces that came down\nfrom the North and destroyed the ground laid for peaceful co-existence by the\nFounding Fathers of independence. Better political\/social scientists than Dayan\nhave played the ignominious role of betraying the fundamental principles of\nscholarship. They had no qualms in abandoning their own findings\/theses at the\nend of years of research and plugging anti-Sinhala-Buddhist propaganda to\nbuttress their partisan political agenda. I shall deal with more of it\nlater. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before that let me first deal with the manner in\nwhich distorted history played its subversive  role in post-colonial\npolitics. Each time history was dragged into the political arena it either ran\ninto verbal fireworks with the clash of theories and interpretations, or\nexploded in bloody violence like the fireball that rolled all the way down to\nNandikadal. In fact, the very first communal explosion that ripped the\nuninterrupted inter-ethnic harmony of centuries occurred when the up-and-coming\nleader of rising Tamil communalism, G. G. Ponnambalam, launched his attack\ndebasing the Mahavamsa<\/em><\/strong> and the history of the Sinhalese\nin June 1939 in Nawalapitiya. Lashing out at the Sinhalese as a race of hybrids\u201d\nhe denigrated them as nobodies in the history of the nation. It didn\u2019t take\nlong for inter-ethnic clashes to ignite in the neighbourhoods of Passara,\nNuwara Eliya, and Maskeliya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next month S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike was able to\nform a branch of the Sinhala Maha Sabha in Nawalapitiya. At the inaugural\nmeeting he said: The Nawalapitiya Sinhala Maha Sabha should erect a statue of\nMr. Ponnambalam as we should be grateful to him for provoking the formation of\nthis Sinhala Maha Sabha.\u201d (p.256 \u2013 Communal Politics under the\nDonoughmore Constitution, 1931 \u2013 1947<\/em><\/strong>, Jane Russell, Tisara\nPrakasakayo, 1982.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the time when Ponnambalam was going around\nwhipping up support for his 50 \u2013 50\u201d demand. The ruling Vellalas who formed\nthe power elite in Jaffna backed Ponnambalam to the hilt. The anti-caste,\nanti-communalist Jaffna Youth Congress, the one and only movement of the North\nto reject Tamil communalism, was critical of Ponnambalam. The Youth Congress,\nwhich was a formidable force in the twenties, stated: There has been plenty of\nfalse propaganda and exaggeration on both sides. Mr. Ponnambalam has been\nsinging the glories of the Tamil race from public platforms, and by implication\nand direct statement casting slurs upon the Sinhalese people. Communalists flourish\non one another. It is the existence and utterances of a Ponnambalam that\nprovide the means for the rise to popularity and power of a Bandaranaike, and\nit is the latter\u2019s acts and utterances that the former used to whip up a\nfollowing.\u201d (Ibid \u2013 pp. 255-6).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jane Russel points out that 1938 and 1939 mark the\nnadir of communal relations in Ceylon\u201d. (Ibid \u2013 234). And she noted: In March\n1938, G. G. Ponnambalam and D. P. R. Gunawardena came to blows in the corridor\noutside the chamber (of the State Council).\u201d (Ibid \u2013 p. 257). Footnote to this\nsaid: The victor to this pugilistic contest was, not surprisingly, D. P. R.\nGunawardena\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any serious study of Jaffna will confirm that\ndespite the boasts of the greatness of the Jaffna Tamils they lack not only substantial\nevidence to back it up but also a historical consciousness comparable to that\nof the Sinhalese. So when Jaffna launched the separatist movement in 1948 it\nbecame an urgent political necessity to manufacture a history that could\nsubstantiate their political agenda. The history\u201d contained in the Vadukoddai\nResolution is a clear example of Tamils making history on the run. The frantic\nrush to make a new history was inevitable because the Tamils, unlike the\nSinhalese, did not have a sense of history. Writing on the attitude of the\nSinhalese and the Tamil towards their past, E. Valentine Daniels, Associate\nProfessor of Anthropology, University of Michigan, said that the Sinhalese\nprivilege history, whereas the Sri Lankan Tamils privilege heritage.\u201d (p.\n1.– Three Dispositions Towards the Past: One Sinhala, Two Tamil<\/em><\/strong>,\nSocial Analysis, No.25:22-41, 1989).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides, the Mahavamasa, Chulavamsa,\nDeepavamsa<\/em><\/strong> point to the deep historical consciousness of the\nSinhalese. The Tamils have not produced any comparable records of their past.\nIn fact, the colonial masters had to urge them to produce a history for their\nguidance. The best known, Yalpana Vaipava Malai<\/em><\/strong>, was\nproduced by poet Mylvakanam, because the Dutch Governor asked him to do so.\nNobody asked the historian Mahanama to write the Mahavamsa<\/em><\/strong>.\nHe did so in medieval times because he inherited the historical consciousness\nfrom his ancestors. It was in their blood. It was different with the Tamils of\nJaffna. In the 20th<\/sup> century the Vellala casteist supremacists were\ndesperately in need of a history not only to maintain their casteist grip on\npeninsula politics but also to extend their power beyond the boundaries of\nJaffna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They needed history to sanctify, justify and\nlegitimize political violence which they launched in the end to achieve their\nelusive Eelam. The South too used history to justify their violence. But it has\nbeen more reactive than provocative. For instance, only the North has\nofficially resorted to violence consciously and deliberately to achieve their\npolitical goals by declaring war against the South in the Vadukoddai Resolution\n(1976). No other leadership of any other community has officially declared war\non a mono-ethnic ideology to achieve self-serving political goals at the\nexpense of other communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ending of Vadukoddai violence in Nandikadal\nconfirm that history returns again and again to renew and reinforce the flow of\nthe mainstream, dismissing fanciful and futile interpretations of\ntheoreticians. History refused to be boxed in by narrow, self-serving theories.