Speaking out the
unspoken: revisiting the tracks of the Great Divide
Northeastern Herald, 13 September 2002
The logic of South Asian politics has reasserted
itself in all its customary intensity. On 16th September, the three
major ethnic groups of Sri Lanka are meeting in Thailand to work out
a plan for the devolution of power that would ensure coexistence.
Can Sri Lanka escape the tragedy of India / Pakistan and Pakistan /
Bangladesh? Of course India became wiser and quite soon under the
guidance of India’s Foreign Secretary K. M. Panikkar devised a
system of linguistic states, which in spite of many tensions, is
keeping India intact. Unfortunately, neither Pakistan nor Sri Lanka
realise the value of accommodating with grace the ‘smaller brother.’
Sri Lanka faces this uphill task now.
At this time when an earnest attempt is being made to resolve the
Sri Lanka problem, which has ravaged the country for almost 26
years, it will be useful for curative and preventive purposes to
view ‘clinically’ what went wrong, where. This article attempts to
present the Tamil point of view on how the alienation took place and
the Great Divide became a reality.
Sri Lanka’s entry into electoral democracy was through the gates of
communalism. In the 19th century, the British colonial government
made the Legislative Council more representative by appointing
unofficial members from the various communities in Sri Lanka –
Kandyan Sinhalese, Low Country Sinhalese and Sri Lankan Tamils. When
it came to the Muslims (Moors), this community accused Sir
Ponnambalam Ramanathan of trying to block Muslim representation by
claiming the Moors were really Tamils. Tensions had already started.
In the beginning, the movement for Buddhist identity and cultural
revival, as much as it was in Saivism, was not anti-Christian. And
as the 20th century opens with Anagarikka Dharmapala coming into the
picture, the cry was against ‘foreigners.’ Buddhist writings of this
period reveal a strong anti-Muslim trend. In a way, the
Sinhala-Muslim riots of 1915 though overplayed by the British
government, lay within the logic of history.
Ramanathan, the great Tamil, chose to speak for the Sinhalese and it
is said he made a special trip to London to plead their cause. The
late Badi-ud-din Mahmud, the minister of education in the UF
government of 1970-1977 told this writer, “The Muslims shall never
create a chance for another 1915 and never forget what the Tamils
did to their linguistic brethren.”
At that time there was not much vitriolic writing against Sri Lankan
Tamils though there was the undesirable trend in historiography to
treat Tamil intrusions into pre-Western Sri Lanka as foreign
invasions. John M. Seneviratne in his ‘Story of the Sinhalese’ is
quite clear in dubbing the South Indian Tamil intrusions as
‘invasions.’ The emerging Buddhist consciousness and the general
attitude of the Sangha was to uphold the ‘Mahawansa’ tradition of
treating the non-Buddhist intrusions as something against the
country and its people. The basic Mahavihara ideology of the
‘Mahawansa’ was not taken into count and terms like the ‘Demalas’
read in Geiger’s translation of the ‘Mahawansa,’ had a completely
different meaning in the 1920s and 1930s. It took almost 30 years
for historians like R.A.L.H. Goonawardene and W. I. Suraweera to
take a more historicist view of the ‘Mahawansa’ narrative.
An intellectual decision was taken almost unanimously to distance
Tamil and Tamilnadu history from Sinhala and Buddhist, and present
the Tamils, at least in historical researches, as a damaging force.
The interactive and the syncretistic were almost always overlooked.
More basically, the interaction of the culture of the Tamils with
that of the average, village-level Sinhalese was also ignored. The
Theravada layer of Sinhala culture was highlighted, almost ignoring
the ‘thovil’ and ‘gammaduwa’ traditions (which constitute a rich
legacy for the ritualistic dramatic traditions of the Sinhalese)
coming to terms with those same acts of syncretism.
It is understandable that the Buddhist upsurge was not taken to
highlight the pre-Buddhistic and non-Buddhistic elements. But it
also chose not to highlight the Tamil-Buddhist interaction that was
very much evident in the history of Sri Lankan Buddhism. Efforts
were also made not to emphasise the post-Polonnaruwa cultural
intermingling, which was seen in the Dambadeniya and Kotte periods.
(Scholars like Professor Liyanagamage have drawn attention to some
of these interactions). All these led, inevitably, to treating
Tamils as being against the Sinhalese and Buddhism.
On the part of the Tamils, (at least the articulate Tamils of the
day) Sinhala culture was nothing but a mosaic of what had travelled
down from India – especially South India. They made the mistake of
not realising that those Indian influences in Sri Lanka had blended
into such a form that there was something specifically Sri Lankan
about it. But in the Buddhist / Sinhala view, the innovativeness of
the adaptation was a Sinhala achievement. One could even say the
much-respected Ananda Coomaraswamy himself made this mistake.
It was in such a situation and with the coming of communal
representation that the Sinhala – Tamil divide began to take
substantive form. With Ramanathan out of the picture, his brother
Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam could not convince Sir Claude Corea and
Sir Marcus Fernando that the Tamils in the Western Province deserved
representation. And it might be recalled the word Tamileelam is now
traced to the last days of Arunachalam when he formed the first
Tamil party.
History since the 1930s and the working of the Donoughmore
Constitution are well known for building silent barriers between the
Sinhalese and the Tamils. The great nationalist effort of the Jaffna
Youth Congress to boycott the 1931 elections under the Donoughmore
system was taken as an act of communalism. Seelan Kadirgamar has
argued very convincingly in his edition of the Handy Perimpanayagam
papers how the whole matter was misunderstood. It should be accepted
that the foundations for a racial, if not ethnic divide was firmly
laid during this period.
