THE END OF PRABHAKARAN'S COUSINS
In "An Introduction to Tamil Racism in Sri Lanka", (Prabhakarange Seeyala, Baappala Ha Massinala in Sinhala), I wrote sometime ago, the third and final chapter deals with Prabhakaran's cousins. If I were to reprint the book (the Sinhala version is in its third print) I would say in a foreword that the cousins (massinala) of Prabhakaran are no more. They are literally and literary dead and gone. It is only the ghosts of the cousins of Prabhakaran we see in the form of the recently formed Tamil National Alliance (TNA).
The ghosts who cannot represent the Tamils in Sri Lanka have declared that the LTTE, meaning of course, Prabhakaran is the sole representative of the Tamils. By doing so they have destroyed the soul of the Tamil Sri Lankans as well. Whether there is a pact between the UNP and the LTTE or not there is one between the UNP and the TNA. (This "pact" has been referred to in the November 14th issue of the London based Tamil Guardian) Without some sort of pact no two parties form an alliance or some kind of an electoral pact. In the context of the politics in Sri Lanka today the pact between the UNP and the TNA is a fact. I do not know whether or not, according to the pact between the UNP and the TNA, the UNP also accepts Prabhakaran to be the sole representative of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. However as far as the TNA is concerned Prabhakaran is the sole representative of the Tamils and they themselves are mere puppets in the hands of Prabhakaran or ghosts who "act" under the instructions of Prabhakaran the "kattadiya". The UNP that has clearly entered into a pact with the ghosts is being controlled by the "kattadiya" and if they (UNP) come into power then the ghosts would take over the UNP, the "arthuraya". The Sinhala people are now between the devil and the deep blue SLFP (SLMP) sea of Ms. Kumaratunga. The Sinhala people either have to perform a devil dance (thovilaya) to cure the UNP or get back to the SLFP of 1955 formed by people like Mr. L. H. Mettananda, this time with an ideology of their own. As Prabhakaran himself is a "kattadiya" the second option is more promising. (The SLFP formed in 1951 by Mr. SWRD Bandaranaike was a liberal party. Through a metamorphism, Mr. Mettananda and the others were able to form the SLFP, the party of Sinhalathva in 1955. However, Mr. Bandaranaike, as there was no ideology based on jathika chinthanaya then, was able to use the SLFP for his own purposes. When Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekera says that the SLFP is a "kavandhaya" (body without a head), to me, it is clear that he is not talking of a dead body but of a party without an ideology of its own. The SLFP has been "guided" (misguided) by Marxism/Western Liberalism and not by an indigenous ideology. Due to the lack of an ideology both Mr. SWRD Bandaranaike and Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga have been able to make use of the party of Sinhalathva to come to power and to attempt to work according to their agenda. I am told that even earlier when Mr. Bandaranaike formed the Sinhala Maha Sabhava he wanted to name it the Lanka Maha Sabhava and it was at the suggestion of Mr. Cumaratunga Munidasa who was a leader of the Jathika Vyaparaya then, that Mr. Bandaranaike named it the Sinhala Maha Sabhava. Mr. Bandaranaike through out his carrier had had an ambiguous relationship with the Jathika Vyaparaya.)
