History

Friday, 31 January 2014

Sovereignty under threat


The Northern Province provincial council is threatening and challenging the government of Sri Lanka and the Sri Lankan state over sovereignty of the country. The Provincial Council that includes some LTTE sympathizers and a widow of a terrorist leader has passed number of resolutions revealing their intentions. The Provincial Council does not want an internal investigation into so called human rights violations in the country during the last two weeks of the humanitarian operations and wants an international investigation that is nothing but an investigation by western countries and their cronies. The Council does not believe in the statistics that would be supplied by the Department of Census and Statistics on the missing and dead people during the terrorist active period. They also want to erect monuments commemorating the terrorists in Mullavaikkal.

It is clear that the Northern Province Provincial Council wants to act on its own disregarding the state. They have already come to their own “conclusions”, and with the assistance of Bishops such as Rayappu Joseph of Mannar and Saundranayagam of Jaffna they are inventing “evidence” to justify the “conclusions”. If the Provincial Councils had more powers we would have seen more acts against the state, and finally the Northern Province deciding to recede away from the state of Sri Lanka. The Northern Province Provincial Council should realize at least now that the Eastern Province is not with them and that the latter have gone a long way in reconciling with the other provinces, not according to South African or any other model but in the Sri Lankan manner. The behaviour of the Northern Provincial Council tells the state and the people of the country that the powers given under the thirteenth amendment are too much, and police and land powers should be with the government of Sri Lanka and not with any provincial council.

The Provincial Council of the Northern Province behaves this way not because of any strength of Ananthi or Wigneshwaran but that of the western powers. It is very often said by the UNP and opposition parties who opposed the humanitarian operations against the LTTE terrorists that the government may have won the “war” but not peace. As we have said on many occasions the government won peace as well, but the western countries are determined not to allow the government to maintain peace as they want to punish both the government and the people for defeating the LTTE. If not for the western powers the TNA would collapse like a paper house if not as a paper tiger. Once the tiger was defeated there could not be room for any paper tigers of the TNA, but the TNA is being maintained by the western countries through the dispersed Tamils in the west.

If we summarize what has happened in the history we find that the problem started with Dutch importing the vellalas from present South India for their tobacco cultivation, vellala meaning agricultural labour, after 1650. The Dutch wanted to use the imported Vellala against the Sinhala King and commissioned a Tamil Mudliyar  to write a history of Sri Lanka depriving the king the present eastern province so that they could posses it with the harbours. The Vellalas with the help of colonial powers became the majority of the Jaffna peninsula absorbing the Sinhala majority into the Tamil culture as people of “low” cast. This was the first step in a minority becoming the majority dominant force with the help of the colonial powers in this case the Dutch. What happened in the Jaffna peninsula is not much different from what took place in South Africa with the whites becoming the dominant force though not numerically they were not the majority.    

The next step was taken by the English who cultivated the English educated Vellalas to become the leaders of the country again following the South African model. The English always hated the common Sinhala people who were the only community to rise against them in the history of the country. The English educated Sinhalas were prepared to accept the leadership of the English educated vellalas and petition the English rulers to handover limited autonomy to them. They wanted to prove that they were more English than the English themselves in speech, manners and education. However, the English from their standpoint made the cardinal sin of giving universal franchise to Sri Lanka, thus making the Tamil elite vellalas becoming the leaders of the country a remote possibility.

The Vellalas became aware of this development and it was left to SJV Chelvanayakam to formally agitate for separation so that the English educated Vellala Tamils could try their hands at becoming the rulers of the combined Northern and Eastern Provinces. The Vellalas came out with “theories” such as homeland, federalism to justify their concealed objective of separation, and the western social scientists and their imitators were readily available for justification of the claims of the English educated Tamils. The climax of their agitation was the Vadukkodai Resolution of 1976 when all the so called Tamil speaking leaders united with the Vellalas.

However, the other leaders gradually realized what the Vellalas were up to with connivance of the England led west, and the Vellala leadership had to give way to the Karaivar Prabhakaran who resorted to terrorist activities instigated by Chelvanayakam. Prabhakaran and his terrorist tigers were defeated by the heroic “ranaviruvan” under the political leadership of the President and the direction of the Defense Secretary, against the wish of the western countries who wanted to rescue Prabhakaran and his cohorts even at the last minute.

After the defeat of the terrorist tigers the west wanted to make the Tamils the dominant community again using the South African model of reconciliation where the white still rule the country though nominally the blacks have the political power. The west uses the dispersed Tamils in their countries against the Sinhala people and in this regard the west is helped by the western intellectuals, their imitators in Sri Lanka, the NGO vallas, some clergy of Christian and Catholic Churches, as before. The UNP, JVP also support the west in order to topple what they call the Rajapakse regime. The common denominator of all these sects is the removal of the Rajapakse “regime” and punishing of the ordinary Sinhala people who are the only community who have fought and are fighting against the colonials. These sects are not interested in the human rights of anybody but of removing the “regime” and punishing the Sinhala people. The west that used the English educated vellalas first are now using the dispersed Tamils whether they are educated or not. The TNA is divided along these lines, Wigneshwaran representing mainly the Colombo based elite English educated vellalas and Ananthi representing the other anti Sinhala Tamils. The dispersed Tamils used by the western forces represent mainly the non Vellala anti Sinhala elements, and what Wigneshwaran and his friends do not realize is that the English educated elite vellalas have been on the decline as a political force.

In any event both these groups are only paper tigers who cannot survive without the support of the west that favours the Ananthi group as they know that the elite have no attraction in Jaffna after Prabhakaran. English Prime Minister Cameron who has blocked the publication of a report on how Blair and his American counterpart violated the human rights of Iraq people is now getting the help of Obama to canvass against so called human rights violations by the Sri Lankan armed forces, in order to topple the “regime”, punish the Sinhala people and finally to establish a separate state that Ranil Wickremesinghe who wanted to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Portuguese coming to Sri Lanka and destroying Buddhist temples would give on a platter to his masters in England. When Ranil Wickremesinghe recently said that the “Rajapakse regime” is worse than the Portuguese, Dutch and the English he made clear where he stands.


The Provincial Council of the Northern Province led unofficially by Ananthi is influenced by the west and especially the American ambassador who acts as if she is the Viceroy of the Northern Province. If not for the intervention by these anti Sinhala forces the Ananthi faction would have no power at all, and the Northern Province Provincial Council would not become a threat to the sovereignty of the country. This may not be the best time to do so but the government should seriously consider “awarding” persona non grata status to the lady from America, who is definitely a threat to the sovereignty of Sri Lanka.


Nalin De Silva

31-01-2014