{"id":120901,"date":"2021-12-04T17:10:43","date_gmt":"2021-12-05T00:10:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=120901"},"modified":"2021-12-04T17:10:43","modified_gmt":"2021-12-05T00:10:43","slug":"tamil-oppressors-denied-tamils-justice-equality-and-dignity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/12\/04\/tamil-oppressors-denied-tamils-justice-equality-and-dignity\/","title":{"rendered":"Tamil oppressors denied Tamils justice, equality and dignity"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Jaffna burst\ninto  history under violent and tragic circumstances. It began when Megaha\nof Kalinga, South India, invaded and occupied Jaffna in 1215. He opened his\nreign with ruthless terror. His violence knew no limits. The historical records\nreveal that he destroyed non-Saivite shrines, smashed Buddhist temples, and\ngouged the eyes out of heretics. His lasting contribution, apart from setting\nup a new state,  was to establish the culture of political violence in\nJaffna. The violent culture he established never left Jaffna. This explains why\nhe is known in the history of Jaffna as Megaha the Tyrant. Variants of his\nintolerant, fascist culture  ruled Jaffna from 1215 to 2009 \u2013 the last\nyear of Velupillai Prabhakaran. Prabhakaran who ran the North with an iron-fist\nwas also the last in the line of Megaha political culture.  The successors\nof Megaha — Sankili, the Vellala casteist supremacists and Prabhakaran — took\nto the Megaha violence like duck to water. His successors in turn wrote the\ndarkest chapters in the history of Jaffna. It was also tragic because the\nfascist violence of the Jaffna Tamil rulers denied dignity, justice, equality,\nand basic human rights to the Jaffnaites. Those who followed Megaha put the\nknee to the throat of the Jaffnaites and never let them breathe freely. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jaffna was a\nmulti-ethnic society, with a sizeable community of Sinhala-Buddhists. Sporadic\npogroms expelled the Sinhala-Buddhist and the Muslims. It was the Tamils, in\nparticular, who remained as the common victims of the violent Tamil regimes. Some\nlow-caste Tamils were denied even the right to walk in day light. The turumbas,\nfor instance, were allowed to walk only in the night. The Sudra Vellalas, the\nruling caste, imposed the daylight ban on the turumbas to keep them away from\ntheir sight : they enforced this casteist rule to prevent even an accidental\nmeeting of a turumba. The sighting of a turumba was supposed to pollute the\npurity of the Vellala eyes. Denial of basic human rights was a part of Jaffna\nTamil culture. Collectively, the casteist culture dehumanised Jaffna society.\nThe Sudra Vellala casteism was designed to impose Vellala supremacy by\ncontrolling every aspect of Jaffna life. In the absence of political power\nduring colonial times, Vellala supremacy was imposed through casteist laws that\ncontrolled the lives of the low-castes from the womb to the tomb. It was a\ntypical Gramscian scenario of exerting power through culture\/ideology. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of Thesawalamai\n<\/em>which legalised fascist casteism, including slavery, Hinduism authorised\nthe oppression  of Tamils by the Tamils as the sacrosanct way of life.\nVellala casteism was the governing cultural\/ideological force of the ruling\nelite to maintain their power. The Sudra Vellalas reduced the low-caste to a\nsubhuman outcast unfit for human society. The worst enemies of the Tamils were\nthe Tamil rulers.  The Vellala oppressors of Jaffna never gave the Tamils\ndignity, justice, equality or basic human rights. Though there was deplorable\ninter-ethnic violence in the post-Independent era, the minorities had better\nliving conditions when they were with the Sinhala-Buddhists than under Tamil\nrule. For instance, the Muslims migrants who settled down in the North and in\nthe South found greater security under the Sinhala kings than in the North.\nWhenever there was any ethnic  cleansing of the Muslims in the North they\nrushed to seek protection in the South. The last expulsion of Muslims from\nJaffna was in October 1990. They were given only two hours to leave Jaffna. The\nMuslims found refuge in the South. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall, the Jaffna\nTamils too had better opportunities and living conditions in the South than in\nJaffna. Wellawattam\u201d and Cinnamon Gardens were affluent havens for the Tamils\nwho left Jaffna. The Jaffna Tamils, who were suppressed, oppressed and enslaved\nby its traditional religio-cultural laws, were liberated for the first time\nonly in the free and open society of the South in the post-Independent era.\nExcluding the other\u201d was an incurable malady buried deep in the Tamil psyche.