Incisive Reflections on Sri Lanka’s Political History, 1930s et seq

Sowell’s analysis encapsulates the simplistic approach to the Sri Lankan ethnic problem favoured by western analyists, “Human-Rights” writers, and also by some academic writers of Sri Lankan origin. They put the whole blame on SWRD’s “opportunism”, his Sinhala Language policy, and single him out, whereas the seeds of the conflict had been sown much earlier [see Dr. Jane Russell’s book on Communal politics under the Donoughmore Constitution (1982)]. Populism in politics was fashionable in the 1930s in Europe and also in Sri Lanka (both SWRD and GG Ponnambalam had been labeled “pocket Hitlers” by their respective admiring followers, at a time when Hitler was viewed as a model of a politician who stood to support his ethnic group.

        Chelva and Tamil politcoes in protest action at Galle Face Green

The World War-II as well as the political sagacity and astuteness of the D.S.Senanayake-OliverGoonetilleke combine successfully delayed any ethnic anger flairing until the unfortunate death of DSS. Senanayake had hoped to settle the Sinhala-Buddhist versus Tamil demands (pushed by elite Christian Tamils, and NOT by Hindus) through backroom negociations, away from the dangers of electoral politics. We must remember that the first Sinhala-Tamil riot occurred in 1939 due to provocative and racist speeches by GGPonnambalam. It could have had serious outcomes but for the rapid action of the British Raj in restoring law and order. GGP lost his political standing and looked a clown after his extreme demands from the Soulbury Commission, as well as his claim that the Tamils were “discriminated down” by the British.

It was DS Senanayake who gave a fresh political booster to GGP by inviting him and several Tamils into his first Cabinet of Independent Ceylon, with an ethnicity ratio in the cabinet quite favourable to Tamil speakers. Even by today’s standards of how immigrant workers are treated in the west when it comes to citizenship, the Indian Citizenship Act was a model of democratic treatment for its time. It allowed citizenship to all estate workers who had continued residence in the country for 7 years if they were unmarried, and I think 6 years if they were married. By contrast, in the 1940s, an immigrant worker in the US or Europe had no chanced of getting citizenship at all. Even country-born Japanese and other foreigners were arrested and held as prisoners during the war and had limited rights in peacetime. Native Indians (“red skins”) had no citizenship rights and were held in “Native reserves”. Black Americans were still under the Jim-Crow rules at that time and even into 1965. So, for Sowell or others to criticize the Indian Citizenship act of the 1940s (drawn with consultation of GGP, Vaithiyalingam and others, as well as Up-Country Sinhalese “Radala” leaders and Tamil Planter politicians who were opposed to Indian citizenship) is pure hypocrisy. What we hear from Trump today about immigrant workers is very moderate compared to the attitude of Western people in the 1940s. They believed in the inherent superiority of Whites, just as Tamils and Sinhalese believed in their inherent superiority over “coolie” estate workers.

So, a fair assessment of the immediate post-independence era in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) is to say that its leaders acted in a more enlightened manner than the USA of the 1960s, and respected many of the liberal sentiments of the more enlightened segments of the British Raj, with people like Ivor Jennings and B. H. Farmer acting as its advisors. The Donoughmore Commission of 1931 was way ahead of Jim Crow. But the extremism and polarization of racism had already been planted in the 1930s by the Racist Politics of GGPonnambalam, and the politics of the Sinhala Maha Sabha that came into being as a reaction to the racist politics of GGP Ponnambalam. After GGP accepted the politics of the “Ceylonese concept” of DSSenanayake (as seen from his acceptance speech after the Soulbury Commission, F. Rees, Senanayake memorial number), GGP and the Tamil congress (formed in 1944), as well as many Colombo Tamils, were ready to follow a policy of moderation.

But it was SJV. Chelvanayagam, EMV. Naganathan, M. Navarathnam and others, some of whom had boasted of their Chola origins in the State Council (this includes GGPonnambalam, see Hansard 1935, Column 3045) who took over the Tamil extremist mantel of GGPonnambalam. SJV, who had been deeply radicalized by Thambimuttu’s history of Tamils in Sri Lanka (published around 1940 and in 1945, entitled “Dravida, a History of the Tamils from prehistoric times to 1800”, and containing views similar to Today’s renderings by ex-NCP chief minister C. Wigneswaran) formed the new political party named Ilankai Thamizha Arasu Kadchi in 1949 and brought out the Maradana declaration where the first musing of the Tamil Arasu (Eelam) to be established in the “exclusive homelands of the North and East” were sounded out.

