by Darshanie Ratnawalli
(April 27, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The unease I have long felt about Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka crystallized into distaste on Sunday 13 June 2010 when I came across his interview in that day’s Lakbima. It provided a startling glimpse into the dimension of reality Dr. DJ either inhabits for real or wants to sell to the unwashed masses. The way he tells it, there are lessons to be learnt from the whole Dutugemunu episode (api dutugemunu rajathumagen padam igenagatha yuthuy) because king Dutugemunu handled this dichotomized collective identity thing rather well. He had the right idea about how to manage a country whose intrinsic dichotomy was manifest on the geographical level. In 2nd century BC finding himself the leader of a country afflicted with a dichotomy so evident that it could have been rendered in two colours in a cartographic representation, king Dutugemunu showed his stuff. There were those people inhabiting those areas and these people inhabiting these areas and never the twain would meet. They were in fact going to separate. Our hero nipped that in the bud. But after the war he rendered unto those people the administration and cultural identity of those people and did not try to force on them the admin and cultural imprint of these people. Hence the valid lesson 2000 years later.
“අපි දුටුගැමුණු රජතුමාගෙන් පාඩම් ඉගෙනගත යුතුයි. ඔහු රටේ වෙනම රාජ්ජයක් ඇති කිරීමට උත්සහ කළ ද්‍රවිඩ බල සේනා විනාශ කළා . එහෙත් යුද්ධයෙන් අනතුරුව ඔහු ඒ ප්‍රදේශ පාලනය කිරීමට එම වැසියන්ගේ සංස්කෘතිය හොඳින් දන්නා ද්‍රවිඩ යුව රජෙක් පත් කළා . බුද්ධිමත් පාලකයෙකු වශයෙන් ඔහු සියලු දෙයම බලය පාවිච්චි කර විසඳීමට උත්සහ කළේ නැහැ . ඒ වගේම ඔහු මුදාගත් ප්‍රදේශයේ වැසියන්ගේ සංස්කෘතිය සහ ජීවන රටාව සහමුලින්ම වෙනස් කිරීමට උත්සහ කලෙත් නැහැ . දෙමල ජාතිකයන්ගේ සාමුහික අනන්‍යතාව වෙනස් කිරීමට උත්සහ කලෙත් නැහැ .
We should learn from King Dutugemunu. He destroyed the Tamil battalions who tried to establish a separate kingdom in the country. But after the war to govern those areas he appointed a Dravidian yuvaraj well conversant with the culture of those people. As a wise ruler he did not try to solve everything through force. And he did not try to change completely the culture and the lifestyle of the people in the salvaged areas. Nor did he try to change the collective identity of the Tamil people.
Any sane person reasonably abreast with the Dutugemunu episode (161-137BC) and it’s almost impossible to live in Sri Lanka and not be abreast with this particular segment, would at this point be struggling with disbelief(that the ability to acquire information either passively via unconscious absorption during long association or actively under the imperative of a questing mind, both widely held to be elementary signs of intelligence, should be missing), nausea (that they should be missing in such a prominent personage or that a personage missing them should be so prominent)or laughter (No idea why it’s a laughing matter. But one person I pointed this out to did laugh. Maybe it was indulgent laughter as in ‘whatever will the impudent fellow say next?’)
But what if the above historical sketch by Dr DJ does not deserve the scorn, ridicule, incredulous amazement and the violent distaste contained in the above reaction. What if Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka has merely become attuned to the vibrations and emanations of a parallel universe in the multiverse, presenting an alternative reality that finds expression in an alternate history?
