{"id":120486,"date":"2021-11-21T00:43:20","date_gmt":"2021-11-21T06:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=120486"},"modified":"2021-11-20T17:41:06","modified_gmt":"2021-11-21T00:41:06","slug":"partisan-intellectuals-betrayed-the-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/11\/21\/partisan-intellectuals-betrayed-the-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"Partisan intellectuals betrayed the nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The utter failure of\nour intellectuals to grasp the turbulent historical and political under\ncurrents that destroyed all possibilities of peaceful co-existence has been one\nof the  main contributory factors that prolonged and sustained the\n33-year-old war launched officially by the Tamil leadership on May 14th<\/sup>,\n1976 at Vadukoddai. It ended on May 19, 2009 in the murky water of Nandikadal.\nThe Vadukoddai Resolution began by outlining its own historical and political\nreasons for declaring war and concluded by calling upon the Tamil nation\u201d and\nthe Tamil youth to take up arms against the democratically elected state. The\nageing Tamil leadership, some of whom were ensconced in the parliamentary\nseats, including S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the leader of the TNA, deliberately\ndecided to commit the crime against peace in the Vadukoddai Resolution by\nlegitimising violence officially as a political instrument of the Tamil\ncommunity to achieve their political goal of Eelam, a separate state\nexclusively for the Tamils. Declaring war was the biggest gamble of the Tamil\nleadership. There was no guarantee that their violence could win. Violence\ncould go either way. Despite investing their best political, intellectual and\nfinancial resources, it didn\u2019t go their way. It ended in Nandikadal. It was a\nfutile war that boomeranged on the Tamil aggressors. The failure of the Tamil\nleadership to recognise the new realities is a major obstacle to\nreconciliation. Even after Nandikadal they are flatly refusing to accept\nresponsibility for their miscalculated political gambit. They declared war.\nThey waged war. They financed it. They directed it. They legitimised it. They\ninternationalised it. They theorised to justify their violence. They glorified\nevery massacre and destruction as a victory for the creation of Eelam. They\nmanufactured excuses to justify the killings of the Tamils by the Tamils and\nother civilian non-combatants. They hailed the forcible recruitment of\nunder-aged Tamil children into the futile war as heroic sacrifices of the\ncommitted Tamil youth. They backed to the hilt the Tamil Pol Pot who led the\nwar on their behalf. They even elevated him to the divine status of Surya\nDevan\u201d. And when they failed they blamed the Sinhala-Buddhist, as usual, for\nthe war they declared and lost.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reaction of the state to combat the\naggressive separatist forces was inevitable. Separatism and violence are\ninseparable. Besides, the seasoned Tamil leadership knew the consequences of\ngoing to war with the state. Rightly or wrongly, no democratically elected\nstate would agree to divide a nation to gratify the political aspirations of an\naggressive minority, sacrificing the interests and aspirations of the other\ncommunities which formed the majority. By 1976 Tamil politics had come to the end\nof their tether and was determined to declare war \u2013 the last remaining\npolitical weapon available to them to achieve Eelam. The calculated declaration\nof war by the Tamil leadership was a challenge that no elected state could\naccept lying down. So, at the end of the Vadukoddai Resolution the Tamil\nleadership, declared war, urging the Tamil nation\u201d and the Tamil youth to take\nup arms. The Resolution said :   This Convention directs the Action Committee\nof the TAMIL UNITED LIBERATION FRONT to formulate a plan of action and launch\nwithout undue delay the struggle for winning the sovereignty and freedom of the\nTamil Nation;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this Convention calls\nupon the Tamil Nation in general and the Tamil youth in particular to come\nforward to throw themselves fully into the sacred fight for freedom and to\nflinch not till the goal of a sovereign state of TAMIL EELAM is reached.