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Most Western scholars and journalists have interpreted Sri Lanka as a
tropical island paradise, ruled by 2,500-year-old Buddhist ideals of peace and
compassion. Maintaining the entrepreneurial and profit-motivated capitalist
system, yet stridently pursuing non-alignment, Sri Lanka is seen as a
respectable working model of a Third World democracy, changing governments in
classic style, with modernization uniquely facilitated by superimposition of the
modern on the indigenous. Only occasionally do "race" riots and bloodshed, in
the words of Ian Jack, "stain the face of paradise". (Sunday Times, London, 18
October 1981.)
One scholar wrote: "The political system provides a better model of a
participatory democracy than many states of Europe or America ... The ethnic
minorities were preoccupied with protecting their interests against undue
domination by the Sinhalese-Buddhist majority." The Economist (London, 13 June
1981), in a special 20-page Sri Lanka: A Survey, in its desire to cater to the
world's multinationals and assure them that peace prevailed, sacrificed facts,
compromised with objectivity and even presented the rioting in Sri Lanka as one
by its Tamil community (the reverse of the truth). The opening paragraph stated:
Until 1977 it [Sri Lanka] was best known as a leading member of the
non-aligned movement; a democracy that had voted every one of its
governments out of office; a poor country that somehow avoided the harshness
of its neighbours' poverty; an island of gentle beauty marred only by
occasional riots by its Tamil minority. [Emphasis added.]
However interpreted, behind the romantic veneer and political facade lies the
reality of deprivation of basic rights to citizenship, franchise, and the
language of the Tamil ethnic nation of nearly four million people; three decades
of national oppression; military occupation; police and army repression; and,
today, a mandated Tamil genocide.
Bourgeois scholarship possessed no analytic tools to expose and come to grips
with these social conflicts. The stark unreality of this inadequate bourgeois
analysis, totally disregarding social formation, class conflict and
socioeconomic crises, was first revealed when the JVP revolution broke out in
1971.
When the seemingly secure and enduring state structure portrayed by these
scholars crumbled and virtually collapsed, when thousands of Sinhalese teenagers
resorted to armed insurrection and a revolutionary attempt to seize power to
resolve the socio-economic crises generated by the reactionary policies of the
ruling class, bourgeois scholarship was baffled. Similarly, these scholars have
ignored the more than three decades of national oppression of the Tamil people.
This is so even today, when national oppression has reached the most acute stage
of genocidal repression: incarceration of Tamil intellectuals, Catholic priests,
human-rights activists; and when armed revolutionary struggle for Tamil national
liberation is engaging the total energies of the degenerate bourgeois state.
From 1971 state power has been maintained only by frequent national
emergencies, by rifles and bayonets, deliberately provoked Sinhalese chauvinism,
and a servile, sycophantic state-controlled press. Chauvinism has become an
article of faith and to give it teeth President Jayewardene said in 1977: "If
the Tamils want war they'll have war, if they want peace they'll have peace."
The national question and even the legitimate struggle of the Tamils for justice
is thus denied as non est. Patriotic liberation fighters are branded as
"terrorists" and confronted by state terrorism.
In the absence of any properly grounded scholarly study and freely available
information, the facts of the Tamil national question in Sri Lanka have been
concealed from the Sinhalese, the Tamil people and the world community. Hence
this attempt to bring together the several dimensions of this struggle, which
David Selbourne has properly described as "a true national question, if ever
there was one". My analysis is grounded on materialist, historical bases in
order to expose the issue's complex historical causes and to correct grave
misconceptions surrounding it.
In a memorandum to the Constituent Assembly in 1972, the late Handy
Perinbanayagam, veteran nationalist, distinguished educationist, uncompromising
social revolutionary and unrepentant Gandhian who, in the 1920s, was the first
to admit "low"-caste people into his home, reflected the thinking of the
concerned Tamils:
The "Sinhala only" Act and the change in political climate that ushered
it in came about at a time when it seemed that Ceylon politics had outgrown
the racialist approach and that ideological alignments were taking shape
.... When "Sinhala only" was made the law of the land, not the slightest
effort was made to temper the wind to the shorn Tamil lamb. The self-esteem
of the Tamil-speaking community was trampled underfoot. The law was stark,
blunt and without any recognition of the fact that there was in Ceylon
another sizeable linguistic group to whom their language was just as vital
and precious as Sinhala was to the Sinhalese .... With the passing of the "Sinhala
only" Act, the entire Tamil community became frustrated, unreconciled and
psychologically uprooted. They despaired of human help and sought divine
aid. Pilgrimages, fasts, Yagas were resorted to .... The self-respect of the
Tamil people was more precious than national unity ... anyway there could be
no national unity as long as the Tamils and their language were condemned to
perpetual inferiority .... The Tamil-speaking people of Ceylon will never be
reconciled to an inferior status in their homeland.
Handy Perinbanayagam's organization, the Jaffna Youth Congress, in 1928, was
the first in the country to demand independence for the people of Sri Lanka. For
nearly 50 years he represented Sinhalese-Tamil unity. His commitment was so
strong and his politics so principled that he declined the FP's nomination as
its candidate in three elections to parliament in the 1950s and 1960s; standing
as an independent he lost each time.
He was the only Tamil to hold a clear position on the national question. I
had many private discussions with him and his forthright formulation of the
Tamil national question was that linguistic and cultural rights and equality are
of fundamental importance, and that from those spring equality between two
nations of co-ordinate status in a unitary state. He considered that ethnic and
cultural loyalties override class interests, political party or any other group
loyalty in society when a people is threatened and oppressed by another, and
that unless equality is conceded, national self-determination of the oppressed
nation would be the result. But until his death in 1977, he hoped for, and
strived to achieve, the reversal of the "Sinhala-only" law and gain recognition
of Tamil too as an official language.
The Tamil bourgeois FP and TC politicians never understood the national
question in these terms and their political discourse was so conservative and
reactionary that they alienated concerned socialist-oriented Tamils, and also
the progressive Sinhalese, by their sterile romantic demagogy and collaboration
with the conservative UNP. They possessed no political coherence and advanced no
strategies or tactics that took account of the class forces at work in the
country.
If they had shed their conservatism and sacrificed their bourgeois in
reality, petit-bourgeois - class interests, and from the beginning engaged in
revolutionary socialist struggle, the Tamil people could never have been driven
into the captive situation to which the politics of personal power brought them.
The politics of revolutionary socialist struggle were advanced by the first
Tamil Marxists, C. Tharmakulasingham and V. Sittampalam, in the mid-1930s and
early 1940s, and in the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) at that time they were
the pioneers who correctly formulated the national question, class struggle and
the course of the proletarian revolution. They challenged G.G. Ponnambalam's
bourgeois communal politics, and Sittampalam wrote the famous tract Communalism
or Nationalism ... A Reply to the Speech Delivered in the State Council on the
Reform Despatch (1939).
The LSSP and these Tamil party leaders correctly saw the plantation Tamil
proletariat as the vanguard revolutionary force. In the mid-1940s Sittampalam
organized them for the revolutionary socialist struggle. But unfortunately, both
for the Tamils and for the revolutionary cause, Tharmakulasingham and
Sittampalam died in 1945 and 1946 respectively, and the vacuum they left was
never filled.
After 35 years, the Eelam Liberation Tigers have today come to advance the
revolutionary struggle for Tamil national liberation.
The Sinhalese politicians were never willing to concede that the state structure
agreed at independence was an alliance of the Sinhalese and Tamils to live under
one central government with equal rights. On becoming fully aware of Tamil
subjugation, and the blind alley into which the policies of Sinhalese
chauvinists and Tamil conservatives were taking the Tamil nation, in 1969 I
formed the Tamil Socialist Front, to join with any genuine socialist forces
among the Sinhalese.
Again in 1979, along with some progressive Sinhalese socialists, including
LG. Herat Ran Banda and the famous political scholar bhikkhu (Buddhist monk)
Panjaasara Thero, I launched the Podu Jana Party (Ordinary People's Party),
which stood for equal rights for the Tamils and socialist advance. But each time
it proved a Herculean task to fight the forces of reaction and the parties
floundered.
On the last occasion, as soon as the party was launched, the Prevention of
Terrorism Act was passed and President Jayewardene sent the army with a mandate,
as he put it, to "wipe out" the Tamil "terrorists" demanding a separate state.
More than 10 young Tamils were killed by the army. I was driven to the
conclusion that national oppression had reached such a level that life in a
unitary state was impossible and national unity could no longer be advocated as
a sensible political goal.
Sri Lanka, from the mid-1970s, degenerated into racist violence. Despite the
paucity of writings on the subject, the publicity by Amnesty International (AI)
of "racist" murder, detention and torture of young Tamils contributed to
international awareness of the Tamil national question and freedom struggle, The
AI report by Louis Blom-Cooper QC in 1975 stated:
. . . 42 young members of the Tamil community ... arrested for their
agitation (generally peaceful, so AI understands) for greater autonomy for
the Tamils, who feel that the provisions in the 1972 constitution regarding
language and religion discriminate against them. They had been detained
without trial under the Emergency Regulations for periods ranging from one
year to two and a half years . . .
The subsequent annual reports of A1 from 1976 on contained details of young
Tamils, often held incommunicado and tortured for their political beliefs. The
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), stated in 1977:
It would be a pity if Sri Lanka's leadership waited for bombs to explode
and for prisons to fill up again, before conceding that the Tamils need
reassurance that they have a place in the future of the island.
The Tamil struggle for independence by secession in a separate state of Eelam
was internationalized when, in May 1979, the House of Representatives of the
State of Massachusetts passed the Eelam Resolution calling for the creation of
the Tamil state of Eelam. In 1981, several British MPs sent letters and
telegrams to President Jayewardene calling for an end to imprisonment of Tamils
without trial and for their release. Addressing the Commonwealth Parliamentary
Seminar, held in Colombo in June 1981, Jayewardene angrily reacted, in these
words:
... These telegrams and letters accuse this government of imprisoning
people without trial, even murdering them.... There is one district in our
country in which we are having some trouble with terrorists . . . I cannot
release people without trial, who have been put into jail under the normal
laws of the land. If I may say so, they are talking through their hat. When
you meet your colleagues, please tell them that I said so. [New
Internationalist, November 1981.]
Yet three months later, in August 1981, when the Sinhalese rioting against
the Tamils broke out, Jayewardene stated:
A few days ago in several estates in the Ratnapura District, estate
labourers had been subjected to violence and merciless harassment ... by, I
am ashamed to say ... people of my own race . . . I am ashamed that this
sort of thing should have happened in this country during my government.
[Ceylon Daily News, 21 September 1981.]
