“D. S. Senanayake, and Thondaman senior, T. B. Jayah have already shown the path for Sri Lanka. We Tamils have to get rid of our power-hungry, sovereignist-minded (Arasu-minded) expatriate pseudo-Tamils from their dictating positions, and forge a path of unity and amity with the Sinhalese. I believe that the Hon. Mr. Ananadasangaree, Douglas Devananda, and the new, yet unproven leaders like Muralitharan (Karuna Amman) will join hands with Mr. Rajapaksa to eliminate Prabhakaran, the cat's paw of the Colombo Tamils, to follow in the inclusionist path of Mr. Obama.”
by Sebastian Rasalingam
(November 11, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) Lynn Ockersz, writing a feature article in the Island (7th Nov. 2008), claims that "Obama's triumph is a heavy setback for majoritarianism and racial bigotry". The author is only partially correct, and gives a completely wrong twist to the historic victory of Obama in trying to make political points which go starkly counter to the Unitarian, inclusionist politics of Obama.and Rajapaksa.
Senanayak's approach was the Obama approach
Let me quote Sri Lanka's great leader and inclusionist, our first prime minister D. S. Senanayaka, from his acceptance speech in the state council in 1946. His was the Obama approach.
"...throughout this period the Ministers had in view one objective only, the attainment of maximum freedom. Accusations of Sinhalese domination have been bandied about. We can afford to ignore them for it must be plain to every one that what we sought was not Sinhalese domination, but Ceylonese domination. We devised a scheme that was favourable to the minorities; we deliberately protected them against discriminatory legislation. We vested important powers in the Governor-General.(sic). We decided upon an Independent Public Service Commission so as to give assurance that there should be no communalism in the Public Service. I do not normally speak as a Sinhalese, and I do not think that the Leader of this Council ought to think of himself as a Sinhalese representative, but for once I should like to speak as a Sinhalese and assert with all the force at my command that the interests of one community are the interests of all. We are one of another, whatever race or creed."
Rejection of this inclusive approach by the Tamil leaders
Senanayaka's approach was rejected, mainly by the Colombo upper-crust Tamil leaders of the day. LTTE writings of today are full of attempts to besmirch Senanayake's reputation and claim that he was a "Sinhala chauvinist". When Ponnambalam moderated his position and suggested "responsible cooperation", he was declared a "Traitor" by Chelvanayagam. The Tamils already had set up racist political parties, with specific racist names like "Tamil congress". The most extreme was soon to be founded. This was known as the "Ilanaki Tamil Arasu Kadchchi", and demanded that the Sinhalese be considered invaders in the "Traditional Homelands" of the Tamils in the North-East. The Muslims and the Hill-country Tamils were already excluded by this formula. Unknown to the world outside Tamil society, vast sections of poor Tamils were excluded by the hierarchic conception of a caste-dominated society which was implicitly accepted by the Naganathans and Chelvanayagams of the Tamil leadership. They were wealthy men who had everything and now wanted regal power as well. After all, the word "Raashta" in Sanskrit, or "Rajya" in singhalese, becomes "Rasa" in simple Tamil, as in my name. But the old Tamil grammar "Tolkkaappiam" prescribes that a word beginning with a consonant like "r" should be preceded by a vowel. So "rasa" becomes "arasa", and means "Rajya or "Kingdom". All this is obvious to any reasonably educated Tamil or Sinhalese. The Buddhist monks, learned in Sanskrit and other classical languages certainly knew that the "Tamil Arasu kadchchi" was simply the "Tamil Kingdom party", and deeply suspected the pseudo-federalism of Chelvanayagam. It was only the English educated (i.e., tamil-uneducated) Karuvakaadu (Cinnamon Gardens)
Tamils who feigned that this was a "federal" party. From the day one of the setting up of this "Federal Party", they began to agitate in exactly the same manner as the agitation for ejecting the British from India. I was a young man living in jaffna in the early 1950s, and I did not think that the analogy was in any way correct or just. This was confirmed when I moved to Hatton and finally to Colombo. where I began to see more of Sinhalese society. The sinhalese people were far more inclusive than our Jaffna society which even shut of different layers within itself.
Thus, the Tamil leaders followed not just majoritarianism in the "Tamil Homelands", but also a level of exclusiveness that only the Afrikaner whites were preaching at that time.
