{"id":113601,"date":"2021-04-17T16:11:59","date_gmt":"2021-04-17T23:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=113601"},"modified":"2021-04-17T16:11:59","modified_gmt":"2021-04-17T23:11:59","slug":"death-of-liberal-democracy-in-jaffna-led-to-national-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/04\/17\/death-of-liberal-democracy-in-jaffna-led-to-national-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"Death of liberal democracy in Jaffna led to national disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindpala\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

No Tamil political leader in the\npost-Donoughmore period had single-handedly constructed an ideology and changed\nthe course of national politics, almost overnight, asGanapathipillai Gangaser Ponnambalam (8 November 1901\n\u2013 9 February 1977). Not only that, no one else has left such a lasting impact \u2013\nalbeit a divisive and devastating one — with his ideology on the national\nscene as the politics engineered by him. He was, in his own way, an exceptional\nfigure whose role has been overshadowed by his junior  partner, S. J. V.\nChelvanayakam, a charismatic figure who in reality extended and built on the\nideology founded by him. S.W. R. D. Bandaranaike was Ponnambalam\u2019s counterpart\nbut he  did not create the Sinhala-Buddhist ideology. Rather, he adopted\nwhat was already there on the ground and gave leadership to the dormant forces\nthat were struggling  to be born. Ponnambalam, on the other hand, gave\nbirth to an ideology which  he fathered, defined and activated giving\nleadership  to a political force that entered the blood stream of Tamil\npolitics. In doing so, he reversed the liberal-democratic movement in Jaffna\nand took it back to communalism  — a force that dominates the North\nto  this day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ponnambalam arrived on the\npolitical scene just in time to fill the vacuum in the leadership of Jaffna. By\nthe early thirties the old turbaned Tamil aristocracy was fading away. The last\nof the iconic leaders of Jaffna, Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan, passed away\nin  1930. Jaffna was in  the grip of the English-educated Tamil youth\nwho were  leading Jaffna up the road of liberal democracy and\ncomprehensive nationalism without sectionalism. They were virtually laying down\nthe political agenda of the day. It was a radical movement that went against\nthe  traditional norms  of Jaffna political culture. They were the\ndaring counter force to the dominant Vellala elite which held the reins of\npower both as loyal subalterns in the British bureaucracy and as the\ntraditional supremacists anointed by the Hindu casteism authored by Arumuka Navalar.\nIt was the Vellalas that dictated and enforced the laws and customs (Tesawalamai<\/em><\/strong>)\nthat guided every aspect of the Jaffna way of life, from the  womb \nto the tomb. Inside Jaffna the Vellalas ruled with an iron fist to maintain\ntheir supremacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside Jaffna the \nVellala supremacists campaigned to acquire extra seats in the legislature based\non allotting seats on a communal basis and not on territorial demarcation of\nelectoral borders.  Getting  seats on communal representation would\ngo to  maintain their disproportionate share of power in the commanding\nheights of the political and  administrative institutions. Getting seats\non a territorial basis would not  only reflect the will of the people\nwhich is the ultimate goal in any democratic  system but would also uphold\nthe fundamental principles of democracy. The radical Tamil youth of Jaffna\nrejected both casteism and communalism and organised their movement to abolish\nwhat they considered  to be the two evils of the peninsular political\nculture. In the\nmid-twenties the Tamil youth of Jaffna were leading Jaffna out of feudalism,\ncasteism, communalism, dowry-system etc into  modernity. When they talked\nof nationalism  they meant total swaraj for all without narrow domestic\nwalls\u201d of communalism, or sectionalism\u201d, as the Governor of the day called it<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the late thirties,\nhowever, the Jaffna Tamil Youth Congress had lost its grip. Without the old\nturbaned aristocracy and without the radical youth Jaffna fell into a political\nvacuum. The political space was  open for Ponnambalam to step in as the\nanti-thesis of all that was held sacred by the Tamil youth. The political\npendulum swung from  liberal-democratic end to naked communalism.