{"id":55367,"date":"2016-06-07T22:04:21","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T04:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=55367"},"modified":"2016-06-07T14:39:40","modified_gmt":"2016-06-07T21:39:40","slug":"tamil-myths-ngo-theories-and-the-silence-of-the-church-exposed-by-a-dutch-missionary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/06\/07\/tamil-myths-ngo-theories-and-the-silence-of-the-church-exposed-by-a-dutch-missionary\/","title":{"rendered":"Tamil myths, NGO theories and the silence of the Church exposed\u00a0by a Dutch missionary"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The very first analyst to see through the veneer of Jaffna and get to the corrosive core of\u00a0 Jaffna politics was the Dutch Commander of Jaffna, Hendrick Zwaardecoon. (See\u00a0 Lanka Web : Moddely Tambi \u2013 the Father of Vellahlas\u201d<\/strong><\/em>). His analysis of the peninsular social structure, dominated exclusively by the aggressive Vellahlas, gives a clear insight into the inner workings of politics in the formative stage of the Vellahlas rising in power and status. In 1706, on the advice of Zwaardecoon, the Dutch went as far as making the first study of the ossified caste structure that had an overwhelming impact\u00a0 on the\u00a0 politics of Jaffna and the nation as a whole.<\/p>\n

Starting from the Dutch period, Jaffna-centric casteism developed as an oppressive fascist political force\u00a0 internally, reducing its own people to slaves and\u00a0 outcasts. Later, in the 20th century, when the dominant Vellahlas were gingerly stepping out of their rigid casteist cage into a class they found it necessary to discard the out dated ruling ideology of narrow Vellahlaism and shift into a more\u00a0 broad-based mono-ethnic front with the\u00a0 sole aim of grabbing territory and power outside\u00a0 the\u00a0 borders\u00a0 of Jaffna. This leap\u00a0 from internal oppression to external aggression related to the political ambitions of the Vellahlas. When it directed it violence against the low-castes in Jaffna it was to maintain their internal supremacy. When it formed the mono-ethnic front and turned against the Sinhala-Buddhists it was to grab the Tesawalamai<\/strong><\/em> territory to retain their feudal and colonial power, privileges, position, properties, perks and inter-personal relations that defined their supremacy. It this eternal agenda that dominated the post-independent political agenda. Shades of it began in the time of Zwaardecoon in the form of the first revolt of the Vellahlas, led by Moddely Tambi, the Father of Vellahlaism. It foreshadowed the events that were to explode with greater fury in the 20th century. The Vellahla history which began as a 17th century comedy in the Dutch period \u2013 the revolt was over the issue of appointing a non-Vellahla to a government post \u2013 repeated itself as a cataclysmic tragedy in our time.<\/p>\n

By an unexpected coincidence it is Ben Bavinck, a Dutch missionary-teacher who, in his revealing diaries, had continued the Zwaardecoon\u2019s tradition of looking deeper into the\u00a0 hidden layers of Jaffna society. Bavinck, who lived and worked with the Tamil people in the North, off and on during 33-year-old Vadukoddai War (1976 \u2013 2009), has produced a running commentary of the events driven\u00a0 by violence of\u00a0 both sides \u2013 the Security Forces and the LTTE. It\u00a0 is his sensitive and perceptive reactions to the unfolding events of the longest running war in Asia that makes his diary, Of Tamils and Tigers: a journey through Sri Lanka\u2019s war years,<\/strong><\/em> an\u00a0 invaluable and revealing document. His diary confirms not just the evils of wars in general, but the evils of the particular Vadukoddai War prolonged wilfully and unnecessarily by Velupillai Prabhakaran, the\u00a0 latest Pol Pot of Asia\u201d (James Burns \u2013 The New York Times<\/strong><\/em>). The published excerpts from Volume 1 (Vol. II is yet to come) shines a penetrating light to reveal the failed past of national politics, particularly the fascist Tamil politics led by Velupillai Prabhakaran.\u00a0 Apart from documenting some of the crimes committed by both parties, Bavinck focuses on the immorality of\u00a0 the peddlers of morality whose calculated silence helped Prabhakaran\u00a0 to oppress, suppress and persecute his own Tamil people. The total surrender of Jaffna society to his Pol Potist will is the haunting thread that runs through his diary.\u00a0 Bavinck repeatedly mourns the immoral silence of those who knew better and refused to speak out in defence of the Tamils oppressed and persecuted by the Tamils.<\/p>\n

Most of the details were known to those who were willing to see through the smokescreen thrown up by the pro-Tamil lobby. It was a powerful lobby whose tentacles ran into the core of NGOs, Churches, media, academia and a global network manipulated mainly by the Tamil diaspora. The main mission of this well-organised international network of anti-Government lobbyists was to (1) demonise the Sinhala-Buddhists and the Sinhala governments\u201d, as they called it and (2) divert attention away from the crimes committed by the quasi-state headed by Prabhakaran. It is the ceaseless manipulations of this lobby that sustained Prabhakaran for as long as he did. The initial gains of the Prabhakaran\u2019s military forays can be attributed to a considerable extent to the international pressures (financial, political bases in Western electorates, penetration into key decision-making processes in the Western fronts, propaganda machinery, etc.,) generated by this lobby.<\/p>\n