Thus we see the stark contrast between the Senanayaka approach and the approach of the Tamil leaders who paved the way for the hardening of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike and others who were NOT, fundamentally, racists. Young people of today have to read the Hansard debates of the 1950s to see who was racist and who was not. The "Tamil Arasu Kadchchi" did not hold meetings or lead campaigns to explain its position to the southern Sinahla electorate. It did not attempt to build bridges. Instead it began to break down even the bridges that existed between the two communities. It tried to wrest political power from Colombo by attempting to bring the local administration in the North and the East to a complete halt. The consequence was the retardation of the development of those regions, creation of strong animosity among the two ethnic groups, generation of political upheaval, and the nurturing of youthful extremist "Makkal Padai" groups to push the vanguard of the fight against the Colombo government. By 1976, at Vaddukkoddei, no one condemned the assassinations of the previous year. Full sanction was given to the "armed struggle", in declarations which were personally sanctioned by Chelvanayagam. The great leader Thondaman Sr. refused to accede to such suicidal politics.
Black-American Politics stayed the moral course.
The Black-American politics of the USA is a model of total contrast from that of Ilankai Thamil politics. In 1948 most blacks could not even ride in a bus, let alone exercise any reasonable rights. That is, the blacks were depressed, deprived and discriminated. In contrast, the Tamils in 1948 were the leaders of business, professions, politics and controlled the financial sector. Yet they claimed discrimination and took up a separatist struggle. Our upper-class Tamils, the Natesans, Milroy Pauls, Thiruchelvams, Vaithyanathans were more like the highly privileged Jews of the USA and very unlike the Blacks of USA. In response to the Klu-Klux-Klan and other fascist organizations, the blacks of the USA also set up violent organizations, like the Black Panthers. There were calls for a separate "Black nation" But, in contrast to what happened in Sri Lanka, the educated black leaders DID NOT support this violent approach.
The Christian clergy among the American Blacks also insisted on a high moral path, although there were notable exceptions. Unfortunately, more often than not, the church fathers - bureaucrats rather than servants of Christ, rarely see the true moral path! The upper echelon Christian clergy among the Tamils came from the very same upper classes that produced the Chelvanayagams, Wilsons, Eliezers and Chickeras. The church leaders themselves had, over the years, and almost unwittingly, moved increasingly to the Tamil racist position that had been made respectable by several decades of G. G. Ponnambalam. The good sense of people like Handy Perimpanayagam had evaporated in the "Jaffna Boycott" misadventure of the Donoughmore era. Thus the church itself became an implicit advocate of Tamil separatism. This is the very opposite in spirit to the inclusive politics of African-Americans which has now reached its zenith in Obama. In contrast, the exclusivist politics of the rich Colombo Tamils has brought us into our Nadir, the fascist regime of Prabhakaran.
Thus Lyn Ockersz has given a completely wrong interpretation of the situation for Ilanaki Thamils in the context of Obama's victory. Obama has accepted integration within the unitarian concept of an "American".
He has not asked that Mississipi, Louisiana, South Carolina and other "black states" of America be converted to exclusive homelands for the Afro-Americans because they are discriminated by the whites. He has not talked of "meaningful power-devolution"- the constatt empty chant of the pseudo-federalists. Obama has not said that over 30% of the Black youth are in prison in the US. Obama has not said that most blacks get beaten by the police, even in California, and justice is only possible for blacks if they are rich. That is, although there is enough racism in the USA to build up the sort of confrontational politics practiced by our Tamil expatriates, the Satheesan Kumarans, Wakeley Pauls, the TNA stooges and their likes, Obama chose to follow a constructive path to Afro-American unity.
Rajapaksa's Manadala and Obamas America are unitary concepts.
D. S. Senanayake, and Thondaman senior, T. B. Jayah have already shown the path for Sri Lanka. We Tamils have to get rid of our power-hungry, sovereignist-minded (Arasu-minded) expatriate pseudo-Tamils from their dictating positions, and forge a path of unity and amity with the Sinhalese. I believe that the Hon. Mr. Ananadasangaree, Douglas Devananda, and the new, yet unproven leaders like Muralitharan (Karuna Amman) will join hands with Mr. Rajapaksa to eliminate Prabhakaran, the cat's paw of the Colombo Tamils, to follow in the inclusionist path of Mr. Obama. Thus Mr. Obama's politics is a victory for the unitarian Sri Lankan concept which is guiding Mr. Rajapaksa, even though other, more divisive Sinahala voices, Muslim and Tamil voices, may also be around him. But he has included them all in his big "Mandala", an old Tamil-Sanskrit word which probably means the same thing in Sinhala.
Post a Comment