It is said very often that the TNA is following the LTTE policies and is adamant that the so called thirteen plus is implemented. However, though it may appear that the TNA is following the LTTE it is not so. It was the LTTE that followed the policies of the TULF, ITAK (Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi – Lanka Tamil State Party or the so called Federal Party), TC (Tamil Congress of G G Ponnambalam), Hindu Mahajana Sabai of Ponnambalam Arunachalam formed way back in 1921 as the first racist political organization in Sri Lanka (Ceylon), the racist policies of Ponnambalam Ramanathan that were all instigated by the English. The LTTE did not appear in the political scene all of a sudden and it was only a product of the evolution of anti Sinhala Buddhist policies of the English and of the Dutch prior to that. The Tamil Vellala leaders in Sri Lanka and of course the non Vellala Prabhakaran were used by the English to suppress the Sinhalas especially the Sinhala Buddhists. I do not want to go into details as I have analyzed racist Tamil politics in “An Analysis of Tamil racism in Sri Lanka” and in many articles written to “The Island” and “Divaina” but it has to be re-iterated that had the Sinhalas accepted the Vellala Coomaraswamy – Ponnambalam family as the leaders in the nineteenth century as the English expected, we would not have had the so called ethnic problem. However, it is to the credit of Sinhala majority outside Colombo and the then English speaking Sinhala Christian (both RC and non RC) lay leadership in Colombo that they did not want to follow the majority of the English speaking Sinhala Buddhist leaders in Colombo and accept the aforesaid family as the leaders of Sri Lanka.
The contemporary history of Sri Lanka is full of ironies. The Coomaraswamy – Ponnambalam family (the much talked about Annada Coomaraswamy in connection with the Nelum Pokuna Mahinda Rajapakse Rangahala and the Nelum Pokuna Mawatha was a cousin of the Ponnambalams) belonged to the Vellala clan who were descendants of the agricultural labourers imported by the Dutch for their tobacco cultivation and had been uplifted in the Hindu hierarchical society from Shudra to much more than Vaishya by the Dutch, English and finally theoretically by Shri Arumugam Navalar. The Tamil Hindus in Sri Lanka did not have the same social structure as the Hindus in India and we do not find either Kshathriyas or Brahmins among the Hindus in Sri Lanka. This fact itself shows that the Tamil Hindus in Sri Lanka do not have a history going back to time immemorial but has tried to follow the Sinhala social hierarchy that itself was a recent phenomenon encouraged especially by the English. The Vellalas were equated to the Govigama or better Radala, and the Sinhalas who lived in the Jaffna peninsula when the Dutch arrived in Sri Lanka were absorbed into the Tamil Hindu society and pushed down the social ladder into the Koviar and other castes.
In the first election to the Legislative Assembly held in 1912 with very limited franchise the English had wanted Ponnambalam Ramanathan to be elected as the representative of the so called educated Ceylonese. Perhaps the English were able to maneuver and get the support of the Sinhala Govigama leaders for the Tamil Vellala leader. However opposition came from the English speaking Sinhala Christians and Catholics who were mainly non Govigama and it became a contest between the Vellala – Govigama and the Sinhala non Govigama who had nominated a Karava candidate. The English educated Sinhala Buddhist Govigamas had become Olcott Buddhist (not to be confused with those who studied at the Buddhist schools) Govigamas by that time and the Sinhalese among the English speaking was represented mainly by the non Govigama Sinhala Christians and Catholics. The politics among the English educated Tamil Hindus revolved round wining the leadership of the entire country with the support of the English and at the same time repressing the non Vellala Tamils. It was after the general elections to the first Parliament in 1947 that Chelvanayakam realized that no Tamil Vellala could become the leader of the entire country through elections and he formed ITAK aka FP to fool the Sinhalas, to establish a separate state in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. In order to justify his aspiration he later claimed that the two provinces were Tamil homeland and that the Tamils were discriminated by the Sinhalas. All these aspirations and claims were finally incorporated into the infamous Vadukodai resolution in 1976, that became a basis for Tamil racist politics thereafter. However, by this time the terrorist “boys” had taken up arms not satisfied with the “methods” adopted by the elders to establish a Tamil Eelam.
