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What a way to fight a war!
By Our Defence Correspondent.Operation Jaya Sikuru has now passed by one year and six months of slowly plodding nowhere.
We believe it is pertinent to ask, at this juncture: What has Jaya Sikuru done for the war? And where is it going to get us?
We’ve asked these same questions before, as this amazing misadventure passed through six months, one year, a year and three months, etc. And there’s never been a response from those who run the war.
All that the public, and we are told officially is that ``troops continue to operate ahead of defenses,’’ ``troops are consolidating positions,’’ etc. That’s army jargon, which means: we aren’t really doing anything.
Every few months, the army lurches forward, gains a few miles, runs into a fierce enemy counterattack, and then it’s back to ``consolidating’’ for another three months. What a way to fight a war!
We won’t try to talk about casualties here, since the draconian censor would then chop up this article like a woodsman chops firewood with an axe. Suffice it to say that it has cost more casualties, in dead and wounded, to both sides, than all the army’s offensive operations combined, from 1983 to 1998.
But the undeniable fact is that today, the government seems no closer to winning the war than in May 1997, when Jaya Sikuru began.
All that has happened since then, strategically speaking, is that the army has taken possession of two thirds of the road from the southern end. But at the same time it has lost control of the vital town of Kilinochchi, the largest town along the road.
What has clearly been demonstrated, time and time again, is that the army is incapable of holding on to stretches of the road in the face of concentrated LTTE attack. This is despite the fact that vast stretches of the road are held by thousands of infantrymen thrown in by the air force, navy, police and Special Task Force. It follows then that even when the entire road is taken, the army will find it impossible to hold it continuously. It is more than likely that there will be nightly attacks on the road, and very little civilian traffic will be able to go through.
In any case, the gargantuan task of holding the road will drain almost all of the army’s resources, and there will be little scope for going on the offensive.
In other words, we can win the road, but it won’t bring us closer to winning the war.
Taking the road was never meant to win the war in the first place. It was merely the necessary thing to do to supply Jaffna. Even when the operation had just started, the top brass acknowledged that winning the war required them to chase the Tigers inside the jungles, and not just on the road.
One fact that is not in question is that the strategy was bold and imaginative when it was planned out in 1995. Taking Jaffna, and then the entire Jaffna Peninsula, were bold strokes, which threw the LTTE on to the defensive. After weathering a string of defeats up to then in 1995, this needed to be done.
But since then, the top brass seemed to have lost the ability to take unconventional steps to gain the objectives. Instead, the troops keep going forward in the same style that the British, French and Germans did in World War I, believing that they can just steamroll over the enemy, killing all in their path.
It seems that the generals have not yet learned the lessons of such wars. The fact is that this type of strategy only succeeds in incurring and inflicting horrendous casualties and deaths. Yet, the rate of attrition is not enough to decide the fate of the war. For every combatant killed on the battlefield, many more than that number are born and grow up in enemy occupied areas. Some day, if the war lasts long enough, and it looks like it will, they’ll be teenagers, and are likely to join or be coerced into the LTTE, just like the teenagers of today.
It is also maddening to see that the army has failed to learn from its own successes. The lessons of brilliantly conceived and executed operations like the one that freed the Mannar-Medawachchiya road in March 1997, have gone over their heads. That operation, at one stroke, freed the major town of Mannar from nearly a decade of isolation, and freed the entire Puttalam district and the Tantrimale areas of the LTTE threat.
What clearly needs to be done, to break this impasse, is for the army to temporarily give up the objective of taking the road, shift troops somewhere else quickly, and strike at the Tigers somewhere else. The planning for this can happen while Jaya Sikuru goes on.
Why this type of thing isn’t happening is beyond comprehension. The excuse that there aren’t enough troops is ridiculous. There’s no point in fighting an endless war. Much better to change strategy and try to win it.
What the generals fail to understand is that the country’s economy can’t sustain this type of war. Up to now, the economy forked out the tens of billions needed every year. The generals took it for granted. But now, the amount is becoming too heavy. This is why the entire business community banded together recently in desperation to try to form their own initiative to end the war.
Jaya Sikuru has proved too costly, and has brought much misery, while prolonging the war. It’s time to change strategy. Otherwise, we’ll keep going round in circles.
The South African connection
By Nalin de SilvaThe current visit of Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamer to South Africa will naturally lead to speculation among many individuals and groups. It has been known for some time that the LTTE is planning to shift its headquarters from London to South Africa. It is also an open secret that the LTTE has been very active in South Africa for some time and that it has links with some organisations there. The LTTE and the African National Congress (ANC) have had close ties and that after Mr. Mandela came to power, the LTTE, with support from some members of the ANC, has been able to organise training camps in South Africa.
According to Mr. Rohan Gunaratne, (The Sunday Leader of 15th November) a fourteen member delegation of the LTTE leaders has met Mr. Mandela in his office around the same period Mr. Kadirgamer was visiting South Africa in early 1996. Mr. Mandela has apparently taken some action against the LTTE training camps only after Ms. Kumaratunga had brought the LTTE activities in South Africa to his attention when they were attending the commonwealth heads of government meeting in Edinburgh in October 1997. However some of the measures that were taken against the LTTE activities have been relaxed subsequently.