In the historical universe or the actual world the sentence “king Dutugemunu appointed a Dravidian yuvaraj to govern those areas’’ has a hard time standing up due to the absence of a) a Dravidian yuvaraj b) those areas during the period under discussion. What Dutugemunu had in the way of a yuvaraj, was Saddhatissa who was his own brother and eventual successor. Similarly a pear shaped island in the Indian ocean, southeast of India, coordinates 70N and 810E, comprising of those areas and these areas wherein those people and these people respectively were domiciled together with their respective cultures and collective identities had no existence in 2nd century BC in the historical universe we occupy. This is not to say that such an island where such conditions prevailed is not real. It is an alternative reality, having a real and actual existence in a parallel world, a parallel universe in the multiverse or possibly a different branch of the single universe, which is every bit as real as the world or universe or branch of universe we occupy. And we will call that parallel universe, Dayan Jayatilleka universe or djverse for no other reason than that one needs to call it something for ease of reference. In the djverse then, the sentence “king Dutugemunu appointed a Dravidian yuvaraj to govern those areas’’ stands up proudly, without diffidence or excuse sure that it won’t induce the better class of reader to gag.
We need a compass. To pin down our location in the multiverse, I am going to have to do something boring, tiresome, and even slightly distasteful. There’s a popular hypothesis about the Neanderthals, that due to a short lifespan the elder Neanderthals were hindered in imparting the acquired wisdom of the ages to the younger generation, so that all Neanderthal inventions would get reinvented every ten years or so. Imagine some Neanderthal elder spirit doomed to stick around the clan for an eternity; every ten years he would say ‘oh not again’ with increasing frustration as the spear sharpening tool is invented for the nth consecutive time by the current bright young Neanderthal. The next paragraph may enable many of you to relate to that Neanderthal spirit. In each new book, PG Wodehouse used to tell his old readers to let their attention wander for the duration of time it took him to put the new readers abreast of the conditions, constants and laws of the Wodehouse universe; and preparing to use the next para as an identifier, a locating device for our actual universe, I too have to caution that it would be skipable for most of you. If you have lived in Sri Lanka, chances are that you have picked up most of this during your commodity wrapper reading. Apparently this is not the case for everyone.
By the third century BC, Dravidian intrusion into the affairs of Sri Lanka became more marked. In 177 BC, two south Indian adventurers usurped power at Anuradhapura and ruled for twenty-two years, to be followed ten years later (in 145BC) by another, Elara, who maintained himself in power for a much longer period - for forty-four years, according to the Mahavamsa-…These Dravidian attempts at establishing control over the Anuradhapura kingdom appear to have been motivated partly at least by the prospect of influence over its external trade.
Apart from this, there is evidence from archaeological investigations conducted at Pomparippu in the north-west of the island in 1956 and 1957 of a culture which bears some resemblance to the south Indian megalithic culture;18 the similarities are most noticeable in the Adichchanallur site just across the water from Pomparippu.19 There are striking similarities in the style of urn burials and the characteristics of the pottery and the associated objects found at these two sites.
The settlement at Pomparippu and a possible one at Katiraveli in the east of the island need to be treated as isolated occurrences, not as evidence of widespread Tamil settlements.20 These two settlements could be dated between the second century BC and the third century BC. For many centuries thereafter there is no inscriptional or other archeological evidence, or literary evidence, of Tamil settlements in the country. There were, of course, Tamil mercenaries who were brought to the island occasionally from about the fifth century AD, but more particularly from the seventh century AD onwards. Their presence in the early stages was for short periods and served a political purpose. They fought on behalf of aspirants to the throne and on behalf of rulers whose position was insecure. Thus Sri Lanka from very early in its recorded history had seen groups of persons from southern India enter the island as traders, occasionally as invaders and as mercenaries but their presence was of peripheral significance in the early demography of the island.
-K.M.de Silva- A History of Sri Lanka-2005 ed. Pg. 13-
“Set against the cautionary note above, and writing as a non-specialist layman, let me sustain my suggestion that ancient history, and for that matter, medieval history, is of little use to us today by venturing to make two bold statements. In effect I am deliberately belling the lion.