In fact, initially, the ITAK was regarded as a fringe racist party by most Tamils, and it was their post-1956 antics, as well as the violent reaction to those antics by Sinhala goons, with no attempt to restore order by the state that escalated the problem, with people like JR Jayewardena, KMP Rajaratne et al taking an extreme nationalist position against SWRD. The ITAK also played a double game, with negotiations to find a moderate solution (e.g., Banda-Chelva pact aka BC pact) while at the same time undermining it all by engaging in inflammatory actions (e.g., the tar brush campaign against the SRI registration plates) to coincide with the announcement of the Banda-Chelva agreement. These included printing of Eelam stamps and unleashing “hartals”, blocking Kachcharis (offices of the Govt adminstrative system), forming “Makkal Padai”, distributing toy pistols etc, all these also coinciding with the BC-pact. The book by M. Navaratnam, published in the late 1950s, spells out what he considered to be the “Irreconcillability of the Sinhalese and the Tamils”, although, ironically, M. Navaratnam, the ITAK theorist of the time, was also involved in drafting the BC-pact although he believed that the Sinhalese and the Tamils were irreconcillably distinct.

These anti BC-pact acts were echoed by JRJ and others who organized Buddhist monks to demonstrate against the BC-Pact. JRJ’s family was strongly linked to the Kelaniya Temple and the Eksath Bhikku Peramuna. Instead of hartals and tar brushes, if the ITAK had given support to SWRD just after the Banda-Chelva agreement and buttressed him and worked with him, a very different outcome would have been achieved (see the “Peking-wing” Communist-party leader N. Shanmugathasan’s book on the History of Ceylon during this period).

We must also remember that the ITAK opposition to SWRD Banda, as well as the unleashing of civil disobedience in the North did not come immediately after the Sinhala Only act. It came after only the outlawing of social discrimination (caste system, see: http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2011/10/tamil-caste-discrimination.html ) that greatly angered the upper caste Tamil leaders who were Landlords of the North, living in Colombo 7, and profiting from the exploitation and discrimination of a less-previlaged stratum of Tamils that was possible within the caste system, for cheaply fulfilling their agronomic needs. This caste system has unfortunately now come back after the end of the Eelam wars, with the return of Tamil leadership to the TULF/TNA leaders.

So, if we are to single out individuals responsible for planting the seeds of racism and division, I would put the blame on GGPonnambalam, SWRD, JRJ, and emphatically on SJVChelva, EMVNaga, MNavaratnam and other early ITAK leaders .

We must also note how the Muslims cooperated with SWRD, while also admiring the very astute politics of Thondaman Sr., who maintained excellent relations with all the leaders and obtained success for his people in a peaceful manner, avoiding the attempts to radicalize them (e.g., by the Marxists with their insertion of Bracegirdle and other militants into the estate system, and by the Tamil liberation groups later on). The Marxists of the day preached violent takeover of the state, and were viewed by Senanayake and others in much the same way as the Muslim Jihadists are viewed today. The Marxist actions of the time frightened moderate leaders and made the citizenship of estate workers even more difficult. The estate Tamils were never integrated into the ITAK activism because, although the ITAK leaders were happy to condemn the Indian Citizenship Act, they themselves regarded the Estate Tamils as being of lower-caste “coolies”.

The Sowell analysis points out that the 40% of all admissions in the Sciences was taken by the Tamils, 49% of medical admissions also by Tamils, and that this fell to about 14% due to the introduction of disrtict-based admissions to Universities, and that this was discrimination against the Tamils. Given that the Tamil population is indeed 12-15% (in the 1950s, and now, in spite of emigration of Tamils for economic and war-related reasons), the “after-the fact” statistic of 14% seems to be more in accord with national demographics. In fact, the previous statistics of 40-49% do not reveal the fact that the 40-49% Tamils who got admitted to the coveted medical, engineering and science faculties, were also almost entirely from privileged Elite sections of Tamils, with virtually no Tamils from lower castes, or from rural areas like Mullativu or Mannar and Vavuniya entering the Sciences prior to the enactment of district-based admissions. The Mavattipuram confrontations (late 1970s) between the ITAK and the Peiking-wing Communits on Temple entry and school entry shoed howd the then existing system discriminated within the Tamil commuinity itself.

While the initial affirmative action in University admissions seemed to have a racist/linguistic element (being based on language), a corrected version was introduced within an year. Tamil academics like Prof. Ratnajeevan Hoole have stated that the district-based admissions policy opened the door for Tamil (and others including the sinhalese) students from impoverished districts. Prof. C. R. de Silva has made a more objective study of the University Admissions Enactments, and in the light of his writings, I believe that what Sowell says here is misleading, and reflects the usual propaganda of the Eelamist lobby and NGO writers. The current district-based admissions system does not discriminate against Tamils.