Is Mr. Mandela playing a double game or is he trying to satisfy the 600.000 strong Tamil/Dravidian community in South Africa? Or has he been converted by the propaganda of Tamil racism in general and the LTTE in particular.
Mr. Rohan Gunaratne in the article quoted above mentions that the LTTE was able to obtain a message from Mr. Mandela for a so- called human rights conference held in June 1996, in Australia. The person who had obtained the message is one Mr. Gordhan, who is an ANC ideologue. He has been engaged in drafting the newly completed constitution of South Africa. Mr. Gunaratne further states: "Some South African colleagues of Gordhan believe that he had been duped by the LTTE into believing that the LTTE struggle against Colombo is similar to the erstwhile conflict between White and Black South Africans. Even some of the better educated South Africans, particularly those of Indian Tamil origin, view the LTTE struggle through the lens of Apartheid."
As Tamil racism was created by the British and sponsored by the western powers that are neither Buddhists nor Hindus, one finds a section of the Christian and Catholic churches among or behind the Tamil racists. Thus it does not come as a surprise to find, from the article of Mr. Rohan Gunaratne, that Dr. S. J. Emanuel, the former Vicar General of the Jaffna Diocese, has been a key figure in the organisation of the LTTE propaganda network in South Africa.
. It cannot be denied that the Tamil racists have been very successful with their propaganda. If some people in South Africa believe that the situation in Sri Lanka is similar to what was in apartheid South Africa then nobody but the governments, present and past, have to be blamed. All the governments have failed in their duty to project the true picture of the country to the outside world.
The fault lies with those who gave the leadership. Most of then were only after power and were not interested in the welfare of the country. Some of them did not have the courage to confront Tamil racism as they did not want to be branded as Sinhala chauvinists. It has become a fact of life that those who oppose Tamil racism and Muslim racism and the associated propaganda are branded as Sinhala chauvinists etc.
For example in this country when a Muslim minister appoints 425 Muslims, out of about 450, to positions in the port it is not racism, but a Sinhala person who questions such appointment is branded as a chauvinist. With all the problems in the country it is all right to take steps to declare Sitaeliya a Hindu sacred city, based on mythology and not on any concrete historical facts. Sitaeliya has nothing to do with Sita of Ramayanaya.( Sita in this case means cold and the short vowel ‘a’ in Sita has been converted into the long vowel ‘a’ by the English pronunciation with the emphasis on the second syllable. The Sinhala imitators of the English, who make female Nanda(r)s out of male Nandas with their imitative pronunciations, have done the rest). The Sinhala people who oppose the move, however, are branded as chauvinists who are a threat to the ethnic harmony in the country.
The situation in Sri Lanka is, in fact, somewhat similar to what was in South Africa, though not the way it is presented by the Tamil racists. In South Africa the Europeans who came very late to the country as conquerors ruled over the original people of the country using force and discriminating against them. Probably they would have preferred to ‘solve’ the problem of the original people by massacring them, the way it was accomplished in the countries in North America, Australia and New Zealand.
The Tamil racists have been going around the world propagating the myth that the Tamils were the original people of Sri Lanka and that the Sinhala people who arrived later conquered and reined over the destinies of the Tamils. However there are so many versions of this story that there is no agreement even among the Tamil racists as to what is supposed to have happened in the distant past. Some are of the view that there were two kingdoms, a Sinhala kingdom in the south and a Tamil kingdom in the north, for two thousand five hundred years. They claim that the Jaffna kingdom, which was finally ruled by the British, was handed over to the ‘Sinhala imperialists’ when the former left in 1948.
Whatever the version is, the Tamil racists are agreed that, at present the Tamils are ruled by a Sinhala government and that the Tamils have an aspiration. There are some Tamils who still claim that they have grievances but they will not deny that the Tamils are a separate nation, that the northern and the eastern provinces are the traditional homeland of the Tamils and that the Tamils have the right of self determination. The picture presented finally by almost all the Tamil racists is that the Tamils are discriminated against by the Sinhala people who arrived in the country after the Tamils.
Of course, there are the ‘enlightened moderates’ who would claim, as if it was a concession given to the Sinhala people, that the original people of the country are neither the Sinhala people nor the Tamils, but the Veddas. This seemingly innocent view has the sinister motive of claiming equal status for the cultures and histories of the ethnic groups in the country with the culture and history of the Sinhala people within the context of the last two thousand five hundred years or so.
The past governments, as well as the present government, have failed to tell the world that Sri Lanka is a Sinhala Buddhist country with a Sinhala Buddhist history and a culture, in which the citizens belonging to a number of ethnic groups live as equal citizens with the Sinhala people, retaining their ethnic identities. They have not presented the historical background of the problem and have allowed the Tamil racists to gain the upper hand.