\nThe Megaha cult of hate politics, injected into the Tamil political culture,\ndrove the two communities apart. Jaffna was never inclined to co-exist\npeacefully with the other\u201d. Electoral politics in particular thrived on\ndemonising the Sinhala-Buddhists. S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, Thanthai<\/em> (the\nFather of the Tamils\u201d) refused to buy a house in Colombo arguing that the free\nand cosmopolitan life-style of the South would drag his children away from\ntheir Tamil roots in Jaffna.  He preferred to buy two estates in the hills\npopulated by the Indian Tamils. (p. 9 \u2013 S. J. V. Chelvanayakam and the\nCrisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, `1947 \u2013 1977, A Political Biography,<\/em>\nA. Jeyaratnam Wilson.)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A cadjan  curtain\nwas thrown round Jaffna to prevent the subversive forces of modernity undermining\nand dismantling the oppressive Vellala fascism. The main thrust of the Jaffna\nrulers and the Vellala supremacists throughout the feudal, colonial and modern\ntimes was to keep Jaffna as an exclusive ethnic and casteist enclave under\nVellala hegemony. Humane politics seldom ruled Jaffna. The Muslims and\nBuddhists were persecuted by Tamil Saivite extremists at the drop of a fez. The\nSinhala settlers in Jaffna rebelled against tyrannical Tamil kings. In the\nSouth the minority Tamils, Muslims and Christians coexisted peacefully. The\nfirst communal clash in the South occurred in 1939 when G. G. Ponnambalam made\nhis provocative speech denigrating Sri Lankan  history and the Mahavamasa<\/em>.\nUnlike in the South, Tamil-Sinhala clashes occurred in Jaffna from 1215 \u2013 i.e.,\nfrom the birth of Jaffna. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jaffna is noted for\nregular pogroms against the Buddhists and Muslims. Expelling of\nSinhala-Buddhists and ethnic clashes in Jaffna occurred from time to time under\nintolerant Jaffna rulers from the 13th<\/sup> century onwards. The violent\nMega cult did not hesitate to expel the Sinhala-Buddhists and Muslims from\nJaffna. The Sinhalese in turn joined hands with the Vanniyar chieftains and\nfought  the rulers of Jaffna. The Tamils too revolted against Tamil rulers\nwho oppressed and supressed them. Mono-ethnic extremism, casteist oppression\nand Saivite religious fury made Jaffna a hot bed of political violence. The\nmost revered religious guru of Jaffna, Arumuka Navalar, told his Saivite\nfollowers to kill blasphemers and if they can\u2019t, hire someone else to do it.\nChelvanayakam who was hailed as the Gandhi\u201d of Jaffna, steered the declaration\nof war in the Vadukoddai Resolution from A to Z. He went along with the\nviolence exploding in Jaffna in the 70s. He garlanded the statue of Sivakumaran\n\u2013 the Tamil militant who attempted to assassinate a Police Superintendent. In\nthe Sinhala-Buddhist South the power struggle was confined mainly to elitist\nrivals, leaving aside the JVP uprisings. In the North the people at the\ngrassroot level rebelled against their tyrannical rulers at the top from feudal\ntimes. Jaffna was not the peaceful haven that it is painted to be. Violence in\nthe peninsula did not receive much attention because its history was hidden.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not much attention has\nbeen paid either to the fact that the North and the South were ruled by two\ndifferent political cultures. Sociologist agree that the caste system in the\nSouth, influenced by Buddhism, was milder and humane unlike the Northern caste\nsystem which was cruel and inhuman. The hegemonic role of the Vellala\nsupremacists too have been swept under the carpet. The one-man regime of\nPrabhakaran that ruled the North during 33 years of the Vadukoddai War gives a\ntaste of the violent political culture that ruled Jaffna throughout its history.\nPrabhakaran\u2019s quasi-state is the highest achievement of Tamil politics. Is\nPrabhakaran\u2019s fascism rule the alternative to the  parliamentary democracy\nof the South? The liberalism of the South amply demonstrates, with all its\ninfirmities, the two different political cultures. The South was an open,\ndemocratic, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, tolerant and liberal society. The\nNorth was a closed, authoritarian, mono-ethnic, mono-cultural, intolerant,\nill-liberal society.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides, a political\nfeature generally ignored by the analysts is that there were two states that\nruled the nation in the post-Independent era. In the South there was a\nparliamentary democracy, with, of course, the usual infirmities that haunt\ndemocracies.  