{"id":120691,"date":"2021-11-27T23:28:41","date_gmt":"2021-11-28T05:28:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=120691"},"modified":"2021-11-27T16:04:33","modified_gmt":"2021-11-27T23:04:33","slug":"war-mongering-chelvanayakam-piloted-the-declaration-of-vadukoddai-war-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/11\/27\/war-mongering-chelvanayakam-piloted-the-declaration-of-vadukoddai-war-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"War-mongering Chelvanayakam piloted the declaration of Vadukoddai War \u2013 Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

On May 14, 1976 the\nVellala Tamil leadership \u2013 there was no other dominant political leadership in\nJaffna \u2013 declared war on the democratically elected state of Sri Lanka. The\nVellala Tamil leadership consisted of the descendants of the  Malabaris\nwho invaded Jaffna in 1215. The invasion was led by an obscure terror called\nMagha of Kalinga,\u201d ( p.37 \u2013 Learing Politics from Sivaram<\/em><\/strong>, Mark\nP. Whitaker). Whitaker, an American anthropologist,  adds that Magha was\nbrutal. He consolidated his rule with relentless violence. Citing a Tamil\nchronicle, Whitaker states on the same page that Magha was a conqueror very\nfond of stomping about, laying waste to Buddhist shrines, smashing non-Saivite\ntemples and plucking the eyes out of opposing  heretics.\u201d As the first\nking of Jaffna he set the template for the culture of violence that ruled\nJaffna from 1215. Sankili followed him by killing 600 Tamil Catholics for not\nowing allegiance to him. The ruling powers of Jaffna\u2014from Magha to\nPrabhakaran  —  has consistently exerted excessive power, reaching\ninhuman levels, to survive in politics. The  culture of political violence\nmade oppression or killing of Tamils the norm in Jaffna. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The political legacy\nleft behind by Magha opened the pathways for his successors to go on the\nrampage, oppressing and killing Tamils, or ethnically cleansing Jaffna of\nBuddhists and Muslims. The Magha- Sankili-Vellala-Prabhakaran culture denied the\nbasic human rights to the Jaffnaites. There are many Ph.Ds awaiting those who\ndare to explore the roots of Tamil violent culture. Research studies on Tamil\nviolence will not come from the Jaffna University because  its academic culture\nis to hide the dark side of Jaffna history, particularly its violent casteist\nhistory. Those who dared to reveal the hidden truth had to flee Jaffna in\nsearch of safe havens. Prof. K. Indrapala, the first professor of histoy of the\nJaffna University, had to run for his life because he said that the history of\nJaffna began in 12th<\/sup> century. Prof. Rajan Hoole had to go into\nhiding because he asked too many questions about Tamil violence, Ms. Rajini\nTiranagama, an academic in the Medical Faculty of Jaffna, was shot dead as she\nwas cycling home, because she was a Tamil dissident. The Tamil tendency,\nhowever, has been to deify Tamil violence. They elevated Prabhakaran, the\nunrepentant killer of Tamils, to the level of  Surya Devan\u201d (Sun God). . <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The history of Jaffna\nhas been the history of the triumph of the violent and casteist Vellalas. They\nruled Jaffna with an iron-fist. Others were forced to obey. The\nSudra Vellalas, the lowest caste in India, flooded the peninsula in the\npost-1215 period. The waves of Sudra Vellala migrants that came after Magha\nstabilised Vellala supremacy. Some of these waves are recorded in detail in the\nYalpana Vaipa Malai<\/em><\/strong> (historical garland), the mini-Mahavamsa\n<\/em><\/strong>of Jaffna. Because they came from Malabar they were known as the Malabaris\nduring the Dutch and the British in the 19th<\/sup> century. It was in the\n20th<\/sup> century that the Malabaris were designated as Tamils. The Tamil\nidentity was resuscitated by Arumuka Navalar, the Hindu religious reformist,\nwho revived the forgotten Tamil classics. In the absence of the Brahmins in the\nHindu society of Jaffna it was Navalar, the religious guru of  the\nVellalas,  who elevated the Vellalas to the highest peak  in the\ncaste hierarchy. The Northern leadership that declared war consisted of the Vellala\nTamil MPs elected democratically by the Tamils of Jaffna. The declaration of\nwar which was adopted unanimously by the first National Convention of the Tamil\nUnited Liberation Front (TULF) held in Vadukoddai was a crime against peace,\naccording to international law. The Convention that passd the Resolution \nwas chaired by S. J. V. Chelvanaykam, leader of the Tamil separatist\nmovement.  