{"id":117549,"date":"2021-08-27T16:08:51","date_gmt":"2021-08-27T23:08:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=117549"},"modified":"2021-08-27T16:08:51","modified_gmt":"2021-08-27T23:08:51","slug":"racism-nationalism-and-supranationalism-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/08\/27\/racism-nationalism-and-supranationalism-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Racism, Nationalism and Supranationalism -II"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

(continued\nfrom August 23, 2021<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka and supranationalism<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every\nSri Lankan government since independence has acted on the tacit understanding\nthat, while remaining politically independent of India without being overawed\nby its size or strength, Sri Lanka should maintain friendly relations with its\nbig northern neighbour at all times. But unfortunately, India doesn\u2019t seem to\nreciprocate this established cooperative, non-threatening stance of Sri Lanka.\nInstead India seems to overlook or slily exploit the growing supranationalist\ninfluence of the West on Sri Lanka that is aimed at containing China. Here,\nAmerica and India view China as their common rival in the region. What Sri\nLanka wants is to remain neutral and non-aligned in its dealings with all three\npowers and enjoy the benefits of sound relations with each one of them. No one\nshould blame Sri Lanka if it gravitated towards China in these\ncircumstances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At\nthe beginning of this essay I wrote: \u2018the primary definition of the word\nsupranationalism given in the Merriam-Webster online dictionary is  the\nstate or condition of transcending national boundaries, authority, or\ninterests\u201d (which needs to be related to different contexts as appropriate, I\nthink, such as global economics, politics, etc)\u2019. A fuller definition of the\nconcept is offered by Marshall Hargraves, editor at Investopedia.com:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\nsupranational organization is a multinational union or association in which\nmember countries cede authority and sovereignty on at least some internal\nmatters to the group, whose decisions are binding on its members. In short,\nmember states share in decision making on matters that will affect each\ncountry’s citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Supranationalism\nseems to be an ideal nursed by the Western bloc, not embraced with any\nenthusiasm by the other powers of the world that are its rivals or adversaries.\nIt may be a good idea for the few rich powerful nations of the West and the\nhandful of their allies in the rest of the world, but at what cost to the\npoorer nations of the third world whose ancestors were at the receiving end of\nthe depredations of Western colonialism that reigned more or less over the past\nfive centuries? Isn\u2019t it not likely that it will threaten nations\u2019 sovereignty\nand their internal democracy? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nUnited Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the European Union are supranational\ngroups to varying degrees. They were established with a view to promoting\ncooperation while preventing conflict between nations particularly in economic\nand military matters. Supranationalism itself is not a new idea. It may be seen\nas a more threatening version of globalization, which itself is a metamorphosis\nof Western colonialism. Supranationalism has evolved  into what\nnationalists see as oppressive and imperialistic. Of course Americans decry the\nnationalism of countries that choose not to toe their line as \u2018radical\nnationalism\u2019, as a negative tendency that must be suppressed. Supranationalism\nhas evolved from its apparently non-aggressive beginnings soon after the end of\nWorld War II in 1945 into a global menace. Sri Lanka seems to be almost in the\ngrip of a steadily tightening supranationalist domination, exercised through UN\norgans for example, in a world where the country, as a small independent state,\nis being increasingly subjected to manyfold dangers and disadvantages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka faced with three sinister forces<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus\nSri Lanka finds itself pitted against a monstrous coalition of three sinister\nforces: global supranationalist hegemony, separatist Tamil racism and Indian\nexpansionism. The three are actually strange bedfellows pursuing their\nrespective separate targets at the expense of hapless