Oh... your quick, anyway thanks now now I can understand things better.... it seems like he was using a appeal argument as history book facts.
All I wanted to say is that people hardly take up arms and put their lives in risk just for some trivial reason....... the origin of tragedies at both sides it hardly can hardly be one person's fault.
The mythical ethnic problem – I
According to the “accepted” version of the ethnic problem the Tamils are being discriminated by the Sinhalas or the Sinhala extremists, and injustices have been caused to the Tamils after the independence was declared in 1948. This version states the following among others. The Tamil leaders had been very patient with the Sinhala governments and after discussions had failed, as a last resort had wanted in the seventies to establish an Eelam in the Northern and the Eastern provinces, which are the homeland of the Tamils who constitute a separate nation. (This homeland is referred to as the traditional habitats in the infamous J. R. Jayawardene – Rajiv Gandhi pact signed in 1987.) The Tamils had lived in this country as permanent settlers from a very distant past going back to the time Vijaya is supposed to have come to this country. Mahavamsa is a myth that has gone to establish the Sinhala Buddhist supremacy in the country. It is considered on the same level as the Thripitaka (the three baskets of Dhamma) by the Sinhala Buddhists. The Official Language act marked the beginning of the problem while standardization scheme adopted at the admission to the Universities worsened it, after the 1972 Constitution justified the discrimination of the Tamils. Prabhakaran had no option but to engage in an armed struggle and the Tamils had been able to convince the western countries that there is a Sinhala Buddhist supremacy that discriminates against the Tamils. The human rights of the Tamils have been violated over the years culminating with the military operations that saw the defeat of the LTTE, which was a national liberation movement. The diaspora living in the western countries have been successful in convincing those countries of discriminations against the Tamils and violation of human rights, and the west has taken the issue at international fora due to humanitarian considerations. In order to solve the ethnic problem power has to be devolved to the Northern and Eastern provinces so that the Tamils could “govern” those areas looking after themselves.
What many people forget is that S J V Chelvanayakam established the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi in 1949 long before the Official Language Act and that there has been communal politics before 1948 as has been described by Jane Russell and many other authours. Even these authors only describe and do not analyse the problem, and tend to forget that as far as English colonialists were concerned it all began with the appointment of one Sinhala and one Tamil to represent the two communities Sinhalas and Tamil speaking people that included the Muslims in the Legislative Assembly ignoring the percentages of Sinhalas and Tamils of the population, history and culture of the country. At the beginning there was no Muslim representation, and when the Muslim leaders raised this matter Ponnambalam Ramanathan said he represented the Muslims as well, as they were Tamil speaking. Later English appointed a Muslim member to represent the Muslim community. The Tamil politicians and their theorists also forget that had the Dutch not imported labour for their tobacco cultivation there would not have been a so called ethnic problem. Various people claim that the problem has been internationalized recently but the problem had been internationalized from the very beginning. In fact the problem is not an internal problem as such but a problem created by the western colonialists, especially the English.
How much the west is interfering with Sri Lanka is illustrated by the report of the missing of Premkumar Gunaratnam alias Kumar Mahaththaya alias Mudalige Noel before the official inauguration of the Peratugamee Samajavadee Pakshaya formed by Janarala, a dissident group of the JVP with support from some ex members of the Trotskyite X group. The X group itself was split sometime ago, a section of members calling themselves belonging to an organisation called Peratugamee Pakshaya. It is the other section of the X group which has now decided to work with the Janarala or the dissident group of the JVP either as members or advisors and it is clear that at least the Peratugamee part of the name Peratugamee Samajavadee Pakshaya (PSP) has been given by this section of the X group. The PSP talks of Sinhala Buddhist supremacy, injustices to the Tamils caused by the Sinhala governments, advocates maximum devolution to the Northern and the Eastern Provinces, with a leading official of the Federation of University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) being one of the ex X group members working with the PSP. It is the PSP that the west plans to use to create unrest, to say the least, among University Students and other youth, and with a leading official of FUTA agitating for increase of salaries of university teachers and for so called democratic rights, supported by UNP and JVP, it is not difficult to predict what these anti Sinhala organisations and individuals are up to. The PSP is doomed to oblivion in time to come the way the other Marxist Parties have gone in Sri Lanka but in the short term they would be able to create havoc in the country.
