Two Ponnambalams, two histories, one nation

by H.L.D. Mahindapala

Ponnambalam Arunachalam	G.G. Ponnambalam

On January 30, 1908 Ponnambalam Arunachalam, M.A., Cantab, Ceylon Civil Service, Barrister-at-Law, Lincoln's Inn, took the floor in the Legislative Council Chamber, the highest political institution of the day, to deliver a lecture on the Sketches of Ceylon History. His Excellency the Governor Sir. Henry A. Blake, G.C.M.G presided over this session in the Legislature as usual. The lecture was more than an overview of Ceylon history. In essence it was an exposition of the Sinhala-Buddhist ideology which was expressed for the first time in English at the highest possible level of the English-speaking elite in colonial times.

In the first decade of the 20th century the history of the Sinhala-Buddhist civilization was popular among the English-educated elite who were rediscovering the glories of ancient and medieval Sri Lanka that were buried under the jungle tide. Pioneering British archaeologists were surveying the land and documenting the new discoveries with professional pride. The translation of the Mahavamsa by George Turnour and Wijesinha (1889) was a landmark event that opened up new vistas into a forgotten past. Based on the new historical findings Arunachalam told his elite audience: "..(Perhaps no country in the world that has such a long continuous history and civilization." The self-esteem with more than a touch of pride in his voice rings even today as his words echo in the cold print tracing the past filled with the majesty of the glorious achievements.

Valuable contribution

The latter day revisionists, rewriting history to fit into their separatist agenda, labelled any return to the past with the objective reverence that it deserved as the "Mahavamsa mentality". The main aim of the revisionists was to denigrate the Mahavamsa and all the values that came with it. But in the words of Sir. Ponnambalam there was no such cynical connotation. His speech, in fact, laid the foundations for the school of history that looked upon the past as a guide for the future. The anti-Sinhala-Buddhist revisionists attacked Anagarika Dharmapala for reviving the past history in all its glory. But this was the voice of a leading Tamil scholar. The magnificent grandeur of the past was recalled and articulated with intellectual vigour by Sir. Ponnambalam to put the record straight.

It was a valuable contribution at the time because it confirmed that politics and history are inseparable and that one tends to impact heavily on the other. The impact of Sir. Ponnambalam's history was so influential on the first generation of English-speaking nationalists in the early part of the 20th century that in their frequent ideological battles against the colonial masters they were wont to orchestrate variations of the underlying nationalist theme. In his political vocabulary nationalism meant one nation derived essentially from the values of the Mahavamsa. In fact, in speaking on the theme of Our Political Needs, one of his analytical masterpieces delivered to Ceylon National Congress on April 2, 1917, he summed up the political aspirations of the time as follows: ".....(W)e in Ceylon desire that our Government shall be a Ceylonese Government, that our rulers shall identify themselves entirely with the Ceylonese interests and, in the striking words of the Mahavamsa, "be one with the people".

Ever since Turnour translated the Mahavamsa it was held in high esteem by the distinguished elite of the nation including the scholarly community of the British Raj. Sir Ponnambalam's speech in the Legislature was a defining moment: it defined the nation as it was structured in the past and as it ought to be structured in the future. He spoke as a representative of one nation. Even when he spoke later on Our Political Needs -- the best opportunity to define the political needs of the Tamils -- he spoke as a representative of one nation without dividing it into ethnic enclaves. It was the Sir Ponnambalam school of history that dominated the minds of the majority, from top to bottom. He, in fact, became the symbol of national unity though politics intervened and he parted company with the Ceylon National Congress -- a grand multi-ethnic coalition -- of which he was the president.

Politically, the newly discovered treasures of the hidden past were grasped with passion and commitment by the rising elite who used the new knowledge as a tool against imperialist masters. National leaders began to invoke the nation's history as political evidence of their capacity to rule better than the colonial masters. Going back to the past was just not a political move to prove that the Sri Lankans were equal to the English masters but superior. It was also the most effective political argument of the time. It was S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike who came out of Oxford saying that to be the equal of the colonial masters you have to be their superior. Whether in the Chamber of the Legislature, or the Royal Asiatic Society, or any other platform references to the Sinhala-Buddhist civilization had all the political undertones of emphasizing the superiority of the Orientals over that of the ruling Occidentals.

