{"id":52471,"date":"2016-02-29T18:50:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-01T00:50:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=52471"},"modified":"2016-02-29T11:48:48","modified_gmt":"2016-02-29T18:48:48","slug":"a-brief-history-of-tamils-persecuting-and-killing-tamils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/02\/29\/a-brief-history-of-tamils-persecuting-and-killing-tamils\/","title":{"rendered":"A brief history of Tamils persecuting and\u00a0 killing Tamils"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

In 1968 Jaffna was facing an\u00a0 internal caste war which was threatening to tear it apart.\u00a0 The simmering caste conflict in Jaffna exploded with the\u00a0 low-castes, spurred by N. Shanmugathasan, head of the Peking-wing of the Communist Party,\u00a0 threatening to enter the Maviddipuram Temple \u2013 the segregated religious domain preserved exclusively for the high-caste Vellahlas from feudal and colonial times. It was, in a distant way, similar to\u00a0 the storming of\u00a0 the Bastille : <\/strong>the decadent and\u00a0 dying ancien regime<\/strong><\/em> of the feudal Vellahlas resisting with all their might the\u00a0 rising forces of modernity. Prof. C. Sunderalingam, a Vellahla caste fanatic, was threatening\u00a0 to attack any low-caste who dared to cross the threshold of this\u00a0 Hindu Temple. The Vellahala casteists, including the leadership of the Federal Party dominated by the Vellahlas, were behind him, either overtly or covertly, but mostly covertly.<\/p>\n

Dudley Senanayake, the Prime Minister, had given instructions to the head of the Jaffna Police, Deputy Inspector General, R. Sunderalingam,\u00a0 to open\u00a0 the temple for the low-castes. The battle lines were drawn clearly and the battle of the two Sunderalingams\u201d was at\u00a0 boiling point. The champion of the Tamils, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, who was crying from\u00a0 roof tops about\u00a0 the alleged discriminations by the Sinhala governments, never lifted a finger to help the oppressed the Tamil untouchables \/ dalits, other than paying lip service to abolish the caste system. His\u00a0 deputy, Appapillai Amirthalingam, dodged the issue by saying that the Federal Party did not want to take sides to avoid bringing politics\u00a0 into\u00a0 the temple.<\/p>\n

The vicious caste system of Jaffna was a form of fascist rule imposed by the ruling Vellahla caste on the untouchables \/ dalits to maintain their purity\u201d and supremacy. Caste fascism stripped the dalits of human dignity in every sphere of their life. Even the right to drink water from the wells was forbidden. One of the lowest of the low-castes, the turumbas, <\/em><\/strong>for instance, were forbidden to walk in the daylight lest they should pollute the purity of Vellahla eyes. Beneath the serene surface of the Jaffna landscape casteism slithered into every nook and corner like a poisonous snake, ready to strike at anyone that came within hissing distance of the territorial and\u00a0 social borders of\u00a0 the upper caste. The cadjan curtain that fenced off the other\u201d (outcastes) demarcated their separate territory to\u00a0 prevent pollution from the outsiders\u201d which included the Tamils low-castes.<\/p>\n

The ubiquitous cadjan curtain of Jaffna symbolised the separatist line of the Vellahlas who drew artificial and arbitrary borders to keep the other\u201d out. In the minds\u00a0 of the supremacist Vellahlas the other\u201d included the Batticoloa Tamils, the estate Tamils, the Sinhalese and even the Tamil-speaking Muslims.\u00a0 The Vellahlas were\u00a0 obsessed with separatism as a\u00a0 means of retaining\u00a0 their\u00a0 purity and superiority, both inside and\u00a0 outside the\u00a0 peninsula. The separatist ideology began with the Vellahlas excluding their\u00a0 own people out of their supremacist circle.<\/p>\n