\nSingle-handedly, Ponnambalam reversed the libera-democratic trend and took\nJaffna back to its communalistic and casteist roots. With that he reigned\nsupreme as the sole representative of Jaffna with no rival in sight until the\narrival of Chelvanayakam. The unique characteristic of his politics is that he\nleft an indelible legacy which wound its way, through several twists and turns,\nuntil it wound up in its ill-fated historical end in Nandikadal. Chelvanayakam,\nthough he shone brighter than Ponnambalam as a leader, particularly  with\nhis integrity and commitment to the cause, was merely an  ideological\npupil of Ponnambalam. In extending and taking Ponnambalamism to a further\nextreme the pupil outshone the teacher. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To get a better view of the\nevolving events, it  is necessary to step back and take a glance at young\nPonnambalam as he entered the mainstream. Right from the start he was different\nfrom the rest of the pack. To begin with, his contemporaries who went abroad in\nthe twenties and thirties for studies in leading  universities of the West\nreturned home as committed nationalists imbued with either democratic\nliberalism (S.W. R. D. Bandaranaike and Dudley Senanayaker) or Marxism (N. M.\nPerera, Philip Gunawardena, Colvin R de Silva, Pieter Keuneman etc). Even the\nTamil students like P. Kandiah and A. Vaidiyalingam returned home from\nCambridge as communists. They were, in fact, the founding members of the Ceylon\nCommunist  Party along with Pieter Keuneman. Only Ponnambalam was the\nexception. He went to Cambridge on a scholarship granted by what he\ncontemptuously called the homogenous state\u201d (i.e., the Sinhala state) and\nreturned home without embracing either  liberal or socialist ideals as\nguiding principles for his politics. He opted for a brand of communal politics\nminted by him which ran counter to the mainstream politics of  the \ntime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nationalists (Nehru) coming\nhome had to face two enemies : 1. the  imperialists and 2. the separatists\n(Jinnah) attempting to fragment emerging nations.  Ponnambalam,\nhowever,  was not  inspired by either nationalism for the nation, or\nfor the Tamils, or by the ideology of separatism \/ federalism. In fact, he is\non record saying that federalism is bad for Ceylon and worse  for the\nTamils.\u201d His formula of 50-50\u201d, or what he called balanced representation\u201d,\nwas his ideology to revise communalism as the determining force of national\npolitics, refusing to go along with the prevailing liberal-democratic politics.\nHis main argument was that 50-50\u2019 would obviate the fears and threats of majoritarianism.\nGovernor Andrew Caldecott rejected it as a crude arithmetical formula\u201d. \nLater Lord Soulbury dismissed it as mockery of democracy\u201d. Jaffna Youth\nCongress was most vociferous in condemning his 50-50 ideology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faced with an overwhelming\nopposition he delivered a marathon  speech on March 15, 1939 to the State\nCouncil defending his 50-50\u201d ideology. It was the first time that the Tamil\ncommunalism found a mouthpiece to articulate its seminal ideology that was\nafloat in a vague form demanding extra seats for the Tamils to be on par with\nthe Sinhalese in the Legislative Council. It was seen and rejected as communal\nrepresentation by the British and the Jaffna youth. There  was a\ngrowing  consensus for territorial representation which reflected the democratic\nwill of the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ponnambalam\u2019s main\npolitical theme was to focus on evils of the majority oppressing and denying\nthe  rights of the minorities. But Ponnambalam never referred to how the\nVellala majority in Jaffna exploited, oppressed and denied the fundamental\nhuman rights of the non-Vellala castes and slaves, particularly the Nalavars\nand the Pallas. He was exploiting  the majority-minority theme purely on\ncommunal lines. His main target was the Sinhalese. He did not extend the same\nconcern for the minority in his own community who were subject to most inhuman\nforms of oppression by the majority Vellalas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To overcome the tag of\ncommunalism Ponnambalam made it an issue between the majority and the minority.