After Kilinochchi

"The Tamil supremacy was established and it was drilled into the heads of the Vellala leaders that they were the leaders of the country. Tamil racism was sponsored by the British in order to crush Sinhala nationalism and they themselves brought labour from present Tamil Nadu to act as a buffer between the Sinhalas in the up country and the British government in Sri Lanka."

by Prof. Nalin de Silva

(January 07, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The terrorist who had been described as a military genius by Solheim, you remember the guy, has been defeated. It is now only a matter of time before the armed forces and the police that include the special task force will completely defeat the armed terrorist gang that had the support of the west and India at one time or another. I was a participant in a Rupavahini programme recently where I tried to analyse the situation and come to a certain conclusion. However the inexperienced presenter did not know anything on building an argument and he was only happy to fill the time allocated with some words, and he was not interested in the conclusion! I will try to present my case through this column.

How did the armed forces managed to defeat the so called invincible terrorist group of the westerners? A number of factors have contributed to the victory of the armed forces. The dedication, the capability, discipline and the heroic involvement of the soldiers have been one of the most important factors. Then we have the military leadership given by the secretary to the Ministry of Defence and the commanders of the armed forces. Thirdly the political leadership given by the President contributed very much to this victory. Then we come to the ideological hegemony that was finally established over the hegemony of the non national forces that gathered behind Solheim and others to inflate the terrorists into a mythical invincible force.

It was only the other day that Shanie advocated a ceasefire for the Christmas. He/she was not alone in requesting the ceasefire, and there were others like the all religions group. When the government ignored all these Samaritans and humanitarians Shanie thought that it was an opportunity lost, of course for peace. However one could achieve peace by defeating the terrorists though they will definitely explode a few bombs here and there for sometime, but not for long. It follows that the government by not declaring a ceasefire in fact did not give any breathing space for the LTTE, which is what Shanie and others wanted, and accelerated the peace process. These ceasefires are only Trojan horses and I am sure that the President is well aware of it. If a ceasefire was declared for Christmas then ceasefires would have had to be declared for other religious festivals as well, and the armed forces would have been spending more time in the barracks.

The LTTE was elivated to the status of an invincible force by the westerners with the assistance of India and with the ample support given by the so called intellectuals. There were mushroom war specialists some of whom called it a war and sometimes eelam war. They went on to call it eelam war one two three four, though strictly speaking there was no war at all. These so called experts who do not have any conceptual clarity have gone on to call the present operations the eelam war IV. The armed forces were only involved in operations against the terrorists and it was neither a civil war nor a war between two countries. Apart from these editors and others who talked of a war there were others who thought that war was not for Buddhists. One Thambiah supposed to be a so called sociologist wrote a book entitled Buddhism betrayed. His arguments were met though not in the jargon of western sociology and other western social sciences that limp behind western physical sciences. The dry jargon of western academic disciplines is not for us and we avoid it as much as possible, in spite of the third class engineers who turned out to be third class sociologists, and others.

The "gonibilla" that was created out of a coward (what spirited tigers) gang of terrorists was exploded long time ago and we advocated defeating of the LTTE and said that the terrorists could be defeated when most of the others had been mesmerized by the western "war experts", who compared Prabhakaran not only to the best guerrilla leaders but to conventional war heroes such as Napoleon. We knew that the terrorist leader was not the cobra that was presented to us but a mere rattlesnake or "garandiya". The garandiya may escape with the assistance of the west perhaps to establish an eelam in exile. Whatever he does he is bound to fail, but the forces should try to bring him to Colombo to be given a deserving farewell, perhaps in the presence of the western diplomats.

It is a well known secret that the westerners tried to apply pressure to the government not to go forward with the operations. The former commanders also had tried to convince the former Presidents that the terrorists could not be defeated. The former Presidents were more than willing to listen to those spineless commanders, and go down on their knees to the western diplomats. We were able to see through it and had written on number of times that if the government were to say no to the demands by the west firmly then there was nothing that the latter could do. All credit should go to Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse for standing up to western and Indian pressure and he would be ranked with great Sinhala kings such as Gemunu, Valagamba, Dhathusena, Vijayabahu and Parakramabahu.

It was not only the LTTE that has been defeated. It is basically Tamil racism created and nurtured by the Dutch and the British that was defeated. I do not want to go into details as I have dealt with this subject on number of occasions but suffice is to mention that the Vellalas who were brought by the Dutch for the tobacco cultivation were made the leaders of Sri Lanka (Ceylon) by the British later on. The British who were afraid of Sinhala nationalism from the very beginning cultivated a Tamil vellala leadership around the Ponnamabalam Coomaraswami family over the Sinhala leaders. The Sinhala people who constituted more than seventy five percent of the population with a history of more than two thousand three hundred years were equated with the descendants of Tamil Vellalas who did not have a history of more than two hundred years at that time.



The Tamil supremacy was established and it was drilled into the heads of the Vellala leaders that they were the leaders of the country. Tamil racism was sponsored by the British in order to crush Sinhala nationalism and they themselves brought labour from present Tamil Nadu to act as a buffer between the Sinhalas in the up country and the British government in Sri Lanka. The demand for equal representation in the legislature for Sinhalas and Tamils sprung from this Tamil supremacy which was a minority supremacy established with the assistance of the British imperialists.

However, with universal franchise which the Vellalas opposed introduced by the British in good faith of the leaders that they had created for the Sinhalas the things began to go wrong for Tamil minority supremacy and Tamil racism. The leaders after all did not fail the British, and until the advent of Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse the west was not unhappy in general with their products. There was one Tamil Vellala, a Christian for that matter who understood that it was not possible for the Tamils to be leaders of the country after the introduction of universal franchise and he opted for a separate state in the Northern and the Eastern Provinces. The so called injustices to the Tamils were created and grievances of Tamils were mentioned in addition to a bogus history of the country and the Northern and the Eastern Provinces in order to justify a separate state in the two provinces. We asked the question as to what the injustices caused to the Tamils due to being Tamils and no satisfactory answer was given. It turned out that these so called grievances had arisen out of administrative problems which could have been corrected without any difficulty. However, the Tamil Vellala elite having realised that they could not become leaders of Sri Lanka as a whole wanted a separate state and the next generation took up arms to achieve what the elite had wanted. The whole exercise was based on a bogus injustices problem and as such there is no problem to be solved as far as the Tamils (and Muslims) are concerned.

However there was a problem, it being Tamil minority supremacy and the solution the Tamils proposed with the assistance of the west, which became part of the problem was a separate state. There was only one solution to the whole problem and now that solution has been given. Any military solution is also a political solution and the armed forces have now given a political solution to the problem of Tamil minority supremacy and separatism. The APRC has no role to play now and all talk on devolution of power to satisfy Tamil minority supremacy and separatism has no currency. The APRC should be dissolved.

However we have a different problem altogether. That is the question of integrating the Tamils and other ethnic groups to the already existing Sinhala nation may be under a different name. One may call it national integration but it is definitely not nation building as a nation already exists. The national integration is up to the Tamils and the other ethnic groups and a solution could be found if the Tamil and other leaders stop going round the world with the assistance of the west criticizing the Sinhala nation for so called injustices. If they want they can learn from Obama who has become culturally an Anglo Saxon American Christian (he is Christian in religion as well) without criticizing the existing American nation and culture. Obama unlike some of our Tamil (and Muslim) leaders has been integrated into the American society and is not a minority President. He knows more than any Muslim in the world that had he remained a Muslim he would never have become the President of USA. - Sri Lanka Guardian