Separatism was a means of protecting and preserving\u00a0 their feudal\u00a0 and colonial powers, perks, positions and privileges. Any intrusions to pollute the sanctity of the Vellahla inner circles, either by Tamil low-castes or the Tamil-speaking and non-Tamil outsiders were strictly forbidden. Some intrusions were punished\u00a0 with death. Whether\u00a0 it\u00a0 is the secular Thesavalami <\/strong><\/em>law, (law of the land), Saivite religious laws as restructured by Arumuka Navalar, the caste fanatic, the Catholic Church practices of reserving the front pews for the upper caste and last pews for\u00a0 the low-castes, the ruling political ideology, the approved traditions of the social order, all coalesced to keep the other\u201d (particularly the untouchables \/dalits) out of Vellahla properties, Hindu temples, schools, wells, buses, and all other social amenities necessary for living\u00a0 as equal human beings with dignity.<\/p>\n

The roots of Tamil violence and its subhuman culture can be found in the embedded casteist forces that pursued only purity, exclusivity and supremacy. The Vellahlas never\u00a0 hesitated to use violence to\u00a0 retain their purity, exclusivity and supremacy even at the cost of oppressing and suppressing their\u00a0 own people. Vellarlars,\u201d wrote\u00a0 Prof. Bryan Pfaffenberger, had long considered the Jaffna Peninsula a private preserve for their interests……In the fifties, for instance, many Minority Tamils ( Vellahla euphemism for their untouchables \/ dalits ) still lived in Vellarlar – owned\u00a0 palmyrah groves or wasteland; if they did not submit to Vellarlar labour demands, they could be threatened with expulsion. The economic compulsions were paired with informal political controls :<\/strong> Minority Tamils who attempted\u00a0 to raise their position would find their communities victimised by Vellarlar- organised gangs of thugs, who burned down huts and poisoned wells.\u201d\u00a0 (p. 81 — The Political Construction of Defensive Nationalism: The 1968 Temple-Entry Crisis in Northern Sri Lanka, The Journal of Asia Studies, 49, No. 1,\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>February 1990).<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The caste system was legitimized and maintained as a divinely ordained and immutable religious order of the chosen people, the Vellahlas. The low-castes were destined, according to their karma, to remain in the condition into which they were born. They had no alternative in this life except to accept the supremacy of the God-given Vellahlas\u201d. Consequently, it became more than a religion. It became a political cult to keep the Vellahla caste\/class in power on a fascist theology, manufactured and sanctioned by the Father of the Vellahlas, Arumuka Navalar,(1822 \u2013 1879), the leading caste fanatic of Jaffna. Saivism, as doctored by Navalar, was essentially a religious cover to legitimise the supremacy of the Vellahlas \u2013 the lowest category in the\u00a0 hierarchy of the classical caste system in India. The highest caste was that of the Brahmins. But\u00a0 there were no Brahmins, the priestly caste, in Jaffna, except for the few who crossed over from India. Crossing the seas was a taboo to preserve the purity of the priests who are likely to be polluted by foreign influences.\u00a0 This posed a problem for the\u00a0 imported caste system in Jaffna :<\/strong> the caste hierarchy in Jaffna had no substitute for the Brahmins at the apex. It was Arumuka Navalar who stepped in and anointed the Vellahlas as the divinely ordained substitute for the Brahmins. In a show of gratitude the Vellahlas have worshipped him since then as their demi-god.<\/p>\n