Sri Lanka. They are\nmutually beneficial to each other at the moment. It appeared that America\u2019s\nMillennium Challenge Corporation program was set to bifurcate the island\nwithout the people\u2019s mandate to do so into two parts (north-western and\nsouth-eastern) with a so-called economic corridor from Colombo in the western\nprovince to Trincomalee in the eastern; the economic corridor was going to be\nadministered under  American, rather than Sri Lankan, law. Sri Lankans\nthat this would have coincided with the separatist agenda. Though the scheduled\nMCC Compact between the US and Sri Lanka was not signed in the face of Sri\nLankan public\u2019s opposition to it, giving the impression that the project was\nunilaterally abandoned by America, whether certain concessions are being\nguaranteed to the interventionist power through diplomacy, or whether it is\nbeing implemented under a different form of coercion is not known. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

India,\npreoccupied with expansionist regional superpower ambitions at the expense of\nSri Lanka and other smaller neighbours, has lately given indications of its own\nbent towards a version of supranationalism. The Indian Bharatiya Janata Party\n(BJP)tried to augment its influence in neighbouring countries through\npolitical, ideological, and religious strategies using Indian-related\nminorities in those countries. In mid-February this year (2021), Diplab Kumar\nDeb, Chief Minister of India\u2019s Tripura State , was reported to have stated that\nthe BJP was planning to expand the party into countries like Sri Lanka and\nNepal. The BJP\u2019s national president Amit Shah also has hopes of establishing\nBJP branches in neighbouring countries to win elections and form or participate\nin governments in Sri Lanka and Nepal. Sri Lanka and Nepal have already\nexpressed their vehement opposition to such hegemonic moves on the part of\nIndia. Within opposition ranks in India itself, the BJP proposition has drawn\nheavy flak. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nhandful of racist Tamil politicians hinge their separatist demand upon an\nalleged Tamil nationalism within Sri Lanka. As shown in the first part,\n\u2018nation\u2019 means a large body of people united by common descent, history,\nculture, or language, inhabiting a particular country or territory\u201d. Now the\nseparatists had to back up their claims with proof of their eligibility in\nterms of this definition. So they concocted a historical homeland theory. It is\nnoteworthy that even prominent Tamil historian Karthegesu Indrapala did not\naccept this idea. A distinguished Tamil historian and the first professor in history\nat the Jaffna University (established in 1974 during  the United Front\ngovernment of Sirimavo Bandaranaike), Karthigesu Indrapala clearly asserted in\nhis London University University PhD thesis (1965) Dravidian Settlements in\nCeylon and the Beginnings of the Jaffna Kingdom\u201d, that on the basis of the\nmeagre evidence that is available, we have to conclude that there was no\nnotable Dravidian settlements of a widespread nature before the tenth\ncentury\u2026\u2026.\u201d. He rejected assertions to the contrary made by earlier Tamil\nhistorians like C. Rasanayagam and Gnanapragasam as unscientific. Sri\nLanka\u2019s recorded history of two thousand five hundred years and ancillary\nhistorical and archaeological evidence available, do not lend support to the\nTamils\u2019 Sri Lankan homeland hypothesis.  So they decided to fabricate one\nthat did.  To this end, they wanted to distort the history of Sri Lanka to\nsuit their separatist goal. So, let\u2019s now turn to this aspect of our subject. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historicity of Sri Lanka\u2019s historical narrative<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nour country became an independent republic in 1972, we should  have\nretained the name Ceylon by which it had been internationally known for\ncenturies before that and the name Lanka domestically, both as official names.\nOur narrow-minded politicians failed to use that great opportunity for making\nthe historical assertion that the country still remained \u2018Ceylon\u2019. To explain\nthe significance of this: \u2018Lanka(wa)\u2019 is what Sinhala speakers still call it\nlocally; its Tamil version \u2018Ilankei\u2019 is what Tamil speakers use. Even\nofficially, they seem to prefer \u2018Ilankei\u2019 to  the formal post-1972 \u2018Sri\nLanka\u2019.  Or at least, we should have straightaway named it \u2018Lanka\u2019 without\nthe Sanskrit word \u2018Shri\u2019 (which is what the simplified English spelling \u2018Sri\u2019\nstands for).  