{"id":50282,"date":"2015-12-18T13:36:28","date_gmt":"2015-12-18T19:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=50282"},"modified":"2015-12-18T06:32:18","modified_gmt":"2015-12-18T13:32:18","slug":"tamil-theology-upgraded-prabhakaran-and-downgraded-jesus-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/12\/18\/tamil-theology-upgraded-prabhakaran-and-downgraded-jesus-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Tamil theology upgraded Prabhakaran and downgraded Jesus –\u00a0Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

At the height of the 33-year-old war \u2013 i.e., from the Vadukoddai declaration of war on May 14, 1976 to Nandikadal on May 18, 2009 — two Tamil clerics decided to give a face-lift to Tamil politics by dressing it up in new clothes of Christian theology. Under the cover of waging a war of liberation\u201d even the so-called moderates had accepted Tamil fascism\u201d (Prof. Rajan Hoole) as a necessary means to achieve\u00a0 their political end. Any one who questioned Tamil fascism\u201d was condemned and, wherever possible, eliminated as a traitor. The Tamil terror unleashed by Velupillai Prabhakaran to maintain his supremacy as the sole representative of the Tamils\u201d tolerated no dissent. Any threat to his reign of terror was snuffed out swiftly.\u00a0 The New York Times<\/strong><\/em> labelled Prabhakaran as the latest Pol Pot of Asia\u201d. The University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna, the only courageous voice of the dissenting Tamil intellectuals, was documenting in detail the horrors coming out of the womb of Jaffna.\u00a0 Eventually, the LTTE headed by Velupillai Prabhakaran was banned as a terrorist organisation by the international community.<\/p>\n

The Churchmen who were witnesses to the rise of the Pol Potist cult in the North went along with it, religiously blessing the fascist horrors unfolding before their eyes. They decided to embrace the Tamil Pol Potist cult in preference\u00a0 to the elected government of the day which they branded as the Sinhala government\u201d. In short, they hailed Tamil fascism under one-man rule as the better alternative to the multi-cultural democratic norms that ruled\u00a0 the nation, with all its imperfections, in the post-independent era. The Vadukoddai violence incrementally morphed into the North-South war which was waged exclusively by the intransigent\u00a0 and implacable Velupillai Prabhakaran. He dragged it on for\u00a0 33 years. The peninsula\u00a0 became the battleground\u00a0 for the three main combatants \u2013 Sri Lankan Force, Indian Forces and Prabhakaran\u2019s Forces. It was the Tamils of the North who suffered most. More than any other force, the Tamils who were expecting liberation\u201d became the victims of the\u00a0 dreaded cult of Tamil Pol Potism.<\/p>\n

In contrast, the Sri Lankan Government continued to conduct its war against the Tamil terrorists within a democratic framework, however fragile and defective it may have been. Tamil politics, on the other\u00a0 hand, had descended into the depraved depths of fascist politics. It was desperately in need of moral justifications. The Christian Churches of the North, dominated by Tamils, were already in the thick of Tamil separatist politics, lending a helping hand to Prabhakaran. Through the global network of Christian Churches, they were in the forefront either justifying or manufacturing excuses for Tamil violence. Their modus operandi was to paint the Tamils as the victims\u00a0 of the oppressive Sri Lankan government without mentioning that the Tamils penned inside Prabhakaran\u2019s Pol Potist regime were never invited to the\u00a0 grand birthday parties of his children, or to swim in the pool built for\u00a0 him\u00a0 to cool off in the heat of the dry zone. While Prabhakaran even siphoned off the food and medicine sent by the Government of Sri Lanka to fatten his family and\u00a0 his cadres protecting him, the Churchmen\u00a0 accused of the Government of Sri Lanka of using food as a weapon of war to deprive the Tamils of essentials for\u00a0 their\u00a0 survival.<\/p>\n

The Tamil Churchmen\u00a0 were doing their utmost best in propagandising from\u00a0 the pulpit, through parish letters and lobbying from Rome to every possible Tamil home. But the Churchmen were desperately in need of a Christianised justification for their\u00a0 role in aiding and abetting Tamil separatism \u2013 a movement that turned Tamil against\u00a0 Tamils, and took the lives of more Tamils than all the other forces put together, as stated by S.C. Chandrahasan, the son of S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the father of Tamil separatism. The putative Tamil theologians stepped\u00a0 in\u00a0 to undertake a rescue mission that would sanitize Tamil violence and make it a respectable and acceptable force in\u00a0 the eyes of the\u00a0 world. Prabhakaran too depended heavily on the Churchmen to whitewash his crimes against humanity, particularly his\u00a0 crimes against his own Tamil people. And the Churchmen fanned out into various corners\u00a0 of Christendom to present Prabhakaran as a latter day saint who had risen to rescue the oppressed Tamils.<\/p>\n

