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Reflections on the national flag of Sri
Lanka and State terrorism:
Symbolism of the Sinhala oppression of the Tamils
22 June 2006
"...If one carefully looks
at the national flag of Sri Lanka, its
recent history and its symbolism, one need
not labor hard at understanding the ethnic
problem of the island..."
[see also
Sinhala Lion Flag imposed by Sinhala
Majority, 1948]
Terrorism has recently become a very bad
word in international vocabulary. But the word
remains very difficult to define. There are many
conflicts around the world. Terrorism and counter-terrorism
look very much alike. Long period of terrorism from an
oppressor produce counter-terrorism among the oppressed.
When terrorism and counter-terrorism are in full-swing and
there is full-blown conflict, it becomes difficult to
distinguish which is which. Who started the oppression and
then intensified it in so many ways should be identified as
the terrorist. The oppressed, pushed to a desperate corner,
fighting for survival through any available means, should be
characterized as counter-terrorist; they should be rescued
from the oppressor and saved. Sri Lanka is a clear-cut case
where terrorism and counter-terrorism could be easily
identified.
 If
one carefully looks at the
national flag of Sri Lanka, its recent history and its
symbolism, one need not labor hard at understanding the
ethnic problem of the island. This is an easy way out of a
possibly difficult situation because of the sharp ethnic
polarization, current media reports, comments and analyses
from the Sinhala/State side and the Tamil side could be so
much at variance of what is actually going on that many
people in the international community do not bother to get
to the bottom of facts. Many people have contacts with State
side of the story only or with mainstream media which is
controlled by the Sinhala side and form their opinions from
one-sided presentations.
Sri Lanka is a member of the United Nations Organization.
Even though there are more than 190 countries which are
members of the UNO, it is very clear that a number of
countries are not nations. Each of these countries has more
than one nation. Many of these countries are colonial
constructs by colonial masters for their administrative
convenience and then continue now as independent countries.
Some colonies had to fight hard for their freedom and
freedom struggles helped to forge some identity among
different peoples. In Sri Lanka there was no freedom
struggle.
The Sinhala majority, which is moving
heaven and earth now to deny power-sharing with the Tamil
minority, enjoyed British colonialism so much that not even
one Sinhala person was risking his life, fighting against
the British between 1849 and 1948. The Sinhalas were ready
to be subservient to the British masters but they are not
willing to share power with their fellow Tamil citizens. As
soon as the Sinhalas found that political power has come
into their hands through the concept of majority rule, they
began to perfect it as ethnic majoritarianism; deprivation
of the rights of the Tamils and reduction of the status of
the Tamils to second class became their
dynamic political ideology. Thus the small island of Sri
Lanka finds itself home to Sinhala and Tamil Nations who
appear to be in mortal combat.
Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was called in 1948, had no national
flag at the time of independence. The present national flag
without the saffron and green stripes was a flag, found
among some items seized by the British conquerors from the
Kandyan king in 1815. The Sinhalas were strongly attracted
to the lion flag in an attacking posture, as the myth of the
origin and connection of the Sinhalas to the lion was
fascinating to them.
Tamils were not accepting it and suggesting a national
flag acceptable to all ethnic communities. The government
appointed a Parliamentary Select Committee to make its
recommendation to the Parliament. This committee had a
majority of Sinhalas, two Tamils and a Muslim. The Sinhalas
were insisting on the attacking lion flag. No other country
in the modern world seems to have such a terrorist banner in
its national flag. How do you resolve such a problem when
the majority ethnic community insist on having its way?
Many Sinhalas still subscribe to their ancestral myth that
they descended from a lion only about 2600 years ago. I
think that the myth as narrated in the Mahavamsa should be
studied carefully as it seems to explain the deep seated
Sinhala fear or insecurity in dealing with the Tamils.
According to the myth, the lion came across a (human)
princess, took her to its den and cohabited with her. They
had two children. The lion had the princess and children
within the closed den. Only lion goes out and then returns.
The lion loved its freedom but it was never allowing freedom
to its family. The lion is acutely aware of is
beastly/brutal nature. No human being may continue to be
with it, if she has a chance to get out.
Tamils started claiming equal status and
equal opportunity. Then, Tamils have demanded federalism but
were willing to settle for much less as demonstrated in
Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam Pact of 1957 and
Dudley Senanayaka � Chelvanayagam Pact of 1965. These
agreements were abrogated through opposition from the
Sinhala side. The Sinhala side insisting on finding a
solution within the unitary constitution, reminds me the
position taken by the ancestor of the Sinhalas. They are
saying that no freedom of movement outside the den is
possible. If freedom were allowed beyond the den, �people of
the lion� seems to feel that humans may run away from the
beasts.