Before sitting down to steer the declaration of war he had gone\nthrough every word of the Resolution with a fine comb, according to his\nson-in-law, Prof. A. Jeyaratnam Wilson. (p. 128 \u2013 S.J. V. Chelvanayakam\nand the Crisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, 1947 \u2013 1977, A Political\nBiography,<\/em><\/strong> A. J. Wilson).  In other words, Chelvanayakam, the\nwar-mongering Gandhi of Jaffna, piloted the declaration of war from the\nbeginning to the end. Parenthetically, it is necessary to note that the Nazi\nleaders of World War II were tried and sentenced at the Nuremberg Trials, inter\nalia<\/em>, on this charge of committing crimes against peace. After the\nVadukoddai Resolution legitimized violence, it is logical for the inherent\nMagha-Sankili-Vellala culture to produce Velupillai Prabhakaran, the Tamil\nleader who killed more Tamils than the others. When the university students of\nJaffna celebrate Maaveerar Day\u201d they are hero-worshipping the worst killer of\nTamils next to Sankili. It is  the equivalent of neo-Nazis celebrating\nHitler\u2019s birthday. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Riding high on the\nanti-Sinhala-Buddhist hate politics \u2013 it had  reached boiling point in\nJaffna by 1976 — the Vellala Tamil leaders declared war to achieve their\nelusive Eelam. Declaring war was the ultimate offensive that was left for the\nthe Tamil extremist to pursue Eelam. But no democratically elected government\nwould agree to divide Sri Lanka into two separate states. After committing\nthemselves to pursue the Vadukaddai War (a.k.a. Eelam War)\n— there was no strategic goal higher than declaring war for the Tamil leaders\nto pursue Eelam — the Tamil leaders were trapped in a war they never\nexpected to drag so long. Appapillai Amirthalingam, was  one of the\nFathers of the Vadukoddai Resolution. He hailed the gun-toting children that\ncame out of the Vadukoddai Resolution as our boys\u201d. He and other lawyers who\nrallied behind the violent Vadukoddai Resolution rushed to defend the boys\u201d in\ncourts and told them not to be afraid of killing Tamil traitors\u201d. After all,\nthe Vadukoddai Resolution had legitimized violence and urged the boys\u201d to take\nup the gun and never to flinch until they achieve Eelam. The Sansoni Commission\nreport records how the Vellala leadership egged the boys\u201d to pursue violence\nwithout fear. One day the boys\u201d walked into Amirthalingam\u2019s house and shot him\ndead at point blank range. The children of the Vadukoddai Resolution had no compunction\nin killing their fathers. The violence in the Vadukoddai Resolution was\ndirected primarily at the Sinhalese who were demonised as the enemy\u201d.\nBut, as it often happens, history does not run on premeditated lines. Tamil\nviolence took off on a logic of its own. The unintended consequence of the\nVadukoddai Resolution was to release the bottled genie of Magha-Sankili-Vellala cult of\nviolence.  Once Tamil violence was released it ran amok killing \nindiscriminately. Tamil violence first turned against the Tamils. The bullets\nthat were aimed at the Sinhalese ricocheted  and killed the Tamils. Tamils\nkilled more Tamils than the Sinhalese in the Vadukoddai War<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Vadukoddai War\nended on May 19, 2009 in the brackish waters of Nandikadal Lagoon in Jaffna. It\nlasted 33 years and five days, to be precise. It was a futile war. The\nconsequences of the brutal violence unleashed by the Vadukoddai War impacted on\nall communities. The Tamils of the North suffered the most. V. Ananadsangaree,\nthe leader of the TULF, said that the Tamils had the freedom to protest when\nMrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Prime Minister, opened the Jaffna University but\ncould not even step into Jaffna which was under a Tamil Thalaivar\u201d (Leader).\nS. C. Chandrahasan, son  of the father of the Vadukoddai declaration of\nwar, Chelvanayakam, mourned that more Tamils were killed by the Tamil killing\nmachines of Prabhakaran \u2013 the first-born child of the Vadukoddai Resolution —\nthan any other force. The Vellala Tamil elite who fled to greener pastures abroad\ncontinued to finance the war that was killing more Tamils than the other\ncommunities. The Vellala Tamils invested all their collective resources, both\nfrom abroad and at home, into the war chest of Prabhakaran. The best of Tamil\nintellectuals invested their knowledge, skills and expertise to win the war.