KAMALIKA PIERIS

After the colonization schemes of the 1950s and 1960s,   the government started doing Development Schemes. Tamil Separatist Movement viewed these development schemes   with great alarm, because they brought Sinhalese settlers into the area they had reserved for Eelam. State-sponsored colonization would lead to a change in the demography of the Northern and Eastern Province.

The Accelerated Mahaweli Scheme was the largest development scheme in Sri Lanka .it started operations in October 1977.  It was a multi-purpose development scheme involving the construction of reservoirs, hydroelectricity plants and irrigation systems. The Mahaweli Scheme was designed to provide hydroelectricity, agriculture, irrigation and   settlements to four provinces, Northern, North Central, Central and Eastern.

The Mahaweli Scheme was divided into 13 Systems labeled A to M.  Tamil Separatist Movement complained that Systems A, B (Right Bank), I, J, K, L and M either fully or partially fell inside Eelam.

The   settlements in the Mahaweli   scheme started in 1978. Because of Mahaweli, Tamils in the Eastern province lost two-thirds of their land to the Sinhalese and became a minority population, said Oakland Institute. The number of Tamils in the Eastern province dwindled from 76 % in 1827 to 39% percent in 2015.

Tamils are no longer the majority in Trincomalee either. The only district in the Eastern Province that has more Tamil than Sinhalese residents is Batticaloa, continued Oakland in 2015. Mullaitivu District, which was mainly Tamil, has the second-highest concentration of Sinhalese in the Northern Province, said analysts in 2022. [1]  They all agreed that   Mahaweli project had successfully managed to reconfigure the ethnic ratio of the Northern and Eastern districts.[2]  

The separatist Tamils voiced their concern about Mahaweli to the authorities in India, when they went to India to discuss the ethnic conflict. They managed to get Mahaweli included in the Agreement reached between the two governments in 1983 in New Delhi. Mahaweli was included in the document known as Annexure C”, drawn up by G. Parthasarathy, special envoy of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and tabled before the All Party Conference at Thimpu in 1985.

This annexure said that the settlers in the Mahaweli System should  be selected  according to the ethnic composition of the Island,  75% Sinhala, 15% Tamil and 10% Muslim.[3] However, the Census of 1981 gave the figures as Sinhala 74.9% Tamil 11.2% Moors 9.2%.  Tamils were asking for 4% more than what they were entitled to. The Conference ended in December 1984 with nothing decided.  Annexure ‘C” was forgotten. Most people don’t even know about it.  But Tamil Separatist Movement continues to refer to it as if it is approved policy.

The senior officials in all strategic   positions at Mahaweli ministry were Tamil. These Tamil officers outmaneuvered and outflanked their complacent Sinhala counterparts, through clever stratagems, said Malinga Gunaratne, who had worked in Mahaweli. Their machinations were well calculated, well planned out and executed with clinical precision. Large tracts of land were designated as   elephant corridors, forest reserves, national parks  and no settlement was allowed in them.

Tamil Separatist Movement had studied the Mahaweli plan carefully and had marked out two strategic locations where Sinhala settlements   could puncture Eelam. They were Maduru oya and Yan oya settlements. Illegal Tamil settlements were established by 1983 in Yan Oya  and Maduru oya.

Padaviya was another critical area.  Padaviya (1958) was bursting at the seams by 1980. The area could not accommodate the 2nd and 3rd generations.  They would have had to expand into Vavuniya and Mullaitivu .Tamil Separatist Movement saw this and started installing Tamil settlements on the border of Padaviya leaving a massive buffer zone between these settlements and the Vavuniya- Mullaitivu districts.

These illegal settlements were known to the authorities who turned a blind eye. When the government was told of illegal Tamil settlements in the Accelerated Mahaweli area, the government took no action, said Malinga Gunaratne who had worked at the Mahaweli Ministry.  Those working in the Ministry, however, could see the deals made between the authorities and the Tamil separatist politicians. The Minister knows about the Tamil activities but he is helpless, the Tamil lobby is too strong, Malinga was told. [4]  (Continued)

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[1] https://countercurrents.org/2022/06/state-sponsored-sinhalese-colonization-of-tamils-traditional-homeland/

[2] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2023/04/10/development-gone-wrong-sri-lanka-at-75/

[3] https://thuppahis.com/2022/07/28/the-mahaweli-project-the-mother-of-all-development-schemes-in-sri-lanka/

[4]  Malinga Gunaratne. For a sovereign state