KAMALIKA PIERIS

The Ceylon Tamil, despite the label, is not ‘Ceylon’ at all. The Ceylon Tamil originated in Tamilnadu. The British got down Tamils to carry out Settler Colonization” in Ceylon. Settler Colonization”is the introduction of a foreign settler group, to crush the existing indigenous group and take over the country.

Settler Colonialism”   is a strategy where the colonial power   deliberately brings in outsiders to a new country, to occupy its land and push out those who were living there earlier. The original residents are   displaced and later eliminated. The settlers    then dig in and   create a permanent community there. They entrench themselves so well that they cannot be easily dislodged. They are able to do this because they are backed by the foreign country that is ruling there.

Then at independence, the government of the newly decolonized country has to deal with this settler group. There is a tussle between the two. The issue of sovereignty and central government comes up. UN helps. UN   Resolution 2625 of 1970 says, any attempt at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and territorial integrity of a state is incompatible with the UN Charter.

However, settler colonialism is also given a chance. A community of people who claim the right of self-determination based on a common ethnicity, history and culture can seek to establish  sovereignty over  their territory, said analysts But such communities are usually treated as autonomous areas, not as  sovereign, independent states,.

 Settler colonization” is different to migration.  Migrants do not organize against the state, they assimilate. Japanese laborers migrated to Peru and Hawaii. Fujimori became the President in Peru.  In Hawaii they worked in the sugar plantations.  Within two generations they had left the plantations and   risen to middle class positions. 

Settler colonialism was a specific policy of British imperial   expansion in the 18^th century. Australia, New Zealand, Canada and USA are settler colonies created by Britain. They were settled by British immigrants who left Britain, looking for fresh pastures abroad. These British settlers went to these countries by ship, killed off the locals and took control of the country. Those who survived the killings were put into reservations.  Nobody called it genocide. The indigenous peoples were considered subhuman and expendable.

The British also introduced a settler community into Palestine. Britain had in 1917 promised the Jewish community that they would someday settle them in Palestine (Balfour Declaration).  In 1922, when Britain got the mandate to rule Palestine, they did so. They chased out the Palestinians from a section of Palestine and sent in the Jews.

The state of Israel was created in 1948. Israel wanted to expand and also acquire defensible borders. They wished to annex Egypt’s Sinai. They hated the Arabs and wanted them   out of Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said recently   that Israel will not permit the creation of a Palestinian state after the end of the war in Gaza. Israel   ignores the Human Rights Council.

The ongoing Gaza war has induced analysts see Israel in terms of Settler Colonialism.  The Zionist project is now, perhaps for the first time,  labeled a settler-colonial project. The original Zionist idea of planting a European Jewish state at the heart of the Arab world through the dispossession of the Palestinians is inacceptable, said Ilan Pappe (Al Jazeera, October 2024).

  India was part of the British Empire and the British rulers took Indians, including Tamils as settlers to other colonies. British sent Tamil settlers to Seychelles, Mauritius, Reunion, Fiji   and South Africa. In Fiji, the Indians were able to take control of the government. Indians were expelled from Uganda in 1972 by Idi Amin. They ended up in London. Tamils integrated into local populations in Mauritius, South Africa, Guyana, and Fiji. Tamils in Malaysia became a distinct sub culture.    Tamils in these countries, unlike the Tamils in Sri Lanka, have not demanded separation or more power or complained about discrimination and oppression, said Kanthar Balanathan.

Sri Lanka underwent a period of Settler Colonialism. British brought Tamil setters in specifically to colonize Sri Lanka. They entrenched themselves in Jaffna in the North, in Batticaloa in the East and established a presence in Colombo. They were known as ‘Jaffna man’, ‘Colombo man’ and ‘Batticaloa man’. ‘Jaffna man’ and ‘Colombo man’ (who were often the same) looked down on ‘Batticaloa man’. There were also pockets of Tamils in most parts of the country except for southern districts like Galle and Matara.

At independence the Tamils declared in Sri Lanka that they were a separate nation and they were entitled to self determination. But unlike Australia, New Zealand, Canada and USA, Tamils in Sri Lanka found that it was not going to be easy to challenge the Sinhala state.

 Sri Lanka happened to be a centuries old sovereign state, with a strong historical memory. Sri Lanka remembers a time when there was no Tamil colonists and the north and east was Sinhala-Buddhist.  Also, Sri Lanka was under British rule only for 133 years (1815-1948) a very short period in a history of over 2500 years. Lastly, Sinhalese turn strongly patriotic when challenged. They firmly declare Rata bedanne denne be” .