If the governments had done their duty by the country, the outside world, excluding of course the sponsors of Tamil racism who are also responsible directly or indirectly for the propagation of the myths, would have known that as in the case of apartheid South Africa, it is an ethnic group of recent origin that dictate terms, with the help of the western powers, to the people who built a unique culture in the history of the country.
Dr. Karthigesu Indrapalan in his Ph. D. thesis states categorically that the early history of the country is Sinhala. Even Prof. Ranaweera A. L. H. Gunawardane, whom the Tamil racists are very fond of quoting, does not deny the history of the Sinhala people. His argument, which was very ably met by Prof. K.N.O. Dharmadasa whom the Tamil racists conveniently forget, deals with the concept of the Sinhala nation and not with the Sinhala history. The fact, that the Tamil racists have tried to deny the Sinhala people their history, itself shows how dominating the Tamil racists are and how they have been dictating terms to the Sinhala people.
While in South Africa, Ms. Kumaratunga would have come across at first hand the LTTE activities and their myths that have been propagated. The only way to confront Tamil racist propaganda is by exploding these myths. Thus it is natural that Ms. Kumaratunga selected South Africa to tell the truth that the Tamils are not the original people of Sri Lanka. However it is unfortunate that an attempt has been made by a section of the government to deny Ms. Kumaratunga her due credit for standing up to Tamil racist propaganda. The behaviour of this category of people reveals once again the dominance of the Tamil racists. The country is in such a siege that the head of the state cannot tell the world the truth regarding theTamils in this country.
What is most deplorable is the attitude of Mr. Ranil Wickremasingha and the UNP on this issue. Acting opportunistically, in order to win the support of the Tamil racists at the next election, they have asked the government to resign for telling the truth. In other words the UNP prefers to lie only to please the Tamil racists. Who said that there is discrimination against the Tamils in this country?
It should not be concluded that it is now too late for the government to embark on a propaganda campaign against the myths propagated by Tamil racism. Ms. Kumaratunga with her statement in South Africa has taken a step in that direction.
Peace alliance overcomes unexpected attack
By Jehan PereraIt began as just another meeting, and potentially another "talk shop". Scheduled to commence at 2 pm, the organisers kept on delaying the opening, while glancing at their watches.
They were waiting
hopefully for those late coming stragglers.
The 800 seat Public Library Auditorium was substantially empty to begin with, and would have demoralised the most ebullient of speakers.
But a half hour later the hall was more than half full, and the size of the gathering looked respectable enough for the proceedings to commence. Fighting off the sleepiness of the early afternoon few would have guessed that in little over two hours, this somnolent scene would give way to a physical battle for the control of the stage and the microphone.
The meeting of the broad coalition of religious dignitaries, peace activists, academics, trade unions, women’s and youth organisations, professionals, business groups and civic organisations last week on November 11 (Armistice Day, the day of remembrance of the costs and losses of the First World War) took place after over four months of planning.
The original purpose of the organisers of the "Alliance for Peace" had been to try to build up public pressure on the government and opposition to enter into a bipartisan consensus on ending the war in the north-east. Initially, the thrust of the Alliance was to request the PA and UNP to appoint two members each to form a "Peace Task Force" to work out the basic principles on which a lasting solution to the ethnic conflict could be found.
However, just as the business leaders who organised a highly successful "all party conference" last month are sadly realising, the two largest political parties in the country are not very enthusiastic about collaborating together in endeavours that they cannot monopolise.
The government has its devolution package, which it has laboured over for over two years and, virtually alone, sees as possessing all the basic ingredients of a solution.
On the other hand, the UNP appears to believe that the government wants to hog the political credit for any solution, and so is content to play the role of the proverbial dog in the manger.
Having beaten their heads against the stone wall (and stony hearts) of the government and opposition leaderships, the core group of organisations that comprised the Alliance, then decided to call a larger gathering of civic organisations to discuss their predicament and design an alternative course of action.
In a letter circulated to over a thousand key individuals and organisations, the the convenors of the Alliance which included Prof Tissa Vitarana of the Suriyamal Peace Foundation and Andrew Samaratunge of the National Movement for Justice, Peace and Reconciliation virtually admitted their failure and appealed for more support from civil society.
"Since our last communication to you on the above subject," they wrote, "the Organising Committee tried very hard to get the cooperation of the main political parties to set up a National Peace Task Force.
It would now appear that from within our Alliance it is necessary to set up a Task Force that would operate in an unofficial capacity to facilitate the coming together of the main actors that can influence events, particularly the PA and UNP.
The factual situation is that the two main political parties seem to have put back the solution of the ethnic conflict from their political agenda and given priority to preparing for elections.
The recent developments on the war front (ie. the massive bloodletting at Killinochchi) do not appear to have made a significant change in this attitude."
The response to their letter was extremely heartening.
