In Parts II and III of the present series of articles it was shown, contrary to the myth
propagated by
Ms. Radhika Coomaraswamy, that Tamil racism has existed since the last century and that
the myth
making was started not by the expatriate Tamils after 1983 but by people like Mudaliyar
Rasanayagam who as far back as 1926 were, in fact, echoing the tradition of the mythical
Yalpana
Vaipava Malai composed in the Eighteenth century. I wonder whether Mr. D. P. Agasthiyan
who had
written to "The Island" on the 1st and 3rd of May 1999 along the lines of these
myths is an expatriate
Tamil. Whether he is a local or not it is clear that even today there are many
non-expatriate Tamils
living among the Sinhala people, who continue to keep themselves busy with upholding the
Malai
tradition of History.
Ms. Coomaraswamy on the other hand pretends to recognise that some of these are myths. For
example she says: "Tamil myths as currently espoused by some Tamil expatriate
scholars appeals to
have the following elements. Firstly Tamils of Sri Lanka are the heirs to an old and
ancient civilisation
which has its roots in Mohenjadaro and Harappa, civilisations which had been destroyed by
less
developed Aryans from West Asia. Secondly, Tamils are the original inhabitants of Sri
Lanka and the
Sinhalese are actually Tamils who came later to the island and became Sinhalese after
adopting
Buddhism as their religion. Thirdly, the Tamil language spoken in Sri Lanka is its purest
form; it is
Tamil as spoken during the Sangam renaissance of the ninth century. Fourthly, Saiva
Siddhantha is the
religion of the Tamil people and has a special home in Sri Lanka because of the teachings
of Arumuga
Navalar". Not only that she "concedes" them as myths she is also
"against" the utilisation of these
myths by those whom she wants us to believe as expatriate Tamils who have taken up the
industry of
myth making after 1983 as a reaction against the Sinhala nationalist ideology that arose
in the fifties.
Now the question is why should Ms. Coomaraswamy try to create the impression that she is
against
these myths. Is it because that she is a rational objective impartial intellectual who is
dispassionately
interested in seeking the objective truth whatever the outcome of such endeavour may be?
It could be
so, but from her article, sorry the research publication, that appeared in "The
Island" of 6th and 8th of
March 1999, it is clear that there are other motives. She says: ".... the discourse
of Tamil nationalism,
ESPECIALLY AS EXPRESSED IN CERTAIN TYPES OF EXPATRIATE LITERATURE,
appears to contain the same communalism, which if unchallenged will lead us further into
the modern
era of neo-tribalism". It sounds as if Ms. Coomaraswamy is "against" what
she and her gurus in the
west call neo-tribalism.
However only one paragraph later she says: " It may be argued that Tamil
intellectuals cannot afford
to make the same mistake (she is referring here to the ‘mistakes of the Sinhala
intellectuals’). Political
ideologies which further the cause of social justice, which fight oppression and
exploitation must be
distinguished from those which find their sustenance only in tribe, race and ethnicity.
The right of
ethnic groups to political expression, to political autonomy and even to a separate state
may be
justified in "political" terms of the right to self determination or the right
to be free from oppression or
exploitation. It poses difficult problems if it is justified in terms of the discourse of
a chosen people."
Then she goes on to say:" The discourse of a chosen people, which is a familiar and
important part of
Sinhalese nationalism has become a new and disturbing phenomenon in Tamil political
writing . In
surveying some of the books and articles which have come out since 1983 there appears to
be an
alarming and rapidly growing process of myth creation about Sri Lankan Tamils. It is
important that
these myths be dispelled now, before they receive ideological vigour. ........... The main
thrust of this
campaign appears to come, not so much from Madras or Jaffna, where every day issues of
survival
point to a different type of politics, but from the expatriate community, who have begun
to write
extensively on Tamil history and ideology. Their writings are circulated widely and have
an important
effect on Tamil consciousness.
Many Tamil social scientists have argued in private that this new phase in Tamil
nationalist writing is
an attempt by the middle class, expatriate population to capture momentum and give
ideological
direction to the Tamil nationalist movement which for the most part has relied on general
concepts of
freedom from oppression and the right to self determination. However, impugning motives to
expatriate scholars, and thereby dismissing the influence of such writing may
under-estimate the
power of such ideology which draws sustenance only from ethnic loyalty. There is no doubt,
that
these writings have become an influential part of the ideological debate and it is
therefore necessary to
analyse the political implications of such myths of dissemination."
