{"id":91826,"date":"2019-07-31T22:58:03","date_gmt":"2019-08-01T04:58:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=91826"},"modified":"2019-07-31T15:56:08","modified_gmt":"2019-07-31T22:56:08","slug":"uneven-handed-treatment-of-muslim-and-tamil-mps-who-are-alleged-to-have-terrorist-links-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/07\/31\/uneven-handed-treatment-of-muslim-and-tamil-mps-who-are-alleged-to-have-terrorist-links-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Uneven-handed treatment of Muslim and Tamil MPs who are alleged to have terrorist links."},"content":{"rendered":"

Bodhi Dhanapala<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Thank your Mr. van der Poorten<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You are most welcome to push forward\nyour own analysis of the events that had occurred in Sri Lanka and hold your\nown analysis of the Eelamist Racist program of “an exclusive Tamil\nHomeland” put in place since 1949 that has been the cause of the\ncalamitous evolution of Sri Lanka’s ethnic history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I find it strange that you write\n“Sri Lanka has paid a serious price for all the dabbling that has been\ndone by well-meaning\u201d expatriates and we hardly need another voice to stoke\nthose fires”.  And when you say  WE in the “we hardly\nneed”, who are these We, especially because you are yourself a Canadian,\nby your admission! What hypocrisy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You seem to believe that only you\nhave the right to speak, and only your perspective is good and useful? \nMay be you do not have a vote in Sri Lanka, but I still have a vote, and live\nthere sufficiently long each year and pay taxes there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some points for you to\nponder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1).  I feel that you begin the\ndiscussion by applying the tar brush to your interlocutor  instead of\ngiving an evidence-based analysis because you have NO FACTUAL basis for what\nyou say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 If you feel that my analysis\nis biased by “sinhala-Buddhist”, thinking, I could have equally well\nstated that your analysis is biased by your Dutch- Burghur background (jusging\nby your name – I don’t of course know if the name is authentic).
\n But such personal attack is not my approach to  discussing these\nmatters as such a demarche is totally counterproductive and in the end leads to\nwhat has happened in Sri Lanka over the years. In fact, it was this attitude\nshown by people who think like you, but went further and took matters to their\nown hand that led to the coup d’etats attempted in Sri Lanka on two occasions\n(e.g., against Sirima’s government) and foiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. The tone of the narrative\nIN  Sri Lanka and abroad, ON Sri Lanka, has been set by the Land-owning\nupper class  and upper Caste communities of Sri Lanka, which constitute\nthe Tamil Vellalar, Sinhala Goigama and European Colonial -planter progeny. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When SJV Chelvanayagam declaired the\nNorth and East “exclusive Tamil Homelands” and launched a\nprogram  to extricate the northern  fiefdoms of the rich Vellalar\nliving in in Colombo 7, he expected this to be quite easy because in the 1950s\nthe public service, the GCSU,  the professions, the private sector\nmercantile trade, import-export (shipping lines etc) were in the hands of the\ntamil community. Remember that the ITAK, and before them the Tamil Congress in\nthe state council, PREVENTED the  building of causeways and roads in the\nJaffna peninsula as they felt that it will make the olow caste people\n“uppity”.  Jaffna was maintained as an Urban council so that the\nVellalar living in Colombo did not have to pay municipal-level taxes, even\nthough Jaffana had become a big town. It was SWRD Bandaranaike who passed laws\nagainst explicit and implicit caste discrimination, and moved Jaffna to the status\nof a municipal council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 But this did not happen due to\ncomplex reasons explained in detail by historians and by perceptive journalists\ncoming from the Tamil community itself. Nevertheless, the atttude the ITAK is\nseen in the fact that Dr Navaratnam, the chief ideologue of the ITAK at that\ntime even wrote a book entitled the “Irreconcilability of the sinhalese\nand the tamils”, published I think, in 1952.  The standard narrative\nis that the Banda-Chelva pact was torn apart by the actions of Buddhist priests.\nIt is only rarely mentioned that Navaratnam and other federal party stalwarts\nheld a shut down of all Jaffna shops and government services protesting AGAINST\nthe B-C pact because the core-component of the Jaffna ITAK were too and nail\nagainst the BC pact. Chelva assuaged them by saying a little now, but we will\nget full control later. Such statements, made in tamil, not reported in the\nEnglish press, did nevertheless percolate to the south. You CANNOT HAVE\nfederalism and <\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Who  are these historians? \nI hope you are familiar with the writings of the Oxford historian Dr. Jane\nRussell. See for instance her book “Communal Politics under the\nDonoughmore Constitution, 1931-1948”. You can also read Professor\nK. M. de Silva.s writing on the ethnic conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. See the writings of Dr Sebastian\nRasalingam, one of the few Tamil journalists coming from a “depressed\ncast”. In fact you should ask why there are virtually NO low caste\npoliticians, journalists or academics in the Tamil community, and how the social\nengineering has controlled that society so that the Periya Dorei class controls\nthe vast majority of low caste people so that they continue to be landless and\neducationless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. The most incisive  writings\nof Dr. Rasalingam are in  Tamil. But it is quite probable that you do not\nread Tamil (while you may know enough pidgin Tamil to speak to servants and\nworkers). So let me send you some references to Dr. Sebastian Rasalingam’s\nEnglish articles. Many of Dr. Rasalingam’s articles have appeared in the columns<\/p>\n\n\n\n

of  D. B. S. Jeyraj, a Tamil\njournalist who lives in Toronto, and in the Sri Lanka Guardian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, you will say that\nRasalingam and Jeyraj are expacts “dabbling in Sri lankan politics”\nand that only you and your voice should be heard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/federalidea.com\/focus\/archives\/201<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/pdfs.island.lk\/2007\/08\/15\/m1.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/www.srilankaguardian.org\/2009\/02\/tamil-racism-is-kami-kaze-of-tamil.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/www.srilankaguardian.org\/2009\/01\/one-mans-political-solution-anothers.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/www.srilankaguardian.org\/2011\/07\/keeping-tamil-culture-and-uprooting.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/www.srilankaguardian.org\/2011\/06\/sinhalization-of-north-and-tamilzation.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/transcurrents.com\/tc\/2010\/10\/a_texan_tamils_jambustained_wo.htm<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

http:\/\/www.island.lk\/2009\/05\/04\/features8.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

and so on, many many articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IGNORANCE IS BLISS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wed Jul 31 2019\n02:29:35 GMT-0500 (EST), Emil van der Poorten <emilvan@sltnet.lk<\/a>> wrote: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Dhanapala:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With all due respect, you are comparing apples with oranges in\ncomparing the LTTE, its roots and the Sri Lankan political history that gave it\ntraction with the Jihadists who are driven by VERY different needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or is this simply, yet another exercise in trying to justify the\ngospel of Sinhala Buddhist Supremacy?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka has paid a serious price for all the dabbling that has\nbeen done by well-meaning\u201d expatriates and we hardly need another voice to\nstoke those fires.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In case you are wondering about my credentials, check them out\nbecause I still hold citizenship of the country in which you reside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emil van der Poorten <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bodhi Dhanapala Thank your Mr. van der Poorten You are most welcome to push forward your own analysis of the events that had occurred in Sri Lanka and hold your own analysis of the Eelamist Racist program of “an exclusive Tamil Homeland” put in place since 1949 that has been the cause of the calamitous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bodhi-dhanapala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91826","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=91826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}