By 3:30 pm on the day of the meeting, over 600 persons were in attendance, representing over 75 organisations, and including very well known and respected personalities from different fields of non-violent endeavour. The attendees included
the Ven Malwatte Wimalabuddhi Nayake Thero, the Ven. Madhithiyawela Vijithasena Nayake Thero, former Vice Chancellor of the Vidyodaya University, Ven. Prof. Kamburugamuwe Vajira Nayake Thero, the Ven. Diviyagahe Yasassi, the Ven Pallekande Ratanasara, Bishop Winston Fernando, the internationally renowned theologian Fr Tissa Balasuriya, Human Rights Commissioner Javid Yusuf, Northern Muslim Rights Organisation Secretary Moulavi Sufiyan, former President of the International Bar Association Desmond Fernando, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women Dr Radhika Coomaraswamy, Marga Institute head Godfrey Gunatilleke, Head of the Sociology Department of the University of Colombo Prof Siri Hettige, former diplomat Stanley Jayaweera, Hindu Council President Yogendra Duraiswamy and Hindu Congress President Kandiah Neelankanthan.
As the gathering was much too large in order to have the type of informal discussion that had originally been envisaged, it was decided to form two smaller groups to facilitate discussion in which all voices could be heard. The main topic was to promote a bi-partisan political approach to finding a solution to the ethnic conflict while preparing the groundwork for a negotiated political settlement that would end the war in the country. Thereafter the two groups re-convened in the plenary session, at which time the two chairmen of the small groups, both of whom were venerable Buddhist monks, took the stage to read out the conclusions of their respective groups.
It was at this stage that the totally unexpected disruption began.
A member in the audience with the group of youthful disrupters stood up at this stage and asked whether the steps prescribed for peace would make the LTTE leader Mr Prabakaran lay down arms and talk peace.
As if on cue, others stationed within the audience began to chant slogans in concert. "Death to Prabakaran.
We want terrorism destroyed.
The war must go on till the end.
We do not want peace till the terrorists are eliminated," they said. The disrupters who had stationed themselves in strategic positions within the Public Library Auditorium where the meeting was held sought to create the impression that the protests were coming from every place in the hall.
This was followed by moves on the part of the disrupters to forcibly take over the stage, at which point the organisers and others present moved to expel the disrupters.
The group was then gradually pushed out of the hall. The pushing and shoving went on for a while,
with a few policemen trying to stand inbetween the participants and the disrupters.
There was a great deal of shouting, abusive language and chanting of slogans by the disrupters who claimed to be from the National Movement Against Terrorism, a shadowy group of unknown influence and contacts.
The disrupters also distributed a leaflet under the name of the National Movement Against Terrorism, calling for the investigation and if need be, the arrest of certain prominent journalists writing for both the independent and state press who were deemed to be offenders under the ban on the LTTE.
"Put the LTTE ban law into effect, investigate and if need be arrest them," the statement demanded.
Ironically, all the journalists named were those writing solely in the English language press, which certainly gives a flavour of the English-language elitist bias of the National Movement Against Terrorism.
On the other hand, their storm troopers were mono-lingual Sinhala-educated youth.
The leaflet also called for the investigation of the National Peace Council which it claimed was a "War Council of the LTTE."
Much to their credit, the vast majority of the participants at the meeting stayed until the end, despite the attempted disruption.
Many of them, despite their greying hair, also stood up to physically resist the disrupters who were less than half their age (and weight, for the most part) and were successful in evicting them from the Auditorium.
The disrupters were kept out of the auditorium until the close of the meeting, at 6:30 pm with the appointment of a national committee to coordinate the programmes of the Alliance.
The action plans presented by the working groups were also adopted for future implementation.
The inability of the disrupters to prevail was due to two main reasons. The first was the presence at the meeting of a fairly large contingent from the LSSP and the old left movement.
While many were no longer young, they would surely have recalled thier halycon days when trade union action and street protests were the order of the day.
They were not afraid of confrontation even if it meant fist fighting in defence of their right to peaceful assembly.
In fact, some of them had to be persuaded not to thrash the young disrupters after they had been expelled from the hall.
The second reason for the ability of the peace movement to continue with their meeting was simply the disproportion in numbers.
The pro-war disrupters were outnumbered at least 20 to 1 within the hall. Recent public opinion surveys, such as the one carried out by the University of Colombo’s Centre for Anthropological and Social Studies bear out the pro-peace sentiment of the general population.
After four years of bloody military stalemate in which thousands of armed combatants on both sides have paid the supreme price with their lives, the wish for a non-military approach to ending the conflict is clearly on the ascendent.
The Culture Scene
Drama as an exam subject
by Bherunda"The study of theatre involves aspects of literature, history, economics, art, architecture, fashion, sociology, technology, ideology and sex" wrote the renowned critic and writer, Bamber Gascoingne in 1972. He added, "What more does one need for a well-rounded education?" It would be unrealistic to suppose that any educationist today, any where in the world, (and certainly not any where in Sri Lanka) would be so generous as to concede to the study of theatre in the school curriculum a place of such grandeur as Gascoigne implies it should get.
Nevertheless, educationists in most modern countries have gradually, though sometimes even reluctantly, admitted the importance of the study of theatre and drama in the life of the school. The last four decades have seen drama gaining ground in all kinds of educational institutions the world over.
