The case for original place names in Sri Lanka, in each language.

By Gam Vaesiya

(April 05, Ontario, Canada , Sri Lanka Guardian) A number of articles have appeared in the recent past, in several newspapers and in Internet blogs, discussing the `"pros and cons" of reverting to the original place names of the country. The blog-sites of the Sri Lanka newspapers had iscussed Place names in the North and re-featured an old article by Horsburgh.More recently, Upali Jayasekera (UJ), Austin Davis, and most recently Mr. S. Abewickrema and Mr. P. A. G. Henry have written about traditional place names in the opinion columns of the Island.

Mr. Abewickrema also wrote in the Island and contends that continued use of anglicized names like Negambo, Trincomalee, or tolerating post boxes with the "George Rex" emblem (see image) are "Colonial relics" that we should do without. Mr. Henry states that "If we try to replace the anglicized names of our popular destinations like Kandy, Negombo, Galle etc with their historical names as suggested by UJ and transliterate them into English, it is likely to create unnecessary confusion specially among foreigners". Meanwhile Austin Davis fears that a segment of history would be obliterated.

Multiplicity of English transliterations of place-names.

Sri Lanka's history has woven itself into a rich tapestry since the time of the ancient sea routes and the silk route which called on Mahatheetha (Mannar) and connected ancient Europe with the far East. Thus contemporary Sri Lanka has place names which contain roots derived from Elu, Pali, Sanskrit, Sinhala, Tamil, Malayalam, Portuguese, Dutch and English names. Some names have arisen due to the inability of the invader to accurately sound a local name. Thus a name may have a variety of different spellings in English. Tamil names are even more daunting than Sinhala place names. Thus a town near Madakalapuwa, known in Sinhala as "Kirala weva", and "Iralaikkulam" in Tamil gets anglicized into "Irallaikulam" and "Eeralaakulam" as well. This is not an exception, but is quite typical of the problem. The politically famous Vadukoddai has at least five anglicized avatars, viz., "Vadukoddai, Vaddukoddai, Vaddukkodai, Vaddukkodai, Vaddukoddei". Even in 1900, older residents of Vadukoddai knew the original place name to be Batakotte, which even figured in the name of the American seminary which existed at the present site of Jaffna College. The sinhala place-name testifies to its use as a garrison town even during the times of the Portuguese historian de Queyroz. A detailed study of the traditional place names of Sri Lanka has been published in print as a book, as well as in on-line format (see for example, dh-web.org/place.names/ which may be accessed by clicking (Click here)).

Clearly then, Mr. Henry's belief that using English names would alleviate possible confusion is based on his focusing on a few well known locations like Colombo, Galle and Kandy. A systematic officially recognized English transliteration of the Sinhala and Tamil place names is a crying need that should be addressed by the official-maps unit of the government. That is, we need to replace the multiple forms of English spelling of a place name like Vadukoddai (Batakotte) by a unique rendering.

Our Rich Historical Tapestry

However, that does NOT mean that we throw out the usage in several languages that we have inherited as part of our rich historical tapestry. Thus Alimankada is known as Elephant Pass in English, and Anaiyiravu in Tamil. An old Sinhala prakrit name like Rana-madu becomes Iraanamadu in Tamil, in conformity with the grammatical demands of the Tolkappian, where consonants like "R" are decorated with a preceding vowel "I", in this case. The Mahavamsa clearly lists names of sea ports like Meepathota (Madupadathitha), which were directly rendered into Iluppaikadavai by the Kalinga-Magha forces, and today rendered by a variety of spellings like " Illuppakadavai, Illupaikadavai".

The solution to this multi-lingual place-names is simple. Let the Sinhala writers, journalists and Sinhala speakers (i.e., some 75% of the population) use the traditional place names which are available for almost all place names through out the island. Similarly, let the Tamil counterparts (i.e., some 10-15%) use the Tamil name if available. The English writers could use the
English name, with the Sinhala or Tamil name in parenthesis. This is already a well established formula. Thus the place-name Brussels becomes Bruxelle when writing in French, Bru(mlaut)ssel in German, and Bruselas is Spanish.

It is time to save the British historical legacy

As for the "colonial signs" like the post boxes of the British era (see attached image), the government must catalogue them, protect them, and make every endeavor to
display them in situ. If that is impossible, the object can be removed and displayed in a local museum. They are extremely valuable, irreplaceable tourist attractions, as some of them are a century old and still in excellent shape.

Some of the older people may have lived under the British Raj, and may fail to think these objects as historical. However, it time now to recognize that the British Era is a part of history, and we need to take active steps to safeguard its historical artifacts which are fast disappearing as old buildings, road names, old bridges, traffic roundabouts, culverts etc., are "renovated", "modernized" and lost for ever. Howmany quaint old iron bridges have we lost for the modern pre-stressed concrete ones?

I also attach herewith a "limestone" bridge from the Bibila area, built in 1872 by the 10th Division Pioneers Engineering Corps (see image). This is a unique engineering construction from the 19th century, which should also be preserved at all costs, rather than demolished in the name of road modernization. If road modernization is needed, the new road should pass along side this bride, and mark off the ancient bridge as a historical site. Read more...

Regarding Kath Nobel's comment on: "Another perfectly reasonable idea"

By Gam Vaesiya writes from Ontario, Canada

(March 25, Ontario, Sri Lnaka Guardian) Kath Noble is one of Sri Lanka's columnists who is always worth reading. She is well informed and writes with good judgment. I read her comment which appeared as feature article in The Island (17-March-2010) as well as in Transcurrents, ( read)on the proposal by SPUR, an Australian expatriate group. The "Transcurrents version" has the benefit of some reader comments as well.

SPUR has proposed that electoral

representation in the North needs to be reviewed. In Kath Noble's words " They want the Government to undertake an immediate census of the North and East, with a view to cutting the number of representatives from those districts in Parliament". Kath Nobel claims that "you'd have thought everybody in Sri Lanka would be extra careful about suggesting policies Tamils might consider discriminatory." KN explains further: "Rushing in to calculate how many people need to be represented and therefore how many seats the North and East are due in Parliament isn't going to be viewed with anything like understanding. It will be seen as taking advantage of a crisis to get one over on Tamils".

Where angles fear to tread?

In fact, Kath Nobel cites the University Admissions issue as an example of what not to do. The University standardization came into effect because the 1970 SLFP government in coalition with the LSSP recognized in-grained inequalities in the existing system which discriminated in favour of Colombo, Kandy and Jaffna, and took steps to correct them. The same government took steps to nationalize the (mainly Christian) private schools, and indeed earned for ever the hostility of the Anglicized products of these schools.
Some of the more enraged even attempted to carry out a coup d'etat.

Should one not put into place democratic processes because it would offend the
sensitivity of some powerful group? Didn't every democratic reform upset the Tamil or Christian or Sinhala-conservative ruling classes? Dare we have Universal Franchise?

Kath Noble should have gone back many years further in history. The first quarter century (1900-1920) was idyllic for the Tamil ruling class as they, in the person of the "pure-laine" Ponnambalam Arunachalam, represented even the Sinhalese in front of the British. Then came, the Donoughmore commission "suggesting policies Tamils might consider discriminatory", if we are to use Kath Nobel's words. The suggestion of SPUR is only a faint echo of Donoughmore, who proposed universal franchise, with one vote for each,, irrespective of wealth, even for women, and even ignoring caste! The whole of the North recoiled from all this and rejected the Donoughmore proposals. Ponnambalam
Ramanathan led two delegations to London hoping to get the caste system included in the constitution. Meanwhile, G. G. Ponnambalam (GGP), realizing that he could usurp the Ramanathans by playing the even more inflammatory race politics, began his campaigns of the 1930s, with attacks on the Mahavamsa, and on the Sinhalese "race" claimed to be a hybrid "off-shoot" of the Tamils. This lead to the 1939 Sinhala-Tamil race riots which were rapidly quelled by the British authorities. This is in strong contrast to the post-1956 riots where law and order always arrived far too late.

Pan-Sinhala Government.

The reaction to the insensitivity of Ponnambalam was the rise of S. W. R. D. Banadarnaike (SWRD) and the Sinhala Maha Saba. Ponnambalam knew very well that universal franchise meant the end of the hegemony of the Tamil ruling class over the Ceylonese people. Meanwhile, D. S. Senanayake (DSS) wanted to prove that a pan-Sinhala government could run fairly and without communalism. By clever manipulation of the committees of the state council, DSS established a pan-Sinhala government in the State council for a few years. Although the Sinhalese had accepted a quarter century of Tamil hegemony during Arunachalam's time, the Tamils strongly resented the few years of the pan-Sinhala state council under Senanayake. But this was enough for Senanayake to prove to the British constitutionalists that a non-discriminatory Sinhala government could
function. The British rejected Ponnambalam's 50-50 proposal, and GGP's claims of discrimination in education, colonization, health, employment etc., and essentially rehashed the constitutional package that Senanayake wanted, in the guise of the Soulbury commission. The first cabinet of Senanayake, with 14 ministers, had excellent representation of Tamils and a Muslim. The foreign ministry, the Galoya board which ran the colonization schemes, the armed forces, the universties, the civil service, the banking sector etc., all had Tamil representation roughly equal to twice or even three times the demographic percentage.

The battles against causeways

Kath Noble should go back to read the Hansard of those times. The Northern Peninsula was a disconnected set of villages amid lowlands, impassable due to lack of causeways and proper roads. And yet, every time the responsible minister proposed building such causeways, there were stout objections. "Sensitivities" of the type mentioned by Kath Noble in her judgment against SPUR were coming into play. However, here it was not ethnicity but caste that was relevant. There were objections to providing causeways to areas with low caste villages. There were even objections to converting Jaffna (a very populous urban council) into the status of a Municipal council. The Colombo Tamils who owned property in Jaffna did not want to pay higher taxes! However, all this was presented as examples of Sinhalese interference in Tamil matters. Dr. Jane Russell, the British Historian writes that Tamil politicians essentially regarded that any legislation touching the North should not concern the Sinhalese legislators.

Exclusive Tamil Homelands

S. J. V. Chelvanayagam did not accept the "Ceylonese" concept that D. S. Senanayake was trying to build up. His associated had published and popularized a vigorous, militant genre of historical writing claiming that the Tamils were the earliest and ever present inhabitants of Sri Lanka. These Tamil-nationalist historians, while condemning the Mahavamsa as false history, would in the same breath reformulate it, with the names of Kings cast in to Tamil form, vith Vijaya becoming Vijayan, and Kashyapa becoming Kasi-Appaan etc. The concept of the exclusive Tamil Homelands already existed in writings that appeared around 1940 onwards. In 1945 E. L. Thambimuttu had written the book "Dravida, a History of the Tamils from Prehistoric times to 1800". The 1949 Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi manifesto of Maradana stated an exclusive land claim, and established the clarion call for a separate state. As found in the Tamil-language election material distributed by the ITAK in 1952 in Jaffna, the objective of the party was to use every means possible to rouse the "uchchaham and Uruppu" of the people to establish a separate Arasu of the Tamils. The talk of Federalism was restricted to Colombo audiences only.