\u201d    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Considering the internal political\npressures pushing the Tamil leadership during this time the declaration of war\n(throw themselves into the sacred fight for freedom and flinch not\u201d) \nwas, in a sense, inevitable. The Tamils had come to the end of the road of\nTamil extremist politics. The declaration of war to achieve a separate state\nwas the last option available to them in their desperate pursuit of Elam. Their\nlong journey on the road to Nandikadal, the futile end of Tamil extremism,\nbegan in the early 20th<\/sup> century. It began in the 1920s with the\nTamil leadership demanding one extra seat in the Western Province. This was in\naddition to the seats allocated by the British administration to the Northern\nTamils in the Legislative Council. The Oliver Twistian craving  for more\nand more power in the administration, legislature and the economy has been a\npathological condition with the Tamils. Driven by the Vellalas it has been a\nchronic and incurable condition that dominated Tamil politics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two communities went apart with the\nTamil leadership escalating their demands each step of the way, from decade to\ndecade. From the base of demanding one extra seat in the twenties the Tamil\nleaderhip led by G. G. Ponnamabalam jumped to demand 50% of power for 11% of\nTamils in the thirties, crying discrimination\u201d when, mark you,  the\nBritish were ruling Ceylon, as it was known then. The British were the first to\ndismiss the accusation of discrimination\u201d as unsubstantiated fiction. In the\nforties, Tamil demands escalated from 50 \u2013 50 to federalism with S. J. V.\nChelvanayakam breaking away from Ponnambalam and forming his Illankai Tamil\nArasu Kachchi ( Federal Party) in 1949.  From federalism the Tamil\nleadership leapt to separatism in the fifties onwards. In the fifties it became\nincreasingly clear that federalism\u201d meant separatism in Tamil. The Tamil\nleadership marketed their increased demands as federalism\u201d in English but in\nTamil the phrase Arasu Kachchi\u201d was used to convey the concept of a separate\nstate\u201d.  It culminated in declaring war in the Vadukoddai Resolution.\nAfter declaring war to achieve a separate state there was no other higher political\ngoal left for them to negotiate. Separatism was, of course, non-negotiable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, what is significant is the\nSouthern reaction to the escalating demands of the Tamils of the North. When\nthe Tamils demanded an extra seat in the South in addition to seats given to\nthem in the North the Sinhala leadership agreed, after controversial disputes,\nto grant the seat to Sir. Ponnambalam Arunachalam. But, as revealed in the\nmagisterial monographs on the break-up of the Ceylon National Congress and the\nrise of Tamil separatism Prof. K. M. de Silva, Sri Lanka\u2019s foremost historian,\nrevealed that Sir. Ponnambalam rejected the offer. The Northern Tamils then\nblamed the Sinhalese for not keeping their word given to Sir. Ponnambalam. That\nis the first time  that the Tamils arrogantly rejected the offer to heal\nthe North-South conflict.  Second, when G. G. Ponnambalam demanded 50-50\nhe was offered 45%. He rejected that and insisted on 50 -50. As pointed out by\npolitical scientist Prof. A. J. Wilson and historian   Prof. Sinnappah\nArasaratnam, it was a colossal blunder. These two major events prove that there\nwas always willingness on the part of the South to accommodate the North. The\nfinal proof came when Chelvanayakam, the father of separatism, discovered that\nthere was ample room for peaceful co-existence through cooperative politics.\nThe best period for inter-ethnic relations was when the Tamils worked jointly\nwith the Sinhalese. Prof. Wilson wrote: Yet for all this (unfulfilled\npromises) the period of Dudley Senanayake\u2019s \u2018National government\u201d, 1965 -1970,\nmarked the golden years of Sinhala-Tamil reconciliation. The President of the\nFP, S. M. Rasamanickam, in his presidential address to the annual convention of\n1969, spoke of  the rewarding relationship: During the last four years we\nwere able to gain some rights, if not all of what we expected, through the\nmethod of cooperation.\u201d FP parliamentarians for once had the opportunity of\nparticipating in  government and of benefiting from belonging to the\ngovernment parliamentary group. They had endured a period of tribulation when\nthe Bandaranaikes were in office in 1956 – 1965 and the 1965 \u2013 1970 phase had\nbeen the much-needed breathing spell.\u201d (p.111 \u2013 S.J.V. Chelvanayakam and\nthe Crisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, 1947-1977, A Political Biography, <\/em><\/strong>A.\nJeyaratnam Wilson.