The progress in our country has been slow but considerable. As far back as the 1930’s, the primary class time-table accommodated a subject called "dramatization". The teacher selected the play, usually from the classroom Reader and one period in the week was devoted to the pupils acting out scenes from the lesson. Bherunda remembers a distant day he was asked to act a Saracen at a time when he did not know whether that was a man or an animal. Plays were also done in those far off days, as I suppose they still are, in the Middle School for Inter-House Competitions, close-of-term entertainment and prize giving day displays before parents and guardians, this last mentioned activity being an admission that the school owes an accounting of its life to the community, particularly to parents. This is also a tacit admission that the theatre would be the best medium for doing so.
The Principals allowed time to be taken off from other subjects when Prize Day drama was to be practised, although the time tables of the Middle and High School never accommodated drama as a subject. After-school stay-over for Inter-House or Parents’ Day displays were generously permitted by Principals who otherwise were unconcerned with the educational virtues of drama. Drama was also used as a handmaiden for the teaching of history, civics and literature and perhaps even geography !
Sometime in the late fifties, the Arts Council of Sri Lanka in collaboration with the Ministry of Education organized an Inter-school Drama Competition. This was probably the first time that school drama was given recognition at a national level and undoubtedly was the early signal of a change of attitude towards drama in education as deserving an existence by the own right.
But, speaking generally, the conditions in schools for drama to have a serious impact on the life of the school or outside community were not at all satisfactory. Writing in 1967 Bherunda described the situation thus. "In the school, the whole thing (the study and practice of drama) was left to chance ...... If the school has an interested teacher, he (or she) produces the play usually amidst the apathy, sometimes even the positive discouragement of a Principal struggling hard to fit drama into an already crammed and rigid time-table. Participants are begged from their classes and within closed doors the selected students rehearse the "school-play" as something outside the school’s life". If a teacher chose to do a play for the Arts Council’s School Drama Festival, he was viewed as a person undergoing unnecessary trouble.
But the post-Maname theatrical resurgence gradually gave rise to a change of attitude that was far-reaching and educationists were beginning to see the need to study drama per se in schools and universities. By 1976 a very significant step was taken by the Education Faculty of the University of Colombo, when very farsightedly, it initiated a special course in Drama for post- graduate teachers who were, on obtaining their diploma, to become pilot teachers for teachers of drama in schools.
The visionary and missionary behind this move, it is little known, was the late Dhamma Jagoda who, from a dramatist’s rather than an educationist’s child-centred point of view, nevertheless a nationally important point of view, saw school children as potential audiences whose critical appreciation alone could ensure the emergence and sustenance of a National Theatre Culture.
Jagoda was shrewd in a good cause. He noted, with a certain slyness, that the Hon. Mr. Lakshman Jayakody, then Deputy Minister of Defence, who was an influential parliamentarian of the then-government and a grandson of the 19th century playwright, Charles Dias, had a soft spot for the theatre. Dhamma approached him with a plan and the good-hearted Minister not only accepted his proposal regarding the training of teachers but also acted to put the second phase in Dhamma’s plans into operation - the proposal to introduce Drama as a school-subject. But the Minister did not rush to it. Acting wisely, he appointed a Committee to Report on the question of introducing Drama to schools with Professor Ediriweera Sarachchandra as its Chairman. The Report of the Committee was issued in 1972, two years after its appointment.
By 1976 a syllabus was ready and in 1977 Drama and Theatre was introduced as a subject for the G.C.E. Advanced Level Examination, of course, as recommended by the Committee. The subject was gladly received in the schools and there was a rush of candidates wishing to offer it at the very next exam: but only 11 schools could be supplied the teachers qualified in the University’s Diploma Course in terms of the Pilot Project. If, however, the teachers who came out annually continued to be appointed to the schools chosen according to the project, the need for teachers could have been gradually met.
But this was not to be ! The political upheaval of 1977 shattered all plans. The Project was busted with the teachers scattered helter-skelter. They found themselves in remote places where they were entrusted with teaching any subject but drama. There is a story told that a petty bureaucrat in the Education Ministry told the new Minister that the Project was conceived merely to ensure places in Colombo schools for political favourites of the previous Government and hey presto ! The political bull-in-the China shop thundered "Transfer them all out as far as possible", illustrating for us how stupid a gullible politician and how destructive an irresponsible bureaucrat can be!
This political vandalism and wantonnes could not be wreaked on Drama as a subject for the Advance Level Examination: although it had been introduced by the previous Government. It remained invulnerable by reason of its wide popularity among candidates. Despite the debacle and the consequent dearth of teachers the subject seems to grow in popularity and candidates have increased upto about five thousand in 1998.
Nevertheless the dearth of teachers for drama in schools remains a serious problem, intensifying annually. It has been reported that the Education Ministry’s Department of Examinations has been compelled to get marking of drama scripts done by dance teachers, an anomaly as bad as getting Biology teachers to mark Home Science merely because the latter is also termed a Science!