Because of the rioting against the Tamil people, in August 1981 the Tamil
Nadu State Assembly, in India, passed a resolution unanimously condemning the
violence and expressing sympathy with the Sri Lanka Tamils. The Hindu (Madras,
22 August 1981) reported:
The Finance Minister and Leader of the House, V.R. Nedunchezhian, who
moved the resolution, and the Leader of the Opposition,
M. Karunanidhi, and other party leaders who extended unqualified support to
it, said they did recognize the dictum that no country had the right to
interfere with the internal affairs of another nation. Where human and
minority rights were at stake, everyone had a right to demand justice, they
contended.
And the Indian Express (New Delhi, 13 July 1981) correctly summed up the
Tamil national struggle in these words:
... the cause for Eelam has picked up pace now and what it lacked in
world propaganda in the 1950s and 1960s has been effectively achieved in the
1970s and the present decade.
In all my writings, past and present, I have steadfastly held to the dictum
enunciated by C.P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian for 50 years: "Facts
are sacred, comment is free." In fact, comment has been kept to a minimum, to
let the facts and events speak for themselves.
As with my previous book, in this work too I am greatly obliged to Robert
Molteno of Zed Press, my publishers, for his constant encouragement, from the
time he became aware that I was engaged in writing this book, and for his
critical assessment of the manuscript. Lastly, once again I record my
appreciation for the keen interest taken by my wife Vasantha in my writing of
this book, and for her constant pressures to get back to writing, when I had, on
the way, so often stopped writing because of my onerous duties on the Bench.
Satchi Ponnambalam London
15 July 1983
Sri Lanka is the name of the island earlier known as Ceylon. The new name was
bestowed by the Republican constitution on 22 May 1972. "Ceylon" is the name by
which the island came to be known to the outside world after Portuguese
mercantile penetration in the early l 6th Century.
To the Tamils and the Sinhalese, the indigenous people, the country had
various appellations. Its earliest name, among the aboriginal Tamils, was
Tamaraparani, the name of a river in Tamil Nadu, south India. The island is
referred to by this Tamil name in Emperor Asoka's 3rd Century BC Rock Edict in
Girnar, western India. Tamaraparani became Taprobane to the Greek travellers at
the time of Alexander the Great. The early Indian Sanskrit works refer to the
island as Lanka, its name in the Sanskrit language. The name Tamaraparani fell
into disuse by the 1st Century AD and a new Tamil name, Ilankai, came into use.
The island is referred to by that name in the Tamil classical Sangam literature
(lst-4th Century AD). And so it continued until the 1970s, when Tamil
consciousness led to the naming of the north and east of Sri Lanka, the
traditional Tamil homelands from time immemorial, as Eelam.
There has been no name for the island in the Sinhala language, then or now.
The present name Sri Lanka is its Sanskrit name, meaning "the resplendent
island". The closest Sinhala name is Sihala, used just once in the Dipavamsa and
twice in the Mahavamsa. Generally, Lanka has been the Sinhala name used. Sri
Lanka has been variously described by the early travellers. "Ceylon is
undoubtedly the finest island of its size in the world," said Marco Polo. Others
have enchantingly described it as "the pearl of the Orient", 'the pendant on the
chain of India", "this other Eden, this demiparadise", "the land without
sorrow".
Sri Lanka is situated at the southern extremity of the Indian subcontinent,
separated from it at its narrowest point by only 22 miles of sea called the Palk
Strait. It lies between six and 10 degrees north of the Equator, and on the
longitude of 79 to 81 degrees east. Sri Lanka is a medium sized island
charmingly and strategically situated in the Indian Ocean. It became a trading
post in the age of early European maritime adventure and a strategic naval base
in the age of imperialism.
The island has an area of 25,332 square miles (16.2 million acres)— almost
the size of Ireland or Tasmania. It has mountainous terrain in the central part,
with an average elevation of 3,700 feet, surrounded by an upland area ranging
between 1,000 to 3,000 feet. The rest of the country comprises a coastal plain,
broad in the north and narrowing in the east, west and south. There is an
abundance of rivers, all starting in the central hills and flowing outwards to
the Indian Ocean. More than three quarters of the land area is arable, and the
climate is admirably suited for most tropical crops .
Sri Lanka is a country of heterogeneous culture, with two separate and
distinct ethno linguistic nations (Sinhalese and Tamils), five communities (the
Tamils of Indian origin, Sri Lankan Muslims, Indian Muslims, Burghers, and
Malays) and four great religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam).
According to the last population census, at the end of 1971, Sri Lanka had a
population of 12.7 million, and it is now estimated to be about 15.5 million.
For reasons of history, the Sinhalese live in the west, south and centre, and
the Tamils in the north and east. Until the administrative unification of the
country by the British in 1833, this pattern of distribution was one of mutual
exclusiveness. This was a result of differences in language, religion and
culture and of political organisation in the past under separate Sinhalese and
Tamil kingdoms. The areas the Sinhalese and the Tamils occupied were their
traditional and exclusive homelands, to which they owed their first loyalty.
The Tamils were the aboriginal people of Sri Lanka, and, in this writer's
contention, the Sinhalese came with the introduction of Buddhism in the 3rd
Century BC. The Muslims arrived to trade from Arabia or India, or even from
Arabia via India, around the 10th Century; the Tamils of Indian origin after the
opening of plantations by the British in the 1840s; the Malays from Malaya as
mercenaries of the Dutch in the 18th Century; and the Burghers are the relic of
the Portuguese and Dutch conquest, in the 16th and 18th Century respectively.
According to the 1971 census, there were 9,146,679 Sinhalese, constituting
71.9% of the population. The Sinhalese are divided into the low country
Sinhalese and the up country, or Kandyan, Sinhalese. The former comprise 42.8%
and the latter 29.1% of the population. The Tamils numbered 2,611,935, or 20.5%
of the population. The Tamils are divided into the Sri Lankan Tamils and the
Tamils of Indian origin. The former comprise 11.1 % and the latter 9.4% of the
population. The Muslims are divided into the Sri Lankan Muslims (6.5%) and the
Indian Muslims (0.2%). The Muslims are Tamil speaking. Hence 27.2% of Sri
Lanka's people are Tamil speaking. The Malays constitute 0.3% and the Burghers a
similar figure.
Buddhism is the ancestral religion of the Sinhalese and is professed by 67%
of the people, all Sinhalese. Hinduism is the ancestral religion of the Tamils
and is professed by 17.6%, all Tamils. Christianity is professed by Sinhalese,
Tamils and Burghers and is the religion of 7.7%; and Islam, professed by
Muslims, is the religion of 7.1% of the population.
As stated earlier, the Sinhalese and Tamils are separate and distinct
nations. Because of their particular historical past, and because of national
ethnic differences and the occupation of separate homelands, each possesses
separate and distinct national consciousness and owes its loyalty first to its
own homeland. and then to Sri Lanka.
The British were the colonial rulers of the country from 1796. Having brought
the Sinhalese and the Tamil nations together in 1833 for purposes of
administrative convenience, after a century of colonial rule and colonial
plantation economy the British withdrew at independence in 1948, leaving the two
nations yoked together under a Westminster model constitution in a unitary state
structure.
Earlier, in 1946, the Sinhalese and Tamil political elite had arrived at a
constitutional settlement for independence, the Sinhalese upper middle class
political leadership promising just and fair government and power sharing on the
basis of partnership to reap the benefits of freedom and self government. Both
the Sinhalese and Tamil leadership, in perfect amity and unity, adopted the
independence constitution as representing "the solemn balance of rights" between
the Sinhalese and Tamil peoples.
The independence constitution contained an entrenched and inviolable non
discriminatory safeguard, in Section 29(2), based on a provision in the Northern
Ireland constitution. As in Northern Ireland, it proved ineffective in
safeguarding the rights it intended to preserve inviolate. That constitution
bestowed by the British at independence, contained no law on citizenship
franchise or on individual and communal rights in a multi national state.
After independence, the Sinhalese bourgeois political leadership, via the
arithmetic of the ballot box and gerrymandering, denied citizenship and
franchise to one half of the Tamil people the million Tamil plantation workers
of Indian origin, long settled in the island. It then set half a million of them
on a course of compulsory repatriation to India, a country most of them had
never seen. The plantation Tamils of Indian origin were the largest component in
the organized working class in the country and had already engaged in working
class struggle, displayed unexpected class solidarity and voted for the Marxist
parties, who relied on them to advance their revolutionary struggle. This was
the first line of attack by the upper middle class to keep power in its hands.
The Sinhalese governments, by a policy of aggressive state financed Sinhalese
colonization and resettlement of the traditional Tamil areas, sought to end the
Tamils' exclusive occupation of their homelands in the north and east . Under
this programme, which was accelerated after 1948, over 200,000 Sinhalese
families were resettled in colonized enclaves, organized in clustered villages
in over 3,000 square miles of the Tamil homelands. As a result, one third of the
Batticaloa district in the eastern province—in the Tamil heartland—was taken
into the new Sinhalese Amparai district. The Trincomalee district and the
Batticaloa district (reduced in size because of the carving out of the Amparai
district), formerly exclusively Tamil, were according to the 1971 census 28.8%
and 17.7% Sinhalese, respectively
Then, in violation of the policy of governments from as early as 1930 to make
Sinhala and Tamil the official languages of the country, Sinhala was made the
only official language by the government of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike. The Tamils
were administered in another's language and given the oppressive stamp of a
subject people. The doors of government employment, on which the Tamils had
principally relied for employment and economic advance, were closed to them.
This forced Tamil government employees to study and work in Sinhala or leave
employment. Tamil officers were given three years to learn Sinhala or face
dismissal. This discrimination was extended to the security services, public
corporations and other services, and to the private sector, where proficiency in
the official language was an obvious premium.
Tamil parents and educationists resisted the teaching of Sinhala to their
children, although often in the past they had done so voluntarily. Now they
resisted, afraid they would lose their separate national ethnic identity as
Tamils and would face assimilation. Still worse was the government's decision
that children should be taught in their mother tongue: Sinhalese children in
Sinhalese and Tamil children in Tamil. This led to an anomalous situation: Tamil
children were supposedly "educated" without knowing the official language of
their country. They became alienated and could find no role outside their own
regions. Hence their patriotism was directed towards their own homelands.
The younger generation of Sinhalese and Tamils became strangers to each
other, and, to the Tamils, the unitary state became a monstrous irrelevance,
which served only to perpetuate their disadvantaged condition. In short, the
state not only failed to safeguard their interests, their language and culture,
but actively discriminated against them because of their Tamil birth. In fact,
they had no state; hence the urge to create a state, called Eelam, in their own
homelands .