Whether Kumar Mahaththaya was abducted by the government or not what is interesting is that he has come to Sri Lanka with the “blessings” of the Australian government under the pseudonym Mudalige Noel. It is clear that the Australian government has issued the passport number N 1016123 to this Mudalige Noel knowing very well that he is Premkumar Gunaratnam. It is none other than the Australian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka who has given the details of the passport of Mudalige Noel who is supposed to be an Australian citizen. Apparently the High Commissioner has been there at the airport when Kumar Mahaththaya left for Australia in the wee hours of Tuesday. Mudalige Noel has overstayed his visa and Sri Lanka has the right to send him off without even informing the Australian High Commission in Colombo. However the million (Australian) Dollar question is what made the Australian government to issue an official passport to Kumar Mahaththaya under the name Mudalige Noel. Has he changed his name officially in Australia and if so when did the change take place? In any event Australian Federal government would have known that Kumar Mahaththaya and Mudalige Noel are the same person, and what were the reasons for the Australian High Commission not to divulge these facts to the Sri Lankan government when the latter was searching for Kumar Mahaththaya. This is only one incident regarding the behaviour of the west that has come to light in the recent past but the involvement of the west against the Sinhalas is clear from the very beginning of the colonial rule in this country.
Going back to the mythical ethnic problem what would have happened if the English governor had appointed say five Sinhala members, one Tamil member and one Muslim member as unofficial members to the Legislative Assembly in the first half of the nineteenth century. There would not have been a so called ethnic problem as the Tamil leaders would have known their position and the strength in the country. Instead what happened was that they were accustomed to the idea that the Tamils were equal in strength to the Sinhalas, if not more, and that the Muslims did not have a separate identity but were Tamil speaking people who could be represented by the Tamil leaders. From the time of the Dutch it is clear that the westerners have used the Tamil leaders against the Sinhala people, commissioning a Tamil Vellala Mudaliyar to write a so called history book by the name Yalpanam Vaipava Malai denying the Sinhala kings the right of the Eastern coast of the country, which the Dutch wanted to control. The process still continues and in between we know that the English transplanted Tamil labourers in the plantations as a buffer against any possible uprising by the Sinhala upcountry people whom they were scared of even after massacring the Sinhala leaders in the 1817 – 18 independence struggle by the Sinhalas against the English colonialists. (To be continued)- 12/04/11
The mythical ethnic problem – II
It is very difficult for a weekly column to write on a topic in instalments as it has to comment on current topics as well. Recently it has become a common phenomenon to observe people coming to the roads and blocking them, setting fire to tyres and making mayhem against some or other police action. Last week at Dematagoda, people from what is known as T 20 Watte, nothing to do with cricket, blocked the Baseline Road apparently over taking some people into custody by the police. The Police claim that those who have been taken into custody are “bad boys” and an inquiry is being held. In any event twenty three have been released on bail, and the police has informed the whereabouts of the others. It is true that the Police has had not a clean track record but people protesting against is a new experience that has to be looked into by the police itself. It is a well known fact that a leading member of the Peratugamee Samajavadee Pakshaya (PSP) who had been a convenor of the illegal Inter University Student Federation was among the protesting people at Dematagoda. The PSP has no mass base island wide and has no strength to stage another 1971 or a 1987-90. It is being used by the westerners for a limited purpose as we have said on few occasions and they have been assigned the task of staging this type of demonstrations so that the police would retaliate probably with the support of the armed forces, and create “human rights violation cases”, for various human rights organisations here and abroad to protest against the government leading to economic sanctions and even perhaps to a NATO attack in the name of R2P and internationalism. There is nothing new about this internationalism as from the fifteenth century the west has taken upon themselves the burden of civilizing the non European nations, a la Macaulay. The west is now civilizing us and teaching how to be democratic and also to respect the human rights of the people. This is nothing but crab theory which in turn is crap, propagated by Macaulay’s children.
