Most of the people in Sri Lanka, I believe would celebrate the victory of the armed forces over Tamil terrorism, in spite of opinions expressed by some intellectuals and others who I am sure are also concerned with what is now known as reconciliation. Whatever is meant by that word which has various connotations especially with respect to the South African experience, which has no relevance to the Sri Lankan situation, there should be an understanding between the Sinhala people and others living in the country, if the children of each and every one of us are going to live peacefully in this motherland of all of us. I deliberately say between the Sinhala people and others living in the country, and not between all the communities or words to that effect, since the Sinhala people and their culture occupy a significant position in the country. If the others are not prepared to accept that then it would lead to another “war” sooner or later. The humanitarian operations had to take place due to the refusal by the Tamil Vellala leaders of the past to accept the fact that the Sinhalas and the Sinhala Buddhist culture occupy a significant position in the country.
I myself would not want the Sinhala Buddhist culture to be the dominant culture in the country as it is against Buddhist principles. It has to be emphasized though the western countries pretend to be secular Christian cultures are their dominant cultures. Though the western political scientists and other social scientists try to deceive the rest of the world by claiming that the western states are secular it is not so as any of the states would defend the particular Christian culture in the country by not tolerating any other culture when they feel that their dominant culture is under threat. They would not allow practitioners of other religions to have places of worship freely as they have numerous laws to obstruct the construction of such places of worship. In some of these Christian countries Muslim women are not allowed to wear their traditional dress for the flimsy reason that the human rights of other people to recognize these women are violated! As we have mentioned previously in so called Monarchies the Kings or the Queens are Christian England being the worst country in this respect, with the head of the state being the head of the Church as well. Still the political scientists of the western countries would say that the Church is separated from the State.
The Christian culture is not only the dominant culture of the western countries but for all practical purposes in the other countries as well. This dominance is maintained through education and media. The knowledge that is created in the western countries is Christian and we are forced to disseminate that knowledge to our students in the guise of maintaining so called international standards. The university senates have a pseudo academic freedom to teach and research according to the western standards passed on to our countries. The western social scientists would claim that the world has become smaller and that we have a global village now without mentioning that the Village Headman, a post introduced by the English, is the President of USA. They would want us to get more and more involved in the affairs of the global village, thus losing any semblance of independence that we have at present.
It is in the above background that we celebrate the victory of the armed forces defeating the Tamil terrorists. The Tamil terrorist movement was an outcome of Tamil racism that was created and nurtured by the Dutch and the English. India had a hand in creating Tamil terrorism and we know that the Indian governments had been training arming and funding the terrorist movements not only of Prabhakaran but also of Uma Maheswaran and others. It is an irony of history that Rajiv Gandhi was killed by the very same movement he and his mother had baptized and nurtured. Even the Sri Lankan President Premadasa who had supplied arms to the LTTE to fight the IPKF was assassinated by Tamil terrorism.
We are not celebrating a victory over the Tamils in this country and the vast majority of Sinhalas are in favour of the development work carried out by the government in the Northern and the Eastern Provinces as well as in the Southern Province. The victory was essentially over the westerners and of course the Indians even more than the Tamil terrorism. It was the west, namely England and Netherlands at the beginning that created, and cultivated an English educated Tamil Vellala leadership against the Sinhalas, especially the Sinhala Buddhists. The English, in particular worked in a very subtle way to give the Tamil Vellala leaders the idea that they were the leaders of the country. The Tamil leaders tried to maintain their overrepresentation in the legislature by artificial means with the English encouraging the former to do so. It is well known that the Tamil leaders such as Ponnambalam Ramanathan went before the Donomourgh commission and argued against universal franchise as they knew that in such an eventuality the Tamil leaders would never be able to have a majority in the legislature. The Tamil leaders also wanted fifty - fifty (it was not Sinhala fifty percent and the others fifty percent) thus making the Sinhala representation a minority in the legislature and finally asked Soulbury to see that the Sinhalas would not obtain a majority representation in the delimitation of Parliamentary constituencies. The English instigated the Tamil leaders and helped them whenever possible as they were determined to see that the Sinhala Buddhist culture and the Sinhala people, who were a threat to their hegemony, were degraded and weakened, if not destroyed.
The west had been supporting not only Tamil racism but Tamil terrorism as well with the help from India and was using the LTTE to establish a separate state, as they had done in many other countries in the world, Sudan being the latest example. The western agents such as Solheim and Robert Blake not to mention many other western and Indian Diplomats, wanted a separate country in the Northern and the Eastern Provinces, and we all know how desperate they were to see that Prabhakaran and the other terrorist leaders escaped to the west during the latter stages of the humanitarian operations. We know that Nambiar was attempting to bring a ship to take the terrorists to some western country or a country that supported the west against Sri Lanka. All these attempts were defeated and it was not simply the Tamil terrorists the armed forces, the Defence Secretary were fighting under the political leadership of the President.
The humanitarian operations were successful and were victorious over the powerful west, and the Indians who want to be regional leaders, and it was a victory against the establishment of a separate state. It was the only successful operation in the recent history of the world against terrorism, and who would say that we should not celebrate such a momentous victory. In fact the Tamil people also should be happy over the victory as it brought freedom to them from the yoke of the terrorists led by Prabhakaran. However, we have a long way to go in bringing peace to this country. Though Tamil terrorism has been defeated, Tamil racism has not been in spite of the fact that the Tamil leaders and the NGOs maintained by the western states have no argument against what we have to say on these matters. It is the western countries that maintain Tamil racism through the so called Tamil diaspora and some sections of the TNA. The Tamil people should not think that the western countries love them as we all know how we are treated in those countries. There is no multiculturalism in any of the countries in the world in a strong sense where all cultures are treated equally. In England and the other western countries it is the Christian Culture (though not homogeneous, and change from one country to another) that is the dominating culture, and even in Singapore it is the Chinese culture which is the dominant culture and not the Tamil Hindu culture. In India it is the North Indian Hindu culture that is dominant and not the South Indian Hindu culture nor Sikh nor Muslim culture. It is the western “intellectuals” and their henchmen and henchwomen that have made us to practise a multiculturalism that is not found anywhere in the world. The Sinhalas are very tolerant and would allow any culture to flourish provided that those who practice that culture accept that Sinhala Buddhist culture is the significant, not the dominant, culture of the country. A sensible “reconciliation” could be achieved with that kind of understanding, and fighting against western cultural economic and political colonialism collectively.
Copyright Prof. Nalin De Silva