One Tamil member of the Parliamentary Select Committee
wanted to come to a compromise about the national flag issue
and asked for a saffron stripe to represent the Tamils. The
saffron color represented the color of the flag of the Tamil
Jaffna kingdom which was conquered by the Portuguese in
1621.The Muslim member wanted a similar recognition for his
community in the form of a green stripe. The green color is
special to Islam. The resolution was to assign two stripes,
a saffron stripe to represent the Tamils and a green stripe
to represent the Muslims, outside the frame of the lion
flag.. The other Tamil member- Senator S.Nadesan-
gave his dissent that the design of the whole national
flag proposal was unacceptable. He wanted to have a new
flag, without the ferocious animal representing the majority
community. Even though he was just one member, he seems to
have represented the widespread sentiments of the
non-Sinhala populations, especially the people of the
North-East. The Sinhala attitude to the Tamils is reflected
well in the national flag where lion having a raised sword
is trying to tear down the saffron stripe representing the
Tamils.
The way that the issue of national flag was determined shows
to some extent how Lankan political process was going to
work in Lanka. As there was universal suffrage except for a
substantial section of the Tamils and as there were periodic
elections and as there were peaceful change of governments,
some people credit Lanka as a democracy. The Sinhala
Buddhists have their own way. The two main Sinhala political
parties have been competing for political power for many
decades and Tamil-baiting becomes the main political
platform.
The attitude of the Muslims is
interesting. They have not identified with the Tamils in
their freedom struggle. When Federal Party was popular in
the North-East in the fifties and sixties, there were a
number of Muslims like Kariyappar, Mustapha, Ahamed and
Muhammed Ali who contested on FP tickets and won their
parliamentary seats from predominantly Muslim electorates.
But soon after elections, they crossed over to Sinhala
government sides and this created a lot of ill-feeling among
the Tamils. As they succeeded in getting a green stripe,
equivalent to the saffron stripe of the Tamils, they demand
that they should be an equal third partner. Peace talks in
Lanka should be trilateral and tsunami aid arrangements also
should be trilateral. But when government takes a tough line
and Tamils start suffering, Muslims remain silent. The
Tamils feel that their struggle could have been a success,
if Muslims, majority of whom, speaking Tamil, cooperate with
them. But most of the Muslim parliamentarians continue to
carry favor with Sinhala governments and enjoy perks of
office and personal and other favors.
Among the nearly two hundred flags at the UNO, only Sri
Lanka has a terrorist flag- a ferocious animal, carrying a
raised sword in one of its paws in an attacking posture.
Facing that brute is the saffron stripe representing the
Tamils. Muslims are not directly attacked as the green
stripe is on the other side of the saffron stripe. This flag
represents nicely what goes on in Lanka from the early
1950s.
From 1956, the ideology of the Sinhalas
was Sinhala hegemony, when Sinhala was made the only
official language. This develops into Sinhala Buddhist
hegemony in the 1970s. Each of the two major Sinhala
political parties, which came to power with big majorities
in the 1970s, produced their own constitutions, one after
another in 1972 and 1978. Both of them went a step further
in alienating the Tamils in that Buddhism was given the
foremost place in the constitution, making it in practice an
official religion. Four bo leaves, representing the
sacred tree of the Buddhists was surreptitiously
incorporated into the four corners of the national flag
without any parliamentary discussion or approval. The
Sinhala Buddhists have become so bold that they didn�t care
a damn of what non-Sinhala Buddhists think about these
changes. One can catalogue a long list of
issues of Sinhala attacks on the Tamils since independence.
Extensive land grab from historical habitat of the Tamils,
deprivation of the right to vote for a substantial section
of the Tamils, denial of official status to Tamil language,
almost forced repatriation of half of the disfranchised
Tamils to India, denial of merit as the basis for
recruitment to public and corporation jobs to the detriment
of Tamils and standardized admission to the universities to
reduce opportunities for Tamils- these are some of the
issues that instigated the Tamils. As a final step, even a
new constitution was proclaimed in 1972. Tamil proposals for
looking after their interests were summarily rejected. A
Sinhala Buddhist State of Sri Lanka emerged. It was at this
time that the Tamil leaders decided that the Tamils could
not expect justice by being a part of the Sri Lanka State
which is based on Sinhala Buddhist hegemony. They formed the
Tamil United Liberation Front and declared that the Tamils
should strive for a separate state. When
the international community advises the Tamils to choose the
ballot instead of the bullet, it does not seem to be aware
that the Tamils have tried that method for more than a
quarter century. Tamil community had been represented in
Parliament by eminent lawyers and scholars. They have
presented the Tamil cases very eloquently. The Sinhala media
and State and Sinhala-controlled media very rarely publishes
those contributions. Tamil politicians have talked to
Sinhala political leaders and formulated compromises, in
1957 and 1965. Opposition Sinhala parties and Sinhala
extremists have always blown up any compromise as total
betrayal of the Sinhalas and succeeded in getting those
pacts torn up. The Tamils decommissioning arms at this stage
will only mean that they will go down to the status of the
federal party trying to talk and come to a settlement in the
fifties and sixties.