S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike was no racist. He was a democrat and an opportunist who did not have the political adroitness or sagacity of D.S. Senanayake. When SWRD formed his government in 1956 with the "Sinhala-only" cry, Muslims and other minorities did join his cabinet. What if the Tamils had also offered to cooperate with him and even join the government? The Colombo Tamils knew Bandaraniake very well as they all belonged to the same social class. They knew that he was not a racist. Some, like the Thiruchelvams, living down the same road may even have helped to bridge such a move. Given such a big move, SWRD would have had to make equally big concessions- and he could have.

And yet, that was far too big a step. The ITAK had already decided in 1949 that the Tamils were economically and organizationally strong enough to take on the Sinhala majority. The idea that the "invaders" must be driven out of the exclusive homelands, just as the British were driven out had been firmly spelt. In this case the invaders were the Sinhalese and the Muslims living in the North and the East. Every political process was to be used as a means of polarizing the two communities. Senanayake, be it Don Stephan or Dudley, or even GGP were to be painted as enemies of the Tamils.

An inevitable state of Affairs?

Kath Noble should now see that there was a determined inevitability that had to play its Aristophanean end inexorably. Of course, this reading of history can be sharply questioned. But then, every reading of history is only a cross-section of a multi-dimensional manifold of facts. Each cross section is different and shows to advantage some facts, while covering others. While I readily grant that a completely different analysis can be presented with equal vigour, I have attempted here to argue that SPUR's demand for electoral reform is just a feeble echo of what started in 1931. proposing one vote per person. They too touched Tamil sensitivities, being prone to the same objections as those of Kath Noble, generating a vehemence and force that are still shaking and stripping this country apart.

Irrespective of Tamil sensitivities, Sri Lanka today, and Ceylon then, have grappled with the refusal of the Tamil leadership to accept the concept of one vote for one man. The 1930s saw the upsetting of Tamil sensitivities with the rejection of Ramanathan's plea for legislatively recognizing caste. The 1940s saw the upsetting of tamil sensitivities with the rejection of the 50-50 formula by the British. The 1980s saw the complete recognition, by J. R. jayawardene, of Tamil as an equal-status official language, and the Indian proposals for provincial councils, mainly under the duress of the sessionist threat of the LTTE. of course, the LTTE took every step to prevent the implementaion of Tamil language, by threatening and forcing out from the government workers competent in Tamil.

Sebastian Rasalingam, an outspoken anti-LTTE Tamil writer, has characterized the "exclusive Tamil-Homelands" concept as being identicle to the Apartheid concept of the white Afrikaaner regimes. Kath Nobles's plea for continued appeasement of sentiments which originate from such macabre roots cannot surely be justified. Read more...

The Presidential election and what it reveals.

“The actual vote on the 26th of January is perfectly within this ball-park of figures. So, why was the election victory such a surprise to many people? Why did our newspapers and pundits claim that there was a “neck and neck" range. Why was the issue hyped to a case of immanent regime change?”
…………………………………………………..

By Gam Vaesiya

(January 31, Ontario - Canada , Sri Lanka Guardian) The results of the 2010 presidential election in Sri Lanka are depicted in the color-calibrated map shown here (courtesy: external link). The colours range from deep blue for Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR), to bright green for the opposition contender Sarath Fonseka (SF).
The vote in the North and the East

The strikingly large green areas are deceptive and demand attention. The green areas in the North and the East correspond roughly to the "exclusive Tamil homelands" claimed by the LTTE, and also by the TNA. The later spear-headed the Tamil supported for SF. However, although these green areas loom large in size, they merely added up to about 615,000 votes cast (see attached table). We have included tha nacient names of these regions to emphasize the historical connection of these areas to the rest of the country. The 615K vote from Jaffna, Trinco and Vanni combined is no more than one typical small area in the south, e.g., the Galle district!

Some commentators have claimed that the voter turn out in the North and east is only 20% of the listed voters. However, the voter lists do not reflect the current situation in these areas. The 158,000 votes in 2010, from the Jaffna district, of which nearly 50,000 went tp Rajapaksa, compare well with the 130,000 or so that the TNA polled in the post 2000 elections. Then the TNA members were the only candidates allowed by the LTTE. If the actual resident numbers and voting patterns in Jaffna during past elections (1994, 3.0 %, 1999, 19%, 2005, 0% -under LTTE boycott) are considered, the turn out in the North and East in effectively at the 40-50% level.

Modeling the voting using previous polling data

In Sri Lanka there had been recent provincial polls in most parts of the country. We could attempt to use those data, under the zeroth order assumption that the voters hold onto their basic allegiances, to make a prediction of the outcome of the 2010 presidential election. Such a calculation, using linear response estimates and the provincial-elections data base yield a 61% vote in favour of Mahinda Rajapaksa, with an error margin of plus or minus 4% depending on how the math is done (more technical details will be published
else where).

The actual vote on the 26th of January is perfectly within this ball-park of
figures. So, why was the election victory such a surprise to many people? Why
did our newspapers and pundits claim that there was a "neck and neck" range. Why was the issue hyped to a case of immanent regime change?
Rarajpaksa's bid for a second term

The incumbent president had successfully, in 3 years, brought to an end a very expensive war which had dragged on for 30 years. If he were a commission wallah, bent on making money and business, surely his game plane should have been to join up with the Western and Eastern arms dealers, mercantile groups etc., and milk the war for as long as he could! The war-based economy, with its patterns of self-serving NGOs, human-rights vendors, as well as western diplomats using the troubled waters to make a name for themselves, would have all become friends of the regime. Rajapaksa came in with a weak minority government. Instead of following the clear cut path well-trodden by his predecessors, Mahinda Rajapaksa undertook a path which was declared to be utter folly by all the experts, military and civil. An Indian expert claimed that Killiniochchi (Giraanika of ancient times) will become Rajapaksa's Stalingrad. The political opposition satraized that Rajapaksa had confused Alimankada (Elephant Pass) with Pamankada (a suburb of Colombo). However, defying enormous military odds, and enacting parliamentary stratagems based on splitting the opposition using pork-barrel tactics, recreating new foreign friends to defend himself against western interest groups, Rajapaksa and his team played a dizzying game that would have been the envy of any politician faced with such enormous odds.

And yet, the Colombo mercantile class as well as their commentators whose sentiments and sympathies are more well attuned to the interests of western capitals were utterly unimpressed. In their view, Rajapaksa should not have pursued a war against Prabhakaran, irrespective of his crimes against his own Tamils, and against the Sinhalese and Muslims. They are utterly uninterested in the nationalist agenda of the Rajapaksa program. In their view, they are better equipped to push the mercantile agenda of the west in Sri Lanka. Ranil Wickremasingha and the TNA both belong to the essentially right wing, elitist, westernized mercantile class of the country. Clearly understanding that they have no political strength in the country, they needed a disguise to appear in the nationalist garb that has become popular in the Country as a reaction to the secessionist war. They succeeded in recruiting a disgruntled army commander as their front man for the election. Thus the Green regions of the map, showing the voter pattern in many of the urban centers (Colombo, Kandy, Galle) should not be interpreted as a pro-LTTE vote.

It should be interpreted as a pro-western, pro-market vote, directed by those
market players who lost their profiteering enterprises to a new, more nationalist regime. They gambled on the hope that Sarath Fonseka might be able to sway enough voters to their side, to create a "neck-to-neck" race. If the race had indeed been neck to neck, they expected that the resulting mayhem would benefit their future political and mercantile agenda.

This simply did not happen. Unlike in the west, there are no "undecided votes" among the Sri Lankan voters. Indeed, after a very emotional war, it is completely foolish to expect that there would be any significant undecided votes.

The results of the 26th January election, and the agreement with the predictions of our zeroth order mathematical model, confirm that the Sinhalese voted as they normally would, while the Tamils also did what they have done for decades, i.e,
follow their leaders.

The enormous new emergent factor.

However, there is an enormous difference in this election. For the first time in
decades, a Sinhalese leader has garnered 30% of the Tamil votes in the so called
"exclusive Tamil homelands", just a few months after a very emotional and horrific war. This giant first step will become an even bigger reality when all parts of Sri Lanka are more effectively connected by fast rail networks and other communication lines. Sri Lanka is a small country which can be fitted easily between Boston and New York. Modern IT technology can solve the political Gordian knot of language and geographic isolation that had plagued previous generations. A Tamil trader speaking in Tamil on his cell phone to a Sinhalese trader in Colombo or Galle can each converse in their own languages, while the voice chip will do the language translation. A Tamil can live in Mullaitive (Mooladoova) and yet commute to Colombo on a fast bullet train moving at 200 km per hour. It is not divisive constitutional bickering over the 13th amendment etc., that will solve the problems of Sri Lanka. What is needed is the jettisoning of those old oddities and going forward to a new world where very basic priorities hold. These priorities are universal human priorities of jobs, education, health, justice and human dignity which are the same for Sinhalese or Tamils. There is an excellent chance that Rajapaksa may succeed in delivers those objectives, and the voters may well have chosen very wisely. Read more...

Reply to Gam Vaesiya

By Trishantha Nanayakkara

(January 16, London, Sri Lanka Guardian) I wish to leave a brief note in response to the comment made by Gam Vaesiya, Ontario, Canada, on 14th January 2010, to my original article "Presidential election 2010, and the next armed uprising in Sri Lanka".

First I thank him for taking time to read and comment. As he correctly noted, this topic is a complicated one deserving the application of complicated chaotic models of many dimensions.

However, being engineers we prefer to deal with complicated chaotic systems with the simplest model we can think of. Maybe that is one difference between how an engineer and a political scientist looks at social dynamics. Moreover, I did not want to give a theoretical explanation to the armed uprisings in Sri Lanka. Rather, it is how I see why Sri Lanka has had three armed uprisings after independence, as a humble citizen.

Perhaps, this is why whole of Chinese cabinet is made up of engineers. They do things using simple models while others waste time looking for the most complicated model that exactly explains the reality. Reality itself is its best model in that sense.

Related links:

The fallacious logic of the article: "Presidential election 2010, and the next armed uprising in Sri Lanka"

Presidential election 2010, and the next armed uprising in Sri Lanka
Read more...

The fallacious logic of the article: "Presidential election 2010, and the next armed uprising in Sri Lanka"

| Both GGP and SWRD had been glowingly referred to as "pocket Hitlers" by their admirers!
..........................................................

By Gam Vaesiya, Ontario, Canada

(January 15, Ontario, Canada , Sri Lanka Guardian) I was provoked to write this article by another article which appeared in the Sri Lanka Guardian entitled ,Presidential election 2010, and the next armed uprising in Sri Lanka by Trishantha Nanayakkara. The author takes up six principles for analysis, and seems to argue that clear conclusions as to how to prevent the next armed uprising could be drawn.