What was missing in the pro-separatist campaign of the Churches was a theology to justify and \/ or cover up the horrors of the Tamil violence that erupted in the post-Vadukoddai Resolution period. It was easy for the the\u00a0 Churchmen to twist the ground realities and project the Government\u00a0 of Sri Lanka as demonic\u00a0 force. But the theoretical difficulty was in elevating the crimes of Prabhakaran to the dizzy heights of a divine force.<\/p>\n

Of course, any attempt to rationalise and justify the Pol Potist\u201d violence of Prabhakaran was an uphill task. But to construct a theology to sanitise it was impossible. But that\u00a0 is precisely what Rev. S. J. Emmanuel, former Vicar-General of Jaffna, and the head of Global Tamil Forum (GTF) , and Rt. Rev. Dr. Bishop S. Jebanesan promised to do for Tamil separatism. Rev. Emmanuel was the first to announce his decision to construct a Tamil theology. He played a prominent role when the LTTE forced the Tamils to move out of Jaffna into Vanni, hoping to leave a vacant city for the Security Forces advancing into the heart of Jaffna. The Diasporic propaganda machine was also intent on impressing the world that the Tamils were leaving\u00a0 voluntarily in support of their LTTE liberators\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rev. Emmanuel was the chief propagandist marketing this myth.\u00a0 But the\u00a0 following snippet\u00a0 from the University Teachers Human Rights, Jaffna, report tells the hidden story of the forcible eviction of Tamils by the LTTE:\u00a0 On October 30th, 1995, it (the LTTE) forced almost the entire\u00a0 population to move\u00a0 our\u00a0 of Jaffna City and Valikamam. It had already sent out agents to the West, including a member of the Christian clergy, to spread the word that a humanitarian crisis had resulted from 500,000 people spontaneously fleeing their homes to escape the Sri Lankan Army and to be with the Tigers.\u201d (P. 384 — The Arrogance of Power, Myths, Decadence and Murder<\/strong><\/em>, University Teachers for Human\u00a0 Rights (Jaffna), (July 2001). It was, as stated by Prof. Hoole, a crisis engineered by the LTTE\u201d (ibid) and the clergyman who went to the West to be the messenger boy of Prabhakaran was Rev. Emmanuel. He wrote a pamphlet titled Let my People Go, <\/strong><\/em>claiming to be the Tamil Moses who virtually led the Tamil exodus that was herded out of Jaffna by the LTTE to Vanni. As the dedicated acolyte of Prabhakaran, he continues to theologise\u201d even now to boost his myth of projecting Prabhakaran as the liberator\u201d virtually on par with Jesus. (A sample of his latest theology\u201d was published in Colombo Telegraph<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 November 25, 2015). His theological\u201d defence will be dealt with later.<\/p>\n

Dr. Bishop S. Jebanesan, is the second Tamil cleric to announced\u00a0 his decision to construct a theology for the Tamils only. He is the co-author of The\u00a0 Bible Trembled<\/strong><\/em>, a scholarly study of the early Christian influences and confrontations in Hindu Jaffna society. He declared later in an interview with Prof.\u00a0 S. Ratnajeevan Hoole published in the Daily Mirror<\/strong><\/em> that he too was engaged in writing a theology for the Tamils. In response, I questioned (also in the\u00a0 Daily Mirror<\/strong><\/em>) the validity of manufacturing a Christian theology for the Tamils ONLY which meant excluding the Sinhala Christians. It was obvious that any attempt to construct a theology exclusively for a single tribe would run counter to the universal humanism of Christianity. Any theology written exclusively for the Tamils would have been a racist exercise\u00a0 excluding the Christians in the majority Sinhala community. In their blind eagerness to boost the bloody politics the Tamil theologians were, either wittingly or unwittingly, trying to create two Christianities \u2013 one for the Tamils and one for the Sinhalese. But Jesus belongs to all Christians, irrespective of race, and to hijack his universal principles to promote partisan politics of any one community is an exercise in\u00a0 futility, if not stupidity.<\/p>\n

The greatness and the universality of Christianity is in the historical fact that Jesus took God out of the hands of his own Semitic tribe\u00a0 — the Hebrews who claimed the sole ownership of God by proclaiming that they were the chosen people of God — and made Him the saviour of all mankind. He made Christianity an inclusive\u00a0 means for all believers to access God without handing the ownership to any chosen tribe dwelling in an exclusive enclave . Any attempt by the two Tamil clerics to write a theology exclusively for the Tamils would have meant tribalizing God as if a single\u00a0 tribe had been given the unique privilege of monopolising God\u00a0 for\u00a0 their benefit alone. Writing an exclusive theology for the Tamils alone is a contradiction which cannot be reconciled with the basic principles of Christian universalism. An exclusive\u00a0 theology for a\u00a0 chosen tribe is the most un-Christian doctrine imaginable.<\/p>\n