Tamils gave an overwhelming mandate to
the TULF to establish a separate State for the Tamils in
general elections of 1977. Of the predominantly Tamil
electorates in the Northeast, the TULF lost only one seat.
In 2004, the TNA contested on the platform that the LTTE is
the sole spokesman for the Tamils and won all the Tamil
seats except one even in a proportional system of elections.
Tamils have shown what they want. Nobody could argue that
these mandates are not enough.
It is important to notice what happens in Sri Lanka
parliaments even now. Even after twenty years of civil war,
Sinhala politicians do not make an attempt to understand
Tamil grievances and Tamil demands. When Tamils bring in
proposals to discuss the problems of the Northeast, most
Sinhala politicians absent themselves as they don�t want
even to listen to them. Even in the most recent discussion
about the Northeast problems in Lankan parliament, Both
Mr.R.Sampanthan, the leader of the TNA and Mr.Rauff Hakeem,
the leader of the Muslim Congress, have to complain that
most of the Sinhala members were absent from the House.
I am aware that the President and members of the government
declare that they are ready and look forward for talks and
negotiations with the LTTE. Based on what the Tamil
parliamentarians demand, the government can formulate a set
of proposals for consideration by the LTTE. The LTTE leaders
have no special arguments to bring forward to the table. How
they differ from the parliamentarians is in having force to
back up the demands of the politicians. If the government
cannot understand what the Tamils want even now, the LTTE
without arms, cannot be expected to succeed in enlightening
the government more than now. That means there is no scope
for fulfilling Tamil aspirations by open-ended talks between
the government and the LTTE.
The introduction of a new constitution in Sri Lanka, whose
focus is Sinhala Buddhist hegemony, also led to the
emergence of Tamil militant groups by about 1975 as it was
becoming clear that no accommodation is possible for the
Tamils who yearned for equality of status and equality of
opportunity within a Sinhala Buddhist State. During the
seventies, Tamil militant groups concentrated their
attention on destroying Tamil collaborators and on robbing
State banks for funds. The government came out with the
dragonian Prevention of Terrorism Act and the armed forces
were entrusted with the task of bringing to end the Tamil
insurgency. The LTTE mounted a major attack on Sinhala
soldiers only in 1983, thirty-five years after independence
and twenty-seven years after Sinhala only act. It is very
important to note this fact, when coming to a decision on,
which is terrorism and which is counter-terrorism. This year
marked the beginning of the civil war in Lanka where the
Sinhala State was on one side and Tamil militant groups are
on the other side. Very soon, the LTTE emerged as the only
powerful movement fighting for the Tamils.
1987 marks a very important land-mark in the history of the
civil war. It started a process of �liberating� the
Northeast from the LTTE. Shelling and aerial bombing becomes
an important part of the government warfare. Death and
destruction was brought to the Tamils by the State of Lanka
which reflects its attitude of considering the Tamil people
as enemies of Lanka. The armed forces also engaged in
numerous massacres of innocent Tamil civilians during the
course of this civil war. Armed forces move about with the
lion flag; among large number of Tamils, this flag generates
fear and humiliation and not love and respect.
It is interesting to note the emergence of a national flag
among the Tamils. Tamils look up to the tiger flag as one
capable of resisting the lion flag. The Tamil Kingdom which
existed for centuries in Lanka had a flag whose main feature
was a seated recumbent bull. The Tamil resistance movement
did not choose this flag as a bull could not be expected to
stand up to a marauding lion. The Chola kingdom of Tamils in
South India had a tiger flag. There is lot of symbolism in
the change over from a bull to a tiger. When the lion was
attacking the Tamils for about two decades, the peaceful
law-abiding Tamils were behaving like a cow/bull. A
realization that they have to behave like a tiger occurred
to few Tamils in the seventies. This view is shared by a
vast number of Tamils now.
The marauding lion of yore is
complaining that the newly emerging prowling tiger is a
terrorist. Just because an ethnic community has forced the
marauding lion to be the central figure in the national flag
of a State and behave likewise against another ethnic
community in that State, the international community should
not turn a blind eye to what goes on and decide that an
established State however evil and cruel it may be, it has
to be defended. If the lion flag does not appear to be a
terrorist flag, how could anybody say that the tiger flag is
a terrorist flag?
If a really united peaceful country for the whole island
were to emerge out of the tragic events, a new national flag
transcending the marauding lion and the prowling tiger may
have to be devised. |
