Uyangoda revisited on Tamil nationhood, self-determination

[TamilNet, Sunday, 04 May 2014, 13:42 GMT]
In a pioneering and incisive article published 35 years ago in a Colombo-based monthly journal Lanka Guardian, Jayadeva Uyangoda, currently a professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Colombo, articulated the Tamil Nationhood and corroborated Tamils right to self-determination based on the Marxists-Leninist principle. His article, condemning the Sinhala Left’s failure to grasp the National question in the island is remarkably applicable in the present context of protracted genocide and military occupation, and displays the resilience of Sinhala chauvinism, which is endemic to the Sri Lankan left, opines a Tamil diaspora student of Anthropology, reproducing the article authored by Professor Jayadeva Uyangoda in the Lanka Guardian of 15 March 1979. 

Prof Jayadeva Uyangoda [Library Photo]

Professor Uyangoda, in his 1979 article wrote: “It is a matter of regret that almost all the leftist political parties and groups in this country have been committing the fundamental error of considering the Tamil people in Sri Lanka only as a national minority. This failure betrays not only their residual traces of social chauvinism... but also their inability to grasp the Marxist-Leninist fundamentals on the national question.”

Uyangoda Revisited on Tamil Nationhood, Self-Determination by Thavam Ratna