{"id":66811,"date":"2017-06-10T16:05:21","date_gmt":"2017-06-10T23:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=66811"},"modified":"2017-06-10T16:05:38","modified_gmt":"2017-06-10T23:05:38","slug":"jaundiced-jaffna-jingoism-ran-all-the-way-to-nandikadal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/06\/10\/jaundiced-jaffna-jingoism-ran-all-the-way-to-nandikadal\/","title":{"rendered":"Jaundiced Jaffna jingoism ran all the way to Nandikadal"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The flow of migrants to Sri Lanka never ceased throughout its history.\u00a0 Each\u00a0 migratory wave came with its own characteristics. Each found its own niche in the over-arching Sinhala-Buddhist society. Historical records do not indicate that the new migrants encountered any difficulties in settling down with the numerically preponderant Sinhala-Buddhists. Take the example\u00a0 Robert Knox. He is noteworthy because he\u00a0 has\u00a0 left a record of his sojourn in the Kandyan\u00a0 Kingdom. Though he was not a migrant (he was a prisoner of the Kandyan King) his narrative gives an intimate account of the easy-going, friendly, hospitable and accommodating nature of the Sinhalese. Whatever prejudices the Sinhalese may have against foreigners initially, they disappear once they get to know them. In time the migrants become a part of the mainstream. The Sinhalese also have a continuous history of assimilation which explains, to some\u00a0 extent, why the Sinhalese population grew exponentially, leaving\u00a0 the other communities behind.\u00a0 Living with the other\u201d became a defining principle of the Sinhala-Buddhist culture. Multiculturalism and pluralism became a way of\u00a0 life.\u00a0 Peaceful co-existence has been the norm in the open Sinhala-Buddhist culture which provided ample space for diverse cultures.<\/p>\n

In particular, the persecuted minorities who had nowhere to go invariably found refuge in the arms of the Sinhala-Buddhists.When the Catholics left behind by the Portuguese were persecuted by the Dutch they found refuge in the Sinhala-Buddhist\u00a0 kingdom. Wahakotte, for\u00a0 instance, remains as a Catholic island in a sea of Sinhala-Buddhists. When the Muslims were also persecuted by the Dutch they found security and prosperity among the Sinhala-Buddhists. And the Muslims who were driven out of Jaffna in feudal and modern times always found alternative shelter among\u00a0 the Sinhala-Buddhists.When Velupillai Prabhakaran hunted Tamil intellectuals, Tamil\u00a0 politicians etc., who were opposed to him, they found a safe haven in the Sinhala-Buddhist south.\u00a0 Even when the lunatic fringe of the Sinhala-Buddhist society went on rampage against minorities it was the majority of the Sinhala-Buddhists that rushed to their rescue. The opportunities for the minorities to rise within the overall Sinhala-Buddhist framework is demonstrated in the demography of Colombo : <\/strong>the minorities have overtaken the capital. The Sinhalese have withdrawn into the interior. Well, a capital that is dominated by the minorities cannot be all that bad for the minorities despite their repeated cries of discrimination.<\/p>\n

Here I refer to the mainstream flow of events.\u00a0 I am not referring to aberrations which mar the image of all civilised societies. It is wrong to take the odd aberration and project it as a systemic failure of the whole. Any judgement should be proportionate to the whole because no society is absolutely pure. Walter Benjamin, who was a leading light of the Frankfurt School of Marxists,\u00a0 in his Theses\u00a0\u00a0 on the Philosophy of History\u201d hit the nail on the head when he said that there is no document of civilisation that\u00a0 is not at the same\u00a0 time a document\u00a0 of barbarism.\u201d It means that there is a dark side to all societies. Political idealism has been striving \u2013 in vain so far \u2013 to shepherd society into the sunny side of civilisation. So in this imperfect world only those who possess a higher proportion of goodness, tolerance, and\u00a0 humaneness have a right to cast the first stone.<\/p>\n

Judged on this scale, the Sinhala-Buddhists, who had lived in communal harmony with diverse communities, have been commended by leading scholars.The leading Tamil political scientist, Prof. A. J. Wilson, son-in-law of S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the father of Tamil separatism, argued convincingly that one of the reasons for the success of the parliamentary democracy was the tolerant Buddhist culture. In his\u00a0 essay on\u00a0 The Future of Parliamentary Government<\/em><\/strong> he wrote : <\/strong> …the Sinhalese Buddhist ethos of tolerance does help to overcome in limited ways militancy and rigidity of Sinhalese language and Sinhalese Buddhist extremists. The tolerance helps produce an atmosphere for accommodating the demands of minority groups. In this way extreme elements on\u00a0 both sides are inhibited from gaining the upper hand.\u201d (p. 41, The Ceylon\u00a0 Journal of Historical and Social Studies<\/strong><\/em>, Vol.IV, Nos. 1 and 2, Jan-December,1975).<\/p>\n