Navalar was himself a Vellahla and he imposed all the religio-social restrictions to keep the low-castes condemned as victims of their karmic past. He is the evil genius of Jaffna who perverted the Jaffna culture into a rigid, fascist gulag of the Vellahla supremacists. The Vellahlas owe everything to him because he used religion as a political tool to enthrone the Vellahlas as the supreme authority of Jaffna. Thanks to Navalar the Vellahlas gained the religious sanction to be the overlords of Jaffna. From the time\u00a0 of\u00a0 the Dutch, when the Vellahlas rose\u00a0 in rebellion against the appointment of a Madapalli (an\u00a0 extinct caste now) as a Canakepulle to the Dutch administration, the Vellahlas gained\u00a0 the upperhand of being the subalterns to\u00a0 the colonial masters. They brooked no opposition to\u00a0 their power in Jaffna from any internal rival castes. Though they were the unacknowledged subalterns under colonial masters they lacked the religio-social\u00a0 authority to be in command. Navalar\u00a0 filled this vacuum by anointing the Vellahlas as the supreme caste divinely ordained to\u00a0 rule the other castes. After Navalar\u2019s blessings the Vellahlas assumed that they were born to rule and any challenge to their authority was put down with violent\u00a0 force, if necessary. Navalar\u2019s politicised Saivism turned Jaffna into casteist \/ racist enclave. His Saivism dehumanised Hinduism and pushed the low-castes into a hell hole of casteist \/ racist fascism.<\/p>\n

Navalar took the lead in setting the precedent for the denial of basic human rights to the low-caste Tamils. He was one of the first to exclude the\u00a0 low-castes entering his schools. Navalar\u2019s Saivisim, therefore, was more than a reformed religion. It was a political cult manufactured by him to deny the oppressed Tamils of Jaffna their dignity, their liberty and their right to live as human\u00a0 beings. Some were condemned as slaves for life until the British abolished slavery in 1844. Neither the British nor the radical Prevention of Social Disabilities Act of 1957 passed by S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike \u2013 the only comprehensive legislative\/political\u00a0 step taken by any administration to combat the caste fascism of Jaffna \u2013 worked because Vellahlaism was an entrenched force, like Saivism,\u00a0 that could not be eradicated\u00a0 overnight. It became a part of the DNA of Jaffna culture.<\/p>\n

Only the explosive force of Prabhakaranism had some impact on the caste establishment. But that too seemed to have been\u00a0 short-lived. Latest research reveal that Vellahlaism is raising its\u00a0 ugly head again in Jaffna. Thanges Paramsothy, PhD Research Student in Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, University of East London, United Kingdom wrote in\u00a0 his\u00a0 latest article : The LTTE movement, which was in power, to some extent had destroyed this political domination within its movement giving leaderships to all caste groups. Thamilchelvan, for example, who was from one of the oppressed caste groups, Ampattar, became as a leader of the political wings in the LTTE movement. Apart from the debate on success, failure and problems in the political mobilisation of the LTTE, it had the negotiating power where people from different social and caste backgrounds became as participants. Soon after the LTTE was defeated, the Tamil politics is once again been dominated by the Vellalar caste in Jaffna. The oppressed castes have a little or no space to become as potential leaders. The criticism against the TNA is that they appoint one person from the oppressed castes as a candidate at every parliamentary election in order to show that they are \u2018casteless\u2019 in their selection process of the candidates. However, the past experience shows that the person who was selected as a contesting candidate in the TNA would be as a potential loser than a winner.\u201d (Colombo Telegraph<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 November. 24, 2016).<\/p>\n

Saivite Vellahalism was a well-knit and organized political force, wrapped in the revised text of Saivism, to protect, promote and preserve, at any cost,\u00a0 its feudal and colonial powers, privileges. properties, positions and perks of the Vellahlas. Its collective and concerted socio-political objective was initially to keep the low-castes as a subhuman species to do their dirty work, if necessary by thuggery and inhuman force, including killing. It was no doubt a prickly issue for the Vellahlas who were fighting a losing battle to preserve their feudal and colonial privileges in the 20th century. Losing their supremacy over the low-castes was an unthinkable\u00a0 proposition for the Vellahlas. Peninsular politics depended essentially on the supremacy of the English-educated, Saivite, Jaffna Vellahlas (ESJVs) over the rest. They derived their authority and legitimacy in feudal\/colonial times from the distorted theology of Arumuka Navalar who elevated them to the peak of power.\u00a0 But in the 20th century the religious authority, as defined by Navalar, was losing its validity. Vellahlaism as a ruling ideology was so powerful that even Ponnambalam Ramanathan went to London before he died in 1930 to convince the imperial masters that the caste system should be kept at any cost for the stability and progress of the Tamils. However, creeping modernity, universal franchise, market forces, free education, liberal and\u00a0 socialist ideologies\u00a0 were undermining thedivine\u201d authority legitimised by the caste fanatic Arumuka Navalar.<\/p>\n

