{"id":97047,"date":"2019-12-30T00:35:51","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T06:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=97047"},"modified":"2019-12-29T17:28:24","modified_gmt":"2019-12-30T00:28:24","slug":"tamil-politics-sinking-in-a-history-of-tamil-lies-part-i-reply-to-c-v-wigneswaran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/12\/30\/tamil-politics-sinking-in-a-history-of-tamil-lies-part-i-reply-to-c-v-wigneswaran\/","title":{"rendered":"Tamil politics sinking in a history of Tamil lies \u2013 Part I — Reply to C. V. Wigneswaran"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Faced with the monumental \nachievements of the Sinhala-Buddhist civilisation the Tamils have been \nstruggling constantly to pose as if they were the Gullivers who were the \nfounding architects of the nation, from the dawn of  history\u201d,  and the rest \nwere all second-class Lilliputians. However, in the twentieth century, as \ndecolonisation unleashed the suppressed grass root forces, the Tamils of Sri \nLanka were in for a rude shock. They were unnerved and shaken by the \nconsciousness of their scanty history. Their arrogant response was to make a \nmountain out of their mole hill in the north, partly to claim that they are \nsuperior to the other Tamil-speaking people and partly to downgrade the \nclassical heritage of the Sinhala-Buddhists. The inadequacies of their patchy \nhistory \u2013 unlike the unbroken line of Sinhala-Buddhist history from the \npre-Christian era \u2013 have forced them to revise and rewrite their history to make \nthem look good in their own eyes and that of the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overwhelmed by the dynamic and the \ndominant forces of history rising to regain its lost heritage in the \n post-colonial age the Tamils have reacted aggressively to claim huge chunks of \nhistory and territory \u2013 a reactionary move that  has retarded the growth of all \ncommunities. Besides, the intransigent and self-destructive politics of the \nTamils have boomeranged on them.  Their arrogant political ideology led them to \nthe most humiliating defeat in the  battlefield. Their only consolation has been \nto blame everything on the Sinhala-Buddhists, even their catastrophic end in \nNandikadal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Unable to face the challenges of \nthe new post-colonial world they took to fear-mongering as the last resort. It \nis their fears that have driven them to demonise the majority as their perennial \nenemy. The Tamil leadership has survived in the competitive democratic \nelectorates by creating the Sinhala-Buddhist bogey. The mytho-maniacs of the \nnorth cannot survive in the political arena without this bogeyman. Not having a \ngreatness of their own the Tamil ideologues have been on the defensive quite \naggressively, often claiming to be as great as the Sinhala-Buddhists, or even \nsuperior. Not having a grand history equivalent to that of  the  epic \nSinhala-Buddhist civilisation, they fill it with arrogant and ignorant claims \nthat have exacerbated inter-ethnic harmony and peaceful co-existence in the \npost-independent age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consequently, one of the main \nindustries of the Tamil ideologues has been to manufacture a history that has \n(a) not happened in recorded time, or (b) substantiated by the available \nevidence of the known past. They are desperately in search of a history that \ncould justify, incontrovertibly, their modern political agenda for a separate \nstate. Without a history comparable to that of the Sinhala-Buddhists their claim \nfor a separate state would be watery. Just nothing more than pachcha \nthanni<\/em><\/strong>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are also aware that history \nplays a decisive role in shaping the politics that bedevils our lives.   Prof. \nK. Indrapala, the controversial Tamil historian, highlights this aspect when he \nwrote: History has been enlisted and mobilised to fight the issues of our day. \nSome academic historians have become willing recruits for this battle\u201d. (p. ix \u2013 \nThe Evolution of an Ethnic Identity, The Tamils in Sri Lanka, C.300 BCE to \nC. 1200 CE.<\/em><\/strong>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So history has become an \nindispensible factor for the Tamils to pursue their separatist political goal. \nHistory has become an incurable obsession with the Tamils. Absence of a glorious \nhistory makes their heart yearn for a history that would validate their \ndelusional past. The best they have produced so far to justify their elusive \npolitical demands is the Vadukoddai Resolution of 1976. It contains the essence \nof the politicised history of the Jaffna Tamils. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the crisis faced by Jaffna \nintellectuals has been the absence of an authoritative history to guide their \nthinking rationally and objectively.  They have \nbits and pieces picked from here and there but never a comprehensive \nhistory measuring up to objective academic standards until the late \n20th<\/sup> century. It was a serious gap in the known history\u201d, wrote the \nmost controversial Tamil historian, \nKarthigesu Indrapala. In fact, he was sent to the London University in 1962 to \nfill this gap. (Ibid.)  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