Political science is not at all a science

Unfortunately, the author assumes that the military uprisings of post-independent Sri Lanka are simple results of discrimination of specific groups by other groups or connected with his six principles. That is, a systemic cause is looked for, using some general principles. The possibility that certain elite individuals actually worked hard, over several decades to create the mayhem, because of their misguided beliefs, does not get captured into this type of analysis. Those who love grand analyses prefer to ignore simple truths and strive for grand-looking pseudo-truths.

It is such flawed, spacious logic that has been the basis of the political analyses of Lenins, Stalins, Mao Tse Dongs, Pol Pots and other theorists who started from general principles and decided that some specific things have to be done, if necessary by force, to put matters "right". This is like in thermodynamics, where we start from simple principles, and make specific conclusions. Unfortunately, politcal processes are more akin to complex adaptive systems close to the edge of chaos, if we use the language of the Nobel Laureate Murray Gell-mann.

In Sri Lanka too, we have had a surfeit of Golden brains (N. M. Perera, Colvin R. de Silva et al), or Legal Eagles (G. G. Ponnambalam, S. J. V. Chelvanayagam, S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike) as they were then called. They brought back, in the 1930s, two sets of general principles and attempted to apply them to Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon.

The two themes of Sri Lankan politics that began in the 1930s

The two dominant veins of thought in the 1930s were Marxism and Nazi Nationalism.
Marxism adulated the working class, and wanted to put the workers in power by an armed uprising, dethroning the capitalist class. Colvin, Philip and N. M. Perera (the golden brains) came back from England, fired with ideas of organizing and polarizing the people of the country towards the militant path, planning a bloody battle against British imperialism and world capitalism. Philp Goonawardene was glowingly referred to as a local Stalin.

G. G. Ponnambalam (GGP) had made two visits to Nazi Germany, and was impressed by the power of Nationalism. He realized that Tamil nationalism was his key to overthrowing the Ramanathan clan who were there because the "highest caste" was endowed with political power by the Hindu form of divine right. Thus Ponnambalam began his attacks on the Sinhalese, their chronicle Mahavamsa, and roused the Tamils to a sense of strong communal identity that enable him to capture the leadership of the Tamils. In a speech in the State Council in 1934, Ponnambalam rejected the "Ceylonese" identity and claimed that he was a proud Dravidian. He actively laid the seeds of Tamil-Sinhala strife. The first communal riot occurred in Navalapitiya, after a a highly inflammatory speech by Ponnambalam (see the newspaper report in The Hindu Organ, June 12, 1939 and other newspapers of the time). Ponnambalam's excursions into Tamil nationalism were countered by SWRD who began to set up branches of the "Sinhala Maha Sabha".

Both GGP and SWRD had been glowingly referred to as "pocket Hitlers" by their admirers!

Much of this has been ably documented by historians like Dr. Jane Russell, an Oxford scholar.

The Marxist leaders applied their general theories (some what like what Thrishantha Nanayakkara does) and concluded that armed uprisings are needed. They began a process of civil confrontation which almost delayed the granting of independence to Sri Lanka (K. M. de Silva has discussed this in his Penguin edition on the History of Sri Lanka). Marxists, together with Bracegirdle frightened the leaders of Sri Lanka, including the Tamil leaders, who feared trade union chaos in the Tea estates. They reformulated the citizenship provisions for Indian workers by insisting on the requirement that only those who had seven years residence could become citizens. This was the opportunity for S. J. V. Chelvanayagam (SJVC) to declare that GGP was a traitor to the Tamil cause, and create the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) in 1949. This was long before any language flare ups, educational or other seemingly discriminatory programs or any issues of the sort that Thrishantha Nayakkara implicitly implies had come up. Significantly, although the upper-caste ITAK leaders attacked GGP for his support of the Indian citizenship act (drawn up mainly by Kandiah Vaidiyanathan), these upper caste Nanganthans and other politicians would not associate with the "coolie castes" of the tea estates.

The 1949 ITAK "Maradana" resolution had a key provison, calling for chasing out the invaders from the exclusive Tamil Homelands of the North and East. The Arasu Kadchi gave itself a sanitized cover by adopting the name "Federal Party" in Englsih, and indeed, some Colombo moderates actualy believed in Federalism. Federalism did have a great chance in the late 1940s and early 1950, as the Kandyans and some Southerners also favoured federalism. However, the ITAK did not take its political platform to the Kandyans or to the Southern groups. Instead it took it exclusively to the North, where its Tamil language publications, printed for the 1952 election did NOT talk of federalism. The ITAK pushed a deeply separatist program based on the exclusive right of the Tamils to the North and the East - in short, a form of Tamil Apartheid. This aspect of Tamil Nationalism has been well documented by Dr. Michael Roberts ( Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol.XXVII, no.1, April 2004). The Sinhalese and the Muslims were claimed to be the invaders of these regions. Their presence did not fit in with the ITAK objectives.

It is these beginnings that Trishantha Nanayakkara forgets. The Tamil elites of Colombo were wealthy, controlled the banks, import-export, the professions and the administrative system. They had no doubt that they can wrest the North and the East from the Ceylonese government if they pushed their plans intelligently. The first Tamil militant group,the Makkal Padai, was set up in the early 1960s in Trincomalee (ancient Gokanna), with the blessing of SJVC. The ITAK had already began to distribute wooden pistols at its "Sathyagrahas", and claim that the forces of law and order were despicable tools of the Sinahla government.

Meanwhile, the Marxists also had no doubt that soon enough they will capture power, by a process of trade union action as well as sharpening the militancy of the student population. They had tasted blood when they dethroned Dudley Senanayake.

They felt that SWRD was like the Mensheviks who were preceeded by the Bolsheviks who captured power. Thus we had our Golden Brains, and their trade unions, working hard to raise the militancy and workers. They were told that the forces of law and order were capitalist tools to be cut down with contempt.

The west Punishing Ceylon then, and Sri Lanka now.

The introduction of free health services, while family planning was still not publicized or practised, led to a significant post-independence bulge of youth populations. SWRD's socialist policies were "punished" by the west which diverted its capital towards the Malaysian peninsula and Singapore. Mincing lane lowered tea prices and began promoting South African teas. Western airlines and Cargo ships diverted their routes avoiding Colombo. The IMF explained that Sri Lanka must conform to the demands of the IMF or be punished. The socialist politics of the Sirima government further slowed down the creation of jobs, as everything had to pass through consumer-unfriendly and inefficient state-administered corporations. The rise of the JVP and the youth militancy of the Tamils could also be related to demographics as well as the stagnant character of socialist economies which were incapable of supporting the expensive welfare state created during the hay day of the free -market policies of D. S. Senanayake and Oliver Goonatilleke .

Current attempts to shut down our trade by withdrawing EU concessions or branding us with human rights violations are no different to what SWRD had to face, when he nationalized the foreign oil business, took over Trincomalee (the ancient port Gokanna) and talked of more socialism.

Planned political programs of militant action.

Theorists like Thrishantha Nanayakkkara do not allow for the fact that there were specific groups who, for ideological reasons, systematically worked to break down law and order.

These were people who either expected to bring about the socialist revolution, or found the "exclusive homelands" into reality.

When minority groups talk of "exclusive homelands", and when Marxist militants put the Colombo harbour on strike most of the year, reactions develop. Rightwing death squads came in to being. Sinhala Nationalist groups which are ready to take on the ITAK challenge and attack Tamils came into being. Thus the succession of race riots in the post-Senanayake era, and the increasing decline of law and order are directly related to the acts of misguided ideologues than to any acute discrimination levied on any ethnic or social group. One has to only look around the Indian subcontinent even today (not sixty years ago) to see stark discrimination of various social groups as well as women to realize that simple answers do not suffice.

The political turmoils of post-independent Ceylon were planned and foisted on the country, and once the "arsonists" do their job, the fire spreads.

How to avoid armed uprisings and ensure peace

If Sri Lanka it to not to have another armed uprising, we need national integration rather than devolution. We need economic prosperity and good governance. Sri Lanka is small enough to fit snugly into the small space between New York and Boston, or between Paris and Lyon leaving more than 70km to spare. Now, would one talk of devolution of the NY-Boston area into Hispanic, Jewish and WASP regions to ensure that there are "exclusive ethnic homelands" in there? Would we demand that Yiddish, Spanish and English be made official languages of equal standing in those areas? It is in fact such grotesque demands that the TNA, and its predecessor the TULF at Vaddukkoddei (Batakotte) demanded, for the last three decades. It is the essense of the 13th amendment forced on Sri Lanka by the Indians. However, today Tamil is legislated to be a full official language. It extensively used in Sri Lanka, irrespective of the fact that there are a fewer percentage of Tamils in Sri Lanka than there are Hispanics in many parts of USA where only English is allowed.

So, what will ensure that there will not be another armed racist uprising in Sri Lanka? It is national integration and economic growth. It is to be seen in a system of fast trains (like the Lyon-Paris TGV) which will make Jaffna only 1.5 hours away from Colombo. It is to be seen in making our society multi-ethnic and multi-cultural in the same sense that Colombo is already a tapestry of diverse peoples who live in harmony, in spite of the grave provocations put on it by the LTTE. Thus, fast train systems and modern communications will provide a technological fix to the old canker of communal division that has threatened to split the country apart - a very small country that can fit between Boston and NY!

What about language? Sinhala and Tamil have the same grammatical structure bestowed on both by Panini. The words of the two languages share a large common lexicon due to the importance of Sanskrit cognates occurring in both languages. Consider a Tamil person speaking Tamil on a cell phone from Jaffna to some one in Colombo who understands only Sinhalese. As far as cell-phone conversations and text messages go, following I. A. Richards of Oxford, we could probably identify the basic words and set up an elementary look-up table and translation scheme so that the Tamil-Sinhala words are automatically translated. The present author has talked to engineers at ICTA in Colombo who feel that this is emminently feasible. Of course, we are not talking of translating poetry. This sort of thing is already available on Internet browsers, even for languagesfar more complex than Sinhala or Tamil. Thus, there are trivial technological solutions to the divisive language politics that has eroded Sri Lanka for decades.

The 2010 presidential election

The TNA is the remnant of the racist growth which began with the communal politics of GGP. It is made up of extremely reactionary upper-caste Tamil leaders who have little to with the ordinary Tamils. These leaders remained silent, or secretly celebrated when Amirthalingam, Cangaratnam, Thiruchelvam, Kadirgamar and others were assassinated, and when distinguished Tamil school principals or Kururals were liquidated by the LTTE. Their election to parliament was deemed to be illegal by the EU observers but they continued as LTTE-proxy "parliamentarians". They have run to the Tamil Diaspora and to Tamil Nadu for political support, and have never attempted to take their political case to the country at large. In fact, they are a cabal of rich racist Tamils who believe in the Tamil apartheid concept of "exclusive homelands". The UNP has also shed its rural roots and become a cabal of rich Colombo elites with narrow mercantile interests. The Thambi-ayiahs of the Cargo Boat dispatch company, the Maharajas and Paskaralingams have a lot in common with the current rump of the UNP led by Ranil Wickremasinghe, Jayalath Jaywardena and others.

