{"id":52670,"date":"2016-03-06T22:16:30","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T04:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=52670"},"modified":"2016-03-06T06:46:21","modified_gmt":"2016-03-06T13:46:21","slug":"jaffna-low-castes-stoned-arumuka-navalar-godfather-of-vellahlaism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/03\/06\/jaffna-low-castes-stoned-arumuka-navalar-godfather-of-vellahlaism\/","title":{"rendered":"Jaffna low-castes stoned Arumuka Navalar \u2013 Godfather of Vellahlaism"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

After enduring the indignities and humiliations of oppression and persecution of the Vellahla supremacists, the Minority Tamils\u201d \u2013 a euphemism for the\u00a0 untouchables — launched their\u00a0 first organised revolt in 1968 at Maviddipuram Temple. Earlier attempts during British rule to\u00a0 resist the\u00a0 oppression of the Vellahla fascists were quashed ruthlessly by Vellahla thugs. The\u00a0 isolated incidents in various corners\u00a0 of Jaffna merely provoked the\u00a0 Vellahla oppressors to hit back with severe punishments, including burning and killing of the low-castes. The annual reports\u00a0 of the British administration for the province of\u00a0 Jaffna\u00a0 have recorded\u00a0 the\u00a0 numerous incidents of Vellahla violence crushing the low-castes. These\u00a0 were unorganised, sporadic attempts of\u00a0 the low-castes to breakthrough Vellahla fascism. The push to enter Maviddipuram Temple, backed\u00a0 essentially by the Peking-wing\u00a0 of the Communist\u00a0 Party, was the very first organised movement\u00a0 of the untouchables to challenge\u00a0 the Vellahla supremacy.<\/p>\n

It was in the sixties that the Vellahla elite (i.e., the English-educated Saivite Jaffna Vellahla (ESJVs)) faced the full wrath of the untouchables \/ dalits. The\u00a0 organised\u00a0 revolt\u00a0 of\u00a0 the low-castes at Maviddipuram was\u00a0 an affront to their power and prestige. It was a serious\u00a0 challenge to the Vellahla supremacists. And they were not going to take it lying down.\u00a0 The revolt of\u00a0 the low-castes was also a severe blow\u00a0 to their carefully crafted campaign to denigrate the Sinhala-Buddhists as the oppressors of the\u00a0 Tamils. Any exposure of the Vellahlas as the brutal persecutors\u00a0 and executors\u00a0 of their\u00a0 own people would undermine\u00a0 their main propaganda\u00a0 thrust\u00a0 to demonise the Sinhala-Buddhist majority \u2013 a theme which they played\u00a0 to the hilt to gain\u00a0 political\u00a0 mileage by claiming to be victims of\u00a0 the Sinhala government\u201d.<\/p>\n

The immediate reaction of the Vellahlas to the Maviddipuram revolt was to fall back on their demi-god, Arumuka Navalar, (1822 \u2013 1879). The\u00a0 Vellahlas owe their\u00a0 higher status in the caste hierarchy to Navalar. It was he who single-handedly reformulated the Hindu Saivite\u00a0 ideology to\u00a0 elevate\u00a0 the Vellahla Sudras (the\u00a0 lowest in\u00a0 classical caste system of India) to\u00a0 the highest rank in Jaffna. So\u00a0 when the\u00a0 low-castes launched\u00a0 their organised revolt the Vellahlas responded by organising a public expression\u00a0 of their faith in Navalar, the Godfather of Vellahla casteism. They decided to revive Navalarism by carrying his image in a procession. In June 1969, one\u00a0 year after Maviddipuram revolt, the Vellahla\u00a0 elite launched a march from Udipiddy to Jaffna, carrying\u00a0 the statue of Arumuka Navalar in a\u00a0 procession.\u00a0 It was meant\u00a0 to be a Saivite religious procession but it had all the undertones\u00a0 of Vellahla politics making a desperate bid to reassert\u00a0 its supremacy over the low-castes. It was a move partly to reinforce and reinvigorate the threatened political\u00a0 base among the\u00a0 Vellahlas and\u00a0 partly to deliver the clear message to the untouchable that Vellahlaism was alive and\u00a0 kicking.<\/p>\n

