{"id":64586,"date":"2017-03-25T15:35:44","date_gmt":"2017-03-25T22:35:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=64586"},"modified":"2017-03-25T15:35:44","modified_gmt":"2017-03-25T22:35:44","slug":"mirage-the-great-tamil-novel-of-our-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/03\/25\/mirage-the-great-tamil-novel-of-our-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Mirage \u2013 the great Tamil novel of our\u00a0 time"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

When two distinguished authorities on the history of Jaffna\u00a0 —\u00a0 Bishop S. Jebanesan of the Jaffna Diocese of\u00a0 the Church of South India, and Richard Fox Young who holds a Chair in the Princeton Theological Seminary, USA., \u2013 collaborated to translate the novel Mirage (Kanal <\/strong><\/em>in Tamil), depicting the plight of the despised Tamil outcasts (Dalits) of the\u00a0 North, it automatically raised the significance and the value of the novel to a level way above the rest of modern Tamil literature. In addition to recognising its literary merits,\u00a0 their selective act to translate this\u00a0 particular novel conveys the measure of respectability and socio-political meaning they attached to the narrative written by K. Daniel, a Turumbar, the lowest of low-castes in Jaffna. The Turumbars were the dhobies to the dhobies of Jaffna.<\/p>\n

A low-caste writer achieving this recognition is a rare honour. This translation opens up an opportunity for the silenced voices of the Tamils oppressed by the Vellalas, to be\u00a0 heard in the wide world and the translator (Bishop Jebanesan) and the editor (Young) must be congratulated for undertaking this task. Theirs is valuable service because it throws light into the hidden horrors committed behind the ubiquitous cadjan curtains of the Jaffna Vellalas. Unlike other scholarly studies which tend to\u00a0 drift in the conceptual\/theoretical levels, Daniel\u2019s delineation of the existential experiences that were etched into his memory exposes Jaffna as the hell-hole of the\u00a0 Tamil outcasts. Reading\u00a0 this novel would certainly make you wonder how the world was taken for a ride by the Vellala propagandists who diverted attention from\u00a0 their historical role as victimisers of Tamils to be the victims of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority.<\/p>\n

The two scholars who produced the translation describes the novel as historical fiction\u201d. Daniel too confirms that the novel is based on incidents that occurred in his little village and adds in his preface : All of the characters who pass through it were people I saw with my own eyes. Some are still living (in the eighties). Each incident that occurs in the novel actually happened.\u201d (p. xiv). Daniel states that\u00a0 only difference is that he\u00a0 had changed their names. For instance, he introduces a Christian priest to the village as the alternative to Hindu Saivite Vellala oppressor. But he changed his name from Fr. Gnana Prakasar, a towering figure of Jaffna in his time, to Cwami Nanamutar\u201d. So there could not have been a more sensitive and truthful eye witness of the Hindu Saivite Vellala crimes against their own Tamil people than that of Daniel, who viewed the dialectics of his caste-dominated, hierarchical, dichotomised, oppressive\u00a0 society through Marxist lenses.<\/p>\n

Mirage, <\/strong><\/em>which was written in the eighties, has been hailed by those acquainted with Tamil literature as a mini-classic. But its value was played down by the Vellala elite who defined and determined, at all times, the parameters, the contents and the\u00a0 icons of Jaffna Tamil culture.\u00a0 For instance, they hero-worship as a literary lion Arumuga Navalar, the caste fanatic who revised Saivite Hinduism to elevate the Vellalas to the apex of the caste hierarchy.\u00a0 At best, he unearthed the old Tamil texts from S. India and reproduced them which led to a revival of the past glories of Tamil literature in Tamil Nadu. His works did\u00a0 not lead to a lasting Tamil renaissance in Jaffna. But the outstanding creative writer of Jaffna, Daniel, who exposed the savagery of the Vellahla oppression is marginalised. His greatness is not\u00a0 only in breaking away from the artificiality of the rigid, formalised, conservative style of traditional Tamil that was in vogue and writing in the spoken idiom but also in daring to penetrate deep into\u00a0 the most\u00a0 oppressive and cruel culture of Jaffna society and exposing their hypocrisy and horrors which were hidden from the\u00a0 public eye.<\/p>\n