Both Prabhakaran and his cousins are the descendants of their grand uncles (seeyala) Messrs. Ponnambalam Ramanathan, Ponnambalam Arunachalam and others and their uncles (baappala) Messrs. GG Ponnambalam, SJV Chelvanayakam, EMV Naganathan, A Amirthalingam and others. The grand uncles and the uncles began the Tamil racist policy of not giving the rightful place to Sinhalathva, that is Sinhala nation, Sinhala Language, Sinhala Culture and Sinhala History. They were assisted by the British who baptised Tamil racism in this country in 1833. The main political demand of the grand uncles and the uncles had been equal representation in the legislature for the Sinhalas and the Tamils. They wanted to deprive the Sinhala people and Sinhalathva the rightful place at the centre of power. They ignored the fact that the Sinhalas had lived in this country at least from the time of king Pandukabhaya and that the Sinhalas are descendants of Yakshas, Nagas, Devas and other indigenous tribes as well as of tribes such as Singha and families (vanshas) such as Shakya who came from Bharath and that the Sinhalas have created a unique culture in this country not found anywhere else in the world, that the Sinhala language is a mixture of the original Hela of the Yakshas and Nagas and others and Bharath languages such as Maghadhi Prakrit, Vanga and was later influenced by Sanskrit, whereas Tamils in Sri Lanka have no continuous history even from the thirteenth century and that most of them (including the Ponnambalams) are descendants of people who came from Malabar coast during the Dutch and British period and that the Tamil Hindu culture is not very much different from the Tamil Hindu culture in Tamil Nadu (any differences there being due to the influence of Sinhala culture), Tamil language is not something created in this country. (As a writer by the name Gandhara Vesi in an article in Divaina has remarked the Tamil in Sri Lanka is so much similar to that in Tamil Nadu the former could not have branched off from the latter many centuries ago. If it branched off during the time of the invader Elara, say, it would have become a separate dialect by now. Contrary to Dr. Siriweera's opinion this also shows that Elara and his soldiers were people who came from Dravidian country in Bharath and who either died during the war with king Dutugemunu, went back to Bharath after the war or Sinhalised within a generation or two. (There have been no Tamils living in this country for thousands of years, a fact established by Dr. Indrapalan's thesis as well.)
The Tamil leaders in order to justify their demand that the centre should have equal (rather more Tamil representation) representation fabricated a Tamil history in Sri Lanka going back to thousands of years without an iota of historical or archaeological evidence. (The findings of Dr. Dane Hawkey using the new dental morphological technique would demolish the myth that the Dravidians established the megalithic culture of the island. As has been commented by Mr. Asgar Hussein, Dr. Hawkey shows that the skeletal remains at Pomparippu clearly indicate that they (Pomparippu inhabitants) possessed dental traits much more similar to Sinhalas than Tamils, Veddas or the more primitive Balangoda Man.) They then created the Mahavansa Phobia and tried to distort and discredit the work of Mahanama Thero. In this exercise they have been assisted by people like Drs. Leslie Ranaweera Gunawardane, Indrakirthi Siriweera, Kumari Jayawardhane and their co thinkers. (In a way it is wrong to use the word thinker for imitators) .
The grand uncles of Prabhakaran manoeuvred to rule the entire country through power in the centre. This was a result of the Jaffna Hindu Vellala Syndrome a la an eminent historian now living in England. Jaffna Hindu Vellalas want to rule the others. In the Jaffna peninsula it used to be the empire of the Vellalas. When they came to Colombo they wanted the same "royal" treatment from the others. The British the masters of the divide and rule game knew how to exploit the Vellala mentality and they gave the Vellalas more than equal representation in the legislature, professions and in the field of education. As was mentioned earlier they came up with bogus histories to justify their claims and planted the idea that the Tamils should have their own kingdom as had been the case for thousands of years. The myth was propagated and it captured the minds of the younger generations.
Mr. SJV Chelvanayakam introduced a radical change in the politics of Tamil racism. Instead of trying to manoeuvre the centre with more representation for the Tamils he wanted to establish a separate state for the Tamils in what was later called the homeland of the Tamils. To achieve this he adopted the "little now more later" policy as described by Dr. AJ Wilson in his father-in-law's biography. Together this shift from manoeuvreing at the centre to a separate state he made a change in the leadership of Tamil racism. From then on it was going to be a Tamil Catholic (Christian) leadership and not a Tamil Hindu leadership. The British who were behind Tamil racism would have welcomed this. However this second change was not only the beginning of the end of Vellala Hindus but of future Prabhakaran's cousins as well.