The coming of the Donoughmore Constitution and the decision to go
for territorial representation led only to an extension and
expansion of communal politics. The failure of the Ceylon National
Congress (CNC) in real ‘national’ terms should be seen in this
context. And the Sinhala Maha Sabha was an important political group
and no less a person than S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike was associated
with it.
It was in this situation of mutual distrust and backstabbing that
Sri Lanka took two very effective steps towards future
democratisation – steps, which enabled the participation of the
entire population of Sri Lanka. The first was the decision to
develop education in Sinhala and Tamil. In fact there was a proposal
that Sinhala and Tamil be made national languages in the State
Council. Second, and more important, was C. W. W. Kannangara’s
proposal of a system of free education. Education, which was the
only passport for the upward mobility in colonial Sri Lanka, was now
open to all – irrespective of class differentiation and distance
from Colombo.
This brought about a great revolution. Coupled with the shift to
‘swabasha’ as the medium of instruction, free education was a
radiant socio-political fire that swept across the country. But
though Sri Lanka did the correct thing educationally and
democratically, the manner by which it was implemented went against
it. In deciding to make Tamil and Sinhala the media of instruction,
it did not care, or pause think, on the need for coordination
between the two languages. Sinhalese did not have to learn Tamil and
Tamils did not have to learn Sinhalese. There was no coordination
for the establishment of a Sri Lankan linkage.
This led slowly and surely to the erection of impenetrable walls
between the two communities. Given the contemporary mood of the
Sinhalese, what began going into Sinhala textbooks on the history
and culture of the country were really material accusing the second
largest community in the country of playing a negative role in the
development of Sinhala and Buddhism. The year 1956 marks an
important turning point. What the average Sinhalese did not feel as
having imbibed in 1948 at independence, he or she felt they had
found in 1956. Power, S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike said was now in the
hands of ‘panchcha maha balavegaya’ – the ‘sangha,’ ‘guru,’
‘kamkaru,’ ‘veda’ and ‘govi.’ The historiography of the Sangha made
the Tamils look villains.
We are now in the late 1950s and 1960s. The die was cast and
divisions along ethnic lines could not be postponed further.
It is at this point that one should take count of the Sinhala media
– especially the influential press. Growing out of the
anti-Christian and anti-alien tradition it did not differentiate
either between race and religion, or country and race. It argued
very strongly for the Sinhalese of the entire country and the
reification of what is referred to as Sinhala-Buddhism. In the eyes
of the influential Sinhala press, any attempt on the part of the
minorities to assert their presence was taken as anti-national.
It is true that in 1949 and the early 1950s the political forces
that led Tamil opinion were insisting on Tamil with a Dravidian
flavour, bringing into Sri Lanka the overtones of the Dravidian
parts of South India. It should be agreed this element was
substantively present in the rhetoric. But it was enough to frighten
the already frightened Sinhalese community, which was becoming a
victim of its own minority complex forgetting the fact it was a
majority.
At a time like this it was expected the major left parties of the
day could have played a decisive role. And to a certain extent they
did. The CPSL was for regional autonomy and it were they who
organised the first meeting opposing Sinhala Only at the Colombo
town hall. Dr. Colvin R. De Silva made the famous remark “two
languages one nation, one language two nations.” But the vagaries of
Soviet politics and the absence of a sound Marxist understanding of
the Sri Lankan situation, led to the major left parties to take a
pro-Sinhala position in five – six years’ time.
The only political force that could have cemented the Sinhala –
Tamil rift was now becoming openly anti-regional autonomy and by the
mid-1960s the leftist slogan of “Dudleyge badey, masala wadey,”
brought out the hatred of the hitherto uncorrupted Sinhala comrade
to view the Tamils as political enemies.
The coup de gras comes in 1972, when the Marxist Constitutional
Affairs Minister Dr. Colvin R. De Silva presented the Republican
Constitution, taking away Section 29 of the 1948 Constitution, which
was the only safeguard for minority rights. What Prime Minister D. S
Senanayke had to accept from the Whitehall, De Silva unceremoniously
threw out of the window. Following this, the old and feeble Federal
Party leader S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, made a two-sentence declaration
in the House. Many of the members of the House did not know what he
said till the Hansard arrived. And the wolf the Sinhala media had
been crying had at last arrived. Chelvanayakam declared that his
party now stood for separation
The new Constitution and the actions of the United Front government
alienated the Tamil youth too. By the late 1970s, Tamil militant
groups vehemently attacking the traditional Marxists but using
Marxist slogans of liberation etc. had come to stay. In such a
loaded situation, 1983 was not far away. With 1983 there was no
denial of the ethnic war coming into the open. This was a reflected
very strongly in the lexis used. The Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims
were no longer ‘communities’ living in one country, but became
‘ethnic groups’ with defined, almost racial characteristics.
The passage from community to ethnicity is the price the Sri Lankan
polity has had to pay for intransigence in dealing with Tamil
demands for justice. Further, when there is a reference to
ethnicity, cultural separatism is implied and the demand for
political separatism is only a matter of time. Since 1983 Tamil
resistance has become resistance against oppression – both military
and administrative.
It is this run of events we have to look back upon and if possible
correct. Till 2002 it was argued that when the UNP was in power the
SLFP opposed all what the UNP said and did, and vice versa. But from
the Tamil point of view there is no better opportunity to resolve
the ethnic conflict than at the present moment, where there is a
SLFP (PA) president and a UNF (UNP) premier.
If the Sinhalese cannot come to an agreement between themselves now
as to how they are going to accommodate the other sections of the
Sri Lankan population, it is hardly likely they would do so in the
future. But ironically (or is it tragically?) the Sri Lankan state
has two governments within it. And let it not be forgotten the
Tigers too have their own government. “Lead kindly light lead thou
me on, I am far away from home.”
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