Chandre Dharmawardena in May 2014 responding to Devanesan Nesiah’s Article [latter at https://thuppahis.com/2014/05/19/engaing-issues-of-caste-in-india-and-sri-lanka/]
Mr. Nesiah’s discussion “engaging” caste issues begins with the opening remark: “Caste is observed by the overwhelming majority of Sinhalese and Tamils but the subject remains virtually taboo in public discussions. If it is mentioned in public, it is often either to hurl abuse or to negotiate a marriages “ . This is absolutely correct and especially so for communal politics since the time of Arunachalam Ponnambalam and Ponnambalam Ramanathan.
What is often not realized is that the same click of Colombo-based lawyer-Landed aristocracy, and their descendents, have ruled the Tamil-speaking community since the 19th century. The 2013 election of Wigneswaran, Sampanthan, Sumanthiran and others to the NPC is merely a continuation of the same “unchanged leadership”. Unfortunately, this has not been realized by Western observers (see for instance, the observations of the top diplomats in the Canadian Foreign ministry, that I have examined in: http://dh-web.org/hrsits/
They have regarded the return of the TNA as a “historic reaffirmation” of Tamil political will. How far is this “will” guided from above, and what is the role of caste hegemony in deciding Tamil politics?
These questions are not included in Nesiah’s contribution. Many political writers supporting Tamil or Sinhala nationalism discuss the issue ideologically but ignore caste structure. The Marxist intellectuals (and there are many in our chattering classes) prefer to discuss Antonio Gramasci or Louis Althusser and other irrelevant writers, without facing ground realities. This is perhaps partly because there are virtually no “low-caste tamil” intellectuals who would have felt the bite of casteism in their own experience. They see no reason to look inside their own ethnic communities.
This is in contrast to the writings of Indian Marxist intellectuals who have often identified the caste issue as fundamental to the “National question”. We can go to Namboodripad’s study of the Kerala question that I think predated Kosambi’s Marxist analysis of Indian History.
In recent times, only Sebastian Rasalingam has raised a strident voice, stating that the Tamil push to separatism is merely an attempt to maintain hegemony over land and labour that the Colombo landed aristocracy had always had (and threatened forever since universal franchise). Land-based separatism is the escape route of the landed aristocracy from the consequences of Universal franchise in unitary Lanka.
I have attempted to gather at least some of Rasalingam’s scattered writing in one place, viz., http://dh-web.org/place.
Unfortunately, Mr. Nesiah has not ventured into a discussion of the political role of the hierarchic system in Tamil society, and its role in the ease of ascendency of a figure like Prabhakaran in demanding unquestioning obedience, as is required from the lower castes, and from women. Furthermore, we should not forget that during the Eelam wars, when “low-caste” villagers who were affected by army-LTTE cross-fire ran into “upper-caste” Tamil villages for refuge, they were brutally turned away (such issues have been studied by Fransesca Bremner in Recasting Caste: War, Displacement and Transformations Francesca Bremner, international Journal of Ethnic & Social Studies , Vol. II, No. 1, June 2013)
The “inverted pyramid” of the caste system in Sinhalese and Tamil society has been mentioned by many writers. Its contrast with Dravidian society can be simply explained if we begin with the hypothesis that the North of Sri Lanka was populated by a Sinhala-speaking, largely Buddhist agrarian society, (with small Dravidian communities as well). When the North became fully Tamilized (e.g., during Sankili’s times when he ejected many Japananaya/Yalpanam Sinhalese into the Vanni), the govias simply became kovias etc, and the caste-structure of Sinhala agrarian society remained intact, in Tamil garb. This seems to be also the case with the many place names in the North which are most easily understood to be tamilized versions of Sinhala place names. This is a thesis already advocated by Fr. Rasanayagam, Velu Pillai, Horsburg, Indrapala and others. I have made a more full compendium of such studies at …. http://dh-web.org/place.names/
These place names also show the vital role of caste in the village social organization. So, if IDPs were “resettled” in their “old homes”, you would be re-creating old-style caste-segregated Tamil societies that we need to get away from. So, land nationalization followed by re-settlement on a non-caste basis is a possible “top-directed” approach to democratizing the North. But the TNA is against any such reforms.
In practice, any forced “social engineering” will bring untold pain to poor people, and the approach advocated by Mr. Nesiah, using education, trade, (as well as infra-structure development designed to intermingle people), music, drama and games (cricket !) are the best options.
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A SPECIAL NOTE
Both Nesiah and Dharmawardena are focusing on the 20th century and its foundations in broad sweep. Writing in the 2010s, however, we also need to factor in int the caste dimensions of the armed amil resistance that emerged in the north and east [plus Colombo] from the 1960s onwards …initially as underground movements. The Karaiyar-led LTTE eventually spearded this resistane [often by brutally eliminating the leaders of other underground resistance groups and/or the leaders of the TULF]. Some of these currents are discussed and pictorially illustrated in my two-volume Tamil Person & State, Colombo, Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2014.
A PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY IN SUPPORT OF THIS ARTICLE added by The Editor
Prashanth Kuganathan: “Social Stratification in Jaffna: A Survey of Recent Research on Caste” https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/soc4.12101
Neville Jayaweera: Jaffna. Exorcising the Past and Holding the Vision,
Anura Gunasekera, Review of Jayaweera, 2 August 2014, in http://sangam.org/exorcising-holding-vision/
Devanesan Nesiah: “Review of Neville Jayaweera’s Jaffna: Exorcising the Past and Holding the Vision,”17 October 2014, http://groundviews.org/2014/09/17/review-of-neville-jayaweeras-jaffna-exorcising-the-past-and-holding-the-vision/
Charles Sarvan: Review, 27 March 2015, https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/jaffna-exorcising-the-past-holding-the-vision/
Jane Russell: https://thuppahis.com/2020/09/23/caste-ur-and-tamilness-among-the-tamils-in-metropolitan-london/…. 23 September 2020
https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/6149902
S. Murari: “The Prabhakaran Saga: The Rise and Fall of an Eelam Warrior,” https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/6149902
HLD Mahindapala: …
Robert S. Perinpanayagam:
Michael Roberts: …..
Jane Russell:
Jane Russell on Nationalist Extremism on Both Sides in the 1970s et seq
Reflections on Caste Disabilities in the Jaffna Peninsula in 1973 and Movements towards the Present