During his term as president, Ranasinghe Premadasa, being a\nconfirmed  believer in occultism in spite of his ostentatious Buddhist\npiety, insisted on the letter \u2018h\u2019 being added to \u2018s\u2019 in the word as transcribed\nin English (thus forming the palato-alveolar fricative \u2018sh\u2019), on the suggestion\nof numerologists, in order to ensure the alleged \u2018correct\u2019 pronunciation of the\nname, that is supposed to nullify certain alleged malefic effects! This was\nvery na\u00efve on his part, for in practice, even Sinhala speakers rarely get the\nfricative sound \u2018sh\u2019 right (it is not a phoneme in the authentic Sinhala sound\nsystem). Sinhala speakers almost always say \u2018siri\u2019 instead of \u2018shri\u2019. So it is\nalways pronounced \u2018Siri Lanka\u2019 not \u2018Shri\/Sri\u2019 Lanka among them, because initial\nconsonants unaccompanied by appropriate vowel sounds are almost nonexistent in\nthe language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\npreoccupation with the name of the country was due to the fact that, especially\nthe Sinhalese majority, were anxious to  make a clear break with the\ncolonial past with which the name \u2018Ceylon\u2019 was associated (or so the\npoliticians reasoned). They were unaware of the fact that \u2018Ceylon\u2019 harked back\nto the ancient name of the island Sivhela\/Sinhale\/Sihela. Even the proponents\nof the new Sanskritized name \u2018Sri Lanka\u2019 seemed to have forgotten that \u2018Ceylon\u2019\nwas actually a corruption of \u2018Sinhale\u2019 \u2018the land of the Sinhalese\u2019.  But\nthere were many other names by which the country was known in the past:\nHeladiva, Taprobane, Serendib, Lanka, etc. Lanka appears even in the Chronicles\nwritten before the 5th century CE, which deal with happenings in Lanka in the\n6th century BCE. That these descriptive names were in common circulation among\ninternational visitors, sailors, travelers, and traders suggests the fact that,\nbeing on the ancient Silk Route, Ceylon\/Sri Lanka was widely known in the\nancient world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The island was\nmost commonly famous as \u2018Sinhale\u2019, the land of the Sinhalese, because it has\nbeen the homeland of the Sinhalese, and it was they who built up a vibrant\ncivilization whose cultural moral foundation was the Buddhist ethical\nphilosophy. King Dutugemunu (161-137 BCE) declared at the launch of his\ncampaign against the invader Choa king Elara (205-161 BCE): This enterprise of\nmine is not for the purpose of acquiring the pomp and advantages of royalty.\nThis undertaking has always had for its object the re-establishment of the\nreligion of the supreme Buddha\u201d (Chapter XXV of The Mahavansa\/Mudaliyar L.C.\nWijesinghe translation\/1889). The whole country is flagged with archaeological\nremains of ancient buildings such as royal palaces, Buddhist monasteries,\nstupas and shrines. Then there are rock inscriptions that support the written\nhistories, bearing testimony to a history of more than two and a half\nmillennia. The fact that the Sinhalese have no other homeland than this country\ncannot be disputed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sinhalese\nambassadors in the court of emperor Claudius<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Roman\nhistorian Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) in his Natural History<\/em> gives a\nvivid account of a royal embassy consisting of four members with a person\ncalled Raki as its leader from the court of king Bhatika Abhaya Tissa (38-66\nCE) visiting the imperial Roman court during the reign of the emperor Claudius\n(41-54 CE) to negotiate the purchase of red coral from there.  The coral\nwas for making an ornamental net to cover the Maha Tupa (Ruvanveli Maha Saeya)\nat Anuradhapura as an offering to the sacred monument.  Ptolemy (c. 100 –\nc. 170) made his map of Taprobana (Taprobane as foreign visitors at that time\ncalled Sinhale) significantly larger than it actually was relative to his map\nof what is today called India to the north, signifies the importance he\nattached to the island as a country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The account of\nAnnius Plocamus, a Roman tax collector from the Mediterranean region, (who\nmediated the royal ambassadorial visit during king Bhatika Abhaya Tissa\u2019s reign\n(20 BCE – 9 CE)), currently available in the Wikipedia, provides a fine example\nof the deliberate distortion of Sinhalese history that has been carried on for\nnearly a century by certain Tamil racist