In the midst of this comes the news that Drama has been introduced as a statutory subject for the G.C.E. (Ordinary Level) as well.
There are two implications of all this which comes to mind. First, that immediate steps will have to be taken to increase the number of and opportunities for teachers of drama through the Universities and Training Colleges (It is in fact surprising to learn that the Giragama Training College for Aesthetics has no course in Drama).
The question has been asked "What is going to happen to all these students of drama as we have no professional theatre to absorb them?" and the reply has been given that it is not intended to make all these students dramatists but full-fledged personalities who can enjoy a piece of theatre. But then the question arises "There must be a theatre in the country to be enjoyed". The present crisis in the theatre threatens it with extinction. Secondly then, the implication is that immediate steps will have to be taken to rescue the local theatre from total collapse by which it is presently threatened (of which later).
A problem of history – re-examined
by E. A. NaganathanThe late Mr. Anthony Gnana Prakasam B.A. (London), Advocate, Barrister (Inns of Court) and Barrister (Sorbonne), one of those muiti-facetted geniuses which Yalpanam is so prolific in producing generation after generation, mathematician, linguist, philosopher and educationist (he pioneered the Montessori method in Sri Lanka) and of whom the late Mr. S. J. Kadirgamar, Q.C. remarked "he was a legend in the law library," which was before he retired from the legal scene to his idyllically scenic estate "Madonna del Fiore at Ihala Biyanwela, Kadawata, there to practice experimental chemistry with clays of many colours, discovering in the process a magnificent ruby and sapphire of the purest water, which he duly presented as rings to his wife Rasapupathy Senathi Raja, my aunt, and who, I believe, holds the record of having sat all three examinations of the Law College in one and the same year and passed with Honours, no doubt with the assistance of tuition from Justice de Sampayo, even whilst he was lecturing as Vice-Principal of the Training College, then in Thurstan Road - once said, "History is a mystery". It seems the same reservation is in the mind of Mr. Nalin de Silva who has made a problem of a matter of fact. Let us examine the facts.
Elara (201-161BC) believe it or not, was the 13th ruler of Sri Lanka, assuming the Mahavihare postulate of a "single nation state" reflecting a "Sinhala Buddhist consciousness". The latter, by the way, raises the question which has been asked before as to whether the two must always be yoked together like Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee, or whether there could not possibly have been, even in a remote corner of the country a person who was Buddhist but not Sinhala-speaking or in the alternative, Sinhala-speaking though not Buddhist.
Be that as it may, Elara moves on to the stage of Sri Lanka history a la the Mahavamsa a mere 46 years after Devanampiya Tissa (247 BC) Even before him there seem to have been Sena and Guttika, who were the 1 0th and 11th rulers The 5th ruler, Mutasiva, a somewhat Saivite sounding name, was the son of Pandukabhaya, the 4th ruler, and he was succeeded by his 4 sons, Devanampiya Tissa, Uttiya, Mahasiva-again the Saivite ring, and Sura Tissa, and then came S. and G. above named.
Again, after Dutugemunu (161-137 BC) and the reigns of his brother, Saddha Tissa (137 - 119 BC) and the latter’s four sons, Tullatthana, Lajjitissa, Khallatanaga and Valagamba (119 - 103 BC), five Tamils, Pulahattha, Bahiya, Panayamaraka, Pilayamaraka and Dathika (103 - 89 BC) took over the reins, within the relatively short period of 34 years of Dutugemunu’s death, till Valagamba’s restoration in 89 BC. On this point, whilst the Mahavamsa is pretty clear that these parties and their predecessors were "Tamils", Mr. Nalin de Silva entertains the doubt whether such a breed of humans by that name existed at all at that time! This must be taken with a big loaf of salt, unless Mr. Nalin de Silva sees certain parallel between these creatures, whom he concedes were all the same "invaders", and the Tamils of our time resident in Sri Lanka whom the Sinhala leaders of his ilk made "stateless" humans by a stroke of the pen in 1948 by the Citizenship Act of that year, thereby creating a new specimen of anthropological freak, never seen before or after in the evolution of mankind.
The aforesaid historical scenario, however, invites the obvious historical inference of the presence at that time of a large "Tamil" population of high standing, holding key positions in society and government, and commanding extensive resources of land and peasant power, and money from business, especially the lucrative entrepot trade with the opportunities it provided for purchasing munitions and allegiances (as in our own times). Elara it must be remembered, reigned for 40 years - longer than any of our post-Independence rulers and we all know how, as in the case of the S.L.F.P and Sirima after just 7 years, and the U.N.P. and J.R.J., Premadasa and D.B.W. after only 17 years, the foundations fell apart under their feet in the run-up to the general elections that followed. Yet Elara had the staying power to not only hold his regime together upto the time of his death, but to even attract the loyalties of the "Sinhala" generals - Gamani and Dighabaya, up to the last.