From 1956, the Tamils did not participate in the government of Sri Lanka.
They were ruled by the Sinhalese. And the Sinhalese acted in their own interest,
not in the interest of the Tamils. Hence the discrimination against them in
employment and education. For the benefit of the Sinhalese, the government
introduced lower qualifying marks in the competitive examination for entrance to
the university. This eliminated competition. The merit system no longer existed.
Yet various stratagems of "standardisation", "district quotas", etc. were used
to favour Sinhalese students, thereby removing a large number of Tamil students
who had qualified for university admission.
It is these students, who were so flagrantly and unjustly excluded from
university and prevented by the state from achieving their aspirations, who are
today in the vanguard, providing the groundwork and leadership of the armed
liberation struggle for the secession of the state of Eelam.
Of the four prevailing religions, Buddhism at first became the de facto state
religion of Sri Lanka. Then the 1972 Republican constitution directed the state
to give the "foremost place" to Buddhism and to "protect and foster" it. The
1978 constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic went further and directed
the state "to protect and foster the Bud&a Sasana", i.e. to include not only
the religious doctrine but also the Buddhist sects, monasteries and bhikkhus.
Hindus, Christians and Muslims have only private rights of worship. The argument
was advanced that, in the old Sinhalese monarchical society, the king was
advised by the Sangha. In this manner, Sri Lanka was made a theocratic state.
From independence, the Sinhalese governments totally isolated the Tamil
homelands from all economic development programmes and projects undertaken with
massive foreign aid from Western donor countries. As a result, over the last
three decades, while the Sinhalese people and their homelands have prospered and
flourished, the Tamil people and their homelands have suffered and become the
backyard colony of the Sinhalese.
There occurred four major anti Tamil "race" riots, in 1956,1958,1977 and
1981; each time the Tamil people living in Colombo and the Sinhalese areas of
the south had to assemble as refugees and withdraw to their homelands in the
north and east. The last two riots were well organized and specifically directed
against the plantation Tamils, many of whom abandoned the plantations and fled
to the north and east. Previously mute, exploited, miserable coolies in the
plantation enclaves, on resettlement they are becoming a new political force
uniting with their brethren of the north and east. This is a development of
great importance, not only for the Tamil national liberation struggle, but also
for the proletarian revolution and socialist reconstruction.
In all these riots, hundreds of Tamil people were killed, many Tamil women
raped and countless numbers of Tamil homes looted and burnt. After the 1958
riots, Professor Howard Wriggins wrote:
"The memory of these events will retard
the creation of a unified modern nation state commanding the allegiance of all
communities." It is important to remember that all these things happened despite
the fact that the Majority of the Sinhalese are Buddhists and despite the
fundamental Buddhist concepts of karma ("compassion") and metta ("universal
love").
All these methods were used by the Sinhalese rulers to avoid and divert the
class struggle, common to both the Sinhalese and Tamil oppressed and exploited
classes, fuelled by the reactionary economic policies adopted to benefit their
class and to consolidate power in their hands. So they resorted to Sinhalese
Buddhist propaganda. Their objective was to let national ethnic forces divide,
contain and smother class forces.
We shall see how the working class was betrayed, in crucial revolutionary
Situations, by its leaders, who were of the same social class as the rulers and
by their "Marxist" parties, because they could not advance a revolutionary
Proletarian programme. Since the leaders betrayed them, the proletariat failed
subsequently in its historic task of fighting the oppression of the Tamil nation
and supporting their right to self determination. I shall come to these matters
shortly, when I deal with the national question.
Hence the goal of the Sinhalese ruling class, pursued and consummated within
a relatively short period of ten years, was to achieve the conquest of the Tamil
nation and its lands by the force of majority legislative power, executive
edicts, military repression to quell peaceful political protest, anti Tamil
rioting and state financed colonization. To these have now been added frequent
states of emergency, the Prevention of Terrorism Law and "Tiger" hunting to
maintain that conquest.
As a result of the reactionary economic policies of the ruling class, the
dependent capitalist agro export economy has been in continual decline and
perennial crisis. Whenever it is about to sink, it is kept afloat by foreign
aid, IMF loans and World Bank organized "Paris Club" Aid Consortium commodity
import credits. The conditions for these included the devaluation of the rupee,
cuts in welfare expenditure, removal of food subsidies and a general willingness
to transfer the accumulating burdens on the poor. At the same time, to benefit
the rich, both local and foreign, the government encourages an "open economy",
liberalised imports, removal of exchange controls, incentives for foreign
capital, tax holidays, constitutional guarantees for foreign investors, etc.
Yet, after 30 years of this type of policy, the economy today is in its
deepest crisis ever. Sri Lanka, two years ago held out as the "IMF's success
story", is today yet another "IMF disaster". While heaping the burdens on the
poor, President Jayewardene stated in 1983:
The recent spate of price increases and revision of the Rupee
against the dollar in Sri Lanka were the result of the requests of the IMF . .
. the increased price of essential commodities, including rice and bread as
well as transport fares, were necessary to obtain an Extended Fund Facility
from the IMF to tide over the precarious balance of payments situation'.
The revolutionary pressures are contained by frequent states of emergency.
Power frequently alternates between the political and the military. When it gets
power, the military is not accountable to the politicians. The only connection
is the family ties linking the two—at the top. But at the bottom, for soldiers
and people, there is the same stark reality of brutality and suffering. This
structure is maintained by guns and by a servile and sycophantic press. But the
class question is about to come to the surface, as the national question already
has done, in the form of revolutionary armed struggle for national liberation.
We have seen that national oppression of the Tamils started in the very first
year of independence, with the enactment of the Citizenship Act of 1948, which
denied a million Tamils their basic right to citizenship, rendering them
stateless. This was followed by their disfranchisement the following year.
We have also seen how national oppression then extended to the Sri Lankan
Tamils. The denial of their language rights seriously affected their political,
economic, social, educational and cultural life. We have also seen how their
lands were colonized and taken over by the Sinhalese. We have also seen how
there were riots against them, and how both the Sri Lankan and the Indian Tamils
were driven to their homelands. We have seen how life in a unitary state was
made impossible and irrelevant to them. We have seen that, in reality, the
Tamils had no state to protect and advance their interests. In that context,
what was obviously and urgently needed was their own state, comprising their
homelands in north and east Sri Lanka. The United States Declaration of
Independence in 1776, in a similar situation, stated:
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights
that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to
alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. . . When a long train
of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a
design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their
duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future
security . . . and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter
their former Systems of Government.
For about a quarter century, the Tamil people and their bourgeois nationalist
leaders attempted peaceful political dialogue, non violent agitation and behind
the scenes negotiations, and they entered into open or secret pacts with their
Sinhalese counterparts to win recognition for Tamil as an official language or,
as an alternative, regional autonomy. They even collaborated to win tangible
concessions to soften the rough edges of their deprived status.
But each time pacts were broken, laws and regulations were not implemented,
and they could not win a single concession. The Tamil people were second class
citizens even in their own homelands. They were given their children's birth
certificates, their land titles, their tax certificates, their passports, in Sinhala. Mrs Bandaranaike, as prime minister from 1960 to 1964 and from 1970 to
1977, set her face resolutely against any political accommodation or modus
vivendi. In 1964, she said that the Tamils "must accept" the place that she had
allotted them. In the 1970s, with a six year emergency in force, her army
resorted to institutionalised repression of the Sri Lankan and Indian Tamils and
the Tamil speaking Muslims. Her Republican constitution removed the meagre
safeguards against discriminatory legislation contained in Section 29(2), and
the Tamils were reduced to their lowest position since 1948.
Because of the level of oppression, secession became the inevitable political
goal of the Tamils, and at their insistence the Tamil bourgeois nationalist
leaders formed the Tamil United Front (TUF). In 1975 its leader Chelvanayakam
declared secession to be the goal of the Tamil people. In 1977, the TUF was
Reformed as the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), and in the subsequent
general election asked the Tamil people for a mandate to secede as the separate
State of Tamil Eelam. The TULF stated in its election manifesto:
The Tamil nation must take the decision to establish its
sovereignty in its homeland on the basis of its right to self determination.
The only way to announce this decision to the Sinhalese government and to the
world is to vote for the Tamil United Liberation Front.
What the TULF was asking, in terms of the national question, was a plebiscite
on secession. The people understood it as such and overwhelmingly expressed
their collective national will to secede. They expressed, through the democratic
political process, their thirst for self determination. This was their answer to
a quarter century of national oppression. It was thus the task of the leadership
to translate that will into reality.
This was a turning point. The Tamils no longer wanted to live in union with
the Sinhalese but decided to organize themselves as a political state, separate
from them. The historic significance of this decision was that the union,
devised for the Sinhalese and the Tamils by their British overlords in 1833, had
failed to be satisfactory or workable, after 115 years of British rule and 30
years of independence.
There was an important political dimension to this decision to seek
secession. This was the role of young Tamils in the 1977 election. They had
become the worst sufferers because of the "Sinhala only" law, their educational
disadvantages, the employment impasse, the economic stagnation of the Tamil
areas and other forms of national oppression.
From 1972, they were subjected to
arbitrary arrests, and often to beatings by the police, whenever they protested
against the various discriminatory measures employed by the United Front
government to shut them out of the university, and whenever they organized black
flag demonstrations against visiting ministers. These led them to form
themselves as the "Tigers" to oppose and resist national oppression.
They were
the leading force behind the TULF's decision to secede. In fact, the TULF had
simply to endorse their position, because theoretically, as we shall see, they
had become familiar with Marxism-Leninism and with all of Lenin's tracts on the
"Right of [Oppressed] Nations to Self Determination".
Just as in the 1970 election the young Sinhalese JVP had campaigned and
secured victory for the United Front coalition, principally because of the UF's
socialist programme in the Joint Election Manifesto, in the 1977 election the
young Tamil "Tigers" campaigned and secured victory for the TULF, principally
because of the TULF's programme for secession.
In the 1970 election, for young JVP supporters, unemployment, the high cost of living and income disparities
were predominant issues which needed resolution, in the 1977 election, for the
"Tigers", national oppression, questions of education, employment, language
rights, cultural discrimination, Tamil self respect and other aspects of the
national question were the key issues.
Because of the role of young Tamils, the TULF won all 10 seats in the Jaffna
peninsula, where it received 71.8% of the votes. Jaffna is the heartland and
the intellectual capital of the Tamils, and such an absolute victory on the
question of secession was decisive. Jaffna had given the lead in all political
and social questions among the Tamils since political unification in 1833. The
TULF won the four other seats in the northern province mainland, and in the
eastern province it won Trincomalee, Batticaloa (lst member), Paddirippu and
Pottuvil (2nd member). The young Tamils were active mainly in the peninsula and
in the important town constituencies of the eastern province. The results
indicated that they had won a "yes" vote in a democratic referendum. They were
aware that Lenin had described the referendum as follows:
The right of nations to self determination implies exclusively the
right to independence in the political sense, the right to free political
separation from the oppressor nation. Specifically this demand for political
democracy implies complete freedom to agitate for secession and for referendum
on secession by the seceding nation [emphasis added] .