Their global lobbying, along with the massive propaganda campaigns, succeeded in forcing the Security Forces to wage a war with one\u00a0 hand tied behind\u00a0 their backs. The final defeat of the Prabhakaranist forces came only after the Sri Lankan forces dared to reject the imported recipes and interventions for peace and adopted home-made remedies to challenge Tamil Tigers. Until the Security Forces triumphed at Nandikadal this effective lobby succeeded in glorifying the Prabhakaranist regime as a liberating force\u201d. Perhaps, their greatest success was in silencing those who knew what was happening to the Tamil victims who were penned in by Tamil terror. Prabhakaran succeeded in justifying and prolonging the agony of the Tamil people because the Tamil intelligentsia, particularly those in the diaspora, conspired to cover-up the Prabhakaranist crimes committed in the name of protecting and serving the Tamil people.<\/p>\n

The voice of Bavinck rings loud and clear against this high-pressure background designed to maintain a calculated silence. To begin with (and as stated by Bavinck) there was hardly anybody to oppose the principle that Might is Right\u201d.\u00a0 Bavinck\u2019s diary entry of March 2, 1990 states : I had another discussion with (K) Sritharan, (one of the few outspoken Tamil dissidents) who deplored the fact that the churches in Jaffna had spoken up so little in order to correct the militants. The Roman Catholic Church had several times addressed the government and its forces, but about the \u2018boys\u2019 they, like the Protestants, had been silent.\u201d The deafening\u00a0 silence of the Churchmen, with international links, and that of the public intellectuals denied the Tamil people persecuted by their liberator\u201d the moral and political power needed to raise their voices or protect themselves from the fascist Tamil terror. The principle of R2P, invoked by Gareth Evans, ICES, and other NGOs, was to stop the Forces from advancing into the territory occupied by Prabhakaran. But there was no active principle invoked to protect the Tamils who were targeted from the time Prabhakaran started killing Tamil dissident in 1975. His first victim was Alfred Duraiyappah and he never stopped killing Tamils even when he was running away from the battle field. In his ruthless fashion, Prabhakaran\u00a0 shot the Tamils who formed\u00a0 his human\u00a0 shield when they were fleeing into the safety zones opened up by the Army. Prabhakaran wrote his own shameful history by being the one and only Tamil leader who killed more Tamils than all the others put together.<\/p>\n

By 1990 it was clear that the plight of the Tamils caught in the crossfires was deteriorating by the day. Bavinck\u2019s entry made on May 10, 1990 highlighted the tragedy facing the Tamil people. He wrote : Frightening also is that the new Tigers recruits are all little boys of about 10-to-12 years-old. The Tigers cannot get the older school boys to join anywhere.\u201d This war crime is condemned universally. But the Tamil Boko Haram got away with it because the human rights activists like Paki\u201d Saravanamuttu , (PS), diverted attention to the desertions in the Army. He was gloating over the news that Army deserters were weakening the fighting capacity of the Forces. The\u00a0 crime of forcibly recruiting Tamil children to fight in Prabhakaran\u2019s futile war was brushed aside, or played down. Why did PS go down that misleading track? Why should a human right activist be overly concerned about the Army losing its cadres when he should be concerned more with the Tamil mothers fathers and mothers losing their children to Tamil Boko Harams? Even as a hired human rights activist what should\u00a0 have been his priority \u2013 the Tamil kids plucked from the breasts of their mothers or the desertions in\u00a0 the Sri Lankan Army? Obviously, winning the Vadukoddai War at any cost — even\u00a0 by throwing untrained kids into the battlefield — did not bother his foreign-funded conscience.<\/p>\n

In other words, he was giving a nudge-and-a-wink for the Tiger Supremo to carry on the war whichever way he can, even by forcibly recruiting kids, if that is the only way Prabhakaran can stand up to the advancing Army. PS\u2019s triumphalism was in celebrating the losses faced by the Army. The agony of the grief-stricken Tamil mothers was swiftly swept under a carpet of silence. His silence, compared to the ear-splitting decibel level raised to gloat over the losses to the Army, was obscene. When, as a Tamil, his\u00a0 own people were being oppressed and persecuted by a fellow-Tamil the moral\u00a0 choice before\u00a0 him was clear. But he dodged the issue by diverting attention to the Sinhala governments\u201d. The refusal to face the evil staring in his face makes him an intellectual pariah who should have been kicked out of human right circles with utter contempt.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0 he was not alone in this. It was a malaise\u00a0 with the public intellectuals right across the board. The failure to name and shame the greatest evil facing the nation at the time condemns most of those intellectuals as lifting their skirts for a quick buck. This is just\u00a0 not a rhetorical statement. The money, the opportunities, perks, scholarships and the kudos were available only to those who toed the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist line. Those who argued for the counter-narrative were not even invited to the seminars run by the foreign-funded NGOs. A whole new intellectual industry mushroomed to manufacture conformity. And, in that propaganda battle, they were successful. The power of Bavinck is in challenging this conventional and mono-causal theory and presenting a counter-narrative.<\/p>\n