The JVP, by a remarkable act of the Hegelian dialectic inverses itself and becomes the "street boys" of the UNP-TNA combine. It is this heterogeneous group of business plus erstwhile leftists that JRJ would have labeled "naxalites", that Thrishantha Nanayakkara believes will provide us with a peaceful future. Sarath Fonseka, the leader of this motley gang is going to be a President who will satisfy the political aspirations of all these groups, clean up corruption, raise wages, solve all problems! Fonseka is the proverbial Kokath Thailaya or snake oil that will do wonders.

The political naivety of this candidacy, with its vishvaasaneeya venasa is unbelievable.

Surely, after the successful end of thirty years of war, what the country wants is NOT CHANGE, but consolidation and stability. In most other post-war situations, military rule continues for several years. In Sri Lanka, owing to preset parliamentary elections due this year, it is inevitable that we need to face the hustings. The only sensible choice before voters is to not to change the pilot in midstream. The voters can give the incumbent president a resounding confirmation, so that the forces of Racism and Marxism that began their debut in the 1930s can be finally put to rest. Read more...

Did the Tiger change its strips for a white Flag?

- Defence secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa, and President Premadasa, got to know what happened only when "it was all over".
.................................................................

By Gam Vaesiya, Ontario, Canada

(December 30, Ontario, Sri Lanka Guardian) Probably the most important outcome of Sarath Fonseka's misadventure into the political arena has been his opening up a post-mortem of the Tiger leadership. Although Fonseka may reduce the "walk-over" majority commanded by Rajapaksa, the final outcome of the election is fairly evident to everyone except those who have become mesmerized by the mismatched Mangala-Ranil-Tilvin kaleidoscope.

There is already enough information available to the discerning observer to piece together the likely evolution of events which had developed its own momentum, well beyond the control of the many players who were involved.

The strategy of the LTTE.

A number of academic observers (e.g. Gamini Keerawella, Gerald Peries) have noted that the final strategy of the LTTE was to create an impossible humanitarian situation - a grave humanitarian crisis- that would warrant Kosovo-style international intervention in the Sri Lankan conflict. The LTTE systematically planned this scenario by holding two hundred and fifty thousand ordinary men, women and children with them and hoped to keep them till such an eventuality took place. Even before the fall of Killinochchi (ancient name: Giraanikka), many well-to-do Tamils had paid their way out. But the vast
majority had no option but to retreat with the Tigers. Highly placed diplomats of three western nations, several officials of the UN, two British journalists, and at least two parliamentarians of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) were involved, together with a vast array of Tamil academics, businessmen and activists in western countries, to bring about this plan to fruition. Interestingly, there was no serious support for this plan from highly placed Indian officials.

Nadesan, the LTTE political spokesman, rejected all calls by the government to lay down arms and surrender. The LTTE firmly believed that these Tamil people herded in place would remain with them till the end. But, as soon as the Sri Lankan forces broke the earth bund and lifted the siege, the people deserted the LTTE. Some prominent LTTE members, e.g., Daya Master surrendered using the channels that were put in place by the military, in spite of LTTE suicide squads and sharp shooters which attacked likely surrendees. On a number of occasions, esp. during 15-17th May, the Tigers pretended to be surrendees and then attacked, killing and injuring hundreds of civilians and fellow LTTEs trying to flee.

Once it became clear that the strategy based on expecting a ``humanitarian crisis'' had failed, the LTTE leadership began to use the diplomatic and parliamentary channels that had be put in place to attempt a safe passage for the LTTE leadership. However, although mechanisms for surrender were in to place and although they were function reasonably well, as seen by the number of high-ranking LTTE cadre who safely surrendered, the LTTE leadership did NOT want to make use of them. The leader of a cyanide cult cannot possibly surrender. Reports of interviews and interrogations with IDPs suggest that Prabhakaran did not wish to surrender, but instead expected to be escorted out. Another plan had been for some of the leadership to meet up with suitably placed special envoys, while Prabhakaran himself would try to ``disappear'' in a clandestine escape. A makeshift hospital, an ambulance as well as sea crafts had been made ready near ellamullivaaikkaal (Valbatugala) and it was reported to have been put at the disposal of the LTTE leader. This was meant to be the location for foreign rescue officials to receive and accompany Prabhakaran who demanded to be treated at the level of a head of state. There was no question of his biting the cyanide capsule or showing any semblance of surrender. It was to appear as a negotiated evacuation only.

Thus proposal to surrender with white flags etc., seems to be mostly a general romantic picture evoked by various parties in Colombo, including the MP Chandrakanthan who was in contact with the Rajapaksa administration. It did not involve the army commanders who were directly in the Valbatugala (Vellamullivaaikkaal) area. The Rajapaksa administration believed that the modalities of surrender already existed, as indeed surrenders of various cadre were happening on a continuous basis, and saw no need for new modalities. If indeed a party of LTTE leaders had moved forward with the intention of surrender, it is almost certain that the tiger leadership, equipped with cell phones and communication equipment with a global reach could have attempted to send messages that would be easily picked up by army electronic eves-droppers or visual observers. If such a surrender was the objective, it is clearly more important to coordinate with the immediate ground commanders on site, rather than with Nambiar, Marie Covin, Chandrakantha or Palitha Kohona. Also, if a party moved forward with white flags, the Tigers who are reputed for photographic and cinematographic records of all kinds of historic scenes would have at least taken a cell phone picture of the event and transmitted it to western reporters, diplomats and ``KP'' (Selvarasah Pathmanathan) who are said to have been in touch with them almost constantly.

Unexpected arrival of the special squads.

The unexpected events in the unfolding of the drama were two fold. Events unfolded much faster than anticipated. The British, French and Norwegian diplomats did not secure a special status for the LTTE leaders to evacuate, while the UN envoy Nambiar arrived too late to do anything. Meanwhile, the LTTE leadership seems to have taken steps to AVOID the positions manned by the 58th Division of Shavendra Silva, or the 59th Division of Prasanna Silva who were on the Thibbatugala beach. Either of these divisions would have arranged for their safe surrender, as they had been accepting surrendees for several days by then. Instead, the LTTE leadership had a number of plans which included (i) Sneak through the army cordon, possibly using the ambulance, or use do-or-die" support from Ramesh and Ilango who were to remain ready to fire and fully armed, while accompanying the group led by Nadesan. Meanwhile Prabhakaran would remain incognito in a third group. (ii)If they were to meet up with the soldiers of the 58th or 59th Division, Nadesan would negotiate and ask for an honourable diplomatic-level escort to evacuate Prabhakaran.

However, instead of meeting with the 58th or 59th divisions, they stumbled on the army special units attached to the special forces of the Golf, Echo and Delta squads. They noticed the armed second group consisting of Ramesh and Ilango and their men. This write has NOT been able to find any evidence of Nadesan and others in the lead group carrying white flags. It is very likely that the special forces soldiers would have challanged them as well as Ramesh, Ilango and their men. Where were they moving with armed support? If they were looking to surrender, they should have marched towards the 58th or 59th Division posts on the beach. This was an unexpected misadventure, and the Tigers were in no position to fight the special squads or claim that they are attempting to surrender.

Special squads were deployed to cover strategic escape routes, precisely to prevent clandestine rear-guard action or secret escape by the LTTE. The special squads operated away from the surrender lines. The LTTE leaders, and their armed body guards (Ramesh, Illango et al.) succumbed to the fire of the special forces.

General Fonseka's attitude.

While all this was happening, General Fonseka was in China. On December 20th 2009 "The Sunday Leader" published a clarification by Fonseka on his previous statements. Fonseka stated that :

"As Commander of the Army during the final stages of the war, I did not receive any communication that some LTTE leaders were planning or wanting to surrender. I was not told at any stage they wanted to do so and that some kind of an agreement had been reached that they must come out carrying pieces of white cloth".

It is entirely according to protocol that foreign missions pass through the Defence secretary and the Foreign Ministry rather than go directly to the Commander of the armed forces. What attitude would General Fonseka take if he had been in Colombo and if he had been consulted by the Defence secretary – as he surely would have been. Fonseka too would have assured everyone that the modalities for surrender already exist, and that many top LTTE cadre like Daya master had already surrendered safely.

If the ex-General Fonseka attempted to blame the commander of the 58th or59 th divisions, that would be completely pointless as there is evidence that Nadesan and his group never attempted to go to the surrender posts of these divisions. If they did carry white flags, is would be inconsistent with the stand taken by the LTTE leadership which claimed that this was an honourable evacuation arranged under the auspices of the UN. It does seem established that Nambiar had been told that it is already too late for him to do anything,. It is also clear that the British and French diplomats, as well as the UN iplomat probably did not realize that a pitched battle was going on. They had been informed that a``humanitarian crisis'' is unfolding, and that it is simply a matter of their driving into Nandakadola and evacuating the LTTE leadership which is marooned behind the army lines!

The story of the white verti

Given the level of electronic communication that was being used, and given the well known fact that Army intelligence, and perhaps foreign intelligence, were monitoring all the electronic conversations and radio communications emanating from Nadakadola, it is indeed surprising, and beyond credibility that the proverbial ``white cloth'' becomes the modality for surrender. During the IKPF-LTTE battles, when the Tiger cadre were to be arrested, they blew themselves up. There has never been any examples of deployment of white clothes. During the Premadasa era, some 600 Sinhalese policemen surrendered to the LTTE, unarmed, and there too no white cloth was used as the modality of surrender. It should also be remarked that the policemen who surrendered were murdered in cold blood by the LTTE.

Defence secretary Gothabaya Rajapaksa, and President Premadasa, got to know what happened only when "it was all over".

When and where did the story of the white cloth appear first in print?
Read more...

Manik Farm, the "Mahathalithagama" of the Mahavamsa.

Most people have only a vague idea of the location and where abouts of these IDP camps with names like "Manik Farm, Kadirgaamar Village etc. How many such camps are there ? How many people are there in these camps?
_________

By "Gam Vaesiya", Ontario Canada

(September 21, Ontario, Sri Lanka Guardian) Now that the military effort against the LTTE is over, most of the concern is directed to the IDP camps. Many dignitaries and concerned people have visited the IDP camps, sometimes with axes to grind, and sometimes with a genuine mission of humanitarian aid. The most recent visitors have been the English Catholic Bishops, and then we have had the United Nations Under Secretary General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe. The latter was also interviewed on the usually somewhat anti-Sri Lankan "As it happens" program of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Mr. Pacoe did not come out in support of the dire, inflammatory claims of the Tamil Diaspora which is still beholden to the fallen LTTE. The Bishops echoed the position of the Catholic Church in Sri Lanka which has been calling for sending the IDPs home, and claiming that these are "prison camps".

Well informed Tamil Christians like Sebastian Rasalingam have discussed
(Read)
the dilemma faced by the church which has to echo the views of the
upper class Tamils.

