{"id":94223,"date":"2019-10-22T16:17:11","date_gmt":"2019-10-22T23:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=94223"},"modified":"2019-10-22T16:17:11","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T23:17:11","slug":"tamil-leadership-re-igniting-anti-sinhala-buddhist-racism-for-political-gain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/10\/22\/tamil-leadership-re-igniting-anti-sinhala-buddhist-racism-for-political-gain\/","title":{"rendered":"Tamil leadership re-igniting anti-Sinhala-Buddhist racism for political gain"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Any lawyer who has\nmade it to the peak of his profession carries with him the authoritative air of\nhaving achieved the highest intellectual capacity to build up a case on hard\nevidence and presenting it cogently, logically, rationally to persuade his\naudience, court, forum, etc., of the unshakeable truth on which the case is\nbased. But there are, of course, exceptions to this rule. C. V.\nWigneswaran,(CVW)  former Supreme Court Judge and later Chief Minister of\nJaffna, is one of them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After he left the\nbench and joined the Northern political class obsessed with Tamil extremism\nallied to Prabhakaran he has played a mean and vicious role of denigrating the\nSinhala-Buddhist at every turn. Like most other Tamil politicians he is playing\nthe anti-Sinhala-Buddhist card to the hilt for survival in Jaffna which has\nconsistently and unreservedly rejected pluralism, diversity, peaceful\ninter-ethnic coexistence with the Sinhala majority, or even the Muslim\nminority. They have never considered the construction of an enlightened path\nfor reconciliation, overriding the narrow and partisan interpretations of\nhistory for separatism. They have never sat down and revisited the failure of\ntheir post-independent politics that led them all the way to Nandikadal. As\nseen in the 13-point demands put to the leading presidential candidates they\nare going back only to revive the policies that dragged their hapless people\ninto death, destruction and despair. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only ideology\nthat  was allowed to reign supreme in Jaffna by the Vellalar ruling class\n\u2013 they were in the majority– is anti-Sinhala-Buddhism. This  ideology has\ncome down from the early decades of the twentieth century. It was honed,\nweaponised and unleashed as a deadly force against the Sinhala-Buddhists by G.\nG. Ponnambalam in the 1930s. Ever since then demonising  the\nSinhala-Buddhists has  been the primary\nplatform that dominated Jaffna politics. No  politician competing \nfor electoral votes could  survive without scapegoating the\nSinhala-Buddhists. Following this  line, CVW is now performing to beat\nhis  rivals in this game of demonising the Sinhala-Buddhists. After the\ndefeat at Nandikadal CVW has stepped into the Northern political stage to\nrevive and activate the failed bid by his predecessors to perpetuate the anti-nation\nbuilding politics of the Jaffna political class. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest\nexhibition of this campaign surfaced in Colombo Telegraph<\/em><\/strong> of\nOctober 14, 2019. Consider, for instance, the following story taken out of a\nlong list of complaints made against the Sinhala-Buddhist recently.(\nSee Colombo Telegraph<\/em><\/strong>, — 14\/10\/2019).  In it CVW . spins\nhis stories accusing the Sinhala-Buddhists and the state of victimising the\nTamils and then says: . \u201dHow far this is true I do not know. But\nwe are told many families\u2026\u2026.\u201d <\/em><\/strong> have been victimised. (In the last\nphrase I am summarising his numerous charges). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagine him\npresenting this case to a judge in a court of law and then concluding by\nsaying: \u201d How far this is true I do not know. But we are told manyfamilies\n\u2026 etc., etc. Which judge is going to take him seriously? Will not his case be\nthrown out of court summarily without any further hearing? He goes to court\nwithout knowing whether there is any truth at all in his stories of Tamil\nclaims of victimisation but he wants the whole world to believe that the\nvictimisation of the Tamils is true. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this is the\nbest that a Tamil judge of the supreme court can produce how much truth can\nthere be in most of the wild accusations made by the Tamils against other sources? This penchant for repeating\nsecond and third hand stories has been one of the main reasons that had warped\nthe public discourse on the ethnic issue. Had they checked their facts and\nstuck to the stark realities the ethnic issue would not have gone so far as\nNandikadal.  