\nThe most deplorable  part is the role played by the intellectuals.\nRe-reading Prof. Tambiah\u2019s Buddhism Betrayed?, <\/em><\/strong>particularly\nin the light of subsequent events, makes you wonder about the integrity of\nintellectuals and their capacity to contribute gainfully to the welfare of\npeople, particularly to people trapped in conflict situations. Dayan\u2019s theories\ntoo can be dismissed as hollow sounds of an empty vessel. Whether it is on\nCuba, his ideal state, or on Sri Lanka, his political theories and somersaults\nquestion not only his intellectual honesty but also his failure to grasp some\nof the essentials of the ground realities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is the betrayal of their own principles and the\nsacred standards set for sound scholarship that make the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist\nacademics\/theoreticians a bunch of hired hacks selling their talents to the\nhighest bidder in the political market. Take the case of Prof. A. J. Wilson,\nson-in-law of the father of Tamil separatism, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam. In his\nearly career he began by commending Buddhism as the force that has stabilised\nSri Lanka and fostered democracy. Here\u2019s what Calvin Woodard, an American\nscholar, wrote in a review of Wilson\u2019s, Politics in Sri Lanka, 1947\n\u2013 1973,<\/em><\/strong> (Mac Millan Press, 1974): The uniqueness of Sri Lanka,\nWilson points out, is that it has faced these challenges without veering \nfrom the democratic path. Certainly then, the key to the future lies in an\nunderstanding of the  past. How and why, in other words, has the democratic\nexperiment been able to work so well in Sri Lanka? The author investigates this\nand  concludes that the political stability so far maintained in Sri Lanka\nis due mainly to two forces, one of indigenous origin and the other the \nresult of Western implantation. Primary is the Buddhist ethos and the doctrine\nof tolerance. This, according to Wilson, has acted to dissuade the majority\ncommunity from unduly imposing itself on the minorities and encourage it to\nrespect the fundamental rights and distinctions of others in the plural\nsociety. Similar in effect to the Western notion of compromis<\/em>, the\ndoctrine of tolerance has facilitated compromise and  provided essential\nunderpinning in society to the parliamentary system.\u201d ( pp. 72-73, The \nCeylon Journal of  Historical and Social Studies<\/em><\/strong>, Vol III,\nJuly-December, 1973, No.2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should be noted that this was written after S.\nW. R. D. Bandaranaike, who is generally vilified by the Tamil ideologues as the\nevil force that unleashed Sinhala-Buddhism as a dominant political force. \nWilson\u2019s ideological somersault is unacceptable. Yes, one could  take it\nfrom a prostituting politician selling himself to win votes but not from an\nintellectual who was the best-informed on the facts and issues of the day. Is\nthere any intellectual integrity left in Wilson for turning against his own\nscholarly judgement? Is marrying the daughter of S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the\nfather of Tamil separatism, a valid reason for turning against the\nSinhala-Buddhists?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following in his father-in-law\u2019s footsteps he too\nbegan to accuse the Sinhala-Buddhists of  being creatures of the Mahavamsa<\/em><\/strong>.\nAbandoning his own scholarly judgement, he had no compunction in using pop\nslogans like Mahavamsa mentality\u201d to denigrate the Sinhala-Buddhists.\nObviously, he has not read that masterpiece which declared that the ultimate\nobjective of history was to make the island a fit-dwelling place for men\u201d\nand  not for any particular community, certainly not for the\nSinhala-Buddhists. This is another deplorable case of our intellectuals\ndistorting history to serve their political ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This brief outline is only a part of the history of\nthe anti-Sinhala-Buddhist  ideologues who had no compunction in\nselling  their souls for self-serving politics. Eventually these\nintellectuals reaped in Nandikadal the  hate politics they sowed in\nVadukoddai. The tragedy is that they still keep on harping on the futile\npolitics of blaming the Sinhala-Buddhists without examining seriously and\nhonestly where they went wrong and why. How long are they going to keep on\nblaming  the Sinhala-Buddhists for their political blunders that took them\nnowhere?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not knowing what to do next they are bent on\ngoing  back to their fathers\u2019 and grand-fathers\u2019 politics like G. G.\nPonnambalam who talked of two nationalities\u201d in Parliament on the opening day.\nI wrote this as prelude to deal with his attempt to go back in time to his\ngrandfather\u2019s divisive politics. Incidentally, his grandfather asked only for\nfifty-fifty\u201d not a nation. Tamil nation\u201d was a latter-day concoction. I shall\ngo into some aspects of his politics in the next contribution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala The abuse of history has been one of the major contributory factors that led to the exacerbation of the North-South relations. If our political\/social scientists had balanced the mono-ethnic extremism of the North with the Southern forces rising against the provocative politics  of the peninsula (Example: 12% Jaffna Tamils demanding 50% […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-h-l-d-mahindapala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106371\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}