The UN under secretary did not make the kind of knee-jerk remarks made by
the Bishops. His reports fitted in with two earlier reports
by individuals who are not VIPs. Here I like to select two
interesting reports which appeared recently in the Island newspaper.
First is that of Lilini Jayatilake (Island Feature on August 02) which gives a detailed
report of their visit to the IDP camps known by the names Manik Farm,
Chettikulam, and other camps like Sumathipuram, Dharmapuram and
Veerapuram and Komarasankulam camps. She presents a relatively positive
picture, especially of the children who "tore around the back garden in
bursts of high spirits", and also records that the people were clean and
well fed, although many yearned for the freedom of going out of the
camps. An earlier report was that of Sebastian Rasalingam (Island
Feature, 13th July 2009) who also came out with a positive report which
went onto assert that many of the dire claims of the Diaspora are
misplaced.

Most people have only a vague idea of the location and where abouts of
these IDP camps with names like "Manik Farm, Kadirgaamar Village etc. How
many such camps are there ? How many people are there in these camps?
What is the historical background of the places where the camps are
located? How were the camps named?

The location of the so called Manik Farm, or Maenik Farm, is particularly intriguing
from a historical perspective. This is an area already noted by the
Archaeological Department for the existence of ancient ruins (1983 report
by the Asst. commissioner Mr. Somasiri) as this has been a theater of war
since the earliest days of Sri Lanka's recorded history. The
Mahathalithagama of the Mahavamsa is very likely to be in this area. In
fact, it is most likely that this IS Mahathalithagama. The Chulavamsa
records that the Pandyan king Sri Mara Sri Vallabha, when he invaded Sri
Lanka (9th century CE), first captured the Uttaradesa (i.e, effectively,
north of the southern limit of the Vanni, i.e., Vannimava which is
today's Vavuniya). Sri Vallabha is supposed to have destroyed the
Uttaradesa and its people, and encamped at Mahathalithagama. He then
defeated the army send by king Sena I. The Sinhala king, hearing of the
route of the Uttaradesa and the defeat of his army, retreated to the
hills. Meanwhile, Sri Vallabha is said to have collected his troops and
some of the dispersed indigenous Tamils at Mahathalithagama - an IDP camp
of the 9th century! Some of the other towns of the region, e.g.,
Pampaimadhu, Thanndykulam, Poonthddam etc., have been discussed by
toponymists and some attempts to surmise their ancient names have been
made (see http://dh-web.org/place.names/index.html).



In the attached map we have indicated the Manik Farm which today has four
major zones. The largest of these Manik farm zone-2 is home to some 69k (i.e,
69 thousand) people according to the 26-June-2009 data released by the UN
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Colombo. The Zones
1,3 and 4 have some 47k, 44k, and 43k individuals who are mainly from
people displace from the Vanni region (Mannar to Mulllativu). We have
also shown the other camps in the attached map, together with their
probabale ancient names, as far as we can ascertain them.


Manik Farm Aruviaru Sivanantha school 1k
Manik Farm Zone 1 47k
Manik Farm Zone 2 67k
Manik Farm Zone 3 44k
Manik Farm Zone 4 43k
Menik Farm Zone 5 5k
Menik Farm camp (Kathirkamarnagar village) 19k
Nelukkulam transit center 3k
Cheddikulam school 2k
College of education, Poonthoddam 6k
Vavuniya Sivapirakasa Ladies College 3k
Thandikkulam School 1k
Adiyapuliyankulam School 1k
Vavuniya Puthukkulam 2k
Va/Komarasankulam School 2k
Va/Sooduventhapualvu Muslim School 2k
Veerapuram Transit Site 5k
Sumathipuram Transit Site 5k

Thus these camps held some 260k persons, according to the figures
released at the end of June 2009. This number has now shrunk by
about 20,000. Hence the continuing claim of 300,000 detainees is
not based on available figures.

In naming the IDP villages, the government has simply resorted to the
names of old Tamil leaders like Arunachalam, Ramanathan etc., as well as
the welcome addition of the name of Kadirgamar. It should be noted that a
Tamil dissident writer (Sebastian Rasalingam, Island Feature
30-January-2009; http://www.island.lk/2009/01/30/opinion1.html ) had in
fact objected to the use of names of old Feudal Tamil leaders like
Ramanathan who had led several delegations to the Colonial Secretariat in
London to demand that the caste system be enshrined in the constitution
of Ceylon. Indeed, most of the Vanni IDPs of today who are lodged in the
Ramanathan Village would be regarded as low-caste individuals of "no
importance" by Ponnambalam Ramanathan who always chose to emphasize his
Brahmin status.


The attitude that one takes towards the existence of these camps (still
only a few months after a 30 year long war) seems to be based very much
on one's political prejudices than facts. Thus some writers have ignored
the fact that these camps are in reality a resounding success, and a
cause for national pride. when total chaos of the sort What happened in
New Orleans (after Katrina) in the USA could have easily occurred here
since the numbers and circumstances are more horrific. Instead, judging
by all reliable reports, the IDPs have been safely stationed and three
wholesome meals are provided to them. There has been an amazing
outpouring of help and concern from the people of the south as well as
from some sections of Sri Lankans who form the so-called Diaspora. Over
200 doctors and some 1000 nurses are attending to the IDPs. Indian and
French medical teams are also working in these camps.

We need to also enlist the good will of school children of the south who
could go to these camps and organize sports and musical activities,
language exchange etc., as means of establishing a better mutual
understanding of the problems of the country.

Unfortunately, the positive aspects of how the IDPs have been helped have
been ignored by many outside observers. The faces of children peering
thorough the barbed-wire fences have been shown all over the world. The
government claims that these are simply children who crowded along the
fence to watch the helicopters which brought the newsmen and television
crews to the IDP camps. However, the picture shows that we need to move
beyond "holding and shielding" to "renovation and resettlement".

Undoubtedly, it is not in the interests of Sri Lanka to hold these people
in camps. They should be used for the reconstruction of the North. Once
the basic infrastructure of the villages is in place, with de-mining
completed, the people would need houses as well as sustainable economic
activity to exist in their villages. If the people are provided with
basic building materials, they can supply their labour and their
ingenuity to build their own houses and establish their own agricultural
activities. That is, these IDPs become creators of economic wealth and
join in the process of rebuilding the North, instead of being individuals
dependent on State aid or charity.

-Sri Lanka Guardian Read more...

Four historic conjunctures where Tamil thinking tumbled in to "Tappitam"- II

Link to Part One

By Gam Vaesiya, Ontario

The Vadukkoddei (Batakotte) Voodoo

(June 01, Ontario, Sri Lanka Guardian) Pulip Padai was a rather unsuccessful precursor to the many militant youth groups sponsored by the ITAK and later, by the TULF which prided itself on its "boys". The leaders probably believed that they could control the "boys" in much the same way that Cinnamon Garden housewives control their low-caste Tamil domestic help ("servants") . By then, due to a series of racial riots that polarized the two ethnic groups apart, attitudes in the Tamil community had hardened sufficiently for the ITAK to expose its original agenda clearly and stridently.

Vadukkoddei was an ancient Sinhalese garrison town, known till the 1900s as "Batakotte", a name used even by the American Seminary which existed here before the rise of Jaffna College. Ironically, this town became the stage for the 1976 "Vadukkoddei resolution" which essentially declared that the Tamils must seek separation from the Sinhalese and create the independent state of Eelam in the North and the East. These were claimed to be "exclusive homelands of the Tamils". Although some writers claim that the resolution was pushed to an extreme wording by the "boys", it is stated by A. J. Wilson that S. J. V. Chelvanayagam read it carefully and endorsed it. The speeches of Chelvanaygam in 1975, or even the 1949 proceedings of the ITAK show that the Vadukkkodei resolution bears full continuity with the earliest thinking of Chelvanayagam, and the ITAK.

However, Thondaman Sr., the leader of the Hill-country Tamils was NOT a party to the Vadukkoddei Voodoo. Thondaman was an adroit politician who understood that he had to safeguard his fragile people from the possibles pitfalls of Marxist or racist extremism. He knew that his community, though Tamil speaking like the Muslims, were not included in the so called "Jaffna Kingdom" of the past.

The Vadukkodei resolution was in itself nothing but a political declaration reflecting the ethnic polarization of the nation. The TULF went to the polls in 1977 and successfully obtained a mandate from the Tamil population in the North. The vote in the Eastern province did not go in favour of the TULF. Even in the North, several "hard-line" Eelam candidates who run on the ticket of full separation lost the vote (the 1977 elections have been discussed recently by Neville Ladduwahetty, Island 25-may-2005. See- an external link ) Nevertheless, the TULF parlimentarians used the 1977 election victory as a bargaining chip to push for a strongly ethnic agenda, buttressed with the threat of separation. In some ways1977 was similar to the support given to Adolf Hitler by the Germans in the early 1930s. The Germans, humiliated by defeat and strongly mesmerized by the nationalist jingoism of Hilter, did not notice the dark and ominous abdomen of Nazism. In the same way,the Tamil leaders in Vadukkoddei did not see the destiny of Durraiappah hovering over them.

The electoral success of the TULF led J. R. Jayawardena (JRJ) to make every possible concession to the Tamil leadership. Amirthalingam and others accepted this offer. In reality, the leaders of the TULF and the UNP all lived in the "Karavaakaadu" or Cinnamon Gardens enclave. Their nationalism could be reconciled within the "free market" money-making "robber Barron" environment unleashed by J. R. Jayawardene. Thus, if the TULF and the UNP had been left to themselves, they may have crafted a mutually acceptable solution. Such a solution would most certainly not have bothered about the poor people of the Vanni or Jaffna. But it would have at least ensured a peaceful society. Thondaman Sr.,having dissociated from the Vadukkoddei resolution, had indeed got "all he wanted" from the J. R. government.

But the simple minded rustic boys of Vaddukkoddei could not understand the TULF "striking a deal" with the "Sinhalese government" . The TULF leaders and Kasi Anandan the poet had categorically denounced the Sinhala rulers. The Voodoo of Vdukkoddei had arisen in the form of the LTTE to strike down Amirthlingam and "other traitors". Fortunately, Chelvanayagam had been spared of seeing the mayhem of the Voodoo that had arisen from his vision. His 1949 vision of exclusive Tamil homelands was the direct antithesis of the moral high road advocated by the Jaffna Youth league in 1930. By murdering TULF leaders, the LTTE lost all rights to the electoral vote of 1977. The "boys" of the TULF had a clear end - Eelam, and any means was justified to reach this end. They welcomed state terror.

By all accounts, Black July was partly a machination of some UNP Sinhala extremist politicians. It was also an event engineered by the LTTE. Its agent was a police officer known as Nadesan (later to become Tamilchelvam's replacement). Remarkably, almost all the top officials in the police, viz., the Inspector General of Police and his deputies, were Tamils. They remained impassive and did not enforce even a token level of intervention in the name of law and order. No judicial commission has gone into these events as the leaders of both ends of the ethnic divide have skeletons to hide. But now that many of those individuals are dead, assassinated or killed in the war, it is time for an impartial inquiry into one of the great moral blots on the Nation.

