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Origins of the North-South
Conflict[1]
Tracing the origins of any violent conflict can run in diverse
directions with emphasis on one or the other cause that
contributed to its growth and momentum. But of all the
approaches to any crisis the most misleading path is to rely on
any single cause. In every historical process that leads to
crises there are multiple factors that crisscross and
interweave, twisting round the core issues and consolidating the
thrust of the events culminating in violence. It is, therefore,
obvious that any mono-causal interpretation or theory advanced
to explain the historical events that led to the current
north-south conflict in Sri Lanka will be inadequate to grasp
either the essence or its rounded totality.
Invariably, it is politicized history that would tend to focus
on mono-causal interpretations. It is virtually a sine qua non
for partisan projection of the complex issues (the simplified
“them” vs. “us” approach) because a mono-causal interpretation
lends itself readily to distort the realities and serve
political ends. This school of mono-causal interpretation of Sri
Lankan actions and reactions in the pit of politics had gained
ascendancy, particularly with the new school of rewriting the
history emerging as one of the growth industries. The impact of
this mono-causal interpretation, which blames only the Sinhala-Buddhists,
has been to exacerbate the prevailing political climate by
polarizing the two communities.
A holistic approach, taking into consideration all the operative
factors, is more likely to eliminate emotions and introduce a
more balanced view of the evolving chain of events. It is also
important that events should be placed in the proper sequence,
without omitting one or the other factor to tilt the
perspectives favourable to any one side. This is a prime
necessity to construct a reasonable historical composition that
includes the multi-factorial causes. Equally important is the
starting point of the seemingly insignificant events (example:
the launching of the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchci (Tamil
State Party) on December 18, 1949) that gathered momentum by
veering away from the democratic and non-violent path until it
exploded into a violent crisis. In most instances the starting
points are selected arbitrarily to suit partisan theories – a
common practice that is not conducive for rational analysis or a
balanced understanding of the related issues.
In the final analysis, all these factors must be woven into the
interconnected flow of events to unravel a discernible pattern
from a reasonable distance, away from the emotional impact of
exploding events. It is human that events exploding in your face
must necessarily color the perspectives and even distort the
realities. Therefore any meaningful analysis must necessarily
step back from the immediacy of events and take a dispassionate
view of the totality of forces that led to the crisis. For
instance, the grassroot forces breaking out of the old mould
crumbling with the antiquated colonial empires fading into
oblivion; the rough and tough transition from semi-feudalism to
modernity; the caste-based ancien regimes resisting change in
the hope of clinging on to their feudal and /or colonial
privileges, powers and positions; the historical necessity of
redressing imbalances of colonial legacies; the local leadership
grabbing and diverting the internal forces to extremities; the
stagnant economies that frustrated the hopes of youth looking
for social mobility; the rewriting of old histories to justify
new ideological claims to exclusive territories; the importing
of new ideologies and political vocabularies from the West to
rationalize extreme demands and violence; the dynamic
interconnectedness of evolving events; the chance happenings and
the actions and reactions are some of the key factors that need
to be addressed before passing judgments that are neither
helpful to understand the crisis nor to find a solution. It must
be noted that it is not possible within the short essay to deal
with all these factors. Only some factors will be highlighted to
question the mono-causal theory and explore the route to the
origins of the north-south crisis.
It is also apparent that, as in every other crisis, the
north-south conflict produced a plethora of interpreters,
theorists, paradigmists, exponents, propagandists and schools of
thoughts with each individual or school of thought focusing one
or the other cause. By and large, these diverse opinions
converged and narrowed down to only one single cause: Sinhala-Buddhism.
This mono-causal view turned into a popular and orthodox
reference point for the ideologues heading towards the creation
of a mono-ethnic enclave as a solution to rival regional claims.
In time it gained the sanctity of approved ideological
correctness for the interpretation of events that flowed from
“1956” – a common starting point for those who advocate the
mono-causal view.
As in all other historical movements, the events rolling down
the turbulent years collided with each other and exploded with a
violent and unmanageable fury -- particularly the events
originating in the post-1983 phase. One of the principal victims
of this violent process was history. Like the human actors
trapped in the cycle of violence history too got politicized and
polarized. While bullets waged a relentless war on the ground to
grab territory, books and publications were launched at a higher
level to win the hearts and minds for one or the other side. To
escape this poisoned atmosphere it is necessary to go to a more
neutral period where history unraveling in tortuous paths was
interpreted with dispassionate analysis, giving weight to the
prevailing facts and not to constructed theories.
History can be written in two main ways: 1) by picking the
relevant and available facts from the ground that could lead, by
the force of its own logic, to a comprehensive pattern that
explains the past or 2) by constructing a theoretical formula at
the top from selected facts to fit a preconceived pattern. The
first tends to be a broader and more humane view drawn from
existential realities. The second is a narrow theoretical
construction imposed by paradigmists and high-flying fashionable
schools of expensive ideologues sitting at the top, with a
plausible degree of sophistication. The more durable one is the
first and the second, like all fashions, tend to fade away with
time.
There are two scholarly historians who belong to the pre-1983
neutral period: 1) Dr. G. C. Mendis, one of the pioneering
historians of Peradeniya University and 2) Prof. K. M. de Silva,
arguably the foremost historian of our time. The disarmingly
simple voice Dr. Mendis has been drowned by the noisy school of
re-writers who dominate the current climate of opinion. Prof. de
Silva’s authority continues undiminished by the partisan or
self-serving theories by new inventors of history. Both
historians have delved into the origins of the communal rift and
though they focus on two different decades their evaluations are
not contradictory.
Dr. Mendis, writing in 1963, trace the beginnings of communalism
to 1943. [2 ] “Communalism,” he wrote, “was a factor which
divided the body politic in Ceylon in the early forties of the
century…..This communalism seen in 1943 was undoubtedly a new
development. European writers such as the Portuguese Jesuit
Fernao de Queyroz and the Englishman Robert Knox of the
seventeenth century and James Cordiner and other English writers
of the nineteenth century have left us pictures of Ceylon with
its various divisions of society but in none of their works does
one come across communal conflicts of the type we saw then.
“The Sinhalese-Tamil problem, which was the most acute in 1943,
could hardly be traced back even to the last century. Before the
tenth century A. D. there is no evidence of any serious
antagonism between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. Up to that time
the Tamil immigrants seem to have inter-married with the
Sinhalese, as they do today in the coastal districts of Negombo
and Chilaw, and gradually merged themselves into the Sinhalese
population…..” [3 ]
This conclusion based on a researched survey of the past
challenges two fashionable theories. First, it questions whether
the starting point of the north-south was “1956”. Second, and
more importantly, it challenges the other unsubstantiated theory
that the Sinhalese and the Tamils were two hostile communities
at each others throat from the year dot. Picking the hard facts
from the ground Dr. Mendis emphasizes that communal animosities
have not been a feature of both cultures. He argues that it is a
new phenomenon caused by the competition of the middle-classes
in the two communities to grab the limited amount of jobs in the
government service – the only stable and growth industry under
the British regime. As a rule colonial regimes did not pursue
policies of encouraging indigenous entrepreneurs to compete with
the overarching imperial interests.
The Tamils of Jaffna held a disproportionate share of jobs in
the government service [ ] and it has dawned on them, says Dr.
Mendis, that “they cannot expect to hold any longer the same
proportion of post as well as the same number of key-posts in
the Government as they did in the past….” He sees the roots of
the crisis in the stagnant economy. He sees the two middle
classes of the two communities trapped inside a stagnant economy
without any new space opening up in the economy to absorb the
new generations into the system. This is a more reasonable
historical setting to explain the sudden explosion of
communalism, and also the violence of youth, of the two
communities. Down the ages, as pointed out by Dr. Mendis, the
two communities had co-existed peacefully at all levels – from
the arid dry zone villages to the highest rungs of society. If
so how could “1956” – the year of resurgence of the suppressed
grassroot forces of nearly five centuries of colonialism – be
categorized as the starting point of all evils in the Sri Lanka
polity? It will be argued later that “1956” became the symbolic
year for the Tamil leadership to scapegoat the Sinhalese as
their enemies. They demonized them as the primary cause of their
social and personal problems. Since language was also the
vehicle of upward social mobility under colonial and
post-colonial times the Tamil leadership focused on the Sinhala
Only Act of 1956 as the main instrument of discrimination.
However, Dr. Mendis and Prof. De Silva went beyond “1956” to
trace the origins of the communal rift. Dr. Mendis demarcated
the forties as the period when communalism raised its ugly head.
It was the time when G. G. Ponnambalam raised the divisive cry
of 50-50. Prof. de Silva, however, focused sharply on the
twenties when Sir. Ponnambalam Arunachalam broke away from the
Ceylon National Congress and retired into the womb of Jaffna on
the demand for an additional seat for the Tamils in the Western
province. (More of this later.) Though Dr. Mendis points to the
forties as the time when the communal issues took an acute turn
he recognizes that there was a concerted move from the twenties
by the Tamils to block any attempt of the Sinhalese to gain
their due share of power as the majority community under
proposed constitutional reforms. “In 1921 when representative
government was about to be granted,” wrote Dr. Mendis, “the
Ceylon Tamils who comprised eleven per cent of population asked
for half the number of seats which the Sinhalese who comprised
sixty-nine per cent, were to get, and succeeded.” [4 ] In this
statement Dr. Mendis reveals the central thrust of Jaffna-centric
politics: their demand for parity of status with the majority.
Clearly, both historians emphasize two different decades as the
starting point of the north-south divisions. The difference,
however, is only in the emphasis and not in the historical flow
of events that nudge each other and connect one decade to
another. It is quite visible that the core issues of the Tamils
that originated in the twenties gathered a new momentum and
reincarnated in a more virulent manifestation in the forties and
in the subsequent decades. What began as an additional seat for
the Tamils in the Western Province in the twenties escalated
into 50-50 in the mid-forties and separatism (in the guise of
federalism) in the mid-fifties, until it climaxed in the
Vaddukoddai Resolution of 1976.