By\u00a0 the 60s the traditional authority of Saivite casteism was coming apart at the seams and threatening\u00a0 to unseat the Vellahlas from their precarious perch located in the highest peak of the caste hierarchy. The persecuted Minorities\u201dwere rising, slowly but surely, from the ashes of vicious casteism.\u00a0 It was at this juncture that the threatened Vellahlas nominally dropped casteism and turned to racism\/nationalism to unite the divided Jaffna society. The cover of nationalism\u201d\u00a0 was the last ploy of\u00a0 the Vellahlas adopted,mark you, not to serve the Tamils of\u00a0 all layers, from the top\u00a0 to the bottom, but to retain the power, privileges, positions, properties and perks of the Vellahlas. To achieve this they had to establish an administration of the Vellahlas, by the Vellahlas, for the Vellahlas. Under the British they were almost there, holding a commanding position in the legislature, public administration, professions and the private sector.\u00a0 Their concentration of power was in the public sector holding a disproportionate share of jobs in the British administration. This kept them quiet and satisfied, enjoying the most favoured status with English as the official\u00a0 language. It is the command of\u00a0 the English language that lifted them from the\u00a0 rest\u00a0 of the low-caste Tamils and the other communities as a power elite. This\u00a0 gave the English-educated, Saivite, Jaffna Vellahlas the upperhand, both inside and outside Jaffna.<\/p>\n

There was a marked shift from casteism to racism in the post-Donoughmore period when the arrogant and uppity Vellahalas were forced to depend on electoral votes of the low-caste to retain power in the legislature. Jane Russell in her masterly study of racism in the\u00a0 post-Donoughmore period, Communal Politics under the\u00a0 Donoughmore Constitution, 1931 \u2013 1947<\/strong><\/em>. (Tissara Publication, 1982). reveals the pure anti-Sinhala-Buddhist racist ideology spearheaded by Ponnambalam in\u00a0 the\u00a0 thirties without being motivated by any traces of nationalism\u201d.\u00a0 Her book gives an insight into how the Tamil racist casteists manipulated northern politics to retain Vellahla supremacy, both inside and outside Jaffna. Clearly, Tamil nationalism\u201d was a latter-day construction. Even Prof. A. J. Wilson, the leading\u00a0 authority on Tamil politics of this period, wrote : Ceylon Tamils lacked clearly defined objectives during\u00a0 this phase. It was based on the mistaken belief that the British presence\u00a0 would continue and that\u00a0 Ceylon\u00a0 would\u00a0 be granted restricted self-government\u00a0 and not\u00a0 complete\u00a0 independence….\u201d ( p. 14 \u2013 S. J. V. Chelvanayakam and the Crisis\u00a0 of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, 1947 \u2013 1977, A Political Biogrpahy<\/strong><\/em>, (Lake House Bookshop. 1993). In a more direct and\u00a0 perceptive analysis, Prof. Asoka Bandarage of George Town University, Washington, USA,\u00a0 in her scholarly text, says: As Benedict Anderson suggests, many of\u00a0 the primordial identities, nations and traditional homelands espoused by various\u00a0 ethno-nationalist groups are only \u2018imagined communities\u2019 formulated in response to modern circumstances rather than primordial entities based on historical facts. The traditional Tamil homeland thesis manufactured by Sri Lankan Tamil elites is a case in point.\u201d (p. 10 \u2013 The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka, Terrorism, ethinicity, political economy, <\/strong><\/em>(IUniverse, New\u00a0 York.)\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Obviously, the Tamil Vellahla elite was leading a racist movement against the Sinhala-Buddhist majority purely to protect their socio-political interests. Tamil nationalism was not even in their vocabulary at the time though nationalism\u00a0 was the popular flavour of all politics in the early 20th century. Initially, Tamils were not moved by nationalism in which the masses rallied\u00a0 behind a Nehru or a Gandhi. It was primarily a movement of\u00a0 the Vellahla elite at the top to protect their powers, positions, properties, perks and privileges more\u00a0 than a mass\u00a0 movement for nationalism. Even the issues raised by Ponnambalam\u00a0 in thirties and Chelvanayakam in the forties related to concerns\u00a0 of the Vellahla elite and not the Tamils masses. The language\u00a0 issue, for\u00a0 instance, was essentially an economic issue that concerned the Tamil public servants and professionals and not the Tamil masses who negotiated their commercial and private transactions comfortably, from Sea Street jewellers to barbers and thosai-kadays<\/strong><\/em> in Kandy in Sinhala.<\/p>\n