We are told he had been a horse-trader in his early years. We know from our experience and hearsay of the goings-on in corporate entities, how difficult it is for a single or group of Directors of a Board to stage a ‘coup’ against the remaining members, How much more difficult then for a foreign horse- trader to have wrested power from a brother of Devanampiya Tissa, even if, as I believe, he was not the ruler of the "Sinhala Buddhist unitary state" of Mr. Nalin de Silva’s flight of fancy, but only a chieftain of the Anuradhapura principality or locality. It is unreasonable to infer that a trader could have found his way to the highest position in the land (assuming, again, the "single nation state" of Mr. Nalin de Silva’s imagination running riot) if there were not an existing politico-socio-economic infrastructure in place that rendered it possible. Mind you, the ruler Elara ousted was Asela, Devanampiya Tissa’s brother and before him the afore-mentioned S. and G. had ousted another brother, Sura Tissa.
No. Any reasonable, prudent person will agree that Dr. W. I. Siriweera’s description of the "epic" (that Mr. Nalin de Silva so loves to foster), as a "feudal power game" was absolutely correct. Personally, I should call it an over-statement I revert, at this permit, to my off-stated thesis that the Sri Lankan Tamils, by and large, are not aliens but natives of the soil, being as much mutual descendants of the indigenous Hela (Eela) people, with the difference that the one were acculturated and adopted a Prakrit of Sanskrit as language and Buddhism as religion, and the other Tamil and Saivism, respectively. Having said this, I must allow for the fact that the early "Tamils" in Sri Lanka were (as in S. India) profoundly Jain and Buddhist, Hence, as I pointed out previously, they would have gone to form the non-Tweedledum Tweedle-dee population of Buddhist residents of the country, who were not Sinhala-speaking.
Viewed totally, with a son of Pandukabhaya enjoying the name of Mutasiva, himself the father of Devanampiya Tissa, and Devanampiya Tissa’s second son to succeed him, bearing the same of Mahasiva, and the number of ‘Nagas’ abounding in the regnal titles of the rulers of Mr. Nalin de Silva’s "single Sinhala Buddhist nation state" i.e. Khallatanaga (109 BC.) son of Saddha Tissa, Cora Naga (63 BC.) son of Valagamba and grandson of Saddha Tissa (incidentally he was the husband of Anula (48 BC) whose first paramour was Siva), Ila Naga (36 AD) Mahallaka Naga (136 AD), grandson of Vasabha (67 AD) and brother-in-law of Gajaba I (114 AD) Kudda Naga (188 AD), grandson of Mahaliaka Naga, Siri Naga I (184 AD), likewise grandson of Mahallaka Naga, Abhaya Naga (231 AD), son of Siri Naga I, Siri Naga II (240 AD) grandson of Siri Naga I, Mahanaga (565 AD) etc., we cannot help agreeing with Dr. Siriweera’s (in my view) understatement that "the Mahavamsa was more a national epic of the Sinhala Buddhists of the orthodox Theravada sector (and I would add of the Mahavihare sect) than a dynamic history of the island".
For who were the ‘Nagas’ if not get unabsorbed residue of the original inhabitants of this country (whether they were four distinct peoples, Yakkhas, Nagas, Asuras and Rakshasas, or fewer sharing these names, we shall never know, or find out as long as we cling to the Mahavamsa for divination). Taken in combination with the insights to be gained from the Ramayana epic we may visualize settlement of there people wherever nature was bountiful and provided water, tillable land, navigation, access to the sea and land routes, and trade, etc. Scattered throughout the land would have been these units of skilled, efficient and organized people, but their interaction with each other and the Tamil immigrants and their Saivite priests, and the Prakrit-speaking immigrants from ‘Lata’ and ‘Lada,’ identified as Bengal and Gujerat, and the Pali-speaking Buddhist missionary monks, we will never be able to learn, let alone get to know, if we remain as deaf, dumb and blind as Mr. Nalin de Silva, except to the effusions of the oracle, otherwise called the Mahavamsa.
In this context every word of Dr. Siriweera’s rings true, loud and clear. The Dipavamsa was concerned with relating the history of the visits of the Lord Buddha, and the introduction of Buddhism to the island.
However, in my view, the island did not exist as Sinhala after the lion but after Si-hela - the four ‘Hera (Eela) peoples. The author gave articulation to the Sihala - Buddhist consciousness of the "converted", not the entirety of the population, surely. How silly of Mr. Nalin de Silva not to get Dr. Siriweera’s inference straight! Of course the Dipavamsa and the Mahavamsa are "national epics of Sinhala Buddhists" such as Mr. Nalin de Silva, with blinkers on the Tamil and Sinhala people had lived together in this country during the last 2500 years or so, or rather, I would say, the Hela (Eela) peoples, singly and severally typed or identified as "Sinhala" and "Tamil" in the course of time, had lived, as so described by Dr. Siriweera. S. and G were "invaders" Elara came from Chola and was an ‘invader". So what! Could Karunanidhi, let alone Jayalalitha, invade the island today and seat themselves in power for a 40 year stretch if there were not powerful forces entrenched in the country e.g. the Tamil feudal chiefs permanently settled in the country, referred to by Dr. Siriweera, favouring their cause? On the other hand a Sri Lankan Tamil of lower middle class background, named V. Prabhakaran has succeeded in combatting the "legitimate" ‘Sinhala - Buddhist unitary state with elan simply because he is not an invader but a son of the soil descendant of families that have lived in the country from the dawn of history, under whatever label may have been fixed on them from age to age, and he and his forces draw strength from this fact, and cannot, therefore, be easily defeated.