Sir Ponnambalam had earned the respect and admiration of his peers and the people as the leading light of the day guiding the nation not only to reclaim its lost past but also to create a future based on the cherished values of a history that shone in the eyes of those who could see it. He was lifting the veil that hid the past for the present to appreciate its value. Urging the nation to explore the "rich treasures of history, ethnology, folklore, botany, geology, zoology (which) await the explorer in every part of the Island" Sir Ponnambalam said: "It would help also to recall to us and fix in our minds the great things done by our ancestors.

Thus we may in time recover some of our lost originality and acquire that self-confidence which is indispensable to national progress and national success".

His speech was aimed at reclaiming the forgotten past for the glory of the present. Deploring the cultural cringe of the Westernised Oriental Gentlemen (WOGs) Sir Ponnambalam reminded the legislators : "At a time when the now great nations of the West were sunk in barbarism, or had not yet come into existence, Ceylon was the seat of ancient kingdom and religion, the nursery of art, and the center of Eastern commerce. Her stupendous religious edifices more than 2,000 years old and, in extent and architectural interest, second only to the structure of Egypt, and her vast irrigation works, attest the greatness and antiquity of her civilisation. Her rich products of nature and art, the beauty of her scenery, her fame as the home of a pure Buddhism, have made her from remote times the object of interest and admiration to contemporary nations. Merchants, sailors, and pilgrims have in diverse tongues left records of their visits, which confirm in a striking manner the ancient native chronicle which Ceylon in almost singular among Asiatic lands ......" The presiding Governor could not have missed the political message hidden in this evocation of a civilization that was equal to any other.

Reviving memories

It was, of course, a time when nationalism was expressed not in violent rebellion, or even in non-violent mass political movements, but in more subtle forms like reviving the memories of a monumental past that left its indelible legacy in the minds of a nation waking up from nearly five centuries of colonialism. Sir. Ponnambalam was proud that "officers of a public department (had) formed themselves into a Society for the promotion of historic study and research. They used to read together and discuss the Mahawamsa, the ancient chronicle of Ceylon....." He also remarked in this speech: "It is refreshing to read a Royal College boy protesting in the College Magazine against the exclusion of Ceylon history and geography from the curriculum of our leading schools".

Sir Ponnambalam's lecture was a paean sung in praise of the Sinhala-Buddhist civilization. The tributes he paid to Dutugemunu and Sri Sangabo were effusive. When he came to the Tamil kingdom of Jaffna he spoke only of the military exploits of the Aryachakravartis. There were no tributes to the cultural achievements of the Tamils in his speech. Or even a reference to Yalpana Vaipava Malai -- the first official history written by Mylvaganam Pulavar at the request of the Dutch Governor in......... Naturally, with his knowledge of Jaffna history and culture he had hardly anything to cite as great achievements of the Jaffna Tamils. His focus was on the richness of the Sinhala-Buddhist civilisation.

He regarded the Mahavamsa as a treasure trove dazzling with historical insights that illuminated not only the past of Sri Lanka but also that of neighbouring India. He said: "...Mahanama, a literary artist, who lived a generation after Buddhagosa, wrote the Mahawamsa, which is really an epic poem of remarkable merit...

Excavations

Excavations by General Cunningham in the Topes (brick burial mounds) of Sanchi in Central India have furnished striking and unexpected confirmation of the Mahawamsa." Ananda Coomaraswamy, the great aesthetic savant, too paid his tribute the Sinhala art in his magisterial monograph, Medieval Sinhala Art.

What is also noticeable of this period is that history, art and culture fired the imagination of the newly emerging bourgeoisie of all communities. In the absence of the mass politics the English-educated, propertied, semi-feudal, semi-capitalist class who were pitted against the British colonial masters derived their power from the glorious past with which they taunted their rulers. They were bonded together at the top by a common culture of their shared past. Though they had personal and political differences there were no irreconcilable ideological differences at the turn of the century. That came later, in the twenties and, more markedly and venomously, in the thirties.

The remarkable feature of Sir. Ponnambalam's speech is that he claimed the glory of the past as a common heritage of all Ceylonese, as they were known at the time. The latter-day revisionists who have re-written politicized history to denigrate Sinhala-Buddhist civilization cannot dismiss the informed, accurate and balanced judgements passed by Sir Ponnambalam as a product of the "Mahavamsa mentality." In praising the Sinhala-Buddhist culture he did not feel that it was anti-Tamil or politically incorrect. On the contrary, referring to the veneration of King Elara's tomb "by silencing the music, whatever procession they may be heading" he says: "Well, may the Sinhalese be proud of chivalry so rare and unprecedented". He viewed Sri Lankan history as one unbroken continuity. It was not segmented into Sinhala, Tamil or Muslim, or Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic. It was a holistic approach in which all were "Ceylonese".