But for the Tamil Churchmen the pull of Tamil separatist\u00a0 politics was stronger\u00a0 than the fundamental principles of non-violent Christianity. The magnetic idea of Tamil separatism had dragged the Churchmen deep into Tamil politics. In the predominantly Hindu society of Jaffna it was the Tamil Churchmen who took the lead, both internationally and nationally, to politicize religion with the sole aim of dividing Sri Lanka on ethnic lines. Their objective was to elevate Tamil politics to a higher moral\/spiritual plane, if that was possible, with a newly constructed Christian theology exclusively for the Tamils. Their thinking was that a separate theology was necessary to go along with a separate state. Apart from this the Churchmen had a hidden agenda : a separate Tamil theology in the separate Tamil state would pave the way to establish an exclusive Tamil clerical hierarchy without kow-towing to the higher-ups in the national ecclesiastical bureaucracy who would naturally be Sinhalese.<\/p>\n

Though in the eyes of God all creatures, big and small, are equal the Tamil clerics felt that their superior Tamilness can be maintained only under Tamil hierarchy in the Church\u00a0 bureaucracy. In fact, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the father of separatism, left the Anglican Church and joined the South Indian Church to pray for\u00a0 the same God. He was comfortable in\u00a0 his Tamil ambience, praying in a Tamil church for a God to whom Tamils can relate without going\u00a0 through Sinhala channels. The only difficulty they faced was making God into an ethnic Vellahla Tamil. Short of that they were planning to Tamilise everything else.<\/p>\n

Christian theology, like all Abrahamic theisms, claims its origins from divine sources. But the Tamil clerics decided to produce a man-made theology exclusively for\u00a0 the Tamil tribe. It was bound to be a partisan political exercise for\u00a0 the creation of an exclusive ethnic enclave rather than a pure spiritual exploration pointing the way to the promised Biblical realms of eternal salvation. Eelam, like the Mosesian\u00a0 Promised Land, was on terra firma. It was diametrically opposed to the Promised Land of Jesus which was not of this earth. As it turned out, the politicised theologies\u201d of the Churches ended in offering political candles \/ pandans<\/strong><\/em> to worship the Satanic Sooriya Devan\u201d rather than the\u00a0 loving God, the Father of all humanity.<\/p>\n

Part of the cult to concoct a theology exclusively for the Tamils came from the desperate need of the Tamil Churchmen to prove that God was on their side. This exclusive Tamil theology was going to be the ultimate argument that would silence the critics, sceptics and dissidents. It was going to be a divine justification for Tamil separatism and subhuman violence generated by Tamil politics which has been detailed graphically by Prof. Rajan Hoole, in his collection of incisive and\u00a0 candid essays, titled The Arrogance of Power, Myths, Decadence and Murder<\/strong><\/em>, University Teachers for Human\u00a0 Rights (Jaffna), (July 2001).\u00a0 But no theology \u2013 Tamil or otherwise \u2013 could justify or sanctify the unspeakable brutalities that came out of the subhuman womb\u00a0 of Jaffna. It baffled even a perceptive analyst like Prof Rajan Hoole who consistently refused to pussy-foot around the crimes committed by the Tamils against the Tamils and, of course, the NGOs. What he witnessed and reported\u00a0 exposed the hidden layers of\u00a0 the fascist\u00a0 culture\u00a0 of Jaffna.\u00a0 Jaffna was bleeding to death. In one of his article he grieved and wondered how the abominable cruelties could\u00a0 have come out of the womb\u00a0 of Jaffna.<\/p>\n

The Bible, of course, has been used down the ages to justify diverse political regimes and extremist dogmas boosting the superiority of a chosen race \/ nation. The political aim of\u00a0 these manufactured theologies has been to claim that God is on their side and not\u00a0 on the side of their opponents \/ enemies\u00a0 — a distinct advantage in an argument or in battle. In the 20th century, for instance, the Bible had been used by the White supremacists to justify racism in the Bible Belt of America in the southern states and by the Afrikaans in S. Africa to justify apartheid. These theological dogmas are constructed to separate people into the superior and inferior categories. Such dogmas are inherently divisive and oppressive and lead to confrontations and aggression.<\/p>\n