historians. The Wikipedia entry refers\nto a certain Tamil writer by the name of T. Isaac Tambyah, author of \u2018Psalms of\nSaiva Saints\u2019 (1925). Isaac Tambyah assumes that the name given by Pliny of the\nleader of the embassy Rachias<\/em> is a version of Rasaiah! Rasaiah is\nfamiliar to us as a common Tamil name. (Actually, to be fair by Isaac Tambyah,\nhe only repeats an obviously uninformed guess that had been made by British\ngovernor Emerson Tennent (1804-1869) that the name Rasaiah suggested that the\nembassy was sent to Rome by an alleged Rajah of Jaffna (The governor had been\nmisled by a Tamil zealot\u2019s figment of imagination for there were no Tamil\nrulers in Dambakolapatuna {Jambukolapattana in Pali}, as that area was known\nthen, in the first century CE.) There is no doubt that a Tamil distortionist\nhad fed Tennent with wrong information! The same Wikipedia account suggests\nthat the embassy was prompted by a trivial discovery of the sincerity of Romans\nby the king. The late Dr D.P.M. Weerakkody, Western Classics scholar, wrote a\npaper  about historical Sri Lanka-Rome relationships in 2013. It is\nobvious that Dr Weerakkody never took the Tamil historian\u2019s claim that Pliny\u2019s\nRachias was \u2018Rasaiah\u2019 seriously. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historical\ntruth of the Sinhalese embassy to Rome<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The historical\ntruth about the first century Sinhalese embassy to Rome is well established.\nAuthoritative historians have found that the name Rachias is a  corruption\nof the Sinhala name Raki or Rakiya, one of the typically short Sinhala names\nthat recurs in a number of inscriptions as distinguished professor in Archaeology\nRaj Somadeva of the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, has clearly pointed\nout.  He has provided much documentary and epigraphical evidence to prove\nthis. Pliny himself has given a detailed account of Rachias or Raki, which\nshows that Raki was an important personage, indeed, a scion of the Sinhalese\nroyal family. Raki\u2019s father was an ambassador too. He was employed by the king\nof Sinhale of the time to lead an embassy to China. For Raki to represent the\nSinhalese king in the Roman court, he had to be of the Sinhala royal family. He\nwon\u2019t have insulted the emperor by sending ambassadors under the leadership of\na non-Sinhala, non-native commoner called Rasaiah! Can you imagine that a king\nwho was rich enough to buy red corals to make a huge net to adorn the stupendous\nMaha Saeya would do such a thing? (The purpose of the embassy was to negotiate\nthe purchase of those red corals.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Real\nindependence was asserted in 1972<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No fair minded\nSri Lankan with a sense of self respect would disagree that real independence for\nSri Lanka came with the adoption of the republican constitution in 1972 under\nthe United Front government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, widow of SWRD\nBandaranaike who had spearheaded the 1956 nationalist revolution. However,\naccording to the Encyclopaedia Britannica editors Actual independence for the\ndominion of Ceylon came on February 4, 1948, when the constitution of 1947 went\ninto effect. \u2026\u201d.  (The author of the entry is Sinnappah Arasaratnam\nrepresenting the E.B. Editors). A  dominion <\/em>in this context means a\nself-governing nation within the Commonwealth of Nations (which is a euphemism\nfor the menacing spectre of the former British empire). How can that be actual\nindependence for any former colony? Hardly any Sri Lankan with a sense of\nhistory and a measure of regard for truth and justice would accept E.B.\u2019s\ndefinition except the anti-nationalist minority,  who still hanker after\nthe privileged position that they had been granted by the rapacious\ncolonialists at the expense of the majority Sinhalese and the equally\ndispossessed lower sections of all the communities that far outnumbered the\nminuscule elite (composed of the privileged sections of the subject population\nirrespective of their racial identity) that relished the crumbs fallen from the\nimperial table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Menacing glare\nof former colonials<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even after half a\ncentury of egalitarian democratic republicanism, Sri Lanka hasn\u2019t still\nsucceeded in escaping the menacing glare of the former colonials, who continue\nto exploit the communal disharmonies that they created to destabilize the\nLankan state. As Shamindra Ferdinando of The Island reported a couple of months\nago, Conservative Party member Lord Naseby, the President of the All Party\nParliamentary UK-Sri Lanka Group, said, It was reprehensible that the UK, as a\nmember of the UNHRC, had suppressed \u2018robust evidence of utmost importance\u2019\u201d.