It was, of\u00a0 course, fashionable to pin the primary responsibility of providing security to the elected state of\u00a0 the nation. But these intellectuals pretended that there was no commensurate responsibility for the unelected quasi-state of the North was to protect the people. The mercenary mission they engaged in was to manufacture excuses for the crimes committed by Prabhakaran. Tis\u00a0 was a bonanza for him to get away with war crimes and crimes against humanity. In fact, till the end Prabhakaran was dependent on foreign-funded agencies to put\u00a0 pressure on the Government to stop the war which would have benefited only his belligerence. With the moralists in NGOs, Churches and academia pointing the finger at the Government he had a field day. He had no qualms even in using the Tamil people as a human shield to protect himself. He read R2P to mean Responsibility to Protect Prabhakaran!<\/p>\n

What kind\u00a0 of\u00a0 a hero was Prabhakaran when he had to depend on 10-12-year-old kids to protect him? Which leader who forcibly drags young kids to protect himself can be respected as a worthy leader? When a leader uses the people, including the aged, to\u00a0 protect himself instead of the leader protecting his people can he be considered as anything more than a self-serving coward? Doesn\u2019t this confirm that the Tamils\u00a0 never had a leader who served their\u00a0 interests selflessly? The tragedy of Tamil history is that they never had a leader who acted in the interests of the oppressed Tamils. The Tamil leadership has a consistent record of treating the Tamil people with utter contempt. First, the Vellahla leadership treated the Tamils as slaves, or as outcasts unfit for their superior society. In 1844, when the British abolished slavery the first step they took was to abolish the right of he Vellahlas to kill their slaves. Second, Prabhakaran followed the Vellahla tradition and even went beyond the Vellahla slave-owners :<\/strong> he killed the Tamils \u2013 including the entire Tamil leadership \u2013 without any compunction.<\/p>\n

Even the Tamil human right activists like Saravanamuttu were no better than silent slaves of Prabhakaran. PS did not go round the world mobilising international opinion against Prabhakaran\u2019s barbarism though he spent millions to denigrate Sri Lanka in every available global fora. On the contrary, they retreated into an unholy silence which, in the eyes of Prabhakaran, justified his reign of terror. And the more the Tamils fell at this feet, worshipping him as their Suriya Devan, the more he felt justified in killing Tamils. He attained divine status by his power to kill. It was his unchallenged power to kill Tamils and non-Tamils that forced the Tamils to surrender to his will.\u00a0 Nothing pleased the Tamils more than his\u00a0 power to kill their opponents. Each time he killed the coffers in the Tamil diaspora overflowed with dollars. So Prabhakaran had no qualms about killing Tamils.. And the Tamil leadership, from Appapillai Amirthalingam to Rajavarothiam Sampanthan, the current leader of the Opposition,\u00a0 remained silent believing that the doctrine of necessity justified the killing of the Tamils who were an unnecessary obstruction to achieve Eelam.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0 failure\u00a0 of the Tamil moral guardians to stand up for the rights of the little children is an unpardonable obscenity. Tamil culture reached it lowest depths when the Tamil Churchmen handed over the Tamil children kept in their care by the Tamil parents to the LTTE. The Tamil priests tipped off the LTTE at midnight. The children were picked up\u00a0 and taken away forcibly from the Church in the morning.\u00a0 If the Churchmen, kicking aside all moral barriers, supplied other\u00a0 people\u2019s children left in their care to fill the depleted cadres of the LTTE what was there to prevent Prabhakaran from brain-washing those children to kill their fellow-Tamils \u2013 their\u00a0 own kith and\u00a0 kin ? Whose crime is greater? The Church offering Tamil children to Prabhakaran to turn them into killers? Or Prabhakaran giving the\u00a0 kids their last supper of cyanide pills and sending\u00a0 them off to kill dissident Tamils like Neelan Tiruchelvam?<\/p>\n

Since Prabhakaran didn\u2019t achieve any lasting victory for the Tamils isn\u2019t his greatness only in turning kids into brutal killers? Isn\u2019t his cult of Tamils killing Tamils the ultimate\u00a0 glory of the Tamil culture? Considering the history of this cult that began with Sankilli \u2013 the killer\u00a0 of 600 Catholics in Mannar in 1544 —\u00a0 is there any chance of the Tamils going beyond Prabhakaran to produce an enlightened and humane leader who would care and work selflessly for all the Tamils?<\/p>\n

(To be continued)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala The very first analyst to see through the veneer of Jaffna and get to the corrosive core of\u00a0 Jaffna politics was the Dutch Commander of Jaffna, Hendrick Zwaardecoon. (See\u00a0 Lanka Web : Moddely Tambi \u2013 the Father of Vellahlas\u201d). His analysis of the peninsular social structure, dominated exclusively by the aggressive […]<\/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-55367","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\/55367","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=55367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55367\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}