The Lost Rights of the Tamils

| by C. Naganathan

( June 06, 2012, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian ) At the 14th Convention of the ITAK in May 2012, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) leader R Sampanthan was spot on when he said,

“…Up to 500 years ago, the Tamil people established their own governments, and governed themselves. Our party symbolizes a time in history…during which our people had their own sovereign Tamil governments...Our fundamental objective is to regain our community’s Home, its historical habitat and its sovereignty.

Until the 10th century AD, the people in the island irrespective of their racial background were scattered all over the island with the Tamil settlements more towards Rajarata (North of Anuradapura and close to Polonnaruva). According to the historian Dr. M. Gunasingham, from around 10th to 13th century A.D, (Subsequent to the Chola domination of Sri Lanka in the 10th century A.D), people who identified themselves as Buddhists and Hela/Sihala shifted their seats of rule from the ancient kingdoms of Anuradapura/ Polonnaruva (ruled alternatively by both Sinhala and Tamil kings) towards South, West and Central Sri Lanka while the people who identified themselves as Saiva and Demela moved their ruling structures from these same regions to the North and East of the island. For many centuries from then, until the Portuguese conquest of the Jaffna kingdom from the Tamil king Cankili 11, the Tamils and the Sinhalese were living in two separate regions in Sri Lanka. Just like the Sinhalese, the Tamil people of Sri Lanka also established their own kingdom/government, and governed themselves independently. The Tamil kingdom, which extended up to the eastern province, came under Portuguese domination in 1621, and this was how the Tamils lost their sovereignty, independence and their traditional homeland.

Even after the European colonialists (Portuguese, Dutch and British) arrived, until the British united the Tamil North to the Sinhala South in 1833 for their convenience in administration, the Tamil speaking areas remained a federal region. The Portuguese, when they captured the Tamil kingdom, appointed a captain-major as the governor of Jaffna and administered it as a distinct political unit. The Dutch continued the same. The British gave credence to a united Ceylon in 1833, ignoring the historical realities that existed. This uniform administrative structure and the idea of a “united Ceylon” spelt doom for the Tamils’ distinctiveness, again, something the Sinhalese rulers had failed to achieve.

When the European colonialists arrived, what all of them clearly observed and experienced during their period was that, in the island of Sri Lanka, there were two different Nations (Sinhalese and Tamils) having two different languages, religions, cultures, and living in two well defined and clearly and naturally demarcated (with thick jungles, lakes, river, etc) land areas with their own kingdoms within their traditional lands. The Tamils lived as a majority within their separate land area (North & East) and the Sinhalese also lived as a majority within their land area (South, West & Central). The British, on seeing the naturally existing borders of the two ethnic groups used their technology to demarcate them as two separate regions (occupied by two separate ethnic groups) and created the maps for the first time somewhere in the 1800s. In their map published in England, the area that constituted the traditional homeland of the Tamils is unmistakably shown to extend from Chilaw northward and eastward to a point near Madawchchi; south of Padavil Kulam extending to the Trincomalee district; and the Batticaloa district down to the mouth of the Walawa Ganga in the south.

Later in 1833, the British created one government with one centralized, unitary form of administration under a governor in Colombo without the consent of the people, and in doing so ended the hopes for a Tamil nation as a distinct political entity, something that no conqueror had managed to do - to stifle the flame of an independent existence. The introduction of a unitary form of government (creating a single majority) was a tragic step in the wrong direction which led to the Sinhalese hegemony over the Tamils. It was the grave mistake on the part of the British to bind together in a common polity the two ethnic groups with no common links, and to bind them together by the whip they wielded. It was a death knell for the Tamils’ distinctiveness, freedom, independence and their centuries-old sovereignty.

In his speech Sampanthan only speaks about restoring the legitimate rights of the Tamils which we lost to the Sinhalese via the colonial rulers (British).