The end of politics of the Tamil elite

by Prof. Nalin de Silva

(August 11, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian)Shamindra Ferdinando has to be congratulated on rejecting the award he was given at a recent journalism awards ceremony. It is clear that the remnants of Tamil elite politics are still to be found in Colombo, London, Toronto and such other places but nobody will ever be able to go to pre Nandikadal era, even if hundreds of awards are given to some henchmen and henchwomen of Tamil elite politics involved in propaganda against Sinhala nationalism.The times have changed and though the so-called brilliant political analysts who were once for political solutions through peace talks are now credited for "forecasting" that peace would not be achieved without defeating Prabhakaran, even their time is over. The Tamil politics are into a different era and many Sinhala people would not be bothered whether KP is in custody or not. This KP under GR (Gotabhaya Rajapaksa) is not the same as that KP under VP (Velupillai Prabhakaran) and we have already entered a period of reconciliation of Sinhalas, Tamils, Muslims and others living in Sri Lanka, leaving out the elite aligned nation of Sinhalas and the elite Tamils and Muslims.

A Sri Lankan nation with Sinhala Buddhist culture as the significant culture that respects the other cultures will emerge but it will take some time and the aborted Ceylonese nation will have to be cremated with all the "pansakula" rites, though it never had any existence as a living or non living entity. The Ceylonese nation existed only in the minds of the English and their obedient servants and 1956 will be triumphant before 2056. Though Jathika Chinthanaya will not be credited immediately for what it has achieved by "enlightened" political analysts both here and abroad we are not bothered as we know how histories are (there being no history as such but only histories) written and we would wait for few more years to write our own history. At present we do not have power in the university history departments nor in other such places and may those who believe in an objective history go to their graves without seeing the history written by the Sinhala nationalists and rest in peace.

However, whether they like it or not I have to explain the KP phenomenon if I may call it so not for the benefit of the English historians and Tamil elite but for the serene joy of the common man (hudee jana pahan sanvegaya), in the tradition of writing of history in our culture. In other words how did that KP become this KP and has the so-called 9/11 got anything to do with that? The US may be worried about their security after that incident now called 9/11, but it has not changed its attitude towards global terrorism. The US in particular and the west in general have only one "principle". That is to safeguard and propagate their culture while weakening if not destroying other cultures.

The standard explanation of the Tamil problem in Sri Lanka as formulated by the west and Tamil elite could be stated as follows. "The Sinhala leaders, especially after 1956, have discriminated against the Tamils in Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan Tamils wanted to redress their grievances through negotiations but the Sinhala governments were not willing to come to any settlement as the governments were forced not to do so by the Sinhala extremists. The Tamil leaders then had to resort to peaceful sathyagrahas but even then the governments did not listen. Instead of rectifying थेसे injustices to the Tamils, the Sinhala governments under pressure from the Sinhala extremists ordered the police and the armed forces to attack the innocent Tamil civilians who were engaged in sathyagrahas. Thus Tamil youth had no alternative but to take up arms against the Sinhala state. The Tamils wanted to rule their own areas, the so-called traditional homelands in the eastern and northern provinces."

However, in this formulation nothing is mentioned on the founding of the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (Lanka Tamil State Party) in 1949, seven years before 1956 in order to establish a Tamil state and of the politics of G. G. Ponnambalam, who wanted fifty-fifty, in essence reducing the Sinhala representation in the legislature to less than fifty percent, and of Ponnambalam Ramanathan and his brother Ponnambalam Arunachalam, who demanded equal representation for Tamils and Sinhalas, in that order, in the Legislature. These are sometimes referred to as communal politics of that era but the Tamil politicians who were involved were the grand uncles and uncles of Prabhakaran, who wanted the leadership of the country inspired and sponsored by the English governors and other English officials. It is unfortunate that some Sinhalas who have been brainwashed by the English propagandists still think that everything started after 1956.

The western countries continued to help anti-Sinhala politics of Prabhakaran and they used not only the Tamil politicians in Sri Lanka but the NGOs the western social scientists both here and abroad, and also the so-called diaspora. After the death of Prabhakaran the politics of Anglicised Vellala elite has also died a natural death, though there are ghosts involved in awarding anti Sinhala journalists and others prizes and medals in order to give them recognition". Prabhakaran, who took the mantle of Anglicised Tamil Vellala politics from Amirthalingam was neither Anglicised nor a Vellala. Amirthalingam was not Anglicised but came from a Vellala family. Changes had been taking place in the leadership without many of us taking note of them though both Amirthalingam and Prabhakaran had been continuing with the anti-Sinhala politics.

As I have mentioned before Tamil nationalism unlike Sinhala nationalism is top down and not bottom up. The leadership of Arumugam Navalar collapsed in no time and the Anglicised elite took over the leadership of the Tamils. Among the Sinhalas a similar phenomenon took place the leadership of Anagarika Dharmapala being defeated by the Senanayakes. However, it was not identical with what happened in Tamil politics as the Senanayakes though somewhat Anglicised were Olcott Buddhists and had at least one foot in the Sinhala nationalist movement. The Sinhala Buddhists have not been satisfied with this leadership provided by the Olcott Buddhists and had been looking for a Sinhala Buddhist leadership ever since.

The defeat of Prabhakaran had nothing to with 9/11 incident contrary to the claims to that effect by some political analysts trained by the west, who cannot find internal reasons to explain the victory of the armed forces. With all the deficiencies it was the leadership of Mahinda Rajapaksa that finally defeated the LTTE and the Anglicised Tamil politics sponsored by the west. The Sinhala nation was armed with theories as well as this time and the President was immensely helped by those theories.

With the killing of Prabhakaran the west and the Anglicised Tamil elite had nobody in Sri Lanka who could give leadership to the anti Sinhala politics, and they had to depend on the so-called diaspora. However, the diaspora is not a homogeneous body and not all Tamils who have migrated in the recent years are Anglicised Tamil Vellalas. There have been people such as Karuna, Pillaiyan, Daya Master, George Master in the LTTE, who come from ordinary families but were used by the elite to "fight their war". It was only a matter of time before they left the LTTE and the politics of the Tamil elite. Some sections of the diaspora are only following these pioneers who left the LTTE, and KP is the best known example in this regard. KP is from an ordinary family and he like many others has now realised the folly of the policies of the Tamil elite that was sponsored by the English and the other westerners. There is no point attempting to resurrect the APRC or to establish some other body to find solutions to a discarded formulation based on so called injustices to the Tamils. The government is engaged in some kind of development in the north and the east and what we have to solve is a different problem and not that formulated by the Tamil elite and the west.