1. Vijaya did not exist. Vijaya is a symbolic idea.
2. If Elāra existed as a chieftain in the second century BCE, he was not a Tamil; and, indeed, the Sinhala-Tamil opposition carried no meaning in that century…
… Two, Elāra: in the fourth century Dīpavamsa, which predates the Mahāvamsa by 150 years or so, there is a relatively brief reference to the struggle between two chieftains named Gāmini and Elāra (Elāla). But there is no suggestion that Elāra is a Damila (Tamil). It was Mahānāma, writing at about the time when Dhātusena had displaced invading Tamil chieftains, who rendered this battle between two ancient chieftains into an epic Sinhala-Tamil conflict. He did so while constructing a broader saga that rendered Dutugämunu into a warrior hero and defender of the Dhammic way. In brief, Mahānāma read his present into the past in order to underline his principal claim, namely that Lanka or Hēladiv was a place selected to preserve Buddhism in its pristine form, with the Sinhala cast as the chosen people.”
-Dr. Michael Roberts - History as Dynamite. Let Us Circumscribe History Talk- Island 1 January 2000-
“Our observations on the ethnic aspects of Sri Lanka’s history up to about the end of the 12th century have to remain brief. They are, in fact, repetitions in summary form of what has been stated in a large volume of historical writings. Yet our sketch is adequate to show the lack of substance in the assertions that ‘Throughout the centuries from the dawn of history the Sinhalese and Tamil nations have divided between them the possession of Ceylon’. Quite clearly, such a contention does not conform to any of the scholarly interpretations of known facts of history that relate to the nature of links that bind Sri Lanka’s main ethnic groups to the island as a whole and to its different parts.
Discarding, then, the claimed primordial origin and continuity of the dichotomous possession of Sri Lanka by two national groups as a distortion of the country’s ancient history, we can now … ”
Professor G.H. Peiris’ ‘An appraisal of the concept of a traditional Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka’ – The Island- 25th March 1999
At this point however, we should be guilty of nitpicking, unless we take a small break from the clever sarcasm and consider the very real possibility that when Dr. DJ set out to recount that interesting exemplary tale starring Dutugemunu, the Dravidian Yuvaraj and Those Areas, he was hazily informed by a hazy notion of Parakramabhahu vi of the 15th century AD and not Dutugemunu of 2nd century BC. Substitute the name Parakramabhahu vi for Dutugemunu in the above quoted portion of the DJ interview and we get an alternative reality whose points of divergence from the known universe while considerable are not so epic as to render it totally alien. One doesn’t mean to harp. Nothing alienates a discerning readership than harping. But the mind of an academic who fails, despite being closely associated with the ideology of the conflict for so many years, to distinguish between Dutugemunu and Parakramabahu vi and be cognizant of the implications of the 1600 years separating them, excites the emotion known as horrified fascination and invites speculation along interesting lines. For the sake of the discerning readership, we will now swallow the horrified fascination, rein in the slanderous speculation, make allowances for chronological confusion and concede that the Dutugemunu-Tamil yuvaraj-those people-those areas segment narrated by Dr DJ should perhaps not be taken so literally. What matters is, not its details but the essence which is that in the djverse, at some point in history, not clearly fixed in Dr. DJ’s mind (may one be allowed a small sigh here, discerning readership?), the dichotomous possession of this island by two national identities was achieved.
At some historical period, never mind if it was BC or AD, those people, those areas, their culture and identity configured themselves in counter point to these people, these areas, their culture and identity and created a context, which was identical to or at least brought to mind, the Russia-Chechnya situation, Mindanao in the Philippines scenario and the Basque county in Spain picture. Keep this in the forefront of you mind. It is one of the great constants of the djverse. You will sense it lurking subliminally behind many of his pronouncements as a taken for granted charter, legitimizing them and investing them with sense. If ever a DJ pronouncement makes you goggle and wonder where it is coming from, consider the pronouncement in conjunction with the Great Constant and you will understand where it is coming from.
“His diagnosis of why the bulk of the international community urges a solution of territory based political autonomy, leads him to three conclusions: Eelamist agit-prop, Marxist intellectual influence and politicians with a “here-and-now” perspective. None of these explain India’s secular state, quasi federalism and linguistic regions, Chechen autonomy, Spain’s autonomous Basque region, or Mindanao’s autonomy in the Philippines, to name just four disparate examples.”