That the young Tamil "Tigers" based their ideology and strategy for national
liberation on Marxism Leninism and Lenin's theses could be seen in Towards
Socialist Eelam, a popular theoretical work published in Tamil by the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in 1980. This book is a Marxist-Leninist
analysis of national struggle and class struggle and of the proletarian
revolutionary strategies to be advanced concerning the Eelam national question.
The second part of the book explains the failure of the young JVP revolution of
1971.
After 1977, legalized national oppression of the Tamils became the goal of
the Sinhalese governments. The Proscribing of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam Law was passed in 1978, and the following year, it was repealed and
replaced by the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the most draconian law ever to
enter the statute book of Sri Lanka. This law did not define "terrorism" and
treats every Tamil who commits "any unlawful act", at home or abroad, as a
"terrorist" liable to be detained by the police for 18 months without trial. It
authorized hitherto unknown powers of entry, search, seizure and interrogation,
including keeping the arrested incommunicado by the police.
The provisions of this act clearly violate the UN Universal Declaration of
Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It
has been condemned by the International Commission of Jurists and its repeal has
been called for by Amnesty International.
Immediately after the passing of this act, a state of emergency was declared
in the Tamil areas on 11 July 1979, and President Jayewardene dispatched one of
the four battalions of the Sri Lanka army to Jaffna, with a mandate, in his own
words, to "wipe out" the "terrorists" demanding secession. More than 10 Tamils
were arbitrarily arrested in their homes on the very first day, and the bodies
of two of them—Inpam and Selvaratnam—were put on public display.
As a member
of a delegation of MIRJE, a human rights organization, I subsequently
interviewed the families of both and received first hand reports of how the army
and police had come in, in civilian dress, and requested them to come to the
gate of their houses and had taken them away for no known reason.
The army then resorted to arbitrary arrests of innocent young Tamils,
detained them and engaged in systematic torture. David Selbourne, of Oxford
University, poignantly described the torture the young Tamils were subjected to
by the Sinhalese army in an army camp in the Tamil area:
The torture of Tamil detainees at Elephant Pass—"if they groan and
cry there (Aiyu, amma, amma!) [unbearable, mother, mother!], no one can hear
them—and at the Panagoda army camp is now a routine matter. And with a high
turnover of short term detentions—in which young Tamils are taken in, often
repeatedly, for interrogation and a beating, and then released—an estimate of
numbers is difficult. There have been a few Argentinian style "disappearances"
also . . .2
In November 1982, repression was for the first time extended to Tamil
intellectuals and Catholic priests. The only law that has been applied to the
Tamil people by the Sinhalese government from the time of the 1979 declaration
of the state of emergency, is the Prevention of Terrorism Act. And, according to
the scope of this act, every Tamil is a possible "terrorist". The armed
patriotic resistance offered by the "Tiger" movement will be dealt with in
Chapter 6.
The Tamils differ from the Sinhalese in language, religion, culture, customs
and traditions. The Sri Lankan Tamils are a separate nation with their Tamil
language, Hindu religion, Tamil Hindu culture and heritage, and a history of
independent political organisation, in separate sovereign kingdoms m the north
and east, for centuries. Equally, the Sinhalese are a separate nation with their
Sinhala language, Buddhist religion, Sinhalese Buddhist culture and heritage and
history of monarchical rule, in a number of Sinhalese kingdoms in the west and
central areas, for centuries.
The fact that they are two ethnic nations is beyond dispute. As late as 1799,
Sir Hugh Cleghorn, the first Colonial Secretary of Ceylon, wrote in the famous
"Cleghorn Minute":
Two different nations, from very ancient period, have divided
between them the possession of the island: the Sinhalese inhabiting the
interior in its Southern and Western parts from the river Wallouve to that of
Chillow, and the Malabars [another name for Tamils] who possess the Northern
and Eastern Districts. These two nations differ entirely in their religions,
language and manners.
Both the Sinhalese and the Tamils were subjugated in battle by the Portuguese
at different periods. The Portuguese, then the Dutch and until 1833 the British
ruled the Sinhalese and Tamil areas as separate domains. In 1833 they were
brought together by British fiat. During the colonial period, they lived in
"union but not unity" (to borrow Dicey's phrase describing the relations between
the French speaking and English speaking Canadians). The two peoples lived in
concord and discord, amity and enmity, but were held together by a common
master, a common language and an impartial rule .
The important fact is that, in the colonial period, they co operated and
combined and yet retained their freedom to live their own life, without let or
hindrance. That Tamils and Sinhalese had an equal share in the national
patrimony was accepted as axiomatic. But a strong common national bond with a
common culture, traditions, heroes and saints, and a common national ideology to
hold the two nations together, failed to develop.
This was the case even at a time when, except at the level of the elite, the
social organization of both Sinhalese and Tamils was basically non competitive
and non acquisitive. Social emphasis was not on the individual but on the group,
the village community. Progress or success was not the aim, and both groups, as
we know today, suffered. Both were basically peasant agriculturists and the
activities of the government did not touch them. The caste society of both
provided considerable social cohesion, as each caste group was functionally
related and dependent on the other.
All these no longer exist and competitiveness for scarce resources, and
acquisition of wealth and influence, have become the objectives of a bourgeois
society. These could have been held in check, or even satisfied, by a properly
organised socialist society, but that was not what the ruling class wanted. The
upper class, and its middle class allies, have, by their policies and
propaganda, brought about the break up of the nation. These developments must be
fully appreciated before we proceed to formulate the national question. In their
act of self determination, through the democratic referendum of 1977, the Tamils
expressed their collective desire to secede. It was a historic democratic
decision but the Sinhalese political leaders were unwilling to concede the right
of self determination, in the sense of its secession and political independence.
The UNP, in its election manifesto of 1977, had
The United National Party accepts the position that there are
numerous problems confronting the Tamil speaking people. The lack of a
solution to their problems has made the Tamil speaking people support even a
movement for the creation of a separate state. In the interest of national
integration and unity, so necessary for the economic development of the whole
country, the Party feels such problems should be solved without loss of time.
The Party, when it comes to power, will take all possible steps to remedy the
grievances in such fields as (1) Education, (2) Colonisation, (3) Use of Tamil
language, (4) Employment in the Public and Semi Public Corporations. We will
summon an all Party Conference as stated earlier and implement its decisions.
Yet when it came to power, with a five sixths majority, it betrayed its
pledge to the people, both Tamils and Sinhalese, and took no action to solve the
problems of the Tamil people. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that the 35 year
old subjugation of the Tamils will continue.
President Jayewardene demonstrated this when, in October 1982, he told David
Selboume:
"They can't separate, and what we give them can't be different from
any other part of the country."
This clearly showed that he had no comprehension
of the national question. It also showed that the "Tigers" were right in their
belief that there would be no peaceful, political resolution of the national
question.
Hence, to achieve secession, the Tamil nation was left with no alternative
but armed struggle. Basing themselves on Marxist Leninist theory, the patriotic
Eelam Liberation Tigers viewed the Tamil national question, and their armed
struggle, in terms of Lenin's theoretical analysis. In a letter to Prime
Minister Premadasa, released to the local press, foreign high commissions and
and embassies, the Liberation Tigers declared on 20 July 1979:
The most important factor that we wish to state clearly and
emphatically is that . . . we are revolutionaries committed to revolutionary
political practice. We represent the most powerful extra parliamentary
liberation movement in the Tamil nation. We represent the militant expression
of the collective will of our people who are determined to fight for freedom,
dignity and justice. We are the armed vanguard of the struggling masses, the
freedom fighters of the oppressed. We are not in any way isolated and
alienated from the popular masses but immersed and integrated with the popular
will, with the collective soul of our nation.
Our revolutionary organisation
is built through revolutionary struggles based on a revolutionary theory. We
hold the firm conviction that armed resistance to the Sinhala military
occupation and repression is the only viable and effective means to achieve
the national liberation of the Tamil Eelam. Against the reactionary violence
and terrorism perpetrated against our people by your Government we have the
right of armed defence and decisive masses of people are behind our
revolutionary struggles. [The full text of this letter appears as an
Appendix.]
We have seen that the principal factor that generated the demand for
secession is national oppression by the big Sinhalese nation of the small Tamil
nation. Theoretically, Tamil nation, as an oppressed nation has the right to
self determination, and on the basis of a democratic referendum resolved upon
secession. Some self styled Marxists in Sri Lanka, lacking in theoretical
clarity, while conceding that the Tamil nation as an oppressed nation has the
right to self determination contend that self determination does not include
secession. The correct theoretical position has been precisely and clearly
stated and restated by Lenin that self determination of nations is nothing but
secession and the formation of an independent state. To clear up the theoretical
muddle it is necessary to quote some passages from Lenin:
Self determination of nations in the Marxist programme cannot,
from a historico-economic point of view, have any other meaning than political
self determination, state independence, and formation of a nation state'
(Lenin: The Right of Nations to Self Determination)
Again, Lenin formulated:
Consequently, if we want to grasp the meaning of self
determination of nations, not by juggling with legal definitions, or
"inventing" abstract definitions, but by examining the historico economic
conditions of the national movements, we must inevitably reach the conclusion
that the self determination of nations means the political separation of those
nations from alien national bodies and the formation of an independent
national state'.
Lenin advanced the freedom of an oppressed nation to secede as a universal
socialist principle of workers' democracy. He viewed the struggle of an
oppressed nation to secede as a revolutionary mass action and a necessary part
of the proletarian attack on the bourgeoisie. In the case of the Tamils too,
since their historic decision in the 1977 elections, the struggle for secession
needs historical fulfilment, and the revolutionary struggle advanced by the
Eelam Liberation Tiger Movement has been on the basis of socialist democracy and
proletarian revolution. Hence it is a classic and authentic attempt to resolve
the national question, and one that is sui generis and needs to be supported by
all freedom lovers, liberationists, Tamil patriots and genuine Marxist
Leninists.