This is the point I keep returning to, and I do not think it can be called Tamil chauvinism or xenophobia. By the time the Mahavamsa was written by Dhatusena’s brother, the monk Mahavamsa, in or around 460 AD, about 1004 years would seem to have elapsed since the approximate date of Vijaya’s arrival and about 707 years since Devanampiya Tissa’s accession.
Dr. Siriweera is right in saying that over this long period the "element of conflict in the relations between the "Sinhalese" and the "Tamil" had crystalized. Isn’t Mr. Nalin de Silva aware of the immense changes in the relations between the two parties that have taken place in the just 48 years since Independence.
Dr. Indrapalan can go and fly a kite. He is obviously of that camp of Tamils, who luckily grow fewer in number each day who believed in buttering the powers that be in order to earn their daily bread. A lenient construction to be placed on his utterance is that it is a reference to those castes or tribes or groups of families that migrated from S. India to Sri Lanka, not merely to Yalpanam, but along the entire western sea-board, (where they now form stout defenders of the Sinhala Buddhist unitary state line of thought) in the wake of the Muslim invasions and the displacement caused by the wars that ensued, commencing in the 10th century. There are several ‘noble’ families in the Valigamam province of Yalpanam who trace their descent to Cholian chiefs who arrived with the expansion of the Chola Empire. e.g. the Wirt Senathi Raja family of Alaveddy to which belongs Sri Retnapupathy Senathi Raja, my mother.
There is no getting away from Dr. Siriweera’s interpretation that the Elara — Dutugemunu campaign was not a racial war fought between the "Sinhala" and "Tamil" people. Further, that these two peoples though by other names, were living in the country, side by side, in several places, since the beginning of human settlement. However, by the time of the writing of the Mahavamsa around 460 AD. the identities of these people as "Tamil", "Sinhala", " Buddhist", "Saivite" etc. had begun to crystallize.
No story not even the Dutugemnu — Elara story could be "the corner stone" of a thing that never was i.e "the Sinhala Buddhist unitary state of this country". What may one ask, happened to Dutugemunu’s maternal grand-father’s state i.e Kelaniya? Was it over-run by a second tidal wave? Obviously there was not one but several such states or units of government co-existing in the country. It just so happened that the ruler of one such i.e. Tissamaharama moved against that of another i.e. Anuradhapura and won the contest.
Even the great Vijaya Bahu I (1055 AD) had a time of it in establishing his suzerainty ephemerally only, over most of the country, and we know the problems his sister’s grandson, (the grandfather was a Pandyan prince and Parakrama Vagu was a Pandyan regnal title), Parakrama Bahu I (1155 AD) had to secure himself against his own relatives - not least his father’s sister, his aunt Sugala, which stretched his resources to the utmost.
The country, like now, was never single, unitary state, whether Sinhala Buddhist or not, whatever Dr. Colvin R. de Silva or Professor G. L. Pieris may say. Particularly after Parakrama Bahu’s sisters son, the Kalinga prince, Vijaya Bahu II succeeded him (1186 AD), thereby initiating the Kalinga dynasty which lasted till Narendra Sinha of Kandy (1707 - 1739 AD), there was definitely no "unitary" state and, as I have pointed out elsewhere, Nallur as a seat of government under the Kshatriya Aryachakravartins of the Eastern Ganga line of the Kalinga Vamsa from 1215 AD, actually ante-dated the other co-existent capitals of Dambadeniya, Yapahuwa, Kurunegala, Gampola, Rayigama, Kotte, Sitawake and Kandy, under the closely inter- related and inbred rulers of the same Kalinga family group.
I hold no brief for Elara. He may have been an "invader" But I do dissent from describing Dutugemumu as a "liberator" - from what? Unless we give the term the infinitely elastic sense in which each of the major "Sinhala" political parties claims to have ‘liberated’ the country and its peoples with every election it wins I don’t have to be a racist to dissent from the "Sinhala Buddhist history of the country" that Mr. Nalin de Silva seeks to sell. But I will not -repeat not, accept that as a Sri Lankan Tamil, I am a member of an immigrant minority. On the contrary, I am member of an indigenous majority in my own homeland of "Eelam", by which I mean (as my kingswoman, Ranita Hensman) the contiguous territory of traditional Tamil habitation in this country, as identifiable by a census. The Tamil problem in Sri Lanka is a problem not of history, but of the mischievous mystification of history by people with an axe to grind and reputation to foster like Mr. Nalin de Silva. He may rest assured that all Sri Lankan or should I say Eela, Tamils will agree with this view.