In the North it was a one-man fascist regime bent on hunting\nits political opponents, most of whom were the Tamils. The LTTE regime had all\nthe trappings of a state which was, in reality, nothing but a ruthless killing\nmachine. For instance, it had law courts  that dispensed laws made to sustain\nthe one-man regime in power. No professional or respectable Tamil lawyer,\nincluding those Tamil lawyers like R. Sampanthan and M. Sumanthiram, who\ncomplain bitterly about Tamils not having  dignity, equality and justice\nin the Sinhala state\u201d, practised law in the Tamil courts  of\nPrabhakaran\u2019s quasi-state. Isn\u2019t it because they found dignity, equality and\njustice only in the courts of the Sinhala state\u201d and not in Prabhakaran\u2019s\nTamil courts? Would the Tamil leaders send their children   to study\nlaw in Prabhakaran\u2019s Law College or would they enroll them in the Law College\nin Colombo? What respect would C. V. Wigneswaran have earned if he served as a\njudge in Prabhakaran\u2019s courts? What justice did Tamil parents get from\nPrabhakaran\u2019s courts when they went to court seeking the release of their\nchildren abducted by Thamil Chelvam? Did the Tamils find justice in the\nSinhala courts\u201d or in the Tamil courts? From the beginning (i.e, 1215) the\nTamil rulers never led the Tamils down the path of liberalism. They showed no\ncapacity to run a democratic government. They had a penchant for running only\nfascist states riddled with violence. From Megaha to Prabhakaran the pattern\nnever changed. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Jaffna\npolitical culture, the individual was denied his\/her right to be human. Under\nthe Pol Potist Tamil rulers, or under the facist casteism of the Vellalas, the\noppressed Tamils hardly had the opportunity to experience even a modicum of\nhuman dignity, equality and justice. Even in colonial times the dominant Vellalas\ninvoked the Thesawalamai <\/em>law to impose their casteist hegemony. It gave\nthem the right to exploit their fellow-Tamils as slaves. Jaffnaites had their\nfirst taste of human dignity, officially, under the law, only after S. W. R. D.\nBandaranaike enacted the Prevention of Social Disabilities Act of 1958. It\ndismantled the powers of the oppressive Vellalas to rule over a slave-owning\nsystem. No other ruler \u2013 colonial or native — dared to challenge the casteist\nsupremacy of the  entrenched Vellalas. The Dutch legalised the Theswalamai\n<\/em>laws in 1707. It empowered the Vellalas to impose their casteist customs\nand laws and rule with ruthless force. Even after the British banned slavery in\n1844 the Vellala supremacists continued to impose the Thesawalamai<\/em> laws\nthrough devious means. The Vellalas fought to retain their power in the\nlegislature and in the courts. For instance, Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan went on\na special mission to London to convince the British of the importance of\npreserving the caste system for internal stability. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jaffna became humane\nonly in the post-Independent years and that too was interrrupted by the reign\nof Prabhakaran. He revived and re-imposed the Megaha cult of violence which\nturned Jaffna into a Pol Potist regime. In the end, it was left to the Security\nForces to restore democracy in the North. Nandikadal brought not only peace but\nalso liberation and dignity to the Tamils of Jaffna. Tamil leaders like R.\nSampanthan and M. Sumanthiram are able to walk, with their heads held high, and\npursue their politics with dignity because the Security Forces liberated the\nNorth. Today the Tamils are entitled to criticise the President without fear of\nany reprisals. Under their Tamil Thaliavar<\/em>, (Leader), whom they anointed\nas the sole representative of the Tamils\u201d, they did not have a chance to utter\na word against him. They lost their dignity when  they consented to accept\nhis authority knowing that they will not get justice, respect or equality. They\nregained their dignity to act as independent human beings  only under the\nSinhala state\u201d which they denigrate and blame wherever they go.  <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The denial of dignity,\njustice, equality and human rights by the Tamil overlords of Jaffna to their\nfellow-Tamils makes a mockery of their bogus complaint that they have lost\ntheir dignity, equality and justice under the Sinhala state\u201d. The topsy-turvy\ncaste system of Jaffna which elevated the lowest Sudra Vellala to the highest\nin the caste hierarchy created a political culture that warped Jaffna society.