“The Vaddukoddai Resolution began by saying that from the dawn of history Sri Lanka was divided into two nations – the Tamil and the Sinhalese. This separatist claim outlined in the Vaddukoddai Resolution was in need of intellectual and academic respectability as no recognized history book has confirmed this claim. It was a questionable idea running in search of authors to confirm it.”
(September 28, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) It is the task of each generation that inherit a shared past to redefine itself in facing new challenges. The challenge posed by the northern forces has not only thrown the nation into a volatile situation that could not be contained by international or national agreements but has also forced the nation to engage in defining itself all over again by re-examining its past to discover the route that brought them to the present.
The battle that is waged right now is just not a military exercise to regain lost territory, or to prove its mettle and worth as a collective capable of defending its inherited identity. It is also an ideological battle to re-examine ourselves, our values and the inherited heritage which provided political space for peaceful co-existence of multi-ethnic, multi-religious communities throughout our history until it exploded in the post-independence era under over-determining political pressures coming down from the north. The meaning of this war is not so much in winning territory as in regaining, restoring and reinforcing the values that enriched the political landscape for peaceful co-existence of all communities as in the past.
In this war the ownership of territory is as much at stake as the ownership of history. Every diverse socio-political strand that tangles with the complexities dominating contemporary politics is derived directly from its history. In one sense, it can be called “history wars”. In fact, running parallel to the war on the ground is the “history wars” at the ideological level. After the Vadukoddai Resolution was passed in 1976 under the direct supervision of S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the father of Tamil separatism, an army of academics rose up armed with new theories to revise Sri Lankan history. The main theme of these revisionists was to justify the main objectives of the Vaddukoddai Resolution, mainly the homeland theory of the Tamils and the justification of the war declared by the Tamils against the Sinhalese.
The Vaddukoddai Resolution began by saying that from the dawn of history Sri Lanka was divided into two nations – the Tamil and the Sinhalese. This separatist claim outlined in the Vaddukoddai Resolution was in need of intellectual and academic respectability as no recognized history book has confirmed this claim. It was a questionable idea running in search of authors to confirm it. This theory of two nations could be made credible only by, first, drawing geographical boundaries that no one knew existed before and, second, by filling the space within the imaginary boundaries with a narrative that was not known to the ancient, medieval or modern historians. Unable to fill their “homeland” constructed in 1976 they filled it with concocted theories. As the northern political forces gathered momentum a whole new school of revisionists cropped up following the politicized history outlined in the Vaddukoddai Resolution to challenge the values, beliefs and the known facts on which this nation was built.
Broadly speaking, it can be divided into two main schools: 1. the Peradeniya school pioneered by Dr. G. C. Mendis and Prof. K.M. de Silva, Sri Lanka’s foremost historian in the pre-politicized stage and 2. the Colombo school with left-leaning theoreticians adhering strictly to a de-constructed history produced more to conform to the political agenda outlined in the Vaddukoddai Resolution than to the evolutionary narrative of events in its sequential order in the colonial and post-independence era. The distinguishing characteristic of the Colombo school of revisionists was to import or manufacture theories to hold up the political platform sketched in the Vaddukodai Resolution leaving out the plain historical narrative which does not confirm the history of revisionists.
For instance, the revisionists invariably start their history from “1956” blaming S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike disregarding the basic fact that the first communal political party, the Tamil Mahajana Sabhai, was formed on August 15th 1921 in Jaffna demanding communal representation rejecting territorial representation. The south did not react to this instantly. The south was more concerned with winning the cooperation of communities to present a common front against the British regime. In the twenties the south was engaged actively in issues of social justice and the living conditions of the rising working class. A. E. Goonesinha, the pioneering labour leader who had links with the British Labour Party, was leading the working class strikes on a massive scale. There was an anti-British political element too in these strikes. Later the Marxists surfaced in the thirties mobilizing and leading the anti-imperialist forces
Though the north too was involved in the swaraj movement – mainly among the Tamil youth – the Vellahla elite was more absorbed in consolidating their feudal and colonial privileges, positions and power by oppressing the lower-castes of Jaffna. The new Sinhala bourgeoisie was focused on two major fronts: 1. the rising Marxists and 2. the dying British colonialists. It took a long while for the Sinhala community to raise their voices as a common collective. It happened in 1937 when S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, the Western classics scholar from Oxford, launched the Sinhala Maha Sabha, which later merged with the UNP in 1945.