Dayan Jayatilleka in response to Malinda Seneviratne on what would explain the pressure towards territory based political autonomy for Sri Lanka - Hostage to the past. The Devolution Debate & Historicism.
Ingress of other peoples into a land, the etymology of whose name proclaims it to be the land of a certain peoples (England, Scotland, Ireland, Normandy, Wales, Cornwall Brittany, Sieladipa), doesn’t ipso facto dichotomize it. But if you are interested in a historical situation where this was the case, where patterns of migration, invasion, assimilation and acculturisation went on under the smokescreen of a few centuries, and when the smoke cleared you found the landscape dichotomized like apples and oranges, then Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain is your case. There, long term Anglo-Saxon ingress not only led to the dichotomous possession of the territory by two distinct identities but also left the Briton identity spatially fragmented in Wales, Cornwall and Brittany.
In contrast to this primordial scenario involving state systems and social milieus that were…well primordial, is what transpired when state systems were more advanced, evolved and tenacious. Then, incorporating and integrating impulses came into play and the ingressing population got incorporated into the existing social, political and cultural order. This is what happened re Normandy. Invading Viking populations were incorporated by legitimizing their occupation, by allowing them to hold conquered territories as homage paying vassals, who accepting the overlordship of the French king, were entrusted with protecting the said territories from further raids. When they became unwilling to express their subservience to this overlordship, due to attaining equal status with their overlord since becoming Kings of England and being in reality more powerful than their overlord, they were forcibly excised from the equation.
The background to the conflict is to be found in 1066, when William, Duke of Normandy, led an invasion of England. He defeated the English King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings, and had himself crowned King of England. As Duke of Normandy, he remained a vassal of the French King, and was required to swear fealty to the latter for his lands in France; for a king to swear fealty to another king was considered humiliating, and the Norman Kings of England generally attempted to avoid the service.
Wikipedia-Hundred Years’War
What one found in Sri Lanka, when the smoke cleared after the tumultuous events of the 13th century AD was that; instead of retreating in a south-south westerly direction to lick the wounds on its spatially fragmented self, thus leaving those areas free to blossom into an Other identity, a certain identity still continued to infest those areas like a chemo resistant tumor, thus denying those who like to keep it simple (because it would be too much of an intellectual challenge otherwise), the clear cut those areas-that collective ID/these areas-this collective ID universe. That was probably why the strong potential of a distinct Other collective identity evolving (at least) in the Jaffna peninsular starting from the 13th century (if not earlier), and transforming that geographical space into its cultural heartland, had failed to attain actualization in Sri Lanka of our known universe even as late as the 16th century.
When the Portuguese arrived on the scene in the Sri Lanka of this universe they failed to find a collective identity or a presence in Jaffna, which was ethnically and geographically separately identifiable and distinct from the obvious one Lanka presented to them. In other words, an Other collective identity, which could leave a clear, separate and distinctive imprint on the collective consciousness of the outsider was conspicuous by its absence from the kingdom of Jaffna; so that classification glitches identifying the Jaffnese as Sinhalese appeared not only in their official missives, but also in the narrative pages of that unusually perceptive and eminently citable Jesuit chronicler Fernao de Queiros.
