The Sri Lankan Model

"In Sri Lanka the Tamils wanted a bigger share of power at the centre from the very beginning from the days of the legislative assembly that was established by the British by appointing one representative each for the Sinhala nation and the Tamil community, ignoring the history, geography, demography etc. The British cultivated the aspirations of the Tamils from the beginning against Sinhalathva, and the Tamils were inspired to cling to the privileges that they were given by the British."
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by Prof. Nalin de Silva

(February 06, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The President has said that he is interested in devolving power within a Sri Lankan model and not according to some other model. It may be assumed that by this statement he has ruled out the much favoured Indian model and the so called British model. The Indian model is supposed to be pseudo federal while the British model could be called pseudo unitary. Thus the President in his wisdom appears to be thinking of something else. However this does not mean that everything is in order in the Dharmadveepa. The President himself talks of devolution and nobody knows what he is trying to devolve. Whether it is the legislative powers or the administrative powers that the President has in his mind will become clear with time. However meanwhile Dr. Kohona who was imported from UN or USA where the former is situated has nearly upset the apple cart by inviting the political parties to discuss devolution within an undivided country. The JVP reminding that Mahinda Chinthanaya stands for a unitary state apparently had wanted the President to explain the change in the nomenclature. It is advisable if those who surround the President, after coming from cooler climates, and other parties, especially after the Presidential elections get themselves acquainted with Mahinda Chinthanaya.

The series of articles on Sulu Karuna of Elankesan to be continued would also explain the British involvement in baptising and nurturing Tamil racism in this country. The westerners in general are of the view that the Sinhala Buddhists are responsible for the state of affairs in the country, and that any solution to the so called national question should address the grievances of the Muslims and the Tamils. They even talk of homelands of the Tamils (and the Muslims?) and are concerned of the welfare of those communities. If they have the same concern for the Muslims in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and other Muslim countries this world would have been a much better place. Though many pundits may laugh, as far as the west is concerned Theravada Buddhism is a bigger threat than Islam. The latter is after all a theistic religion whereas the former is not. Even Mahayana Buddhism is tolerated by the west as the Bodhisattva concept in that religion could be extended to a theistic version without much difficulty. The western media would highlight the "plight" of the Muslims in Sri Lanka and Thailand, but not that of the Theravada Buddhists in Bangladesh. If anybody thinks that the Christian west is becoming atheistic then he or she is mistaken. The (non Catholic) Christian west may finally discard the Jesus of the Catholics but not the God Himself. (The book and the film da Vinci Code are all about "improving" the concept of a non Roman Catholic Jesus Christ within the western Christian modernity, which Leonardo da Vinci himself, perhaps also as a result of being a member of Sion Priory, began in the fifteenth century.) The whole western Christian culture, including the Theory of Evolution, Big Bang and Newton's Laws in western Physics, is centred on the God, and the westerners cannot simply accommodate an atheistic religion such as Theravada Buddhism. Theravada Buddhist countries may not be as rich as the Muslim countries nor do they have strong armies but the "cultural" or the "spiritual" ( I prefer the word Adyathmica) strength of Theravada Buddhism as practised in Sri Lanka and South East Asia, not the Theravada Buddhism of the so called educated rationalists who refer to Kalama Sutta without reading it completely, (if they read it completely they will find that there is no rationalism in that Sutta, and the Buddha had asked the Kalamas who were subject to various "preaching" by "gurus" and shramanas , and who could not decide who was correct, to follow the "vinnus". (I have discussed the Kalama Sutta in an article I wrote to Divaina long time ago.) Rationalist Buddhism is for those Olcott Buddhists who have FAITH in or believes (or do what) western Christian science in particular and western Christian knowledge in general.