Ms. Coomaraswamy and others of her ilk would like to "debunk" these myths
created by the
so-called expatriate Tamils mainly because it will undermine their campaign for
"political autonomy
and even to a separate state" that "may be justified in "political"
terms of the right to self determination
or the right to be free from oppression or exploitation". They are now worried as
"it poses difficult
problems if it is justified in terms of the discourse of a chosen people." The
"scholars" unlike the
expatriates know with what kind of myths they can argue their case for political autonomy
and a
separate state. They would not like to see the Mahavansa being quoted at all as it gives
credibility to
that great work by Rev. Mahanama. They know that the historical or the ideological myth
stands no
chance at all in the face of the work done by Prof. Indrapala. In his Ph. D. thesis
submitted to the
University of London he categorically states that "Until about the thirteenth century
A.D. the history of
Ceylon was the history of the Sinhalese people." (page 6). Probably the lawyers close
to Ms.
Coomaraswamy would have helped her to weed out those expatriate myths that would pose
problems for their case in arguing for political autonomy and a separate state without any
assistance
from the Mahavansa. The myth that the "scholars" (including the lawyers) have
propagated with some
success is that the Tamil demands are "rights" based. According to them the
Tamils are demanding
political autonomy, self-determination etc., because they have been discriminated against
since the
Sinhala Language Act of 1956. They claim that they have evolved a "political
discourse" which can be
defended as against an "ideological discourse" of the expatriates.
The "scholars" hide the fact that their so-called political discourse is also
surrounded with myths.
Firstly it is a myth to state that the "expatriates" started the
"ideological discourse" after 1983. The
Tamil racism from the very beginning is based on the ideological myths from which Ms.
Coomaraswamy tries to give the impression that she is dissociating. Mudaliyar Rasanayagam
nor Mr.
Chelvanayakam who talked of a three thousand-year history of the Tamils were not
expatriates who
came to the limelight after 1983. As I have said in Part III the Tamil demands from the
days of the
legislative assembly were based on the notion that the Tamils have a history in this
country going even
beyond Vijaya and that the Sinhala people did not build a unique culture in this country.
People like
Mr. Agasthiyan based in the tradition of Malai come to conclusions such as "The Nagas
and the
Lambakarnas intermixed and together with other Tamils from South India formed the
forefathers of
the Tamils in the North today" and "Sinhalese did not play any part in the
cultural development of the
Tamils". He says that "in fact it was the other way around" based on
arguments of the form "it is
obvious that sufficient scholarship was not shown to the study of the message in this gold
plate
(Vallipuram-NdeS) for if it was done it would have clearly shown Jaffna neither had any
Sinhalese
living there nor was there any frequent contact between Jaffna and the rest of Sri
Lanka." ("The
Island" 3rd May 1999). Mr. Agasthian must be a present day Rishi Agasthi to
"see" the conclusion
even before a proper study (in his opinion) is made!
Secondly Ms. Coomaraswamy and the others propagate the myth that the Tamils are being
discriminated in this country and that the Tamil demands in the fifties were "rights
based". All these so
called discriminations emanate from the reluctance of the Tamils to accept that (i) the
majority of the
people in the country are Sinhala, (ii) the history of the country is Sinhala, (iii) the
culture unique to this
country is Sinhala and (iv) the language of the country is Sinhala, as a result of the
Malai type history.
The Tamil racists are against Sinhala being the only official language in spite of the
fact that more than
85% of the population can understand that language and they wanted Tamil also to be an
official not
because that the Tamil identity would be lost as a consequence but simply because of the
belief in the
Malai tradition of History. The so-called discriminations arise out of this "false
consciousness" given to
the middle class Tamils by an ideology based on a mythical history. Ms. Coomaraswamy and
others
of her ilk try to hide this fact and want the rest of the world to believe that there was
no ideology
behind the Tamil demands in the fifties of the so-called Federal Party and the other Tamil
racist
parties subsequently formed. The fact that the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (Lanka Tamil
State Party)
was formed before the so-called discriminations debunks the Coomaraswamy myth. The Tamil
demands in the fifties as well as those before and after the fifties were
"ideologically based" and not
"rights based".
Thirdly Ms. Coomaraswamy is propagating the myth that the history based on the
"Yalpana Vaipava
Malai" and the Mahavansa are both myths. What she and the other "scholars"
are trying to say is that
the Malai tradition and the Mahavansa tradition are only legends and nothing more. The
strategy is
simple. They know that Malai tradition is not consistent with the historical and
archaeological facts
and cannot be defended. By pretending to be non-biased they then claim that Mahavansa is
also a
mythical tradition. They are worried that some "scholars" like N. Satyendra
quote Mahavansa to
"prove that the Sinhalese are of Tamil descent." For example, according to Ms.