In the thirties the Tamil leadership opposed\u00a0 universal franchise because it\u00a0 threatened their elitist\u00a0 and\u00a0 privileged\u00a0 position. It was not only a political leveller but also a direct challenge to Vellahla supremacy. Under feudal and colonial times they used the religious ideology to retain their power. Under the new democratised dispensation of the post-Donoughmore period they could no longer use the outdated authority of Saivite casteism to sustain their power. Under the new political realities the Vellahlas were forced to abandon casteism as a means to win votes in the peninsula. They had to\u00a0 look for an alternative ideology to keep the reins of power in their hands and it was\u00a0 in this phase that the Vellahla elite turned to virulent racism with G. G. Ponnambalam, the new kid in political bloc, going hell-for-leather, with his racist attacks on the Mahavamsa<\/strong><\/em> and the Sinhalese. Ponnambalam used his anti-Sinhala-Buddhist campaigns as naked and blunt racist attacks. He did not argue his case\u00a0 on Tamil nationalism at any stage. The thirties was the time when nationalism was moving like a tidal wave across the British empire. Ponnambalam did not base it on anti-colonial\u00a0 nationalism. It was\u00a0 pure\u00a0 and simple anti-Sinhala\u00a0 racism. It was later camouflaged\u00a0 as nationalism by Chelvanayakam because Ponnambalam\u2019s 50 \u2013 50\u201d campaign lacked the populist aura\u00a0 of nationalism that could include the excluded low-castes.<\/p>\n

There are several dates picked to define the birth\u00a0 of Tamil racism. It is possible to go back as far as 1921 to\u00a0 identify the origins of racism as a political force. It was the year in which Sir, Ponnambalam Arunachalam broke away from the Ceylon\u00a0 National Congress, based on the multi-ethnic model of Indian National Congress, and established the first racist organisation, the Tamil Maha Jana Sabhai. But\u00a0 racism, as decisive political\u00a0 forces, was forged by G. G. Ponnambalam in the\u00a0 thirties. He injected virulent\u00a0 racism into mainstream politics for the first time in the\u00a0 thirties when his crude attack on the Sinhalese sparked off communal riots in Nawalapitiya, Matale and Passara.<\/p>\n

Historian Dr. G. C. Mendis commented that the communal harmony that prevailed for centuries\u00a0 was broken by the communalism that erupted in the thirties and the forties. Focussing on this aspect he wrote : This (Sinhala-Tamil) communalism seen in 1943 was undoubtedly a new development. European writers such as the Portuguese Jesuit Fernao de Queyroz and the Englishman Robert Knox of the seventeenth century and James Cordiner and\u00a0 other English writers\u00a0 of the nineteenth century have left us\u00a0 pictures of Ceylon with its various divisions\u00a0 of society but in none\u00a0 of their works does one come across communal conflicts of the type we saw then.\u201d\u00a0 ( p. 127, Ceylon Today and Yesterday,<\/strong><\/em> Main Currents of Ceylon History<\/strong><\/em>, Associated Newspaper of Ceylon Ltd., 1957).<\/p>\n