One last point needs to be adverted to. Many readers may be left with the
question as to how in the face of such genocidal repression by the state terror
machine secession could be achieved and the Eelam state established. I could do
no better in answer than refer to Lenin, again:
Under no circumstances does Marxism confine itself to the forms of
struggle possible and in existence at the given moment only, recognizing as it
does that new forms of struggle, unknown to the participants of the given
period, inevitably arise as the given social situation changes." (Collected
Works, Volume 11, p. 213)
References
1. In the appendix to the Tamil book Towards Socialist Eelam, all Lenin's
writings on the self determination of oppressed nations are cited, without a
single exception
2. David Melbourne, in The Sinhalese Lions and Tamil Tigers of
Sri Lanka in
The Illustrated Weekly of India, Bombay 17 and 24 October 1982.
Sri Lanka presents a rich diversity of peoples and cultures, some ancient and
indigenous, others modern and transplanted. From the early centuries of its long
history, Sri Lanka has been a diverse society, the components of diversity being
ethnicity, language and religion. l The island's geographical proximity to India,
its strategic location on the east west sea route and the mercantile and
territorial encroachments of the European powers contributed to the ethno
linguistic and religious make up of the country.
Every great change that swept India had its repercussions in the island and,
until the beginning of the 16th Century, Sri Lanka was a pawn in the power
struggles of the south Indian Tamil kingdoms of Pandya, Chola and Chera. During
the four and a half centuries of European rule, beginning with the Portuguese
conquest of maritime areas in 1505, the elements of diversity have kept
increasing. And by the time of the British conquest, in 1796, the island had
acquired its multi ethnic structure, the two well developed ethnolinguistic
cultures of Sinhalese and Tamil, and the four great religions of Hinduism,
Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. While the island as a natural geographical
unit imposed a certain unity on the people, their diverse cultures, which are a
residue of history, dictated separate collective identities and solidarities.
The outstanding fact of Sri Lanka's nationality structure is that, from
ancient times and continuously over the last two millennia, two major ethnic
people—the Sinhalese and the Tamils—have lived in and shared the country as co
settlers This shared descent is traceable to the 2nd Century BC. The history of
the people before that time has not been unravelled on a valid historical basis
and is wrapped up in myths and legends invented by the Pali chronicles of the
Sinhalese—the Dipavamsa and Mahavamsa—written in about the 4th and 6th Centuries
AD, respectively.
Both these chronicles are verse compositions in Pali, the
Buddhist scriptural language, written by Buddhist monks, not in the historical
tradition but as being the words of Mahanama, the author of Mahavamsa, "for the
serene joy and emotion of the piously They were written unabashedly from the
Sinhalese Buddhist Standpoint, lauding the victories of the Sinhalese kings over
the Tamil kings, treating the former as protectors of Buddhism and saviours of
the Sinhalese, While deriding the latter as invaders, vandals, marauders and
heathens.
In an effort to establish that the Sinhalese are the original occupiers of
the island, the chronicles misrepresent the aboriginal Nega and Yaksha (or
Raksa) Tamil people as non humans, and validate their version by creating myths
about the past. yet these chronicles and their stories have been relied upon by
historians for the reconstruction of the early history of the island, and this
mythological history has been retold in later Sinhalese historical and literary
works, and repeated in the Buddhist rituals, so that they constitute the current
beliefs of the Sinhalese. They exert a direct influence on present day ethnic
relations in Sri Lanka. As Walter Schwarz, a perceptive writer on the national
question in Sri Lanka, has observed: "The most important effect of the early
history on the minority problem of today is not in the facts but in the myths
that surround them, particularly on the Sinhalese side."2
It is not established on valid historical grounds when and how the Sinhalese
emerged as an ethnic people in the country. There exists no historical evidence
for a Sinhalese presence before the 2nd Century BC. The place of evidence has
been taken by the Vijaya legend, invented by the authors of the chronicles. The
Dipavamsa, literally "The Story of the Island" (probably written in the 4th
Century AD), purports to narrate the story of the island from the earliest human
times.
It introduces Vijaya, as the first occupant and founder of the Sinhalese, in
these words: "This was the island of Lanka called Sihala after the lion. Listen
to this chronicle of the origin of the island which I narrate." According to the
chronicle, Vijaya, the grandson of a union between a petty Indian king and a
lioness, on being banished for misconduct by his father Sinhabahu (the lion
armed), came with 700 men by vessels and landed on the west coast of Lanka, at a
place called Tambapanni, in 543 BC, on the day Buddha died, i.e. passed into
nibbana. Vijaya's men were lured into a cave and captured by a demoness (Yaksha)
queen named Kuveni. Vijaya rescued his men, married Kuveni and had a son and
daughter.
Vijaya later told Kuveni that before being crowned king of Lanka he should
marry a human princess. He therefore banished Kuveni and the children into the
jungles, sent his ministers to the Tamil king Pandyan, who ruled the Madurai
kingdom in south India, and took the king's daughter as his wife. His men also
obtained their wives from the Madurai region. Kuveni was later killed by the
demons. In the jungles, the children married incestuously and had many children,
from whom, the chronicle states, the Veddas3 of Sri Lanka arose.
Vijaya is said to have held his coronation and made himself the king of Lanka
and ruled for 38 years from Tambapanni, his capital. He and the Tamil princess
had no children and hence, on his death, his brother's son Pandu Vasudeva came
from Bengal and became the king of Lanka. This story has been re told with
greater embellishment in the Mahavamsa, literally "The Story of the Great Dynasty" (written in the 6th Century AD), the source
of the present day early history of Sri Lanka.
There is no historical evidence whatsoever for the arrival of Vijaya and the
related story. There is no trace of a place named Sinhapura or of the petty king
Sinhabahu in Bengali history. But because of their inability to account
historically for the emergence of the Sinhalese, historians follow the lead of
the Vijaya legend.4 Thus K.M. de Silva, Professor of History at the University
of Sri Lanka, states:
Both legend and linguistic evidence indicate that the Sinhalese
were a people of Aryan origin who came to the island from Northern India about
500 BC. The exact location of their original home in India cannot be
determined with any degree of certainty. The founding of the Sinhalese is
treated in elaborate detail in the Mahavamsa with great emphasis on the
arrival of Vijaya (the legendary founding father of the Sinhalese) and his
band in the island.5
On the basis of this legend, the present day Sinhalese claim that they are
the first settlers and are of Aryan origin. The foremost propagandist of the
Sinhala Buddhist "revival", Anagarika Dharmapala, wrote in 1902 on the origin of
the Sinhalese:
Two thousand four hundred and forty six years ago a colony of
Aryans from the city of Sinhapura in Bengal . . . sailed in a vessel in search
of fresh pastures . . . The descendants of the Aryan colonists were called
Sinhala after their city Sinhapura, which was founded by Sinhabahu the lion
armed king. The lion armed descendants are the present Sinhalese .6
The chronicles introduce the mythical Vijaya and his men as the first
settlers and proceed to misrepresent the settled Tamil Naga and Yaksha people as
non humans. The former are described as "snakes" and the latter as "demons".
This has also been uncritically repeated by modern historians according to whom
the Nagas and Yaksha are non humans of prehistoric times .
But it is an undeniable fact that, in the proto historic period of the island
to (c.1000-100 BC), there were two Naga kingdoms, one in the north called Naga Tivu
in Tamil, and called Naga Dipa in the Indian Sanskrit works, and the other in
the south west, in Kelaniya. Even the Pali chronicles mention them in a
different context, in connection with the purported visits of Buddha to the
island. The Mahabharata and Ramayana, the two great Indian epics written in
Sanskrit before the 6th Century BC mention the Naga kingdoms and their conquest
by Ravanan, the Tamii Yaksha king of Lanka. So does the Greek astronomer and
geographer Ptolemy, writing in the 2nd Century AD, who locates Naga Dipa in the
north, covering the territory from Chilaw in the west to below Trincomalee in
the east.
According to tradition, the Tamils of India and Sri Lanka are the lineal
descendants of the Naga and Yaksha people. The aboriginal Nagas, called Nakar in
Tamil had the cobra (Nakam, in Tamil) as their totem. The Hindu Tamils, to this
day, continue to worship the cobra as a subordinate deity in the Hindu pantheon
and there are many temples for the cobra deity all over north Sri Lanka.7
Equally, the Yakshas were not demons but worshippers of demons, as shown by the
still prevalent practice among the Hindu Tamils of propitiating the demons,
which arose out of primitive fear and belief in the destructive power of demons.
Ptolemy describes the Tamil Yaksha people:
"The ears of both men and women
are very large, in which they wear earrings ornamented with precious stones."
The wearing of ear rings by both men and women is a custom still extant among
the Tamils in the villages of north Sri Lanka and in south India, and the poor,
unable to purchase gold ear rings, wear rolled palmyrah leaves instead. That the
ancestors of the present day Tamils were the original inhabitants of Lanka is
well brought out by the historian Harry Williams:
"Naga Dipa in the north of Sri
Lanka was an actual kingdom known to historians" and "the people who occupied it
were all part of an immigrant tribe from South India—Tamil people called
Nagars".8
Another writer states: " . . . long before the coming of the Sinhalese
there would have been long periods when the island was inhabited by the
ancestors of the present Tamil community".9
Recent archaeological excavations of burial mounds in the old Naga Dipa area,
which covered a region from Chilaw up to Trincomalee through Anuradhapura, have
shown skeletal remains of a people of megalithic culture who practised
inhumation as a mode of burial in the proto historic period. The artefacts found
within, such as rouletted pottery with graffiti symbols, iron nails, bronze seal
rings, arrow heads, spears and daggers, show that those people had a settled and
civilized life. The Sangam literature (lst- 4th Century AD), reflecting the
indigenous cultural tradition of the Tamils of south India, mentions inhumation
as a custom then prevalent. These finds have, on paleographical reckoning, been
dated to not later than the 4th Century BC 10 and the skeletal remains classified
as those of south Indian type.11The north western urn burial site (Pomparippu)
is said to offer many parallels with those found on the Coromandel coast of
Tamil Nadu, south India. 12 Ptolemy refers to Naga kingdoms on the Coromandel coast, and towns with
toponyms like Nagar Koil and Naga Patinam, appearing from the earliest times,
confirm that Naga people of the same origin occupied the Tamil areas of south
India and Sri Lanka. The latter may have migrated from south India in early
times, when Sri Lanka was certainly joined to mainland India through the shallow
ridge of sandbanks called Adam's (or Rama's) Bridge in the Gulf of Mannar.
Furthermore, the important find of a statuette of Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of
good fortune, in the Anaikoddai excavation (1982) confirms other evidence that
the Naga people were Hindus and that Hinduism was the religion of the people of
Sri Lanka before the introduction of Buddhism.13
The conclusions that could validly be drawn from the new historical data
clearly establish that the ancestors of the present day Tamils were the original
occupiers of the island, long before 543 BC, which the Pali chronicles date as
the earliest human habitation of Sri Lanka.
