{"id":61932,"date":"2016-12-30T23:45:18","date_gmt":"2016-12-31T05:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=61932"},"modified":"2016-12-30T16:33:42","modified_gmt":"2016-12-30T23:33:42","slug":"the-last-king-of-jaffna-was-a-sinhala-buddhist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/12\/30\/the-last-king-of-jaffna-was-a-sinhala-buddhist\/","title":{"rendered":"The last King of\u00a0 Jaffna was a Sinhala-Buddhist"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Part of the crisis we are facing today was caused by either deliberately hiding the realities of history, or by political activists\u00a0 distorting\u00a0 it\u00a0 to suit expedient politics\u00a0 and partisan ideologies.\u00a0 Distorted\u00a0 history indeed\u00a0 played a central\u00a0 role in dividing the Sinhala-Tamil communities on ethnic lines. One of the main thrusts of peninsular\u00a0 politics was to distort Sri Lankan history and polarise the two communities to keep them apart on ethnic lines. It began\u00a0 with G. G. Ponnambalam\u00a0 who launched\u00a0 his political campaign in the\u00a0 thirties by targeting the Sinhalese and their\u00a0 history. He became the champion of the Tamils by\u00a0 delivering a nine-hour lecture\u00a0 to\u00a0 the Soulbury Commissioners in which he blamed\u00a0 the Sinhala government\u201d for discriminating\u201d against the Tamils. Neither\u00a0 he\u00a0 nor\u00a0 any of\u00a0 his successors who held the leadership of Jaffna stood for any progressive, liberal, socialist, or pluralistic political programmes for peaceful co-existence. They survived in politics by rousing communal\u00a0 passions\u00a0 in\u00a0 Jaffna against the Sinhalese. The\u00a0 usual litany of complaints against the Sinhalese, which began with Ponnambalam, was dismissed by the Soulbury Commissioners as stuff and nonsense, unsubstantiated by the available\u00a0 evidence.<\/p>\n

But this\u00a0 did\u00a0 not\u00a0 stop him\u00a0 from attacking the Mahavamsa<\/strong><\/em> and Sinhala\u00a0 history. It\u00a0 is\u00a0 his distortions\u00a0 of\u00a0 history that caused the first Tamil-Sinhala riots\u00a0 in Nawalapitiya in 1939. His Sinhala rival, S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, thanked\u00a0 him for giving a boost to\u00a0 the newly formed Sinhala Maha Sabha which was established\u00a0 to counter anti-Sinhala racism. Since then\u00a0 the anti-Sinhala racism of Jaffna politics has been the regular diet fed to the people\u00a0 of Jaffna. It the scapegoat\u00a0 on which Jaffna\u00a0 politicians\u00a0 have been riding, partly to cover up their political sins of treating\u00a0 their\u00a0 own people as pariahs unfit for\u00a0 human society and partly to demonise\u00a0 the Sinhala-Buddhists \u2013 the indispensable political tool\u00a0 used consistently to gain\u00a0 political\u00a0 mileage both\u00a0 domestically and internationally.<\/p>\n

A common feature of\u00a0 Jaffna\u00a0 politics is the refusal to assess Sri\u00a0 Lankan\u00a0 history objectively without looking at\u00a0 it through the coloured lenses of either Ponnambalam, or S. J. V. Chelvanayakam. The ultimate\u00a0 expression\u00a0 of\u00a0 anti-Sinhala racism\u00a0 was enshrined as the official\u00a0 history of Tamils in the Vadukoddai Resolution\u00a0 of 1976. Subsequently, it became the standard reference\u00a0 point\u00a0 for academics, NGOs pundits, researchers, social scientist and the whole caboodle of pro-separatist, or pro-devolution ideologues. Any factual or objective analysis\u00a0 of history that goes counter to the authorised version of Tamil politics throws the Jaffna Tamils off balance. Schooled essentially in the locally manufactured history they are utterly confused when\u00a0 confronted with any critical \/ scientific \/ objective history that questions the hand-woven history that were rolled out like home-made beedi<\/strong><\/em> for popular consumption.<\/p>\n