He singled out the Mahawamsa as a unique document that belongs to the whole nation. And he ended his lecture with a plea to return to "the great ideals cherished by our ancestors" and "make ourselves worthy of our inheritance." He said:: "Over the garden gate of my old college (Christ's) at Cambridge -- the college of Milton and Darwin -- stands the motto of the noble founders, the Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII.

The motto is Souvent me souvient: "often it come to my mind". "often I am reminded." It is a perpetual reminder to successive generation of the member of her family and of her college, of her ancestors' loyalty to duty, to king and country, and to high ideals. Well would it be for us Ceylonese if we too kept fresh in our hearts the great deeds done and great ideal cherished by our ancestors, and strove to make ourselves worthy of our inheritance."

But then came the turning point in modern history. It came in the third decade of the 20th century with a full frontal attack on the Mahavamsa and the Sinhala-Buddhist civilization. The third decade headed by G.G. Ponnambalam, turned Jaffna into a den of corrosive communalism. The universalism of Sir Ponnambalam in the first decade and the idealism of the Tamil Youth Congress in the second decade were overtaken by the racist parochialism of peninsular politics led by G.G. Ponnambalam in the third decade. Under G.G. Ponnambalam Jaffna turned against the history of communal amity and unity that was embraced by Sir Ponnambalam. In the first decade of the 20th century under Sir Ponnambalam Sinhala-Buddhist history was elevated to the highest pinnacle. In the second decade the Tamil Youth Congress, guided by Gandhian idealism, campaigned for a united Sri Lanka rejecting casteism and racism -- the two main objectives of English-educated Tamil youth coming out of missionary schools. It was the most powerful, open-minded, liberal movement of Jaffna that lasted for brief while -- till the mid-thirties.

After the death of the Tamil Youth Congress no "ism" – socialism, liberalism, Stalinism, Maoism, Castroism, you name it -- ever raised its head again in Jaffna to confront the ingrained force of Vellahlaism that morphed into racism. Even Gandhism was snuffed out by the rising tide of mono-ethnic extremism whipped up by G.G. Ponnambalam.

When G.G. Ponnambalam entered the political arena in the thirties he was confronted by the Tamil Youth Movement. He had no viable or credible ideology to combat the Gandhian ideals of the Youth Movement that was dead against racism and casteism. Their idealism demanding total swaraj – like the Gandhian movement in India -- for the whole nation, without any divisions into communal enclaves, prevailed as a dynamic political force in the peninsula.

This ideal also led them to boycott the first general elections under the Donoughmore Commission which did not grant independence. Unable to face the power of the Youth Movement G. G. Ponnambalam was forced out of Jaffna to fight for a seat in Mannar in the first elections under the Donoughmore Constitution. Besides, this new comer could not compete within Jaffna with the "turbaned aristocratic leadership" (Jane Russell) of Sir. Ponnambalam and Mahadeva who were the respected and dominant force in Jaffna.

Despite their personal and political differences the old guard, in their own way, were inclined to work cooperatively with their Sinhala counterpart.

But the broader vision of the first two decades changed in the third decade when northern politics took a convulsive reversal into intransigent communalism.

Two different takes

It was U-turn from which Jaffna never recovered to regain the aspirations of communal harmony and a united Sri Lanka led by the Tamil Youth movement. G. G. Ponnambalam stood doggedly for the narrow politics of Tamil communalism. He was the first to spark off the wild fire of communalism when in Nawalapitiya (1937) he targeted the Mahavamsa and the history of the nation which was embraced and praised by his namesake in the first and second decades. The two Ponnambalams had two different takes on the history of Sri Lanka and that made all the difference to the politics of the nation.

The anti-Sinhala-Buddhist communalism of Ponnambalam grew over the years into a formidable force. He targeted the core Sinhala-Buddhist history and values to downgrade the history of the Mahavamsa and elevate the fictitious history of the north. This line of attack was vital for survival and growth of Ponnambalam's divisive communal politics.

