TULF, BUDGET AND THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE
(1998 November 11)
The Tamil United Liberation Front has decided to vote against the budget. This has nothing to do with Dr. G. L.
Peiris or with his budget proposals. In fact they are not concerned with the budget. They have not even analysed
how the budget is going to affect the Tamils in Jaffna or outside Jaffna.
The TULF is going to vote against the budget not because of the money allocated for the so-called "war".
If that was the case then they should have voted against the previous budgets of Dr. Peiris. But they did not do
so.
The reasons behind the decision of the TULF are political and not economical. It is very clear that the TULF is
thinking of withdrawing gradually, its support to the government (TULF TO WITHDRAW SUPPORT
) and they may be already looking towards the UNP and Mr. Ranil Wickremasinghe.
This government though voted in by the people was manoeuvred into power by the non-national lobby. They had only
one objective. That was to devolve more and more power to the Eastern and Northern provinces and pave way for the
Eelam through a federal state. The Marxist parties continued to support the government even with an 'open economy'
policy. They were and are more interested in devolution of power than in economics. The Tamil racist parties rallied
around Ms. Kumaratunga, as they believed that she was genuinely interested in devolving more power to the Tamils.
In fact Ms. Kumaratunga was and is interested in devolving power. She is convinced that the Tamils have grievances
and that is exactly why she was made the leader of the PA by the non-national forces. Having come to power she
immediately commenced negotiations with the LTTE. The G.L. - Neelan political package was introduced and a huge
campaign was launched to promote it. The Sudu Nelums, Thavalams and Yathras were seen on the roads in addition
to peace merchants trying to sell peace to the captive audiences in schools and in meetings organised by the MPs.
The government media worked overtime to take the package to the people. The NGOs thought their dreams were coming
true and they started day dreaming.
However it did not last long. Even without the SLFP, the party that traditionally championed the Sinhala Buddhist
cause, which was hijacked by Ms. Kumaratunga and her SLMP type politics, the Sinhala people were able to campaign
against the package at all odds. The LTTE was never interested in the package and the so-called war was resumed
to 'liberate the Eelam from the Sinhala imperialists'. The UNP first wanted to test the public opinion and then
feeling the pulse of the electorate decided not to support the package.
The NGO bandwagon, especially the free media people, were the first to realise that the package was not on. Then
the others gradually came to the same conclusion and now the peace merchants have to satisfy themselves with dubious
opinion polls. However not all are seeking the comfort of opinion polls. For example we have amongst us Mr. Fatchett
(FATCHETT ARRIVES ), the British under secretary for Foreign and Commonwealth affairs,
having come all the way from London, to get the UNP and the PA to come to some kind of agreement on talks with
the LTTE. The big business community is seen to be giving him a big helping hand.
If Mr. Fatchett and the big business community fail in their attempt then the Tamil racists and their sponsors
will again turn to their traditional supporter the UNP. The TULF is already on their way towards the UNP. As a
first step they have decided to vote against the budget.
The TULF in the meantime has expressed shock over a statement made by Ms. Kumaratunga in South Africa to the effect
that the minority community in Sri Lanka was not the original people of the country. Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamar, who
has denied that Ms. Kumaratunga made such a statement, has been criticised by the TULF. Dr. G. L. Peiris can rest
assured that the decision by the TULF to vote against the budget has nothing to do with his economic management.
This incident shows how the Tamil racists try to bully the Sinhala people with their false propaganda. All the
Tamil racists have join hands in criticising the statement made by Ms. Kumaratunga as if it was a deliberate lie.
These are the tactics of Tamil racism. They fear the truth. They do not want to accept the history of the country.
They want the whole world to believe their false propaganda, according to which the Tamils have lived in this country
from time immemorial.
Ms. Kumaratunga should not give into their false propaganda. She has spoken the truth except for the use of the
term minority. The majority and minority communities are concepts coined by the ancestors of Mr. Fatchett and we
should try to avoid using these terms. Let the TULF vote against the budget. Nothing will happen to the government.
The Tamil racists base their false propaganda on work by people like Gnanapragasar, who claimed that Sri Lanka
was originally a land of the Dravidians. For the benefit of those who have not read the Ph. D. thesis of Dr. Karthigesu
Indrapalan who later became the first Professor of History at the University of Jaffna, I quote below extensively
from chapter 2 of that unpublished thesis.
