{"id":120590,"date":"2021-11-23T18:31:20","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T01:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=120590"},"modified":"2021-11-23T18:31:20","modified_gmt":"2021-11-24T01:31:20","slug":"erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-27-b1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/11\/23\/erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-27-b1\/","title":{"rendered":"ERASING THE EELAM VICTORY Part 27 B1"},"content":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Tamil Separatist Movement says it is entitled\nto ask for a separate state because the Ceylon Tamils are a separate nation\u201d. The concept “nation’\nis not a legally recognized concept, nor is it recognized in international law.\nInternational law only recognizes the sovereign state. International law does not recognize imaginary\nnations either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The word \u2018nation \u2018came from the Latin\u2019 natio\u2019 meaning a human group of same\norigin.  The\nword came into political use in Europe in the 19th<\/sup> century. Analysts\nobserved that European scholars used  \nthe word \u2018nation\u2019 anyway they wished, in the 19th century and they are\ndoing the same in the 20th<\/sup> century. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is an assortment of definitions, which will indicate the contradictory\npositions taken, regarding the word ‘nation’. .Karl Deutsch defined a ‘nation’\nas “a people in possession of a state”.  Peter Alter suggests that a nation is a politically\nmobilized people”. Walker Connor suggests that ‘nation’ is a ” self-defined\ngroup~. Pilsudski said that it is the state which makes the nation, not the\nother way round. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Joseph Stalin, (1912) said that \u2018A nation is a historically evolved,\nstable, community of language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup\nmanifested in a community of culture\u2019. \nTo crown it all, Benedict Anderson (1983) said   nation is an “imagined community’. This\nmeans that the United Nations is a Union of Imagined Nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nation states of Europe came into existence only about 200 years ago. Up\nto the 19 century, Europe was governed by two large empires which covered the whole\nof the European continent. The largest of these were the Holy Roman Empire,\nwhich formally ended in 1803, the Ottoman Empire which lasted till World War 1.\n(1914-1918)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Within the Holy Roman Empire there were\nseveral ruling dynasties such as the Hapsburgs, who divided into the Spanish\nHapsburgs and the Austrian Hapsburgs. Europe at this time consisted of a mass\nof small principalities, dukedoms,\nbishoprics, fiefs, each with a separate administration. Germany alone consisted\nof about 360 independent states. The various states went with various royal\nhouses, like private property.  They were\nexchanged among the various ruling houses, through royal marriage alliances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some nations formed slowly. France was the earliest but slowest to turn\ninto sovereign state. It took nearly 4 centuries. From the 10 century France\nhad a continuous hereditary monarchy and a political centre in Paris. From\nhere, over time, the kings annexed adjacent territory, such as Burgundy,\nBrittany, Normandy, and Toulouse, to form today\u2019s Republic of France. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

England had little difficulty in declaring itself a nation, in the 16 century\nbecause it was an island. Similarly Spain and Netherlands both jutted out to\nsea and had one border each with mainland Europe. Once that border was settled,\nthey were on their way to becoming sovereign states. Italy and Germany unified\nthrough wars of unification starting in 1848. German unification was completed\nin 1871.Italy settled the matter during World War I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Political unification did not automatically create a ‘nation state’. In\nItaly,   Massimo d’Azeglio’s,\nPrime Minister of Sardinia, said “We have made Italy, now we have to make\nItalians”. Bismarck, Chancellor of the newly united\nGermany, had to create a unified German state from the bunch of independent\nprincely states that were brought under the King of Prussia. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hobsbaum pointed out that the real push towards nation states was not\ncultural, it was economic. There was a significant expansion of trade and\ncommerce in Europe during this time. There was an increase in the   number of cities, also trading and business houses\nand the middle class expanded. Roads and bridges led to better\ncommunication.  In Germany, an important\nmilestone in its unification was the creation of the Zollverein, a customs union\nwhich included all the German states. Customs barriers between the states were\neliminated and a common tariff created, leading to a sort of commercial union. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Europe in the 18 century was also notable for significant advances in political\nphilosophy. It was the age of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Adam Smith.\nThese thinkers commented, inter alia, on economy and government. Their writings\nwhich actually reflected the utter backwardness of Europe   were thereafter treated as universal\npronouncements of staggering importance and studied all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The French Revolution of 1789 and the administration reforms of Napoleon\nalso influenced political thinking. The idea of nation state and constitutional\ngovernment became popular. In 1848 there was a wave of activity all over\nEurope, with demands for state constitutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Countries which were under western rule used the European concept of nation\nto formulate a reason for demanding independence\nfrom the imperial powers. Ceylon\ndid not need to declare it a nation to obtain independence.  It had been a well recognized monarchical\nstate before, but the Tamil Separatist Movement took the opportunity to declare\nthat it was a separate nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Communist Party of Ceylon supported the Tamils. In 1944 Communist Party presented a\nmemorandum on a federal constitution to the Ceylon National Congress. They said\nthat the Tamils were historically evolved nation, living in a contiguous\nterritory in their traditional homeland, speaking a common language, with a community\nof culture. They were entitled to self determination. The definition is\nstraight out of Stalin\u2019s definition in his Marxism and the national question\u201d\nobserved analysts.  The memorandum had\nbeen drafted by Pieter Keuneman and A Vaidilingam. (continued) <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS Tamil Separatist Movement says it is entitled to ask for a separate state because the Ceylon Tamils are a separate nation\u201d. The concept “nation’ is not a legally recognized concept, nor is it recognized in international law. International law only recognizes the sovereign state. International law does not recognize imaginary nations either. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kamalika-pieris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120590","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=120590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}