\nWhen they ran out of cadres to fight their war they even forcibly recruited\nunder-aged children to save invincible\u201d Prabhakaran, their Surya Devan\u201d. In\nthe end the Tamils lost the war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, it was an\nunnecessary, senseless and immoral war that ended with the Vellala Tamils, who\nlaunched it, achieving nothing. Now that the gruesome and painful episode is\nover it is the moral duty of the Tamil leadership and the intellectuals who\nwent along with the war-mongers of the Tamil killing machine, to consider what\nwent wrong. Instead the intellectuals are deliberately turning a blind eye to\nthe political forces and the ideological justifications that contributed to the\nprolongation of the war for 33 years. Wars are not fought with bullets alone.\nThe finger that pulls the trigger to fire the bullet is motivated by ideology.\nIn manufacturing theoretical and ideological justifications for the violence\nthat flowed from the declaration of the Vadukoddai War the intellectuals were\ncomplicit in the war crimes and the crimes against humanity committed in\nthe name of Tamil Eelam. Judge C. G. Weeramantry, Vice-President of the\nInternational Court of Justice, who in his celebrated  dissenting\njudgement declared that nuclear weapons were unlawful under any circumstances,\nalso held the view that the scientists and the technicians should be held\nresponsible for the intellectual input they contribute to make weapons of mass\ndestruction. He went beyond the political decision-makers to pin moral\nresponsibility on the scientific community that contributed their knowledge for\nconstruction of WMDs. The primary function of intellectuals is to produce\nknowledge. The knowledges\u201d that intellectuals produce are not mere abstract theories\nthat remain as dead letters between covers of a book. Their knowledges\u201d have\nserious consequences and they should be held responsible for the impact of\ntheir ideologies on humanity. In Sri Lanka the intellectuals who gathered in\nseminars, produced books, manufactured theories and ideologies, lobbied and\ninfluenced decisions-makers and propagandized their knowledges\u201d without\ntelling the truth to centres of power should be held responsible for the part\nthey played in prolonging the fascist terror unleased by the Northern\nleadership. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Vadukoddai War\nspawned research centres specifically to manufacture knowledge\u201d to produce\npeace. Centres like the National Council for Peace, International Centre for\nEthnic Studies, Centre for Policy Alternative and MARGA are some of the\nintellectual factories set up purportedly to produce knowledge for peace. They\nlaboured for 33 years without producing a single theory\/formula to end the war.\nThey were a miserable failure. It was plainly because they were going along\nin devious ways with concocted histories of the past that fitted into Tamil\nseparatist agenda of the present. They, imported theories to justify the\nviolence that were running  berserk. They hatched formulae arguing that\nmore power should be devolved to the moderates\u201d knowing that they had\npledged their loyalty to Prabhakaran. The intellectuals were hoping\nto wean the\nmoderates\u201d away from Prabhakaran by giving in to all their demands. But\nmoderates\u201d had surrendered their powers to Prabhakaran, whom they had\nacknowledged as the sole representatives of the Tamils\u201d. So what\nwas the point in giving  more powers to the moderates\u201d? Even their\nwell-meaning theories went to reinforce the powers of\nthe invincible\nSurya Devan\u201d. Clearly, the intellectuals had no viable solution to\nend the war. They operated on the misguided belief that minority\nrights\u201d, claimed by a fascist tyrant, who was oppressing and\nkilling the\nvery minority he was supposed to liberate, should be appeased to end the war.