Western diplomats goose-stepping with horrors bred in the Jaffna womb - Part II

The Sri Lankan crisis is not something that is unique in the map of global violence. It is just another corner of the world facing the violence common in the 21st century - particularly the violence arising from majority-minority relationships. The world is full of minorities and their relationships with the majorities, or with other minority neighbours, can run into intractable problems, sometimes even violence, primarily because the minorities are deliberately moving in the direction of aggressive assertiveness without working out possible compromises that can be beneficial to all communities. In an increasingly explosive world where lethal weapons and new technologies can escalate violence to unacceptable levels - particularly with the tendency of the armed group to spray bullets indiscriminately in any direction they fancy, locally or abroad - there is a duty cast on both sides to adjust and learn to co-exist avoiding violence which can spin out of control once it is unleashed. Whichever community takes up arms that community must accept the consequences of that fatal decision without blaming the others. It is their choice and they must be held responsible for their choices, particularly when the other communities had co-existed peacefully and successfully with their big and small neighbours.

The normal tendency, however, is to blame majoritarianism as the primary cause in the deterioration of majority-minority relations. A more balanced survey of the past in Sri Lanka would reveal that a minority culture can be more aggressive, dehumanizing and destructive than the majority culture, and that all those who claim to be victims can be victimisers with a ferocity far in excess of those who are supposed to have victimized them.

Victimology, in fact, has been refined by the sophisticated minority in Jaffna as a tool to justify vindictiveness with a vengeance. Those who posed as underdogs took the upper hand when they turned into top dogs and resorted to violence with no compunction, leaping to extreme obscenities.

Vellahla

Over the years the Sri Lankan crisis has been distorted by the blinkered view that focused narrowly and exclusively on the southern political train carrying post-colonial socio-political forces (described generally as Sinhala-Buddhist provocations) up north without a northern train coming down south, carrying their load of peninsular provocations, and colliding head-on on ethnic tracks. This mono-causal view gained popularity with aspiring careerists in academia NGOs politicizing their research to back up the political platform of the Tamil separatists. A close study of the "research" and the Tamil separatist platform written by the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kachchi (Tamil State Party disguised as Federal Party) reveals that both ran on parallel, if not identical, lines.

Demonizing the south became the standard trade mark of the NGO hacks and academics who found a lucrative source of advancing their careers by chanting the anti-Sinhala-Buddhist mantra. Besides, by focusing on the Sinhala south it was possible to divert attention from the currents and undercurrents that were the sources of inherent violence in the north. What has been swept under the carpets of victimology is the violence of the peninsular political class which, on any objective assessment, makes Jaffna stand out as the cruelest and most oppressive society of Sri Lanka , going back to feudal times. The quantum of violence generated by the Hindu-vellahla culture of Jaffna has no parallel in any other community. The vellahla-fascist culture that oppressed its own Tamil low-castes originated and was nurtured in the hegemonic Hindu ideology. The politicized Hindu ideology sanctified and endorsed the unpardonable crimes against its own people. It was so in feudal times. It was so during colonial times - most of which is recorded in colonial documents. It is so even now under Prabhakaran's variant of political violence - most of which is recorded in UTHR reports and other human rights reports.

Prabhakaran's violence is a logical extension of the original Hindu fascist culture of the vellahlas.

Though its origins are in the Hindu casteist culture Prabhakaran acquired the violence after shedding its religious content. His violence is secular. He, of course, could not find any traditional sanctity for his violence because he was targeting the Hindu vellahla elite and even some Hindu priests. But by aligning himself with the Christian priests he gained all what he lost in the Hindu priests. Some misguided Christian priests even promised to construct a new theology to justify his brutalities. They were swept away by the idea setting up an exclusive Tamil hierarchy without sharing ecclesiastical power with the Sinhala-wing of the Churches. At times even Rome had a worrying time trying to keep both Tamil and Sinhala wings under the Catholic cupola. It was the Christian priest who stepped in to fill the ideological vacuum left by the Hindu priests who had lost their casteist grip on Jaffna.

Rise of Christian priests

The rise of Christian priests coincided with the rise of colonial power. It was the Churches that opened the doors of opportunity to the Jaffna Tamils during colonial times. Prabhakaran discovered that the Churches were a valuable ally in spreading the gospel of separatism abroad through the far-flung network of Christian lobbies in the Western capitals.

This was role that the Hindu priests confined to their parochial Hindu kovils in Jaffna villages could not fulfill. As opposed to the ineffective Hindu priests the Churchmen played a key role in influencing politics both at home and abroad. The close ties between the Church and Prabhakaran is evident in the fact that though he had targeted a few Hindu priests who did not bend to his demands he had not dared to touch a single Christian priest so far, though there are reports of him targeting Christian priests to put the blame on the "Sinhala-dominated" state to denigrate their image abroad, particularly in the Christian-dominated West. It also must be admitted that Prabhakaran's outstanding contribution to the northern politics is the radicalization of the rigid, conservative society of Jaffna.