How, then, does one explain the emergence of the Sinhalese as an ethnic
entity in the island? In the 3rd Century BC (the date usually assigned is 247
BC), Buddhism was introduced into the island by missionaries led by Bikkhu
(Buddhist monk) Mahinda, possibly the son of Asoka, the great Emperor of India
(c 273 - 232 BC), who became converted to Buddhism and was determined to spread
the religion far and wide.
Devanampriya Theesan the Tamil Hindu king of Lanka at
that time, accepted the missionaries from Asoka and became converted to
Buddhism. Since, in those days, the religion of the ruler became the religion of
the people, and because Hinduism has always been infinitely flexible and little
given to rigorous dogma, Buddhism, being an offshoot of Hinduism, spread fast in
the island.
Mahinda brought not only the religions message but also the Pali canon, i.e.
the scriptures as preached by Buddha in Pali, a language of Aryan people who
overran India in ancient times, driving the Dravidians—the pre Aryan people of
north and central India—southwards. The Buddha dhamma (the doctrine comprising
the moral order), or at least the basic "five precepts" were taught to the
people in Pali, and they are still recited by the Buddhists in Pali. The Sangha
(the order of Buddhist monks), whose prerogative it was to know and preach the
doctrine, learnt Pali in order to understand the dhamma as well as the Vinaya
(rules of discipline for the Sangha). In this way, with Buddhism came Pali, a
new language, and it was learnt by the bhikkhus to preach the dhamma as well as
for the writing of books, just as Latin was used by the Christian clergy in
medieval Europe.
In the course of time, the Sinhalese language as well as the alphabet and the
script grew from the Pali language. With the spread of Buddhism and the growth
of the Prakritic Sinhalese language, there occurred a religio linguistic
division of the people into those who remained Hindu Tamils and the emergent
Buddhists speaking the Sinhalese language. This development can be inferred from
a number of Sinhalese Buddhist features in Sri Lanka. Firstly, there is no
evidence whatsoever of the Sinhalese as a people, or of Sinhala as a language,
before the introduction of Buddhism in 247 BC. The earliest cave inscriptions are
in the same Brahmic script as the famous Rock Edicts of Asoka in western India.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica states:
The earliest surviving specimens of the (Sinhalese) language are
brief inscriptions on rock, in Brahmi letters, of which the earliest date from
c 200 BC. The language of these inscriptions does not appear to be greatly
different from the other Indian Prakrits (i.e. chronologically Middle Indo
Aryan languages) of the time.l4
Secondly, the Sinhalese Buddhists, in the practice of Buddhism, have not
quite succeeded in freeing themselves from their Hindu past. They continue to
worship the Hindu deities, although Buddha revolted against the worship of gods
and Buddhism opposes idol worship.15
Thirdly, the caste system, the central feature of Hindu society, prevails
among the Sinhalese Buddhists, although Buddhism is opposed to caste. This again
is a vestige of the Hindu past.
These, taken together with the historical and archaeological data outlined
earlier, lead one to the irresistible conclusion that Sinhalese emerged as a
result of the ascriptive cleavage consequent upon the spread of Buddhism in the
Pali language. The Sinhalese, then, in terms of their origin, are not an Aryan
people as popularly claimed, but Tamil people who adopted a language which
developed from Pali, an Aryan dialect.
Even the pioneer Sri Lanka historian Dr G.C. Mendis, although he uncritically
accepted the Vijaya legend of the chronicles, was left in doubt about its
validity and observed:
" . . . it is not possible to state whether they [the Sinhalese] were Aryan
by blood or whether they were a non Aryan people who had adopted an Aryan
dialect as their language".16 Equally, Dr S. Paranavitana, the
former Archaeological Commissioner, stated:
"Thus the vast majority of the
people who today speak Sinhalese or Tamil must ultimately be descended from
those autochthonous people of whom we know next to nothing.''l7
There is, however, no single origin of the present day Sinhalese, as over the
centuries diverse people have merged to form the Sinhalese ethnicity. The
Tamils, living among the Sinhalese in the south, "gradually adopted the
Sinhalese language, as some of them still do in some of the coastal districts,
and were merged in the Sinhalese population''.l8
Between the 14th and 18th
Centuries, large numbers of Dravidians, mostly from Malabar, south India, came
over and settled and were assimilated as Sinhalese. So did the Colombo Chetties,
whose ancestors came from the Chettiar community, in Tirunelveli district of
Tamil Nadu, owing to a great famine there in the 17th Century.
Furthermore, in 1739, since Sri Narendrasinghe, the Sinhalese king of the
Kandyan kingdom, had no suitable progeny to succeed him, the brother of his
Tamil queen, from the Nayakkar royal dynasty in Madurai, ascended the throne and
took on the Sinhalese name Sri Vijaya Rajasinghe. This line of Tamil kings
continued until the Kandyan kingdom was ceded to the British in 1815. The kings
of the Nayakkar dynasty took on Sinhalese names and professed Buddhism to please
their subjects. So did their families, courtiers and retinue, who came over in
substantial numbers.l9
Hence, in reality, as Dr N.K. Sarkar has put it: " . . . no matter what the
racial origin, little remains of the original stock, except a belief in it".20
Broadly speaking, in terms of present day identification and self image, a
Sinhalese is one who bears a Sinhalese name and speaks the Sinhala language,
whatever his origins may be.
The Sinhalese people and the Sinhala language are found only in Sri Lanka.
The Sinhala language is the mother tongue of the Sinhalese, who are 71.9% (69.3%
in 1953) of the Sri Lankan population, today a little over 15 million. In 1953,
Sinhala was the only language spoken by 58.9%, Sinhala and Tamil by 9.9% and
Sinhala and English by 4.29 of persons three years and over. The Tamils (both
Ceylon Tamils and "Indian" Tamils) constitute 20.5% ( 22.9% in 1953) of the Sri
Lankan population. The Tamil language is the mother tongue of the Tamils and
also of almost all Ceylon Muslims (or Moors) who form 6.5% of the population,
and the Indian (or "Coast") Muslims who form 0.2%. Tamil was the only language
spoken by 21.6% and Tamil and English by 2.9% of persons three years and
over.21
The Sinhala language grew out of Pali and is not connected to the present day
Indo Aryan languages of northern India, which are all related, with varying
degrees of kinship, to Sanskrit language. The vocabulary consists basically of
Pali words with many Sanskrit and Tamil loan words. The long vowels of the Pali
words are shortened and the double consonants reduced to single ones. Dr W.S.
Karunatillake admits:
"There have been several linguistic traditions that have
exerted varying degrees of influence on the development of the Sinhalese
language. Of these Tamil is one of the most important. There is reason to
believe that in the past, the study of Tamil language and literature was
cherished by the Sinhalese scholars."22
Sinhalese is written in a variation of the Pali script, but in rounded
letters like those of the Dravidian language scripts, closely resembling Telegu
letters. In the first century AD, the Sinhalese alphabet showed a sudden
deviation from the letters inscribed in the rocks and resembled those in the
inscriptions of the Andhra kingdom, and was probably introduced from there. At
that time, Andhra was a great centre of Buddhism, with the famed Amaravati and
Nagarjunikonda, on the river Krishna. And, according to Benjamin Rowland, in his
Art and Architecture of India, the Nagarjunikonda "monasteries included one
building specifically reserved for resident monks from Ceylon".
Until the 6th Century, the Sinhalese language remained in its Prakritic
stage, and it was only by the 10th Century that the language and script
developed almost to its present form. Pali died out in India by about the 12th
Century but is used as the standard language of Theravada Buddhism, which
prevails in Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Kampuchea.
The earliest Sinhalese
literary works were produced towards the end of the 10th Century. Much
literature was produced in the 13th and 14th Centuries, all by bhikkhus, and
this is considered to be the classical period of Sinhalese literature. They were
all of Buddhist religious inspiration, comprising commentaries on sacred texts
and elaborations of the Jatakas (the tales of previous births of Buddha). As the
premier work of Sinhalese poetry, Kavsilumina, states: "The choicest flower of
the tree of scholarship is the portrayal of the grandeur of Buddha." Secular
literature began only in the 20th Century.
Buddhism and Hinduism were the only religions of the Sinhalese and Tamils,
respectively, until, following upon the Portuguese conquest of the littoral
areas in 1505, Catholicism was introduced by the Portuguese and a minority of
the Sinhalese Buddhists and Hindu Tamils became converted to it Later, under
the British conquest and occupation (1796 - 1947), there were further
conversions to Protestant Christianity by both Sinhalese and Tamils,
particularly the English educated elite. Today, 67.4% are Buddhists (all
Sinhalese), 17.69 are Hindus (all Tamils), 7.1% are Muslims, 6.4% are Catholics and 1.4% are
Protestant Christians. 93.5% of the Sinhalese are Buddhists and 6.5% are
Catholics or Protestant Christians. Of the Tamils, 81% are Hindus and the rest
are Catholic or Protestant Christians.
Religious division has taken place in such a way that being a Buddhist
implies being a Sinhalese, and being a Hindu implies being a Tamil. Despite this
contrasting ethno religious configuration, there has been no conflict between
the two on religious grounds. Between the Buddhists and Muslims there have been
conflicts, such as the 1915 riots, and also sporadic fighting in recent times
over religious differences. There were also clashes between the Sinhalese
Buddhists and Sinhalese Catholics in the early 1960s over Catholic dominance of
the public and defence services, over education and over what the Buddhist
chauvinists then objected to as the Catholic clergy "representing a foreign
power" and engaging in "Catholic action", i.e. insidious priestly intervention
in the recruitment and promotion of Catholics in government jobs.
The Mahavamsa links the story of the landing of Vijaya, the "origin myth", to
a series of religious myths regarding the place of Buddhism in Lanka, as
ordained by Buddha. According to the chronicle, Vijaya landed on the day Buddha
passed into nibbana (death and enlightenment). Both these events are recorded as
having occurred in 543 BC. The chronicle states:
"The prince named Vijaya, the
valiant, landed in Lanka, in the region called Tambapanni on the day the
Tathagatha (another name for Buddha) lay down between two twin like sala trees
to pass into nibbana."
In this way, the chronicle vests the "origin myth" with a religious
significance. Even more important is the assertion in the chronicle that Buddha,
just before his death, summoned Sakka, the king of gods and the divine protector
of the sasana (the dhamma doctrine as taught by Buddha), and instructed him:
"Vijaya, son of Sinhabahu, is come to Lanka . . . together with 700 followers.
In Lanka, O Lord of Gods, will my religion be established, therefore carefully
protect him with his followers and Lanka."
By such injunctions of the Master,
the chronicle represents Vijaya and his supposed descendants the Sinhalese
Buddhists—as a chosen people with the special mission of preserving the Buddhist
religion in Sri Lanka.