\nInstead of demanding one or two extra seats like his predecessors he wrapped\nthe fragmented demands of the old turbaned aristocracy into a consolidated\npackage of 50-50\u201d. It was communalism on a national scale. He wasn\u2019t asking\nfor one or two extra seats in the periphery, either in  the North or\nWestern provinces for the Tamils. He was asking  for a huge share of power\nat the centre to be on par with the majority. In his speech he explored various\ntheories against majoritarianism and presented his argument as a defence\nagainst the abuses of the majority against the minorities. It was this speech\nthat made him a figure  to reckon with in national politics. Needless to\nsay, it enhanced  his stature in the Tamil community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May-June 1939 he shot\ninto the limelight again with  his explosive speech at Navalapitiya\ndenigrating the Sinhala-Buddhist culture, its history and the people. In the\npolitical heat generated by his 50-50\u201d demand this anti-Sinhala-Buddhist speech\nwas explosive enough to set the nation on fire. But both events \u2013 his marathon\nspeech and his virulent speech at Navalapitiya \u2013 was sufficient to destroy the\ncommunal harmony that prevailed in the colonial and feudal ages. Ponnambalam\nignited the first Tamil-Sinhala riots. The nation that began to bleed in\nNavalapitiya in 1939 never stopped until it ended in Nandikadal in 2009.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ponnambalam\u2019s main theme was on evils of the\nmajority oppressing and denying the  rights of the minorities. But\nPonnambalam never referred to how the Vellala majority in Jaffna exploited,\noppressed and denied the fundamental human rights of the non-Vellala castes and\nslaves, particularly the Nalavars and the Pallas. He was focused on communal\npolitics directed against the Sinhala-Buddhist majority while he was a leader\nof the Vellalas who never lifted a finger to liberate the oppressed\nTamils.  under his very nose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ponnambalam\u2019a success in\nreversing the liberal-democratic trend fostered by the Jaffna Youth Congress\nwas fatal. He was trying to make a case for the Tamils as the victims of the\nSinhala majority. But the ground reality was different. The Sinhala masses were\nin the same boat as the masses of the  other communities though\nPonnambalam made it look like a Sinhala vs. Tamil issue. The Jaffna Youth\nCongress depicted the plight of  the Sinhalese succinctly when they wrote\n: The\nSinhalese peasantry are suffering from a scarcity of land and are becoming\nrapidly pauperised. The business of the island is in the hands of the Europeans\nand the Indians. The cocoanut industry is the only industry that remains in the\nhands of the Sinhalese. Even in this more than seventy-five percent of the\nestates are mortgaged to Indian capitalists. Even in the professions and the\nGovernment service Sinhalese occupy a comparatively inferior place. Whatever\nthe reason for this state of affairs the Sinhalese are becoming sensitive to\ntheir inferior position and are crudely attempting to reassert their position.\nIn this delicate state of feeling the granting of the 50\u201350 demand will make\nthem feel that they are to be reduced to a state of political helplessness, and\nwill call forth the most violent reaction. Communal propaganda will be openly\ncarried on by the Sinhalese\u2026 The leadership of the Sinhalese will pass into the\nhands of avowedly communal elements [like the Sinhala Maha Sabha].\u201d (Communalism\nor Nationalism<\/em><\/strong>? \u2013 Reply of Jaffna Youth Congress to Ponnambalam\u2019s\nspeech..)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These two events \u2013his marathon  speech and the\nNavalapitiya attack on Sinhala-Buddhists,  both coming one after the\nother  —  coincided with his cry for 50-50\u201d to give birth to a new\npolitical consciousness in the North and the South. As pointed out by the Youth\nCongress, the communalism of one was feeding  the other. In fact, Bandaranaike\nthanked Ponnambalam for his Navalapitiya tirade against Sinhala-Buddhists\nbecause it helped him to mobilise the Sinhalese to his Sinhala Maha Sabha on a\nlarger scale. With  his words and actions Ponnambalam led Jaffna into a\npolitical cul-de sac<\/em><\/strong> from which  it never\ncame  out. Ponnambalam\u2019s words and actions, when put together, added up to\nan ideology of the Tamils consisting of three major factors : 1.