Navalar\u2019s statue was to be unveiled at Nallur on June 30 at 7.30 p.m. Only about 500 selected invitees were expected to attend the ceremony. But everything was not going the Vellahla way. The streets of Jaffna were tense. Red-shirted Tamil youth were distributing anti-Navalar pamphlets. Hand-bills condemning Arumuka Navalar Sabhai were also distributed.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Shanmugathasan, the Peking-wing head of the Communist Party, was behind the anti-Navalar movement.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Posters had appeared on the walls of Jaffna. One screaming poster demanded : BLOW UP THE STATUE OF NAVALAR FOR\u00a0 HE IS A CASTE REVIVALIST!\u201d Another cried : NAVALAR WAS A CASTE DIE-HARD. WHY ERECT STATUES FOR SUCH A REACTIONARY?\u201d<\/p>\n

    The statue had journeyed from Udipiddy through Chavakachcheri to Jaffna. In some places the statue was stoned. V. Navaratnam, the firebrand of the Federal Party, was heading the procession carrying the image of Navalar. As tensions mounted the Sinhala Government\u201d had to rush reinforcements to keep the peace and restore the Vellahla status\u00a0 quo. (See The Times of\u00a0 Ceylon <\/strong><\/em>\u2013 June 28, 1969).<\/p>\n

    Maviddipural and the anti-Navalar protests shook the very foundations\u00a0 of\u00a0 Saivite Jaffna Vellahla casteism.\u00a0 These events were the external manifestations of the\u00a0 subterranean forces that were suppressed\u00a0 by brutal force\u00a0 for centuries. The full fury of the oppressed\u00a0 low-castes was threatening to tear Jaffna apart in the 60s. The Vellahlas were reacting defensively. They\u00a0 could no longer rely on the feudal brutal force\u00a0 to\u00a0 retain their grip on Jaffna.<\/p>\n

    The Vellahlas had\u00a0 maintained their supremacy in Jaffna during feudal and colonial\u00a0 times by suppressing with force all moves\u00a0 of the low-castes to assert\u00a0 their right to live as human beings. Summarising the violent politics of Vellahla fascism Prof. Bryan Pfaffenberger wrote: “An artifact of a colonial plantation economy, the caste system of Jaffna could be maintained only by force – and force has indeed been used … These (caste) restrictions had the force of law under Dutch and the early British regimes and even into the 1960s. In Jaffna in the 1940s and 1950s, for instance, Minority Tamils (i.e. oppressed castes) were forbidden to enter or live near temples; to draw water from the wells of high caste families, to enter laundries, barber shops, cafes, or taxis to keep women in seclusion and protect them by enacting domestic rituals; (forbidden) to wear shoes; to sit on bus seats; to register their names properly so that social benefits could be obtained; to attend schools ; to cover the upper part of the body; to wear gold ear-rings; if male, to cut their hair, to use umbrellas; to own bicycles or cars; to cremate the dead; or to convert to Christianity or Buddhism.<\/p>\n

    To enforce these restrictions extra legally Vellahlas have fielded gangs of thugs to punish upwardly mobile Pallars and Nalavars. These gangs pollute untouchable wells with dead dogs, fecal matter, or garbage, burn down untouchable fences or houses; physically assault and beat Minority Tamils, and sometimes kill them. Preceding the Maviddapuram crisis there had been several altercations in which Minority Tamils died.” (The Journal of Asia Studies<\/strong><\/em>, 49, No. 1 (February 1990)).<\/p>\n

