WHO IS DENYING WHOM
The Ministers would have been very happy to have had the meeting of the so called aid group (development forum!) in Sri Lanka. In fact one of the ministers had said that they were able to have the meetings that are held usually in other parts of the world, in Sri Lanka for the first time. When everybody knows that what we get are loans in the name of aid, it is difficult to think of a reason to be proud of having had to ask for loans nearly sixty years after the so-called independence. However, over the years the Ministers of Finance had been blowing their trumpets over the so called aid that they had been able to obtain. Instead of looking forward to the next meeting if we could have a plan to phase out these meetings then we would have something to talk about. Sri Lanka would become independent at least economically and most probably politically the day we have the last meeting of the "aid consortium".
Though it may not be expressed in the open sessions it is almost certain that the loans that Sri Lanka get would be attached to the "Joint Mechanism". It is the westerners who say that there is no free lunch. Not only that there is no free lunch we have been forced to come back for a paid dinner as well. If we refuse to attend these lunches and dinners we would be branded as Polpotists and what not, but one can be certain that in spite of the LTTE is being branded as a terrorist organisation Prabhakaran and his cohorts would not be branded as Polpotist.
The loans are attached to the Joint Mechanism and the President is under pressure from the western powers as she is dictated by them, and also by her Mahajana Party (SLMP) policies to which she is eternally loyal. However, the apologists for the LTTE as well as those who pretend to be anti LTTE but work for the LTTE in a very subtle way, would say that the Joint Mechanism should have been given. One of their main arguments is by giving the Joint Mechanism Sri Lanka would have been able to win the west towards them. They would also say that the Sinhalas have refused to give anything to the Tamils over decades and the Joint Mechanism is the latest in this long list of institutes that the Tamils were not given.
As far as the Sinhalas are concerned it is not the case that they had failed to give anything to the Tamils. There may be some Political Scientists, NGO pundits, media personnel and of course their masters and mistresses, the western "intellectuals", politicians and the so called foreign correspondents who maintain that the Sinhala people over the years have failed to recognise the grievances of the Tamils. These people only repeat what others have said before them without even trying to read, let alone understand, what the Sinhalas have to say in this regard.
We have analysed this question in "Prabhakaran, Ohuge Seeyala, Baappala Ha Massinala" which has been translated into English as "An Introduction to Tamil Racism in Sri Lanka", way back in 1995. Since then new material has been added around the basic theme, in the articles written to the newspapers It is clear that Tamil racism in Sri Lanka has its beginnings in the Dutch period when the colonial power imported people from the south coast in India for the tobacco cultivation in the Jaffna peninsula. The Dutch had to bring these people for the simple reason that there was not enough personnel in those areas for the cultivations they began. It has to be pointed out that after the Arya Chakravarthi kingdom that was established in the thirteenth century fell to the Portuguese in the sixteenth century there was no continuity either in the kingdom or in the population as such. The kingdom that fell to the Portuguese was not an independent kingdom as the Sinhala kings were recognised as the "emperor" even by the Portuguese historians, and the population was not entirely Tamil. In the Jafna peninsula there were Sinhalas as well, whose descendants have been absorbed into the Tamil community as members of the Koviar and other casts. Also there were descendants of the non Tamil Velakkaras who were brought by Magha and others who attempted to conquer Pollonnaruwa.
The Dutch having brought the Tamils from South India went on to make the foundation for the present Tamil population in the Jaffna peninsula. They were instrumental in forming the Vellala caste, and most of the prominent members of that cast including the Ponnnamabalam brothers, Muthukumaraswamis were descendants of those who were brought by the Dutch.
The Dutch during this time had problems with the Sinhala kings over the coastal areas in the present eastern province and were eager to claim the ports along the eastern coast. It was with the intention of acquiring these ports that the Dutch commissioned a Tamil to write a bogus history of the Tamils having a history going back to thousands of years. The so called history book that carries the name "Yalpanam Vaipava Malai" was the result, and the Dutch were happy to see that the "historian" had claimed the ports that they wanted for the Tamils, albeit without an iota of historical evidence. This poetry book that has no history supported by documents nor by at least internal consistency has become the source of inspiration for many later day racists.