\ndisproportionate share of power in the centre ; 2. whipping up the cry of\nvictimology and 3. demonising the Sinhala -Buddhists, their history and their\nculture. Though Ponnambalam did not put all three factors together and spell it\nout as a cohesive ideology the upshot of his tactics resulted in providing the\nframework for his successors  to build on this triad to push mono-ethnic\npolitics of the North to the  extreme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A close examination of Northern politics will\nreveal that it never  deviated  from  these three factors \nidentified by Ponnambalam. First, in the post-Ponnambalam period mono-ethnic\nextremism escalated incrementally heading straight towards the Vadukoddai\nResolution which declared war against the democratically elected state\ndemanding a separate state. Tamil extremism encapsulated in the Vadukoddai\nResolution has its roots in Ponnambalamism, especially his disproportionate\ndemand for 50-50\u201d. Eelam is an extreme version of 50-50\u201d. Second, the\nrationale for this demand was the accusation that the Tamils were the \nvictims of Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarianism and discrimination. In his second\nlength speech to the Soulbury Commission in 1945 he made the same accusation.\nAfter examining his claim, the British Commissioners dismissed it as an\naccusation unsubstantiated by the weight of evidence. Third, for him to make a\ndemand of this proportion he had to buttress it with just not yesterday\u2019s\npolitics but on the entire course of history. To claim 50-50\u201d he had to put\nTamil history on par with that of the Sinhalese. Or better still, to denigrate\nit as being almost inferior to  that of  the Tamils. Demonising the\nSinhala-Buddhists and denigrating their history and culture was a primary tool\nof Tamil politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

History was an  indispensable element for the\nTamils to claim equal  status \u2013 i.e., 50-50 at first and then later,\nseparatism. Hijacking history to back their claims was an essential source. A\nwhole new industry sprang up, particularly in academia and the NGOs, to\ndenigrate Sinhala-Buddhist history, culture and heritage. A classic example\nis Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics and Violence  in Sri\nLanka<\/em> \u2013 S. J. Tambiah of Harvard University. Though it came with the\nwith the imprimatur of prestigious Harvard University it lost it credibility\nbecause it was seen as a tendentious tract written to  denigrate the\nSinhala-Buddhists \u2013 a la Ponnambalam. The cover itself betrayed his political\nbias. In  it  a leading  Buddhist monk was portrayed in a\nmilitant pose, indicating clearly the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist mission  of\nTambiah. Besides, he begins his book with a stupid question:  If Buddhism\npreaches nonviolence, why is there so much political violence in Sri Lanka?\u201d\nAnd in the following 203 pages he labours to convince the reader that behind\nall the violence were the Sinhala-Buddhists and their ideology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, he produces a mono-causal thesis\nblaming only the Sinhala-Buddhist ignoring  the complex of history of\nmultifarious factors that converged to create the North-South conflict. He\nsays: \u2026..I have tried to present in narrative form the unfolding of events\nover a period of about hundred years \u2026The main question to which I shall probe\nis the extent to which, and the manner in which Buddhism as a religion\u201d\nespoused by Sri Lankans of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries has\ncontributed to the current ethnic conflict and collective violence in Sri Lanka.\u201d\n( p.3 — Ibid). And then he proceeds to detail how Buddhism has contributed in\na significant way to the current conflict. He takes a blinkered view as if\nBuddhism had acted as the sole miscreant that caused the violence. The\ndialectics of two forces of the North and the South interacting and clashing\ndoes not enter into his  account. It\u2019s Sinhala-Buddhism that is blamed all\nthe way. The fact that Sinhala-Buddhists were reacting to an inimical,\nuncompromising, intransigent force from the North, determined to impose its\nminority demands at the expense of the rest of the nation, which can naturally\nprovoke a reaction, has been ignored. What is implied is that as non-violent\nBuddhists their duty was to give in to all the demands of the minority. The crisis\ncould have been avoided if the Buddhist have been more tolerant and\ncompromising, according to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By omitting  the roles played by Northern\nactors Tambiah has  virtually exonerated the Tamils from any\nresponsibility for the violence. In any case, it is against common sense to\nbelieve that violence came only from the uncompromising attitude of the\nmajority. It is like believing in the sound of a clap with one  hand.