    No ruling elite in any community in Sri Lanka had oppressed and ill-treated their own people like the way the Tamil Vellahla caste\u00a0 of Jaffna persecuted, and even killed, the\u00a0 low-castes, if they dared\u00a0 to violate their purity\u201d and supremacy. They subjected the low-castes to abject humiliation from womb to the tomb. Prof. Pfaffenberger was documenting the existential conditions under which the low-castes were forced to live. Jane Russell too in her pioneering book, Communal Politics under the Donoughmore Constitution, 1931 – 1947<\/strong><\/em>, (Tisara Press, 1982), revealed in graphic detail the iron fist of Vellahla domination\u00a0 and\u00a0 oppression.\u00a0 It was not like the fizz of the violence of the Sinhala lunatic fringe that explodes today and subsides tomorrow. It was a systemic way of life that humiliated and exploited the oppressed Tamils, mark you, with the blessings of Hindu Saivite religion, for centuries. Vellahla fascism turned Jaffna into a gulag for the\u00a0 low-castes from\u00a0 which there was\u00a0 escape only in the grave.<\/p>\n

    The Jaffna Tamils detest talking about this shameful and dark chapter of their history because it\u00a0 pricks\u00a0 their inflated ego filled\u00a0 with illusions of being highly moral\u00a0 Gandhians living exclusively on the purity of the greatest culture on earth. Besides, exposing the dark underbelly of evil Jaffna would undermine their claim of being victims of discrimination\u201d by\u00a0 the Sinhala governments\u201d.\u00a0 The inhuman treatment\u00a0 of Tamils by Tamils makes a mockery of their allegations of discrimination\u201d by the so-called\u00a0 Sinhala governments.\u201d Fearing condemnation by the civilised world and the consequent loss of political mileage they have moved heaven and earth to hide the dark side of their history, first, by posing as moral purists superior to all other communities and, second, by diverting attention away from their hidden cruelties to issues of discrimination\u201d by the other\u201d, namely their bete noir<\/strong><\/em> the Sinhala governments\u201d. So it\u00a0 is\u00a0 not surprising for the Jaffna Tamils to react aggressively whenever they are exposed as criminals who had persecuted, oppressed a sizeable segment of their own people as subhuman insects fit only to be crushed under Vellahla feet.<\/p>\n

    Of course, practically all histories of all communities have their own black spots, but the record of the Vellahla Tamils of Jaffna goes beyond the horrors of segregation in the Bible Belt of American south, the apartheid in S. Africa, and even the barbaric Boko Harams who abducted their own children. Ironically, it is this leadership that cried loudly to the world that the Sinhala governments\u201d had discriminated\u201d against them since 1948 \u2013 the\u00a0 year of Independence. It is the systemic cruelty of Tamils persecuting and killing Tamils that the Tamils love to sweep under their mats. The victimisers of the low-caste Tamils love to bask in the glory of being treated as victims of the Sinhala governments\u201d.<\/p>\n

    The Tamil Churchmen, who preached human\u00a0 dignity and rights, had\u00a0 no qualms\u00a0 about going along with this oppressive casteist\u00a0 order.\u00a0 Christian morality was politicised to sanitise the image of the Tamils by focusing\u00a0 on infirmities of\u00a0 the\u00a0 Sinhala governments\u201d. Tamil Churchmen religiously brushed aside the\u00a0 Biblical command to first look at the beam\u00a0 in their eyes before criticising the mote in the\u00a0 eyes of others.<\/p>\n

    It is the systemic horrors of Tamils persecuting Tamils that make Maviddipuram and the anti-Navalar protest significant events. These events demonstrated to the Vellahlas that the fascist casteism on which they survived and thrived had\u00a0 passed its use by date. The Vellahlas were also beginning to feel\u00a0 the heat of the internal divisive forces rising from the\u00a0 ranks of\u00a0 the low-castes. They were no longer in a position to use fascist violence to enforce casteism of\u00a0 the old feudal regime. In the sixties the Vellahlas were in the\u00a0 doldrums. They were struggling to hang on to their rank and status in\u00a0 the\u00a0 societal hierarchy knowing that the old way of life was over.<\/p>\n