\nLord Naseby was speaking in defence of Sri Lanka against false allegations of\nwar crimes); he stressed: It is unforgivable and is a black day for my UK\nGovernment\u201d. (I consider Lord Naseby to be in the line of Western intellectuals\nwho, moved by their sense of humanity during colonial times, rendered yeoman\nservice to energise the Buddhist national revival that independently originated\namong Lanka\u2019s learned Buddhist monks in the latter half of the 19th century; these\nincluded British Buddhist scholar T.W. Rhys Davids {1843-1922}, founder of the\nPali Book Society, German orientalist Wilhelm Geiger {1856-1943} who brought\nout critical editions of the Pali chronicles the Mahavansa and the Culavansa,\nand had them translated into English, his compatriot Buddhist educationist and\nauthor Marie Musaeus Higgins {1855-1926}, and the American military officer\nturned theosophist and Buddhist revivalist Henry Steel Olcott\n{1832-1907}).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

History behind\nthe \u2018Tamil national question\u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Centuries of\nshared history between the native Sinhalese and South Indian Tamils anciently\ndefined by trade relations and cultural interactions, but more frequently\nmarked by Tamil military  aggression that went well beyond commerce and\nculture, preceded the arrival of European imperial powers in the island. \nPermanent Tamil presence in Sri Lanka is only about 800 years old. (More than a\ncentury of deliberate distortion of history has enabled some Tamil politicians\nto put sovereign Tamil presence in the island even before the alleged arrival\nof Vijaya!) Until the 13th<\/sup> century CE, there were no permanent Tamil settlements in Sri\nLanka, as authoritative historians like Professor K.M. de Silva have proved\nbeyond disputation. Of course, Dravidians had trade relations with Sri Lanka\nover a long time before that. Muslims, though they didn\u2019t settle down in the\nisland permanently in significant numbers until much later, came to Sri Lanka\nfor trade through India more than one thousand years ago; most of them must\nhave come with  Tamils from South India. Even today the Muslim minority\nare overwhelmingly Tamil speakers. The islanders had trade and cultural\nlinks  with countries  in Asia such as China, Myanmar,Thailand, and\nCambodia, and with countries in Africa such as Egypt, and even with imperial\nRome in Europe, where Sinhale was well known as a popular port of call for\ntrading vessels and as a regional emporium for diversified commerce (rice,\nspices, gems, elephants, and so on). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At independence,\nthe pursuers of the goal of a separate Tamil state within Ceylon who formed the\nTamil State\/Kingdom Party euphemistically called the Federal Party, had seized\nupon the  historically invalid two nation\u201d hypothesis embedded in the\nCleghorn Minute of 1799, which proposes the idea of two different nations\n(Sinhala and Tamil) from a very ancient period (having) divided between them\nthe possession of the island\u2026\u2026\u201d.  This two-nation theory is a complete\nfallacy. Ceylon asserted real independence in 1972 through parliamentary democracy\nby declaring itself a republic, a unified country where the citizens belonging\nto various ethnic, linguistic and religious communities enjoy the same\ndemocratic rights and bear the same responsibilities as equal members of a\nsingle sovereign state protected by the same laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(To be concluded\nin the third and final part)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Rohana R. Wasala (continued from August 23, 2021) Sri Lanka and supranationalism Every Sri Lankan government since independence has acted on the tacit understanding that, while remaining politically independent of India without being overawed by its size or strength, Sri Lanka should maintain friendly relations with its big northern neighbour at all times. But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rohana-r-wasala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117549","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=117549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117549\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}