The flat refusal of the Tamil Separatist Movement to let go of Tamil Separatism and assimilate, can be attributed to Settler Colonialism. It is Settler colonialism that is keeping the Tamil Separatist Movement going. Assertions made by the Tamil Separatist Movement which puzzle and incense the public come from Settler Colonialism.  The public wonder why the Tamil Separatists   don’t assimilate, leave or just shut  up. That is because Settler Colonialism will not allow  it.

 Here  are two landmark  Declarations of the Tamil Separatist Movement , dated 1949 and 1976. The first is the Speech delivered on December 18, 1949 at the Inaugural business meeting of Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) by S. J. V. Chelvanayakam KC . The second is the Vaddukoddai Resolution of 1976.  THIS IS SETTLER COLONIALISM SPEAKING.

We first look at the 1949 utterance.  The Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK)  was  started in 1949   by three  parliamentarians, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, C. Vanniasingam and Senator E. M. V. Naganathan. On 18 December 1949, a group of sixty Tamils including two parliamentarians and two senators convened at the Government Clerical Service Union (GCSU) hall in Colombo, said DBS Jeyaraj.

That historic conclave resulted in the launching of a new political party with the avowed goal of establishing an autonomous State for the Tamil-speaking people of Ceylon  within a united island. The new party was named in Tamil as Illankai Thamil Arasu Katchi” meaning Ceylon Tamil State or Tamil Government Party. The word ‘State’ denoted a unit within a federal set-up and not a sovereign State as some of its detractors alleged,”  said AJ Wilson,  son in law of Chelvanayagam  .

Chelvanayakam and his party ushered in an ideological shift in Tamil politics, said  DBS Jeyaraj. Chelvanayagam  formulated Tamil nationalism on linguistic lines in  clearly demarcated territory, the  Northern and Eastern Province, which he said were the traditional homelands of the Tamil speaking people. These provinces would form an autonomous Tamil State (Thamil Arasu). This state would come into a federal arrangement with the residual Sinhala state and remain within a Ceylonese union.

Here are extracts from the Speech delivered on December 18, 1949 at the Inaugural business meeting of Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK) by S. J. V. Chelvanayakam KC, re-arranged by me.  The full text can be seen at  https://sangam.org/1949-speech-by-s-j-v-chelvanayakam/

Chelvanayagam started  his speech of 18.12.1949  by saying, we have met together with the common aim of creating an organization to work for the attainment of freedom for the Tamil speaking people of Ceylon. It is essential to form an autonomous Tamil speaking state. No other solution is possible.  Before the Portuguese came, there were two nations,  Sinhala speaking and Tamil speaking. The Tamil nation became a separate kingdom around the 9^th or 10^th  century, announced Chelvanayagam .

The discussions towards  Independence focused on the creation of a unitary state in Ceylon. On 20th November 1947 Tamil Congress  wrote to Secretary of State for the Colonies,  in London saying  that  this  Unitary Government  was totally unacceptable to the Tamils and in the absence of a satisfactory alternative we demand the right of self-determination for the Tamil people,”  said Chelvanayagam .

This was ignored and a unitary government  was foisted on the Tamil speaking people of Ceylon, complained Chelvanayagam  .The Tamil speaking people realized the danger of a unitary type of constitution for a heterogeneous population. They  never lost sense of their danger,  declared   Chelvanayagam

Where in 1947 and 1948 it became evident that the Singhalese people could carry on their Government ignoring the Tamil representatives and could pass legislation after legislation defying the wishes and feelings on the Tamil people, there was open one of two alternatives to the Tamil speaking people,  explained Chelvanayagam .

One was abject surrender. The other was a campaign to free the Tamil speaking people from a constitution in which they were utterly powerless. The Tamil people favored the latter as indicated in the elections.

At the general ejections of 1947 Tamil Congress which swept the polls in the Tamil areas stood for resistance against encroachments on Tamil rights. Whenever the question was referred to them, the Tamil electorates consistently decided for a policy of resistance , announced Chelvanayagam .

The Tamil people  are politically conscious of being a separate nation. This is an encouraging sign and those who want to work for the good of their people must act [now].  We should therefore get together a body of those who desire to see the Tamil-speaking people free and who have faith in the future of this people, declared  Chelvanayagam .

