Reconciliation and the issue of identities

The Nakba (‘Catastrophe’ in Arabic) is the name given to the ethnic ‘cleansing’ of Palestine of almost its entire Arab population. Zochrot (‘remembering’ in Hebrew) is an Israeli group dedicated to educating the Jewish population about the Nakba.

On April 25 this year in Tel Aviv, during Israel’s Independence Day celebrations, the group attempted to recite the names of the depopulated Palestinian towns. Mishteret Yisrael Police personnel suppressed the attempt.

Last year Israel passed a law to punish institutions (including municipalities) which commemorate the Nakba. The reasoning behind this action is clear. Zionists require memory of the Nazi holocaust which killed six million Jews, but requires a one-sided view of their own actions.

Ultra-nationalist movements require memories of ethnic repression to survive and thrive. For example, the Nazis needed the memory of the unjust Versailles Treaty and the myth of a ‘Jewish-Communist Conspiracy’. Where facts challenge the memory, it is necessary to excise the facts.

In Sri Lanka we have seen this happening among Tamil ultra-nationalists. The myth is of a ‘Sinhala state’ unrelentingly repressing and committing ‘genocide’ against the Tamil population. That this version is not completely accurate can be seen by looking at the history of the ‘ethnic problem’.

Trans-ethnic marriages

Before the early 20th century, the overwhelmingly important issue was not ethnicity, but caste. Trans-ethnic marriages by people of similar caste (especially Vellala-Goyigama) were common enough.

In 1911, Ponnambalam Ramanathan was elected to the Legislative Council, defeating Marcus Fernando. The issue was not ethnicity, but caste.

Vellala/Goyigama Sinhalese and Tamils voted for Ramanathan, others for Marcus. The modern conception of the ‘Sinhalese’ came about among the emergent bourgeois (mainly so-called lower-caste elites), through attempts to unite people of different castes.

It is notable that, at the time, ‘Cingalese’ referred to a native inhabitant of ‘Ceylon’ - hence GB Shaw’s character ‘Sir Jafna Pandranath’, visibly a Tamil, is nevertheless referred to as a ‘Cingalese gentleman’.

The term ‘Ceylonese’ was used to indicate all Sri Lankans, including Burghers and Britons.

The ‘Ethnic Problem’ came to be primarily because of jostling among members of the native elites for places in the government service. The British colonial masters, true to their opportunistic policy of ‘Divide and Rule’, had given more than their fair share of these appointments first to Burghers and then to Jaffna Tamils.

Political structure

In 1928, Sydney Webb, Colonial Secretary in Britain’s Labour government established the Donoughmore Commission to map out Sri Lanka’s future political structure. The depositions of many leaders of the elites of the ‘Kandyan’ and ‘Low-country’ Sinhalese make it clear that they thought of themselves as separate ethnic groups.

Universal franchise, which was introduced as a result of the Commission’s report, this was opposed by many of the leaders of the elite, in particular by the leaders of the Tamil elite. In response to the introduction of democratic elections, the Tamil elite leadership responded with a demand of ‘Fifty-Fifty’: half the parliamentary seats and half government service appointments were to go to Sinhalese, half of each to members of the minorities. This was a virtual apartheid.

The elite nature of this demand is exposed by the fact that nowhere was there a provision for use of the Tamil language - the elite were perfectly happy to see English continuing as the Official language, to the detriment of both Sinhala - and Tamil-speakers.

Anti-Tamil riots

It was left to the Leftists to begin talking about the use of the vernaculars in the State Council in 1936. Not until 1944 did members of the elite introduce a bill for the vernaculars to be the official languages. In fact, only under the Mahinda Rajapaksa government is the 1944 bill being implemented fully!

The 1956 ‘Sinhala Only’ policy was a mistake, but it was rectified partly by the ‘Tamil Also’ provision in 1958 - to which the Tamil political leaders also agreed. Tamil has since had a status in Sri Lanka still rare for a minority language: for example, in Britain Welsh and Scots Gaelic are official only regionally (the latter only became an official language of Scotland in the 21st century) and Urdu/Hindi has no place at all.

It was in 1959 that Chellappah Suntharalingam, a former minister in DS Senanayake’s Cabinet, first used the term Thamil Eelam or Eylom. In 1963, he called for ‘the partition of Ceylon’ and a ‘fight for the Freedom and Independence of the Eyla Thamil Nation’.

‘Thamil Eelam’ remained mainly a theoretical construct, mainly confined to émigré circles in Britain until 1972. It gained ground after the introduction of media-wise standardisation (which was similar to the affirmative action legislation in Tamil Nadu - which enabled under-privileged Dalit caste people to enter universities); a cohort of young educated Tamils was galvanised into supporting the establishment of an independent Tamil state.

Unfortunately, the JR Jayewardene government which came to power in 1977 gave the moribund Tamil terrorist movement a shot in the arm through a combination of anti-Tamil pogroms (including the destruction of the Jaffna library) and lackadaisical enforcement of the law.

It was the events of ‘Black July’ 1983 that became the abiding memory used by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to justify their expulsion of Sinhalese and Muslims from majority Tamil areas.

Since then the LTTE attempted time and again to goad the Sinhalese masses into anti-Tamil riots, but to no avail. The LTTE rump in the Diaspora (with not a little help from foreign media) has painted the last months of the recent civil conflict, particularly in the Mullaitivu district, as ‘genocide’.

The best way to prevent the LTTE rump from achieving its aims is to pursue fully the policies of reconciliation inaugurated by President Rajapaksa. We need no more ‘memories’. It is vital to displace our consciousness of being ‘Sinhalese’, ‘Tamil’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Burgher’, ‘Malay’, ‘Veddha’, ‘Bharatha’, ‘Memon’, ‘Sindhi’, ‘Bohra’ or ‘Parsee’ with the consciousness of being ‘Sri Lankan’.