Unity in understanding imperialist legacy of Tamil genocide

செவ்வாய், 11 நவம்பர், 2014

Unity in understanding imperialist legacy of Tamil genocide

[TamilNet, Sunday, 09 November 2014, 00:39 GMT]

“If there is no unity among Tamils, the Sinhalese ruling elite will continue their game of divide and rule and perpetuate Sinhalese dominance,” writes V. Suryanarayan in The New Indian Express on Saturday. He should first tell this to the New Delhi Establishment and ruling elite in India, which in its greed to come in the shoes of British imperialism and swallow the island as a whole, detracted Tamil Eelam envisaging parity in dominance and self respect to both Tamils and Sinhalese, divided Tamils, exploited sections of them, directed the war into genocide and now in the game of making inroads into the island by confirming the genocidal Sinhala State, gagging Tamil Nadu, but asking Tamils in the island to come in unity to help the process, responds Tamil activists for alternative politics.

Further comments from Tamil activists for alternative politics in Eezham:

V. Suryanarayan, retired professor of South and Southeast Asian Studies, long working with New Delhi’s ‘national security’ outfits, was writing the feature to exploit the birth centenary celebrations of C.V. Velu Pillai (1914-1984), an up-country Tamil leader and cultural personality who had made multi-faceted inspirations in the community.

V Suryanarayan

“The tragedy of Sri Lanka is self-evident. While many literary and political groups in the hill country have chalked out an imaginative programme to commemorate the memory of Velu Pillai in the birth centenary year, the Sri Lankan Tamils and Tamil-speaking Muslims have, by and large, kept out of the celebrations,” Suryanarayan was making a dig at Eezham Tamils and Tamil Nadu supporting the cause of Eezham Tamils.

Suryanarayan was long displaying the dividing game of the New Delhi Establishment, more efficiently than the Sinhala elite.

“Velu Pillai was deeply sensitive to the fact that Tamils in Sri Lanka are not homogenous. They are divided into Sri Lankan Tamils, Indian Tamils and Tamil-speaking Muslims. Over the years, the Indian Tamils are developing an identity of their own, very different from Sri Lankan Tamils and the Tamils of India. This reality has spurred a debate within Indian Tamil community regarding their identity and the name in which they should be known,” Suryanarayan writes.

Suryanarayan imposes ‘Sri Lankan’ identity to Eezham Tamils, even after they had democratically demonstrated their denouncement of it at the very initiation of it in 1972.

But the learned professor claiming a long champion in ‘mediating’ the cause of up-country Tamils with New Delhi (or vice versa) couldn’t spell even the Malaiyaka Tamil identity of the up-country Tamils properly, showing the depth of his involvement. He consistently wrote ‘Malaiham,’ throughout the New Indian Express feature and the Indian national media also didn’t care to correct it.

“A broad consensus has emerged that the community should be known as Malaiha Makkal [sic]—children of Malaiham [sic]. Velu Pillai played a catalytic role in the growth of this thinking. In his conversation with Prof. Valentine Daniel, Velu Pillai has given vignettes of the Malaiha [sic] Tamizharin Puranam—epic of the Hill Country Tamils,” Suryanarayan wrote.

Writing of an event in 1983, in which he received some up-country Tamil activists, he wrote; “I put them in touch with leaders of various political parties and media personnel. I also arranged a talk by them in Madras University, where they graphically described how their problems and aspirations were different from that of Sri Lankan Tamils. Three days later, Yogeshwaran, MP from Jaffna, telephoned and asked me why I am creating divisions within Tamil society. I responded that they are people of Indian origin and India, given its Gandhi-Nehru legacy, has a special responsibility towards them.”

* * *

The national question of up-country Tamils or Tamils of Indian origin has not come only from 1949. It has started much earlier, even under the British, when limited governance was given since 1930s to an ‘All Sinhala’ cabinet in Ceylon and to Nehru cabinet in India. All of them ditched Tamils.

The Eezham Tamils emotionally in support of the independence of India, sympathetic to the cause of the Tamils of Indian origin in the island and strongly opposed to their repatriation, were hated by the Sinhala nation for those very reasons.

The Eezham Tamils eventually took a stand that only the independence of their nation and territory in the island would arrest genocide, structural genocide and ensure security and self-respect of all Tamil-speaking people in any part of the island.

But New Delhi imperialism’s ‘vision’ is annihilating the nation and territoriality of Eezham Tamils, bestowing ‘right to genocide’ to the Sinhala State and separately continuing deception with the divided and subjugated Tamils of all origin, for devouring the island as a whole and to create a permanent check against any dissension in the south of India. From time to time the fangs of New Delhi operatives would prick the venom imperceptibly as well as directly.

Writing in last June, after visiting the island as a member of the BJP-RSS-Shiv Sena delegation, journalist Swapan Dasgupta said: “The ‘Tamil problem’ that provides livelihood to the global human rights industry and provokes indignation in some circles in India seems essentially a Jaffna problem, and should be renamed as such,” implying that the ‘other’ Tamils in the island have no problems with the Colombo-New Delhi designs and therefore unity is needed only to fall in line.

What is said in the present column is no way in defence of the so-called Eezham Tamil leaders and activists in the island and in the diaspora, the impotency of whom is unable to come out with an inclusive national cause of Tamils presentable to the world and even to the Sinhala nation, but is prepared to pawn the fundamentals to the designs and lures of imperialisms.

There is no excuse to the inability in reaching out one another, in all camps of the leaderships and activists of the Tamil-speaking people.

* * *

A fitting discourse on Professor Suryanarayan’s New Indian Express feature theme could be found in two articles written by a matriculation class student ‘Kokilam’ that appeared in the school magazine of Jaffna Hindu College in June 1939 and July 1939.

The articles contemporary to the times Suryanarayan now tries to ‘re-enact’, tell the feelings of Jaffna Tamils to the injustices committed on the up-country Tamils as early as in 1939; how the business community was spared but only the working class was affected (reminding of today’s Indian corporates and up-country Tamils); how the British kept quiet to the injustices; how the enmity of the Sinhalese towards Eezham Tamils escalated because of the latter’s support to the cause of the Tamils of Indian origin; but how even India (of Congress self government) ditched the maritime economic opportunities of Eezham Tamils while they were supporting the cause of Indian Tamils and how the attack on them was from all sides.

As Suryanarayan’s feature is aimed at Tamil readership, the trouble to translate Kokilam’s Tamil articles into English is not taken up.

[Courtesy to Jaffna Hindu College Old Boy’s Association that documented the old magazines.]