His violence was directed in two directions simultaneously: 1) "the Sinhala-dominated governments" - the bogey needed for him to sustain his violence based on hate politics and 2) the Hindu vellahla elite of Jaffna.

Publicly his violence was driven by the hatred of the Sinhalese. Privately, it was also motivated by getting even with the vellahlas who had persecuted the low-castes long before the agricultural "sudras" of Jaffna - the lowest caste in classical Indian hierarchical system - anointed themselves as the high-caste vellahlas, thanks to the Arumuka Navalaar, the patron saint of the vellahlas.

After Prabhakaran overthrew the monopolistic grip of the vellahlas in Jaffna there have been reports of the low-caste Tigers marching into the houses of vellahlas, cocking their legs up on their high caste furniture, and ordering the vellahlas to serve "porichcha koli".

It was pay back time. The vellahlas who dominated the peninsula from feudal times imposed the subhuman culture by denying the low-caste Tamils even the right to walk in day time.

The turumbas. for instance, were allowed to walk only in the night to prevent the purity of the eyes of the vellahlas being polluted.

The unprotected low-castes were beaten, tortured, killed if they dared to violate any of the codes of conduct held sacred by the Hindus. Their cries of discrimination by "the Sinhala-dominated governments" ring hollow when the records reveal that the upper elite of Jaffna rigorously and violently prevented their low castes from stepping even into outermost circle of Hindu temples. Most of the low-castes were segregated and not allowed to enter upper-caste houses, or sit with them in buses, schools or even draw water from their wells. The vellahlas ran their own vicious version of the KKK in Jaffna.

Throughout the feudal and colonial times it was easy for the vellahla caste fanatics to impose their fascist regime because they (1) owned the temples, which were money-spinners (2) owned the land with powers to dictate terms on the low-caste workers and (3) held the dominant positions in colonial administrations - three commanding heights of Jaffna society that conferred power on those who were in control. The colonial masters who did not want their administration in the north troubled - in addition to the problems created by the rebellious south - turned a blind eye to crimes of the vellahlas. Consequently, the vellahlas ran the peninsula according to their uncompromising and authoritarian Hindu ideology. Their word was law. Humiliating punishment was a sacred rite that had to be imposed to preserve the purity and dominance of the vellahlas and they never hesitated to go to violent extremes to maintain their purity and dominance.

Primary requirement

There is something more than hypocrisy when these caste fanatics, who relentlessly persecuted their own Tamil community, turn around and accuse the Sinhala majority of discrimination. Of course, turning the wrath of the Jaffna Tamils against the Sinhalese was a primary requirement for the vellahlas to survive politically. The Sinhala bogey was also raised to win votes against any Tamil party that attempted to co-exist harmoniously with the majority. Second, the rising resentment of the low-castes against the upper-caste - a factor that threatened to divide Jaffna society - could be contained only by diverting attention from the inhuman vellahla domination to "the Sinhala-dominated governments".

Neelan Tiruchelvam, Radhika Coomaraswamy, Prof. S. J. Tambiah, Poi-kiyana-sothy Sarvanamuttu deliberately turned the searchlight on "the southern Sinhalese" to avoid focusing on the Tamils of Jaffna dehumanizing their fellow Tamils on a scale that cannot be excused under any system. The rare exceptions are the Hoole brothers (Rajan and Ratnajeevan) and Bishop S. Jebanesan who marginally explored the dark side of the Sri Lankan moon. Prof. Ratnajeevan Hoole, who was prevented from entering the Jaffna campus by the Tamil Tigers, was forthright in exposing the horrors of caste-ridden Jaffna society in his semi-autobiographical book, The Return of the Exile.

Bishop Jebanesan gingerly exposed the religio-political system of Jaffna that warped peninsular politics and society but failed to draw the logical conclusions. He covered the horripilating Jaffna Tamil crimes under a religious cloak in his scholarly book, The Bible Trembled.