The moral madness of the no-fire zone

If the Voodoo of Vadukkdodei manifested itself in the moral precipice of Black July, it was only the beginning. Eelam was "The objective – no matter how". In Tamil society, loyalty to one's kith and kin comes before anything else. That is, one may lie, cheat or do worse to protect a family member. Tamil racism is based on extending this to every Tamil who "has to be protected from the Sinhalese foe".

Assassinating "traitors" was already begun under the tutelage of the TULF. Holding Tamils as hostages was a practice which began against the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IKPF). The use of child soldiers, young women as spies and suicide cadre followed in tandem. Psychological black mail of the highest level was carried out by offering Thaleepan as a human sacrifice in front of the Nallur Temple. Attacks on Buddhist temples, mosques, and on civilians in undefended border villages were used in the hope of re-creating the 1983 Black July. When the State war machine retaliated mercilessly, the LTTE rejoiced in the destruction, and found more and more sympathizers in the diaspora.

The diaspora itself consisted of two groups. There were Tamils who immigrated claiming State persecution. There were other Tamils who immigrated claiming LTTE persecution. Every genuine case was only one in ten out of the flood of economic refugees who made it good to Colombo, and then to foreign climes. It was the in-grained Tamil principle of loyalty to one's kith and kin that deprived them of the moral high road. It was necessary to defend the Tamils who are fighting for the Tamils. It is necessary to twist the truth and trim the tune in their defense and to ultimately achieve Eelam. When Tamils were ordered to leave Jaffna and corralled to the Vanni, it was easy to imagine that it was a temporary step and ignore the hostage taking. When Tamils were held hostage in Vakarai, and later even in Madhu, it was still easy to ignore all that and remain mesmerized by the dream of Eelam. A Rayuppu Joseph could play the prodigal priest and take even the Sacred Mother of Madhu hostage. The church fathers had long lost their moral compass and collaborated with Prabhakaran, taking a leaf from Pope Piis XII and many of his Cardinals who enjoyed a Concordat with Hitler.

However, as the Vanni war developed, it became clear even to confirmed supporters of the LTTE that the poor and defenseless people are being used by the LTTE merely as an expendable cover. The wealthier and more influential Tamils could get the authorization to leave. But this was not the case for some 250,000 poor Vanni Tamils. Dr. Noel Nadesan, Editor of the Uthayam, a Tamil News paper in Australia pleaded in August 2008 to "let my people go". Dissenting Tamil writers like J.Jeyaraj, Sebastian Rasalingam, Thomas Johnpulle as well as the UTHR authors had become increasingly vocal. And yet the TNA, the LTTE and the policy makers continued to ignore the moral imperative. The Tamilnet continued to spin yarns and publish doctored pictures of past carnage. The military offensive at the time had been directed mainly towards the attrition of the LTTE cadre. Unlike in the yet-to-be no-fire zone, the people had not been corralled into a highly dense shield around the LTTE leaders who moved along a network of air-conditioned bunkers.

The moral cry of the Uthayam Editor and the likes of Rasalingam were NOT picked up by the diaspora. Talk show activists like Poopala-Pillai, and writers like Narapala-singham and Satheesan Kumaran continued to call far Eeelam and even a return to the borders of the cease-fire agreement (CFA) of 2002!. Mindless Marxists like Kumar David and Wicramabahu continued to regard the LTTE as the epitome of Liberation.

What if the Expatriate Tamils had taken the high moral road and demanded Tamilnet to be truthful? What if the expatriate Tamils had demanded that Noel Nadesan's call to "let the people go" be heeded?

What if the expatriate Tamils had rejected the TNA and put its weight behind Ananadasangaree who is the last chastened remnant of the old TULF?

Ethnic Equilibration has to accompany devolution.

However, it is still not too late, at least for the Tamils living in Sri Lanka, to forge ahead in a new direction. Parliamentary programs and civil society after the world war in Japan and Germany were restored after a period of intense reconstruction. No Marshal-plan type generous aid has been offered to Sri Lanka. Instead, the West is incensed to punish Sri Lanka because it did not conduct its politics according to the western agenda as set out by Norway, Britain and the EU.

The next step is very clear. The displaced people, including the Sinhalese, Muslims and Tamils driven out of the North need to be settled. Any type of power devolution needs to be balanced by ethnic equilibration if suspicion is to be replaced by confidence in the unity of the country. A rapid development of infrastructure, fast-rail connectivity and administrative cohesion have to be established. Finally, parliamentary elections would enable a new set of Tamil l politicians to fill the vacuum of leadership that seems to exist in Tamil politics today.

-Sri Lanka Guardian Read more...

Four historic conjunctures where Tamil thinking tumbled in to "Tappitam"- I

“A small minority attempting to confront a majority population outside parliament, by street struggle, is deliberately planning to expose its people to civil violence.”

______________________

By Gam Vaesiya, Ontario, Canada

(May 29, Ontario, Sri Lnaka Guardian) The military defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the eradication of its top leaders by May 19th, 2009 marks the end of one historic process and the beginning of another. Given the globalization of the Tamil Diaspora, this historic conjuncture has been associated with unprecedented agitation in the major capitals of the world (Sri Lanka Guardian, 3-May, ).Unfortunately, the Tamils squandered an excellent opportunity to take the high moral road, to regain their lost reputation, and win the accord of India or even Tamil Nadu.

The spontaneous reaction of the Diaspora Tamils to the hostage-taking of a whole population by the retreating LTTE was hijacked by the LTTE lobby. The latter sought to convert the call
of the Diaspora into a condemnation of the government and a means to rescue the LTTE.

However, as a correspondent in the "Washington Post" stated, the Rajapaksa administration "wisely resisted this pressure" to the very end. Although some of the publicity seeking vote conscious politicians in Canada, Britain and France attempted to ride the crest of the LTTE demonstrations, the hard-headed defense establishments shared a view closer to the comments of the Washington Post. On the other hand, the NGOs and the Human Rights organizations took a very strong position against the Sri Lankan government, especially because their own relevance and ability to function had been halted by a regime suspicious of these NGOs. Tamil protesters, waving flags having two guns, bullets and a roaring Tiger, were totally unable to harvest the moral fervor of the Human Rights lobby.

So much energy, so much effort, organization, money and lives dedicated to an objective. And yet, all in vain.

Tamils, misled by small but powerful controlling groups have been in such situations for at least a century. It is instructive to see how there were four similar historic conjunctures when the
controlling Tamils made the wrong decision and "took the Tamils into Tappittam". One of the earliest tappittams was when the Tamil leaders decided to oppose the Donoughmore commission.

The next historic conjuncture was the D. S. Senanayake period where the Tamils failed to consolidate themselves beyond Senanayake, and allowed Chelvanayakam to forge on the fire of Sinhala Nationalism. The third historic failure was the Vadukkoddei (Batakotte) resolution where the high moral road was forsaken and the call for separation by force if necessary was enshrined. The fourth conjuncture is the end of the Eelam IV war and the termination of the LTTE. Even now, there is still a chance for the Tamils as well as the Sinhalese to take the high moral road. The Diaspora Tamils, living in luxury and away from the turmoil, have the capacity to take up such a position. But the Mafia-like strength of the LTTE among the expatriates has so far prevented this.

The Donoughmore Debacle

The recommendations of the Donoughmore Commission, 1931, were opposed by the Tamils on two fronts. The conservative, caste ridden, powerful Cinnamon gardens (Kurunduvatta) Tamils, led by Ponnambalam Ramanathan opposed the Donoughmore commission because it proposed Universal Suffrage. The progressives, lead by the Jaffna Youth League called for complete Swaraj and led the "Jaffna Boycott". The Cinnamon Gardens Tamils (CGT) enjoyed the favour of the British. Their dominant position was also linked to their elite caste affiliation. Thus they were not ready to face a parliamentary system which rejected race and caste divisions,

This opposition of the Cinnamon Gardens Tamils to Universal Suffrage translated into Ponnamblam's anti-Sinhala and anti-Mahavamsa campaigns, ably documented by the British historian Jane Russell. It was not D. S. Senanayake, but the legislators of the state council led by the Colombo Tamils and some of the Kandyans who got Governor Stanley to scuttle the Donoughmore citizenship to the Tamil estate workers. In effect, Colombo Tamils, English educated and westernized, and yet caste-ridden and authoritarian, acted to guard its self-interest, and totally failed in its moral duty to the Nation and community.

The fault of the Jaffna Youth League (JYL) was totally the opposite. It got carried away in its idealism and on its rhetoric of Swaraj. It wanted to copy-cat the nihilist heroism of the Indian struggle. Thus it ended up in a counter-productive boycott of the Donoughmore recommendations. The JYL was pro-Sinhala. 

It recognized that the Sinhalese were like them, under the British. JYL was fired by the highest ideals of individual equality and a strong sense of anti-imperialism. It demanded "Swaraj Now", and uncompromisingly rejected the Donoughmore commission as being far too short of what they wanted. In the end, the well heeled Cinnamon gardens Tamils won the day and the Pan-Nationalist high-minded JYL lost. The caste sentiment of the Cinnamon gardens Tamils translated into a racist form of Tamil nationalism in Ponnambalam.

The D. S. Senanayake conjuncture

D. S,. Senanayake (DSS) very adroitly allowed Ponnambalam to vent his anger and accusations against the Sinhalese in front of Soulbury, and prevented any acrimonious rebuttals by young Turks like S. W. R. D. Banadaranaike (SWRD). Already, Ponnambalam claimed that the colonial government and the State Council had "discriminated against the Tamils" in colonization, jobs, health, education", and alleged "support of Buddhism", and proposed reserving half the legislature for the Tamils who were, however, about 1/5 the number of Sinhalese. Senanayake, together with a number of "moderates", pushed the "Ceylonese" point of view which was the logical continuation of the Donoughmore and Soulbury approach to Ceylonese politics. The latter was itself largely the result of the adroit politics of Senanayake and his associates who approached the problem in a non-confrontational manner, as opposed to the Marxists, and communal agitators like Ponnambalam.

In the acceptance speech to the State Council in 1946, DSS stated:
" ... through out 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 gave heavy weightage to the minorities; we deliberately protected them against discriminatory legislation. We vested important powers in the Governor -General... We decided upon an Independent Public Service Commission so as to give assurance that there should be no communalism in the Public Service.(sic) 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, what ever race or creed."

And yet, a significant part of the Tamil congress were not satisfied with Ponnambalam's call for ""responsive cooperation with the Sinhalese leaders". Before long Ponnambalam was labeled
a "traitor" by Chelvanayagam who proposed the creation of an independent Tamil State (Arasu), in founding the Ilankai Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) in 1949. As many of the urban Tamils could not accept his call for "driving out the Sinhalese and other invaders from the Tamil homelands", the English name selected for the ITAK was the "Federal party".

The cry of "traitor" hurled by Chelvanayagam against Ponnambalam, was destined to be a harbinger of the more violent methods of the TULF and the LTTE in dealing with dissent.