In his book Jaffna under the Portuguese which includes extensive research into Portuguese records, Professor T.B.H Abeyasinghe narrates in pages 24, 25, 26, 27 how Lancarote de Seixas proposed in 1630,
… that Portuguese casados should be settled in Jaffna on a large scale and the lands there be distributed among them.25…
… When Goa referred these proposals to Lisbon, the authorities there consulted two old Asia hands, one of them being Belchior Botelho da Silva, who counted at least a decade of experience as a captain in many parts of the island.27 …
… The decision of the Lisbon authorities was embodied in a letter dated 15th March 1634. The views of the two old Asia hands seem to have influenced the authorities in Lisbon, particularly on the need for caution and for not rocking the boat. …
… The decision of the Lisbon authorities was founded on natural justice. It was also founded on misintelligence. A principal factor they took into consideration in arriving at their decision was the possibility that the implementation of the two proposals would lead to rebellion. This is clear from a statement in their letter of 15th march 1634 “…se nāo deve fazer novidade….porque de outro modo escandalizar junta tanta gente e de animos tāo inquietos e pouco fieis…” (no innovation ought to be tried…because otherwise people of such restless spirit and little faith will be scandalized…) But in referring to people of restless spirit and little faith, the Lisbon authorities were thinking of the Sinhalese of the Kotte Lands and not of the Tamils of Jaffna, as the phrase “como sāo os chingalas” (as are the Sinhalese) which follows the extract quoted above makes clear. Three decades of rebellion in the Kotte lands had implanted among the Lisbon authorities a wholesome fear of attempting anything likely to cause unrest among the Sinhalese. To that fear and to the misintelligence among the Lisbon authorities that Jaffna was inhabited by the Sinhalese, the Jaffna mudaliyars owed their survival.”
In an adjacent footnote (31), Professor Abeyasinghe has some words to say on the prevalence of this persistent misintelligence (it had persisted in the minds of Lisbon Authorities even after consultation with two old Asia Hands, one of them with over a decade of experience as a captain in many parts of the island).
“Such misintelligence was not confined to Lisbon. The Count of Vidigueira, after serving as viceroy at Goa for 7 years (in two terms) and after a term as President of the India Council in Lisbon, still believed in 1626 that the inhabitants of Jaffna were Sinhalese. ANTT Doc. Rem. Livro 24 doc 18 (no folio numbers) Even Fernão de Queiros’ work was not free from this error. See pp. 357, 361, 366, 371 etc.”
Even if one is tempted to dismiss such misintelligence (even though it be regarding so elementary a ground reality) prevalent among your Lisbon authorities, your count Videgueiras and your captain Botelho da Silvas as so much ‘bureaucratic’ blindness, an ingrained inability to be sensitive to the human element of a given equation (you can’t really, you know dismiss it like that, just ask your selves if the Spanish could have been blind to the Moros in the Philippines or if the Basques of Spain could have been sort of fuzzy, hazy or invisible to the French battalions of Napoleon or if Chechens and Russians could have seemed fully interchangeable to a traveler to 17th century Russia), but even if you could, you can’t dismiss the prevalence of this misintelligence in Queiros’ work so easily.
Queiros was a Jesuit chronicler. The penetration of the Portuguese into Jaffna through their Jesuit, Franciscan and Dominican missionary arm predated that of the political, was more extensive and necessarily involved closer human contact. His narrative has drawn comment for its exactness. Even when he doesn’t get the details right, he shows an uncanny ability to communicate the essence, see for example his description of the nature and dynamics of Aryachakravarthi rule.
And yet he tends to use the word ‘chingala’ when writing about Jaffna in much the same way as he would use the word ‘negro’ if he was writing about Africa; as a common noun, a generic name for the Jaffnese.
On page 363 of ‘Temporal and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon’, we meet for the first time 12 modeliares, who have just excited the wrath of the king of Jaffna. And when we meet them again on page 366, they are 12 heads on a block. Those heads are ipso facto categorized as chingala heads.
“… But because the others asked him to submit to the Portuguese, promising them tribute and vassalage with a feigned heart, as he had done before , till time brought about a change of circumstances, he was still so full of obstinacy, that he ordered the 12 Modeliares, who were of this opinion and had represented to him the complaints and losses of the natives to be arrested. …”
-Pg. 363-
“…. Among other things he found a block with 12 Chingala heads which the King ordered to be cut off, because they pointed out to him how necessary it was to make peace with the Portuguese even though only deceitfully, for to him the faintest dream of a crime was proof enough, and this cowardice as a necessary consequence, made his subjects exceedingly cowardly, …”
-Pg. 366-
Queiros using the word ‘chingala’ as a synonym for Jaffnese;
“… but when they saw the course (of the ships) they posted men on the way as best as they could and the Prince of Jafanapatao instructed a Chingala and he came to have speech with the Viceroy and…”
-Pg. 356-
In the same vein, when two Portuguese scouts land in Jaffna to ‘case the joint’, they are immediately surrounded by ….you guessed it …the Chingalaz.
