A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Saturday, July 15, 2017
‘Minority Complex’ of some Sinhala Leaders and Advocates!
Leslie
There can be some objective reasons why some of the Sinhalese, not all,
have a ‘minority complex.’ The historical or geopolitical context is
Tamil Nadu or South India.As far as I am aware, this was first pointed
out in an objective manner by Leslie Goonewardene of the old LSSP,when
he wrote ‘The History of the LSSP in Perspective.’ He said that,
"Although in the state of Ceylon, the Sinhalese constituted the majority
and the Tamils the minority, the Sinhalese considered themselves to be
the minority in the region, when one counted also the tens of millions
of Tamils in South India." He also added "However unfounded these fears
may have been, they were both widespread and deep among the Sinhalese
population" (My emphasis).
This was in 1960. His mistake was to consider it a total Sinhala
perception. A task of the LSSP or the left movement, anyway, was to
change ‘these unfounded fears’ for a better and a progressive future of
Sri Lanka. But it was not happening.
I met Leslie in early 1974 for an interview, at his Colombo residence,
at Pedris Lane. I was thinking of doing my post-graduate research on the
left movement at that time. When we were discussing this matter, among
other things, and I asked him critically: ‘Is it not correct to say that
the LSSP itself has succumbed to these fears?’His answer smiling
was:‘You know, most of our comrades also suffer from these fears.’ It is
still true of the remaining old LSSP today, and the traditional left
movement in general.
Roots of Fear
All ‘fears’ or concerns cannot be totally discounted. As a small Island
nation, it is true that Sri Lanka is vulnerable to immense international
and other pressures. That is what a national leadership for; to
prevent, counter and manage these pressures. But instead, if the leaders
and their advocates themselves promote these fears among the masses,
that is the prescription for a ‘defeatist nation’ instead of a confident
and a vibrant one.
HLD Mahindapala in a response to my article, ‘Is there a "Sangha State" behind the State’ (10 July), says the following.
"His objections, as I understand it, are to Sinhala-Buddhist politics
which oppose the disproportionate demands manufactured in the thirties
and forties by the two intransigent racist gang-leaders, Ponnambalam and
Chelvanayakam."
His ‘understanding’ is completely wrong.
My objections(or rather exposure)were to the BBS’ fascist politics and
its justification by the Asgiriya Mahanayake Theras followed by the all
three Nikayas. Mahindapala is still living in the thirties and forties
with Ponnambalam and Chelvanayakam!
This is a common ailment. Sri Lankan armed forces defeated the LTTE in
May 2009. But even thereafter, many of the Rajapaksa leaders and
advocates continuously suffered from the LTTE fear without any
foundation. That is why they terribly failed to take the next step for
national reconciliation with the Tamil people. It was not merely the
fear of the ‘international,’but also the fear of the ‘internal,’ the
minorities. They couldn’t understand the new stage. They continuously
lived in the old conditions, at least mentally. I know this for sure, as
I was somewhat close to them that time.
It was not that that the issues of security could easily be discounted,
just because of the defeat of the LTTE. But there should have been some
proportionality and realism. The new risks were not the same as before.
They won, but they felt that they lost!
This was not only a Rajapaksa ailment. The failures of the political
leaderships since independence to forge a united Sri Lankan nation, on
the lines of a civic nation or civic nationalism, were at the core of
this ‘defeatist’ and ‘defensive’ politics. There was no iota of optimism
or self-confidence. They go too much into history, without a vision and
confidence for the future. The minority, and particularly of the
Northern Tamil leaders, also suffer from this ailment in multiple ways
and my focus in this article is on the Sinhala leaders and their
henchman advocates.
When you look around the world, most of the conflicts, or their reasons,
are more of imagined than real. This is also one reason why a dangerous
armed race (now a nuclear race) is conducted with colossal financial
expenses and fatal risks, while thousands and thousands in the world’s
poor suffer from hunger, malnutrition and disease.
In rare cases, there are/were minorities controlling the majorities.
Apartheid South Africa was one example. However, after the political
change and defeat of Apartheid, the South African Black leaders are
managing the country with confidence. There are no traces of ‘minority
complex’ among the South African leaders.
Sri Lanka is not Alone!
Of course, Sri Lanka is not alone. The closest ‘friend’ in this case is
Zionist Israel. The way they cultivate the ‘minority complex’ is very
much similar to what the Sri Lankan propagandists, like HLD Mahindapala,
do in our country. Therefore, the Maha Sangha should not be blamed
solely. The blame should go to these propogandists also.
Nissim Rejwan(‘Israel’s Years of Bogus Grandeur,’ 2006) succinctly puts
this ‘minority complex’ in Israel on three counts. First, as they feel,
when the world is divided into Jews and Gentiles (non-Jews), then the
Jews are of course a minority. This is also similar to what is perceived
in Sri Lanka on religious grounds. The Buddhists are the majority in
Sri Lanka (70%), but a small minority in the world (7%).
