{"id":112130,"date":"2021-02-27T17:08:46","date_gmt":"2021-02-28T00:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=112130"},"modified":"2021-02-27T17:08:46","modified_gmt":"2021-02-28T00:08:46","slug":"spectre-of-tamil-hate-politics-marching-again-as-gandhian-non-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/02\/27\/spectre-of-tamil-hate-politics-marching-again-as-gandhian-non-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Spectre of Tamil hate politics marching again as Gandhian non-violence"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The Tamil\npeople followed Velupillai Prabhakaran blindly because he promised to deliver\nEelam. The gains of the initial military adventures of the LTTE also made him\nlook like the messiah who could  fulfil their dream. But  he took\nthem for a ride \u2013 the biggest in the history of the Tamils — and gave them\nEvil-laam. His only achievement was in constructing and honing the  most\nefficient  killing machine which targeted and killed mostly Tamils.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His\njuggernaut had its roots in the violent political culture of Jaffna. He became\nthe  iconic image of the Tamil political culture, particularly with his\ncadre of suicide bombers, because he was an integral part of the traditional\nfascist culture of Vellala-dominated Jaffna. Nothing represents Jaffna\npolitical culture better than Prabhakaran\u2019s fascist one-man regime. He hit the\nheadlines of the New York Times<\/em><\/strong> on May 28, 1995 with\nJames F. Burns branding  him as the Pol Pot of Asia\u201d. The Vellala\nsupremacists dominated the history of Jaffna particularly from the Dutch period.\nThey never loosened their iron-fisted grip on Jaffna and open their society for\ndemocratic liberalism at any stage.  In broad outline, Jaffna could be\ndivided into two layers: 1. the Vellala oppressors, the dominant majority and\n2. the marginalised low-castes whose lives were determined from the womb to the\ntomb by fascist casteism. Prabhakaran was the genie that came out of the corked\nviolent Vellala culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only\ndifference was he did not belong to the Vellala caste. He was a karaiyar<\/em><\/strong>,\nthe fisher caste, who catalysed and transformed Vellala fascism into his\nbrand  of  Tamil Pol Potism \/ Prabhakaranism. Vellala fascism segued\ninto Prabhakaranism naturally like a river that flows into the sea and when the\nintegrated forces emerged as Tamil Pol Potism in the 20th<\/sup> century\nthe Vellalas took to it like duck to water. They glorified him, financed him,\nspun theories to legitimise him, internationalised him as key player in S. Asia\ntaking on even India, lobbied for him, provided logistics and expertise to oil\nhis  killing machine etc. Prabhakaran mobilised a broad front of various\ncastes but  without the critical and massive support of the  Vellalas\nhe could never have gone as far as he went. In the end, one was hardly\ndistinguishable from the other. They were two sides of the same coin. The\nchange over from Vellalaism to Prabhakaranism was as easy as Stalin taking over\noppressive  Czarist culture and marketing it as glorious and liberating\ncommunism. Prabhakaranist fascism was marketed as glorious Tamil nationalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vellala\nleaders like Rajavarothiam Samapanthan and M. A. Sumanthiram fell at his feet\nand accepted his supremacy. He was elevated by them to the highest position of\nbeing the sole representative of the Tamil nation\u201d. In other  words,\nthey acknowledged voluntarily, without any compulsion, that they were the\nservile factotums willing to obey the commands of the master killer of Tamils.\nThey never once raised the issues of dignity of the Tamils, justice for Tamils,\nequality for the Tamils and peace for Tamils with their Supreme Leader. They\nnever went to UNHRC to complain about the war crimes and crimes against \nhumanity community by the Supreme Commander of the busiest killing machine ever\nproduced by the Tamils. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ideologically,\nthere was no difficulty for the Vellalas to embrace Prabhakaranism because it\nwas merely a secular version of the  Vellala religious dogma spelt out\nwith clarity by the holy guru  of the Vellalas, Arumuka Navalar. In one\nof  his commentaries he says: It is the duty of every Saivite to kill\nthose who steal Sivan\u2019s property or revile him. If one is not strong enough to\nkill the blasphemer, one must hire another to do it. If one has nothing to hire\nwith, one must leave the country where the sinner lives. By remaining in the country\none becomes a participant in the sin .(p. 80 \u2013 The Bible Trembled,\nthe Hindu-Christianity Controversies of Nineteenth-Century Ceylon<\/em><\/strong>, by\nR. F. Young and Bishop S. Jebanesan, Vienna 1995). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, killing\nis anointed as a religious duty in the Hindu-Vellala culture to \nretain  the supremacy and the purity of the believers. Going step by step\nto any length in violence to preserve the supremacy of the deities of the day \u2013\nincluding anthropomorphic demi-gods like Sankili and Prabhakaran \u2013 is the\nvalidated norm. Killing or hiring someone else to kill is the legitimised modus\noperandi. For instance, the Vellala elders who declared war in the Vadukoddai\nResolution was too old to kill. So, they licensed the youth to take up arms and\nkill anyone who  stood in the way of attaining Eelam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This sealed\nthe affinity between Vellala religiosity and Prabhakaranist secularism. In some\nVellala homes  abroad they light lamps and place it before Prabhakaran\u2019s\nimage located alongside other Hindu gods on the mantelpiece of the living room.\nTamils who have no remarkable heroes in their history  are left with no\noption but to go down the  lowest depths to ferret out heroes from the\nbest killers of Tamils as their  demi-gods. Only a warped culture which\nhas lost its humane values would pick the most heinous killer as their hero.\nSo, the Tamils have picked Prabhakaran, the evil genie who had killed more\nTamils than others, as their latest hero. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The desperate\nbid in Tamil politics has been to fill the vacuum in their history. Though the\nTamils of Jaffna boast of a great Tamil culture they never produced anything\nworthy of note in the civilizational domains of literature, drama, art, music,\narchitecture etc. They were at best third-rate imitators of the great Tamil\nculture of S. India. So, when they boast about their great Tamil culture they\nrefer to the classical Tamil culture of S. India and not anything innovative or\ncreative that came out of Jaffna. Mediocrities are genetically incapable of\nproducing great cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The perennial\noppressive culture of Jaffna has either produced a one-man regime or a fascist\nideology like Vellalaism \/ Prabhakaranism. This oppressive culture had its\norigin in Sankilli, the forefather of Prabhakaran, who marched down to Mannar\nin 1544 and massacred 600 Tamil Catholics who refused to recognise him as the\nsole representative  of the Tamils\u201d \u2013 an incurable obsession with Tamil\nleaders. As Catholics they had sworn allegiance to the King of Portugal.\nBecause they refused to pay homage to him he massacred them all, babies,\npregnant women, old and young without any discrimination. Tamils specialised in\neliminating  discrimination with either the sword or  the gun.\nSankili put on record the first mass massacre. Prabhakaran was the last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jaffna never\nhad space for liberal, open, tolerant, pluralistic,  or an  inclusive\npolitical culture. After Sankilli came the slave society with the \nVellalas rising as a dominant force during the Dutch period. The Tesawalamai <\/em><\/strong>legitimised\nslavery and the supremacy of the oppressive Vellala culture. It was this\nculture  that dominated and warped Jaffna society. After the Vellalas came\nPrabhakaran, the first child born out of the Vellala Declaration of War on May\n14, 1976 at Vadukoddai. Ironically, Prabhakaran began by eliminating the\nVellala elite who declared war against the Sinhalese in the noted Vaduukoddai\nResolution and ended by throwing bombs and shooting the helpless Tamils refuges\nrunning away from him into the arms of the Security Forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tamil people\nrunning away from their first Tamil state \u2013 it was only a quasi-state —\nwas  the ultimate insult to Tamil nationalism. It exposed the fake Tamil\npride of being superior to all other communities. It is a state that could\nnot  give the Tamils food, security or dignity. It had to depend on the\nSinhala state\u201d to feed their people. Or to wait for parippu<\/em><\/strong> to\nfall from the skies. It also meant that what God has put together cannot be\nseparated by the  force of brutal Tamil violence. History that has\nrejected Tamil invaders, marauders and colonialists repeated itself once gain\nin 2009  to prove that those  who forget history end  up in\nNandikadal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tamils\nwho hero-worship Prabhakaran fail to realise that he had Eelam in the palm of\nhis hands and he threw it away. He had it when Rajiv Gandhi offered him the\nChief Ministership. He had it when Chandrika Bandaranaike offered him the North\nand the East for ten years without elections. He had it when Ranil\nWickremesinghe gave him the power that was nearest to Eelam, with international\nguarantees. Every one of these offers was a prospective political base from\nwhich he could have launched his political manoeuvres to reach his next\npolitical stage on the road to Eelam, if he knew how to get there. But in his\narrogance and  total ignorance of alternatives methodologies to achieve\npolitical goals, he assassinated Rajiv Gandhi \u2013 the goose that laid his golden\negg. And  he shot to pieces CBK\u2019s offer and, most of all,  Ranil\nWickremesinghe\u2019s deal for which he (Ranil) was expecting  to win  the\nNobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\nmiscalculating and missing  the best opportunities that came his way,\nPrabhakaran too proved to be a congenital idiot\u201d, in the colourful phrase of\nProf. Kumar David. Drunk with  his own belief of invincibility he went\nbeyond his limits to take on GOSL, India and even some segments of the\ninternational community who were initially sympathetic towards the Tamils. He\nhad only one answer to all his  problems: kill, kill and kill. In the end\nhe ran short of killers. He had to forcibly drag children out from  school\nto fight in his futile war. In short, he overreached himself. He went for Eelam\nor nothing. In the end he got nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apart from\nhis own arrogance he was misled by the glorification of the Tamil diaspora and the\nservile Vellala elite, led by the TNA. Like the politically bankrupt Tamils\nPrabhakaran was a victim of his own egotistic myths.  