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by Dr. H. M. Mauroof, President, National Muslim Movement

The Leader of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress A. Vinayagamoorthy has, according to the press, initiated efforts to form an organisation called National Tamil MPs Forum to express the national voices of the Tamil Community in "vital matters" such as a permanent "unification" of the North and the East.

The group, according to the press announcement, is due to include MPs of the Tamil National Alliance comprising the Tamil United Liberation Front and the All Ceylon Tamil Congress amongst others, the Ceylon Workers Congress, the Up-country Peoples Front, the Western Province People's Front, the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam and the Tamil MPs of the UNP.

This move, in our view, is a positive one because this democratically elected group with the ability to claim to authentically speak for the Tamil people could make a good impact despite criticism that it is a movement of LTTE stooges.

The emergence of this nascent organisation could be important from two angles, firstly, it follows in the first step of the announcement of the LTTE's counter-proposals to the Government's for the establishment of the interim self-Governing Authority for the North and the East, which has already been described by many as Eelam in content, if not in words': it is noteworthy that the LTTE makes no bones about describing it correctly by stating that it is on behalf of the Tamil people, and not attempt to dress it up with words such as 'Tamil speaking' people.

Secondly, because the emerging organisation which has chosen to graduate the nomenclature from 'merger' to 'unification' which is different qualitatively, has been done by a group that is used to talking with the tongue and not with the gun.

In these circumstances it is timely for us to renew the call for the Muslim MPs to blow life into the dormant grouping called the Muslim Parliamentarians Forum.

This latter call is certainly not from a confrontation stand point; on the contrary, it is a call not to again miss the opportunity to engage and debate with an authentic group elected by the Tamil people on issues that are absolutely core to the future of the Muslims of the North and the East. In the first instance it would be refreshing to look at the history of the Eastern Province. In early history the Eastern Province profited from being part of the hydraulic civilisation which emanated from Anuradhapura; there are surviving monuments to attest to this past.

During this period the Eastern Province was populated by Sinhalese people. With the demise of the Anuradhapura civilization in the face of epidemics like malaria, the area lost most of its population to disease or desertion.

Subsequently all of the East became part of the Kandyan kingdom.

It is during this period that the Muslims were settled in the East. Muslims facing Portuguese persecution in the trading centres of the Western Coast were given succour by the Kandyan King who settled the Muslim refugees primarily in the Eastern Coast.

What thereafter developed was a symbiotic relationship between the Kandyan Royalty and the Muslims who were settled mainly in and around Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Kalmunai, the Muslim role of internationalization of the Kingdom's trade and defence was greatly welcomed and appreciated because the Kingdom, for all practical purposes, was land locked. It is these Muslim settlements many centuries old that remain to date and flourish in the Eastern Province.

These are incontrovertible historical facts. Most of the Eastern Tamils are believed to have been settled during the British period. Therefore calling the Eastern Province a sole Tamil Homeland or an area of sole Tamil historical habitation cannot, historically speaking, hold water.

In much later years the depleted Sinhalese population was replenished in the main by colonization schemes initiated by Mr. D. S. Senanayake as Agriculture Minister in the 1930s when the Trincomalee District was the centre of colonization activity and later in the Ampara District after 1946 as Prime Minister. Successive Governments in Independent Sri Lanka continued those policies of only settling Sinhalese to the exclusion of Tamils and Muslims which was a main reason for the more or less fatal juncture we have presently arrived at.

Census Department figures are available from 1901; they are very instructive and are self-explanatory:

Also, the above figures reflect the emigration of fairly large numbers of Tamils; this had been mainly to Canada.

These are, in the main, voluntary migrations to seek greener pastures; the East was not theatre of destructive wars between the Sri Lanka Army and the LTTE which were fought in the North: Mankulam (1990), Pooneryn (1993), Mullaitivu (1996), Killinochchi (1999), Elephant Pass (2000).

Hence demographically speaking attempts to call the Eastern Province a sole Tamil homeland is at best a misnomer. In early history it had been a Sinhalese homeland, latterly a Muslim and Tamil homeland, and now, a Muslim, Tamil and Sinhalese homeland. The official population figures for the three districts of the Eastern Province is as follows:

Now, to ownership of land. Land ownership in the Eastern Province is Sinhala dominated as a result of the colonisation schemes.

The Sinhalese are known to own 80 per cent of the land in the Ampara and Trincomalee districts. The Muslims despite their majority population in the province are known to own less than 15 per cent of the province's land. Could the Eastern Province be designated a sole Tamil homeland? This province stands quite distinct from all other eight provinces in the country that it is the only province in the country where all three major communities comprise more than 25 per cent each.

It is best for the Muslims, while negotiating with the authorities in Colombo, to also engage with the emerging grouping of Tamil MPs; this is a group that is, on the one hand, used to democratic ways of discussion and argument, and, on the other, is in very close contact and collaboration with the LTTE whose 20 year experience had been only with the gun aimed not only at the Muslim and the Sinhalese but also at the Tamils who refused to toe their line. The potential for prospects of a breakthrough into the LTTE mindset should under no circumstances be discounted.

The Muslim Parliamentarians Forum is the best and the most appropriate platform; the members of both groupings will be forced to interact almost daily.

The time is indeed opportune for the Muslims to energise themselves without delay. The Muslim case has now a greater chance of success with the recent entry of the President directly into the scene; her year 2000 constitutional proposals had taken the Muslim case into account; and the recent historic speech by PA spokesman and former Foreign Minister Mr. Laskhman Kadirgamar at the Motion in Parliament on a Muslim delegation at the peace talks augurs well for a success.

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