    Caste was to the Vellahlas what petrol was to a car. It was essential to the Vellahlas because any attempt\u00a0 to dismantle the casteist hierarchy would\u00a0 take away the\u00a0 power and\u00a0 privileges of\u00a0 the Vellahlas. At the same time, it was becoming increasingly clear to them that the answer to the rising low-caste forces was not to go back to Arumuka Navalar.\u00a0 The\u00a0 religious cover Navalar provided to elevate the Vellahlas\u00a0 to\u00a0 the peak of the caste hierarchy was no\u00a0 longer tenable or viable in 20th century. The Vellahlas were desperately in need of an alternative to Navalarism.\u00a0 A new\u00a0 rationale with a new ideology was needed for\u00a0 the\u00a0 Vellahlas to retain their grip\u00a0 on\u00a0 Jaffna \u2013 their primary political\u00a0 base, a.k.a, the heartland\u00a0 of\u00a0 the\u00a0 Tamils\u201d. Maviddipuram and anti-Navalar events were pushing\u00a0 the Vellahlas to\u00a0 modernity which\u00a0 they were forced to accept\u00a0 most reluctantly.<\/p>\n

    Jaffna was poised delicately between\u00a0 two worlds \u2013 one\u00a0 dying and\u00a0 the other struggling to be born. The Jaffna Vellahla leadership was silent and reluctant to take any meaningful or active steps to liberate the non-Vellahlas, fearing a backlash from the Vellahla voters. But at the same time it was aware of the enemies\u00a0 at the gates threatening\u00a0 to tear down the decadent ramparts of\u00a0 its ancien\u00a0 regime<\/strong><\/em>. Apart\u00a0 from the\u00a0 Peking-wing\u00a0 of the Communist Party the Buddhist monks and Buddhist activists too rushed to Jaffna to present an alternative to the Vellahla supremacists. They were\u00a0 hoping to do an Ambedkar who converted the untouchables in India to Buddhism on a\u00a0 mass scale. Ambedkar used\u00a0 anti-Hindu caste Buddhism to liberate the oppressed dalits from the\u00a0 tyranny of\u00a0 the\u00a0 Brahmins. His\u00a0 movement\u00a0 gained\u00a0 universal recognition and\u00a0 approval.<\/p>\n

    But neither the Buddhism nor Marxism succeeded in providing a viable alternative to Vellahlaism. During the better part of its history Jaffna had lived only by two isms\u201d : casteism and racism. Those who lived by casteism and racism were also doomed to face the bitter consequences of these two self-destructive and dehumanising forces. Unlike the open society in the\u00a0 south Jaffna had shut\u00a0 the door\u00a0 to any liberal ism\u201d. As a closed society, tightly controlled by Saivite Vellahlaism, only casteism and racism remained as interchangeable dynamics dominating\u00a0 every aspect of Jaffna political culture. Both were\u00a0 inextricable\u00a0 strands that intertwined interminably to shape and determine the politics\u00a0 of\u00a0 Jaffna.<\/p>\n

    Casteism, in particular,\u00a0 was a dogmatic and ineluctable belief system which they had internalised as a way of life. The Hindu Organ, <\/strong><\/em>the ideological guardian and the leading mouthpiece of Jaffna society in the British period, expressed the essence of this\u00a0 dogma when it wrote : The caste system which constitutes the hall mark\u00a0 of Hindu society is\u00a0 indispensable to us Hindus if we are to exist as a corporate body. Comparing the merits of the East and West, Meredith Townsend in his admirable\u00a0 book Asia\u00a0 and Europe<\/strong><\/em> says: I firmly believe caste to be a marvellous discovery, a form of socialism which through the ages has protected Hindu society from anarchy and from the worst evils of industrial competitive\u00a0 life. It is an automatic poor law to begin with and the strongest for a known trade union! If ever our\u00a0 critics judge matters relating to our institutions, they do it from a superficial knowledge of men and matters, or are blinded by their shallow enthusiasm for advertising religious propaganda.\u201d (The Hindu Organ \u2013 <\/strong><\/em>July 18, 1918). The indispensability of\u00a0 caste was felt so deeply that Ponnambalam Ramanathan, the\u00a0 shining star of Tamil politics, went on a special mission to London to impress\u00a0 on the British colonial\u00a0 masters the need to legalise it.<\/p>\n