Could Federalism have succeeded? Indeed, it could have succeeded if it had been led by the sort of idealistic, morally conscious men like the leaders of the Jaffna Boycott of the 1930s. A
sinhala-friendly Tamil party, holding meetings in the South and in the Kandyan region, and explaining how federalism could have worked, may have captured a resonance with the political set up of the time. Such a party would not have opposed the SWRD program. Instead, it could have, like the Tamil-speaking Muslim leaders, cooperated with the Sinhala nationalists. SWRD was not a racist, and while he fought for Sinhala rights and opposed Ponnambalam, readily acknowledged the rights of Tamils in all his speeches in the State Council (see Jane Russell's book, "Communal Politics in the Donoughmore era"). Thus, a Tamil nationalist party that could cooperate with Banadaranaike would have won the rights of the Tamils and preserved the mercantile and professional advantages that the Tamil community possessed in abundance at the time.

Unfortunately, the Tamil nationalist movement was NOT lead by men vested with the Jaffna-Youth-league attitudes. Instead Chelavanayagam and the ITAK began a series of extra-parliamentary demonstrations, tar-brushing Sinhala signs, issuing Eelam postage stamps, and attempting to demobilize the civil administration in the East and the North, even after the Banda-Chelva pact. The first militant group, "Pulip Padai", which attempted to arm itself was launched by the ITAK in 1962, in front of the Kooneswaram temple in Trincomalee.

A small minority attempting to confront a majority population outside parliament, by street struggle, is deliberately planning to expose its people to civil violence. The ITAK looked upon all such incidents as a welcome catalyst for ethnic polarization.

Thus we see that the tactics used by the LTTE later on, where the civil population was put into jeopardy in return for propaganda gains, were already a part of the ITAK methodology. The ITAK was, both by name and by intent, a racist party with objectives similar to the apartheid concepts of the Afrikaaner administration. That such a basically confrontational, exclusively racist politics could be launched indicates the moral decline that plagued the leadership of the Tamils, firmly in the hands of a self-centered Colombo elite group.

(To be continue)

-Sri Lanka Guardian

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Sathara Varam Deiyyo - The Guardian deities and the International Community

By Gam Vaesiya

(May 12, Ontario , Sri Lanka Guardian) When the chattering classes in Colombo talk approvingly of the "International community" (IC), they mean the Europeans, Americans, and their close allies like Canada and Japan. Although the United Nations may have over 200 nations, it is this small but super-IC that we hear about.

Sri Lanka has been repeatedly visited by highly placed emissaries of this super-IC. They come to "intervene with the government", and "make it do the right thing". The super-IC has taken the mantel of the Guardian deities of the people. The "Right to protect" (their interests) was the basis for going into Iraq, Vietnam or Korea. The Sri Lankan conflict does not directly impinge on the interests of the super-IC, and yet, egged on by the vocal pro-Tiger diaspora, these emissaries see an "easy catch".

What if David Miliband and Bernard Kouchner had managed to twist the arm of the Sri Lankan leaders, gone to the No-Flee Zone (euphemistically called the No-Fire-Zone) and dispatched the Tiger leaders to unknown exile? The Nobel peace prize? After all, even Menacham Begin and Henry Kissinger were given Nobel Peace prizes, totally ignoring their culpable roles in world conflicts.

Fortunately for the world, the Sri Lankan leaders did not budge under pressure. Now Miliband and Kouchnerare trying to get even by pressurizing the UN, claiming that a bloodbath is taking place in Sri Lanka. Although "no confirmed information is available", these ministers point the finger at the Government, ignoring the fact that the government has stopped using heavy weapons. News vendors like the British channel-4 have fallen to a new low in news reporting, where extreme claims of rape and rotting dead bodies are reported, based on "hearsay" of unidentified individuals, ignoring the existence of a deliberate disinformation campaign when news gathering has to be done with extreme caution.

The Mahavamsa, the ancient historical chronicle of Sri Lanka, tells us how four guardian deities, Natha, Vishnu, Kataragama, and Saman were assigned the job of guarding Sri Lanka. Vishnu is also "Upulvan", the deity who gave Vijaya's men magical protective threads for their wrists. Natha is replaced by 'Vibeeshana' in later writings. 'Paththini' is also a supplementary guardian deity in our local folk traditions. After all, even the Greeks sacrificed to Apollo or Aphrodite as the case may be, and to the local God.

Who were these "Guardian deities" of ancient times? The Gods were themselves conquerers deified into the ancient Sumerian-Persian-Indo-Asian evolution of our belief systems. By the time the Mahavamsa was penned, many of the legends had reintegrated into other similar legends. In the ancient world, there was no clear distinction between miracle and physical process. The natural world met miracle with invocations, sacrifice, and sacred rites. The God of Katharagama, "Skanda", is none but the Persian "Iskandar" whose Hellanic name was Alexander. Skanda was a conquerer God who vanquished the Asuras and other opponents. The people of the south (i.e, the "Dravida") merged him with their local God, Murugan. The writers of the Pali chronicles made no mistake in including Skanda as one of the Guardian deities.

Vishnu is another powerful God, a Bodhsattva for the Buddhists. Vishnu represents the spiritual power of South India, at that time a Buddhist nation which sent out monks like Buddhagosha to Sri Lanka. Significant pockets of south India used Sinhala as the local language, and even today Tamil Nadu has place names like "Nagarjuna Kanda (Nagarjunakonda)". The Mahavamsa writers correctly handed over to Vishnu, representing South India, the task of protecting Buddhism.

Natha is none other than the power of the Sumerians, Etruscans and other who filtered into India and merged with the Gods of the Rig Veda. In later times, Natha changes to Vibeeshana, acolyte of Rama. Natha and his surrogate Vibheeshana represent North India, i.e., the spiritual power of the Gods of the Ramayana, directed against the "Yakkas", a Kirat people who had even colonized Sri Lanka prior to the legend of Vijaya.

Saman is the home-made Guardian deity, overseeing Lanka from Samnathakoota or "Samanalakanda" (Adam's peak). We should however note that Vibeeshana (but NOT Natha), is partly a Lankan prince (Raavana's clan) who had fallen out and joined Rama.

The Ancient "Sathara Varam Deiyyo" represented the deified international powers of the ancient world, as seen via the lens of legend. Today, in a world where the fire of the Gods has been replaced by guided missiles, mines and other tools of technological war, the biggest weapons merchants are also the capitalists of the IC. It was this set of Gods that the Chandrika-Ranil governments invoked, in the "Cease-Fire-Agreement (CFA)" with the Tiger leaders.

When one set of Guardian Deities fails to deliver, we invoke another set. The new Guardian Deities are China, Russia, Iran and Libya", with India a hidden :kurural". These nations are held in low esteem by the super-IC. However, the destruction of Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, client militarization of Pakistan, Vietnam, and Korea are vile evidence against the super-IC. Fortunately, as long as the LTTE is a regional problem, we can do without the supr-IC, and retain the new Guardian Deities who have been successfully invoked by the Rajapaksa administration. The human-rights record of these new guardian deities is probably no worse than that of the super-IC, although their reputation, as orchestrated by the super-IC journalists, is quite the opposite.

-Sri Lanka Guardian

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David Cameron asks "Will Colombo make Peace" ?

By Gam Vaesiya, Ottawa, Vanada

Prof. Cameron, writing in the Globe and Mail of April 3rd 2009, Toronto asks
"Will Colombo make Peace"?

But it takes at least two to make peace.

(April 12, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Tamil National alliance (TNA) in Sri Lanka has rejected invitations (10 April) for talks with the Indian Foreign Minister Shivashankar Menon. The TNA rejected a similar invitation from the Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa.

David Cameron teaches "political science" at the University of Toronto and took part in Sri Lanka's peace talks from 2002 to 2004 as a member of the Forum of Federations. So he his far more informed about the Sri Lankan situation than the typical "citizen of the street". However, political science is only a science by appellation, and hence his discussion needs re-examination, particularly because his analysis ignores a number of very important parameters which are missing in most discussions of the conflict in Sri Lanka. The zeitgeist of the discussions of the 2002 era was molded by two groups. One group consisted of the upper-caste Colombo Tamils who were the empowered group during the British era. They had become the mouth piece of the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Eelam (LLTE), and have been named "Thimpu Tamils" by Sebastian Rasalingam, a dissident Tamil writer ( see ). The other group was the representatives of the Sri Lankan government, largely drawn from the Christian-educated Colombo upper classes. It is this zeitgeist that David Cameron and the "international community" (IC) is most familiar with.

Karuna's secession

The international community as well as the Government and LTTE peace negotiators were all surprised by what David Cameron records in the following manner: "A devastating blow was delivered to the LTTE in 2004, when the Tigers' eastern military commander, known as "Colonel Karuna," broke with Mr. Prabhakaran and set up a competing movement in the northeastern part of the country. This destroyed the Tigers' claim to represent all of the north and northeast of Sri Lanka, and radically undermined its military strength. The Karuna faction began to work covertly against the LTTE with elements in the Sri Lankan army."

Why did no "political scientist" predict this? After all, the strength of any science is that it studies a system, and builds up enough knowledge to make useful predictions. Societies are so complex that political scientists rarely use quantitative simulations to test their beliefs - they just hold forth. They usually miss the underlying structural features, and by force of events seize upon the most talked of features. Karuna's rift was not fore-seen as the structural nature of Tamil society was ignored in most deliberations of the conflict in Sri Lanka.

Contrary to the stance taken by the elitist Colombo leadership, Tamil society is neither monolithic nor homogeneous. It is a strongly stratified system where each stratum rules the lower stratum. The upper-crust Vellalar caste has its own fine distinctions, with the "first-class Tamils" being the ruling class that had dominated Tamil politics since the 19th century. Even in the decade prior to independence from the British, the leading Tamil politician, Ponnambalam Ramanathan, led delegations to London, with the hope of getting the Colonial office to include the caste system as the legislated law of the land. The opposition of the elitist Colombo Tamils to the "low-caste" Tamils who worked in the tea plantations was such that their citizenship, proposed by the Donoughmore commission, was sabotaged not by just the Kandyan Sinhalese, but most forcefully by the Tamil leaders themselves. Some high-caste Tamil leaders like Peri Sundar considered it an utter indignity to run for office in competition with low-caste Tamils. The Tamil-casteism of the pre- independence era was replaced by Tamil-nationalism and Tamil racism when dealing with the Sinhalese, but the underlying casteism did not go away.

Just as the hill-country Tamils were "low-caste", so were the Eastern Tamils of "Mukkuva" extraction. The Upper-caste Jaffna Tamils demanded suzerainty over all Tamils with the proviso that the hierarchy be respected. The Eastern Tamils and the Hill-country Tamils were regarded as "subject castes" by the Thimpu Tamils. However, the leaders of the Eastern Tamils, or the hill-country Tamils, living within the multi-ethnic societies that prevailed in the Eastern and Central provinces, rejected the hegemony of the Jaffna-Colombo elitist axis. Thus the political proposals of G. G. Ponnambalam to the Soulbury commission (equal division of the legislature between the Sinhalese and the Tamils), or the "traditional Tamil homelands" concept of S. J. V. Chelvanayagam, annunciated at the Maradana meeting of the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) in 1949, were rejected by Thambimuttu and other leaders of the Eastern Tamils, as well as by Thondaman, the leader of the Hill-country Tamils.

