It was in 1833 the Legislative Assembly
was established by the English colonialists, which comprised 10 official
members and six unofficial members. All the unofficial members and four of the
official members were appointed by the English governor while six of the
official members were members of the executive committee. Thus in essence all
the members were appointed by the governor. Of the six unofficial members three
were Europeans, one was Sinhala, one Tamil and the other Burgher. There were no
Muslims. This was the beginning of minority communal politics with the
blessings of the English who nourished Tamil racism that had been established
by the Dutch, and 2015 Presidential elections saw the continuation of it. The
Sinhala people especially the Buddhists were denied of their due place in the
country ignoring their history of more than two thousand years compared with
the history of Vellala Tamils who were brought here by the Dutch, the
demography of Sri Lanka with more than seventy percent of the Sinhala people
and above all the culture the Sinhalas have built in this country. Tamil racism
has since 1833 grown into Tamil separatism in the forties of the last century
and into Tamil terrorism in the seventies. Muslim racism which first began as a
phenomenon against Tamil racism in the final decades of the nineteenth century
has since the seventies turned against Sinhala people. The history of Tamil
racism is described in :Prabhakaran, ohugeseeyala, baappala ha massinala
(Prabhakaran, his grand uncles, uncles and cousins – of course political),
which is now in its fourth edition.
There was a reason for the English to
encourage Tamil racism against the Sinhala people in addition to its divide and
rule policy. The Sinhala people could not be conquered by any nation, ethnic community, dynasty in
their history of more than two thousand years, and finally exactly two hundred
years ago in 1815 the cunning diplomacy of Doyle and others made some of the
Sinhala leaders to sign a pact with the English, erroneously called the Kandyan
Convention by the English and their imitating “educated” Sri Lankans,
establishing English Christian colonialism over the whole country against the
wish of the Sinhala leaders. There were two important clauses in the Pact, I am
not tired of repeating, namely that the country will be ruled according to
Sinhala customs and that Buddhagama and Devagama, meaning the Buddhism as
practiced in Sri Lanka (not pure Theravada if there is any such religion),
would be protected. However, the English being gentlemen breached the two
clauses in no time.
There are parallels between 1815 and
2015. Having experienced 2015, it is not difficult to imagine now how the
English would have propagated myths against Sri Wickrema Rajasighe the last
king of the Sinhala kingdom. The false propaganda by the present government
party against the previous government has not stopped even after the formation
of the Maithripala- Ranil-Chandrika (MRC) government with the assistance of
Champika, Rajitha, Rishard, and Sumanthiran though the latter has not taken up
a portfolio. Mangala Samaraweera goes to town claiming and proclaiming that
there was an attempt by Mahinda Rajapaksa to cling to power with the assistance
of the armed forces in the morning of the ninth of January, and this is a
serious allegation. Ranil Wickremesinghe should either confirm or deny this
allegation as he was involved in the transition of power and not Mangala
Samarweera. By his silence Ranil is only adding fuel to this propaganda by
Mangala and it is not a good augury for the so called good governance that the
present government promised. Promises and Pacts in the tradition of English
colonialism that is with us even today are meant to be broken.
The English in 1815 had turned most of
the Sinhala leaders against the King and we tend to forget that even
Keppetipola Nilame had decided to serve the English after the Pact. When the
Sinhala people who were virtually leaderless turned against the English when
the latter breached the Sinhala English Pact of 1815, it was Keppetipola who is
supposed to have led the English army that was sent to overcome the first
independence struggle of the Sinhalas against the English. However, Keppetipola
listened to the Sinhala people sent back the English army with the weapons,
without following the westerners and their traditions, and led the independence
struggle against the English. This was in 1817, and Keppetipola was defeated,
murdered and finally the Sinhala people in Wellassa were massacred by the
English. Even after that some Sinhala leaders continued to serve the English
and today the situation is not much different. Are we heading towards a 2017
massacre of the Sinhala people this time with the assistance of the JVP and the
JHU? We have to work with the SLFP (Mahinda) to avoid such scenario.
The Rajpaksas are blamed for the
establishment of the Bodu Bala Sena. However, my understanding is that it was
established by a person(s) now in the MRC government but the BBS having
understood what was happening somewhat lately had turned against its mentor
referred to as the “usa man” (tall man) by the leading Bhikkus in the BBS. The
irony is that Rajitha who was vehemently opposed to the BBS and Rishard who had
had verbal fights with the mentor in the cabinet are again with the latter in
the new cabinet after defeating Mahinda.
There were at least five factors that
contributed to the defeat of Mahinda, the major being the minority supremacy
the Tamil leaders had been expecting from 1833. I will describe them in detail in the
forthcoming articles but the above map,
with courtesy from Sunday Times, would give a picture of what happened
on the 8th January of 2015, a date which the future generations of
Sinhalas will remember with 2nd March 1815. It is a case of establishing
minority supremacy through the ballet in one case and through the pen in the other
case. The wish of the majority has been defeated through western knowledge,
maneuvering, false propaganda etc in both cases. In 2015 western technology
that was not available in 1815 was also used. The areas marked in red in the
map are those where Maithripala had won while those marked in blue are Mahinda
territory. The map is nothing but the so called Eelam map with up country,
urban areas and the Catholic belt also marked in red.
Mahinda would not have been a
nationalist in the beginning of this century. I have known him for more than
thirty years and I have some knowledge of his evolution as a politician. Unlike
some others in the Jathika Vyaparaya (nationalist movement) I did not expect
him to be a confirmed nationalist. He was a pink socialist in the beginning and
I had opposed his non nationalist policies in the nineties. However, I never
forgot that Keppetipola had served the English, and that Mahinda had never
served the English colonialists. He has been for the Palestine liberation from
his youth, a fact that the Muslims in Sri Lanka conveniently forgot to support
MRC trio following some of their leaders who identified themselves with western
colonialism against the Sinhala people whose kings settled them in the present
day eastern province to safeguard them from initial western (Portuguese)
colonialism. Mahinda had gradually turned to be a nationalist and his evolution
is far from complete. Unlike the “usa man” Mahinda has not followed a sig - sag
policy shifting from nationalism to whatever ism the former could think of for
the purpose of getting power. If Keppetipola turned a nationalist after 1817,
Mahinda became a nationalist before 2015, but not before 2005. However, we
worked for him in 2005 as we had realised his potential even then. It was in
1889, he and SB Dissanayake invited me to deliver the first Bandaranaike
Memorial lecture when the SLFP was in dire straights, probably due to the fact
that the speakers could not be found those days. I chose “panas haye daruwo” as
my title, a term that has entered into
the political vocabulary of the country. It was a turning point and the SLFP
has not looked back after that. I have no doubt the SLFP, not the Chandrika clique
that has no legal validity at all, will come back in a short space with Mahinda
as the President and a dynamic strong person as the secretary. (To be continued)
Nalin De Silva
14-01-2015