The Churches too were complicit in aiding and betting the vellahla elite to suppress and oppress their own people. They even built separate pews to segregate the low-caste Christian from the high-caste Christians. The low-caste Tamils, abandoned by the colonial masters and left high and dry by their religious leaders, suffered in silence until S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike passed the Social Disabilities Act of 1959 - a landmark piece of legislation rated as "a classic" by Prof. Bryan Pfaffenberger who made a study of the caste system of Jaffna. He says Bandaranaike was made to pay more for destabilizing the vellahla establishment in Jaffna dominated by "caste fanatics" like Prof. C. Suntheralingam than for his Sinhala Only Act of 1956. What these caste fanatics called "discrimination" by the Sinhala-dominated government pale into insignificance when compared to the abominable treatment meted out to the Tamils by the Tamils. It happens even today. No other community had decimated the Tamils as the Tamil Tigers. No other community had liquidated the Tamil leadership as the Tamil Tiger who were born out of vellahla violence and politics. No one else had brutalized Jaffna society, particularly Tamil children, by dragging them into futile war as the Tamil Tigers, the sole representative of the Tamils. Not a single "Sinhala-dominated government" had deprived the Tamils of their rights as the one-man fascist regime in the Vanni. It is these dehumanizing imperatives of peninsular politics that fouled up inter-ethnic relations. The internal hierarchical imperatives that drove peninsular politics explain why ONLY Jaffna took up arms and not the other Tamil-speaking communities.

The eastern Tamils, Muslims and the Indian Tamils were not rigidly hierarchical nor ruled by an oppressive political elite whose violence was built into the political culture of Jaffna.

Irony

Yet the irony is that it is the so-called "Sinhala dominated governments" that are in the dock. The Blakes and the Chilcotts (B&Cs) are quite adept in repeating the mono-ethnic propaganda of the Jaffna Tamils without grasping the dynamics of the north and the south societies. Besides, B&Cs either ignore the history of political violence in the post-independence era, or are ignorant of it which places them at a disadvantage in interpreting or understanding the fundamentals that drive Sri Lanka violence.

Incidentally, political violence erupted not with the Tamil youth but with the Sinhala youth who were the first to take up arms also on cries of discrimination and oppression. They took to violence focusing on economic (Marxist) cries. The Tamil youth who were fed and brought up on hate-Sinhala politics blamed their plight on the ethnic discrimination. However, the decisive, underlying factor was the stagnant economy that did not provide social mobility to the Sinhala and Tamil youth coming out of universities and schools. But Jaffna-centric politics, based exclusively on mono-ethnic extremism, whipped up the anti-Sinhala racism for the communal gains of the peninsula political elite. It was this racist platform that grew into monstrous proportions and degenerated into subhuman violence when Prabhakaran grabbed power from the vellahlas.

Besides, it is obvious that the Jaffna Tamils who cry from roof tops about discrimination could never have developed the skills and the sophistication to manipulate and gain the acceptance of B&Cs in Colombo and infiltrate the Western capitals to extract the maximum political mileage if they were the underprivileged and the oppressed people they claim to be. Every Tamil who hobnob in Western cocktail parties or lobby the Western capitals came out of the free education system, from the kindergarten to the university, provided by "the Sinhala-dominated governments." Since they claim to be victims of discrimination by "the Sinhala-dominated governments" it is appropriate to ask them how they managed to reach their professional heights in Western capitals if they were deprived of the opportunities to develop their talents in Sri Lanka . The Jaffna Tamils got the best of free and equitable services from "the Sinhala-dominated governments" even after 1956 - the year in which S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike swept into power. Nowadays they have somewhat revised their cry of discrimination. In fact Radhika Coomaraswamy came on BBC recently and said that there was no "economic discrimination". Then what were they crying about? The history of their separatist politics reveals that their objective was not to gain some jobs in government service. No. Their objective was to grab an unequal and undue proportion of power and territory which was disguised and presented as "discrimination" in the initial stages. This becomes clear when their cries of "discrimination" morphed into "aspirations" meaning political power and territory at the expense of other communities.

As stated earlier, the Tamils never had it so good as under "the Sinhala-dominated governments". They also never had it so bad as under their self-appointed "sole representatives" of today, or under the fascist vellahla regimes in feudal and colonial times. The predictable reactions of B&Cs indicate not their understanding of the complexities of the interplay of these two societies but their ability to swallow uncritically propaganda that is fed to them from time to time by Tamil propagandists posing as profound pundits in the cocktail and NGO circuits. As representatives of the leading powers of the West one expects a more nuanced, sophisticated and mature appreciation befitting not only their professional standing but also the intellectual essence and brilliance of those who can come to grips with the ground realities and move the frontiers of knowledge to greater heights for the war-weary people of Sri Lanka to reap the benefits of peace. Regretfully, what has been displayed by them so far is their trained ability to react like Pavlovian pups to the ringing of Tamil bells. Clearly they have been taken for a ride on the train that went up north. After that they have no evens bothered to look at the train that came down south like a juggernaut destroying everything in it wake. This, perhaps, is the only explanation for their "dip-low-messy" in Sri Lanka.

To be continued...