}<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is a telling piece of evidence,\ncoming from the highest Tamil political sources, which debunks  the\npolitical myth that the Sinhala-Tamil relations were irretrievably\nirreconcilable because of the intransigence of the Sinhala governments\u201d to\nnegotiate with the Tamils and accommodate the Tamil needs. Clearly, there were\ngolden\u201d opportunities for both sides to negotiate within the non-violent\ndemocratic framework, despite the sporadic ethnic explosions and complaints of\ndiscriminations etc. As stated by Rasamanickam there were always means of\nachieving  political goals through the method of cooperation\u201d, though\ndilatory. But the Tamils opted for Vadukoddai formula which meant war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each mishap was exploited by the Tamil\nleadership to crank up hate politics and demonise the Sinhala-Buddhist South as\nthe enemy of the Tamils that had to be defeated.  Tamil extremism was\nescalating  hate politics to a violent pitch. The Sansoni Commission\nreport documents how the Tamil leadership spoke of non-violence in Parliament\nand stoked violence in Jaffna. For instance, it records the evidence of how two\nTamil leaders, A. Amirthalingam and T. Sivasithamparam, openly condoned the\nkillings of  the boys\u201d. Quite brazenly, without any moral compunction,\nthey encouraged the killings of the boys\u201d promising to defend them in courts.\nThat is the fundamental difference in the politics of the North and the South:\nthe South had no organised militant units based on hate culture to launch\nracist attacks targeting those perceived to be the enemies of the state,\nincluding dissidents. In the South the sporadic violence fizzled out almost\nsoon after the outburst. The North, however, had numerous militant units organised \nspecifically to pursue politics of hate to the extreme end. According to\nTaraki\u201d, (pseudonym of Dharmeratnam Sivaram) a leading Tamil journalist, there\nwere 37 militant units in 1983, the largest and the most effective being the\nLTTE and PLOTE. There were no such killing machines organised at the grass root\nlevel to target the perceived enemy systematically in the South. On the\ncontrary, the \u2018Sinhala state\u201d provided protection to the Tamils persecuted by\nPrabhakaran. The South had sporadic mob violence which invariably were\nknee-jerk reactions to Tamil provocative  violence. But the sporadic\nmob  violence was not run by institutionalised militant groups organised\nto hunt and terrorise or kill the opponents\/dissidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ruthlessness of Tamil violence\nexhibited its brutal face when the LTTE assassinated Amirthalingam and Neeelan\nTiruchelvam \u2013 two of the leading intellectuals who  manufactured legal and\ntheoretical excuses for the violence of the Iyakkum\u201d (movement). It was the\nlethal ideological bullets manufactured by them that ricocheted and hit them.\nThe Sinhala state\u201d, on the contrary, protected the Tamil Parliamentarians who\nhad sworn allegiance to Prabhakaran, the enemy of the state. In short, the\nSinhala state\u201d was giving protection to the  enemies of the state. The\nSinhala state\u201d was also commended by the UNICEF for being the only state that\nprovided essentials \u2013 food, medicine, welfare facilities etc., — to a\nrebel-held territory. If by any chance there was a short supply of the\nessentials or delay in delivering due to bureaucratic bungling there was a huge\ncry by the intellectuals, particularly in the NGOs, accusing the Sinhala\nstate\u201d of the using food and medicine as weapons of war. The role played by the\nTamil MPs was like that of other peaceniks : both used their accusations,\ntheories and cries for peace to tie the hands of the Sinhala state\u201d and\nstrengthen the hands of Prabhakaran to wage his war. Every mishap, misstep,\nmisstatement, was used by them to justify the refusals of Prabhakaran to\nnegotiate. The intellectuals failed to recognise that it was their excuses that\nemboldened Prabhakaran to prolong the war. He knew that the intellectuals were\nthere behind  him to justify his war-mongering tactics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A  glaring example is that of the three\nintellectuals — Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda, Charles Abeysekera, an NGO\napparatchik, and, most of all, Bishop Kenneth Fernando — who sat at the feet\nof Velupiallai Prabhakaran,  drank his Orange Barley, (a fizzy drink),\nchewed his biscuits and came back to Colombo from Vanni, to glorify him. With\nhis two fellow-travellers sitting on both sides, Bishop Kenneth Fernando, told\na press conference that Prabhakaran  is humane\u201d. By no stretch of\nimagination could an indiscriminate killer of non-combatant civilians and\ndissident Tamils be considered humane\u201d. Prabhakaran demanded total obedience\nto his one-man regime and had no reservations about liquidating anyone that\ncrossed his path. It is incredible that a Bishop of the Anglican Church would\njustify the indiscriminate massacres of non-combatant civilians as humane\u201d.