The trajectory of northern events that escalated over the
decades, gathering a mono-ethnic virulence and ended in
violence, date back to the pre-independence period. The
Vaddukoddai Resolution of 1976 was the inevitable outcome of the
events that originated in the twenties. This is a defining
moment not only in peninsular politics but also in the nation
because in 1976, for the first time, the leadership of a
community decided consciously and deliberately to abandon the
age-old principle of non-violent co-existence among all
communities and declared war on another community.
Here a distinction should be made between the unorganized,
sporadic mob violence that bursts from time to time and fizzles
out and the violence officially adopted, endorsed, organized,
financed and promoted by a leadership of a community. Neither
individually nor collectively has any leadership of other
communities ever encouraged or urged their communities to wage a
war against another community. The Vaddukoddai Resolution will
stand as an indelible black mark on the conscience and the
politics of the Jaffna Tamil leadership that was wont to pose as
pious Gandhians in Sri Lankan politics.
Prof. A. J. Wilson confirms that S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the
father of the separatist movement, personally checked and
approved the wording of the Vaddukoddai Resolution. In his
biography of Chelvanayakam, his father-in-law, Prof. Wilson
recorded: “Apart from this (Vaddukoddai Resolution) being a
collective decision of the main Ceylon Tamil components of the
TULF (Tamil United Liberation Front), that is the Federal Party
and the ACTC, (All Ceylon Tamil Congress) Chelvanayakam approved
the choice of words.” [5 ]
The Tamil leadership never expected the violence endorsed by the
leadership to boomerang on them or their community. They
embraced and endorsed violence solely to target the Sinhalese.
But the children of the Vaddukoddai Resolution did not hesitate
to turn their guns and liquidate the fathers who passed it
triumphantly on May 14, 1976. Ironically, the children of the
Resolution considered their political fathers to be greater
enemies of their cause than the perceived demons of the south.
Chelvanayakam escaped assassination by the LTTE only because he
died shortly after passing the Resolution. Those who stepped
into his shoes, starting from Appapillai Amirthalingam, were
gunned down in broad daylight.
In other words, they fell into the grave they dug for their
enemies. Today the Tamil community is facing from all quarters
the inhuman consequences of the violence unleashed by their
political fathers against the south. When the Tamil political
elite opted to step out of the democratic framework and pursue
their goal of separatism through violence they hardly realized
that they were releasing a genie out of the bottle. They
believed that the ideology of a separate state they invented in
the fifties and climaxed in the call to arms in the concluding
clauses of the Vaddukoddai Resolution would help them to ride on
the backs of the youth to power. [6]
The Tamil leadership, drawn mainly from the dominant vellahla
caste, failed to recognize that violence, once unleashed, would
turn into an unmanageable force and assert itself as an
independent force with power to remove them from their cherished
and established positions. In passing the Vaddukoddai Resolution
the dominant vellahla caste literally transferred the power they
held for centuries into unknown or hostile forces they trusted
initially to do their dirty work. The vellahla caste held sway
as long as they remained within the democratic framework. They
did not foresee that the Vaddukoddai Resolution would bring down
just not themselves individually but the entire vellahla caste
that had ruled Jaffna during feudal and colonial times. The only
positive feature of the Tamil violence that flowed from the
Vaddukoddai Resolution was to radicalize the calcified Jaffna
society structured on inflexible caste lines. Nothing short of
violence could have changed that rigid ancien regime of the
vellahla high-caste. In hindsight it is apparent that in passing
the Vaddukoddai Resolution the vellahla caste dug their own
grave.
As “1976” marks the abandonment of democratic and non-violent
politics and opens up a new phase in north-south relations the
events leading up to it need to be traced, even sketchily, to
grasp the impact of the northern politics on the south. This
Resolution raises some key questions: Why did the north alone
resort to confrontational, aggressive and violent politics? Why
did the other Tamil-speaking minorities refuse to join the
bandwagon of the northern politics despite overtures made by the
Jaffna Tamil leadership? [7] If the claim of discrimination
against the Tamil-speaking people is valid then why didn’t all
the Tamil-speaking join in a common front against the Sinhala
majority? How did the Tamil-speaking Muslims and Indian Tamils
succeed in settling their differences and grievances
non-violently and co-exist in relatively harmony with the
Sinhala majority?
Even on the sensitive and explosive language issue it is clear
that only the Jaffna Tamil leadership raised a storm over it.
This significant feature confirms that the Sri Lankan crisis is
not an ethnic issue, with all the Tamil-speaking ganging up
against the majority Sinhalese, but a regional issue confined
only to the north and the south. If the east and the central
hills joined the north against the majority then it would have
been unquestionably an ethnic issue of gigantic and unmanageable
proportions. A common front of all Tamil-speaking peoples would
have been an overwhelming justification of the cries of
discrimination against the Tamil-speaking minorities. The
refusal of the other two Tamil-speaking communities to join the
juggernaut of Jaffna rolling down from the north questions the
validity of demonizing the Sinhala majority as anti-Tamil
racists. One swallow does not make a summer. Nor does the
aggressive campaign of one Tamil-speaking community make the
Sinhala majority evil racists.
If conventional wisdom had probed deeper and taken into
consideration the relationships of the Sinhala majority with all
three Tamil-speaking communities in historical times, and
particularly in the post-independence phase, it would have been
possible to arrive at a more balanced assessment rather than
escape into a mono-causal theory. For instance, if the Sinhala
majority is confronted with the violence of only the
Tamil-speaking community of the north, then questions must be
asked and answers given to explain why violence was confined to
only one region and not to all the other Tamil-speaking regions
in the island.
Perhaps, the answer could be found in one of two things or both:
(1) either there must have been something right that the
majority was doing to maintain easy, non-confrontational
relations with relations with the minorities or (2) there must
some structural faults in the foundations of northern society to
adhere to their boast of non-violence and pursue unrelenting
violence. If in a multi-cultural society like Sri Lanka the
northern community fails to take the east and the centre sharing
common ethnic and linguistic interests/values then, in terms of
simple arithmetic, it adds up to 3: 1. If two Tamil-speaking
communities coexisted, maintaining friendly relations with the
majority, then could it be that the north took the wrong turn?
Did the Vaddukoddai Resolution – the ultimate expression of
antagonism to the south -- came out internal compulsions seeded
in the northern political culture? If these questions are not
asked then the researcher will be facing a monumental vacuum
which can be filled by the facile mono-causal theory of blaming
the south.
To arrive at a comprehensive appreciation of the evolving events
attempts should be made to go beyond the popular perceptions.
The popular starting point for justifying northern violence is,
of course, “1956” which has been projected as an anti-Tamil
move, particularly the Sinhala Only Act of 1956. But the other
starting point is to go beyond “1956” to the roots of peninsular
politics that gave birth to the Vaddukoddai Resolution – the
final expression of Jaffna-centric politics to prevent the
Sinhalese to rule as a majority.
Before going any further it is necessary to draw attention to an
over-determining force that governed Jaffna-centric political
culture. Ever since the first signs of decolonization emerged in
the twenties peninsular politics was obsessed with the single
objective of blocking the evolving democratic process of
empowering the electorate with universal franchise, territorial
electorates (as opposed to communal representation) and rule by
the majority based on the free will expressed by the people. No
other community pursued this political objective with such
doggedness. The Muslim and the Indian Tamils showed a
willingness to co-exist in harmony as long as their issues were
handled with care.
But in the peninsula an anti-Sinhala thrust was fostered and
developed as an intransigent force in its political culture.
Consequently, the Jaffna became the home of anti-Sinhala
extremism. The opposition to the Sinhala community as an
organized force originated and subsequently emerged as a violent
force only in Jaffna. They opposed tooth and nail the slightest
tendency for democratizing the political process in the dying
days of British colonial rule knowing that it would empower the
majority. Dr. Mendis wrote: “From 1920, whenever constitutional
reforms were about to be made, they have pressed for a solution
that would prevent the Sinhalese acquiring a dominant position
over the rest. Having failed in their objective they now want to
be supreme at least in two provinces…….” [8]
It is intellectual suicide to ignore this factor that came down
from the north and impacted on national politics. Denying it or
ignoring it would leave open for acceptance, as a valid
explanation of the crisis, only the mono-causal theory that
blames the Sinhala community exclusively. The reality, however,
is that the over-riding force of confrontation and conflict with
the Sinhala majority came only from the north. The northern
antagonism to the Sinhala community and its refusal to co-exist
like the other Tamil-speaking communities was the
over-determining force the exacerbated the north-south
relations. There was no room in the mono-ethnic extremism of the
northern politics for compromises to accommodate the aspirations
of all communities. Northern politics was designed to pursue
only their mono-ethnic ends.
Considering the regional dimensions of this conflict, where
neither the east nor the central hills joined the northern
forces, it is logical to categorize the current crisis as a
north-south conflict. Besides, the demonizing of the Sinhala
south was a logical concomitant of the in-built ideological
antagonism embedded in peninsular politics. For the anti-Sinhala
political culture to thrive and yield results the Sinhala
community had to projected as the “other”, the hated object that
must be destroyed with violence, if necessary. They consistently
targeted the Sinhala south from colonial times, long before the
Sinhala majority had any role to determine national politics.
Rival Tamil political parties in the north, vying for electoral
gains, demonized the south and their Tamil rivals who dared to
cooperate with the centre. The Tamils who joined the centre
either as ministers, or those who allied themselves to national
parties (i.e. UNP or SLFP) were branded as “collaborators”. The
mild-mannered Alfred Duraiyappah, the SLFP Mayor of Jaffna, was
the first victim of Velupillai Prabhakaran when the latter began
his career of political crimes. Destroying their perceived
enemies elevated them to the rank of heroes. The electoral
rhetoric of the north overflows with anti-Sinhala rhetoric.