Chelvanayagam then went on to speak of two other matters which rankled. One was relatively unimportant, the flag and the other was definitely very important, colonization.

The National Flag showed an utter disregard of the feeling and rights of the Tamil speaking people, Chelvanayagam said.  The lion flag was the flag of the Singhalese Kings. It is  identified with Singhalese sovereignty. The flag is being used administratively as the national flag of Ceylon.

The Government’s policy on the flag issued is symbolic of its attitude towards the Tamil-speaking people. The Government ignores their existence  as a part of the  country.  I do not know of any other country with a composite population which has adopted as its national flag the flag of only one section of the people complained Chelvanayagam .

Even more dangerous to the Tamil speaking people is  the Government’s colonization policy., continued  Chelvanayagam . We have only the beginning of it in Gal-Oya. The land to be irrigated under the Gal-Oya scheme lies in the Eastern Province, a Tamil-speaking area.

 There is evidence that the Government intends planting Singhalese population in this  purely Tamil-speaking area. The Government is seeking to use its powers for the purpose of reducing the Tamil-speaking areas that now exist. If this policy is allowed to continue unchecked there will be no Tamil majority areas left in the course of a few decades. 

By many such acts of the Government it has lost the moral right to rule over the Tamil speaking people of Ceylon. It only does so now by the physical right of power. Over two years of internal self-government have reduced the Tamil-speaking people to an inferior status in their own country. They do not feel that the Government is their  government, continued Chelvanayagam .

The manly thing to do is to face the situation and find a way out. There are two ways in which this conflict between linguistic groups could be solved. One is the division of linguistic groups into separate sovereign states. The other and the less drastic remedy is the formation of a federal state making each linguistic group an autonomous state.

Experience in other parts of the world has shown the federal solution to have succeeded in many cases. Well known examples are that of Canada which consists of English-speaking and French speaking peoples and Switzerland. The India Congress and the Indian Government have accepted the creation of linguistic states in principle,  explained Chelvanayagam .

This is then the solution that we ask for. A Federal constitution for Ceylon consisting of an Autonomous Tamil speaking province and an autonomous Singhalese province with a Central Government common to both. This is the minimum provision necessary to prevent the smaller Tamil-speaking nation from extinction, or of being absorbed by the larger nation. . They must be given the right to govern their own territory,  declared Chelvanayagam .

Chelvanayagam concluded with a couple of   contradictory offerings. Our one aim is to achieve freedom for the Tamil speaking people by the creation of an autonomous state within the framework of a federal constitution in Ceylon, he said. He ignored that fact a federal state cannot  also be an autonomous state.  However, the  true objective of this talk emerged in the last sentence of Chelvanayagam’s  speech where he called fora free Tamil State.

The second Declaration to which I draw attention is the Vaddukoddai  Declaration of 1976.  Here is the full text of the Declaration  as given by TamilNet, on 08 June 1997.[1]

THE RESOLUTION

Unanimously adopted at the First National Convention of the

TAMIL UNITED LIBERATION FRONT

held at Vaddukoddai

on May 14, 1976

Chairman S.J.V. Chelvanayakam Q.C., M.P. (K.K.S)

Whereas, throughout the centuries from the dawn of history, the Sinhalese and Tamil nations have divided between themselves the possession of Ceylon, the Sinhalese inhabiting the interior of the country in its Southern and Western parts from the river Walawe to that of Chilaw and the Tamils possessing the Northern and Eastern districts; And, Whereas, the Tamil Kingdom was overthrown in war and conquered by the Portuguese in 1619, and from them by the Dutch and the British in turn, independent of the Sinhalese Kingdoms; And,

Whereas, the British Colonists, who ruled the territories of the Sinhalese and Tamil Kingdoms separately, joined under compulsion the territories of the Sinhalese and the Tamil Kingdoms for purposes of administrative convenience on the recommendation of the Colebrooke Commission in 1833; And,

Whereas, the Tamil Leaders were in the forefront of the Freedom movement to rid Ceylon of colonial bondage which ultimately led to the grant of independence to Ceylon in 1948; And,

Whereas, the foregoing facts of history were completely overlooked, and power over the entire country was transferred to the Sinhalese nation on the basis of a numerical majority, thereby reducing the Tamil nation to the position of subject people; And,

