{"id":120710,"date":"2021-11-28T17:14:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-29T00:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=120710"},"modified":"2021-11-28T17:14:00","modified_gmt":"2021-11-29T00:14:00","slug":"erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-27-b3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/11\/28\/erasing-the-eelam-victory-part-27-b3\/","title":{"rendered":"ERASING THE EELAM VICTORY Part 27 B3"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The\nTamil Separatist Movement said that the north and east of Sri Lanka was the\nhomeland of the Ceylon Tamil. The historical reasons for this were examined and\ndismissed by KM de Silva and GH Pieris in two writings dated 1995 and 1991\nrespectively.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These two writings completely demolished the homeland argument and\nthere was no challenge to their writings. Among\nother arguments they debunked the fictional construction of a Tamil homeland\nbased on the now infamous Cleghorn minute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The    two writings are<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • K.M. de Silva (2013) \u2018Traditional Homelands\u2019 of the Tamils:\nSeparatist Ideology in Sri Lanka: A Historical Appraisal 1st pub 1995. 3rd Rev.\nEd. International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy.  <\/li>
  • G.H. Peiris, \u2018An Appraisal of the Concept of a Traditional Homeland\nin Sri Lanka\u2019 (1991) Ethnic Studies Report IX (1).<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Welikala\nobserved that the absence of precisely demarcated\nboundaries to the homeland has created difficulties for the Tamil territorial\nclaim as a legal and constitutional proposition. This is evidenced in the\nshifting nature of the territorial claim. The Federal Party\u2019s founding\nmanifesto in 1949 merely stated, The Eelam Tamils are a nation of their own,\nthey have a homeland of their own.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Resolution No. 1 at its First National Convention in 1951 asserted\nTamils\u2019 territorial habitation of definite areas which constitute over\none-third of this Island,\u201d but nevertheless called for a plebiscite to\ndetermine the boundaries of the linguistic states\u201d of the future federation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u00a0It was more specific in the Memorandum and Model Constitution submitted to the Constituent Assembly in 1971, which set out a federal scheme for the future republican constitution. This proposed that, The Northern Province and the Trincomalee and Batticaloa Districts of the Eastern Province will form one Unit. This will be a Tamil majority State. The Ampara District [in the southwest end of the Eastern Province] will form a Muslim majority State.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

     In the Vaddukoddai\nResolution of 1976, which registered Tamil nationalism\u2019s paradigm shift from\nfederalism to secessionism, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) identified\nthe Northern and Eastern Provinces as the territory of the future state of Tamil\nEelam. Since then, Tamil nationalists have generally put forward the Northern\nand Eastern provinces as their homeland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Amused\ncritics want to know is there any other ethnic group which has two homelands,\none in India and another in Sri Lanka. In a TV interview S.L. Gunasekera\nstated that if the Tamils had being the original settlers of Sri Lanka then\nthey would not be holed up in Jaffna which is the most arid part of Sri Lanka.\nThey would have been in salubrious areas. Secondly if they were the original\nsettlers why are they a numerical minority now? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Jaffna\nwas initially, Sinhala speaking.\nJaffna was populated by Sinhalese in the ancient and medieval period. The evidence is still there in cattle\nbranding and in place names.  Historian P.A.T. Gunasinghe says that the place names of Jaffna\nonly make sense if they are seen as translations of Sinhala names. He points\nout that \u2018vil\u201d means \u2018bow,\u2019 and \u2018pay\u2019 means \u2018net\u2019 in Tamil. Therefore names\nlike Kokuvil and Manipay only make sense when they are seen as the Tamilisation\nof the Sinhala words Kokavila and Mampe. Valikamam and Vimankam are meaningless\nin Tamil, but make sense if the villages originally bore the Sinhala names of\nValigama and Vimangama. Some\nplace names like Polvattai refer to the Sinhala used in 14th century.  (continued)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    KAMALIKA PIERIS The Tamil Separatist Movement said that the north and east of Sri Lanka was the homeland of the Ceylon Tamil. The historical reasons for this were examined and dismissed by KM de Silva and GH Pieris in two writings dated 1995 and 1991 respectively.   These two writings completely demolished the homeland argument […]<\/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-120710","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\/120710","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=120710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120710\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}