Chief Justice Sansoni’s report on the violence of seventies
records the rhetoric and the actions of the northern leadership
that targeted the Sinhala south and its Tamil allies.[9]
Inherent in the vocabulary of the so-called liberation politics
of the north was an imperative to denigrate the Sinhala
community and hail the anti-Sinhala forces as the saviors.
Whipping up anti-Sinhala extremism was a common ploy adopted to
defeat rival candidates in the Tamil-speaking north. As this
mono-ethnic extremism gathered momentum and hardened in the
north it was inevitable that Tamils would willy-nilly move away
from democratic politics into violence. It should also be noted
that separatism and violence are inseparable. They go hand in
hand as no state is willing to divide a nation by yielding to
the extremist demands of one minority at the expense of all
other communities.
The incremental growth of extremism in the north pushed it into
the Vaddukoddai Resolution – the farthest point the leadership
could take peninsular politics to prevent the majority from
exercising their democratic right to govern. It was also a
Resolution that was born out of the other internal imperatives
of the Jaffna political culture which, incidentally, had a long
history of violence, oppression and denial of fundamental human
rights to a significant segment of its own disempowered people
who, from birth, were destined to serve as virtual slaves to the
vellahla high-caste. Parenthetically, it must be stated that one
of the main contributory factors was the role of the vellahla
high-caste who were in command of peninsular politics and
directed it to serve their ends exclusively. Separatism, it also
could be argued, is direct manifestation of vellahlaism and this
aspect needs another chapter at least to deal with the
intricacies of the caste factors that governed and directed
peninsular politics.
As the foregoing factors point to the crisis as an exclusive
conflict of northern and southern forces there is an
overwhelming compulsion to probe the inner political culture of
Jaffna, more so because practically every nook and corner of the
southern culture (from the Kalutrara Bo Tree to Vihara Maha Devi
park) have been explored exhaustively by anti-Sinhala-Buddhist
ideologues. The northern culture has escaped the attention of
sociological, anthropological, political social scientists.
Historians generally tend to complain about the lack of evidence
on this darker side of the Sri Lankan moon. [10]
The absence of knowledge about the forces that flowed from the
north and collided head-on with the south has provided the
mono-causal theorists the opportunity to exonerate the north and
blame only the Sinhala south. None of these theorists has given
due weightage to the north that was generating, on its own steam
and without any provocation from the south (as seen during the
colonial and pre-1956 phase), political forces constructed and
manipulated deliberately to confront and resist liberal,
modernizing, democratizing forces penetrating the secluded
casteist and feudal fortress of Jaffna.
For instance, the Prevention of Social Disabilities Act of 1957
– the first and the only legislative attack to dismantle the
entrenched vellahla caste grip on Jaffna – was resisted with all
its might by some of the casteist extremists like Prof. C.
Suntheralingam while the other vellahla leaders stood with
folded hands, giving their silent nod to the likes of
Suntheralingam. The connection between vellahlaism – the
dominant political force in the peninsula – and the separatist
movement was drawn by Prof. Bryan Pfaffenberger. Pointing out
that the Tamil identity was a modern construction he wrote:
“Tamil-Sinhalese ethnic conflict in its modern form, moreover,
was unknown during the colonial period. The politics of ethnic
confrontation in Sri Lanka is a contemporary artifact, one that
has been deliberately and politically constructed…What is
striking about this case is that all three of the actors on the
stage of this drama (of constructing a Tamil identity) – caste,
temple religion and Tamil separatism – are of demonstrably
modern genesis; if they draw on tradition, it is a tradition
that is transformed beyond recognition.” [12] He argues that the
vellahla casteists who regarded Jaffna as their exclusive
preserve found it necessary to resist invasions of advancing
modernization, liberalism, capitalism etc that were threatening
the old feudal fortress of the vellahlas in Jaffna.
Separatism, therefore, emerged as the last refuge of vellahla
caste threatened with extinction by modernity. It was perceived
as the viable political formula that could preserve the outdated
casteist structures from succumbing to the hostile forces
invading the peninsula. The vellahlas were fighting two forces
simultaneously: 1) the internal revolts from the low-castes
breaking out of the age-old fetters of the oppressive vellahla
rule and 2) the external forces of liberalism and market
economies that were undermining the feudal land-based economy on
which the vellahlas thrived.
The establishment of a separate state was conceived as an
effective political instrument to combat the internal and
external forces. During the feudal and colonial periods they
justified oppression of the people of Jaffna under religious
sanctions. Hinduism sanctified the oppression of the low-caste
by down-grading the non-vellahlas virtually as non-humans. To
avert the external and internal threats to their safe haven in
the peninsula they invented the theory of a “homeland”. Under
colonialism, as revealed in the reports of the successive
government agents, the vellahlas were waging a brutal war
against the low-castes who were threatening their supremacy and
way of life. But in the dying days of the British Empire they
down-graded the internal enemy and turned against the Sinhalese,
the external “other”. Raising the bogey of the Sinhala enemies
was also the prime means of unifying the divided peninsula on
caste lines. The “homeland” theory, or Eelam, was manufactured,
propagated and developed as a political tool of the vellahlas,
by the vellahlas, for the vellahlas.
Any threat to the established feudal and colonial powers of the
vellahla regime was met with unremitting violence. The history
of vellahlas of the north is one of cruel suppression of the
low-caste slaves to keep them in submission under the supremacy
of the vellahlas who ruled Jaffna with the casteist ideology
derived from Hinduism. Among numerous inhuman cruelties, the
vellahlas did not permit the low-castes to step even into the
seventh outermost court of their sacred temples, nor did they
allow them to bury their dead according to Hindu rituals
reserved only for the high-caste. They enforced the rule that
the turumbas should not walk in daylight as any sighting
of this low-caste would pollute the vision of the pure vellahlas.
Throughout the feudal and colonial times, and even into the late
seventies, the vellahlas maintained their hegemony in Jaffna
through violence. The Vaddukoddai Resolution is a natural
extension of vellahla violence to protect their inherited power
and privileges. Though the fathers of the 1976 Vaddukoddai
Resolution attribute the political source of it to the
“aggressive Sinhala nationalism”, referring in particular to
“1956”, a closer scrutiny of the Jaffna culture will indicate
that the origins of violence can be traced directly to the inner
compulsions of the Jaffna political culture.
Despite these glaring factors that bedeviled north-south
relations, when it comes to choosing between “1956” and “1976”,
it is predictable that political or ethnic sympathies would
normally tend to determine the preference between the two dates.
Nevertheless, it is appropriate to revive the question: Was
“1956” really the cause of separatist politics or was it a
definite example of poking the eye of the baby who was about to
cry, as the Sinhala saying goes? Perhaps, the answer could be
found by looking deeper into “1956” and to consider to what
extent it was anti-Tamil, if at all. It was, no doubt, a
watershed in the post-independence period. It was basically a
grassroot movement to restore the traditional culture of the
Sinhala-Buddhists who were denied their heritage under nearly
five centuries of colonialism. In other post-colonial cultures a
renaissance of this magnitude would have been hailed as a
commendable legitimate process of redressing the historical
imbalances.
Restoring the lost rights of the oppressed people under various
regimes were embraced with benign terms like “affirmative
action”, “positive discrimination” etc. Rawlsian principles
insist that advantages should be offered to the disadvantaged.
At the end of colonial period Jaffna was on top of the People’s
Quality of Life Index (PQLI) with advanced infrastructure,
schools, hospitals and longer life span. A developing society
had to distribute similar resources to the rest of the nation.
Allocating resources to build up the neglected areas in the
south was perceived as acts of discrimination. But even in the
post-independence period Jaffna Tamil leaders participating in
the government took substantial resources to develop Jaffna. For
instance, G. G. Ponnambalam, who was the minister of industries
in the post-independence government of D. S. Senanayake, took
all the new industrial projects (example: cement factor in
Paranthan) to Jaffna.
But restoring the right of 70% of the population to communicate
with their elected government was branded as “communalism”,
“Sinhala chauvinism”, “racism”, “hegemonism”, “majoritarianism”
etc. Implied in these condemnatory terms was the notion that
only minorities had rights, aspirations, grievances and needs
and the role of the majority was to accede to the “aspirations”,
“grievances”, “demands” of the minorities promptly at the time
these issues were raised, irrespective of their merits or their
impact on the “aspirations” of the other communities.
At the time of independence the ruling class consisted mainly of
the leftovers of the British raj competent only in the English
language. This class, drawn from all three communities and
nestling in the transplanted Anglicized culture, shared the
legacy of common elitist values left behind by the departing
British and any deviation to accommodate a native culture was
seen as a threat to their dominant position of the
administrative overclass and professionals. Hence their
resistance to “1956” was instant and instinctive. The
Westernized Sinhala elite too joined hands with the Tamils to
anathematize the grassroot movement of “1956”.
While the Westernized elite of the south sneered at it the Tamil
of the north exploited it as an anti-Tamil measure to undermine
the identity and the rights of their community. Only those who
viewed it as a movement that sprang naturally from nearly five
centuries of colonial oppression and suppression grasped the
underlying meaning of this historical force. Dr. Mendis wrote:
“…(T)he Sinhalese-Buddhist resurgence is a logical outcome of
modern developments, and the attempt to make Sinhalese the only
official language did not arise from a desire to destroy the
Ceylon Tamil community in the Island. Its chief object was to
replace English in the sphere of Government, and the opposition
to Tamil was, therefore, really incidental.” [13]
Only a few had grasped the significance of this aspect of the
Sinhala Only Act of 1956. It is against all common sense to view
it as an act against the Tamils because it was a piece of
legislation designed specifically to replace English – the
language that was imposed as the official language in 1833.