Having said that let us get back to the mythical ethnic problem. We have been asking the Tamil leaders and others who talk of Tamil grievances to spell them out for more than two decades but up to now nobody has given a convincing reply. Could at least the Indians who come to Sri Lanka on what may be called field trips and advocate devolution along so called 13 plus, inform us the problem they want to solve? If they are concerned of so called injustices then they should specify them and spell out the solution for each such injustice. In the mean time they could do something to improve the conditions of the Buddhists living in India. There are no injustices caused to Tamils by being Tamils, as poverty etc., can be found among the other communities as well. We have also remarked that more than fifty percent, some would say more than sixty percent but we will have to wait for the 2012 census figures, of the Tamils live outside the Northern and Eastern Provinces, the so called Tamil homelands, and even if more and more power is devolved to those two provinces as a solution to the “injustices”, the majority of Tamils living outside those two provinces would not be affected by such devolution of power. Thus even if one were to assume that there are injustices caused to the Tamils, devolution of power to the Northern and Eastern Provinces is not going to help to solve the problem of the injustices of the majority of the Tamils living in other parts of the country.
I will consider two “injustices” claimed by Tamil leaders. I have discussed these so called injustices for more than twenty five years, but it is good to remind the readers of the same when the LLRC report, which talks of injustices is being discussed in so called international fora. One of the “injustices” is the Official Language Act that made Sinhala the only official language of Sri Lanka (Ceylon). The other is regarding the admission of students to the Universities. Sinhala had been the official language of Sinhale for thousands of years, even if the concept was not there. There was no need to formulate such a concept as it was the only language used in matters concerning the state. Almost all the inscriptions found in the entire island including present day Jaffna are in Sinhala and it also implies that the state not only carried out its activities in Sinhala but communicated with the people also in the same, even after the twelfth century when permanent Tamil settlements were set up in Sri Lanka. Further according to late Mr. Gamini Iriyagolla, whom unfortunately even the so called patriots have forgotten, Sankili as the “king” of Jaffna signed a pact (was it a peace accord?) with the Portuguese in Portuguese and Sinhala, and not in Tamil. It is clear that Tamil had not been an official language at any time in Sri Lanka.
Incidentally we do not have to go by the Portuguese historians who refer to kings and an emperor in Kotte as we did not have an emperor at any time in our history. The Portuguese historians who could not understand the Eksesath Rajya in Sri Lanka tried to grasp the concept within their systems that had emperors and kings. It is unfortunate that the Sri Lanka historians have not made a proper study of the Eksesath Rajya, which was unique to Sri Lanka or Sinhale, and it would not be a bad idea to have an entirely new constitution along the lines of Eksesath Rajya without tinkering the present constitution and wasting time on 13 plus or minus. Eksesath Rajya is a form of unitary state, if I am to use western terminology, and it has maximum devolution as far as administrative purposes are concerned. Whether in Jaffna or Hambantota most of the difficulties arise due to the fact that the people cannot take decisions on problems affecting their day to day lives. We have to devise a way of keeping the politicians away, and giving power to the people in administrative purposes. The politicians should concentrate on policy matters and legislating at the centre, and the powers of the bureaucracy should be restricted to a minimum.