If Dutch created the Tamil race and Tamil racism in Sri Lanka it was the British who baptised Tamil racism in the country. The British who were conscious of the western modernity project of Christianizing the world by culture if not by religion, more than any other European power created minorities in the colonies whenever possible, and used the so called minority against the others. It was only a special case of the divide and rule policy, and in Sri Lanka governor after governor connived with the Tamil leaders whom they created to deny the Sinhalas and their culture the rightful place that they were entitled to.
From the day the Sinhala British convention, known as the Kandyan convention was signed the British has breached it, the way the LTTE has done after signing the treacherous MoU. The British who had promised to rule the country according to Sinhala laws never did so and the result was the first independence struggle by the Sinhala people against the British in 1817-18. The British who had the armed power as well as the organisational power massacred the people brutally in the true tradition of European Christian "humanitarian" culture. The traditional leadership of the Sinhalas was wiped out, and Sinhalas were given new leaders by the British. These new leaders, who were Christians at least by culture, having had their education in "elite" schools founded by the British, were to betray the Sinhalas for nearly two centuries. The Sinhalas have still not overcome this leadership problem as can be seen from the recent history. There have been one or two exceptions as in the case of Anagarika Dharmapala but by and large the leaders of the Sinhalas, as much as their so called intellectuals were produced by the British to work against the interests of the Sinhala people. The "intellectuals" who know only to serve their masters and mistresses come very hard on Anagarika the only lay leader to serve the interests of the Sinhalas during the last one hundred and fifty seven years after Puran Appu and Gongalegoda Banda.
After 1817, the Sinhalas who were deprived of their traditional leaders had to depend on makeshift leaders in the form of Puran Appu and Gongalegoda Banda. However, by that time the Sinhalas had been weakened, and their position was still worsened after the defeat they suffered at the hands of the forces of Torrington the murderer. He would have been a viscount in the eyes of the British, but as far as Sinhalas were concerned he was a barbarian murderer who had no respect for any religion other than Christianity. .
However, the Sinhalas never gave up the fight against the British, and the anti colonial spirit lived among the masses though they did not have leaders to win the freedom from the British in particular, and the domination of the western Christian modernity in general. Even Anagarika Dharmapala was not up to the mark having had no understanding of the British imperialism. The theosophists who came to Sri Lanka and adopted the term Buddhist Theosophists, what a contradiction in concepts, made a revival not of Sinhala Buddhism but a kind of rational Buddhism that could be compared with western rationalism. This is not the place to explain why these Theosophists who had "mystic" beliefs should have been interested in a rationalism. The Theosophists introduced a new Buddhism to Sri Lanka which I have called Olcott Buddhism which is a Buddhism "preached" in a Christian cultural background, thus helping the western Christian modernity project in the final analysis.
The British in the meantime, beginning in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, had attempted to make Tamils the leaders of the country. The order of preference by the British was Burgher, Tamil Christian, Tamil Catholic, Tamil Hindu, Sinhala Christian, Sinhala Catholic, Muslim and then Sinhala Buddhist. It has to be pointed out that it was only the Sinhala Buddhists who fought against the British raj up to about nineteen thirties when the Marxists appeared on the stage. Even without leaders the Sinhala Buddhists fought and resisted British imperialism with the avenues available to them. The British more than anybody else knew then and know today that it is the Sinhala Buddhists, and not Olcott Buddhists, nor any other category that is an obstacle on the path of western domination in the country. Even the Sinhala Muslim clash in 1915 was used by the British to suppress not only the ordinary Sinhala Buddhists, but the elites among the Sinhala Buddhists who had had their education in the schools established by the colonial power.
The first attempt by the British in the legislative to deny the rightful place to the Sinhalas could be seen in the legislative assembly when they appointed one member each to represent the Sinhalas, Tamils and the Burghers. The Sinhalas who constituted more than seventy percent of the population, and who had built a unique culture in this country for more than two thousand years were equated with the Tamils who did not have a continuous history in the country for more than two hundred years, and who did not constitute even ten percent of the population. Since that date the Sinhalas have been fighting to win what have been denied to them in the legislature as well as in other fields. However, with the help of the intellectual, monetary, political and other machinery available the western powers led by the British have been propagating the myth that it is the Sinhalas who are not prepared to give anything to the Tamils and the other so called minorities.
Professor Nalin de Silva
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