\nThe other two intellectuals who flanked him gave their consent with their\nsilence.  The mendacity of our leading intellectual is execrable. It is\nour intellectual who gave oxygen for Prabhakaran to pursue violence with a\nvengeance. He knew that there are professors, Churchmen at the highest level,\nand intellectuals in organised centres of research, who were willing to suck\nhis toes just for a glass of Orange Barley served at this table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among partisan intellectuals it was a\ncommon  practice to lie on behalf of Prabhakaran and his regime. Take the\ncase of Jehan Perera, the head of the National Peace Council. He referred to\nAnton Balasingham, the theoretician of the LTTE, as Dr.\u201d Balasingham, knowing\nthat he never had a doctorate. When I asked him why he conferred a doctorate on\nBalasingham knowing very well that he had not earned one his reply was that\nothers too do the same. Our conversation didn\u2019t stop at that. In the end he\npromised not to use it. But he never kept his\nword.  He continued to lie misleading the\npublic. Why did our intellectual deliberately lie? Answer: Simple. They\nwere batting for Prabhakaran. They were out to justify, and sometimes even glorify Tamil\nviolence. Lies were told to cover up the\ncrimes and the only way crimes can be covered is by lying. Furthermore, lies\nare told because the truth hurts your cause.\nLies were told by our intellectuals to elevate the criminals to a higher level of respectability. Jehan Perera conferred a\ndoctorate on his idol Balasingham even though he knew he had not earned it. Our intellectuals went all out to glorify\ncriminals. It ws their mean of financing and maintaining their expensive\nlife-style. In short, they were complicit in the\ncrimes committed by the Tamils. Uyangoda and Jehan are two intellectual scavengers who were ever ready to clean  up the blood spilt by\nthe Tamil killers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The scales of their pretentious\npolitical morality were always weighted in favour  of Tamil violence. The\nworst offenders were the Tamil intellectuals. The common morality of the Tamil\nintellectuals was to defend Prabhakaranism as a liberating force. As the\nsuccess of Prabhakaranism depended on pure violence \u2013 it never relied on\ndiplomacy, negotiations or compromises — their intellectual energies were\nfocused on defending Tamil violence.  Justifying and\/or glorifying Tamil\nviolence was an indispensable political strategy for their success.  The success of\nPrabhakaran, for instance, was measured by the corpses he buried. His war chest\nincreased in proportion to the new widows he left behind. It was his power to\nkill that elevated his status to Surya Devan\u201d.  His early military\nsuccess raised the hopes of the Tamil intellectuals. Rationalising violence\nbecame a specialised intellectual activity among the Tamil intelligentsia. A\nhigh water-mark in Tamil society, particularly in the Tamil diaspora, was to\nreceive public recognition from Prabhakaran. Tamil intellectuals were craving\nto receive honours from Prabhakaran. Prof. Jeyam Eliezer, the leader of the\nAustralian Iyakkum<\/em><\/strong>\u201d, for instance, thought it was a great honour\nto be awarded the title of Mahamanithar<\/em><\/strong> (Distinguished Person) by\nPrabhakaran, the worst killer of Tamils banned by the international community.\nHe celebrated this honour in January 1998. It was a time when Tamil violence\nhad reached divine status: Prabhakaran  was worshipped as Surya Devan\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1976 the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist\npolitics of the North had reached a point of no return. On one foot they were demanding a separate\nstate or else\u2026\u2026\u2026.? At this point the Tamil leadership was stuck. There was\nnothing to aspire to beyond the demand of setting up a separate state. The next\nstep was to declare war to achieve it. Separatism had led them to violence. In\npassing the Vadukoddai Resolution they had painted  themselves into an\nineluctable corner. Declaring war was the only option left to fight their way\nout of the corner. So, separatism led to the  declaration of war in the\nVadukoddai Resolution which dragged them all the way to Nandikadal. The\nincremental Tamil extremism, driving Tamil politics all the way from demanding\none seat in the Western Province in the 20s to Vadukoddai declaration of war in\n1976, determined the ill-fated and  short-sighted politics of the North.