"It has been claimed by certain writers on the history of Jaffna that the people of northern Ceylon at the
time of the earliest Indo-Aryan settlements, called Nagas in the chronicles, were Tamils. ( S. Gnanapragasar, Ceylon
originally a land of Dravidians) Some others have claimed that these Nagas were Tamil in culture and language,
although ethnically they were not Dravidian.( S. Rasanayagam, Ancient Jaffna) These conclusions, as we shall see
presently, are based on the legendary accounts of the Nagas in the Pali chronicles and the Tamil Buddhist epic
Manimekalai as well as on the erroneous identification of some of the place-names mentioned in early Tamil literature.
Gnanapragasar, a leading proponent of the theory that the Nagas of the Pali chronicles were Tamils, has put forward
four main arguments in support of it." Dr. Indrapalan then goes on to demolish these arguments.
"In the first place , he has argued that the island of Ceylon as well as the language spoken there were known
in ancient times as Ilam and that the name of the language was later corrupted to Elu. These factors, in his opinion
, "should lead one to conclude prima facie that , at the earliest times, Ilam was occupied , at least in the
main, by a Tamil speaking people. This argument is far from logical. Presumably it rests on the fact Ilam is now
used only in Tamil as a name for Ceylon. But the origin of this name , far from indicating that the island was
occupied by Tamil speaking people in ancient times, shows that the people from whose name Ilam is derived were
Sinhalese. The earliest occurrence of this name is in the Brahmi inscription of South India. In these inscriptions,
from Tirupparankunram and Sittannavasal, occurs the Prakrit form of this name, namely Ila. Evidently it is from
this Prakrit form that the Tamil Ilam is derived. It could be shown that Ila is derived from Sinhala through the
Pali Sihala, or more probably through another Prakrit form Sihila………. Thus, Ilam could be derived from the name
Sihala and would therefore, mean the land of the Sinhalese rather than indicate that Ceylon was originally settled
by the Tamils. Gnanapragasar's arguments, on this score, will become groundless. The derivation of Ilam from Sinhala
is accepted by leading Tamil scholars. ( S. Vaiyapuri Pillai, Madras Tamil Lexicon p 382 & S. Krishnaswamy
Aiyangar in the Preface to S. Rasanayagam's Ancient Jaffna)"
"Secondly , Gnanapragasar has argued that the original inhabitants of Ceylon came from South India and that
these pre-Aryan aborigines were Dravidians who seem to have spoken a Tamil dialect. He base this on the assumption
that the pre Aryan inhabitants of India represent an earlier wave of immigrants from the Mediterranean area and
that no trace of any language other than Tamil is found in India till the arrival of the Indo-Aryans. Although
the pre-historic relations between India and Ceylon are undeniable, the rest of his arguments are based on mere
assumptions. It is not true to say that all the non-Aryan inhabitants of India were necessarily Dravidian. There
were others as well, chief among whom were the Munda speaking people. The chronology of the Dravidian migration
to India is itself an unsettled question."
"His third argument is that 'hundreds of Tamil place-names in Ceylon are pre-Sinhalese. He has given a few
examples of elements of present-day Sinhalese place-names and what have been considered by him to be their Tamil
origins. It is clear that this argument is based on superficial similarities and not on any historical study of
the development or evolution of these names. This could be seen in the two sets of elements as well as from their
phonological development. He has claimed, for instance, that the Sinhalese element dena, meaning 'low-lying land
or valley', is derived from Tamil tinai, meanung corn. But dena and its more common variant deniya are derived
from Sanskrit droni (=valley), through the Pali doni and medieval Sinhalese dona and deni.
The fourth argument that Sinhalese is based on Tamil and that, therefore, 'the original inhabitants of Ceylon'
spoke Tamil is unconvincing. Gnanapragasar arrives at this conclusion by adopting unscientific methods in his linguistic
research. One can only quote the views of Wilhelm Geiger on this matter:- 'Gnanapragasar's methods are not at all
Indian; they are simply a relapse into the old practice of comparing two or more words of the most distant languages
merely on the basis of similar sounds without any consideration for chronology, for phonological principles, or
for the historical development of words and forms.' ".
So much for Gnanapragasar. Dr. Indrapalan then goes on to deal with Rasanayagam. The problem of Tamil racism is
a problem of history and the history of the problem reveals that the Tamil racists are not prepared to accept the
history of the country. Ms. Kumaratunga's statement in South Africa is probably the only correct statement by her
on the problem. Perhaps Ms. Kumaratunga should request her minister for cultural affairs to take steps to see that
Dr. Indrapalan's thesis is printed and made available to the general reader.