It is in this\u00a0 context that the translation of Bishop S. Jebanesan, edited by\u00a0 Richard Fox Young, (2016) sweeps in as a breath of\u00a0 fresh air opening up the hidden culture of the Vellalas. It lifts the novel from its obscurity to the English-speaking readers in all communities. It also elevates the novel as a brilliant study of the divided society of Jaffna in the throes of changing in the early decades of 20th century when Jaffna was still trading in fanams.\u00a0 In very light brush strokes Daniel dramatizes the evil and dehumanising culture of the Vellalas\u00a0 who denied the outcast Tamils to walk this earth even with a modicum of dignity. Daniel exposes, in\u00a0 quiet and sober\u00a0 tones, the Vellala masters who warped Jaffna society with unrelenting Vellala violence\u00a0 down the ages. The underlying theme that comes\u00a0 out of every tragic episode highlights the misery of the Tamils struggling\u00a0 to escape the inhuman cruelty of the Vellala overlords. This is something the Vellalas hate\u00a0 to admit.\u00a0 They loathe being confronted\u00a0 by their brutalities that reduced their own people to\u00a0 subhumans.<\/p>\n

From feudal\u00a0 and colonial periods to modern times Jaffna remained as an abominable gulag of Vellala violence. They dare not face their guilt. Their defence is to parade in the theatre of the world at large as\u00a0 the\u00a0 innocent victims of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority. But Daniel, a Catholic turned Marxist, refuses to focus on this aspect which looms large in the minds of the Vellalas. His silence is a virtual rejection of the Vellala accusation. There\u00a0 isn\u2019t a single\u00a0 reference to the politicised accusations of Sinhala oppression\u201d or discrimination\u201d, the common cry of Northern politics,\u00a0 His narrative\u00a0 is focused entirely on the internal factors that turned the hidden layers of Jaffna society into an everlasting damnation from which there was no escape.<\/p>\n

The theatre of all action in the Mirage <\/strong><\/em>is the little village of Pirikattayali where the Vellalas rule with an\u00a0 iron fist. It is a microcosm of the overarching Vellala fascism that reigned supreme right across the Jaffna\u00a0 peninsula during feudal and colonial periods until the late nineties. There are still doubts as to whether Vellala casteism has been eradicated totally from Jaffna even\u00a0 today.\u00a0 There are no heroes and heroines in Mirage<\/strong><\/em>. There are only protagonists and antagonists playing out their respective roles, highlighting, every step of the way, the internal contradictions clashing at all levels. Both as a political force and a Hindu ideology Vellahlaism reigned supreme riding rough\u00a0 shod\u00a0 over any rival force. They either absorbed the rival castes (e.g., Madapallis) into\u00a0 their fold or crushed the rivals under their jackboots.<\/p>\n

A dark and ominous ambience hovers over the grim village of Pirikattayali ruled by the Vellahlas. Those below them survive as slaves. They were kept alive, on minimum wages and provisions, to serve the agricultural, domestic, social, political, religious (nautch girls dancing\u00a0 in temples) and even sexual needs of the Vellahlas. Daniel\u2019s village is\u00a0 in perpetual conflict with the ruthless ruling class\/caste. There are only two dominant figures that play their dialectical roles : 1.\u00a0 the Vellala landlord, Tampapillaiyar, ordering, threatening, or enforcing his\u00a0 will with force, or\u00a0 bribing the authorities, to have his way in the village and 2. Cwami Nanamutar, the Catholic reformer, who steps into the village as a liberator\u201d. The oppressed Nalavar and Palla converts expect the priest to bring salvation through the Church\u00a0 and take them to the promised land. In the end the Church too succumbs to the overbearing forces of Vellalas and divides the Church pews into the Vellahlas and non-Vellalas. The villagers who suffered under Vellala servitude are told by the new messiahs that they are slaves of Jesus\u201d. It as if they had exchanged worldly slavery to an ethereal slavery imposed by invisible dictators sitting\u00a0 in the skies. Before\u00a0 long, the Church becomes the ally of the Vellalas in maintaining the oppressive status quo.The poverty, the misery, the suffering and\u00a0 the hunger remains unabated. The Church goes along with the contractors who exploit the the low-castes on starvation wages. The Church\u00a0 becomes a part of the\u00a0 establishment. The mirage is in seeing\u00a0 the Church as the liberator.<\/p>\n