\nThey dug their own grave by pursuing extremist politics that escalated\nincrementally from one seat in the Legislative Council to separatism in\nVadukoddai. The rest, as they say, is history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This incontrovertible sequence of events\nthat unravelled incrementally, driving the North to the end of mono-ethnic\nextremism in Vadukoddai, is recorded in history. But it is precisely this\nsequence that has been brushed aside by the intellectuals in surveying the\nNorth-South conflict. The partisan intellectuals invariably begin their history\nfrom 1956 \u2013 the critical year in which the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist hate politics\nstoked in the North clashed head-on with the nationalist forces of the south.\nStarting from 1956 also is advantageous to Tamil politics because it leaves out\na whole chunk of history that had gathered momentum in the North from the\ntwenties. Northern politics was throbbing and waiting for an opening to come\nsweeping down to the South like a juggernaut destroying everything in its wake.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is at this point that the\nintellectuals stepped in forcefully to demonise S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike. Tamil\nattempts to block the nationalist movement to gain independence had failed. On\nNovember 20, 1947 G. G. Ponnambalam, the then acknowledged leader of the Tamils,\ncabled Whitehall asking for the right of self-determination for  the\nTamils\u201d. (p. 30 – Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism: Its origins and\nDevelopment in the 19th<\/sup> and 20th<\/sup> centuries,<\/em><\/strong> A. J.\nWilson). This was the year in which Ponnambalam and Chelvanayakam were fighting\neach other for leadership in Jaffna. Chelvanayakan had called for a plebiscite\non self-determination for Tamils. Besides, the low-castes were also getting\nrestive. The threat of Jaffna fragmenting on caste lines was a possibility.\nVellala casteism which ruled Jaffna had lost its power to retain its supremacy.\nThere was no ideology for the Vellalas to hold Jaffna together under their\nhegemony except Tamil language. As a last resort, they latched on to  the\nlanguage issue to save their skin. The Sinhala Only Act was the gift that\nBandaranaike gave Chelvanayakam to overthrow Ponnambalam and take over the\nleadership of Jaffna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the South, the English-speaking elite\nof all three communities too ganged up against Bandaranaike. They were the\nruling elite of the nation. They also constituted the intellectual elite. The\n1956 wave\u201d busted the supremacy of the minority (6%) English-speaking rulers.\nThe hostility to linguistic democratisation was essentially an elitist\nresistance. Forced by the new realities the Marxists began to talk about\nlanguage as a class issue. With great foresight Bandaranaike had redressed the\nhistorical imbalances. He was not anti-Tamil. Nor did he overthrow Tamil.\nSinhala Only Act overthrew only English and the English-speaking elite who\nnever forgave him. They too joined the Tamils in demonising him as a\nreactionary racist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not surprisingly, the English-speaking\nintellectuals joined them and distorted history to demean and ridicule the\nSinhala-Buddhists.  This, in brief, is the history that brought us to\nwhere we are today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(To be\ncontinued)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala The utter failure of our intellectuals to grasp the turbulent historical and political under currents that destroyed all possibilities of peaceful co-existence has been one of the  main contributory factors that prolonged and sustained the 33-year-old war launched officially by the Tamil leadership on May 14th, 1976 at Vadukoddai. It ended […]<\/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-120486","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\/120486","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=120486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}