The terrorists were only carrying out the politics of the elders in the TULF with arms. However there were groups among the “boys” who had another motivation, namely to fight against the Vellala domination in the Jaffna society. While the anti Sinhala campaign was mainly led by Marxist elements among the terrorists, the fight against the Sinhalas as well as the Vellala leadership was carried on by non Marxists under Prabhakaran. Finally the leadership battle among the terrorists was won by Prabhakaran not in Sri Lanka but in the streets of Chennai. The defeat of Vellala Uma Maheswaran symbolized the passing of the leadership to a Non Vellala (Karaivar) Prabhakaran who went on to murder many a Tamil Vellalas before he turned his guns against the Sinhalas. The clergy of the Catholic and Christian churches who mainly belonged to Non Vellala communities supported Prabhakaran. It is ironical that the leadership among the Vellala Hindus had to support a non Vellala with the backing of the Christian and Catholic churches in order to establish a separate state in the Northern and Eastern provinces. The TULF and later the TNA accepted that the LTTE that carried their anti Sinhala campaign as the sole party that represented the Tamils in Sri Lanka. The English had no problem in supporting Prabhakaran as they were interested only in using the Tamil community as a force against the Sinhalas, especially the Sinhala Buddhists. The church leadership in the country as a whole who in their eagerness to defeat the Sinhala Buddhists supported Prabhakaran and the LTTE wholeheartedly, though there were some priests and many laymen among Sinhalas who did not agree with their shepherds.
All these fights were political and the Sinhalas never agreed with the demands of the Hindu Mahajana Sabai or the TULF or the LTTE. At Thimpu if the Sinhalas had agreed with the Tamil racist demands which were supported by the English and the other western Christian nations ( Norway was only the puppet of English and Americans and Solheim a mere messenger whose position was inflated by the western press in order to hide the real culprits the English.) and of course the Indians. The Sinhalas resisted all these forces and even the thirteenth amendment that was based on the Indo Lanka Accord that recognized Tamil Historical Habitats in other words a homeland was rejected. It was clear that the so called peace talks were leading nowhere but to a Tamil Eelam following the little now more later policy of Chelvanayakam and the Tamil racism and it came to a stage that the anti Sinhala campaign had to be defeated in the battle field which is only an extension of politics using the armed forces. The anti Sinhala campaign was finally defeated at Nandikadal and there is no separate political problem to be solved now, as a military solution is also a political solution. Tamil racist politics continue to exist with the backing of the English and the other western Christian countries and if not for the dispersed Tamil community in those countries, the TNA leadership and the Christian clergy, the westerners would have found it difficult to make an issue against the Sinhalas. It is clear that the west is trying to use so called war crimes and the human rights problem against the President and the Secretary to the Ministry of Defense, and the recent letter from Hilary Clinton to the Minister of Foreign Affairs demonstrates what is in store for the country.
TNA realizing that the Nandikadal victory can be reversed only through a military exercise is now preparing the ground for another “war”. This time it is not going to be another non Vellala Prabhakaran who would lead the fight against the Sinhalas but the Anglican Christian David Cameron. The TNA is aware of what they are doing and Hillary Clinton would press the minister G L Peiris to accept that war crimes had been committed in the last stages of the humanitarian operations. The TNA does not want a Parliamentary Select Committee nor anything else but war and only war. The war this time would be fought by the western mercenaries with some remnants of the LTTE, Janarala of JVP, the NGOs again funded by the western governments, the free media people living in the west under the auspices of the western countries and of course some disgruntled elements of the UNP. If the other groups unite under the leadership of the President Mahinda Rajapakse the mercenaries would learn a lesson that they could not learn in the Arab world.(12/02/08 - non published)
Copyright Prof. Nalin De Silva