Most Muslims in Sri Lanka are also Tamil speakers. T. B. Jayah, the Muslim leader had also rejected the political stance of Ponnnambalam, as well as Chelvanayagam, although Ponnambalam arrogantly assumed the mantel of "spokesman for all Tamils" when appearing in front of Soulbury.

Thus Karuna's rift is a historical continuation of an old rift that discerning political scientists and historians could well have expected. Karuna found that Prabhakaran, having assassinated the Colombo leadership and hijacked its nationalist movement, also assumed the hegemonic mindset of that elitist class. This was the case even though Prabhakaran came from a Karaiar smuggler's village, viz., Vellvettithurai (Vaeli-vaeti-thara). The LTTE treated the Eastern province as its "colony", to draw resources, recruit child soldiers, and tax the people for its war effort. Karuna simply emulated his leader Prabharkaran who rejected the Elitist Colombo Tamils. He in turn rejected the LTTE hegemony over the Eastern Tamils.

The claim of "Traditional Tamil homelands".

The historian Michael Roberts has presented a detailed discussion of how the claims to "exclusively Tamil homelands" (ETH) in the North and the East came to dominate the dynamics of the Sri Lankan conflict (J. South Asian Studies, vol xxvii, p87-108, 2004; ). Historically, these claims are highly overblown and the Sinhalese as well as the Tamils can claim occupation of these lands from time time, especially after the 8th century CE, with the Jaffna kingdom limited to the Jaffna peninsula, then known as "Vaeligama" (in Sigiri Griffiti, and Valikamam in some old maps). A. J. Wilson, a political scientist who was Chelvanayagam's son in law, also stated that ETH became the dominant doctrine of the Tamil nationalist movement. ETH gradually hardened to claim that the North and the East were exclusive Tamil Homelands and that the Sinhalese and Muslims were invaders who have to be driven away. Of course, most Tamils of the early 1950s did not accept this extremely racist position. The Ilankai Thamil Arasu kadchi (IAK) took care to talk of federalism in its English language presentations and its more moderate leaders were probably federalists. The ITAK may have remained an ultra-racist fringe party but for the death of D. S. Senanayake and the rise of the Sinhala only movement. Also, although there was much moderate thinking among the Sinhalese polity, they did not trust the "federal party" with its "Arasu" (Sovereignty) cry uttered in Tamil. The Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam (BC) pact, the first attempt at devolution of power, was doomed to failure . Even after the pact was signed, instead of attempting to build bridges between the two communities, the ITAK engaged in tar-brushing Sinhala street names, car registration plates, and launching acts of civil disobedience. The Sinhalese groups countered with nationalist marches and a demand for the abrogation of the BC pact. The abrogation of the BC pact was actually celebrated even by the ITAK in Jaffna!

David Cameron writes: "if it had been possible, in short, for members of the Tamil community, as Tamils, to participate in the life of their country, the history of Sri Lanka over the last 60 years would have been very different." However, with the concept of "the need to drive the invaders from the Traditional Homelands" fully entrenched, the Tamil leaders chose a path of separatism rather than "participation in the life of the country".

All this was cheered on with glee by westernized Colombo society which had began to hate the "Sinhala Buddhists" who had dis-empowered them in 1956. The attempt at a coup d'etat, led by right-wing Christian groups was the climax of this movement. They, and their journalists finally sided with the Tamil nationalist movement due to their antipathy towards the Sinhala-Buddhist groups.

The ITAK worked hard, aided and abetted by their Sinhalese counterparts who held diametrically opposing points of view, to polarize the thinking of the people. The Tamil parties were far more successful in this, and the ultra-nationalist doctrines of the ITAK became mainstream thinking among the Tamils., with the Vaddukkoddei (Batakotte) resolution (1976) spelling out the need for the creation of a separate Tamil states, Eelam, if necessary by an armed struggle. The Hill country Tamils, and the Tamil speaking Muslims refused to approve the Vadukkoddei (Batakotte) resolution or join the Tamil United Liberation front (TULF).

This resolution officially accepted that Tamil political action would deviate from the moral, democratic path and let the end justify the means.

Meanwhile, Chelvanaygam himself, and Amirthalingam, the leader of the TULF, had been busy building up militant groups who were ready to take up arms. The Pulip Padai (Army of Tigers) had in fact been launched in Trincomalee on the 12th August 1961, with the full knowledge of Chelvanayagam. In a later phase, Sivakumaran, a militant who introduced the use of cyanide to evade capture by suicide, had several meetings with Chelvanaygam. Thus the "Gandhian" image cultivated by some some members of the ITAK was possibly sincere or just another tactic in the struggle to "free the homelands" from the invaders.

Given such a powerful clarion call, and given the bulging demographics of the Tamil youth population of Sri Lanka, it was inevitable that anyone who attempted to compromise on the ETH doctrine by federalism or devolution of power would be eliminated as traitors. This was the fate of many Tamil intellectuals and politicians, ranging from Amirthalingam, Neelan Thriruchelvam and Kadirgamar. Even Rajeev Gandhi was eliminated because he would have established power devolution instead of separation.

The democratic mandate won by the TULF in 1977 was nullified by the LTTE which eliminated the TULF leaders. The LTTE began a full scale war, partly funded by India. The upper-caste leaders of the Tamils, the progeny of the Ponnambalms, Sampanthans and others have today become lackeys of the LTTE, meekly following its orders, collecting funds and organizing demonstrations, refusing invitations to any discussions etc., instead of playing a constructive role.

To heal the wounds of war

The Tigers had grown into a vast immoral mafia organization which extorts funds from the diaspora and has become a liability to every one including the Indians, the Canadians and other countries hosting sizable Tamil populations. Thus, in effect, the military successes of the Rajapaksa government in eliminating the Tigers has been welcomed in many quarters.

David Cameron, in asking if Colombo will make Peace, says "If the nation is composed of all these communities, why is there so little concrete expression of that fact in the affairs of state? For a great many of the President's supporters, Sri Lanka is not a multicultural society, but a single Sinhalese nation with several small minority groups. Government documents are typically issued only in Sinhalese; there are few Tamil-speaking officials; there are repeated reports of racial profiling by the predominantly Sinhalese police force". Contrary to what is stated here, all government documents are issued in three languages. Government functions are also, painfully, three times long as i found when I attended an Independence day celebration. By contrast, all events of the Tamil diaspora are exclusively Tamil events.

David Cameron, a political scientist, knows very well how Japanese and German Canadians were all uprooted overnight and confined to camps rimmed with razor wire during the time Canada was at war. Leave aside allowing individuals of German descent into the civil or armed forces, Canada did not even allow their young sons and daughters to the University of Toronto Chemical laboratories as they were regarded as "security risks". After 9/11 USA introduced the Home security act with draconian powers of detaining people. In Canada too, even in the absence of a war situation, the CISIS holds people as "security risks", send them to countries like Syria, and lead people into Kafkaesque situations even today, where a Canadian is held in the Canadian Embassy in Sudan without trial.

The Sri Lankan government is treating the Tamil population in a far more considerate manner than was the case of Canada in its handling of the Japanese and German Canadians during its war. There are indeed only a small number of police or army officers who are Tamils. Any Tamil in such a position was assassinated or forced out of office by the LTTE. Redressing this situation will now be possible with the elimination of the LTTE. If Quebec and the "rest of Canada" had been at war, it is very unlikely that the "rest of Canada" would be offering extensive services in French even before the war comes to an end. In fact, without there having been such a war for at least a century, and after four decades of ethnic bridge building and Traudeauism, Francophones are still complaining that French is not much used in the civil administrations west of Federal Ottawa. David Cameron, a political "scientist", would well know that it takes a generation or more to change these types of situations. Hence the accusations he has hurled at the Rajapaksa government which has been in power for a just a few years, and still at war, are simply unexpected when coming from a professional.

Sri Lanka will most likely find its own solution

Professional military observers and "international think tanks" had claimed, for decades, that the Tigers can never be militarily defeat. This has now been proven dead wrong. Western analysts have also argued that "power devolution", or a mini "Indian model" based on racial or linguistic identities, is the solution to the problem in Sri Lanka. This, as well as the belief that the Tigers cannot be militarily defeated are both parts of the 2002 Zeitgeist that David Cameron and many other observers are familiar with. A perusal of the writings of Tamil dissidents like Sebastian Rasalingam, Thomas Johnpulle, Lenine Benadict, Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, Noel Nadesan and others shows that a completely different approach is sought by these more recent writers. They have rejected federalism, Indian models, devolution etc, for a multi-ethnic pluralist society that already exists in Colombo, Kandy, Galle and other southern cities. In fact, today Colombo has a Tamil speaking population exceeding Sinhala speakers. Thus, even under conditions of war, a multi-ethnic peaceful society has begun to flourish in many parts of the country. The LTTE has tried to provoke this society by attacking icons sacred to the Sinhalese as well as the Muslims, but there has been a firm, healthy refusal to retaliate.

David Cameron should think what would happen if most of the population of Canada were shrunk into the space between Ottawa, Kingston and the US border. Sri Lanka is not much bigger, and its population is about 21 million. The integrity of the polity between Kingston and Ottawa is established by the availability of fast roads and rail connections. The first acts of the LTTE separatists were to destroy the railroads and dismantle the highways. The new government should seek unity and stability in Sri Lanka by developing its roads, railways etc., instead of constitutionally curving out the pie. Constitutions are no guarantee of human rights - even Josef Stalin had a very democratic sounding constitution. The only guarantee of human rights is the development of good understanding, good communications, the establishment of trade and other inter-dependencies. That is the very opposite of divisive politics enshrined in the call for devolution, based on linguistic lines. Given the modern high-technology revolution where translation from one language to another is available via a mere click on your browser, the problem of the existence of divers languages would dissolve into oblivion with the next generation of computers. Once fast rail links are established, Jaffna and Trincomallee would be quasi-suburbs of Colombo, or as close as Boston is to New York or Washington.

I have no doubt that given peace, and given a few more years, the Tamils living in Sri Lanka and the Sinhalese would forge a successful multi-cultural, harmonious society if only the Diaspora Tamils, locked in their Vadukkoddei mindset, would keep off funding militants to engage in the politics of the Island that they are no longer a part of. A large amount of money collected in Canada was used to blow up human beings in Sri Lanka. The Tamils have suffered the most in this regard. The RCMP-the Royal Candian Mounted Police, was fully aware of it and had repeatably warned the Canadian government that Canada has become a staging post for Tiger Terror operations. Indeed people like David Cameron can help by educating the diaspora Tamils as well as many short-sighted Canadian politicians in this regard.

-Sri Lanka Guardian Read more...