These are reinforced by further myths of visits of Buddha to the island, to
make the "pious" believe that the island has been consecrated by Buddha. His
first visit is set out thus:
" . . . at the ninth moon of his buddhahood, at the
full moon of Phussa, himself set forth to the isle of Lanka, to win Lanka for
the faith, for Lanka was known to the Conqueror as a place where his doctrine
should shine in glory".
According to the chronicle, this visit was to Mahiyangana, in the south east,
where Buddha is said to have quelled the heathen Yakshas. His second is said
to be to Naga Dipa, in the north, where he quelled the Nagas. On his third
visit, Buddha is said to have gone to Kelaniya and several other places,
including Anuradhapura, and "left traces of his footprints plain to see on
Sumanakuta". i.e. Adam's Peak.
In the 1960s, when the renowned archaeologist Paranavitana (himself a Buddhist), in an attempt to demythologize these tales,
declared that the chronicle's account of Buddha's visits was pure legend, the
bhikkhus raised a hue and cry. These myths haunt the minds of the people and
prevent honest scientific inquiry into Sri Lanka's antiquity.
In their myth making endeavour, the chroniclers falsified not only the early
history of the island but even the great historical event of Buddha's nibbana.
They wrongly took 543 BC as the year of Buddha's nibbana and made the supposed
arrival of Vijaya coincide with it.
Wilhelm Geiger and Mabel Bode the eminent
scholars of Pali Buddhism, date Buddha's nibbana in 483 BC. According to the
views of such scholars as General Cunningham, T.W. Rhys-Davids, Max Muller,
Vincent Smith, Percival Spear and H. Parker, Buddha's nibbana could not have
occurred before 486 BC. D.C. Sircar, the epigraphist of the government of India,
convincingly calculates nibbana to have occurred in 486 BC.23 This is 57 years
subsequent to the date stated by the Mahavamsa.
When such a great historical and religious event of international importance
could be distorted to suit the whims of the author of the chronicle, could any
reliance be placed on the other stories of the chronicle? That they were written
as panegyrics "for the serene joy and emotion of the pious" has been forgotten.
On the distortion of historical events by Mahavamsa, H . Parker in Ancient
Ceylon observes:
Tissa ascended the throne in 245 BC and is said to have reigned
for 40 years; but this cannot be trusted, as the reign of kings who lived
about the time have been extended to make the supposed arrival of the first
Magadhese settlers under Vijaya synchronise with the very doubtful date
adopted by the Sinhalese historians as the time when Buddha attained Nirvana
or died, viz. 543 BC.24
Regarding Buddha's visits, there is no evidence whatsoever, not even legends
in India or any of the Buddhist countries, to support them. This genre of
Mahavamsa stories is nothing but a tangled web of cleverly contrived fictions
purely for "the serene joy and emotion of the pious".
But because of their
unquestioned repetition in later historical and literary works (Culavamsa,
Pujavaliya, Thupavamsa, Rajavaliya, etc.), all of religious inspiration, and on
being orally transmitted from generation to generation in the Buddhist rituals
they occupy a revered place in present day Sinhalese Buddhist popular
beliefs. Sinhalese scholars have represented these myths and fictions as the
early history of Lanka. In 1956, Dr Walpola Rahula, the scholar monk wrote that
"for more than two millennia the Sinhalese have been inspired that they were a
nation brought into being for the definite purpose of carrying the torch lit by
Buddha".25
Contemporary Buddhism in Sri Lanka has little of the doctrinal and philosophical goals of the ancestral religion. The doctrine's prime non worldly goal
of striving for salvation, by withdrawal and ascetic renunciation of worldly
craving, has been drastically transformed in recent times by selfstyled
"revivalists" under the slogan of a "return to righteousness".
As such, the
Buddhism of the urban elite vigorously pursues the goods and wealth of this
world. It is also markedly anti Buddhist in being aggressively intolerant of
other religions and ethnic entities, and is encrusted with grand visions of
Sinhalese Buddhist domination of the island. Village Buddhism, on the other
hand, is steeped in magic and exorcism, folklore and myths, pilgrimages and
pageantry. While the belief in the truth of the doctrine certainly prevails and
iconic images of Buddha are ubiquitous in Sri Lanka, the knowledge of the
doctrine and the practice of the Buddhist ethical way of life are conspicuously
absent at all levels. Surveying the scene, Dr E.W. Adikaram, a lay Buddhist
scholar, recently protested:
The Buddhists who get worked up over real or imaginary wrongdoings
of others are injuring themselves first. They are also creating an oppressive
atmosphere which is not conducive to any spiritual growth. A person with even
a little sensitiveness can feel this oppressive atmosphere in Sri Lanka today
. . . if Buddhism is merely an empty shell devoid of love and compassion, the
earlier it disappears the better it is for the world.26
Though Buddhism infinitely values human life as being the one and only
condition from which nibbana is attainable, Sri Lanka is reputed to have the
highest murder rate per capita in the world. The Mahavamsa made a virtue of
killing in defence of Buddhism, in its panegyric of the victories of the
Sinhalese prince Dutugemunu over the Tamil king Ellalan, in the 2nd Century BC
war in which thousands of Tamils were killed.
The chronicle capriciously states that Dutugemunu's war cry was: "Not for
kingdom, but for Buddhism." According to the chronicle, Dutugemunu, in
repentance over the lives lost in war, addressed the eight arhats (saints):
"How
shall there be any comfort for me, O venerable sirs, since by me was caused the
slaughter of a great host numbering millions?"
The arhats replied:
"From this
deed arises no hindrance in thy way to heaven . . . Unbelievers and men of evil
life were they, not more to be esteemed than beasts. But as for thee, thou wilt
bring glory to the doctrine of the Buddha in manifold ways; therefore cast away
care from thy heart, O ruler of men."
This 2nd Century BC war was recalled by
Sinhalese Buddhist chauvinists and, in 1956, Dr Walpola Rahula characterised it
as the "beginning of nationalism among the Sinhalese".27 on the perpetuation of
this myth, Professor Gananath Obeyesekere states:
. . . the mythic significance of Dutugemunu as the saviour of the
Sinhalese race and of Buddhism grew through the years and developed into one
of the most important myths of the Sinhalese, ready to be used as a powerful
instrument of Sinhalese nationalism in modern times. Although the
justification for killing is unusual, the general message that emerges is
everywhere the same: the Sinhalese kings are defenders of the secular realm
and the sasana; their opponents are the Tamils.28
The Sinhalese Buddhist collective consciousness is symbolized in pilgrimages
and pereheras (religious processions), bana (sermon preaching), sil (
meditation), pirit (reciting of sacred texts to exorcise evil spirits), vesak
(celebration of the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Buddha), dana
(giving of alms), tovile (devil dancing) and other ceremonies.
The Sinhalese are broadly divided into the low country and up country (or
Kandyan) Sinhalese. This division is not ethnic, but came about as a result of
the European occupation of the littoral and the rise of the Kandyan kingdom,
which prevailed from the 16th Century till its cession to the British in 1815.
The low country Sinhalese are now 40%, and the Kandyans 29%, of the total Sri
Lankan population. The former occupy the western and southern coastal, mainly
urban, areas and were subject to European influence continuously from the time
of the Portuguese conquest. The latter live in the central highlands and the
north central plains, mainly rural areas, and had a traditional social structure
and way of life centred around the monarchy, feudal aristocracy and Buddhist
monasteries.
Both the low country and the Kandyan Sinhalese are predominantly Buddhists.
Of the Sinhalese Christians, the low country Sinhalese are about 62% and the
rest are Kandyans. Although the cultural differences between the two were
slight, the Kandyan traditional elite opposed the early British attempts to
administratively integrate the Kandyan with the low country regions. And in the
20th Century constitutional reform representations, the English educated Kandyan
elite stridently asserted that they were a "nation" separate and distinct, for
fear of domination by their more articulate low country brethren.29
The personal laws of the Kandyans are their own customary laws, whereas the
low country Sinhalese come under Roman Dutch law, introduced during the Dutch
occupation of the littoral from 1656 to 1795. The low country Sinhalese were the
first to take advantage of the political and economic changes which colonialism
brought about. They serviced the coffee plantations established by the British
as building and cart transport contractors, artificers, arrack and toddy renters
and retail traders, and with the profits earned they bought coffee, coconut and
later rubber estates.
It was also from the low country Sinhalese that the British recruited the
local intermediaries for the consolidation of colonialism. Those who played this
role soon abandoned the Buddhist religion and embraced Christianity, put on
Western dress, repudiated traditional customs, values and food, and adopted
European customs, consumption patterns and life styles.
Their leaders were soon
co opted as nominated members into the Governor's Legislative Council, and they
advanced politically through the Ceylon National Congress, founded in 1920.
Since independence, the low country Sinhalese have provided the leadership of
all Sinhalese political parties, with the exception of Mrs Sirima Bandaranaike
(nee Ratwatte), who, being born into a Kandyan feudal aristocratic (Radala)
family, married S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, a scion of a low country Sinhalese
family, which received great rewards and patronage from the British.
There exist significant internal differences within the Sinhalese on the
basis of caste. A caste society has endogamous kinship groups, with
hierarchical ordering of occupations and services on a hereditary basis. Caste
divisions were integral to, and a surviving remnant of, ancient Hindu society.
There is no certainty as to how it arose but has been perpetuated by the old
Hindu conception of the group as the basic unit of organization, and by the
belief in karma, i.e. the state of life a person is born into is due to his
actions in his previous birth.
But, although Buddhism and Christianity are theoretically opposed to caste
divisions, such divisions prevail among the Sinhalese, low country and Kandyan,
Buddhists and Christians, alike. But the Sinhalese caste divisions are not as
deep, nor their influence so pervasive, nor their observance so rigid, as among
the Hindu Tamils. In particular, there are no Brahmin priestly caste and no
"untouchables" among the Sinhalese.
The conventional "highest" caste are the Goyigama caste Sinhalese, in origin
agriculturalists, and they predominate among both the low country and the Kandyans. They form about 51% of the low
country Sinhalese and nearly 85% of the Kandyan Sinhalese.30 Within the low
country Sinhalese, the Karava come next
(about 17%), followed by the Salagama (about 8%) and the Durava (about 6%).
Those who constitute the last three castes are mainly Tamils and Malayalis who
came from south India between the 14th and 18th Centuries as fishermen,
cinnamon peelers, etc. and were not socially accepted by the Goyigama, although
they became Sinhalised by acculturation. The "low" or "depressed" castes among
the low country Sinhalese are the Batgam, Wahumpara, Berava, Hina, Rajaka, etc.