\nBesides, this claim is factually wrong. For instance, when Ponnambalam was\ndemanding 50-50\u201d the Sinhala Board of Minister offered him 43 per cent.\nPonnambalam rejected it. Which majority in the world had given 43% to a\nminority of 12% on an issue of so fundamental as power-sharing? The Tamil\nleadership blundered and the blame is put on the Sinhala-Buddhists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast, A. J. Wilson, son-in-law of the father\nof Separatism, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, has commended Sinhala-Buddhist as the\nforce that has sustained democracy in a pluralistic society. Calvin Woodward,\nin his review of Wilson\u2019s book, Politics in Sri Lanka, 1947 \u2013 1973,<\/em> states:\nThe uniqueness of Sri Lanka, Wilson points out, is that it (Sri Lanka) has\nfaced challenges without veering from the democratic path. Certainly then, the\nkey  to the future lies in  an understanding of the past. How and\nwhy, in other words, has the democratic experiment been able to work so well in\nSri Lanka? The author investigates this and concludes that the  political\nstability so far maintained in Sri Lank is due mainly two factors, one of\nindigenous origin and the other the result of Western implantation. Primary is\nthe Buddhist ethos and the doctrine of tolerance. This, according to Wilson,\nhas acted to dissuade the majority community from unduly imposing itself on the\nminorities and encouraged it to respect the fundamental rights and distinctions\nof others in the plural society.\u201d (p. 72 – The Ceylon Journal of\nHistorical and  Social Studies<\/em> \u2013 Vol III, July-December, 1973,\nNo.1.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, it didn\u2019t take long for Prof. Wilson to\nsomersault, like most Tamil intellectuals, after the declaration of war\nagainst Sinhala-Buddhist in the  Vadukoddai Resolution endorsed by the\nTamil leadership in May 1976. Tamil and pro-Tamil intellectuals fell in line\nwith Ponnambalam to denigrate Sinhala-Buddhist history and devalue its culture\nin order to push their  claim  for  what Bandaranaike called\noutrageous demands\u201d.  The intellectual fashion was to follow Ponnambalam\nevery inch of the way. A whole school of Ponnambalayas rose in academia, NGOs\nand among pseudo-Marxist pundits \/ political scientists to defend Tamil\nextremism based on the triad outlined above. The irony is that they imagine\nthemselves to be original thinkers when  they are merely aping \nPonnambalam. Dayan Jayatilleka, the self-styled political scientist, for\ninstance, is wondering why there are no Gramsci\u2019s in Jaffna. Where are the\nGramscis of Jaffna?\u201d he  wants to know. He can look till the cows of\nJaffna come home and he  will not find any for the simple reason that\nPonnambalayas do not breed Gramscis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, in  his latest Gramscian\u201d\nutterance he has predicted the end of the Tamils if they don\u2019t band together\nagainst the armed Dharmapalas\u201d. The Ponnambalayas in the North \u2013 there was no\none else in the peninsular landscape \u2013 always survived by similar kind of calls\nto arms. Dayan Jayatilleka is a Ponnambalaya of the South raising phobias\nagainst the Sinhalese just like the way Ponnambalam did at Navalapitiya in\n1939. Clearly, there is nothing original in regurgitating old Ponna\u201d, as he is\nknown in demotic parlance.. But, according to Dayan\u2019s latest prognosis,\nPonnambalamism has come to  a dead-end. So why is it that the Marxists,\nthe Gramscian, the ex-JVPers and the political scientists behaving  like\nPonnayas? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n \n <\/td>\n ReplyForward\n <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindpala\u00a0 No Tamil political leader in the post-Donoughmore period had single-handedly constructed an ideology and changed the course of national politics, almost overnight, asGanapathipillai Gangaser Ponnambalam (8 November 1901 \u2013 9 February 1977). Not only that, no one else has left such a lasting impact \u2013 albeit a divisive and devastating one […]<\/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-113601","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\/113601","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=113601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}