POOR LITTLE MR. CHILCOTT
The "Island" reported on Tuesday the 19th and Wednesday the 20th a speech made by Mr. Chilcott, the vociferous British (does he represent Britain or United Kingdom) on our problems. The first thing that comes to the mind is whether the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in London would be invited to address an audience there on some problem of Britain or UK and whether the speech made by her would be reported in a newspaper published in London. Mr. Chilcott is fond of talking of a "global village" though he did not use the term, and would like to impress on us that no country is a political island by itself. What he tries to drive into our head is the fact that in this "global village" even Britain once called Great Britain by the British and their subservient servants in the empire, is not an island by itself, and Sri Lanka is in a position to interfere with the politics of the British government.
However, whatever poor little Mr. Chilcott in his "innocence" may say there is no symmetry when it comes to international affairs. It may be that Mr. Chilcott is not aware of the asymmetries in international politics. Though Britain may not be an island by itself in politics, it behaves like a continent, and though theoretically the British High Commissioner in Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan High Commissioner in UK (or Britain) have equivalent status, in practice there is a difference.
Mr. Chilcott deserves a full length reply, analyzing point by point, for his effort to represent the British interests in Sri Lanka, and this is only an introduction to such reply. It is unfortunate that our diplomats abroad do not represent the interests of Sri Lanka but the interests of others in general. In that respect Mr. Chilcott has to be appreciated.
With respect to the so called ethnic problem in Sri Lanka, which was mainly created by the British governors of Sri Lanka I must say that our perception is entirely different from that of Mr. Chilcott. He tries to compare the problem here with that in Northern Ireland though admitting that there are differences. However, Mr. Chilcott has forgotten to give the main difference. Northern Ireland (and for that matter Ireland) had been a colony of England while Jaffna or Northern Province in Sri Lanka had never been a colony of the country known as Sinhale, Sri Lanka or by any other name that was used to describe this island.
There is only one solution to the Northern Ireland problem, and that is to give freedom to that country, without tying it to Britain (England) under the name United Kingdom. However, England under the guise of so called asymmetrical devolution, continue to keep Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland under its hegemony without giving those countries freedom from the yoke of colonialism. It maybe said that there is no freedom movement in any one of those countries now and everybody wants to pay their allegiance to Westminster.
What is not understood is that England repressed all the people living in those countries on her way to become the empire on which the sun never set. (It is said that the Sun never set on the empire as it did not trust the English who knew Machiavelli to the core.) In Sri Lanka Mr. Chilcott would find Tamil letters on sign posts whether in Colombo or any other city. Could he find Welsh language sign boards in London or in Manchester. English language has been imposed on us not because English is the most beautiful language nor the most rich language but because of the political, economical and military powers that the English possessed. The English were able to force George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wild to write in English, and they have forced us also to write in English. Though we have to write in English so that at least Mr. Chilcott would understand what we are trying to say, there is no compulsion on Mr. Chilcott to write in Sinhala.
Mr. Chilcott does not have to convince any Sinhala (or Tamil for that matter), and we are being forced to listen to him and try to understand what he says even if our English is not up to the mark. Somebody would say that Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wild were not forced to write in English, but they selected on their own to write in English. However, it was not the case, as by that time England had become a world power and the English Language had become the hegemonic language. Had they written only in Irish very few would have heard of them and at least to be recognized they had to write in English. That is the reason for stating that they were forced to write in English.
Mr. Chilcott makes an attempt to imply that the British interest in the so called ethnic problem in Sri Lanka arises mainly because of the large Tamil contingent that lives in Britain, and also he tries to make the problem a "post independent" problem. I know that this line was not invented by Mr. Chilcott and generally any "responsible" Briton would like to hide behind this position. Then it is possible for the British to relinquish their responsibility and blame the Sinhala people directly or indirectly for the favouring tactics the British adopted towards the Tamils.
It is easy for Mr. Chilcott and others to say that the so called ethnic problem was begun after independence forgetting the history of the problem. It is not only the LTTE and the TULF that try to give a distorted picture of the history and the so called discrimination of the Tamils by the Sinhalas. Recently we read in "The Island" an attempt by an interested party to discredit the Sinhala officers in the Ministry of Education over the award of the Government Scholarship in Mathematics in 1961. As a recipient of the same scholarship six years later I was relieved to find out subsequently, thanks to a letter to the Editor by a Tamil living in Canada, that no discrimination had taken place, and it was an attempt by the Federal Party to rouse communal feelings among the Tamils. The episode merely exposed the tactics not only of the Federal Party but that of the so called enlightened Sinhalas as well.
It is natural for these enlightened Sinhalas also to behave so as enlightenment is finally determined by the standards that the westerners, especially the British, have set in the world. Enlightened people are so judged by the British standards and it is clear that today if one has to be recognized as an enlightened person (prabuddha in Sinhala) he/she has to be anti Sinhala Buddhist. Mr. Chilcott, I am afraid that these enlightened people whom your ancestors have created in this country are misrepresenting history.
(To be continued)
Professor Nalin de Silva
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