His doctoral thesis confirmed that \nthe Tamil settlements began in the 12th<\/sup> and 13th<\/sup> \ncenturies. The Tamils who believed that they had a kingdom from the dawn of \nhistory\u201d (Vadukoddai Resolution) were floored by this scholarly research written \nby a Tamil historian.  To this day the Tamil prefer to believe in the \npoliticised history of the Vadukoddai Resolution which has become the Bible of \nthe Tamil activists. They refuse to accept that it is the best fiction ever \nwritten by the Tamils of Jaffna to glorify a past filled with the first recorded ethnic cleansing, \nfirst mass massacre of the Tamils by the Tamils, Tamil casteist fascism, \nsubhuman oppression of the Tamils by the Tamils, persecution and denial of the \nbasic human rights of Tamils to even walk in God-given sunlight, or drink a sip \nof water from the Vellalar wells. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tamil obsession with their \nconcocted history is expressed clearly in the opening line of the Vadukoddai \nResolution. It says: Whereas, throughout the centuries, from the dawn of \nhistory, the Sinhalese and Tamil nations have divided between themselves the \npossession of Ceylon\u2026\u2026..\u201d  This gambit sums up the Tamil version of history \nwritten to justify their current political agenda of demanding a separate state. \nTheir argument is that they had a separate state from the dawn of history\u201d and, \ntherefore, they are entitled to another one now. It is this narrative that is \nused to justify the divisive politics propagated by Tamil ideologues. Their \ncries for fifty-fifty\u201d, federalism, and Eelam are derived from this assumption \nwhich is based on a narrow, self-serving history that dismisses the larger \ndimensions of an overarching history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They have been digging every nook \nand corner to discover evidence of their antiquity to prove that there was a \nseparate Tamil nation\u201d from the dawn of history\u201d. First, this lie can be \nexposed with a simple statistic. History records that there were 181 kings from \nthe Anuradhapura period (BC) to the Kandyan kingdom. This included Tamil kings \nwho were the rulers of the Sinhala kingdoms and not that of Tamils for they had \nnone. But if the Tamil nation\u201d existed from the dawn of history\u201d shouldn\u2019t\u2019 \nthey too have had over 150 kings, at least? \nThe best of available history of the Tamils, Yalpana Vaipava \nMalai,<\/em><\/strong> records only 20 odd kings. So in what earthly kingdom were the \nTamil kings ruling from the dawn of history\u201d? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, the irony is that though \nthe Tamils boast of an ancient history comparable to that of the Sinhalese they \ndid not even have a valid history book written in their name, says historian Dr. \nMurugar Gunasingham, in his doctoral theses presented to the Sydney University.  \nHe claims that his book, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, A Study of its \nOrigins<\/em><\/strong>,(1999), is the first of its kind to document authoritatively the \nhistory of Jaffna. In contrast, the voluminous tomes of Sri Lankan history \nexplain with its physical depth alone the length of the Sinhala-Buddhist \nkingdoms, civilisation and culture.  Compare this to the size of Yalpana \nVaipava Malai. <\/em><\/strong>Without the notes of the C. Brito, who translated and \nedited it in 1879, it runs into only 59 quarto pages. Can the Tamil kingdoms \nthat were there from the dawn of time\u201d be reduced to 59 pages? And that too was \nwritten not out of a deep sense of history like Mahanama who wrote the \nMahavamsa <\/em><\/strong>or Dhammakitti who wrote the Chulavamsa. <\/em><\/strong>It was \nwritten because the Dutch Governor, Jan Maccara, commissioned Mayilvakanam to do \nthe job for his official guidance and use.  The authors of Mahavamsa \n<\/em><\/strong>and Chulavamsa <\/em><\/strong>wrote their epic poems because they were \nmoved instinctively by a deep sense of history driving them to fulfil their \nsocial and spiritual mission. They did not write their texts to please foreign \nmasters, or because foreign masters gave them orders to do so. But Tamil \nhistorians from Mayilvakanam  to Mudliyar Rasanayagam wrote their histories to \nplease the colonial governors.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tamils, by and large, depend on \nscraps of archaeology to prove their antiquity. No one can deny their presence \nin Sri Lanka soil from the dim distant past. In fact, the Mahavamsa \n<\/em><\/strong>mentions the Tamils as bit players more than the Sinhalese. It even \nmentions the role of Tamils gigolos in Queen Anula\u2019s court.  Like them there \nwere many migrants who visited the shores of Sri Lanka. The core issue, however, \nis whether they had a history comparable to that of the Sinhalese. A potsherd \nhere and a skeleton elsewhere do not add up to a glorious history. Lacking in a \nhistory comparable to that of the Sinhala-Buddhist civilisation, they have been \nfrustrated by their failure to fill the gaping empty spaces in their past. \nUnable to find a history that can match that of the Sinhala-Buddhists they have \nresorted to (1) either denigrate and downgrade the Sinhala-Buddhist civilisation \nthat dominate Sri Lankan history , or (2) fill the blank spaces with \ndistortions, misrepresentations, misinterpretations or brazen lies. C.  V. \nWigneswaran\u2019s  interview (Ceylon Telegraph<\/em><\/strong> —  27\/12\/2019) is a \ntypical example of both tactics. He is a committed Tamil ideologue struggling, \nwith mental gymnastics, to fill the empty spaces of Tamil history with \ndistortions, misrepresentations, misinterpretations and sometimes with even \nblatant lies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the charge of lying in \npublic is a serious one let me begin with it.  