Whereas, successive Sinhalese governments since independence have always encouraged and fostered the aggressive nationalism of the Sinhalese people and have used their political power to the detriment of the Tamils by-

1. Depriving one half of the Tamil people of their citizenship and franchise rights thereby reducing Tamil representation in Parliament,
2. Making serious inroads into the territories of the former Tamil Kingdom by a system of planned and state-aided Sinhalese colonization and large scale regularization of recently encouraged Sinhalese encroachments, calculated to make the Tamils a minority in their own homeland,
3. Making Sinhala the only official language throughout Ceylon thereby placing the stamp of inferiority on the Tamils and the Tamil Language,
4. Giving the foremost place to Buddhism under the Republican constitution thereby reducing the Hindus, Christians, and Muslims to second class status in this Country,
5. Denying to the Tamils equality of opportunity in the spheres of employment, education, land alienation and economic life in general and starving Tamil areas of large scale industries and development schemes thereby seriously endangering their very existence in Ceylon,
6. Systematically cutting them off from the main-stream of Tamil cultures in South India while denying them opportunities of developing their language and culture in Ceylon, thereby working inexorably towards the cultural genocide of the Tamils,
7. Permitting and unleashing communal violence and intimidation against the Tamil speaking people as happened in Amparai and Colombo in 1956; all over the country in 1958; army reign of terror in the Northern and Eastern Provinces in 1961; police violence at the International Tamil Research Conference in 1974 resulting in the death of nine persons in Jaffna; police and communal violence against Tamil speaking Muslims at Puttalam and various other parts of Ceylon in 1976 – all these calculated to instill terror in the minds of the Tamil speaking people, thereby breaking their spirit and the will to resist injustices heaped on them,
8. By terrorizing, torturing, and imprisoning Tamil youths without trial for long periods on the flimsiest grounds,
9. Capping it all by imposing on the Tamil Nation a constitution drafted, under conditions of emergency without opportunities for free discussion, by a Constituent Assembly elected on the basis of the Soulbury Constitution distorted by the Citizenship laws resulting in weightage in representation to the Sinhalese majority, thereby depriving the Tamils of even the remnants of safeguards they had under the earlier constitution, And,

Whereas, all attempts by the various Tamil political parties to win their rights, by co-operating with the governments, by parliamentary and extra-parliamentary agitations, by entering into pacts and understandings with successive Prime Ministers, in order to achieve the bare minimum of political rights consistent with the self-respect of the Tamil people have proved to be futile; And,

Whereas, the efforts of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress to ensure non-domination of the minorities by the majority by the adoption of a scheme of balanced representation in a Unitary Constitution have failed and even the meagre safeguards provided in article 29 of the Soulbury Constitution against discriminatory legislation have been removed by the Republican Constitution; And,

Whereas, the proposals submitted to the Constituent Assembly by the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi for maintaining the unity of the country while preserving the integrity of the Tamil people by the establishment of an autonomous Tamil State within the framework of a Federal Republic of Ceylon were summarily and totally rejected without even the courtesy of a consideration of its merits; And,

Whereas, the amendments to the basic resolutions, intended to ensure the minimum of safeguards to the Tamil people moved on the basis of the nine point demands formulated at the conference of all Tamil Political parties at Valvettithurai on 7th February 1971 and by individual parties and Tamil members of Parliament including those now in the government party, were rejected in toto by the government and Constituent Assembly; And,

Whereas, even amendments to the draft proposals relating to language, religion, and fundamental-rights including one calculated to ensure that at least the provisions of the Tamil Language (Special Provisions) Regulations of 1956 be included in the Constitution, were defeated, resulting in the boycott of the Constituent Assembly by a large majority of the Tamil members of Parliament; And,

Whereas, the Tamil United Liberation Front, after rejecting the Republican Constitution adopted on the 22nd of May, 1972, presented a six point demand to the Prime Minister and the Government on 25th June, 1972, and gave three months time within which the Government was called upon to take meaningful steps to amend the Constitution so as to meet the aspirations of the Tamil Nation on the basis of the six points, and informed the Government that if it failed to do so the Tamil United Liberation Front would launch a non-violent direct action against the Government in order to win the freedom and the rights of the Tamil Nation on the basis of the right of self-determination; And,

Whereas, this last attempt by the Tamil United Liberation Front to win Constitutional recognition of the rights of the Tamil Nation without jeopardizing the unity of the country was callously ignored by the Prime Minister and the Government; And,