At the core of the ethnic issue is that deep craze to believe\nthat the Tamils are the victims of the Sinhala-Buddhist state and any story is\ngood enough to turbo -charge their imagined or rumoured stories of victimhood.\nFor instance, in the dying days of the Vadukoddai War (aka Eelam war) a Tamil\nChristian priest in a church in Melbourne (where I live) was swearing that the\nSinhala-Buddhist soldiers were throwing up Tamil babies up in the air and\npinning them with bayonets as they come down!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Adding fuel to the\nfires of anti-Sinhala-Buddhist racism has been the standard practice of the\nTamil leadership. Just last month CVW led another anti-Sinhala-Buddhist rally\nin Jaffna, along with Suresh Premachandran and Jaffna University students and\nlecturers. The main objective of this Ezhuga Thamil\nrally was to turn back the Jaffna clock to the history concocted in the\nBatakotte (Tamilised as Vadukoddai) Resolution. That version of Tamil history\nended in Nandikadal. Reports reveal that CVW\u2019s Ezhuga\nThamil rally was a flop. Considering all the failures of the Tamil leadership\nsince independence the time has come for the Tamil people to seriously question\nthe misleading and the disastrous role played on their behalf by the so-called\nbrilliant Tamils. It is time for the Tamil people to rise up and ask CVW\nand his gang of University students and lecturers : Are you going to lead us\ndown the path of Batakotte Resolution to Nandikadal again? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

CVW\u2019s swing to\nradical Tamilness is reflected, somewhat garishly, in his face which is\nplastered with Saivite strips of ritualistic ash in technicolour. These strips\nseem to be more symbolic of his anti-Sinhala-Buddhist hatred than any\nexpression of his spiritual purity. What is objectionable is the aggressive\npolitical statement he makes through his face make-up. It is like the\nSinhala-Buddhist politicians displaying their pirith noolas<\/em><\/strong>,\nsometimes thick as ropes strong enough to hang them up in the nearest tree.\nWhich reminds me also of the cynic who told a Christian congregation that if\nJesus was shot with a pistol then Christian devotees would be wearing canons\nround their necks now! Not surprisingly, kovils, churches, mosques and temples\nhave become powerful centres of politics more than religion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The political\nactivity of CVW indicate that he is eager to ride on the back of Tamil youth\ninto power like his predecessors in ITAK (example: S. J. V. Chelvanayakam) who\nurged the Tamil youth to take up arms against the nation. CVW has also jumped\ninto the bandwagon of Tamil extremism with an eye to claim Tamil leadership in\nthe North. Claiming to be the sole representatives of the Tamils\u201d is an\nobsession with Tamil politicians. He is hoping to cash in on the prestige of\nhis judicial background (thanks to the Sinhala-Buddhist state which he\ncondemns) to be the only Tamil worthy of being a respected and hero-worshipped\nleader, now that Prabhakaran is no longer with them\nto be their  thalaivar\u201d. As the head of the newly established\nTamil Makkal Kootani (Tamil Peoples\u2019 Congress) he is making a desperate bid to\nrevive and retain Tamil politics at the same virulent\nand intransigent level defined and pursued by his predecessors, starting\nfrom G. G. Ponnambalam in the 1930s\u2019 to Velupillai Prabhakaran. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one sense he\nis, like all other Tamil politicians, a prisoner of the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist\nideology. Jaffna never had a history of embracing any other ideology. The\npolitical fathers of Jaffna and their followers were, from birth to death,\nbound by two main ideologies : 1. Saivite casteism as defined by the Vellalar\nguru, Arumuka Navalar and 2. anti-Sinhala-Buddhist politics which demonised the\nSinhala-Buddhists in the dying days of the British raj as their main enemy.\nThey never took to socialism, liberalism, pluralism, humanism or any other ism\u201d\nunlike the South which embraced all the ideologies that were sweeping the\nworld, from Marxism, Maoism, Castroism to neo-liberalism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, for a\nbrief period in the late twenties the Tamil youth embraced Gandhism and\npeaceful co-existence with the rest of the nation. But that was snuffed out\nswiftly by Ponnambalam\u2019s anti-Sinhala-Buddhist racism which became the ruling\nideology that gripped the North. Ever since then Jaffna has been the permanent\nhome of virulent Tamil racism, excluding all others as non-Tamil outsiders.