Here is a verbatim quote from his \ninterview: Professor Indrapala wrote his thesis for his Doctorate in the \n1960s. They would not give him his Doctorate at the Ceylon University if he told \nthe truth of the existence of Tamils prior to Chola occupation. So he said real \ncogent evidence of permanent settlements of Tamils was found only during the \nChola occupation.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this statement CVW avers that \nIndrapala would not have got his doctorate from the Ceylon University if he \ntold the truth of the existence of Tamils prior to Chola occupation\u201d. \n(Parenthetically, it must be stated that Indrapala in his doctoral thesis states \nthat Tamil settlements began around  the 12th<\/sup> and 13th<\/sup> \ncenturies, blasting the Tamil beliefs that their history began from the dawn of \ntime). CVW is quite emphatic in saying that Indrapala couldn\u2019t have written the \ntruth about the Tamil origins dating back to the dawn  of history\u201d because \ntelling the truth would not have enabled him to get his doctorate from the \nCeylon University. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, CVW is accusing \nIndrapala of sacrificing the truth to get his doctorate from the Ceylon \nUniversity.  CVW is, perhaps unwittingly, branding Indrapala as a liar with no \nintegrity. In the process he is also questioning the capacity of Indrapala to \ntell the truth.  If Indrapala could lie, according to CVW, what trust can one \nplace in Tamil historians to tell the truth? If his doctoral thesis was a lie \nhow can one trust his subsequent thesis, The Evolution of an Ethnic \nIdentity, The Tamils in Sri Lanka, C.300 BCE to C. 1200 CE.<\/em><\/strong>) written to \nrecant his doctoral thesis? Isn\u2019t CVW also saying that in 1962 there was an \nanti-Tamil professoriat at the Ceylon University that would accept only lies? Is \nthis true?   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is quite obvious that the \nTamils are utterly confused about their undiscoverable history that exists only \nin their imagination. In the absence of hard evidence they fill their imagined \nhistory with lies like CVW. He lies about the Mahavamasa.<\/em><\/strong> He lies \nabout the Yalpana Vaipava Malai<\/em><\/strong>.  Even on the verifiable issue of \nIndrapala he lies through his teeth. Indrapala should know best of how he came \nto write his thesis that shattered the myths of the Tamils. He tells an entirely \ndifferent story of how, when and where he got his doctorate based on the \nhistorical evidence available to him at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He says: \u2026\u2026..(I)n 1962, when as \njunior as a junior member of teaching staff of the university at Peradeniya \n(then known as the University of Ceylon), I was planning my post-graduate \nresearch, the late Prof. W. J. F. LaBrooy, my revered teacher and, that time, \nHead of the Department of History at the university, advised me to research into \nthe early history of the Tamils of Sri Lanka for my doctoral dissertation\u2026\u2026.In \nOctober 1963, I enrolled as a postgraduate student at the School of Oriental and \nAfrican Studies of the University of London and commenced my research on the \nancient settlements of the Dravidian-speakers (please note, not Tamil-speakers) \nin Sri Lanka. I was fortunate to engage in this research in a department headed \nby Prof. Bernard Lewis (still a leading specialist in Middle Eastern history), \nunder the overall supervision of the late Prof. A. L. Basham (then the foremost \nBritish historian of ancient India) and the  guidance of Dr. Johannes de \nCasparis (then Reader in History at SOAS and later Professor at the University \nof Leiden), whose profound knowledge of South and Southeast Asian history as \nwell as expertise in Indian and Indonesian epigraphy became invaluable for my \ntraining, My thesis was completed in October 1965.\u201d (p.vii \u2013 \nIbid).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indrapala who should know better \nthan anyone else about the origin of his thesis says that he wrote and presented \nit to the London University. CVW says that Indrapala presented it to the racist \nCeylon University and that\u2019s why the Tamil researcher could not tell the truth. \nIndrapala contradicts even the racist attack on the Ceylon University because he \nspeaks fondly and reverentially of his fellow-academics at the Ceylon \nUniversity.  So which of the two stories would the reader believe: the facts as \nnarrated by Indrapala or lies concocted by CVW? More than the lie of CVW it is \nhis incorrigible anti-Sinhala-Buddhist hatred that comes out in distorting \nsimple basic facts of the known history and that of historians that is \nunpardonable. It reveals the calibre of Tamil intellectuals whose penchant for \nbelieving in their own lies far exceeds their capacity to believe in basic \nfacts.  It is disgraceful that a Tamil judge should resort to this kind of \nvenomous hatred to prove the fictitious fantasies of their corrosive and \ndivisive politics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

—————————-END<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala Faced with the monumental achievements of the Sinhala-Buddhist civilisation the Tamils have been struggling constantly to pose as if they were the Gullivers who were the founding architects of the nation, from the dawn of  history\u201d,  and the rest were all second-class Lilliputians. However, in the twentieth century, as decolonisation unleashed […]<\/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-97047","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\/97047","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=97047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}