Blooming Errors In Sampanthan’s Eelam-Bud Thesis – A Rejoinder

By Veluppillai Thangavelu –FEBRUARY 27, 2018

Veluppillai Thangavelu

In politics, Malinda Seneviratne is the junior sibling of Dayan Jayatilleka. They have many things in common. They both suffer from the majoritarian mindset and supremacist ideology. They see no merit in devolution/sharing of power. Both are allergic to the word ‘federal’ or ‘federalism’ because both think rather ingeniously that it will lead to separation.

Despite his faults, LTTE leader remains popular among the Tamils even now. He passionately believed in an independent Eelam and sacrificed his life and that of his family. He lived a simple life and was scrupulously honest, unlike the corrupt Sinhalese politicians. His life and death have no parallel in the long history of Tamils. Tamils are convinced LTTE leader opted for armed struggle in self-defence as a last resort because of state-sponsored terrorism by the SLFP and the UNP governments. Both treated the Tamils shabbily and suppressed their natural rights to peaceful life and dignity.

The victory against LTTE by the Sinhala army is a pyrrhic victory because the causes that led to the war remain unaddressed to this day.

Malinda and Dayan think that the natural rights of the Tamils depend on the magnanimity of the Sinhalese majority. But that is not democracy; democracy is rule by consent, not rule by a tyrannical majority. Though both Malinda and Dayan will rush to deny that the Tamils lived for centuries in a Kingdom of their own that co-existed with the Kotte and Kandyan Kingdoms which is a historical fact. Occasionally, the Kandyan Kingdom had even matrimonial relationship with the Jaffna Kingdom. 

A Chief Justice in the British Government, Sir Alexander Johnston wrote on 01.07.1827 to the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland as follow “…I think it may safely be concluded both from them and all the different histories which I have in my possession, that the race of people who inhabited the whole of the Northern and Eastern Provinces of the Island of Ceylon, during the period of their greatest agricultural prosperity spoke the same language, used the same written character, and had the same origin, religion, castes, laws and manners, as the race of people who at the same period inhabited the southern peninsula of India….”

The demography of the Eastern province has been drastically altered by large scale Sinhala colonization from the days of D.S.Senanayake. In 1920 only 4 percent of the population of the Eastern Province was Sinhalese. The Sinhalese settlements in the east were small and scattered, even though most of the east came under the umbrella of the Kandyan Kingdom after the fall of the Jaffna Kingdom. It is only in the past fifty years that there has been a substantial influx of Sinhalese settlements through state intervention.

The island of Sri Lanka, then known as Ceylon, was ceded to the British Crown in 1802 by the Treaty of Amiens of that year. The map of Ceylon attached to the Treaty of Amiens call the Arrow Smith Map of Ceylon depicts the Island of Ceylon as two (if not three) different countries – a Tamil country composed of the Northeast and a Sinhala country composed of the South West and central parts.

Sir Hugh Cleghorn wrote in June 1799 to the UK Government: “Two different nations from a very ancient period have divided between them the possession of the Island. First the Singhalese, inhabiting the interior of the country in its Southern and Western parts, and secondly the Malabars who possess the Northern and Eastern Districts. These two nations differ entirely in their religion, language and manners.” (Malabar meaning Tamil).

Hugh Cleghorn (1798 – 1800) functioned as the Chief Secretary to the First Governor, Frederic North (later Earl of Guilford). He organised the administration and the famous Cleghorn Minute is a classic of its kind. Before coming to Ceylon he was Professor of Civil and Natural History at the University of St. Andrews. He was the agent by whose instrumentality the Island of Ceylon was annexed to the British Empire.

The Cleghorn Minute of 1799 and the Arrow Smith Map of 1802 are official proof that the Island of Ceylon consisted of two separate countries.

But Sinhala-Buddhist extremists dismiss historical evidence with a wave of the hand. Today the Sinhalese population has multiplied many times due to state-sponsored colonization. The 4% Sinhalese in the eastern province in 1920 now stands at 23.15% almost six-fold increase.

When the Portuguese and Dutch invaded and occupied Ceylon, they continue to rule the Northeast as a separate entity due to territorial, language, religion and cultural differences. It is the British that for administrative convenience amalgamated the Northeast with the rest of the country in 1833 on the recommendation of the Governor Colebrook – Cameron commission.

Rightly speaking the Tamil people instead of asking for 50:50 should have asked for the restoration and reconstitution of the Jaffna Kingdom ruled by their ancestors. This they failed to do because of the deception of DS Senanayake who promised the Tamils and other minorities that no harm will befall the Tamils at the hands of the majority in an independent Ceylon!

On October 1945, D.S.Senanayake, the first Prime Minister of independent Ceylon, GAVE THE FOLLOWING SOLEMN PROMISE TO THE TAMILS and other minority communities `NO HARM NEED YOU (NON-SINHALESE) FEAR  AT OUR HANDS (SINHALESE) IN A FREE LANKA.

He was speaking in the State Council in October 1945 when all the Tamil members had unanimously voted for the acceptance of the Soulbury constitution in a White Paper.

‘Do you want to be governed from London or do you want, as Ceylon, to help govern Ceylon?  On behalf of the Ceylon National Congress (founded by Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam in 1919) and on my behalf, I give the minority communities the sincere assurance that no harm need you fear at our hands in a free Lanka’ he rhetorically asked.

Again addressing the State Council on November 8, 1945, D.S. Senanayake went on to reiterate “We devised a scheme which gave heavy weight age to the minorities; we deliberately protected them against discriminatory legislation; we vested important powers in the Governor-General because we thought that the minorities would regard him as impartial; we decided upon an independent Public Service Commission so as to give an assurance that there should be no communalism in the Public Service. All these have been accepted by the Soulbury Commission and quoted by them as devices to protect the minorities.”

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