Historian Dr. G. C. Mendis, too focused on this aspect of communal amity that was writ large in the pages of\u00a0 pre-modern periods. He pointed out that there are no records of inter-ethnic tensions or violence under Portuguese and Dutch periods. North-South communal tensions exploded only in the thirties. It began with G. G. Ponnambalam, the rising star of Tamil communalism, provocatively vilifying the Sinhala-Buddhists. He demonised the Sinhala-Buddhists and ridiculed the Mahavamsa, <\/strong><\/em>claiming, in the same breath, that\u00a0 it was the Tamils who made history in Ceylon, as it was known then. The Hindu Organ <\/strong><\/em>(June, 22, 1939) wrote in its editorial, THE WRITING\u00a0 ON THE WALL<\/em><\/strong> \u00a0<\/strong><\/em>: <\/strong>Ceylon today is seething with petty problems which\u00a0 have been created by thoughtless gas-bags, and which threaten to poison the peaceful conditions in the country…..A verbal bombshell dropped unwittingly by a Tamil politician at Nawalapitiya appears to have set\u00a0 the South\u00a0 on fire……\u201d In hindsight, this\u00a0 editorial note stands out as a prophecy, as suggested in its title. The destructive fire ignited by Ponnambalam could\u00a0 not be snuffed out until\u00a0 it ran into the waters of Nandikadal.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Indrapala, the first\u00a0 professor of history at the Jaffna University, too stated : There have been political and social conflict among them (migrants) but the kind of ethnic consciousness and destructive prejudices that have surfaced in\u00a0 the twentieth century and continue to plague the island were not a part of Sri Lanka\u2019s pre-colonial history.\u201d (ix , Evolution of an Ethnic Identity, The Tamils in Sri Lanka, C 300 B.C.to C 1200 C.E.<\/strong><\/em>, The South Asian Studies Centre, 2005).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Prof Wilson\u2019s explanation for the success of parliamentary democracy in Sri Lanka was laid out in his book, The Nature of Politics in Sri Lanka <\/strong><\/em>(1974). It was a time when parliamentary democracy was hanging in\u00a0 the balance. In 1970 the JVP held a gun to the parliamentary system. Tamil parties too rejected the parliamentary system arguing\u00a0 that it did not\u00a0 give them a fair share of\u00a0 power. The Tamil leadership\u00a0 began by demanding a 50% share of power for 12% of Jaffna Tamils which later turned into federalism and finally morphed into a separate state. The Marxists, on the other hand,\u00a0 argued that the parliamentary democracy was only an instrument of the capitalist class to hoodwink the working class and perpetuate their exploitation and oppression. Besides, both groups who were in the\u00a0 opposition argued that parliamentary democracy would\u00a0 not\u00a0 bring\u00a0 solutions to their problems. Only the Sinhala-Buddhists stood steadfastly by the parliamentary system.<\/p>\n

    Commending Wilson\u2019s book as the finest work yet to appear on Ceylonese politics,\u201d\u00a0 Prof. Calvin A. Woodward, Associate Professor of New Brunswick University, wrote :<\/strong> Certainly then. the key to the future lies in the understanding of the past. How and why, in other words, has the democratic experiment been able to work so well in Sri Lanka? The author (Wilson) investigates this and concludes that the political stability so far maintained in Sri Lanka is due mainly to two forces, one of the indigenous origin and the other result of Western implantation. Primary is the Buddhist ethos and the doctrine of tolerance. This, according to Wilson, has acted to dissuade the majority community from unduly imposing itself on the minorities and encouraged it to respect the fundamental rights and distinction of other in the plural society. Similar in effect to the Western notion of compromise, the doctrine of tolerance has facilitated compromise and provided essential underpinning in society to the parliamentary system.Of equal importance, according to the author, has been the superb leadership supplied by the Ceylonese political elite, a fact which has always highly impressed the knowledgeable foreign observer….\u00a0 I think Wilson has revealed the essential character of the Ceylonese political culture. Its core is the middle way\u201d, a principle that owed origin both to the liberalism of the Westernized elite and to the idea of tolerance espoused by the Buddhist majority. (pp. 72-73, The Ceylon\u00a0 Journal of Historical and Social Studies, Vol.\u00a0 III, July-December 1973). <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