The west (including Mahayana Japan) is working on the basic assumptions that there are grievances of the Tamils (and the Muslims) as a result of the hegemony of the Sinhala Buddhists, the Tamils (and the Muslims?) have traditional homelands, the Tamils (and the Muslims?) should be helped to defeat Sinhala Buddhist hegemony, and to overcome the problems, the solution to the so called problems is devolution of legislative powers and creation of a federal state or a confederation with the eastern and the northern provinces amalgamated as one unit, in order to achieve this solution the LTTE has to be helped as long as the latter does not become a nuisance to the west as well, and to support some other leader in the LTTE if possible or to support another Tamil racist group if the LTTE becomes unmanageable. As of today the LTTE has agreed to go to their second home (or is it the third home after London) in Oslo (the government has had to agree to Oslo after initial protests, though not for "peace" talks as such) under pressure from the west. The west wants to devolve legislative powers and create a federal state or a confederation through "peace" talks. If Prabhakaran does not agree to that "solution" the west will most probably attempt to destroy him and find a new leader for the LTTE. If that too fails, the west will bring the UN forces, defeat the LTTE and force the government to devolve legislative power and create a federation or a confederation with a different Tamil racist party in power in the northern and the eastern provinces. The west knows what it wants, namely weakening Sinhalathva, punishing the Sinhala Buddhists for being atheists even after five hundred years of western Christian influence and domination, and creating the federation leading to a confederation and an Eelam, or the confederation that would lead to an Eelam in no time, with or without Prabhakaran and/or the LTTE. Their so called intellectuals such as Peter Schalk of Uppsala University in Sweden, and others at the University of Sussex and other places, work overtime on this project. The intellectually sterile imitators in Sri Lanka (any sterile imitator with some hard work can get a Ph. D., and a postgraduate degree does not mean anything when it comes to creativity) who call each other intellectuals and work in national universities and/or the NGOs could only repeat what their masters and mistresses in the west create.

It is not a secret that even those imitators who worship the west (for scholarships, fellowships, travel grants and what not) and are against the LTTE, support Tamil racism. Some of them had been members and even ministers under the EPRLF, and are only looking forward to defeat the LTTE, but not Tamil racism. It is unfortunate that most of the Sinhala Buddhists are gullible, and do not know that a person can support Tamil racism while opposing the LTTE. Opposition to the LTTE is not the same as opposition to Tamil racism and one has to be very careful in approving the anti LTTE sentiments of these supporters of Tamil racism. Ignoring these Sinhalas and others who support Tamil racism we would like to ask their masters and mistresses in the west a few simple questions. What are the Tamil (Muslim) grievances? (it has to be remembered that in the "democratic monarchy" Britain even Brazilians can get killed for mistaken identity as Muslims! We still do not know how Diana Spencer, the mother of the second heir to the throne after Charles Windsor who is only aging, died after being more than friendly with a Muslim. Muslims be aware of your new friends in the west). The question I am asking is what are the grievances that a Tamil in Sri Lanka has, merely due to being a Tamil. Have the Tamils got more privileges in the west, where there is no Sinhala Buddhist hegemony, though there are other hegemonies. Even if one assumes that there are grievances, how does devaluation of legislative power become a solution to the "problem"? For how long the Tamils have been residents continuously in the eastern and northern provinces of Sri Lanka? What is meant by the homeland of an ethnic group? Would the so called grievances be solved by devolving legislative powers to the Tamils (and the Muslims) in the so called homelands? Do the Tamils and the Muslims have the same homeland or different homelands? What would happen to the Sinhalas living in the so called homelands of the Tamils? What would happen to the Tamils (and the Muslims) living in the areas which are not identified by the masters and the mistresses as the homelands of the former? How did the eastern and northern provinces that were demarcated by the British finally in 1889, become the homelands of the Tamils (Muslims)? If the British had stuck to their original five provinces with Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa also belonging to the northern province, would the eastern province and the northern province be still called the homelands of the Tamils? How do these arbitrary demarcations lead to historical homelands? Was there a concept of Tamil Homeland in the vocabulary of the Tamil racists before 1976? What are the historical evidences for the so called historical homelands being called so? If legislative power is devolved to the eastern and the northern provinces as a solution to the so called grievances of the Tamils, would the "problems" of the Tamils living in the other provinces including the western province be solved by such devolution? If not how does the west propose to find a solution to the so called grievances of the Tamils in those provinces? Or does it mean that only the Tamils in the eastern and northern provinces have "grievances"? (I am tired of referring to the Muslims within brackets). What is the percentage of Tamil Sri Lankans living in the eastern and the northern provinces? Is it less than fifty percent? What is the percentage of the Tamils living in the eastern and the northern provinces with respect to the total population of those two provinces? Is it less than the Tamil Indians living in Tamil Nadu, and the Scots living in Scotland, when similarly calculated? Is the west trying to find a solution to the so called grievances of the Tamils or promoting the aspirations of the Tamils that were cultivated under the sponsorship of the British? When did the Tamil grievances first appear in the politics of Sri Lanka? When Ponnambalam Arunachalam and others agitated for a separate Tamil representation in the western province in the legislative assembly was it a solution to a grievance or an aspiration of the English educated Tamils (especially of the Vellalas and of the Ponnambalam-Coomaraswamy family)?