\nTheir theories were designed to appease the political agenda outlined in the Vadukoddai\nResolution. In other words, they acted as stake holders in a\npeace process that was going nowhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stuck with an\nanti-Sinhala-Buddhist bias they never understood the intrinsic dynamics that\nwere driving the war into a dead end. It was Prabhakaran who was in the\ndriver\u2019s seat of the war. The war could end only either (1)  by appeasing\nhim \u2013 i.e., agreeing to the establishment of a Tamil separate state\u2014or (2) by\neliminating him from the political equation. As the first option failed with\nseveral appeasements (CFA with international guarantees was one) the military\noption was the only way out. For instance, Prabhakaran shot to pieces the\nmuch-vaunted Cease-Fire Agreement, signed with much fanfare by the\ninternational community, Ranil Wickremesinghe, the then Prime Minister, and the\nNGOs. Did it end the war? The logic of evolving  events proved that only a\ndecisive military offensive could end the war. Our intellectuals, their\nresearch centres in the NGOs, their theories and formulae were doomed to fail\nbecause none could appease Prabhakaran. His intransigence was immoveable. His\narrogance arising particularly from his military successes, his fixed blinkers\nthat prevented him from seeing the possibilities with flexible diplomacy, his\ninstructions to his aides kill him if he fails to achieve Eelam, his\nideological fixations, his tearing up of peace agreements and offers of\npower-sharing to coexist within a democratic state (CBK\u2019s offer), his statements\ncategorically asserting his commitment to Eelam or nothing, confirmed\nthat\nthere was no way of arriving at a negotiated settlement. He offered no\nalternative to his mono-ethnic extremism. He relied essentially and doggedly on\nhis gun held at the head of the nation. He was depending on a military\nsuccess.  He believed he could dictate terms to the world with his\nKalashnikov. Consequently, the problem had to be finally settled with the gun.\nAnd that is what happened in the end with the minimum of fuss. Lord Naseby\u2019s\nfigures of casualties proved it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our intellectuals\nmanufacturing peace formulae in NGOs refused to recognise these realities. To\nthem the war was a gold mine funding their high life-style. Funded by\nforeign governments and allied agencies the centres manufacturing partisan\nknowledge\u201d were run by peace mudalalais\u201d with enough cash to buy some of the\nbest intellectuals in academia and civil society. It is common knowledge that\nintellectuals are wont  to hawk their knowledge\u201d to the highest bidders\nin the market. By and large, the Sri Lankan intellectuals formed an\nEnglish-speaking, theory-spouting, anti-Sinhala-Buddhist, pro-Tamil  mafia\nguzzling free booze in the diplomatic cocktail circuit. Though they scratched\ntheir eyes out, fighting for the last dollar available in the pockets\nof the\nforeign-funders, they closed ranks to form a solid front against\nthe democratically elected state. Simultaneously, they manufactured\nknowledges\u201d to justify the violence of the Vadukoddai War. Playing footsy\nwith  the fascist quasi-state in the North, they wrapped the Vadukoddian\nknuckles with a wet tissue paper occasionally to show that they were objective. They played with the\npower\/knowledge relationship to manufacture the required quantum of knowledge\u201d\nto influence the peace process \u2013 a role that financed their\nwhisky-guzzling  life-style. Knowledge was manipulated\nto denigrate, demean and devalue the state and, thereby, to weaken its power.\nSimultaneously, another chunk of knowledge\u201d was manufactured to glorify the\nTamil mono-ethnic extremists on the basis of minority rights. Jehan Perera once\nclaimed that Prabhakaran\u2019s regime was democratic because it gave him permission\nto run just one seminar on the periphery of Vanni. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Victimology was played\nto the hilt. Seminars, publications, lectures, media, films etc, were organised\nand exploited to manipulate knowledge\u201d to serve their political agenda. In Sri\nLanka, the NGOs trawled every nook and corner in the South fishing for\nknowledge\u201d that could demonise  the Sinhala-Buddhists. The ICES, for\ninstance, produced research\u201d on the Kalutara Maha Bodhiya and Vihara Maha Devi\nPark. But it never bothered to even peep behind the cadjan curtain in Jaffna to\nunearth the forces that were driving  Jaffna into irreversible extremism.