These inescapable dates point to the fact that the rise and growth of Tamil communalism had no direct causal connection with the rise of the pancha maha balavegaya in 1956 – the grassroot forces spearheaded by Bandaranaike. In fact, the sequence of events can be taken to prove that Sinhala communalism was a direct reaction against the dominant Western forces than the Tamils. Sinhala novelists, poets, the emerging bourgeoisie, the sangha were focused on targeting the Western colonialists than the Tamils, despite the aggressive provocations that came down from the north.
Going by the sequence of historical dates there is no causal connection to prove that “Sinhala chauvinism” provoked the Tamils to embrace communal extremism. Consider, for instance, the final move made by S.J. V. Chelvanayakam, the father of separatism, to establish Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (ITAK -- Tamil State Party). Chelvanayakam launched his ITAK on December 18, 1949, just over an year after independence and long before Bandaranaike was swept into power in 1956.
This sequence of events establishes that Chelvanayakam didn’t need a Bandaranaike to launch his separatist politics. He was propelled by the internal forces of Jaffna mainly after he broke away from the All-Ceylon Tamil Congress led by his arch rival G. G. Ponnambalam. Starting from the launch of the Tamil Mahajana Sabhai in 1921 the Tamil leadership had been competing for dominance in the peninsula by accusing rival parties of “collaborating” or being lackeys of the Sinhalese. By 1956 the Tamil leadership had prepared the ground and sowed the seeds for communalism to sprout, raising its ugly heads in the north. The political pendulum that swung from the English-speaking, Westernized elite to the grassroot end of the political spectrum in 1956 was inevitable and necessary to redress the imbalances of colonial history. Bandaranaike’s task was to give the Sinhala people the heritage they lost under nearly 500 years of foreign rule.
After gaining independence all ex-colonies focused on restoring the lost rights of the people under colonial rule. The main thrust of nationalism that swept the colonies in post-World WarII era was essentially to restore the lost rights of the people. Bandaranaike’s politics was no different. His Sinhala Only Bill was to restore the right of the people to communicate with the elected government not in alien English but in native Sinhala. It was an anti-imperialist act and not an anti-Tamil act. In fact, he passed the Tamil Language Special Provision Act to give the Tamils the same privilege. But the Tamil separatists exploited the anti-colonial legislation that deprived the majority the right to communicate with its own elected government to whip up anti-Sinhala racism. Chelvanayakam replaced G. G. Ponnambalam and became a formidable force in Jaffna by demonizing Bandaranaike as the enemy of the Tamils. Bandaranaike policies of bringing the government closer to the people came in handy for the racist elite of Jaffna to fertilize the soil of communalism in the north. In fact, ’56 came in as a poke in the eye of a child waiting to cry.
Chelvanayakam, however, did not need any assistance from his Old Thomian (they were both school mates at St. Thomas, Mt. Lavinia) to launch his separatism. He was driven by two internal imperatives: 1. the anti-Sinhala communalism that had been rolling down the decades from 1921 and 2. his bitter rivalry with G. G. Ponnambalam who had joined the Senanayake government at the end of his 50-50 campaign in the forties. Chelvanayakam accused him of being a “collaborationist” who had betrayed the cause of the Tamils. By 1949 Jaffna had taken the final step to paint itself into the communal corner. Having gone as far as separatism they were forced to take the next step of violence endorsed in the Vadukoddai Resolution because separatism and violence are inseparable. Separatist movements invariably are accompanied by violence because an established state will not part with territory to appease the separatists. So the separatist movement which began in 1949 ran like water following its logical and natural gradient until it ended in the Vaddukoddai Resolution in 1976, declaring war against the Sinhalese.
[To be continued]
(H.L.D.Mahindapala: Editor, Sunday and Daily Observer (1990 - 1994). President, Sri Lanka Working Journalists' Association (1991 -1993). Secretary-General, South Asia Media Association (1993 -1994). He has been featured as a political commentator in Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Special Broadcasting Services and other mainstream TV and radio stations in Australia.)
Post a Comment