After enforcing it for over 100 years only 6 % of the population
were competent to use the language. Unmistakably, the Sinhala
Only Act was aimed at dethroning the English-speaking minority
and not the Tamil-speaking minority. Besides, neither the
Sinhala-speaking majority nor the Tamil-speaking minority
benefited from English being enthroned as the official language.
In numerical terms 94% of the population was dependent entirely
on the 6% of the English speaking elite. How fair was that?
Of course, the Tamil too had the right to communicate with their
administration and elected representatives in their mother
tongue. In 1958 the Tamil Language (Special Provisions Act) No.
28 was passed to grant the Tamils their right to do so. But the
Tamils, who were determined to prevent the Sinhala majority from
regaining their historical rights as pioneers that created a new
culture, a new civilization and a new identity, distorted the
realities and raised the cry of racial discrimination with each
move designed to redress historical imbalances. The irony is
that despite both languages receiving official status it is
English that rules the nation to this day. Furthermore, raising
the cry of discrimination was a habitual tendency of the Jaffna
Tamils – the most privileged community in Sri Lanka from
colonial times. On the eve of independence, they lodged this
complaint of discrimination officially with the Soulbury
Commissioners in 1945. After a through examination of the facts
presented to them they dismissed it as unsubstantiated
irrelevance. [ ] Though the Sinhalese were accused of
majoritarianism at every critical turn it was the dictatorship
of the minority that exacerbated the north-south relations.
Furthermore, the dilatory process inherent in any democracy, or
for that matter, in any political process, was dismissed as
giving “too little too late”.
Besides, the rise of militant minoritarianism in Sri Lanka
tended to exaggerate the missed opportunities and failures of
“majoritarianism” despite the successive gains of the minorities
which should have paved the way for peaceful co-existence. The
historical reality is that the largely tolerant policy of
co-existence with minority communities enabled the state to
maintain non-violent settlements with the other two
Tamil-speaking minorities – i.e. the Muslims and the Indian
Tamils. But the Jaffna-centric Tamil leadership alone took to
militant minoritarianism refusing to co-exist with the other
communities by escalating their demands and resorting to
confrontational politics. As pointed out by Ms. Radhika
Coomaraswamy and Ms. Malini Parasarathy of The Hindu in Chennai,
the southern electorate had shifted significantly to accommodate
the Tamil-speaking minorities since “1956” without any
corresponding response from the Jaffna-centric leadership to
co-exist with the other communities.
They stuck to intransigent politics pushing the Tamil
electorates to extremism. While the other two Tamil-speaking
minorities settled down to co-exist peacefully with the majority
Sinhalese the Jaffna Tamil leadership alone pursued a calculated
policy of escalating demands that were designed to create a
separate mono-ethnic enclave in the north and the east. More
importantly, a characteristic of peninsular politics was that
when one Tamil party moves to cooperate with the state the other
party would invariably condemn it as “collaboration” with the
enemy. Any compromise with the centre would be rejected as
capitulation, forcing rivals into inevitable extremism.
A notable characteristic of the immediate aftermath of
independence was that the transfer of power had no visible or
palpable impact on the lives of the indigenous people. As far as
they were concerned, freedom was handed over to the Brown Sahibs
by the White Sahibs whose primary role was essentially to
imitate and follow the Englishman to the last hole in golf. In
other words, the marginalized masses were left stranded at the
outer fringes of society – a place they occupied even during the
colonial period.
Nor did independence which came virtually on a platter in 1948
catch the imagination of the masses as in India, for instance,
where there was an aggressive movement to throw the British out.
Nor did independence have any significant impact on the
cultural, social, economic or political lives of the vast
majority who lived in the villages. They were even deprived of
their legitimate right to communicate with their elected
government in their own language – a right granted to the
Germans, French, Spanish, English and other leading democracies.
English continued to be the powerful tool of the exclusive
ruling class. The combined Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim elite was
comfortable with English as it was not only a status symbol that
separated them from the vulgar Sinhala-speaking and
Tamil-speaking masses but also because it armed them with the
manipulative means and skills to press the right buttons of
power to preserve and promote their exclusive privileges and
place in society inherited from colonial rule.
Language thus became a source of power and it was not surprising
to find this issue taking centre stage in the post-independence
period. In fact, language played a central part in the political
violence that erupted in the post-1956 period. When S. W. R. D.
Bandaranaike launched the Sinhala Only Act of 1956 it became the
most explosive issue dividing the nation on ethnic lines. In
particular, the Tamil leadership of the north interpreted the
Sinhala Only Act on ethnic lines. But the Sinhala youth, who
took up arms against the establishment before the Tamil youth,
(i.e. in 1970) also cried discrimination on the language issue.
They interpreted the language issue on class lines. They argued
that the ruling class continued to retain English, despite the
introduction of the Sinhala Only Act in 1956, as a prime tool to
oppress the masses. While the Sinhala youth cried discrimination
on Marxist lines the Tamil youth were made to believe by the
Jaffna-centric leadership that the Sinhala language was imposed
on them to deny opportunities for advancement in education, and
employment because they were Tamils.
The fact is that neither the Sinhala-speaking people nor the
Tamil-speaking Jaffna Tamils were happy with the introduction of
the indigenous languages – both Sinhala and Tamil – as the
official and national languages. The Tamil Language (Special
Provisions Act ) No. 28 of 1958 recognized the Tamil language as
the medium of the Tamil population to conduct their affairs with
the elected government of the day. The Sixteenth Amendment went
further and made it the national language. Despite these legal,
constitutional and administrative provisions the Jaffna Tamil
leadership cried discrimination because it was not given parity
of status with Sinhala language.
Total denial by the state to recognize Tamil as a language of a
section of its people would undoubtedly have justified
accusations of discrimination. Moreover, denying the right of
the Tamil-speaking communities to communicate with the state in
their own mother tongue would have been an unacceptable
violation of their basic human right. However, after the
incremental changes to the language provisions, starting from
the Tamil Language (Special Provisions Act ) No. 28 of 1958 the
Jaffna-centric leadership could not justify the accusation of
discrimination on the grounds that the “Sinhala-dominated” state
had denied the right of the Tamils to use their mother tongue.
So they focused on the issue of not giving parity of status to
Tamil. They argued that the denial of parity of status as an act
of discrimination.
The issue, therefore, was not one of denying the Tamils their
right to conduct their courts, administration and communication
with the state in the predominantly Tamil areas but one of a
minority claiming parity of status with the majority – a common
political obsession with the Jaffna Tamil elite. The
deteriorating north-south conflict was exacerbated at each
critical turn by this claim of parity of status with the
majority. This unsubstantiated notion of a minority claiming to
be a majority was inherited from colonial times. “The Tamils had
for a decade or more laid claim to the status of a majority
community…” observed Prof. K. M. de Silva in analyzing the
events that unraveled from 1920. [14] Oddly enough, Gov. William
Manning, (1921 – 24) one of most manipulative governors,
accepted and promoted the view that the Jaffna Tamils
constituted a majority despite the fact that the numbers did not
stack up to justify this claim.
It was this political ambition of a minority to maintain parity
of status with the majority that is at the centre of the
deteriorating north-south conflict. The original claim of
maintaining parity of status with claims to a special seat
Tamils in the Western Province in the twenties or 50-50 in the
forties was not based on discrimination, or on a homeland
theory, or any of the other complaints that the Jaffna Tamil
leadership raised in the fifties. Under constitutional changed
introduced in British times the claim of the Tamil leadership to
parity of status was rejected. When they failed to achieve this
objective in colonial they started the movement for a separate
in the post-independence period. It should be noted that the
current political arguments raised by the Jaffna Tamil
leadership to establish a separate state were deliberately
constructed and introduced in the fifties. Initially, in the
twenties when the Jaffna-centric leadership launched their
agitation for parity of status under the British regime, they
did not peddle theories about a homeland, self-determination,
discrimination and the usual litany of complaints that are
hurled at the majority.
Of all the possible reasons they could think of, they came up
with the idea of the minority being a majority community in the
twenties. The Tamil proponents of this claim were encouraged by
the support of Gov. Manning “ for his own political ends of
dividing and ruling. ……(T)he Tamils were regarded, not the least
by Manning himself, as a majority community,” Prof. K. M. de
Silva, in his exploratory study of the historical events of this
critical period . [15]
Even Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, perhaps the first and the last
liberal of Jaffna-centric politics, did not advance any
realistic or mythical political argument in defence of the
special treatment of the Tamils. It is surprising that even a
learned leader like Arunachalam believed that the Tamils
(meaning only the Jaffna Tamils) were a majority community. "Arunachalam's
use of the term "minorities' in his speeches before his
departure from the Congress in 1921.... did not include the
Tamils which is not surprising since Arunachalam shared the
prevailing opinion that the Tamils were not a minority but were
one of two majority communities (p 115)...... There was besides
the fact that the Tamils were regarded, not least by Manning
himself, as a majority community." (P 107). In particular he
focuses on how Gov. Manning manipulated events, through
Ponnambalam Ramanathan who “was subordinate always to that
master political manipulator, Sri William Manning.” [16]
When the Tamil leadership of Jaffna talked themselves into the
category of a majority under the British administration it had
serious political implications which rolled down the decades
leading to extremist claims. The first move to claim parity of
status was when the Jaffna-centric leadership claimed a special
seat, in addition to the seats given in the north, to the Tamils
in the Western Province, a predominantly Sinhala area. Their
close links with the British regime and the pre-eminent place
they held in the political domain, with the consent of the
majority who elected Sir, Ponnambalam Arunachalam as the first
president of the Ceylon National Congress, confirmed their sense
of superiority.
