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"To us
all towns are
one, all men our kin. |
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"To us
all towns are
one, all men our kin. |
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ENACTMENT OF
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Debate in Sri Lanka House of
Representatives on Sinhala Only Act, June 1956
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Senator
S.Nadesan Q.C., Sri Lanka Senate Hansard 26 June 1957
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50 years later - Tamil an official language "only in name" PK Balachandran, Hindustan Times, 12 February 2006 "....The Tamil-speaking population in Sri Lanka comprises Sri Lankan Tamils, Indian Origin Tamils and Muslims. Together they are 26 per cent of the island's population. But in the 9,00,000-strong public service, Tamil-speakers are just 8.3 per cent. The rest are Sinhala-speakers.Out of the 36,031 employees in the Police Department, 231 are Tamils and 246 are Muslims. Since Sri Lankan Muslims are also Tamil speaking, the total number of Tamil speakers in this vital department is just 477. Wellawatte, a suburb of Colombo, is an overwhelmingly Tamil area, with 21,417 of its residents out of a total population of 29,302, being Tamil speaking. But in the Wellawatte police station, out of the 156 personnel, only 6 are Tamil speaking. The Sri Lankan armed forces are also almost completely Sinhala or Sinhala speaking. The few Tamil-speaking personnel there are Muslims, rather than Tamils as such..... There are only 166 official translators in Sri Lanka. And out of these, only 58 are Tamil-speaking. But translators are required in large numbers because of the existence of a massive linguistic barrier in the country. In the Sri Lankan school system, Sinhalas learn through the Sinhala medium, and Tamils through the Tamil medium. This is so even in the universities. Very little English is taught, if at all, at any stage. This is the reason for the massive linguistic barrier between the two major communities in Sri Lanka, a barrier which has added to the distance between them since independence in 1948. Speaking to Hindustan Times on the state of affairs, the Chairman of the Official Languages Commission, Raja Collure, said: "Successive governments have failed to implement the constitutional provision in regard to the use of Tamil as the second official language." This is regrettable especially in view of the fact that Tamil had been made the second official language of the country, through the 13th amendment, 18 years ago, following the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of July 1987. At that time, it was presumed that the acceptance of Tamil as an official language would automatically lead to the recruitment of more Tamils and that there would be no glaring ethnic imbalances.But Tamil has been an official language "only in name" as The Sunday Times put it. Recruitment of Tamil-speakers, especially ethnic Tamils, has been abysmally low. If at all the state wanted to remedy the situation, it was only in respect of the use of the Tamil language in official work. The accent was not on the recruitment of more Tamils or Tamil-speakers. In the latter part of the 1990s, President Chandrika Kumaratunga tried to introduce an 'Equal Opportunities Bill' to redress the linguistic and ethnic minorities' grievances in regard to employment. The statistics brought out by it were telling. Notwithstanding the powerful case made out for such a bill, it raised a storm of protest among the Sinhala majority, which considered ethnic, linguistic and religious reservations as undermining the unity of Sri Lanka and its destiny as a Sinhala-Buddhist country..." |
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[see also One Hundred Tamils of the 20th Century - S.J.V.Chelvanayagam
Chelvanayagam inaugurated the Federal Party, on December
18th, 1949. One of the demands of the FP was parity of
status for Tamil with Sinhala. This concept of ‘parity
of status’, sought by the FP, was misunderstood by the
Sinhalese. They thought that, it implied bilingualism in
administration, and in government. They meant that, if a
hundred Sinhala clerks were recruited to the public
service, a hundred Tamil clerks should also be
recruited. The ‘parity of status’ in language rights, is
a legal concept, whereby both languages would become
equal, before the law, as official languages. ‘Parity’
does not mean that, both languages should be used, in
every part of Sri Lanka. In 1956, a profound change had taken place in the
political history of Sri Lanka. The forces of ‘Sinhala
Only’ movement were spreading rapidly in the South. The
General Elections of 1956, were fought on the language
issue. The MEP led by Bandaranaike, swept to power on
‘Sinhala only’. The ‘Sinhala only’ cry was loud in the
South burgeoned FP, to victory in the Northern and
Eastern Provinces. B.C. Pact In 1965, Chelvanayagam helped Dudley Senanayake and
his UNP to form a ‘National Government’. Consequently
Dudley Senanayake - Chelvanayagam Pact was signed and
the
District Councils Bill was gazetted in 1968. It
provided inter-alia that steps would be taken under the
Tamil Language Special Provisions Act to make (i) Tamil
as the language of administration and of record in the
Northern and Eastern Provinces, (ii) to make it possible
for a Tamil speaking person to transact business in
Tamil throughout Sri Lanka and (iii) to amend the
Language of the Courts Act, to provide for legal
proceedings in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, to be
conducted and recorded in Tamil. This Bill was opposed
by the SLFP, LSSP and CP, who organised the Joint
Protest March. The Bill was later abandoned. In 1977, J. R. Jayewardene purported to proclaim
that, ‘there were numerous problems confronting Tamil
speaking people, and the lack of solution to their
problems, made Tamil speaking people to support a
movement, for creation of a separate state’. In the
Manifesto of 1977 General Elections, UNP also declared
that ‘the party would take all possible steps to remedy
the grievances of the Tamils, in such fields as, (1)
education, (2) colonisation, (3) use of Tamil Language
and (4) employment in the public and semi-public
corporations. In the years that followed, there was continuous and
sustained agitation not only with regard to language
rights, but also for devolution of power, leading to the
Indo-Sri Lanka Pact. The Indo - Sri Lanka Pact was
signed on July 29th, 1987 by Rajiv Gandhi, then Prime
Minister of India and J. R. Jayewardene, then President
of the Republic of Sri Lanka. Consequently, a Bill for
the amendment of the 1978 Constitution, known as the
13th Amendment to the Constitution was gazetted. It had
two parts: one part was with regard to the Official
Language, and the other part, to provide
decentralisation of powers, through the Provincial
Council system. The Bill contained an amendment to Article 18, of
Chapter IV, of the Constitution to read as: Article 18
(1) - ‘The Official Language of Sri Lanka shall be
Sinhala’, Article 18 (2) ¬’Tamil shall also be an
official language;, Article 18 (3) - ‘English shall be
the link language’, Article 18 (4) - ‘Parliament shall
by law provide for the implementation of provisions of
this Chapter’. India brought necessary pressure on JR, and consequently
the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution,
was brought in, on December 17th, 1988 by which, the anomalies with regard
to the constitutional status of the Tamil Language, so created by the 13th
Amendment to the Constitution, were rectified. The implementation by law
enacted by Parliament of Article 18 (2) as amended by the 13th Amendment,
and of Articles 22, 23 and 24 as amended by the 16th Amendment, became
otiose... On 24th January 24th, 2008 the APRC presented a set of proposals to the President, with the recommendation that ‘the Government should endeavour to implement the 13th Amendment to the Constitution’. Clause 4:1 of the aforesaid Proposals states that, the Government should take immediate steps, to ensure that Parliament enacts laws, to provide for the full implementation of Chapter IV of the Constitution’. It clearly shows that, even the
APRC does not desire to implement the constitutional
provisions, with regard to the use of the Tamil
Language, directly from the Constitution, but is
attempting to implement them, by legislation. It brings
out succinctly that, the APRC too wants to relegate the
constitutional provision, of the use of Tamil Language,
by legislation, even after the 16th Amendment. It is a
political deceit. |
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