The inexhaustible\ncapacity of Tamils to believe in their political piety, purity and greatness\nhas been suicidal. At each stage of their political movement, starting from\nsatyagraha on the language issue, they deceived themselves \u2013 and the world —\nwith their manufactured myths and, in the process, took the wrong route which\nfinally led them to Nandikadal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This brief revisit to the past is to question the\nrole of the current Tamil leadership which is whipping up hate politics in the\nname of minority rights. As in the past they are once again parading as\nnon-violent Gandhians performing satyagraha. D. B. S. Jeyaraj, (DBSJ),the best-informed Tamil\njournalist, wrote about the latest protest march of the Tamils in the Daily\nMirror (13\/2\/2021) in  dithyrambic ecstasy. He wrote: The latest is the\nPottuvil to Poligandy\u201d (P2P) Protest that ended last week was a watershed\nmoment in the political history of Sri Lankan Tamils. The Five day P2P\u201d \nbegan in the East on Wednesday, February 3 and concluded in the north on\nSunday,  February 7. Thousands of Tamils marched on foot and proceeded in\nvehicles from Pottuvil in the Ampara District to Poligandy in the Jaffna\nDistrict\u2026.. What is forgotten, ignored or conveniently overlooked is the fact\nthat for over three decades in post\u2013Independence Sri Lanka, the Tamil political\nstruggle was basically non \u2013 violent and adhered to the noble doctrine of \nAhimsa\u201d (avoidance of injury\/violence) enunciated by that great apostle of non\n\u2013 violence Mahatma Gandhi.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now DBSJ\nknows, only too well, that the last sentence in particular is a load of bunk.\nHe knows that neither S. J. V. Chelvanayakam nor his  followers were ever\nnoble apostles of non-violence  in the  mould  of Mahatma\nGandhi. The essence of Mahatma Gandhi\u2019s non-violence satyagraha movement was to\ncombat high-caste oppression of the low-caste, leaving  aside his\nanti-imperialist campaign. When did Chelvanyakam ever sit with the low-castes\nto back their non-violent  campaign to open the doors of Maviddipuram\nTemple \u2013 the historic battle waged by the low-castes against the Vellalas? On\nthe contrary, the Chelvanayakam leadership did nothing when the Vellalas\ncracked the head of the non-violent low-castes staging their protest at the\nMaviddipuram Temple? He never took a courageous stand and defended the rights\nof the low-castes to enter the Hindu temples. Prof. Bryan Pfaffenberger, a\nleading American authority on the caste system in Jaffna, said that\nChelvanayakam and the Federal party tip-toed out\u201d of the issue. The entire\nTamil leadership, from Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan, and running through G. G.\nPonnambalam and Chelvanayakam never followed Gandhian principles in\ndealing  with the persecuted low-castes of Jaffna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DBSJ\u2019s article glorifying the Tamil Satyagraha 0f\n1961\u201d (DM \u201313\/2\/2021) is typical of the Tamil propaganda to portray the Tamil\npoliticians as highly moral apostles of non-violence who were forced to give up\nnon-violence by the failure of the non-violent Tamil struggle to remedy\nprevailing political maladies.\u201d Romanticising of the doctrine of Ahimsa\n(avoidance of  injury \/ violence)\u201d, he gives the Tamil leaders the aura of\nbeing non-violent saints who were about to enter Mahatma Gandhi\u2019s nirvana when\nthe frustrated youth took up the gun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, of course, is the external fa\u00e7ade presented\nto the world outside Jaffna. While the Tamil leadership was posing apostles of\nAhimsa in Colombo and  other places outside Jaffna, inside Jaffna they\nwere beating the daylights out of the low-castes who  had dared to\nchallenge the fascist might of the Vellala supremacists. He says, I quote:\nWhat is forgotten, ignored or conveniently overlooked is the fact that for\nover three decades in post-Independence (sic) Sri Lanka, the Tamil political\nstruggle was basically non-violent and adhered to the noble doctrine of\nAhimasa\u201d (avoidance of injury \/ violence) enunciated by that great apostle of\nnon-violence, Mahatma Gandhi.\u201d Here he dodges the brutal history of Tamils\noppressing, persecuting and murdering Tamils which was an integral part of the\nJaffna political culture throughout its history. It ceased only the day after\nthe Sinhala state\u201d ended the 33-year-old war on May 19, 2009 at\nNandikadal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says and I quote: \u2026for over three decades in\npost-Independence (sic) Sri Lanka, the Tamil political struggle was basically\nnon-violent and adhered to the noble doctrine of Ahimasa\u201d (avoidance of injury\n\/ violence) enunciated by that great apostle of non-violence, Mahatma Gandhi.