Besides, under the British colonial regime they were in a
commanding position having acquired a disproportionate share of
administrative and political power through which they siphoned
off the resources of the state to the north. [17] Their drive to
maintain parity of status began with the myth of being a
majority community along with the Sinhalese. But the process of
decolonization and representative government would undermine
this unsustainable claim. When Gov. Manning was manoeuvering to
juggle the numbers in the Legislative Council he found that
communal representation (demanded by the Tamils) would give him
a better handle on the affairs of the Council than territorial
representation (demanded by the Sinhalese).
“A rift between the Sinhalese and Tamils had emerged after the
election to the reformed Legislative Council in early 1921,”
wrote Prof. K. M. de Silva. “The question of territorial
representation became the focal point of the growing
controversy. The first elections under the new system had
returned 13 Sinhalese to territorial constituencies as against 3
Tamils. In the old Legislative Council there had been a near
equality in representation between the Sinhalese and Tamil
un-official members. Soon after the new Legislative Council met
influential Tamils began to campaign for the restoration of the
proportion of Tamil to Sinhalese representations that existed
prior to 1920.” [18]
Gov. Sir. William Manning (1921 -24), “the master political
manipulator”, arrived on the shores of Sri Lanka at the critical
point when constitutional changes were to introduce, for the
first time, a majority of unofficial members in the Legislative
Council. In 1920 the official members representing the British
imperial throne were in a majority and the governor had no
difficulty in obtaining consent from the Legislative Council.
But the democratizing of the legislature by increasing the
number of elected representatives would strengthen the ranks of
the unofficial members, or the opposition to the British
administration. The increase in the numbers of the unofficial
members, based on territorial elections (as opposed to communal
representation) was on the cards under the proposed
constitutional reforms. This meant that the Tamils would lose
their pre-1920 parity of status in Legislature. Predictably, the
Jaffna Tamils moved to increase their numbers by claiming an
extra in the predominantly Sinhala Western Province. “…. (T)he
rift between the Sinhalese and the Tamils had ……assumed the
level of a serious political crisis,” wrote Prof. de Silva. “At
the centre of the crisis, and assuming significance out of all
proportion to its intricate worth, was the special seat for the
Tamils of the Western Province.” [19]
This was the first of the many objections and obstructions to
come from Jaffna at the mention of any constitutional reforms.
This claim for a special seat for the Tamils in the Western
Province, in addition to the seats allotted to them in the
north, was the first major step in their subsequent campaigns to
prevent the majority from inheriting their legitimate position
enshrined in any democracy. It was an issue that originated and
was confined only to the north. Since 1920s the main thrust of
Jaffna-centric politics was to maintain parity of status at the
political and administrative levels. Objecting to constitutional
reforms that would democratize the legislature was the only tool
available to them under colonial rule to block the legitimate
aspirations of the majority.
At the core of the cry of discrimination was the failure of a
minority to gain parity of status with the majority. Any
critical examination of the accusation of discrimination will
establish that the Tamils had not experienced any discrimination
that was not common to the Sinhalese or the Muslims, or the
Indian Tamils. Discrimination was endemic and experienced
universally by all communities, including the Sinhala majority.[
] Basically, the cry of discrimination was raised partly as
political ploy to divert attention from their privileged
position and partly to restrain the majority from redressing
historical injustices that was inevitable in the process of
democratizing and liberalizing a colonized society. Also at the
very base of their cry of discrimination was the perennial
obsession to maintain parity of status with the majority.
Anything short of that was perceived and broadcast as
discrimination. For instance, though the Tamil language was
given a special place in the administration through various
constitutional and legislative procedures they cried
discrimination because it was not given parity of status.
What was uppermost in their political agenda was the ambition to
gain parity of status with the majority. In 1921, 1924, 1931,
and finally in 1945 when the Soulbury Commissioners were agreed
on handing over power to the people of Sri Lanka they cried foul
and raised the cry of discrimination to prevent the majority
from gaining their rightful place in history. But the Colonial
Office dismissed their objections on the basis of constructing a
united nation of all communities. When the Tamils demanded a
special seat in the Western Province on the basis of communal
representation the Colonial Office too agreed that “….the
demands of the Tamils….are somewhat excessive…” and that it
would be “a doubtful measure to agree to communal representation
for the Tamils who are a numerous and progressive class.” [20]
Prof. de Silva added: “As for the reserved seat for the Tamils,
the point was made that “the Secretary of State would naturally
be somewhat reluctant to extend the communal principle of
election any further than at present if it can be avoided.” [21]
Jaffna-centric politics refused to accept the democratic
principles of territorial representation. They were bent on
carving out ethnic enclaves based on communal representation.
This was the consistent political behaviour of the Jaffna Tamils
even during colonial times. They showed a distinct aversion to
compromise and coexist peacefully with their neighbors. Running
through the last decades of the colonial regime, and throughout
the rest of the post-independence period, is the unyielding
political thrust of the Jaffna Tamil leadership to prevent the
majority from gaining its rightful place in a democracy. Unable
to stop the process of democratization the Jaffna political
class, represented by G. G. Ponnambalam who headed the All
Ceylon Tamil Congress, raised the mathematically unrealistic
claim of the minority sharing power with the majority on a 50-50
basis.
This proposal of “balanced representation” was a continuation of
the policy of the Tamils to claim an extra seat in the Western
Province and the formation of the first communal political
organization, the Tamil Mahajana Sabhai in 1921. Tamil
communalism began to organize itself into a formidable political
force in colonial times. The successors to the leadership of the
Tamil Mahajana Sabhai followed the founders of Tamil communalism
to the letter. “The Tamil Congress, under its leader G. G.
Ponnambalam,” wrote Prof. S. Arasaratnam, the Tamil historian,
“took off from the old controversy on which the Ceylon National
Congress had split up and over which the Tamils had
unsuccessfully boycotted the Donoughmore Constitution. It took
as its central issue the question of numbers in the Legislature
and asked for a balanced representation or ‘fifty-fifty’ as it
popularly came to be known. Under this scheme the Sinhalese as
the majority community, would not hold more than 50% of the
seats in the Legislature and the other communities would, in
sum, share the remaining 50% of seats.” [22]
However, it is the response of the majority Sinhalese that is
revealing and cuts into the accusations of the Sinhalese being
historically antagonistic to the Tamil minority. Citing Session
Paper XIV of 1944, “The Reform of the Constitution” Prof.
Arasaratnam wrote: “Without being able to concede the
extravagant demand for a perfect balance in representation
between the Sinhalese and the minorities, as put forward by G.
G. Ponnambalam, they (the Sinhalese) conceded a relationship of
57% to 43% as between Sinhalese and others in the legislature.
It was, as it appears now, a tactical error that the Tamil
leaders did not grasp this offer at that time, but stuck to
their extreme demands.” [23]
Clearly, no compromise, however generous, was going to appease
the Jaffna Tamils. Their intransigence illustrates their anti-Sinhala
stance designed mainly to prevent the majority from obtaining
their share of power due to them under accepted democratic
principles. Does this unprecedented offer by a majority to a
minority confirm the popular accusation that the Sinhala
political class comes from an inveterate and intransigent bunch
of racists, chauvinists etc? Does this offer indicate an
unwillingness to accommodate even the excessive demands of the
minorities? Isn’t this an exemplary example of a majority
bending over backwards to build a new nation on communal harmony
and unity? Does this reality substantiate the myths
propagandized to denigrate the Sinhala-Buddhists? Or should the
finger be pointed to the blind obsession of the Tamil leadership
to obstruct the majority from exercising their legitimate rights
enshrined in any respected democracy?
There was more than a touch of Tamil arrogance in this offhanded
rejection of the offer made by the Sinhalese who were accused of
never willing to compromise. No other majority in a commanding
position like the Sinhalese is known to have made such a
generous offer to a minority of 12 per cent of the Jaffna Tamils
or, if taken collectively, a minority of 25 per cent. Commenting
on this Prof. Wilson states: “Ponnambalam overreached himself by
remaining inflexible on his formula when a group of Sinhalese
State Councilors favored a compromise in the ratio of 60 - 40,
or even 55 - 45.”[24]
This arrogance of the Tamil leadership was echoed by
Chelvanayakam when he said that the Sinhalese are not fit to
rule the Tamils. A comparative study of both political cultures
will reveal that the “sole representatives of the Tamils” have
never shown any signs of generosity, liberalism, tolerance or
compromise as the democratic south. Whether it is the caste
system or the political system, the southern culture has tended
to be more humane than the northern culture. Whether it is
Sankili who marched down to Mannar and massacred over 600
Catholics on Christmas eve because they owed allegiance to a
foreign ruler and not to him or to his modern avatar, Velupillai
Prabhakaran, the Jaffna political culture has shown ingrained
tendencies of a closed society governed by authoritarianism,
intolerance, and unmitigated violence against their own people,
let alone outsiders. Shocked by ferocity of violence Tamil
intellectuals have openly wondered how such inhuman brutalities
can come out of the womb of Jaffna.
A political culture driven by anti-liberal, anti-democratic and
anti-people forces will find it difficult to co-exist with its
neighbors. Time and time again, from 1920s, the peninsular
culture threw up extremists (example: 50-50 was an extremist
demand) whose intransigence exacerbated north-south relations.
At each critical point in the north-south relations the tendency
of the Jaffna political leadership was to insist on settling
differences only on their terms. Alternatively, they adopted the
policy of “little now and more later” – a policy that was bound
to keep the north-south relations simmering or at boiling point.
Northern extremist demands reduced the chances of any peaceful
co-existence to a zero. This intransigence has not changed to
this day.