Whereas, the opportunity provided by the Tamil United Liberation leader to vindicate the Government’s contention that their constitution had the backing of the Tamil people, by resigning from his membership of the National State Assembly and creating a by-election was deliberately put off for over two years in utter disregard of the democratic right of the Tamil voters of Kankesanthurai, and,

Whereas, in the by-election held on the 6th February 1975, the voters of Kankesanthurai by a preponderant majority not only rejected the Republican Constitution imposed on them by the Sinhalese Government, but also gave a mandate to Mr. S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, Q.C. and through him to the Tamil United Liberation Front for the restoration and reconstitution of the Free Sovereign, Secular, Socialist State of TAMIL EELAM.

The first National Convention of the Tamil United Liberation Front meeting at Pannakam (Vaddukoddai Constituency) on the 14th day of May, 1976, hereby declares that the Tamils of Ceylon by virtue of their great language, their religions, their separate culture and heritage, their history of independent existence as a separate state over a distinct territory for several centuries till they were conquered by the armed might of the European invaders and above all by their will to exist as a separate entity ruling themselves in their own territory, are a nation distinct and apart from Sinhalese and this Convention announces to the world that the Republican Constitution of 1972 has made the Tamils a slave nation ruled by the new colonial masters, the Sinhalese ,who are using the power they have wrongly usurped to deprive the Tamil Nation of its territory, language citizenship, economic life, opportunities of employment and education, thereby destroying all the attributes of nationhood of the Tamil people.

And, while taking note of the reservations in relation to its commitment to the setting up of a separated state of TAMIL EELAM expressed by the Ceylon Workers Congress as a Trade Union of the Plantation Workers, the majority of whom live and work outside the Northern and Eastern areas,

This convention resolves that restoration and reconstitution of the Free, Sovereign, Secular, Socialist State of TAMIL EELAM, based on the right of self determination inherent to every nation, has become inevitable in order to safeguard the very existence of the Tamil Nation in this Country.

This Convention further declares –

1. that the State of TAMIL EELAM shall consist of the people of the Northern and Eastern provinces and shall also ensure full and equal rights of citizenship of the State of TAMIL EELAM to all Tamil speaking people living in any part of Ceylon and to Tamils of EELAM origin living in any part of the world who may opt for citizenship of TAMIL EELAM.
2. that the constitution of TAMIL EELAM shall be based on the principle of democratic decentralization so as to ensure the non-domination of any religious or territorial community of TAMIL EELAM by any other section.
3. that in the state of Tamil Eelam caste shall be abolished and the observance of the pernicious practice of untouchability or inequality of any type based on birth shall be totally eradicated and its observance in any form punished by law.
4. that TAMIL EELAM shall be a secular state giving equal protection and assistance to all religions to which the people of the state may belong.
5. that Tamil shall be the language of the State, but the rights of Sinhalese speaking minorities in Tamil Eelam to education and transaction of business in their language shall be protected on a reciprocal basis with the Tamil speaking minorities in the Sinhala State.
6. that Tamil Eelam shall be a Socialist State wherein the exploitation of man by man shall be forbidden, the dignity of labor shall be recognized, the means of production and distribution shall be subject to public ownership and control while permitting private enterprise in these branches within limit prescribed by law, economic development shall be on the basis of socialist planning and there shall be a ceiling on the total wealth that any individual of family may acquire.

This Convention directs the Action Committee of the TAMIL UNITED LIBERATION FRONT to formulate a plan of action and launch without undue delay the struggle for winning the sovereignty and freedom of the Tamil Nation;

And this Convention calls upon the Tamil Nation in general and the Tamil youth in particular to come forward to throw themselves fully into the sacred fight for freedom and to flinch not till the goal of a sovereign state of TAMIL EELAM is reached. (End of resolution).

Tamilnet said, This is a translation of the Resolution Unanimously Adopted at the 1st National Convention of the Tamil United Liberation Front, held at Pannakam (Vaddukoddai Constituency) on May 15 1976, Presided over by Mr. Chelvanayakam, Q.C, M.P. The TULF went to polls in 1977 with this and received an overwhelming mandate from the Tamil electorate. This was the last time Tamils of Eelam were able to express their wish freely at a democratically conducted poll added  Tamilnet  in its entry on 8. June 1997. https://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?artid=8861&catid=74  ( continued)

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[1] https://www.tamilnet.com/art.html?artid=8861&catid=74