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Some historians like Chandra
Richard de Silva have dug up evidence that as early as the
second century BC the Tamils had a kingdom spread over the
northern and eastern maritime provinces of Sri Lanka. They
even once laid waste the adjacent Sinhalese kingdoms.
Nonetheless, later history amply proves that both communities
lived peacefully for some time. Parts of the island country
came under the Portuguese in 1505 while in the late 1660s the
Dutch came to rule. Both these powers administered the Tamil
areas as a separate entity.
In 1815 the
British colonial rulers conquered the island and established a
central rule from Colombo. Despite this change, the Tamils
retained and maintained (and were permitted to do so) their
separate identity even though many Tamils migrated to the
predominantly Sinhalese areas in the south. Following the
Hindu faith as opposed to the Buddhist faith of the Sinhalese,
the Tamils stuck to their language, culture, civilisation and
history.
As has been
the history everywhere, the Europeans with "greed of
every type" as their motive not only sought trade and
commerce but they took "school and cross" with them.
The Tamils who inhabited mostly the littoral provinces
obviously came under the "missionary impact"
earlier. Small wonder that nearly 7 per cent of the Tamils
became converts to Christianity through Portuguese Catholicism
and Dutch and Anglican Protestantism. However, even this
section did not evolve as a separate entity. They, at no time
of history, could come out of the age-old Hindu traditions and
cultural values. Group consciousness of the Tamils therefore
became gradually transformed into "national
awareness".
On the other
hand, the British under the Colebrook reforms of 1833
established a "centralised control". The aim was to
end the Sinhalese rebellion so that for their "mercantile
welfare" they could develop a safe and dependable
transport system from the inner hill country to the
metropolitan harbour of Colombo. The British colonialists, in
consonance with their age-old policy of "divide and
rule" encouraged the policy of separation by nominating
representatives to the Legislative Council on the basis of
different communities.
As they
espoused the cause of "communal representation" in
India, the British added this term to the "political
vocabulary" of the island also. The educated Tamils,
Muslims and Sinhalese realising the danger of such
representation agitated to replace it with "territorial
representation". The enlightened Tamils knew that they
stood to lose from such a step, but their naive thinking that
franchise shall be extended to the educated ones, made them to
walk into a trap. Nevertheless, the numerical superiority of
the Sinhalese gave them a majority in the Council. The problem
was, however, temporarily resolved when the Ceylon National
Congress was constituted in 1919. It was agreed that despite
the "territorial principle", the "communal
ratio" in the Council would be maintained in a veiled
form.
With gradual
awakening, the Sinhalese realised that they did not require
the Tamil consent for any policy making and so seriously made
efforts to obtain territorial representation. The introduction
of "universal suffrage" in 1931 sowed the seeds of a
permanent rift between these two communities. The British
policy of handing over power to their trusted leaders (Nehru
in India, Rahman in Malaysia, Nkrumah in Ghana, Nyerere in
Tanzania, Kaunda in Zambia and Senanayake in Sri Lanka) was
the last push to widen the rift. The Tamil consciousness under
the leadership of Chelvanayakam reached a high pitch. The
conservative Sinhalese leadership, on the other side,
suppressed it through "military action" under a
state of emergency. After about two decades of
parliamentarianism, the Sri Lanka Tamil youth came to resort
to violent measures ignoring the sane plea of senior Tamil
leaders. They assumed militant form and the Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Elam (LTTE) emerged as a "militant
formation" led by Velupillai Prabhakaran and thereafter
the continuous "blood bath" on the Sri Lanka soil is
part of the recent and current history.
Going through
all the 10 chapters of this book, including Chandrakanthan’s
"Inside view" anyone reading between the lines will
not fail to realise that besides the "divide and
rule" policy of the British the Sinhalese majority,
feeling itself as the inheritors of the "superior
Aryans", could not come to terms with treating the Tamils
(supposed to be the inheriters of the so-called "inferior
Dravidians") as equals. As a result the Tamils have
started to demand "independent statehood". Peace
efforts by well-meaning statesmen of the world have however
yielded no results, because it is doubtful whether the
Sinhalese would agree to any alternative, such as a
confederation.
This well documented title,
the outcome of two years of intense labour, is an informative
attempt and a must for all concerned to understand this knotty
problem.
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