The Jaffna Tamil argument is that there was no room for them
within the Sinhala-dominated polity to maintain their identity
or to co-exist as equals in a democratic society. Is this a
valid argument? If so, how did the other Tamil-speaking
communities co-exist and resolve their differences through the
non-violent process? No doubt, Sri Lanka is not a five-star
democracy. But the litmus test is to consider whether there was
liberal space within the Sri Lankan polity for minorities to
co-exist with dignity and respect. As a developing country, did
the national leaders take meaningful steps to lay the
foundations to build a nation of equals? As pointed out earlier,
the main grievance of the Jaffna Tamils was that they were
discriminated on the grounds of ethnicity. The fundamental flaw
in this statement is that ONLY the Jaffna leadership interpreted
the defects in the system as a racist attack on their right to
exist as a minority. The reality, however, is that
discrimination was a common factor shared by all communities,
including the Sinhalese. In fact, it was the Sinhala youth who
took up arms – long before the Tamil youth – on grounds of
inequalities and discrimination. [25]
The other side of the coin is that the Jaffna Tamils were given
equality at all levels, starting from national symbols to
ministerial, judicial, administrative and professional ranks.
Take, for instance, the example of the national flag. There are
nearly 75 million Tamils in the far-flung Tamil diaspora,
including nearly 55 million in Tamil Nadu, the historical
homeland of the Tamils. The Tamils have no representation in any
of these flags – including the Indian or in the other 191 flags
flying at the UN – except in the Sri Lankan flag. The green
strip represents the Tamil and the orange strip represents the
Muslims. Shortly after independence a committee selected from
the community leaders sat, designed and agreed on the final
format of the flag and put their signatures of approval. G. G.
Ponnambalam singed on behalf of the Tamils. T. B. Jayah the
Muslim leader put his signature on behalf of the Muslims.
Consider also the currency, the stamps and the aerogrammes. All
three represent the Tamil identity at the highest level, giving
it a dignity not found in any other nation. It needs to be
reiterated that no other nation had given the Tamils in the
diaspora, including India, this honored place. Then there is the
vexed issue of Indian indentured labour brought to Sri Lanka by
the British to work on their plantations in the 19th century.
The argument is that they were denied citizenship because they
were Tamils. First significant point to note is that it was
passed with the consent of G. G. Ponnambalam, the acknowledged
leader of the Tamils, who was a member of the first Cabinet of
independent Sri Lanka. If the Citizenship Bill is categorized as
a racist act then the leadership of the Jaffna Tamils too is
equally guilty of it.
Second, the defining of citizenship is the bounden duty of any
independent nation. The first independent government was
exercising its birth right, as it were, after the British had
inundated the nation with aliens imported as cheap labour to
serve their imperial interests. The new independent was within
its right to define who its citizens were going to be. Third,
not all Indians were denied their citizenship. Those that could
prove a longer period of stay, going back to their grandparents,
were recognized as citizens. They were asked to apply within a
given period. The then leader of the plantation workers, S.
Thondaman, boycotted the registration of his people as a mark of
protest. At the last minute, however, he realized he would lose
his numerical strength and, consequently his political clout and
finances derived from membership in his union, he decided to
register those qualified.
This last minute move caused utter confusion as there was hardly
any time for thousands to lodge their applications. This
bungling prevented his people from qualifying under the
regulations of the Act. Fourth, in subsequent negotiations with
the Indian government they accepted that a substantial residue
could be absorbed as citizens of India and under the
Sirima-Shastri Pact India agreed to repatriate those who
qualified under the Pact. Ignoring all these factors, it is the
Sinhala-Buddhists who are accused of being racist or
discriminatory. On the surface it is a plausible accusation
because victimology reduces issues to black-and-white simplicity
without any grey areas. Victimology is so very easy to
understand. But the reality is complex and invariably
contradicts simplistic presentations.
Perhaps, the notion propagated by the Tamil lobby that they
could not find reasonable accommodation for their grievances
could be tested with the achievements of the Illankai Thamil
Arasu Kadchchi (ITAK -Tamil State Party) when it cooperated
with the Dudley Senanayake government between 1965 - 1970.This
period was considered to be the “golden years” of Tamil
achievements. [26] The President of ITAK announced at their
annual convention that the Tamils have achieved all what they
wanted to achieve by cooperating with the Sinhalese.[27] But in
the preamble to the Vaddukoddai Resolution ITAK denigrated the
Sinhalese and declaimed that the Tamils had been reduced to a
“subject people”. It said that “successive Sinhalese Governments
since Independence have always encouraged and fostered the
aggressive nationalism of the Sinhalese people and used their
political power to the detriment of the Tamils….”
This claim of Sinhalese targeting only the Tamils has been
questioned and challenged by analysts who have asked the Tamil
lobbyists to prove whether they had ever experienced any
inequalities, discrimination, oppression, state-directed
brutalities etc that were not common to other communities,
particularly the Sinhalese. As stated earlier, it was the
Sinhala youth who took up arms against the so-called Sinhala-governments
precisely on these issues. But the Tamil lobbyists were adepts
in focusing only on them as the victims of Sinhala domination.
The Sinhalese, no doubt, fuelled the fires of this political
line by their aberrations and, more so, by the violence
initiated by the lower-level leadership.
Here too it is sad to say that the Tamil leadership exploited
this weakness and deliberately provoked the lower-level Sinhala
leadership to go on the rampage against the Tamils. In plain
words, the Tamil leadership was strategizing to gain political
mileage by provoking the Sinhala mobs to attack the Tamils. It
is a grim story of a blood-thirsty Tamil leadership planning to
thrive on the carnage of their own Tamil people. This chilling
tactic would be indeed incredible if it was not documented by
the leading Tamil political academic, Prof. Wilson. He wrote: “A
second tactic is to destabilize the political situation.
Political murders, acts of sabotage, and inflammatory and
provocative speeches are the established forms, and these have
been tried. The Sinhalese masses and their lower-level ethnic
leadership are needled by such acts and urge their rank and file
to take retaliatory action. Nothing is more satisfying to the
Tamil militants.”
Presenting the hidden side, or the darker side of the Sri Lanka
moon should not be interpreted as an attempt to exonerate blame
from the Sinhala leadership, or to white-wash the sporadic
violence led mostly by the unorganized Sinhala mobs. Their
biggest folly was in playing into the hands of the Tamil
leadership who were waiting on the sidelines to exploit every
mistake. Both sides are guilty of missed opportunities and
serious political blunders. The interaction of the north-south
forces played a key role in exacerbating the crisis. But on any
objective scale of weighing the available evidence emanating
from both sides it is quite apparent that the Tamil leadership
alone, deliberately and consciously, knowing the consequences
constructing a “nationalism” that was never there in history
before the forties, took to confrontational and violent politics
when the option was there for them to settle their grievances
within the non-violent and democratic process. Their political
behaviour stands in stark contrast to the other two
Tamil-speaking communities.
Their “little now and more later” agenda was not designed to
co-exist with the majority. Their agenda, starting from the
twenties when they pushed for an extras seat in the Western
Province and ended in a separate state, would drive them
ineluctably to the explosive Vaddukoddai Resolution. Their
insatiable political appetites, based on exaggerated claims of
victimology, led the politics of the post-independence phase
from one crisis to another. When they cooperated with the centre
they bargained and gained advantages to their community. Having
advanced they would then moved to the next stage of bargaining
on their calculated tactic of “little now and more later”. The
“more later” has nothing to do with “1956”. All the issues that
were raised as grievances in the post-1956 have been settled.
Furthermore, the south has moved taking gigantic steps to
address even the “aspirations”. But there is no end in sight to
the “later”. The nation continues to be brutalized by the
violence unleashed in “1976”.
Pro-separatist ideologues tend to blame the Sinhala nationalism
as the root of all evil in the post-independence phase. The
orthodox view promoted by these ideologues emphasize that the
“nationalism” constructed by the Tamil leadership of Jaffna has
either been fathered by the Sinhalese or went berserk because it
has been a brutalized victim of evil Sinhala nationalism. These
ideologues go along with the “nationalism” floated in the
Vaddukoddai Resolution: “The first National Convention of the
Tamils United Liberation Front meeting at Pannakam on 14th May
1976 hereby declare that the Tamils of Ceylon…..are a nation
distinct and apart from the Sinhalese….” This construction can
be accepted only by those who deny the hard reality that Sinhala
nationalism had co-existed in the past with all the minorities
without any violence.
It can be argued that if Tamil “nationalism” was not constructed
by the Jaffna elite in the forties on their own initiative,
without any provocation from any community, neither the
aggressive confrontations nor the unremitting violence would
have plagued the nation. The artificially induced birth of Tamil
“nationalism” in the forties turned into a ferocious Hanuman
running into the four corners of the nation, destroying
everything in its wake. As opposed to the mob violence of the
lower-level ethnic leadership – and that too provoked by the
Tamil instigators, as stated by Prof. Wilson – the north
adopted, initiated, organized, propagated financed and totally
endorsed violence as the prime tool of advancing their newly
constructed “nationalism”. It stands out as the only community
that declared war on another community in Sri Lanka. So which of
the two nationalisms – the natural and the artificial – should
accept the greater responsibility for exacerbating the
north-south relations that led to this carnage?
Consider briefly, the two political systems that emerged from
the two nationalisms. With all its defects the Sinhala
nationalism has maintained a democratic system “which speaks for
the essentially flexible, plastic nature of Sri Lanka society,”
wrote Jane Russell. She added: “From a sociological point of
view, the major reason for this continuing commitment to
democratic norms has been the tolerant nature of the Theravada
Buddhist rubric. The traditions of the Buddhist belief system
are anti-doctrinaire. Smith (D. E. Smith, Religion and Political
Development) notes again that “Buddhist authority patterns are
highly incongruent with an authoritarian political system and
are supportive of systems encouraging broad areas of individual
freedom”, a view supported by Bechert and Martin Wickremasinghe.