The coming\u00a0 of the missionaries\u00a0 to Jaffna was also a period of confrontation. It was the first serious invasion of\u00a0 modernity challenging the feudal Hindu structure. It opened up a transitional phase which failed to deliver their expectations of escaping Vellala servitude. In\u00a0 any case, the Vellala Hindus, led by Arumuga Navalar, resisted the Christian invasions. They saw it as a threat to their supremacy with the Church backing the low-castes. The\u00a0 conversions by the Christian beef-eaters\u201d were limited mainly to the low-castes who saw them as their redeemers, socially, politically and spiritually. But\u00a0 in the end it was the Vellalas who won. The powerful Vellalas took on every new ideological, political, social, religious force that threatened to challenge their\u00a0 supremacy\u00a0 and crushed them. They remained throughout the feudal, colonial, and post-independent periods as an ineradicable force.\u00a0 In the last resort, when their Hindu theology was running out of steam to sustain their\u00a0 divine right to rule the\u00a0 low-castes, they turned Jaffna into an enclave of mono-ethnic extremism. Under Saivite theology the enemy of the Vellalas was the low-caste. When the ideological power of Saivism ran out the Sinhala-Buddhists\u00a0 became the\u00a0 bogeyman in the\u00a0 post-Donoughmore\u00a0 period. Their biggest selling point was to claim victimhood, accusing the Sinhala-Buddhists as the victimisers, while hiding under the carpet their unrelenting role, over\u00a0 the ages, as the\u00a0 most\u00a0 vicious\u00a0 victimisers of the Tamils.<\/p>\n

Their success in propagating\u00a0 this myth is a remarkable feat in caste\/class history. They turned Marxism on its head and proved that a decadent, oppressive class need not necessarily collapse under the revolutionary forces of the oppressed. The Vellalas proved, time and again, that they could manufacture a false consciousness\u201d and survive successfully by donning the Emperor\u2019s clothes of saviours \/ liberators. Daniel\u2019s unique\u00a0 place as a Tamil intellectual was in his refusal to buy this anti-Sinhala-Buddhist line. A Catholic turned Marxist, he viewed the internal struggle convulsing Jaffna in class terms. Not in racist terms.<\/p>\n

The Vellala political elite, on the other\u00a0 hand, turned the tables and portrayed themselves \u2013 the\u00a0 most\u00a0 privileged community in Sri Lanka — as the victims of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority. The cover-up of their crimes against\u00a0 their own people is the biggest propaganda coup next to that of the Jews.\u00a0 The reality, however, is that the Vellala cruelty to the low-caste Tamils has no parallel either in the Bible Belt of America against\u00a0 the Afro-Americans or the indigenous S. Africans confined to apartheid ghettoes. For instance, in segregated America the Afro-Americans could\u00a0 ride in the seats reserved for them in the back of the bus while the whites had the privilege of sitting in the front. But\u00a0 in Jaffna the low-castes were allotted only the buck\u201d seat \u2013 i.e., the floor between the aisle seats of the bus. They could not\u00a0 sit at the same level in any place in the bus with that of the high-castes.\u00a0 That is how low\u00a0 the Vellalas placed their fellow-Tamils in Jaffna.<\/p>\n

Prof. Bryan Pfaffenberger of the Syracuse University,\u00a0 USA, produced magisterial studies of the Jaffna caste system, in\u00a0 which he detailed the misery of low-castes. In Political Construction of Defensive Nationalism : The 1968 Temple Entry Crisis in Sri Lanka <\/strong><\/em>he wrote : In Jaffna in the 1940s and 1950s, for instance, minority Tamils were forbidden to enter or live near temples:\u00a0 to draw water from the wells of high-caste families; to enter laundries, barber shops, or taxis; to keep women in seclusion and protect them by enacting domestic rituals; to wear shoes; to sit in bus seats; to attend school; to cover the upper part of the body; to wear gold earrings; if male, to cut one\u2019s hair; to use umbrellas; to own a bicycle or car; to cremate the dead; or to convert to Christianity or Buddhism.\u201d\u00a0 Compare\u00a0 this to the hue and cry they raised to high heaven about the Sinhala Only Act of 1956 which would have affected, if at all, only the Vellala high-caste in government service.\u00a0 The champions of the Tamil masses, the Marxists, the Churchmen, the NGO-allied academics, and fashionable pro-Tamil (Vellala) pundits turned a blind\u00a0 eye to the insufferable indignities imposed by the Vellalas. This\u00a0 gave the Vellalas the opportunity to turn their guns on the Sinhala-Buddhists who had given to all layers\u00a0 of Tamils what the Tamil leadership of Jaffna refused to give their own people.<\/p>\n

Daniel is one rare\u00a0 Tamil intellectual who\u00a0 did not swallow\u00a0 the racist rhetoric. Driven by\u00a0 his personal experiences he penetrated deep into the historical suffering of the Tamil masses which the other intellectuals refused to see. The refusal of our intellectual to examine critically the Vellala politics that warped Jaffna society has strengthened and solidified their mistaken belief that the Tamils have been the victims of the majority.\u00a0 Daniel is\u00a0 the only Marxist who had the guts to unmask the Right-wing Tamils and the Left-wing Sinhala mytho-maniacs who diverted attention from Vellala evils to Sinhala-Buddhists. In siding with the Vellala masters of\u00a0 Jaffna the Left-wingers and the liberals served the most cruel ruling class ever to darken the pages of Sri Lankan history. They used the vocabulary, the theories and concepts available in human rights, Marxism, Leninism etc.,\u00a0 to serve the Vellala caste\/class, abandoning their moral responsibility to stand up for the Tamil masses.<\/p>\n