Numerically, politically and culturally it was the Sinhalese who stood in the way of Jaffna Tamil leadership who had come to believe under the patronage of the colonial masters, particularly the British, that they were the subaltern rulers of the nation. They were ensconced comfortably in the key branches of the Legislature, Executive, the Judiciary and also professionally in the private sector. They were the most privileged community in Sri Lanka. The only missing link to their overall dominance was political power. Consequently, their political thrust was to grab a disproportionate share of power at the centre. It was Ponnambalam who gave utterance stridently to his cry of "50 - 50", meaning 50% share of power to the 25% minority under the hegemony of the Jaffna Tamils. Though it was meant to be for the 25% minorities, which included the Tamil-speaking Muslims and Indian Tamils, it was primarily a cry of the Jaffna Tamils, raised by the Jaffna Tamils for the benefit of the Jaffna Tamils.

But given the historical heritage and rights of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority, as with the majorities in other nation-states, and given the fact that there was no rational basis on which Ponnambalam could mount an argument to undermine the legitimate claims of the majority he picked on the history of the Sinhala-Buddhist to denigrate its past and make a specious claim for the Tamils as if they were the great makers and breakers of Sri Lankan history.

When he entered northern politics for the firth time he had two fights on his hands: one internal and the other external. Internally, G. G. Ponnambalam, the "pygmy politician" (Morning Star) first was faced with competition from the established aristocracy of Jaffna. There is no doubt that he had to find a new route to beat the old establishment which was more inclined to acknowledge the Mahawamsa and liberal politics. It was also the time when the returnees from Western universities were influenced mainly by left-wing theories of Marxism. It was a time when the Western political scene was divided between Marxism and the extreme racism of Nazism. While Philip Gunawardena went in search of Trotsky when he was in the Wisconsin University, USA -- there were rumours that he met Trotsky who was then hiding from Stalin in Mexico though this was not confirmed -- Dr. Colvin R. de Silva visited Moscow and wrote a rather critical piece in the Daily News about Stalinism.

Ponnambalam, however, was attracted to Hitler's racist ideology and he visited Germany in the company of right-wing fascists in UK. When he attacked the Mahavamsa and the Sinhalese in Nawalapitiya it was not just an idiosyncratic or accidental aberration. It was a deliberate tactic he adopted, imitating Hitler's anti-Semitic racism which had swept the fascist corporal of World War I into power and sustained him in power, mainly with his racist slogans. Scapegoating the Jews was a marketable ideology in the anti-Jewish Christian culture. Christian Churches have been blaming the Jews as Christ-killers in their liturgy from day one. All the ills of post-World War I too were blamed on the demonized Jews.

Ponnambalam's demagoguery was a repetition of Hitler's racism. It was a wild card that paid him dividends in confronting both the internal and external forces ranged against him. Racism made him a star in the Jaffna firmament, displacing the turbaned aristocracy. His ruthless politics of scapegoating the Sinhalese became a permanent fixture in the peninsular political agenda ever since then.

Tamil racism turned out to be "the insane fury" that led Jaffna all way to Nandikadal Lagoon via Vadukoddai. G.G. Ponnambalam's school of narrow history triumphed over Sir. Ponnambalam's school of liberal history.

Political malaise

After G.G. Ponnambalam came the deluge of unstoppable racism. His arrogant personality, flamboyant style, inflated rhetoric expressed in stilted English (he was more fluent in English than in Tamil), his rabid casteism, his virulent racism, his ambition to oust the old guard and be the sole representative of the Jaffna Tamils -- a common political malaise with the peninsular politicians -- turned him into an unprincipled "political opportunist" and a "thief" (S.J.V. Chelvanayakam). Like the leading Tamil politicians Ponnambalam never had sympathy with the down-trodden low-caste Tamils whom he despised and treated like pariahs.

He was primarily responsible for driving Jaffna away from multi-cultural pluralism into the cul-de-sac of communalism. His Nazi-style politics qualifies him to be categorized as the father of virulent Tamil racism. His junior, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam took Jaffna politics to the next level of racist extremism in the forties when he launched the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (Tamil State Party) in December 1949 -- long before "1956" and all that.