A. J. Wilson goes further. He has argued that the “ethos of
tolerance” encouraged by Buddhism has provided solutions to
vexed problems” thereby serving a “prime factor” in the
maintenance of parliamentary system.”.
Jane Russell was quoting A. J. Wilson’s writing of 1974. Before
the decade was out Wilson was describing Sinhala-Buddhists as
chauvinists oppressing the Tamil-speaking people by denying them
their rights. In his biography of his father-in-law (published
in 1993) he portrayed him as the sole hero who was destined to
fight the oppressive Sinhala nationalism. Without any
explanations he did an intellectual somersault and blamed the
Sinhala-Buddhists for not letting his father-in-law establish
the Tamil state. Prof. S. J. Tambiah, a fellow Tamil at Harvard,
too singled out only the Sinhala-Buddhism as the source of
political evil in Sri Lanka. Both academics come from Jaffna and
both denied the intermeshing forces that collided after the
northern elite constructed their Tamil “nationalism” in the
forties and handed over the Vaddukoddai Resolution (1976), after
stepping out of the democratic framework, for their “boys” to
finish the job they had begun.
Geographically, the two communities were destined to coexist.
Historically, as stated by Dr. Mendis, this destiny was
fulfilled down the ages until the last days of the British raj.
Politically, the ruling elite of Jaffna took to mono-ethnic
extremism ( e.g.: 50-50) or separatism in the forties -- long
before Sinhala nationalism caused any provocation to the Tamils.
Ethnically, two other Tamil-speaking communities – the Muslims
of the east and the Indian Tamils of the central hills --
refused to join hands with the confrontational politics of the
northern Tamils. They opted for consensual politics. Regionally,
the issue began in the north and continues to be in the north
with the east linked to it tangentially. Militarily, too the
violence was initiated, organized and driven by the north. Out
of these bare facts came the Vaddukoddai Resolution. And that is
where the nation is stuck today.
APPENDIX I
FINDINGS OF THE SOULBURY COMMISSION ON ACCUSATION
OF DISCRIMINATION BY THE TAMILS
It has been a political ritual of the Jaffna Tamil leadership
(almost exclusively) to accuse the Sinhala majority of
discrimination, persecution, oppression, domination, etc. It
began long before the Sinhala majority had any political power
to influence decisions. It began in the days when the British
were ruling Ceylon, as it was known then. The Jaffna Tamils were
fond of playing the role of the underdog kicked around by the
Sinhala majority. Victimology was refined to a fine art by the
Jaffna Tamils to win the sympathy of the bleeding hearts,
do-gooders and left-wing liberals.
The reality, however, was different, as the records reveal. In
1945 the leadership of the Jaffna Tamils took their complaints
before the Soulbury Commission. After examining the complaints
the Commission wrote an entire chapter on the subject of
discrimination. though the reality was different. International
Press reports covering the conflict in Sri Lanka almost always
end with a statement such as : "The rebels (LTTE) are fighting
for a separate homeland for Sri Lanka's minority Tamils and are
accusing the majority Sinhalese of widespread discrimination in
education and jobs". Accusations of discrimination were also
made by the Sri Lankan Tamils even before the country gained
independence from British colonial rule.
The following are extracts from Chapter 8 of the Soulbury
Commission Report, titled "Discrimination".
SOULBURY COMMISSION REPORT – 1945
Extracts from Chapter 8 – DISCRIMINATION
138. "The attitude of the Ceylon Tamils in this matter is
epitomized in the following passage from their memorandum of
evidence": -
"Discrimination against the Ceylon Tamils arises not so much
from legislative as from administrative or executive acts of
commission or omission. The community has been filled with grave
apprehension by the cumulative effect of the inequitable
distribution of public expenditure and the manner of dealing
with public appointments".
"... The Ceylon Tamils cited ONLY two instances of legislation -
the Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance (No. 19 of 1931) and the
Anuradhapura Preservation Ordinance (No. 34 of 1942)".
The Buddhist Temporalities Ordinance, 1931.
"... The Ceylon Tamils complain that a total loss of nearly half
a million rupees during the period 1931 to 1943 (the cost of the
Public Trustee's administration) has been incurred by the public
revenue, and that, from year to year, the general taxpayer is
being compelled to pay for the administration of the
temporalities of a section of the population. This is considered
by the minority communities to amount to discrimination in
favour of Buddhism, the religion of the majority of the
Sinhalese."
"Prima facie this contention seems to us to be correct and to
afford evidence against the Sinhalese majority in the Council of
partiality".
The Anuradhapura Preservation Ordinance, 1942
142. "The purpose of this measure was to preserve the historic
city of Anuradhapura and facilitate the development of a new
town outside the zone of its archaeological remains... It was
severely criticized on the ground that the Tamils and Muslims
formed a considerable section of the population of Anuradhapura
(about 10,000 in all) and either owned or occupied the greater
portion of the land affected by the measure...".
143. "Whether the method adopted by the authors of this measure
is the best way of preserving the ruins of Anuradhapura we are
unable to say. Our brief visit to this historic city would not
qualify us to express an opinion; but we are naturally in
sympathy with a measure designed to safeguard the remains of an
ancient city of great extent and beauty. We think that we are
entitled to assume that the Ministers have given long and
careful thought to this proposal, which is in any case in the
best interests of Ceylon as a whole, and not to the advantage of
any one community; AND WE ARE NOT DISPOSED TO ASCRIBE TO THEM IN
THIS MATTER AN INTENTION TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST ANY SECTION OF
THE MINORITIES".
Administrative Actions: Trade and Commerce
146. "It has been the policy of the Government of Ceylon
sedulously to foster the co-operative movement in the Island,
and as a result of State action this movement has made great
strides, particularly since the outbreak of war. There arose at
that time widespread profiteering in consumer goods, especially
food and clothing, and in order to control the prices of
essential commodities and ensure that they reached every citizen
the Ceylon Government imposed a state monopoly on imports and
encouraged the Co-operative Movement. The great success of this
movement has led to an increase in the volume of Government
support and to its extension to the remotest parts of the
Island".
147. "The All-Ceylon Tamil Congress stated to us that "the
practically compulsory nature of the application of this
movement over the whole Island at State expense cannot be looked
upon without serious misgiving", and deduced from this policy a
desire on the part of the Sinhalese to cut out the trade of the
Indians and the Europeans. They averred that the Indians had an
aptitude for trade which the Sinhalese did not possess, and that
the Government was seeking to employ the machinery and finances
of the State to benefit the Sinhalese community at the expense
of others".
148. "It may well be that the Indians are specially qualified by
racial characteristics and habits to become successful traders,
and have in that respect an advantage over the Sinhalese; but we
think that this is a consideration which should not be allowed
to militate against the encouragement by the Government of
co-operative trading. It is of course quite intelligible that
Indians and other merchants including Sinhalese should regard
with anxiety and disfavour the development of this movement -
particularly when it is mainly the result of government
stimulus. Nevertheless, WE THINK THAT THIS POLICY CANNOT
REASONABLY BE CRITICISED ON THE GROUNDS OF COMMUNAL
DISCRIMINATION. ON THE CONTRARY, HAVING VISITED A NUMBER OF
THESE CO-OPERATIVE INSTITUTIONS, WE ARE CONVINCED THAT THEY ARE
OF GREAT VALUE, NOT ONLY MATERIALLY BUT EDUCATIONALLY, TO A
LARGE PROPORTION OF THE POORER INHABITANTS OF THE ISLAND, TAMIL
AS WELL AS SINHALESE..."
Public Expenditure
150. "Wherever a minority problem exists, it is in the sphere of
public expenditure and in the distribution of public revenue
that the minorities are likely to be suspicious and sensitive.
The minorities of Ceylon are no exception, and we have been
furnished by the All-Ceylon Tamil Congress with data purporting
to demonstrate the preference shown by the Government of Ceylon
towards the Sinhalese community in the allocation of public
revenue and works".
Agriculture
153. "From the beginning of this century up to 1931 about
eighteen and a half million rupees were spent by the Government
on what is termed "major works construction", i.e. irrigation
works maintained by the Government for which land-owners are
liable to pay irrigation rates. Of this amount, over eight
million rupees, or NEARLY 50 PER CENT. OF THE TOTAL EXPENDITURE,
WERE DEVOTED TO THE TAMIL (Northern and Eastern) PROVINCES. The
population of the northern Province is estimated, as at 30th
June, 1944, at about 426,000 and the Eastern Province at about
235,000, making in all about 661,000 or a little more than
ONE-TENTH OF THE TOTAL POPULATION OF THE ISLAND".
154. "In 1931, the estimated irrigable area, i.e. the total
rate-paying lands plus lands which could be served by irrigation
works, was 238,000 acres, of which about 130,000 acres were in
the Northern and Eastern Provinces".
157. "The question now arises whether these figures can
reasonably be held to indicate discrimination against the Ceylon
Tamils. We must here observe that the seriousness of a charge of
discrimination based upon differential expenditure per head of
the population or upon the acreage of areas benefited by
irrigation is extremely difficult to evaluate... But certain
facts and arguments have been submitted to us by way of answer
to this charge": -
(i) "Of the estimated area of the Northern Province for which
irrigation facilities have been provided (40,100), only 31,687
acres have been cultivated, leaving a balance of about 8,000
acres for which irrigation exists but which have not yet been
brought under cultivation. The comparable figure for the Eastern
Province is about 24,000 acres. There is therefore a balance of
about 32,000 acres in these two provinces irrigable land capable
of cultivation but not cultivated".
"It is possible that one of the reasons for the failure to
cultivate the available irrigable area to its full extent is
lack of labour due to the requirements of the military
authority. But while this area of land remains uncultivated, the
Government may feel disinclined to incur expenditure on further
development"...
