Sampanthan - Still in Wonderland

The TNA, since the demise of the LTTE, has been hunting with hounds and running with hares as and when it suits their parochial interests. They claim to lobby for the interests of Tamils with the Government while at the same time campaigning for a ‘war crime charges’ in Tamil Nadu and in Western States where the ‘Tamil cause’ still persists. At the last Presidential election the TNA canvassed hard for Fonseka not because he was Presidential material but because they wanted to send ‘Mahinda home’. This is because they expect the ensuing instability of the country to suit their separatist agenda.

This has been the mentality of the Tamil leadership from 1931 where they started their protests arguing the case against the grant of universal franchise to Ceylon under the Donoughmore reforms. Then they joined the Church to protest against the introduction of free education in Ceylon and then objected to the grant of dominion status to Ceylon unless 50 percent representation is granted to them.

Communal politics in Ceylon commenced with the formation of Tamil Congress in 1923 and as if that was not enough Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi (Party for a separate Tamil State) was formed in 1949 by the Tamil leaders. Since then it has been a case of this country getting divided on communal lines culminating in a terrorist war that cost the country hundreds of thousand of lives, billions worth of collateral damage and 34 years of opportunity.

Even after all this devastation, the TNA still continues articulating its hackneyed demands such as the ‘right to self determination’ to the Western and Tamil Nadu sympathizers. The recent protests conducted most vindictively in Tamil Nadu against the holding of IIFA in Sri Lanka could not have taken place without the blessings of the TNA.

From the above account it should be clear that these activities conducted in the name of alleged ‘Tamil grievances’ have been an unbearable baggage on the independent Ceylon and they still continue to be so blithly to date. For how long more is this nation going to be saddled with these unspecified ‘grievances’?

For 34 years our national leaders negotiated in earnest with armed terrorist offering ‘this’, ‘that’ and the ‘other’ to address these ‘grievances’ only to be driven to the brink of national disintegration. The question then is, if the driving force behind this never ending attrition was minority grievances, why weren’t such grievances negotiated during the times of Premadasa and Chandrika, two Presidents who bent over backwards to reach a negotiated settlement? Then with the present President, why weren’t they not even bothered to present their grievances at Geneva?

Further, if all this agitations by the Tamil leaders were on grievances, why should they protest against the grant of universal franchise to all Ceylonese in 1931 and for extending free education to all Sri Lankans in 1945? Aren’t those progressive measures meant to alleviate whatever discrimination that was there at that time?

Hence then if the Tamil leaders have agitated against progressive and equitable measures, such leaders have to be the reactionaries who have perpetrated discrimination and certainly can not be the victims of discrimination as alleged. Thus the Tamils have been the priviledged rather than the discriminated in the Colonial Ceylon.

The fact then is that the Tamil leaders were fighting to protect their privileges and in that quest they have used unspecified ‘grievances’ as a smoke screen because demands for privileges by a community would not have been justifiable. Hence they justified even the most brutal forms of terror under this guise of unspecified grievances.

Thus by arousing the tribal instinct in the average Tamils in Sri Lanka, the Tamil politicians have been able to ensure their communal vote base for the past 62 years. But where have these Tamil leaders led their own people for the past 62 years after having lived off their votes?

The Ceylon Tamils, from being the most privileged, cultured and educated community in the pre-independent Ceylon have today come to be the most fractured community in Sri Lanka. Even in numerical strength this community that was 12 percent in 1948 is estimated today to make up only six percent of the Sri Lankan population.

Further, the most unfortunate aspect of this decline is, as observed by the prospective investors who toured the North recently, that the standard of literacy and English of the average Jaffna man has taken a heavy beating during the past 30 years. That then is the legacy of Sampanthan and his predecessors who led the Tamil community in Sri Lanka for the past 62 years.

J N Dixit, in his book Assignment Colombo makes a cynical comment about R. Sampanthan.

He recalls how Sampanthan had been so particular that the Trincomalee harbour should be included in the draft Dixit was to submit to Gandhi and that prompts Dixit to opine that the Tamil leaders are more concerned about the lands than about the rights of their people.

Therefore, in the final analysis the Tamil leaders in their hunger for land have aroused communal passions and in the process have made the Tamil community jetsam and flotsam over the years. The time is ripe for Sampanthan & co to face reality and call off this bluff.

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