In Sri Lanka the Tamils wanted a bigger share of power at the centre from the very beginning from the days of the legislative assembly that was established by the British by appointing one representative each for the Sinhala nation and the Tamil community, ignoring the history, geography, demography etc. The British cultivated the aspirations of the Tamils from the beginning against Sinhalathva, and the Tamils were inspired to cling to the privileges that they were given by the British. The Sinhala majority of the country would never agree to satisfy the aspirations of the Tamils to have more privileges politically as well as culturally and economically, which have been interpreted as grievances by the British first and then by the west in general. The Sinhalas know that this is a problem created by the west and if the west thinks that they could "solve" it the way they want by ignoring the Sinhala majority, then they are sadly mistaken. They should realise that Kohonas who had served them previously do not represent the Sinhalas.

The Sinhalas would not agree to any devolution of legislative power to the periphery to satisfy the aspirations of the Tamil racists and the west that supports Tamil racism. If the west or even India attempts to answer the above questions without the big brother attitude, then it would be realised that the Sinhalas could agree to sharing legislative power at the centre, and not to devolution of legislative power to the northern and the eastern provinces individually or combined as a unit. The problem with Tamil racism inspired by the British was that by sharing power at the centre they meant more than fifty percent of power should be given to the Tamils. The representation problems that came up within the legislative assembly, the state council including the fifty fifty representation which in practise gave more than fifty percent of representation to the Tamils, and in the Parliament as demonstrated by the evidence given before the Soulbury Commission, illustrate the aspirations of the Tamils racists, which had the support of the British. The Sinhalas are guided by the history and the unique culture that they built in this country and of course the Eksesath Rajya. The Ruhunu Rarta, Pihiti Rata and Maya Rata were not federal provinces as some imitators would like to believe. These imitators are never consistent in their arguments. They would on the one hand say there was no unitary state in this country before 1815, as unitary states were first established in the west and then introduced to the other countries by the western Christian colonialists. However, on the other hand they are very eager to point out that what we had in this country was a federation as if federation was an innovation of the Sinhalas. Would the west agree that federations were found in the east before they were established in the west. The fact that we have a word Eksesath, which is very much like unitary, is forgotten by the imitators. What the Sinhalas want is an Eksesath Rajya, where the legislative power at the centre is shared by the Sinhalas, Tamils, Muslims and others according to the history, geography, culture, demography etc., and where administrative powers are devolved to the periphery as much as possible to various Ratas. In that context and sense a Yapana Rata and a Kanda Udarata could be established together with Ruhuna, Pihiti and Maya re-demarcated. We may even have Upa Janadhipathis of the five ratas thus established resembling the Epas and Mapas that we come across in history.