Scholars, however, are not unanimous about the Vadukoddian version\u00a0 of mono-causal history, its geography, or its anti-Sinhala-Buddhist\u00a0 ideology that led the Tamils all the way to Nandikadal. The post-Vadukoddai image\u00a0 of Jaffna does\u00a0 not conform\u00a0 to the recorded facts in history. Besides, claims and counter-claims\u00a0 have obfuscated the history misleading the followers into\u00a0 paths of suicidal violence. For instance, the first known settlement of migrants of S. India which began in the thirteenth century in Jaffna is labelled by scholars under different classifications. Some\u00a0 say its a kingdom and others\u00a0 refer to it as a principality or as a feudatory. The combined geographical boundaries of the north and the east, which they claim to be their exclusive\u00a0 domain, have no historical basis nor\u00a0 demographic\u00a0 justification (there are more Tamils living with the Sinhalese than in their so-called homeland\u201d), except that they were drawn by the British who centralised the administration by dividing\u00a0 it into regional provinces. The Sinhala kings in the south, however, considered themselves to be the overlords of the entire island. It is\u00a0 in keeping\u00a0 with this doctrine that the King\u00a0 of Kotte ruled Jaffna with Sapumal Kumaraya (aka, Sembaperumal),\u00a0 his general, as the resident ruler of Jaffna.<\/p>\n

King\u00a0 Senerat of\u00a0 Kandy, an ex-Buddhist monk, too considered Jaffna to be a part of his kingdom and when the Portuguese defeated Sankili II in 1619, he bided\u00a0 his time and sent Mudliyar Atapattu, one of his\u00a0 kinsman, with an army of five thousand soldiers, to capture Jaffna. There were, of course, strategic and economic\u00a0 reasons also for invading\u00a0 Jaffna. The advancing Sinhala forces\u00a0 swept into Jaffna with the people of Jaffna rallying behind the victorious Sinhala\u00a0 forces who captured Jaffna by driving out the Portuguese from the land. They were\u00a0 holed\u00a0 up in the confines\u00a0 of their fortress in Jaffna which was under siege by the forces of Atapattu. Fr. Queroz, the leading authority of the time wrote …. the enemy (i.e, the Sinhalese) made himself master of the Kingdom unopposed.\u201d<\/p>\n

So supreme seemed to be their success that the Kandyans even tried to collect taxes\u201d. This was the highpoint of the invasion. The Kandyans had advanced\u00a0 right up to the Jaffna Fort, the enemy\u2019s innermost defences and encamped before it on the Pachellpallai plain.\u201d \u2013 p.276, Kandy Fights the Portuguese, The Military History of Kandyan Resistance, <\/strong><\/em>C. Gaston Perera\u2019s, Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2007.) Senarat\u2019s claim to the Jaffna kingdom\u00a0 was strengthened by the\u00a0 marriage of his two sons to the Jaffna princesses in Tanjore against the wishes of the Portuguese who feared that a marriage alliance between the two kingdoms would be a certain threat to their security and stakes.<\/p>\n

After Jaffna was handed over to\u00a0 the Portuguese un der the terms\u00a0 of the Nallur Convention, the people of Jaffna were\u00a0 oppressed\u00a0 cruelly by the occupation army of the\u00a0 Portuguese. Naturally, they rallied behind the invading Kandyan forces and went on the rampage, burning the hated symbols of Portuguese Churches. The\u00a0 triumphant Kandyan\u00a0 forces were\u00a0 emboldened by the mass support of\u00a0 the\u00a0 population. After the\u00a0 defeat\u00a0 of Sankilli II in 1619 the\u00a0 people\u00a0 of\u00a0 Jaffna were happy to accept the Sinhala forces (in 1629) as liberators. Fr. Bruno wrote that the Kandyan army was joined by the whole kingdom.\u201d (Fr. V. Perniola, The Catholic Church\u00a0 in Sri Lanka, Portuguese Period. )<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 So technically, legally, politically and\u00a0 militarily Senerat established himself\u00a0 as the last king of Jaffna by taking\u00a0 over power from\u00a0 the Portuguese in the last\u00a0 battle\u00a0 for Jaffna. His invasion of Jaffna, his\u00a0 conquest of\u00a0 Jaffna, grabbing power from\u00a0 the Portuguese, his\u00a0 being in total command of\u00a0 the territory, his imposition of\u00a0 taxes and, above all, the mass support\u00a0 he\u00a0 got\u00a0 from\u00a0 the people of\u00a0 Jaffna makes\u00a0 him\u00a0 the legitimate and acknowledged king\u00a0 of Jaffna.<\/p>\n