It was in response to the rising racism\u00a0 of the north that S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike countered by establishing his defensive Sinhala Maha Jana Sabha in 1936. Ponnambalam\u00a0 raised the stakes of racism in thirties by raising the unsubstantiated cry of discrimination\u201d in the thirties, mark you, and demanded 50 \u201350\u201d for 12 % of the Tamils. Though he claimed that it was for all the\u00a0 other minorities as well, neither the estate Tamils nor the Muslims were a part of\u00a0 his 50 \u2013 50\u201d bandwagon. The racist slide from 50 \u2013 50\u201d, to federalism to Eelam was inevitable, particularly with the little now and more later\u201d politics of S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the Father of Separatism. So\u00a0 it\u00a0 is clear that by the thirties \u2013 long\u00a0 before the Sinhala Only Act (1956) or even 1983\u201d \u2013 the Tamils had started galloping on their racist horses dragging the nation into a Tamil-Sinhala conflagration.<\/p>\n

After the failure of casteism to hold Jaffna together the Vellahla elite was jumping desperately from one slogan to another to retain their feudal and colonial powers. The panic-stricken Vellahla elite could only find anti-Sinhala-Buddhist racism as a political tool to defend their decadent and antiquated ancien\u00a0 regime<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 Their worst fear was that of\u00a0 losing power which they held as subalterns during\u00a0 the colonial period. While the Sinhala south embraced a multitude of ideologies \u2013 practically all the isms\u201d that were floating around in the post-War II period \u2013 Jaffna stuck to racism aimed\u00a0 at targeting the Sinhalese of the south. With casteism the English-educated, Saivite, Jaffna Vellahlas (ESJVs) rose to be the sole power inside the peninsula during the\u00a0 feudal and\u00a0 colonial\u00a0 times. With racism they became the key player outside Jaffna in\u00a0 the post-independent period \u2013 the period\u00a0 in which Jaffna took to self-destructive politics of extreme racism. Under the British rule the ESJVs had risen to become a powerful block outside Jaffna. By the time the British left they were in a commanding\u00a0 position to be key players in centre of politics in Colombo.<\/p>\n

By 1948 the ESJVs of\u00a0 the north felt strong enough to mount a challenge using\u00a0 the racist\/nationalist card. Please note I\u00a0 have used the acronym ESJVs and not the Tamils as having\u00a0 mounted the challenge to\u00a0 the centre playing\u00a0 the racist card. I shall explain\u00a0 why in the next article. For the present, I shall end this article by noting that S. J. V. Chelvanayakam launched\u00a0 his Illankai Thamil Arasu Kachchi urging a separate state on Decembe r 18, 1949 \u2013 just one\u00a0 year after independence. It was in the halcyon\u00a0 days when practically nothing significant\u00a0 had changed from the British administration except the colour\u00a0 of the faces of\u00a0 the new rulers : the Brown Sahibs had taken over from the White Sahibs.<\/p>\n

Chelvanyakam\u2019s cry for separatism had no other basis other than racism because it was not based on the Sinhala Only Act (1956), or `1983\u201d, or any of the other issues that exacerbated the North-South relations later. Tamil racism was already in motion in 1948 determined to carve its own way to towards its inevitable end in Nandikadal (2009). Chelvanayakam severed his links\u00a0 with his leader, Ponnamabalam, on the spurious issue of citizenship to the Indian\u00a0 estate workers in August 1949. It is not because he was concerned about the plight of the estate workers. It was only because he feared that the electoral power of the Tamils as a whole would weaken should the Indians estate workers lose their voting\u00a0 rights. Once again it proved\u00a0 to be a bogus issue because the astute leader of the estate workers, S. Thondaman, resolved it without resorting to violence, or aligning himself\u00a0 with the Jaffna Tamil leaders. He suspected\u00a0 that they were trying\u00a0 to muscle in to his patch under a pan-Tamil movement, the Iyakkum<\/strong><\/em> (movement) of\u00a0 the Thamil Payasoom Makkal<\/strong><\/em> (Tamil-speaking people) and rejected their advances.<\/p>\n