Second, when the Jewish situation is perceived in the Middle East, they
remain a tiny minority in a sea of Arab nationals. This is similar to
the most prominent comparison given in Sri Lanka as Leslie Goonewardene
did. When the Sinhalese are compared to the South Indian Tamils (not to
speak of others), it is a minority.
Third, in the case of Israel, in a narrow cultural or culturist terms,
Rejwan also said, the Zionists also feel a minority among the other
Jewish communities. This is in a sense also the case of the Sinhalese,
because many of them readily accept their mixed ancestry/ancestries.
Therefore, the ‘pure Sinhalese’ also feel a minority among the
Sinhalese, although they may be the most ‘mixed’ in the actual sense. If
you are in a mixed marriage, perhaps by accident, then this feeling is
doubly accelerated.
Even otherwise, there is a third dimension to the Sinhala ‘minority
complex’ in the North and the East. This majority-minority complex is a
common bane among the Tamils as well. The whole homeland concept rests
on acquiring a majority status. In areas where they are dominant, they
also want to discriminate the Sinhalese or the Muslims on this basis.
The solution to this bizarre majority-minority syndrome is to perceive
that we all live in a pluralist, multi-ethnic and multi-religious
societies. This is the case in Sri Lanka, as well as in other countries.
As Amartya Sen succinctly illustrated (‘Identity and Violence: The
Illusion of Destiny’), people have multiple plural identities and not
only ethnicity or religion; or only majority-minority identity. Before
the exact population counts were available in Sri Lanka, there were not
much complex or conflicts based on majority-minority or ethnic lines.
People used to mix quite freely beyond ethnicity or religion.
Historically, Sri Lankan society was largely a product of this mix,
until the ethno-minded leaders came to disrupt the situation and use
these fears and feelings for their power politics.
Fear Mongering
Fear mongering about the minorities is mostly a political project than a
real concern among the people. It is promoted by paid and unpaid
advocates of power hungry, mostly defeated political leaders. Only
occasionally, the public is carried away by these fears and propaganda.
The justification for the 18th Amendment was based on the argument that
Sri Lanka needs a strong and a continuous presidency in the face of
threats and risks. It was on that basis that the January 2015
presidential election was held, even two years before, to end up in a
pathetic defeat. It was believed that ‘the majority of the majority’ was
sufficient to win an election, neglecting the ‘minority’ concerns. That
argument also terribly failed.
After the presidential elections, the fear mongering was accelerated to
win the parliamentary elections in August in the same year. The much
hyped Nugegoda rally, to ‘rise up with Mahinda’ (Mahinda Samaga
Nagitimu) was particularly aimed at this end. However, the parliamentary
election results clearly show that the Sinhala people could not be
swayed by those fears alone. The voters moved more towards a
‘majority-minority or a multiple alliance,’ while the SLFP itself
breaking up into two on the same and other issues. This was a major
progress from the old ‘1956 SLFP.’
If there is any reasonable and a general formula for winning elections,
even in the future, that is not about ‘majority of the majority,’ but
about ‘majority-minority or multiple alliance/s’ under a rational
political platform. However, the propagandists, like Mahindapala, are
still waving the old formula of fear mongering about the minorities or
the international actors. This is the gist of his response to me on the
‘Sangha State’ question. If I may just ignore his customary invectives,
the three cases that he has cited amply demonstrate his propensity to
carry on with this fear mongering among the Sinhala people.
He says, "I shall select only three instances [cases] to test the
validity of his [my] argument." What are they? Let me quote his first
case in full.
"Case 1: When the anti-conversion bill was presented the American
government of Bush, a committed Evangelist, forced his will on Chandrika
Bandaranaike’s government to reject it. Now which state was running
CBK’s state?"
He is not giving the time frame or the context for his spurious case.
This was October 2005, although a bill was initially presented in June
to circumvent a more stringent bill from the JHU. Mahinda Rajapaksa was
the Prime Minister of the Chandrika Bandaranaike government that
Mahindapala talks about. Let us forget about that. But MR became the
President after the elections on 17 November. What happened to him and
the bill, thereafter? Was the American government also running the
Mahinda Rajapaksa government as well on the interests of the Evangelical
groups? Mahindapala is mum about this latter part of the history.
In his Response, he has not quoted me at all, except running away with
my thought provoking question in the title! His argument is that, if my
question is valid, then his cases are also valid. But in my case, I have
given ample evidence not only quoting the Mahanayake Theras’ statement,
but also the Asgiriya one, quite extensively. But what he has actually
done is the propagation of the usual ‘minority complex’ and the
‘international phobia.’ His second case is about ‘Islamophobia.’ And the
third one is more spurious, finding NGO ‘reds under every bed.’ There
is no further point in answering him.