“… others already blamed the viceroy for a sluggard for not sending some to discover these rat-traps (as D. Antonio de Noronha called them). Two sailors both brave men, Pero Travacos, a native of Cochim, and Braz de Couto of Truquel in the Boroughs of Alcobaca, offered to go and discover them. They landed with all precaution, but were at once surrounded by the Chingalaz within sight of the Manchua in which they went and by the dawn watch there came a letter from the Prince (brought) by a Christian sailor who had been a prisoner there after a shipwreck, in which he said that if the Chingala whom he had sent should be killed, he would also kill the Portuguese. But that if he were set free, they would be restored. Here some voted that the Chingala should be hanged, little caring for the lives of the two Portuguese worthy of a better reward. Others (as if it were necessary) made a subtle distinction between deceit and trickery, (saying) that the Chingala was only trickish and deserved praise rather than punishment. ..
-Pg. 357-
The persistence of a synonym;
‘Vincente Carvalho. Captain of a foist, seeing himself attacked by 200 men who sought to kill him, said to them: ‘Take me to your King, for I have some things to communicate to him on which depends his safety.’ The delighted Chingalaz made their way to the fortalice where he was; and as they had to pass by the Broad street where D. Antonio……’
-Pg. 374-
When a Portuguese reinforcement arrives to rescue some besieged Portuguese, the Jaffna King sends to them with his message, the bearer of which is …
‘Upon this message D. Antonio halted keeping the Chingala and sent word to D. Constantino de Braganca, who getting rid of the other people who were with him came to Nelur in a manchua by a different route and communicating with the Captains of the relieving force, he ordered them to reinforce the praca, the next dawn breaking through the Enemy, and to send (to the King) that evening by one of the prisoners the head of that Chingala hostage with this message…’
-Pg. 375-
In fact, Queiros could be said to have had a rule of thumb; when a common noun is needed for a native of Sri Lanka, wheresoever the locality under discussion , use the word ‘chingala’.
‘But it was enough that the King knew the delicacy of Portuguese faith, for to show off his valour, he killed the Chingala to whom he was entrusted and fled to our men in sight of an army.’
-Pg.376-
Etiquette according to Queiros; when a common noun is needed for a native language of Lanka, use ‘chingala’ ;
“These terms [written] in the Portuguese and the Chingala languages, were signed and authenticated and the Prince was handed over and sent in a ship with the Modeliar in good custody…..”
-Pg. 371-
And yet Queiros could classify too
“…the Prince who was superintending the war had arranged to attack the Portuguese with 6000 men divided into eight parties, and that the King had remained in the fortalice relying on the promises of the Chingalaz, Badagaz and Moors who served him, and…”
-Pg. 362-
And he could and did use the word chingala in specific contexts;
“… that they should not trust the Chingala guides because they knew that the Viceroy by setting foot in that Kingdom was setting foot in Ceylon also; …”
-Pg. 354-
“... and shall we not believe that it was for these and other causes which we shall mention, that God delivered Ceylon to the Hollanders and animated the Chingalaz to carry on against us so lengthy a warfare?”
-Pg. 355-
And Queiros could project the word ‘chingala’ on to a Jaffnese context purely in order to enrich it too.