\u201d\nThere were two political struggles going on in Jaffna: 1. the racist war\ndeclared on May 14, 1976 at Vadukoddai by the Vellala supremacists (the\nholy Ahimasavadins<\/em> of Jaffna) to retain their feudal and\ncolonial powers and privileges and 2. the low-intensity war of the low-castes\nagainst the Vellala supremacists — the perennial oppressors who had denied\nthem their basic human rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1968 the Vellala supremacists went all out to\nsuppress the Nalavars, Pallas and Parayas etc., rising as an organised front\nfor the first time against the Vellala oppressors. Prof. Bryan Pfaffenberger,\nAmerica\u2019s leading authority on Vellala casteism, in his essay on the Temple\nentry Politics of the Vellalas, revealed that the Vellala  Gandhians\ncracked the heads of the non-violent protesters with bottles filled with sand.\nHe added that  the Vellalas who led the Federal Party tip-toed out\u201d of\nthe crisis without standing up for the low-castes. Rajavarothiam Sampanthan,\nwho was then an  up-and- coming young man in the Federal Party, was never\nseen fighting for the dignity, equality, justice and peace\u201d of the Tamils\noppressed by the Tamils. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a grim snap-shot of the\nVellalas Prof. Bryan Pfaffenberger wrote:  Vellarlars had long considered\nthe Jaffna Peninsula a private preserve for their interests\u2026\u2026In the fifties, for\ninstance, many Minority Tamils ( Vellahla euphemism for their untouchables \/\ndalits ) still lived in Vellarlar \u2013 owned palmyrah groves or wasteland; if they\ndid not submit to Vellarlar labour demands, they could be threatened with\nexpulsion. The economic compulsions were paired with informal political\ncontrols : Minority Tamils who attempted to raise their position would find\ntheir communities victimised by Vellarlar- organised gangs of thugs, who burned\ndown huts and poisoned wells.\u201d (p. 81 \u2014 The Political Construction of\nDefensive Nationalism: The 1968 Temple-Entry Crisis in Northern Sri Lanka, The\nJournal of Asia Studies, 49, No. 1<\/em>, February 1990).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does this compare with DBSJ\u2019s Jaffna which\nhe  thinks is the ideal nirvana of the apostles of non-violent Gandhians ?\nThis question the veracity of DBSJ\u2019s claim that the Tamil politics in the first\nthree decades of independent Sri Lanka was based on the non-violent doctrine of\nGandhi. In any case, can DBJ cite an instance where Gandhi took the side of the\nBrahmins as  against  the harijans? What were the chances of Gandhi\nwalking up and down the entrance to Maviddipuram Temple with a walking stick\nlike Prof. C. Suntheralingam, threatening to beat the hell out of any low-caste\ndaring to enter the holy space of the Vellalas?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tragically, our age is dominated by lies. We live\nin an age where 74 million Americans believe that Trump won the election and\nBiden stole it from him. Isn\u2019t DBSJ acting like another Tamil Trumpian twister\nof the truth? He knows \u2013 if not, he should know \u2013 how the imported slaves from\nMalabar were treated by the Vellala supremacists down the ages in his glorified\nland of Ahimsa apostles. He knows what happened at Maviddipuram.  The\ntemple entry issue at Maviddipuram in 1968 was the climactic moment when the\nJaffna Tamils were asked to choose between evil and  violent casteism and\nhumane politics of giving the Tamils \u2013 just not  the Vellala caste\/class \u2013\ntheir dignity, equality, justice and peace. Can DBSJ tell us in what part of\nthe Tamil verti was non-violent Gandhism tucked in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DBSJ should know, with all his deep knowledge of\nTamil affairs that the path to Nandikadal began with the first satyagraha\nstaged by the Vellala leadership at Galle Face Green. It was staged not for the\noppressed Tamil but for the privileged Vellalas. It was Vellala elite\nperforming satyagraha for Vellala privileges and not  for the oppressed\nTamils. If he loves his Tamil people and if he desires to prevent the kind \nof beating he got from the Tamils he must stop writing bunk \u2013 at least for the\nsake of peace and reconciliation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala The Tamil people followed Velupillai Prabhakaran blindly because he promised to deliver Eelam. The gains of the initial military adventures of the LTTE also made him look like the messiah who could  fulfil their dream. But  he took them for a ride \u2013 the biggest in the history of the Tamils […]<\/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-112130","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\/112130","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=112130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=112130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=112130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=112130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}