\nJaffna, the centre of Northern politics, was never explored in depth to expose\nthe horrors of the inherent Sankili-Vellala culture of violence. To me ICES was\nthe Incestuous Cabal for Eelamist Sycophants producing knowledge\u201d to justify the\nviolent Tamil political culture while denigrating the Sinhala-Buddhist society\nin the South. A typical example is that of three intellectuals from the South\nwho sat at the feet of Velupillai Prabhakaran in the Vanni and returned home to\ninform the media at a press conference that he is humane\u201d. It was ridiculous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All three of them were\nleft-leaning intellectuals. Fr. Kenneth Fernando, Bishop of the Anglican\nChurch, Charles Abeysekera, an ex-civil servant who left government service\nunder a cloud, and Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda, a committed Marxist who\nhero-worshipped the Southern fascist killer, Rohana Wijeweera, leader of the\nJVP., were public intellectuals involved\nin the political discourse.  When they proclaimed that Prabhakaran was\nhumane\u201d they reached the giddy limit of morality. Take the case of Prof.\nUyangoda, a cock-eyed Marxist, if ever there was one. He knew that Karl Marx,\nhis revered guru, earned some pocket money, by contributing the New York Herald\nTribune<\/em><\/strong>. If he was reporting on Sri Lanka would he have ever\ncategorised Prabhakaran as humane\u201d? Besides, it was a despicable lie. In his\nfamous  essay on The Responsibility of Intellectuals<\/em><\/strong>, Noam\nChomsky decried the failure of the intellectuals to tell the truth to centres\nof power. The anger in Noam Chomsky\u2018s article was mainly against the\nintellectuals like Arthur Schlesinger, the Harvard historian, who lied to\njustify Kennedy invasion of the Bay of Pigs. Colin Powell is another who lied\nthrough his teeth when he accused Saddam Hussein of possessing WMDS. \nPowell\nlied to wage war. Uyangoda lied to boost the image of a beastly killer who had\nno compassion even to the live insects he pinned on the pages of his books when\nhe was young. Apart from the moral considerations, their statement that\nPrabhakaran was humane\u201d actually questions the sanity of these three\nintellectuals. A lie of that magnitude is unpardonable. The only possible\nexplanation is that it was not difficult for Prof. Uyangoda to shift his\npolitical loyalties from the Southern fascist killer, Rohana Wijeweera, to the\nNorthern fascist killer, Prabhakaran!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is typical of the\ntwisted intellectuals produced by the Vadukoddai War. Jehan Perera too proved\nto be a shameless liar when he conferred arbitrarily a doctorate on Anton\nBalasingham, the Goebbels of the Eelamists. The immorality of these\nintellectuals is in the fact that they knew they were lying on behalf of\nPrabhakaran \u2013 a Pol Potist killer. If a choice had to be made it should have\nbeen on the side of the democratic state. A victory for Prabhakaran would never\nhave brought dignity, equality or justice to the Tamils, nor peace to the \nrest of the nation. As a one-man regime he could survive only in a permanent\nstate of war. Dictators need wars as a scapegoat to justify their fascist\noppression. Besides, a democracy and a dictatorship could never co-exist in\npeace within an island. The tensions between the two systems make wars\ninevitable. What is worse, Prabhakaran could never deliver\ndignity, equality or justice to the Tamils in his fascist regime. Peace could\nbe won only by eliminating him from the political equation. History has proved\nit: there is peace because the Security Forces definitively put an end to\nPrabhakaran killing Tamils.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our intellectuals\nrefused to recognise the realities. They continued to believe in their\ntheoretical fictions because it sustained their life-style, or advanced their\ncareers in academia, or gained glory as new knowledge-makers in\npartisan research centres. They, however, bragged\nthat they possessed the alternative to war. The Centre for Policy Alternative was supposed\nto provide alternatives to the likes of Prabhakaran. That is a tragi-comic saga\nthat should be explored in the next article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

mahindapala8@gmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala On May 14, 1976 the Vellala Tamil leadership \u2013 there was no other dominant political leadership in Jaffna \u2013 declared war on the democratically elected state of Sri Lanka. The Vellala Tamil leadership consisted of the descendants of the  Malabaris who invaded Jaffna in 1215. The invasion was led by an […]<\/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-120691","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\/120691","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=120691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}