The line of succession from G. G. Ponnambalam to Velupillai Chelvanayakam to Velupillai Prabhakaran makes it absolutely clear that Jaffna politics declined from (1) 50 - 50 to (2) federalism, and (3) to Eelam -- all which were marked with racist violence. Step by step, from decade to decade, Jaffna Tamil politics, led by the most privileged caste/class, descended from one stage of racism to another until it hit rock bottom in the Vadukoddai Resolution (May 1976).

In Vadukoddai the entire Tamil leadership abandoned the non-violent democratic mainstream by legitimizing violence to achieve its political goals -- the first community to declare war on the others. It was a needless war that brought no community any good, least of the Tamils who had to face the brunt of violence launched by its "liberators", both Indians and Tigers.

Three-pronged attack

G.G. Ponnambalam began his career in the thirties by launching a three-pronged attack on the Sinhalese: 1. denigration of Sinhala-Buddhist history 2. cry of discrimination and 3. demanding 50% of the share of power for the minorities which, in effect, meant 50% of power to be wielded by the Jaffna Tamils. His rise to dominance in Jaffna also marks the beginning of the end of the harmonious communal relations that existed for millennia. Despite all the various political differences between the north and the south no one had launched such a venomous attack on a neighbouring community as Ponnambalam.

His cry for 50 - 50 was mathematically and politically indefensible. This demand was a disproportionate to the demographics. But that has been the perennial curse of peninsular politics: their demands have been consistently disproportionate to their size. Consequently, their demands invariably cut in to deny the aspirations and the rights of the other communities. Their intransigent and arrogant politics rejected all offers of compromise and demanded their disproportionate pounds of flesh irrespective of the consequences to the other communities.

Their mono-ethnic extremism also ran counter to multi-cultural, pluralistic and democratic co-existence.

Ponnambalam had no rational or liberal ideology with which to fight for his "rapacious" (S.W. R. D. Bandaranaike) claims. In the absence of a rational or intellectual ideology he raised the emotional communal cry -- the only weapon available to him to beat his opponents inside and outside the peninsula. Peninsular politics in the post-Ponnambalam period was destined to end in violence because mono-ethnic extremism, driven by intransigence and arrogant leadership, could not be accommodated in a democratic, pluralistic society.

The only way out for mono-ethnic extremism was violence. And it exploded in full force with the declaration of war in the Vadukoddai Resolution. It was the Jaffna Tamil leadership that went for a military solution when non-violent compromises were available as seen in the actions of the other two Tamil-speaking communities who resolved their differences through political bargaining and negotiations. The Ponnambalams and Chelvanayakams, on the contrary, deliberately chose rabid communalism which paved the path to violence. In the end it was the Tamil people who had to pay with their lives for the folly of their rabid leaders.

The seeds of communalism sowed by Ponnambalam in the mid-thirties were reaped in the 1947 general election. Ponnambalam's Ceylon Tamil Congress wiped out the old guard and emerged as the new leaders of Jaffna. Jane Russell sums up the rise of Ponnambalam quite aptly. She wrote: "A Mahadeva and S. Natesan, the last of the Ponnambalam-Ramanathan dynasty, had been ignominiously defeated and the new guard of the Tamil Congress had been swept to power as the representatives of the Ceylon Tamil community, with the brilliant and shamelessly Machiavellian G. G. Ponnambalam at their head and the dour. sensitive Chelvanayagam as guardian of the communalist wing.

"It was one of the ironies of history that precisely at the moment when independence had been finally conceded to Ceylon, the goal for which Ponnambalam Arunachalam and, to a lesser extent his brother, Ponnambalam Ramanathan, had worked so assiduously in the early years of the twentieth century, their political heirs -- A. Mahadeva and S. Natesan – should have been toppled from the leadership of the Ceylon Tamil community. For almost one hundred and twenty years this family had been the spokesmen of the Ceylon Tamils. Now the circle of destiny, had completed its revolution. In place of the patrician nobility who had led the Ceylon Tamils for more than six generations there were two newcomers, G.G. Ponnambalam and S. J. V. Chelvanayagam.

"Ceylon Tamil politics, so long dominated by the feudal principle, had at last succumbed to the "bourgeois revolution". It was a class of self-made men who had overthrown "the turbaned heads" of Jaffna. The Jaffnese nobility -- A. Mahadeva, S. Natesan and S. Rajaratnam -- whose forebears had once been the acknowledged leaders of the entire English-educated elite in Ceylon, and considered "the ornament and glory of Ceylon", were now left like fallen idols for the historians to consign to the obscurity of history."