Coomaraswamy,
Satyendra has said: "The Sinhala Chronicle, the Mahavamsa, also records that a few
years after his
arrival in Sri Lanka, Prince Vijaya and his followers married Tamils from the Pandyan
kingdoms in
South India." Now the Mahavansa only says that the wives for Vijaya and the others
were brought
from the Pandyan kingdom. It does not say that the Pandyans were Tamils and this
interpretation is
given by the Tamil racists without realising that there were no Tamils in the Pandyan
kingdom during
that time. For Tamil racists any non-Aryan tribe in India and Sri Lanka is Dravidian and
very often if it
suits them they are Tamil as well.
It is unfortunate for the Tamil racists that the only source that they can quote "to
prove that the Sinhala
people are descendants of Tamils" is the Mahavansa. Even then they have to give their
own
interpretations based on the assumption that the pre Aryan tribes in South India and Sri
Lanka were
Tamils. This assumption is totally false, as the Dravidians, according to historians such
as Nila Kantha
Shastri, have come to India after the Aryans. I will discuss this in more details later.
In the meantime
let me quote Prof. Indrapala on the Sinhala and Pali chronicles. In his thesis he says:
"While the Pali
and Sinhalese chronicles of the island provide very reliable, fairly adequate and
surprisingly
continuous information regarding the political, and to an extent the religious, history of
Ceylon, their
contribution to our inquiry is little." So the Mahavansa is very reliable though its
contribution to the
study that Prof. Indrapala had undertaken was little. It has to be remembered that there
are no
contradictions between the Mahavansa and Prof. Indrapala’s thesis. Thus Ms.
Coomaraswamy’s
attempt to portrait the Mahavansa as the Sinhala equivalent of the mythical Yalpana
Maipava Malai
fails. However much Ms. Coomaraswamy and the others of her ilk attempt, they cannot equate
Mahavansa to Yalpana Vaipava Malai or the Ramayanya and the Mahabharatha as the historical
and
the archaeological evidence corroborate with the Mahavansa on overwhelming number of
cases.
However, one should not get the impression that Ms. Coomaraswamy is really against the
myths in
the Malai tradition. Let us see how Ms. Coomaraswamy approves the work of S. Ponnambalam,
which contains the same myths, while derogating the Mahavansa. She says: ‘Generally
most Tamil
scholars accept the Mahavamsa only as a source of legends. S. Ponnambalam in fact calls
some
Mahavamsa stories "nothing but a tangled web of cleverly contrived fiction."
......... The Sinhalese
have always claimed that they were the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka, with the Tamil
presence
always being that of the invader. The Sinhalese chronicles, the Mahavamsa and the
Dipavamsa, are
used as evidence of this claim to priority. To combat this MYTH OF ORIGIN (my emphasis),
Tamil
scholars such as Ponnambalam have this to say. "According to tradition the Tamils of
India and Sri
Lanka are the lineal descendants of the Naga and Yaksha people. (According to Harry
Williams).
Nagadipa in the north of Sri Lanka was an actual kingdom known to historians and the
people who
occupied it were all part of an immigrant tribe from South India, Tamil people called the
Nagars...
The conclusions that could validly be drawn from the new historical data clearly establish
that the
present day Tamils were the original occupiers of the island long before 543 B.C. which
the Pali
chronicles date as the earliest human habitation of Sri Lanka." ".
Thus Ms. Coomaraswamy while discrediting the Mahavansa and stating that the Sinhala people
were
not the original inhabitants of the country vis-a-vis the Tamils (she calls this the myth
of origin),
upholds the view expressed by S. Ponnambalam that "the present day Tamils were the
original
occupiers of the island long before 543 B.C. which the Pali chronicles date as the
earliest human
habitation of Sri Lanka." Ms. Coomaraswamy tries to give the impression that she is
against the myths
of the expatriates who quote the Mahavansa albeit with their own interpretations to
"prove that the
Tamils were the original inhabitants", but approves the same myth when
"scholars" like Ponnambalam
express them quoting dubious sources. What is clear is that Ms. Coomaraswamy, contrary to
the
image that she is trying to portrait that she and the others of her ilk are against the
myths in the Malai
tradition, she is really not. She is against them only if the Mahavansa has been used to
"prove" that the
original inhabitants were the Tamils. Otherwise she is not and would even praise those who
present
the same myth while derogating the Mahavansa. So much for the scholarship of Ms.
Coomaraswamy.
She and the "scholars" cannot claim that the Tamil demands at any time were
"rights" based, as the
Tamil racist movement has never been devoid of the myths in the Malai tradition of
history. As I have
said the so-called discriminations arose as a result of the belief in the myths of Malai
and as shown
above Ms. Coomarswamy herself upholds these myths as "scholarly" work contrary
to the impression
that she endeavours very hard to create that she is against them. The scholarship of the
"scholars"
itself turns out to be a myth.