\nTamil ideologues tried to give it a shine by labelling Tamil racism as\nsub-nationalism, or Tamil nationalism. But historical events prove that it was\na latter-day development that began with Ponnambalam raising Tamil racism in\nthe  thirties to protect and  preserve the disproportionate Tamil\npower, privileges and  perks  in the British colonial regime. Tamil\nsupremacist arrogance closed the minds of the Jaffnaites  to any other\nalternative. Tamil casteist arrogance went as far as dismissing its own\nlow-caste people as pariahs who should not\nbe allowed to walk in God-given sunlight. For instance, the Turumbas, the\nlowest of the low-castes, were allowed to walk only in the night to protect the\npurity of the eyes of the ruling Vellalars who might\nbump into them in day time. In this tight environment, dominated by\nTamil casteism\/racism, there was no space for CVW, particularly as a new comer\nto the political arena, to compete with any other rival ideology that would\ntend to be conciliatory and moving towards peaceful co-existence with the other\ncommunities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today he is facing\nsimilar (not identical) forces that confronted the young G. G. Ponnambalam when\nhe arrived from UK, qualified as a lawyer. To make his name he had to compete\nwith the established and elderly aristocracy consisting of Ramanathans,\nArunachalams  and Mahavdevas. He had no constructive program to beat the\nturbaned aristocrats\u201d (Jane Russell) entrenched in the colonial system. The\nonly card he could play to stand out from the pack was anti-Sinhala-Buddhist\nracism. So to cut his teeth in politics and to make a name for himself he\nembraced anti-Sinhala-Buddhist racism in the colonial period.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The racism he\nunleashed in the 1930s remained as the permanent norm for peninsular politics.\nHe defined and propagated the aggressive and\nthe intransigent political culture of Jaffna that ran all the way to Nandikadal\n\u2013 and beyond to Wigneswaran. He ruptured the inter-ethnic relations that had\nlasted for centuries. The most marketable slogan for competing and winning\nvotes in peninsular politics was based on bashing Sinhala-Buddhists. This Tamil\ntactic was not labelled as racism. It was labelled as minority rights. But when\nthe Sinhala-Buddhist reacted to it and defended their right to preserve and\nmaintain their historical legacies they were called racists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ever since\nPonnambalam unleashed anti-Sinhala-Buddhist racism as the norm for peninsular\npolitics his successors never deviated from it. It was suicidal for any Tamil\nto champion any other brand of politics that moved towards reconciliation, or\npeaceful co-existence.  Those deviating from this norm were condemned as\ncollaborationists\u201d or traitors to the Tamils, as seen in the time that\nPrabhakaran ruled Jaffna. Tamil extremism blocked all attempts at\nnation-building. Even the best deals offered with international guarantees were\nrejected by the Tamil leadership.  If the Jaffna electorate did not\neliminate them with their votes then the guns of Tamil\nmilitants liquidated them. Examples: Lakshman Kadirgamar, Neelan\nTiruchelvam, Appapillai Amirthalingam etc. Arrogant and relentless Tamil\nviolence didn\u2019t stop at that. Tamil violence went as far as assassinating Rajiv\nGandhi who attempted to keep Sri Lanka united for his own self-interests, with\npowers devolved to the periphery to appease the Tamil separatists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly, there was\nno escape route for any new entrant to deviate from the entrenched political\nculture of Jaffna. In varying degrees of antagonism Tamil politicians had to\nconform to its anti-Sinhala-Buddhist ideology. The Jaffnaites were prisoners\ntrapped tightly inside the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist straight jacket. They could\nmove only within the perennial parameters   drawn by the cadjan\ncurtains of Saivite casteism which morphed into virulent anti-Sinhala-Buddhist\nracism. Whether CVW likes it or not he had to fall in line with the racism\ninitiated by Ponnambalam and finally consolidated by Prabhakaran. For him to\nsurvive in the competitive electoral politics of Jaffa CVW is compelled to\ndance to the beat of nagasalam<\/em><\/strong> choreographed by Ponnambalam and\nPrabhakaran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His