    What should be noted is that Wilson wrote this book in 1974, long after the Sinhala Only Act of 1956. And also after the uprising of the JVP in April 1970. He does not blame S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike or the Sinhala-Buddhists as Tamil-haters or extremists. On\u00a0 the\u00a0 contrary, he argued that Buddhism was a restraining factor that lowered the temperature\u00a0 of the extremists and led to the success of democracy. He goes even further, and in a footnote adds that Buddhism among the Sinhalese has helped to mitigate the rigours of the caste system, which is otherwise similar to that of the Tamils.\u201d (p.75 \u2013 S. J. V. Chelvanayakam and the Crisis of Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, 1947 \u2013 1977, A Political Biography<\/strong><\/em>, Lake House Bookshop, 1994). In other words, he admits, sotto voce, <\/strong><\/em>that the dehumanising Tamil caste system denied their own people the\u00a0 basic human rights and dignity.<\/p>\n

    Wilson undoubtedly would have agreed with Calvin who wrote that he (Wilson) had revealed the essential character of the Ceylonese political culture…the idea of tolerance espoused by the Buddhist majority.\u201d\u00a0 But shortly after that the Tamil political lobby launched a massive propaganda campaign to demonize the Sinhala Buddhists. Two years after Wilson had published his book, his father-in-law, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the\u00a0 father of Tamil separatism, was screaming for\u00a0 the blood of the Sinhalese. By 1976 the Tamil leadership had pushed mono-ethnic politics of the peninsula to the extreme end. The Batakotte (Vadukoddai) Resolution had (1) declared war abandoning the non-violent parliamentary process and (2) urged the Tamil youth to come forward to throw themselves fully into the sacred fight for freedom and to flinch not till the gaol of a sovereign state of Tamil Eelam is reached.\u201d In other words, Chelvanayakam fathered the Batakotte (Vadukoddai) War. Was it necessary? What did the Tamils achieve\u00a0 by going\u00a0 to war?<\/p>\n

    Tamil leadership\u00a0 has a lot to\u00a0 answer for misleading\u00a0 their\u00a0 people and dragging them to the extreme end of the racist spectrum. The Batakotte (Vadukoddai) War was an extreme act and, as proved by subsequent events, doomed to fail. Besides, the brutal violence unleashed by the Batakotte (Vadukoddai) Resolution, which\u00a0 gave birth to its first-born son,Velupillai Prabhkaran, was inevitable considering that the Tamil political culture was entrenched in extremism. Internally it was entrenched in casteist extremism that oppressed its own people throughout its brief history, denying them the basic human\u00a0 rights and dignity. Externally,the English-educated Vellala leadership took to extreme racism to survive in the competitive electoral politics of the peninsular. It was the mean by which they could divide and\u00a0 perpetuate their feudal rule. In the absence of any progressive political ideology they stuck stubbornly to the tried and tested anti-Sinhala-Buddhist racism, the winning card in peninsular politics.<\/p>\n

    The Vellalas, who reigned\u00a0 in feudal and colonial times with an\u00a0 iron fist, treating the Tamils discarded from\u00a0 their pure\u201d high-caste society as despicable subhumans, find their political kinsmen in the Nazis of fascist Germany. In the mistaken belief of being superior to the other\u201d, the Germans persecuted the gypsies,the disabled and, of\u00a0 course, the Jews. Unmistakably, the judgement of the British historian A. J. P. Taylor on German history applies to the vicious Vellalas who treated the other\u201d with absolute contempt. He wrote: The history of the Germans is a history of extremes. It contains everything except moderation, and in the course of a thousand years the Germans have experienced everything except normality.\u201d (The Course of German History<\/strong><\/em> \u2013 A. J. P. Taylor.)<\/p>\n

    There was nothing normal about Jaffna politics. The Vellala elite, who were\u00a0 in the driving\u00a0 seat of Jaffna politics, assumed that they had the divine right to enslave the low-caste other\u201d. They used the Hindu casteist ideology to justify, oppress and persecute their own people during feudal and colonial centuries. The Saivite-Vellala ideology inculcated into them an arrogance that turned them into fascist\u00a0 oppressors. In the end, their sense of\u00a0 superiority inflated their self-image into a destructive force. It infused into them a sense of superior exclusiveness that rejected any co-existence with the other\u201d. They acquired an unlimited capacity to imagine a greatness which they do not\u00a0 possess. For instance, Radhika Coomaraswamy, former head of the foreign-funded NGO, the ICES, in a lecture on her knighted ancestor, Sir. Muttu Coomaraswamy, said that he posed as a prince of Jaffna in the St. James\u2019 court in London!<\/p>\n