\nFrom 1215 to 2009 \u2013 except for the brief spell from 1948 to 1976 when Jaffna\nwas a part of the democratically elected multi-ethnic, multi-cultural state\n—  the indigenous settlers of Jaffna lived either under the insane fury\u201d\n(Yalpana Vaipava Mala<\/em>i) of Tamil tyrants or the hegemony of the Vellala\nsupremacists who imposed fascist casteism to enslave a segment of Jaffna. \nWith all its infirmities the democratic state of Sri Lanka gave its citizen\noptimum freedom even when it was fighting two wars \u2013 one in the South against \nthe fascist JVP and the other in the North against the fascist LTTE. The Tamils\naccepted, with the connivance of the NGOs and INGOs, all the humiliating\nindignities under their Pol Potist Leader. Tamil leaders like Douglas Devananda\nnarrowly escaped the fate that befell Alfred Duraiyappah and Appapillai \nAmirthalingam, only because the mysterious forces that protect him are far\nsuperior to Prabhakaran. Right now, Tamils owe everything \u2013 including  the\nright to dissent  — to the rescue mission of the Security Forces that\nsaved them from living in permanent state of fear and humiliation in the Tamil\nstate of Eelam.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The moral choice\nbefore them is clear: are they willing to live with the kind of dignity,\njustice and equality dished out by Prabhakaran, their Divine Leader, or do they\nprefer the dignity, justice and equality in the Sinhala state\u201d? What were the\nrights of the Tamils guaranteed by the Prabhakaran? For instance, was the right\nof the Tamil children to go to school and return home to their parents\nguaranteed  by the Tamil state or by the Sinhala state?\u201d Was R.\nSampanthan\u2019s right to go to Parliament and speak without fear or favour\nguaranteed by the Tamil state or by the Sinhala state\u201d? Why didn\u2019t \nSumanthiram practise law in Prabhakaran\u2019s Tamil courts if he sincerely believed\nthat the Sinhala stat\u201d does not deliver justice to the Tamils? Was C.V.\nWigneswaran\u2019s right to deliver judgment based on the finest legal principles\nguaranteed by the Sinhala state\u201d or in Prabhakaran\u2019s courts? The list is\nunending. Underlying all these issues is the question of making a moral choice\nbetween the state that would guarantee the highest degree of dignity, justice\nand equality and the state that is politically incapable of delivering these\nbasic essentials. After all, the Tamils were fighting for their dignity,\njustice, equality and security. When a state has to forcibly recruit under-aged\nchildren to fight its futile war how much of dignity, justice, equality and\nsecurity prevailed for the glory of Tamils in their Tamil state? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, the\nmoral choice was crystal clear: should the Tamils opt to live in a\nmulti-cultural democracy with human rights, however imperfect it may be, or\nlive in a mono-ethnic Tamil fascist state without even a minimum of human\nrights? To go for Tamil rights at any cost in a fascist state \u2013 and there was\nno other option under Prabhakaran \u2013 was to live as mono-ethnic slaves deprived\nof basic human rights. What is equalling galling, is that over the centuries\nthe Tamils have proved that they were totally incapable of running a liberal\nstate, guaranteeing human dignity with the right to walk in daylight. The\npolitical culture was so perverse that they denied to human beings the right\ngiven to cattle and dogs. They have no political experience either of running a\ndemocratic state. They have specialised in  fascism but not in liberalism.\nThere has been no redeeming feature in Tamils politics except wallowing in\nmono-ethnic rhetoric and Tamil fascism. The moral option in Tamil politics has\nbeen to find an alternative to Megaha-Prabhakaran cult of fascist violence.\nThough the initial ideology on which the Vadukoddai War was launched focused\non  choosing between Sinhala-Buddhist state and a Tamil-Hindu state it was\nbecoming increasingly clear, as the violence intensified and  dragged on,\nthat the greater choice was between democracy and fascism. The mindless\nviolence of Prabhakaran killing Tamils took the shine away from the ideals of\nTamil nationalism\u201d. Besides, towards the end when Prabhakaran knew he was\nlosing he was forced to fight for his own survival than that of the Tamil\nnation\u201d.  He chose to fight until the last Tamil left for Canada, not to\nnegotiate a settlement to save the lives of the Tamils trapped in a futile war.\nHe dug his own grave with his intransigence and arrogance.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was also clear that\nsaving Prabhakaran was not going to save the Tamils, or the security of the\nTamils, or their thirst for peace after 33 years of war that was going nowhere.\nAll attempts to negotiate a settlement, even with international guarantees, failed.