ambition now\nis to grab the leadership of the Tamils to be the sole representative of the\nTamils. To achieve this he has to kick out of his way the TNA ladder on which\nhe climbed to seats of power in Jaffna. Having done that, he is now aiming to\ntake over the Jaffna leadership by beating the TNA with his aggressive\nanti-Sinhala-Buddhist programmes, politics and pronouncements. As Chief\nMinister he did his damnedest to denigrate the Sinhala-Buddhists and paint them\nas the sworn enemies of the Tamils. He passed the notorious resolution in which\nhe condemned all Sinhala leaders, from the time of independence, as killers of\nthe Tamils. He was so obsessed with anti-Sinhala-Buddhist racism that he could\nnot provide even a toilet at the Jaffna bus stand. Like most of the Tamil\nleaders he was obsessed with anti-Sinhala-Buddhist politics and not with the\nwell-being of the Tamil people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His latest\ngimmickry is to take up the 13-point demands put up by the Tamil University\nstudents in the North and the East universities. As M. Sumanthiram states,\nthere is nothing new in it. It is the same old, same old \u2013 all 13 demands\npointing to separatism. Clearly, we are back to square one. We are back to the\ntime when S. J. V. Chelvanayakam and his band of fake Gandhians were ganging up\nto the draw the belligerent Batakotte (Tamilised as Vadukoddai ) Resolution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a time when\nthe Tamil leadership had pushed Tamil extremism to the bitter end and had\nnowhere to go except to declare war on the rest of the nation. It was time when\nthe Gandhian Chelvanayakam was delighted with the placing on his forehead a red\npottu, consisting of blood drawn from the vein of a Tamil militant. It was a\ntime when the ageing Vellalar Tamil leadership was ready to sit back in their\narm chairs and sacrifice the low-caste Tamil youth, hoping that they would win\nEelam for them to take over as their permanent lords and  masters of the\nfeudal days gone by. The educated Vellalars went overseas to enjoy the greener\npastures, with two cars, one to take their children to universities and the\nother to take their wives shopping. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sequence of\nevents that happened tell the story of the utter failure of Tamil politics. The\nprecise date was May 14, 1976. The place was Batakotte. The entire Tamil\nleadership collectively declared war on the rest of the nation and urged the\nTamil youth to take up arms and never stop until they had achieved Eelam. They,\nof course, never expected to land in Nandikadal. That, in short, the failed\nhistory of Tamils. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 13-point\ndemands put up by the Northern and Eastern Universities seems to heading the\nway of the Batakotte Resolution. History seems to be getting ready to repeat\nitself, this time as a greater tragedy than before. The oldies are taking cover\nunder the 13-points presented by the Tamil youth in the universities. The\noldies are happy that the Tamil youth had taken up their demands, once again.\nThe oldies, of course, have nothing to worry. If the worst comes to the worse,\nthe Sampanthans, Sumanthirams, and the Wigneswarans would come rushing down to\nthe South (which they hate) and take refuge with the Sinhala-Buddhist state\nproviding police protection..The oldies expect the  Tamil youth to fight\nfor the tall tales told in Tamil fiction. In relating these tales they will\ndemonise the Sinhala-Buddhists and never mention a word about the miserable\nfailure of the Tamil leadership to serve or save the Tamil people whom they\noppressed throughout their history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The more  I\nlook into  Tamil politics the more  I am convinced of the value of\nthe words of Prof. Kumar David which described the Tamil leadership as a bunch\nof congenital idiots\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More of Tamil\npolitics in the next article. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala Any lawyer who has made it to the peak of his profession carries with him the authoritative air of having achieved the highest intellectual capacity to build up a case on hard evidence and presenting it cogently, logically, rationally to persuade his audience, court, forum, etc., of the unshakeable truth on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94223","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\/94223","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=94223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}