In this very sketchy outline I have tried to trace how northern events had escalated\u00a0 incrementally from a lower level of\u00a0 racism to\u00a0 a higher racist plane without the help of the Sinhala-Buddhists who are usually accused of being the cause of Tamil extremism. Chelvanayakam launched separatism long before long\u00a0 before S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike ever dreamt of breaking away from the UNP\u00a0 and\u00a0 launching his SLFP, long before the Sinhala Only Act, long\u00a0 before 1983\u201d,\u00a0 etc., revealing the fact that initially there was no correlation between the rise of Tamil extremism and the politics of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike. Mono-ethnic extremism\u00a0 had its roots in the internal dynamics of Jaffna politics without any contributions to its rise and growth in its formative stages in the 30s and 40s.\u00a0 Besides, separatism and\u00a0 violence are inseparable. One follows the other automatically and inescapably. This\u00a0 inevitability was acknowledged and expressed clearly in the Vadukoddai Resolution when the Vellahla leaders urged the youth to take up arms and never cease until they attain Eelam. The Tamil leadership\u00a0 knew that they could break away to form a separate state only through violence. It gave the Tamils the official licence\u00a0 to kill. And killing they did without any restraint. The Tamil youth took to killing like duck to water. There was\u00a0 no stopping\u00a0 them after the Vadukoddai Resolution.<\/p>\n

They targeted the Sinhalese saying\u00a0 that they were merely retaliating to the violence\u00a0 inflicted\u00a0 on them earlier. Then they killed the Indians who came as\u00a0 peace-keepers. Here too the\u00a0 Tamils claimed that they fired back at the Indians because they were raping\u00a0 their women and torturing\u00a0 and killing them. Then they started killing Muslims. Why? There was no rationale\u00a0 for this. Was this necessary at all? What had the Muslims done to the Tamils to kill them? Worst of all, the Tamils turned their guns on Tamils. Why? What had the Tamils done to the Tamils? In the end, the Tamils were facing the horror of Tamils killing Tamils ruthlessly in the name of Tamil nationalism\u201d which lacked the power to force the Sri Lankan government to grant Eelam.<\/p>\n

The indiscriminate killing of Tamils by Tamils reinforces the fact that the Tamils did not need a reason for\u00a0 killing. They were happy to kill anyone who dared\u00a0 to cross their\u00a0 path. They have got away with blaming the Sinhalese for every thing that went wrong\u00a0 in the north-south relations, including the rise of Prabhakaran. But the facts contradict this fabrication. If the Sinhalese were responsible\u00a0 for\u00a0 Tamil violence why didn\u2019t Prabhakaran, who was\u00a0 supposed to have been created by the Sinhalese, stop at killing only Sinhalese? If the Sinhalese created Prabhakaran, the most\u00a0 cruel and biggest killer\u00a0 of Tamils\u00a0 in\u00a0 their history, shouldn\u2019t he have targeted only the Sinhalese? Why did he go all out to kill the Muslims and the Tamils? What had the Muslims done to the Tamils? The fiction\u00a0 that\u00a0 the Tamil took to violence because of the Sinhalese is demolished by the fact\u00a0 that it\u00a0 is Prabhakaran\u2019s violence that had killed more Tamils than all the other\u00a0 violence\u00a0 put\u00a0 together. So are the Sinhalese responsible\u00a0 for\u00a0 the Prabhakaran\u00a0 killing Tamils?<\/p>\n