The attempt to write an exclusive\u00a0 theology for the Tamils could be traced back to inherent Tamil arrogance, which again\u00a0 is rooted in the false sense of Tamil superiority.\u00a0 There is no secular, spiritual or\u00a0 rational basis for the Tamil to deserve a theology that would exclude the rest of mankind. To believe that the Tamils are chosen exclusively by God\u00a0 for special favours has no rational or evidentiary basis. Of course, beneath the veneer of being humble and gentle there lurks a hidden strain of arrogance which places the presumptuous Tamils, in their own minds, way above the rest.\u00a0 Prof. Hoole refers to the ………dangerous inherent assumption of the superiority of Tamils over\u00a0 the Sinhalese and a certain uneasiness about the Muslims who were also largely Tamil-speaking.\u201d( p.xiii \u2013 Ibid) This sense\u00a0 of superiority also extends to the Batticoloa Tamils, the Indian coolies\u201d and, most of all, their own low-castes whom they treat as pariahs. A theology which seeks to establish that the Tamils are the\u00a0 favourites of God is the ultimate extension\u00a0 of this absurd sense of superiority. It is the divine equivalent of sharing power with the Sinhalese.<\/p>\n

In the end, neither produced the theology they promised. Bishop Jebanesan, as far as I know, withdrew into a wise silence on this issue. Rev. Emmanuel, however, keeps on dragging God into his brand of politics. He uses the Christian collar in the corridors of Western power to gain respectability, acceptability and credibility to propagate his fabricated theology\u201d even after his thesis that God was on their side was disproved on the banks of Nandikadal.<\/p>\n

The main thrust of his Tamil theology\u201d was to deify Tamil politics and to demonize the the Sinhalese as the Satanic force acting against the will of God. But if history is the expressed will of God then it is clear beyond any doubt that He has rejected Velupillai Prabhakaran \u2013 the most evil monster that came\u00a0 out of the womb of Jaffna. This message has not sunk into the Tamil psyche yet because pseudo-theologians are still engaged in keeping\u00a0 the fires of Prabhakaranism burning. For instance, Rev. Emmanuel\u2019s Christian mission is devoted to elevate and\u00a0 embrace Prabhakaran as his Sooriya Devan\u201d.\u00a0 Jesus is kept at a comfortable\u00a0 distance to\u00a0 be used at his convenience.<\/p>\n

There was no salvation for peninsular politics after the Tamils\u00a0 crowned Prabhakaran as their Sooriya Devan\u201d. With that Tamil politics took the final leap from absurdity to sheer lunacy. The Tamils who depend solely on their mythicised history to pursue arrogant politics, are severely handicapped by the absence of a credible and noble hero who could be hailed, with some honour and dignity, as the shining symbol of their achievements in their historical past. Their lack of a great icon from their ancestral times leads them to a false sense\u00a0 of superiority. Coming from a bankrupt past with no grand monuments or noble heroes to glorify their brief history, the Jaffna Tamils run\u00a0 down everyone else with venomous envy.<\/p>\n

Of all the figures in their history they have embraced Prabhakaran as their sole hero. Only the diseased Tamil minds, sick with sado-masochism, would\u00a0 embrace a Tamil villain who has tortured, persecuted, exiled and killed more Tamils than anyone else as their hero. Only blood-thirsty vampires would\u00a0 rally round a flag which has no redeeming features to uplift the sensibilities of a humane and urbane being. The hideous images of a snarling tiger, putting his head\u00a0 out of a ring\u00a0 of thirty-three bullets — it looks more\u00a0 like a wreath placed for a corpse — with two bayoneted guns crisscrossing in the background are not the kind of worthy symbols accepted by any civilised community gifted with even an ounce\u00a0 of intelligence and decency.<\/p>\n

All these monstrous obscenities have their origins in the bogus sense of Tamil superiority. The Germans and the Italians have virtually erased from their memories the evil fascist monsters \u2013 Hitler and Mussolini — who led them to defeat and humiliation. They have, of course, other historical giants, who have made unique contributors to the welfare of humanity,\u00a0 to revere. The\u00a0 Tamils of Jaffna, of course, must be excused because if they drop Prabhakaran, the Tamil Pol Pot, whom else do they have to look upon as their great hero?<\/p>\n

Does\u00a0 this\u00a0 choice reflect a sense of superiority or mediocrity?<\/p>\n

(To be continued)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H.L. D. Mahindapala At the height of the 33-year-old war \u2013 i.e., from the Vadukoddai declaration of war on May 14, 1976 to Nandikadal on May 18, 2009 — two Tamil clerics decided to give a face-lift to Tamil politics by dressing it up in new clothes of Christian theology. Under the cover of waging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50282","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\/50282","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=50282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}