(iv) "ON THE BASIS OF PUBLIC EXPENDITURE PER HEAD OF THE TOTAL
POPULATION OF THE ISLAND, THE PEOPLE OF THE NORTHERN AND EASTERN
PROVINCES WERE VERY WELL SERVED IN THE ERA PRIOR TO 1931 AND
RECEIVED A GOOD DEAL MORE THAN THEIR PROPORTIONATE SHARE OF THE
REVENUE AVAILABLE FOR WORKS OF IRRIGATION; AND THOUGH, SINCE
1931, THEIR SHARE HAS BEEN SUBSTANTIALLY DIMINISHED, IT IS STILL
IN EXCESS OF THE PER CAPITA RATIO".
158. "...the fact remains that of an irrigation expenditure of
some thirty million rupees between 1905 and September, 1943,
over ten million rupees have been spent in the Northern and
Eastern Provinces, and COMPLAINTS OF SPECIAL FAVOURS SHOWN TO
THESE PROVINCES MIGHT WELL HAVE COME FROM OTHER PROVINCES IN THE
ISLAND. But the sharp decline in expenditure in the Northern and
Eastern Provinces since 1931 has, as might be expected, provoked
the charge of discrimination to which we have referred".
159. "We think that the following is the true explanation. It
appears to us that prior to 1931 agricultural policy had been
largely based on strictly economic considerations..."
160. "1931, the first year of the State council, coincided with
a year of severe financial stringency, and a sub-committee of
the Executive Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands
was appointed to consider measures of reorganisation and
retrenchment. This sub-committee recommended that the principal
activities of the Irrigation Department should be directed to
the restoration and improvement of the village irrigation works
throughout the Island, and that the development of existing
major works should be undertaken only to meet the actual demand
(as opposed to the possible speculative demand) for irrigable
land..." 161. "Within a few years of 1931 a vigorous campaign
was started to improve the state of agriculture in the more
backward areas, to arrest the drift from the countryside to the
towns, and to enable villages to remain on lands which were fast
sinking back into the jungle. THAT THE POPULATION OF THESE AREAS
WAS MAINLY SINHALESE IS, IN OUR JUDGEMENT, A FACTOR THAT PLAYED
LITTLE PART IN THE FORMULATION OF THIS POLICY. Indeed, it was
endorsed in the State Council by a LEADING MEMBER OF THE TAMIL
CONGRESS, WHO WARMLY EULOGISED THE MINISTER FOR AGRICULTURE AND
MADE NO SUGGESTION OF DISCRIMINATION".
162. "Extensive schemes of colonisation and land development
were instituted, numerous experimental and demonstration farms
established, and a far-reaching programme for the improvement of
livestock set in motion...."
164. "In view of the criticisms expressed by representatives of
the Northern and Eastern Provinces, we are glad to have been
able to see for ourselves a number of these colonies, farming
institutions and cattle breeding stations, and to inspect the
provisions made for agricultural education and training. It is
no part of our duty to report upon the agricultural development
of the Island, but we cannot refrain from expressing our
admiration for the immense efforts which have been made and the
results already achieved, in spite of the lack of staff, plant
and material due to the exigencies of war".
165. "The policy which is being pursued is a long-term one. The
Ceylon Tamils witnesses have criticised on two grounds": -
(i) "that at a time when the cessation of imports of rice from
Burma made the cultivation of home-grown rice exceptionally
important, public funds were devoted to schemes which would not
materially augment the rice supply for many years".
"We think that this criticism overlooks the fact that the policy
was formulated and put into practice some years before the
outbreak of war with Japan, and that to have abandoned it and
switch over at a moment's notice to a short-term programme would
have been very difficult, if not impossible";
(ii) "that, confronted with the alternatives of opening out and
developing land in the jungle and settling on it a population
moved from other areas, or of extending the cultivation under
village irrigation works, the consolidation of areas already
developed in the villages and their improvement by intensive
methods, the Government was ill-advised in adopting the first
alternative and concentrating their efforts on the major works
instead of the minor".
"Here again, we think that it has escaped the notice of the
critics that it only since 1931 that appreciable sums of public
money have been devoted to village tanks. Before that date,
public expenditure on these minor works was relatively small.
The amount now spent on the annual maintenance of these works
exceeds the annual expenditure upon their construction at the
time when the Minister for Agriculture first assumed office".
166. "... BUT THERE IS MUCH TO BE SAID FOR THE ARGUMENT THAT THE
RESTORATION OF AGRICULTURE IN THE SINHALESE PROVINCES WAS LONG
OVERDUE AND THAT THE GOVERNMENT'S POLICY WAS AN ENDEAVOUR TO
MAKE GOOD THE NEGLECT OF PAST GENERATIONS AND TO BASE PUBLIC
EXPENDITURE ON THE NEEDS OF THE LOCALITY".
167. "... our own observations and after careful consideration
of the whole matter, it would IN OUR OPINION BE WRONG TO CONDEMN
THIS PROGRAMME AS DISCRIMINATORY OR TO CENSURE IT AS AN ATTEMPT
TO FAVOUR THE SINHALESE AT THE EXPENSE OF ANOTHER COMMUNITY...".
Medical Services
171. "It seems to us that in the district of Jaffna the major
part of the medical treatment available was provided by
voluntary hospitals founded and conducted by the American
Missionary Society. It may be that the absence of similar
private provision elsewhere accounts for the large proportion of
public expenditure on the construction of hospitals, etc., in
the rest of the Island, but from the information at our disposal
WE ARE UNABLE TO ENDORSE THE CHARGE OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST
THE GOVERNMENT IN THIS REGARD, AND WE SEE NO REASON TO SUPPOSE
THAT IN THE ALLOCATION OF PUBLIC FUNDS TO THESE SERVICES THE
GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN ACTUATED BY ANY OTHER CONSIDERATION THAN THE
NEEDS OF THE VARIOUS LOCALITIES".
Education
172. "Jaffna has benefited for over a century from first-rate
secondary schools founded and endowed by missionary effort of
various denominations. But the complaint was made to us that
despite the immense increase in the education vote since 1931, a
negligible provision of State schools had been made for those
parts of the Jaffna district which did not enjoy the benefit of
English elementary and secondary education".
173. "... AS IN THE CASE OF AGRICULTURE AND HEALTH, WE ARE MORE
DISPOSED TO ATTRIBUTE THE DISCREPANCIES IN EXPENDITURE AND
DISPROPORTIONATE ALLOCATION OF PUBLIC FUNDS OF WHICH COMPLAINT
IS MADE, TO THE GOVERNMENT'S DESIRE TO REDEEM CERTAIN LOCALITIES
AND COMMUNITIES FROM THE NEGLECT OF PAST YEARS THAN TO ANY
DELIBERATE PARTIALITY TOWARDS RACIAL INTERESTS. Education among
the Muslims, for instance, has in the past, for various reasons,
been relatively backward. WE WERE MUCH IMPRESSED BY THE EFFORTS
OF THE Minister for Education, HIMSELF A SINHALESE AND A
BUDDHIST, TO PROMOTE THE EDUCATIONAL ADVANCE OF THIS COMMUNITY".
Public Appointments
174. "We received from the All-Ceylon Tamil Congress complaints
of discrimination against the members of their community in
regard to appointments in the Public Services. This matter
provides a common source of dissension between majority and
minority communities, BUT IN THIS CASE THE COMPLAINT DID NOT, AS
MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED, DISCLOSE THAT THE PROPORTION OF POSTS
HELD BY THE CEYLON TAMILS WAS SMALLER THAN THE SIZE OF THEIR
COMMUNITY WOULD JUSTIFY. ON THE CONTRARY, THE CEYLON TAMILS
APPEAR, AT ANY RATE AS LATE AS 1938, TO HAVE OCCUPIED A
DISPROPORTIONATE NUMBER OF POSTS IN THE PUBLIC SERVICES".
175. "... The Tamil witnesses maintained that in order to
improve the chances of Sinhalese candidates, various small
changes in examination syllabuses and conditions of entry have
been made as a result of the intervention of Sinhalese
Ministers, who have also endeavoured in various ways to use
their influence, e.g. with Selection Boards, to favour
candidates of their own race..."
176. "It appears to us that there have been minor instances of
this kind of discriminatory action by the Sinhalese... BUT IT
WOULD NOT IN OUR OPINION BE RIGHT TO REGARD THE SINHALESE
CHALLENGE TO THE PREDOMINANT POSITION OF THE TAMILS IN PUBLIC
APPOINTMENTS AS BASED ON SUCH SMALL ACTS OF DISCRIMINATION;
RATHER IT IS THE NATURAL EFFECT OF THE SPREAD OF EDUCATION AND
OF THE EFFECTS BEING MADE TO BRING OTHER PORTIONS OF THE ISLAND
UP TO THE INTELLECTUAL LEVEL OF ONE PORTION OF IT..."
In this connection, we cannot help RECALLING A PERIOD IN OUR OWN
HISTORY WHEN, AS A RESULT OF THE SUPERIOR EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES
AND BETTER TEACHING PREVALENT IN SCOTLAND, A MINORITY WAS
ENABLED TO SECURE A LARGER SHARE OF ADMINISTRATIVE AND EXECUTIVE
POSTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM THAN COULD HAVE BEEN JUSTIFIED ON
ANY PROPORTIONAL ALLOCATION. SINCE THEN THE ENGLISH HAVE MADE
STRENUOUS AND NOT ALTOGETHER UNSUCCESSFUL ENDEAVOURS TO REDRESS
THE DEFICIENCIES OF THEIR PAST".
Conclusion
177. "A careful review of the evidence submitted to us provides
NO SUBSTANTIAL INDICATION OF A GENERAL POLICY ON THE PART OF THE
GOVERNMENT OF CEYLON OF DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MINORITY
COMMUNITIES". - Asian Tribune -
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