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| Sunday, 26 October 2003 |
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Racism and the peace process by D. G. A. Perera The removal of history as a subject from the school curriculum has led to a situation where several generations of people (including political leaders) in Sri Lanka, have grown up quite ignorant of the background of urgent problems they have to face today. This has also led to the propagation of baseless myths to replace the authentic historical record that has been carefully studied and evaluated by accredited scholars in the past. Racism was not the basis, or even the cause, of Sinhala-Tamil conflicts before the 16th century. (It was in the middle of that century that Sankili the usurper of power in Jaffna Peninsula initiated the first ever 'Ethnic cleansing' by the wholesale massacre of the Sinhala people living there, (as recorded in a Tamil history called the Yalpana Valpava Malai). The modern myths that seek to replace recorded history are also despicably racist in character. This is true of all that has been written by Dr. S. K. Vadivale under the heading 'History of the Sinhala race' in another newspaper of 23.09.2003. To quote some of Dr. Vadivale's views from that article: "There is no culture called Sinhala culture. It is Tamil Culture that is projected as Sinhala Culture." "When there was no Sinhala language in Lanka or in any other part of the world before 8th century AD, it is thuggery to claim that there were Sinhala people in Sri Lanka prior to the 8th century AD." "It may not be incorrect to assume that in the hoary past, Lanka was from the North to the South, West to the East and the Central Highlands, the homeland of the Tamils of the Hindu faith." However, it is well known that his Tamil compatriots who he says lived here from 'the hoary past' still add up to less than one fifth of the population. This includes the hundreds of thousands of Indian Tamil labourers brought here to work for the British in their tea estates. They were the first Tamils in the Central Highlands where Sinhala peasants were soon deprived of their land. The 20% Tamil population also includes the conservancy labourers brought down from Tuticorin by the British. It also includes the untold thousands of half-starved Kallathonis who came in here clandestinely from South India in search of the free-rice dole after this country's independence from Britain. Not all of them are Hindus. Dr. Vadivale thinks that the 17% of Tamil Hindus belong to a race superior to the Sinhala people who comprise 72% of the population. He does not say why his superior race is still such a small minority even after all the recent additions to its ranks. Dr. Vadivale's theory about Tamils in Sri Lanka 'in the hoary past' is contradicted by his predecessors in the Jaffna peninsula. About three centuries ago (c. 1735), Tamils made a vain attempt to write a history to stake a claim for their right to live there. This is the Yalpana Vaipavamalai referred to, earlier. There too the history of Lanka begins indisputably with the arrival of Prince Vijaya in the 5th century BC. It also says "In those days Langka was a great wilderness, inhabited only by the Vedar and wild animals. There were no human beings in it" (YVM p.2). This puts Dr. Vadivale in a quandary. If he says that Tamils were the Vedar then he has to admit that they were not human beings. He would find it very difficult to acknowledge that his ancestors were sub-human. What were the wild animals living there? The YVM gives no hint, but the Sinhala chronicles say that they were the 'nagas' Now this is a word that means 'elephants' in Sinhala and Tamil as well as in Pali and Sanskrit. It also gives us an insight into why Jaffna peninsula was called Nagadipa in ancient times. We have to get the confirmation of that theory from a modern writer. That is Sir Emerson Tennent, who recorded that during the season that the Palmyra fruits that elephants relished begin to ripen, all the herds of elephants that roamed the Vanni forests crossed over to the peninsula at the narrowest point in the Jaffna Lagoon. That is how, he remarks, that crossing came to be called the "Elephant Pass" (Ceylon p.968). This periodic infestation of Jaffna peninsula from time immemorial is then the cause of the ancient name "Nagadipa" (or Elephant Peninsula). This is an original interpretation of the meaning of 'Nagadipa.' It is a result of creative thinking, that may soon be plagiarised by others as it happened when the meaning of 'Colombo' was published in a newspaper by this writer in 1985. But it appeared in toto with slight changes in the format, as an original bit of writing by another person who ought to have known better than that, in the introduction to a book published and dated a year later. O tempora! O mores! It was this periodic influx of the pachyderms that helped the 'kinglet' of Jaffna, whether he was a Sinhala general up to the 13th century, or an Arya Cakravarti from the North of Tamil Nadu (and referred to derogatorily, as a Wadakkan or Northerner by Tamils). This was because the 'tribute' payable to the Sinhala King was in the form of captured elephants. To be continued |
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