    It was partly this arrogance that misled them all the way to Nandikadal. At every stage they rejected opportunities that were offered to them for peaceful coexistence, even when the solutions for peace came with international guarantees. Taking up extreme positions, from 50 \u2013 50\u201d to federalism, and finally to separatism, they led the way to the ultimate extreme at Batakotte (Vadukoddai) where they declared war against the Sinhalese. Which, of\u00a0 course, led to Nandikadal. At every critical stage the Jaffna Tamil leadership, labelled by Prof. Kumar David, as congenital idiots\u201d, pushed Jaffna, step by step, from one extreme into another. They began by demanding in the twenties one extra seat in the Sinhala Western province, in addition to the seats given to\u00a0 them in the Tamil North. Then in the thirties G. G. Ponnambalam took Jaffna to the extreme of demanding 50 \u2013 50\u201d \u2013 i.e, 12% demanding 50% of power. In the forties, his successor and rival, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, raised the stakes to federalism and finally to separate state. The political, ideological and tactical trajectory of the Jaffna leadership kept moving unrelentingly, like an arrow, from\u00a0 one\u00a0 extreme to another, until they had nowhere to go except to Batakotte (Vadukoddai) which took them straight to Nandikadal.<\/p>\n

    At the core of the North-South conflict was the extremism of the Tamil leadership which\u00a0 poisoned inter-ethnic\u00a0 relations. They never stopped demanding disproportionate claims that were bound\u00a0 to blowback on them. They overestimated their\u00a0 power and assumed that they could push the majority to surrender to their arrogant extremism. It only raised the hackles of the majority community who reacted defensively to preserve and protect national unity and territorial integrity. For instance, a minority of 12% demanding 50% share of power would be laughed out of court in any known democracy. When G. G. Ponnambalam, the father of 50-50\u201d, argued for it with the British rulers of the time they dismissed it out\u00a0 of\u00a0 hand.<\/p>\n

    The aggressive arrogance of the Tamil leadership was self-destructive. When the Sinhala leadership offered 47%\u00a0 Ponnambalam\u00a0 pooh-poohed\u00a0 it and rejected it. It was an\u00a0 opportunity that the Tamils could not afford to miss. It was a blunder of Himalayan proportions. No sensible, rational political leader would fail to grab such a grand opportunity. Imagine 12% minority rejecting an\u00a0 offer of 47%! It was the best deal ever that a minority could get from a majority of 75%.\u00a0 But\u00a0 the congenital idiots\u201d rejected it and blamed the Sinhalese for not cooperating or compromising. They consistently blamed the Mahavamsa mentality\u201d. Both Prof. Wilson, a political scientist, and Prof. S. Arasaratnam, historian, blamed Ponnambalam for missing the bus with\u00a0 his arrogance. The backlash from\u00a0 the Sinhala-Buddhist majority\u00a0 was inevitable. They reacted with\u00a0 their brand of nationalism to counter Tamil arrogance which has gone beyond the limits of reason, tolerance and endurance.<\/p>\n

    So who\u00a0 is responsible for the exacerbation of inter-ethnic relations? Is it the Mahavamsa mentality\u201d, or the Jaffna jingoism that dragged the Tamils all the way to Nandikadal?<\/p>\n

    The answer is blowing\u00a0 in the cold winds that sweep the murky waters of Nandikadal where the body of Velupillai Prabhakaran was found floating, ensuring, at last, that the Tamil children could\u00a0 go to school without being abducted on the way.<\/p>\n

    The Tamil Boko Haram is dead. Long\u00a0 live the Tamil children without fear of being dragged into another Nandikadal by another Tamil Boko Haram !<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    H. L. D. Mahindapala The flow of migrants to Sri Lanka never ceased throughout its history.\u00a0 Each\u00a0 migratory wave came with its own characteristics. Each found its own niche in the over-arching Sinhala-Buddhist society. Historical records do not indicate that the new migrants encountered any difficulties in settling down with the numerically preponderant Sinhala-Buddhists. Take […]<\/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-66811","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\/66811","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=66811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}