The colonial powers in the areas they controlled used Portuguese, Dutch or English as the “official language”, and under the English, their language became the official language throughout the country after 1815. Thus from 1815 to 1956 English was the official language of the country and there was an agitation commencing in the thirties of the last century to make Sinhala the official language, replacing English. With the official language act it became a reality and no injustice was done to the Tamils by making Sinhala the official language as it had been so for thousands of years before the European colonialists arrived. Tamil had never been an official language and by making Sinhala the official language the Tamils did not lose anything that they had had in the history of the country. I would argue that the ordinary Tamils who were more familiar with Sinhala than with English would have been better off at least marginally by making Sinhala the official language replacing English.
However, there was a tiny minority who were affected by this decision. They were the English educated elite, especially the English educated Tamil Vellalas who dominated the lives of the ordinary Tamils. The English educated Tamils, the darlings of the English colonialists then and now, had to get accustomed to working in Sinhala and it was they who protested against making Sinhala the official language forgetting that English was not there mother tongue. The English educated Tamils as well as those Sinhalas who opposed Sinhala becoming the official language were only playing into the hands of the English who wanted this country to continue as their best colony. It is said that when the English were being chased out by the French, the former had an idea of giving up all the colonies except Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Trinidad. Most probably they found the best apes in the colonies among the English educated elite of those two countries. Even today some of the English educated in Sri Lanka remember with nostalgic memories that Ceylon was considered as the best colony by the English. In any event it was the English educated Tamils, if at all who were affected by making Sinhala the official language, followed by a section of the English educated Sinhala elite. They wanted to retain English as the official language for the benefit of a minority of less than six percent of the population, which they did not consider as an injustice to the Sinhala people and the Sinhala language that had been the official language of the country before the western colonialists set foot on the island.(12/04/25)
The mythical ethnic problem – III
The section that was affected by making Sinhala the only official language was the then English educated Tamils and some of the English educated Sinhalas. However, since then while inciting the ordinary Tamils learning Sinhala most of the English educated Tamils who were Colombo based encouraged their offspring to learn Sinhala as well as English. Being in Colombo these children very often became more fluent in Sinhala than in Tamil, and there are many instances when the progeny of the leaders of the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) or the so called Federal Party were able to gain employment in the Public Sector due to their proficiency in Sinhala. However these leaders were the very same people who from 1956 to 1970 gradually incited the ordinary Tamils against Sinhala Language, handing over the torch of hatred to the “boys” who were the children of the latter, who knew only hatred and torture.
The other “discrimination” with which the Tamil leaders went to town was University admissions, when standardisation was introduced after 1972. There was a case for standardisation at university admission even after Sinhala and Tamil had been introduced as the media of instruction in schools especially with respect to western science based faculties. It is a well known fact that especially the western science based faculties were overrepresented by Tamil students and there were various reasons brought forward to “explain” this anomaly. For example, according to reliable sources, in the late sixties the situation in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Peradeniya was as follows:
Year of Sinhala Tamil
admis: students students
1966 9 66
1967 23 52
1968 21 54
1969 24 51
In the Faculties of Veterinary Sciences and Dental Sciences the imbalance was more revealing.
I do not want to go into details, which were discussed even in the Parliament but it was not at all satisfactory as far as the Sinhala students were concerned to say the least, with respect to university admission when the Sinhala people constituted roughly 75% of the population. It could be argued that there were schools in Jaffna that had better facilities and that the schools in Colombo catered for both Sinhala and Tamil students, and that was the reason for the presence of large number of Tamil students in the western science based faculties. Fortunately nobody argued in public that the Tamil students were cleverer than the Sinhala students.
Even if the Tamil students had access to schools with better facilities the Sinhala students were not at fault, and the fact that the Sinhala students had no such schools for whatever the reason was a discrimination against them and it had to be corrected. On the assumption that the Sinhala students and the Tamil students were and are equal in respect of “intelligence” it was nothing but reasonable to expect the Sinhala students to comprise about 75% of the numbers in any given faculty. In order to rectify the discrimination against the Sinhala students some standardisation had to be introduced. As it was discrimination based on media the marks were standardised media wise. With media wise standardisation more Sinhala students entered the Universities and gradually the percentages of students who were admitted the Universities represented the demographical percentages.