Daniel, however remained faithful to his Marxist tenets. He identified the Vellalas, the ruling caste\/class, as the enemy of the Tamils. He steadfastly refuse to conform\u00a0 to the communal cries of the Vellala elite. Why? Perhaps, as a Turumbar, his memory of Vellala servitude ran deep in him. Can he be blamed? Consider the way in which the Jaffna Vellalas treated the slaves. Jaffna had the most\u00a0 number\u00a0 of slaves.\u00a0 The following statistics of the slaves were cited by Bishop Jebanesan from the Census of 1837 in\u00a0 his book The American Mission and Modern Education in Jaffna<\/strong><\/em> (Kumaran Book House, 2013) :<\/p>\n

Western Province \u2013 Male: 393; Female 332<\/p>\n

Southern Province —\u00a0\u00a0 Male: 432; Female 342<\/p>\n

Eastern Province\u00a0 — Male : 12 ; Female : Nil<\/p>\n

Central Province \u2013 Male 687 ; Female 694.<\/p>\n

Northern Province \u2013 Male: 12, 600; Female : 11,910 \u2013 (p. 157)<\/p>\n

This figure of 25,000 slaves was quite\u00a0 disproportionate to the overall population. In the census of 1881 the population of Jaffna district was 261,902. (Cited in Distinctive Features of English in Jaffna \u2013 Sri Lanka <\/u><\/strong><\/em>,\u00a0 M. Saravanapava Iyer, p. 8., \u2013 Kumaran Book House). The Vellalas controlled and kept nearly 25,000 slaves in line by cracking the whip over their backs. They were slave-drivers who forced the Tamil slaves (atimal<\/strong><\/em>) to sit in buck seats\u201d in buses, making sure that they will never rise to their level. Daniel\u2019s memory of\u00a0 these experiences\u00a0 of his ancestors would have been\u00a0 sharpened by his 1968 experiences at Maviddipuram Temple where (low-caste) protestors conducting a satyagraha were attacked by Vellalars using iron rods and sand-filled bottles…\u201d\u00a0 – (p. 296,\u00a0 Mirage,<\/strong><\/em> Afterword (2), Richard Young.) Amidst all this, who can\u00a0 forget Prof. C. Suntheralingam, a caste fanatic, walking\u00a0 up and down the inner courts of Maviddipuram Temple threatening to bash with his walking stick any low-caste pariah who dared to step inside the outermost court of the Temple!<\/p>\n

The Vellala obscenities portrayed in Mirage<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0 make a mockery of the Vellala claim to be the victims of the Sinhalese majority. The\u00a0 horrors of the Vellala crimes against their own exploited people condemns the Vellalas as a brutal caste\/class that showed no mercy to the non-Vellala Tamils of Jaffna. Worst was when the Vellalas, quoting Hindu texts, assumed the divine right to oppress and exploit their fellow-Tamils as slaves. Their contempt for\u00a0 their own people was displayed when they categorised a segment of their own people as pariahs who were kept out of high-caste Vellala society. Some of them were forbidden to walk even\u00a0 in daylight.\u00a0 The Turumbars, for instance, were allowed to walk only in the night just in case they should pollute the purity of Vellala eyes. No other community suffered the humiliating indignities as the Tamil slaves of Jaffna society at the hands of their Vellala\u00a0 masters. And no one is better qualified to document the agonies of the oppressed Tamils than K. Daniel, a Turumbar.<\/p>\n

Daniel\u2019s Mirage<\/strong><\/em> runs on several layers\u00a0 of meaning. Many of its\u00a0 layers are yet\u00a0 to be explored \u2013 later.<\/p>\n

(Publishers : Kumaran Book House, No. 39, 36th Lane, Wellawatta)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala When two distinguished authorities on the history of Jaffna\u00a0 —\u00a0 Bishop S. Jebanesan of the Jaffna Diocese of\u00a0 the Church of South India, and Richard Fox Young who holds a Chair in the Princeton Theological Seminary, USA., \u2013 collaborated to translate the novel Mirage (Kanal in Tamil), depicting the plight of […]<\/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-64586","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\/64586","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=64586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}