The capture of Jaffna by King Senarat in 1629 is also recorded by Captain Ribeiro who wrote : But\u00a0 while\u00a0 our (Portuguese) army was laying\u00a0 waste to the whole of that (Kandyan) kingdom, the General (Constantine de Saa) was advised that the King had sent\u00a0 five thousand chosen men to Jafanapatao under the command of Modeliar of his Atapata, the Captain of his\u00a0 personal bodyguard; he knew that that kingdom\u00a0 and\u00a0 fortress were feebly garrisoned, and that Felippe de Oliviera, who had brought it\u00a0 under the dominion of\u00a0 the Portuguese, was dead.\u201d \u2013 (p. 87, <\/strong>The Historic Tragedy of the Island\u00a0 of Ceilao<\/strong><\/em>, <\/strong>Captain Joao Ribeiro, translated by Paul E. Peiris, Asian\u00a0 Educational\u00a0 Services,\u00a0 New Delhi. 1999). Clearly, this indicates that King\u00a0 Senerat, after calculating the political situation in Jaffna , had picked the right moment to strike. It was, as indicated by Ribeiro,\u00a0 the weakest moment\u00a0 of Portuguese rule in Jaffna. Fr. Queroz too had devoted a chunk\u00a0 of his history to the conquest of Jaffna. Referring\u00a0 to\u00a0 Modliyar Atapattu\u2019s expedition to Jaffna he\u00a0 wrote : This was the last battle in the conquest of Jaffna.\u201d<\/p>\n

The invasion and capture of Jaffna by Senerat blasts the politico-legal myth that the sovereignty of Jaffna was passed on to the Portuguese by the last king Sankilli II of Jaffna and, therefore, the British should\u00a0 have\u00a0 handed back sovereignty to his\u00a0 descendants, the Tamils. But history records that the last king of Jaffna was Senerat, a Sinhala-Buddhist King of Kandy, and not Sankilli II, though he was last king of Aryachakravarti dynasty. As Senerat was the last king\u00a0 to fight the\u00a0 last battle over Jaffna there could\u00a0 be no doubt that sovereignty passed over finally from the Sinhala\u00a0 king\u00a0 to the Portuguese. The conquest of Jaffna by Senerat\u2019s forces in 1629 negated the validity of the Nallur Convention in which Jaffna handed over power to the Portuguese in 1619. The fate of Jaffna was settled\u00a0 finally in last battle\u201d fought by Senerat and not at the Nallur Convention.<\/p>\n

When Mudliyar\u00a0 Attapattu was\u00a0 holding Jaffna the Portuguese general Constantine de Saa had to send two columns from the south to challenge him and regain Jaffna for the Portuguese King. Even though Mudliyar\u00a0 Atapattu held Jaffna for a\u00a0 brief\u00a0 while, history records that sovereignty finally passed\u00a0 over to the Portuguese only after the defeat of Mudliyar\u00a0 Attapattu on Jaffna\u00a0 soil. The victory of Mudliyar Attapatu makes Senarat the last king\u00a0 of Jaffna. And the defeat\u00a0 of Mudliyar Atapattu establishes\u00a0 that sovereignty was regained by the Portuguese only after defeating him. There\u00a0 is serio-comic irony in this historical event : the last King\u00a0 of Jaffna was a Sinhalese and the last king of the Sinhalese was a Tamil. Such are the twists and turns of history which mock the pompous racial assumptions of extremists.<\/p>\n

Accepting\u00a0 the\u00a0 historical truths as recorded\u00a0 by reliable eye-witnesses is indispensable to\u00a0 draw accurate\u00a0 conclusions\u00a0 from history. The pro-Tamil lobby had laboured indefatigably to comb every nook and corner of history to extract evidence to prove that Jaffna\u00a0 belongs to them exclusively.\u00a0 One of the main arguments is\u00a0 based on the Nallur Convention in which they claim that power\u00a0 was handed\u00a0 over by the Tamils to the Portuguese. From this\u00a0 point they trace a line of power flowing from Tamils to the Portuguese and from Portuguese to the Dutch and from the Dutch to the British. From\u00a0 this chain of events they conclude that the British should have handed\u00a0 over power to them instead\u00a0 of\u00a0 handing\u00a0 it over to the Sinhalese because it was the Tamils who handed over\u00a0 power\u00a0 to\u00a0 the Portuguese. But the historical events, as\u00a0 recorded by the Portuguese historians, confirm\u00a0 that the\u00a0 Sinhala King\u00a0 recaptured Jaffna and the decisive and final transfer power took place only after the Portuguese reclaimed Jaffna by defeating the Sinhala forces. So the ultimate\u00a0 transfer\u00a0 of\u00a0 power took place when\u00a0 the Sinhalese lost Jaffna to the\u00a0 Portuguese in the last battle\u00a0 for Jaffna in 1629 and not\u00a0 when the Tamils lost\u00a0 it to them in 1619.<\/p>\n