“… And as the fortalice was not on the seashore, nor capable of defence, and as it did not then appear necessary to preserve it, because it would necessarily remain in a continuous state of siege, on account of the tenacity of the King and of Chingala courage, the Captains wrote to the Viceroy, ‘that it did not seem creditable to our arms to remain locked up with the enemy within sight, since we were accustomed to vanquish more experienced and valorous nations, …”
-Pg. 377-
In the multiverse there are many universes where the potential of an Other collective identity emerging in Jaffna (at least) starting from the 13th century (if not earlier) and manifesting itself in varying degrees of strength by the 17th century saw actualization. In this universe too, that potential can be sensed but only by the conspicuous absence of its realized state. That absence is so conspicuous because of the contrast;
“In summary, then, the war poems of the Kandyan period present us with a picture of cakravarti figures vested with superhuman character, devotional followers and fighters, Sīhala sen, all oriented towards defending a valued territory that was variously referred to as Lakdiva, Tun Sinhalaya, Siri Laka, uda pata rata, et cetera. These add up to a powerful sense of collective self-perception linked to territory. What we see here is a Sinhala consciousness with a significant measure of patriotism. Underpinning this was an explicit notion of sovereignty47 I am reluctant, however, to refer to this form of thinking as a ‘nationalism’ of the sort found in Europe and elsewhere from the nineteenth century48. There was no theory of self-determination supported by the principles of jurisprudence that had developed in Europe. Nor was there an egalitarian ideal and the democratic thrust associated with the idea of popular sovereignty. But the resistances mounted by the people of Sinhalē in support of a hierarchically constituted dynastic state did amount to practices of liberation.”
-Michael Roberts- Language and National Identity: The Sinhalese and Others over the Centuries- Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Vol. 9, No. 2, Summer 2003, pp. 75-102-
“… However, the sturdy defence of the centres of Sinhalē from invading colonial forces can be interpreted as practices of self-determination. …”
-Michael Roberts-Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period 1590s to 1815- pg.147-
Indeed, de Silva had quite explicitly stated in the 1970s that the resistance of the Sitavaka and Kandyan kingdoms in the face of repeated efforts at conquest by different imperial powers amounted to a “protonationalism” or “traditionalist nationalism;” while yet marking the fact that they had a “mixture of ingredients that would constitute modern nationalism anywhere” (de Silva 1979: 134-35). As far back as the 1970s, I recorded my reservations about this characterization (1979a:29-30).
-Michael Roberts-Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period 1590s to 1815- pg.144-
What shows up in contrast, is the absence of a counterpart Other identity evolving (at least) in the Jaffna peninsula starting from the 13th century (if not earlier), and attaining the ability to manifest itself by the 17th century as a presence, ‘which was ethnically, geographically and linguistically separately identifiable and distinct’ and which could present in reaction to imperial conquest, a response that amounted to as ‘protonationalism or traditionalist nationalism having in its makeup a mixture of ingredients that would constitute modern nationalism anywhere’ (as per K.M de Silva) or ‘a powerful sense of collective self-perception linked to territory, incorporating in its makeup a significant measure of patriotism, an explicit notion of sovereignty and practices of liberation and self-determination, oriented towards defending a valued territory’ (as per Michael Roberts).
“The relative passivity with which Jaffna accepted foreign rule stands in strong contrast to the strength and frequency of resistance movements in the south. Jaffna rose against the Portuguese on three occasions, two of them within the first two years of their occupation. On each occasion, it was the arrival of foreign troops from Tanjore or from Kandy- that acted as a catalyst for rebellion. After 1629, for thirty years, Jaffna accepted foreign rule without demur”
-Tikiri Abeyasinghe , Jaffna under the Portuguese pg 13-
“The defence arrangements the Portuguese made for Jaffna were greatly influenced by the assessment made by the leading Portuguese officials in that kingdom on the nature and character of the native inhabitants of Jaffna. Oliveira considered the Jaffna man as generally passive or weak (fraco). His successor as captain-major, Lancarote de Seixas, came to the same conclusion: he found the Jaffna man “quiet and mild, without any military training” and therefore unlikely to rebel unless instigated by outsiders. To them, the post-conquest history of Jaffna bore this out clearly. Luis de Freitas de Macedo, with many years of experience in Jaffna, came to a similar conclusion about the Jaffna man’s nature, as did the chronicler Fernāo de Queiros, basing himself on the observations of those who knew Jaffna well. The result of this assessment was that in Jaffna fortification was begun later, proceeded more slowly, and when it was completed, Jaffna, for its population and area, had fewer forts than was the case in the southern territories the Portuguese held in the island.”
– Tikiri Abeyasinghe-Op. cit.- pg 17-
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