    Vellahla casteism and racism were inseparable\u00a0 twins that were feeding on each other. The symbiotic relationship between these two forces overdetermined the political culture of Jaffna. One was the handmaiden of the other. Nothing significant took\u00a0 place in Jaffna outside the interplay of these two forces. The streak\u00a0 of rabid racism that ran\u00a0 through\u00a0 its history was documented first in the Yalpala Vaipa Malai<\/strong><\/em>, the seminal history written at the request of the Dutch colonial masters. It records\u00a0 ethnic\u00a0 cleansing of the Muslims\u00a0 and the Sinhalese by the Tamils. Tamil racism surfaced, alongside casteism, in various\u00a0 forms during the colonial\u00a0 and\u00a0 the post-colonial\u00a0 periods. The Hindu Organ <\/strong><\/em>(April 4, 1918), for instance,\u00a0 ran a letter, attacking Marakayarism\u201d. The correspondent was protesting against the introduction of the Muslim sarong which he said was an\u00a0 insult to the native verti<\/strong><\/em>. The correspondent wrote : The latest, by no means the\u00a0 last, proof to\u00a0 our self-imposed\u00a0 suicidal policy of\u00a0 denationalisation, is\u00a0 the introduction of\u00a0 Marakayarism\u201d in the domains\u00a0 of our\u00a0 dress. Can anything be\u00a0 more disconcerting to the nationalist than seeing a born Tamil in the\u00a0 Mohammedan Sarong? ……\u201d<\/p>\n

    The distortions of crude Tamil racism has not abated even in contemporary times. It comes from the highest sources. The best example is the form of a former supreme\u00a0 court judge drafting and\u00a0 passing\u00a0 resolutions\u00a0 in the NPC damning the entire Sinhala leadership, from D. S. Senanayake downwards,\u00a0 as genocidal\u201d\u00a0 leaders! In going down this Alzheimer’s path, Chief\u00a0 Minister, C. V. Wigneswaran, has conveniently forgotten the history of\u00a0 Tamil leaders, from Sankili to Prabhakaran \u2013 two Tamil political twins who stand on the only known peaks of Tamil history consisting mainly of the bloodied bones of Tamils massacred by Tamils. After claiming a\u00a0 history longer than that of\u00a0 any other settler in Sri Lanka to whom else can Wigneswaran look up to as inspiring icons of the Tamil past? By all available accounts, he has so far claimed\u00a0 only Prabhakaran —\u00a0 the Tamil Pol Pot who has\u00a0 killed more Tamils than all the others put together. Tamils massacring Tamils, or wiping out\u00a0 the entire Tamil leadership, or dragging a\u00a0 generation of young\u00a0 girls and boys to fight in a futile war, or using fellow-Tamils as a human shield to protect the backs of their doomed leaders fleeing from the battlefield, are, tragically, the high points of the Tamil political culture.<\/p>\n

    This is the legacy left for the Tamil Churchmen, NGO pundits\u00a0 and the Tamil diaspora to celebrate. The pain\u00a0 and suffering inflicted by the Tamils on fellow-Tamils throughout their history convict the Tamil leadership as irredeemable criminals who shed tears (crocodile ones at that!) for the Tamil dead, hoping that tears would bring more political gain than what has been derived so far from corpse politics\u201d. Tamil-dominated NGOs like the ICES or the CPA will commemorate 1983\u201d annually, saying Never again\u201d! That is commendable. But when\u00a0 — O, when! — will these Tamil-dominated NGOs give equal emphasis to Kathankudy and Arantalawa to remember the innocent victims of mindless Tamil violence?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    H. L. D. Mahindapala After enduring the indignities and humiliations of oppression and persecution of the Vellahla supremacists, the Minority Tamils\u201d \u2013 a euphemism for the\u00a0 untouchables — launched their\u00a0 first organised revolt in 1968 at Maviddipuram Temple. Earlier attempts during British rule to\u00a0 resist the\u00a0 oppression of the Vellahla fascists were quashed ruthlessly by […]<\/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-52670","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\/52670","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=52670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}