\nPrabhakaran refused to abide by negotiated settlements. The only option \nopen to achieve peace and security was to remove him from the political\nequation. The Vadukoddai War had gone long enough and the time had come to end\nit. The only way to achieve peace was to neutralise the killing machine of\nPrabhakaran. Morality was in ending the war and restoring peace. Anything short\nof that was moral hypocrisy.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It at this critical\nmoral juncture that the Centre for Policy Alternative (CPA) stepped in to save\nPrabhakaran. It was obvious even in the last stages of the war that Prabhakaran\nwas committed to Chelvanayakam\u2019s doctrine of fight to the end.\u201d In a speech\ndelivered in Batticoloa on May 11, 1975 Chelvanayakam said: \u201dThere is no other\nalternative for the Tamils to live with self-respect other than fight to the\nend for a Tamil Nad ( i.e. a Tamil State)\u201d. ( p.127 \u2013 Ibid). The only\ndifference between Chelvanayakam and Prabhakaran was that the latter was more\nhonest in his politics than the former.  Chelvanayakam posed as a saintly\nGandhian in Parliament in Colombo and stoked the fires of war in Jaffna.\nChelvanayakam\u2019s actions, particularly in the 70s, confirm that he was a\ncommitted war-monger who tried to cover up his belligerence with Gandhian \nposes and utterances.  When in the 70s the violence of the Tamil youth was\nescalating, his thinking was shifting to a fight to the end\u201d. Amirthalingam,\nhis deputy, and M. Sivasithamparam were hand in glove with the militant youth\ngearing up to fight to the end\u201d. By 1975 Prabhakaran had killed his first\nTamil victim \u2013 Alfred Duraiyappah. Chelvanayakam, the Gandhian, had prepared\nJaffna ideologically, to wage the Vadukoddai War which was officially declared\nunder his chairmanship in Vadukoddai on May 14, 1976. It didn\u2019t take long for\nPrabhakaran to decimate most of the 37 rival militant group and take over\nJaffna. With his early military successes, he attained a divine status. He was\nanointed as Surya Devan\u201d. At the political level he was hailed as the sole\nrepresentatives of the Tamils\u201d. No Tamil had reached such giddy heights of\npower in Jaffna.  His arrogance and intransigence grew proportionately.\nDrunk with power he was determined to fight to the end\u201d. He refused to read\nthe signs of the time. And then, almost overnight he  came down from hero\nto zero at Nandikadal. He had come to a dead end. He had outlived his\nusefulness. The inevitable was moving  inexorably to happen: he had to be\nremoved for the Tamils to move forward. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is at this decisive\npoint that Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu, head of the CPA, staged his best\ntragi-comic act. He was leap-frogging from one Western capital to another to\nstop the war. He knew that Prabhakaran was trapped and only international\nintervention could save him. So, he went jumping from one Western city to\nanother to prevent the impending carnage, he said. Pah! He could not reveal, of\ncourse, that his farcical exercise was to save Prabhakaran and not the lives of\nTamils sandwiched between two warring forces.  Like all the moral hypocrites\nrunning politicised NGOs, he took cover under the noble principles of human\nrights. If he was genuinely concerned about stopping the war to save lives why\ndidn\u2019t he feel the urgency for 32 years and seven months when Prabhakaran was\nkilling more Tamils than all the others put together? Why did he start jumping\nup and down only in the last five months of the war, from January 2009 to May\n2009, when Prabhakaran was facing  certain defeat? He was quite smug and\ncontent with the progress of the war when Prabhakaran was scoring military\nsuccesses. He felt no urgency to stop the war when Prabhakaran was winning\nground. His heart began to bleed only when Prabhakaran was losing territory! <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The moral hypocrisy of\nintellectuals like Saravanamuttu is appalling. It is easy to see through his\ntheatrics: he was attempting to use moral principles to save an immoral\npolitical criminal. After that, can he be trusted to do anything honest? <\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala Jaffna burst into  history under violent and tragic circumstances. It began when Megaha of Kalinga, South India, invaded and occupied Jaffna in 1215. He opened his reign with ruthless terror. His violence knew no limits. The historical records reveal that he destroyed non-Saivite shrines, smashed Buddhist temples, and gouged the eyes […]<\/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-120901","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\/120901","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=120901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}