What has happened since then? The Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (Lanka Tamil State Party-the so called Federal Party) leaders Messrs Chelvanayakam and Naganathan were not Hindu, though Vellalas. ( My pen friend and senior at the University Mr. EAV Naganathan, who incidentally lives in Maharagama and travel by bus like me- we may have seen each other though I do not recognise him- could correct me on this if I am wrong. I would like to meet him and have a chat on Tamil racism over a cup of tea introduced to us by the British.) The subsequent Hindu Vellala leadership of the TULF has been killed by Prabhakaran. The last was Dr. Neelan Thiruchelvam whom I knew for more than three decades. The leadership of Tamil racism has been passed from Tamil Hindu Vellala to Tamil Catholic Karaivar (in general and in ideology) through Tamil Catholic Vellala. When the TNA says that the LTTE is the sole representative of the Tamils the transfer is made official and formal.
The Tamil Hindu Vellala leaders of Tamil racism never had an ideology of its own. Their ideology was associated with Vellala dominance over the less privileged castes in Tamil society and to that extent was not an adequate ideology to deprive Sinhalathva its rightful place. They borrowed a form of western Christian ideology for this purpose and was helped by the British as well as western political concepts and theories. However, it happened to be the downfall of Hindu Vellala leadership and a leadership more at home with another form of this ideology emerged with the formation of the Lanka Tamil State Party by Chelvanayakams and Naganathans. (On the other hand the SLFP, the party of Sinhalathva was without its own ideology and it had to borrow Marxism and western Liberalism. It has now been hijacked by the SLMP.) This was only a transitional stage and Prabhakaran and the LTTE emerged with the Christian (Catholic) Karaivar ideology. Prabhakaran's cousins continued to operate in various parties such as TULF, PLOTE without a Tamil Hindu ideology. They had to either borrow from Marxism (PLOTE, EPRLF etc.,) or from western Liberalism (TULF) and did not have even the Vellala supremacy ideology of the grand uncles. Prabhakaran is neither a Liberal nor a Marxist but a Christian fundamentalist wearing the shawl of a Hindu. Few Hindus like Ms. Arundathi writing from London have understood this but they are unfortunately not in a position to do much against this monster. Most of the Vellala Hindus, I am afraid have capitulated to the Tamil Christian Karaivar leadership with a western Christian fundamentalist ideology. (It has to be emphasised that Liberalism as well as Marxism emerged in a western Christian culture. These phenomena including creation of ideologies and theories within a civilisation (culture) could be understood when one is equipped with the concept of chinthanaya.)
From now on only Prabhakaran and the LTTE represent officially as well as unofficially Tamil racism. The west has tried to present the terrorism of Prabhakaran sponsored by them as a fight between Sinhala Buddhists and Tamil Hindus. It is not so and it is a western Christian sponsored project of world imperialism that started in the sixteenth century. Its aim is to deprive Sinhalathva its rightful place and in the final analysis Tamil Hindus have no say in this matter. The (ex) Hindu leadership now realises that some of the concepts such as Tamil homeland and Tamil nation are not correct. However they are too late to realise this. Prabhakaran has grabbed these concepts and the Christian fundamentalist in him would never give them up. The Hindu Vellalas could not survive on borrowed ideology. They first talked about injustices but when they realised that they were wrong they said that they had graduated from injustices to aspirations. Yes, as far as Prabhakaran and Tamil racism, sponsored by the west is concerned it is their aspiration to deny Sinhalathva the rightful place in this country. It is not too late for Tamil Hindus to realise their folly and work with Sinhalas to enrich the traditions and the unique culture that is found in this country. The Sinhalas whether Buddhists or Christian, the Tamils whether Hindus or Christians and the Muslims in this country have a common enemy to fight. That is nothing but western Christian (not in a religious sense but in a cultural sense) imperialism with its hegemony in culture including knowledge, economics and politics. Prabhakaran and the LTTE are the boys of the west and not the boys of Tamils as the Tamils once thought.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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