Though many do not realize there are two standardizations that are effective even today. One is the standardisation arising out of what is known as the District Quota in the western science based faculties. University admissions are not based on what some people would like to call purely on merit as certain percentages are allocated over and above population percentages. These districts are found not only in the Southern, Uva, North Central, North Western and Sabaragamuwa provinces but also in Jaffna and Batticaloa districts. Apart from that the Z score mechanism is a subject wise standardisation to which there is no objection in general.
When media wise standardisation was introduced there was a hue and cry against what the Tamil leaders called discrimination against the Tamil students and they were very fond of claiming that a Tamil student from Jaffna had to score more marks to gain admission to the universities than a Sinhala student from Matara District. How many people realise that today because of the two standardisations in operation a student from say Matara District has to obtain more marks to gain admission to a Faculty of Medicine than a student from the Jaffna District. One could check this fact by going through the cut off points of marks for admission to different faculties released by the University Grants Commission. However, no politician would claim that as discrimination against Sinhala students and go to so called international for a rectification.
The fact is that whether in education, sports, professions or anything else in general the different communities should be represented proportional to the national demographical percentages as far as possible. However, it is well known that when the English were here physically as our rulers the Sinhala, especially the Sinhala Buddhists were discriminated against and it was reflected not only nationally but even at school levels. The School Cricket and other sports teams before the sixties were over represented by the Tamils and the Burghers and the Sinhala and Muslim students were underrepresented. I do not want to mention names but those who are over fifty years would remember this fact as far as their school cricket teams are concerned when they were at schools. Now this imbalance has been rectified and the school teams field fare numbers of Sinhala and Muslim students. There are not many Burgher students in the School sport teams and the number of Tamil students have come down drastically. However, nobody would go to so called international for a claiming that Principals, Wardens, Rectors etc. of schools are discriminating against the Tamil and an almost non existing Burgher students. One of the reasons for over representation of Tamil and Burgher students in School teams, especially in Colombo and Kandy, those days was the over representations of those communities in the school student registers. Again I do not want to come out with examples for ethical reasons.
Leave aside the School sports and look at the sport clubs in Colombo. Though people may complain that communal politics was introduced only after our limited independence in 1948, as authours such as Jane Russell, Nira Wickremasinghe and others have revealed there has been communal politics beginning from early nineteenth century. Even sport clubs were formed based on ethnicity as reflected in the Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC), Tamil Union. Moors, Burgher Recreational Club (BRC) etc. The premier grounds as far as Cricket was concerned, the Oval now named as P Saravanamuttu Cricket Grounds, belonged to the Tamil Union and all the whistle stop matches by the English (why not British, I suppose it is not cricket) and Australian cricket teams were played on these grounds at Vanatamulla. Even the School big matches between schools in and around Colombo were played at the Oval those days. However now the venue has been shifted to the SSC grounds telling us a story to be analysed in the next instalment.
Guys, there's no point continuing this conversation honestly. If he wants to be blinded by his own personal beliefs then let him be at the end of the day who are we to change his "facts" (opinions) besides if he can't accept our points then what's the point debating? He's 23 years old man and he think trolling is when you bring up facts and your beliefs into a statement, dafuq? and we're automatically "LTTE Fanboys" the fact he's been making the same thread over and over again just shows that he's trying to enforce his racial beliefs or whatever to the community, so obviously his butt hurt feelings can't handle the feels, so he has to go calling other members names (i lol'd). He's asking me for proof, when he's failed to provide proof if he was super confident that he right, he could easily show me proof for a counter-argument which again he has failed to provide so don't waste your time on him.
Yup he's most likely going to call me an "LTTE Fanboy", funny how even 12 year olds on this site have better spelling and grammar than him though haha.
You Tamil racists couldn't prove anything now bashing me be mature dude