Traditional Kandyan society was one of status based feudal relations between
the landowning aristocracy, or the Radala (Kandyan Goyigama), and the landless
who rendered various obligatory services to the former. The landless comprised a
number of Goyigama sub castes placed lower down in the ritual hierarchy. There
were also a few non Goyigama low caste groups. Professor Bryce Ryan, in his study
of Sinhalese caste patterns, observed:
"Where the Radala exists, caste
differentiation generally is at its maximum, for around him adhere the various
service castes and with him, too, traditional modes of conduct persist.''31
The caste division among the Sinhalese is most evident in endogamy, cross
caste marriages being rare compared to inter ethnic marriages and marriages
outside one's religion. In the rural, particularly Buddhist areas, caste and
class boundaries often coincide: the rich and the dominant are the Goylgama; the
poor and the oppressed are of low caste.
During the British colonial period there were considerable factional
rivalries for political and economic ascendance between the elite of the low
country Goyigama and the Karava; and between the low country Goyigama and the
Kandyan Goyigama. The Tamil Vellala (the equivalent highest" caste to the
Goyigama) elite always combined with the low country Goyigama and against the
Karava, on the basis of upper caste exclusiveness and loyalties.
It must be remembered that inter dining and intermarriage between castes was
taboo. With the bourgeoisie, loyalties were based first on class, then on caste,
and ethnicity at that time did not seem a likely framework for domination.
Because of this, the Goyigama always treated the Karava with contempt, while it
freely coalesced with the Tamil Vellala.
This was to have its repercussions later on, when, mainly in order to crack
this low country Goyigama Tamil Vellala alliance, the Karava elite created the
"Sinhala only" law and became its most unrelenting agitators. Nearly all the
front line "Sinhalese only" zealots, and the bhikkhu campaigners of the Ramanya
sect, were Karavas.
From that time to the present, it has been the Karava pressure group that has
determined the course of the Sinhalese Tamil ethnic conflict in the country.
Briefly stated, it has a powerful vested interest, for it is also basically a
lower middle class group and earlier found itself in competition (in education,
employment, etc.) with the Tamils, predominantly a functional lower middle
class community. The Karava took a head start in servicing the plantations and
serving the colonial administration, and were initially in the ascendance, but
were ousted from about 1920 by the low country Goyigama elite .
Sinhalese collective identity, in terms of self ascription, is not an ethnic
identity but an ethno religious identity—Sinhalese Buddhist. The dominant
distinguishing mark is Buddhist religious culture, which is central in the
self perception of the Sinhalese Buddhists. The emergence of the Sinhalese
Catholics and Protestants brought about a cleavage in Sinhalese identity. To the
Sinhalese Buddhists—in particular, to the Kandyans the Sinhalese non Buddhists
are as much non Sinhalese as Tamils or Muslims, for their point of reference is
religion and not linguistic identity.
Professor Gananath Obeyesekere pointed out that this self image resulted from
the conversion of some Sinhalese to Christianity.
This identity simply equates Sinhalese = Buddhist—the two cultural
labels are the constituent elements of a single identity . . . The Sinhalese
Buddhists today perceive the Sinhalese Christians as not only nonBuddhists,
but also in a sense as non Sinhalese, for their Christian cultural markers are
viewed as alien.32
This religious centrality in the self perception of the Sinhalese Buddhists
is not something new; it was so in the pre colonial times. Professor Obeyesekere
states:
Up to the 16th century being a Sinhalese implied being a Buddhist
. . . With the advent of the European powers, a split in the Sinhalese
identity occurred as a result of the existence of Catholic and Protestant
Sinhalese who were clearly not Buddhist. Sinhalese ceased to be an ethnic
identity.
The Catholic and Protestant Sinhalese, too, define themselves more in terms
of their respective religion than their linguistic culture. It is their
religious sub culture that is critical in their self ascription. In fact, when
English held sway, i.e. before the "Sinhala only" law in 1956, the Sinhalese
Christians found more in common with the Tamil Christians than with the
Sinhalese Buddhists. And up to the "Sinhala only" law, there was considerable
religious tolerance between the Sinhalese Buddhists and the Tamil Hindus.
But today the Tamils, be they Hindus or Christians, view the Sinhalese as a
monolithic entity united in a single endeavour to subjugate and destroy their
identity as a distinct ethnic entity in the country.
The Sri Lanka Tamils of today are the lineal descendants of the original
inhabitants of the island. To this ancient ancestry, the latter day invasions by
the armies of the south Indian Tamil Pandyan, Chola and Chera kings, and those
raised by the usurping Sinhalese kings, made successive additions. In the proto
historic period of the island, the early totemistic Tamil tribes migrated from
their homelands in south India and settled in the north, in the south west
around Kelaniya and in the south east around the river Walawe Ganga. In the
north, they founded a sovereign kingdom called Naga Dipa. In the 2nd Century AD,
Ptolemy located the earlier Naga Dipa kingdom as covering the territory from
Chilaw in the west to below Trincomalee in the east. The ancient Tamil name of
the island was Tamaraparani. From those ancient times of the Naga Dipa kingdom,
the Tamils have occupied the northeastern littoral, which is their exclusive
homeland.
At the time of the introduction of Buddhism (3rd Century BC), Tamil kingly
rule was centred in Anuradhapura, the ancient capital which the Tamil kings
founded. Devanampriya Theesan, the Tamil king at that time, was followed by
Senan and Kuddikan (177 155 BC) and by Ellalan (145 101 BC). With the defeat of
Ellalan by the Sinhalese prince Dutugemunu, in 101 BC, which is a historical
fact, Anuradhapura became the seat of the Sinhalese dynasty.
The popularized
Sinhalese version of Sri Lanka history, however, represents Devanampriya Theesan
as a Sinhalese king (which is wrong, for, as was earlier contended, Sinhalese
emerged subsequent to the introduction of Buddhism), and Ellalan (called Elara
in Sinhalese) as "a Chola prince, who invaded Ceylon . . . captured the
[Sinhalese] government at Anuradhapura and ruled for about forty five years".33
The fact that Tamil kings ruled from Anuradhapura before the rise of the
Sinhalese kings is borne out by Mahavamsa itself, which in Chapter 24, with
its usual mystification of kings and events, states that when Dutugemunu
informed his father Kavantissa, ruler of the southern principality of
Ruhuna,that he was going to declare war against the Tamils, his father replied:
"Let Tamils rule that side of the Maha Ganga [now Mahaweli Ganga] and the
districts this side of the Maha Ganga are more than enough for us to rule."
The chronicle goes on to say that Dutugemunu's first battle was with a Tamil
petty king Chathan, who was ruling Mahiyangana in the south east, and thereafter
he is said to have fought 31 Tamil petty kings from Mahiyangana to Anuradhapura,
before he met Elara in battle.
These episodes from Mahavamsa clearly indicate the location and area the
Tamils occupied, and contradict the notion that Ellalan was a Chola invader from
India. Even after the passing of Anuradhapura into the hands of the Sinhalese
kings, a number of Tamil kings at various times ruled over the Rajarata kingdom.
The history of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka after Ellalan's death is lost in
obscurity as, for the next 1,000 years, the Pali chronicles describe only the
struggles of the Sinhalese king with the invading south Indian Tamil forces.
Hence there is no continuous history of the fortunes of the Tamil people in Sri
Lanka until 1214, when an independent Tamil kingdom, with its capital in Jaffna,
came into existence.
From that time, Sri Lanka was divided into two ethno linguistic nationstates;
the Tamils in the north and east, and the Sinhalese in the south and west the
two effectively separated by impenetrable jungle. These two ethno linguistic
nations remained separate and isolated by reason of separate political loyalties
and differences in language, religion, culture and customs.
According to Ibn Battuta, a North African Muslim traveller who visited Ceylon
in 1344, the Tamil king Ariya Chakravarti, who had his royal palace in Jaffna,
was a powerful ruler who owned sea going vessels and a cultured man who could
converse in Persian.34
Then, in 1505, the Portuguese conquered the maritime Sinhalese kingdom of
Kotte, near Colombo, and for over a century attempted to conquer the Tamil
kingdom, but met the Tamil military forces in losing battles. The Tamil king
Sankili gave great assistance to the Sinhalese king of Kandy by obtaining
reinforcements from south India in the latter's war against the Portuguese. This
made the latter determined to conquer the Tamil kingdom.
In 1621, the Portuguese
finally won the war of conquest, thanks to their superiority in steel and
gunpowder, captured the Tamil king Sankili and took him as captive to their
headquarters in Goa, India, where he was hanged. For a few years thereafter,
the Tamils continued their resistance to foreign rule, under the leadership of a
coastal petty king, Varnakulathian, but were subjugated.
The Portuguese administered the Tamil "Jaffna Patnam", as they called it, as
a separate domain from their Sinhalese maritime possession. So did the Dutch,
who captured it from the Portuguese. In 1802, by the Treaty of Ancient Holland
ceded her possessions in Sri Lanka to the British, who also Continued to retain
the separate identity of the Tamil areas until 1833, when, for the first time,
for administrative convenience, the British unified the low country Sinhalese,
the Kandyan and Tamil areas, and brought them under a Single unitary political
authority—the government of Ceylon.
In this way, the Tamils and the Sinhalese were defeated, severally and at
different times, in battle with the Portuguese conquistadores. Their separate
collective identities and political loyalties were extinguished by conquest and
were brought within a unitary Ceylonese nation state.
Sir Robert Brownrigg, an
early British governor of what were then the separate (Tamil) Jaffna Patnam and
the low country Sinhalese region, wrote in his despatch dated 10 July 1813 to
the Secretary of State for Colonies:
"The Tamil language, . . . which with a
mixture of Portuguese is used through all provinces, is the proper tongue of the
inhabitants from Puttalam to Batticaloa northward inclusive of both these
districts. Your Lordship will therefore have no objection to my putting the
Tamil language on an equal footing of encouragement with the Sinhalese."
Throughout the British colonial period, the Sinhalese and the Tamil people
remained equal in their subordination to the British raj. Both Sinhalese and
Tamil languages were also equal in their subordination to English, and so were
Buddhism and Hinduism to Christianity.
According to the 1971 census, Ceylon Tamils numbered 1,415,567, or 11.7% of
the population, and the Indian Tamils, who were recruited as labour for the
British plantations in the l9th Century and settled in Sri Lanka, were 9.4%.
Tamil is also the mother tongue of almost all the Muslims, who are 6.7% of the
population. As such, Tamil is the mother tongue of 27.8% of the people of Sri
Lanka.
In India, Tamils number 50 million and live in Tamil Nadu state, extending
from Pulicat Lake to |