As a Sinhalese I can\u00a0 always dismiss the Tamils killing Sinhalese, without rancour, saying that\u00a0 it is a\u00a0 part\u00a0 of\u00a0 the brutal Sankili trait that runs through Jaffna culture. (Sankili\u00a0 marched\u00a0 down to Manner and\u00a0 massacred 600 Tamil Catholics on the Christmas eve of 1544 because they owed allegiance to the King\u00a0 of\u00a0 Portugal and\u00a0 not\u00a0 to the sole representative\u00a0 of\u00a0 Jaffna\u201d \u2013 the perennial\u00a0 ambition of\u00a0 Tamil leaders). Second, though I cannot\u00a0 condone the killing of Muslims I can always pretend that the Tamils had their own reasons for\u00a0 killing the Muslims without, of course, accepting\u00a0 anyone\u00a0 one\u00a0 of\u00a0 those reasons as being valid. But what I can\u00a0 never accept or forgive is the Tamils killing\u00a0 Tamils. It\u00a0 reduces Jaffna to a barbaric enclave of a prehistoric age. What is the culture\u00a0 of\u00a0 Jaffna if its\u00a0 leaders gave\u00a0 the\u00a0 silent nod to Tamils killing\u00a0 Tamils? What is worse, the so-called cultured Jaffnaites and their\u00a0 cohorts in NGOs diverted attention away from inhuman cruelties and\u00a0 injustices\u00a0 inflicted\u00a0 on the Tamils by the Tamils by accusing the Sri Lankan and\u00a0 Indian forces \u2013 both of whom never reached the scale\u00a0 of\u00a0 Tamils persecuting and killing Tamils throughout their history.<\/p>\n

The ESJVs and their fellow-travellers, justified Tamils\u00a0 killing\u00a0 Tamils in the name\u00a0 of a bogus nationalism\u201d that was not there to move the Jaffna\u00a0 Tamils\u00a0 to rise against the Sinhalese as one mass movement. If\u00a0 the Sri Lankan\u00a0 forces were a genocidal\u00a0 occupation army\u201d, as claimed by some Tamils, how come\u00a0 they succeeded not only in driving out Prabhakaran, their nationalist hero\u201d, and hold Jaffna, the heartland of the Tamils, even when Prabhakaran was at the\u00a0 peak\u00a0 of\u00a0 his power?\u00a0 It was\u00a0 possible to throw out the Indian occupation\u00a0 army with the solid backing of the Sri Lankan government because it\u00a0 was a genocidal\u00a0 occupation army\u201d. But the Tamil Tigers, who claimed that they defeated the fourth largest army in the world, could not survive against the nationalist forces that annihilated\u00a0 them\u00a0 on the banks of Nandikadal.<\/p>\n

Tamil\u00a0 history records that the Tamils have been the primary victimisers\u00a0 of the Tamils and yet they continue to pose as victims of\u00a0 the Sinhalese. How long are they going to wallow blindly in their political humbuggery?<\/p>\n

There is, no doubt, that something is rotten\u00a0 in the state\u00a0 of Jaffna and that\u00a0 something\u00a0 is the basic\u00a0 inability of the Tamils to face reality and, more importantly, the lack of elementary morality which leads them to worship Tamils killing Tamils as their heroes.<\/p>\n

The saintly pose of Tamil political purity and victimology stinks to high\u00a0 heaven in the peninsula and in Radhika Coomaraswamy\u2019s ICES \u2013 the Incestuous Cabal of Eelamist Sycophants \u2013 that has\u00a0 been manufacturing bogus theories, distorting historical facts, to back up victimological fictions of the most privileged\u00a0 community in Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala In 1968 Jaffna was facing an\u00a0 internal caste war which was threatening to tear it apart.\u00a0 The simmering caste conflict in Jaffna exploded with the\u00a0 low-castes, spurred by N. Shanmugathasan, head of the Peking-wing of the Communist Party,\u00a0 threatening to enter the Maviddipuram Temple \u2013 the segregated religious domain preserved exclusively […]<\/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-52471","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\/52471","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=52471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}