The Nallur agreement signed\u00a0 with the Portuguese has no relevance to the transfer\u00a0 of power because after the conquest of Jaffna by Senarat the Nallur Agreement had no validity under the new\u00a0 political dispensation\u00a0 of the\u00a0 Kandyan\u00a0 King. The conquest of Jaffna by Senerat superseded the previous arrangements with the Tamil kings. As the last king\u00a0 of Jaffna\u00a0 it was his word that reigned supreme in the destiny of Jaffna. This emphasizes the prime necessity of\u00a0 establishing\u00a0 historical truths to\u00a0 prevent falsifications\u00a0 of\u00a0 history and, more\u00a0 importantly, to\u00a0 trace the proper sequence of\u00a0 events\u00a0 without hiding relevant historical facts for political gain. The validity of the Tamil claim to a separate state\u00a0 based on\u00a0 their argument\u00a0 that sovereignty of Jaffna was passed over\u00a0 to the Portuguese by the Tamil king loses legitimacy and\u00a0 credibility when tested against the eye-witness records of the\u00a0 Portuguese\u00a0 historians. A nation does not deserve to be divided on fictitious history.<\/p>\n

One\u00a0 other\u00a0 point that is\u00a0 noteworthy is that in the officials records\u00a0 of the Portuguese, Dutch and the early 19th century British there wasn\u2019t a community known as the Tamils. The Jaffna Tamils were consistently branded as Malabaris. There were no Tamils, per se, in the known records until late in the 19th century. Here\u00a0 is an example from\u00a0 the British records : There is no part of the world where so\u00a0 many languages are spoken or which contains such mixture of nations, manners and religions. Besides Europeans and Cingalese, the proper native of the\u00a0 island, you meet scattered all over the town almost every race of Asiatic : Moors of every class, Malabars, Travancorins, Malays, Hindoos, Gentoos, Chinese, Persians, Arabians, Turks, Maldivians, Javians and Natives of all the Asiatic isles. Parsees or worshippers of fire, who would\u00a0 sooner have their houses burnt and themselves perish\u00a0 in the flames than employ any means to extinguish it. There are\u00a0 also a number of Africans, Cafrees, Buganese, mixed race of Africans and Asiatic; beside the half-castes, people of colour and other races which proceed from a mixture of\u00a0 the\u00a0 original ones. Each\u00a0 of\u00a0 these different class of people has its own manners, customs and language.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was\u00a0 written in 1803 by R. Perceival in\u00a0 his\u00a0 book, An Account of the Island of Ceylon<\/strong><\/em>, (London 1803, pp. 114-115).\u00a0 What is striking in Perceival\u2019s report is\u00a0 the absence of Tamils in this account. The absence\u00a0 of a racial group established as Tamils from\u00a0 the early colonial records is puzzling. However, it\u00a0 is wrong\u00a0 to conclude\u00a0 that the Tamils were not there. Even the Mahavamsa\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em>records the prevalence of the Tamils (Demalas). The reference to Tamils comes into prominence mainly in the British records of the late 19th century, particularly after the censuses which classified the\u00a0 people according to\u00a0 races. The Portuguese and the Dutch classified them\u00a0 essentially as Malabaris.<\/p>\n

In the early colonial periods, however, the\u00a0 influx\u00a0 of S, Indian migrants from Malabar and Travancore must\u00a0 have\u00a0 overshadowed the native Tamils. Besides, the Tamil consciousness\u201d which rides high, overdetermining current politics, could not\u00a0 have been\u00a0 in existence in the early colonial periods. As\u00a0 shown\u00a0 earlier, the records do not even recognise Tamils as a communal\u00a0 entity. The\u00a0 rise of Tamils as a political force, driven by the Saivite-casteist forces forged\u00a0 in its insular past,\u00a0 is clearly a post-British phenomenon. This\u00a0 development has a\u00a0 history of\u00a0 its own which has to be explored more thoroughly to disentangle the interweaving threads of north-south\u00a0 relations that worsened inter-ethnic relations. The\u00a0 rise of Tamil consciousness\u201d, in its most\u00a0 virulent form, emerging from nowhere, as it were, has been a decisive factor in the 20th century\u00a0 and, oddly enough, our\u00a0 social scientists have ignored this aspect in analysing the Tamil past\u00a0 that went awry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala Part of the crisis we are facing today was caused by either deliberately hiding the realities of history, or by political activists\u00a0 distorting\u00a0 it\u00a0 to suit expedient politics\u00a0 and partisan ideologies.\u00a0 Distorted\u00a0 history indeed\u00a0 played a central\u00a0 role in dividing the Sinhala-Tamil communities on ethnic lines. One of the main thrusts […]<\/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-61932","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\/61932","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=61932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}