Gunaratne names Dr. A.N.S. Kulasinghe (Chair- man), G.G. Jayawardene and H.B. Jayasekera of the Central Engineering Consultancy Bureau as showing tremendous enthusiasm for the project once he told them that the Minister had given his approval. This was about 23rd July 1983. These men were no doubt excellent engineers. But motivated by Sinhalese elite ideology, they were thoughtless about transplanting Sinhalese poor into conditions that were economically di- sastrous and politically explosive. It is these same poor who were killed with the same thoughtlessness by the same class in the name, ironically, of democracy and law and order, when the JVP started playing on their disen- chantment in the coming years.

The orgy of violence erupted in Colombo just about the time Minister Dissanayake gave ap- proval for the project and leading officials of the Mahaveli Board were working on the conquest of the Yan Oya basin, while around them in Co- lombo, the Tamils were being subjected to an orgy of violence. Even around Darley Road where the Mahaveli Board is situated, there were human torches of Tamils felled by the mobs. These officials had taken a flight from reality. In the secretive paranoid atmosphere of their work, just about any Tamil with a modest position in government service became a spy, a saboteur and a menace. To them a handful of Tamil mili- tants became an army of separatist terrorists. It did not occur to them that all civil, political and social service organisations among the Tamils had been prostrated by months of repression. Gandhiyam leaders were behind bars and Dr. Rajasundaram was murdered in prison on 27th July while the Mahaveli men conspired. K. Kanthasamy of the Tamil Refugees Rehabilita- tion Organisation had fled from the country in June 1983, upon being warned of impending arrest. Many of the refugees from the 1977 vio- lence they had rehabilitated in the North-East, had already been attacked by armed forces- backed mobs in June and were in refugee camps. There was no one to look after them leave alone help them to return to their homes. At this very moment of triumph, as it were, the men in the Mahaveli Board began seeing ghosts.

The following is from Herman Gunaratne’s For a Sovereign State (p.58):

“Whilst we were making arrangements to imple- ment Karunatilake’s proposals in or around the month of August 1983, we received some very disturbing reports. Panic stricken messages were pouring into the Mahaweli Ministry stating that Tamils were en- croaching on state land, that the Tamils were taking advantage of the absence of the security forces in the North and the East to attack and hold their main target – land; and they were going for it in a big way.

“Whilst the enraged Sinhala people were causing havoc to Tamil economic establishments in Colombo, the dedicated Eelamist was hitting us on the most sensitive issue – LAND.

“The main objective of this thrust was the right bank of Maduru Oya.”

Thus began the Maduru Oya fiasco, which we will come to later. These ham-fisted demo- graphic projects with the full-backing of the State behind them, and further coming on the heels of the events of the preceding months culminat- ing in the July holocaust, stirred the worst fears of the Tamils. Up to this point there had been a belief among the Tamils that in the North-East, at least, they were free from the violence of com- munally charged mobs, or could at least hope to defend themselves. State sponsored colonisation had gradually eroded that belief. What the Mahaveli Board was planning to do was to implement in one fell-blow what had been thought about for a long time (Gunaratne names Minister C.P. de Silva in the 1950s as the originator), but carried out in small stages. Such ideas were the main inspiration behind govern- ment policy up to the time of the Indo-Lanka Accord. Their enforcement was taken over by such powerful figures as Ravi Jayewardene and Lalith Athulathmudali. It sent the Tamils into the arms of India and brutalised them to the point of consenting to massacres of Sinhalese civilians and providing fertile ground for the rise of the fascist Liberation Tigers. The men who ruled the destinies of Sri Lanka, the political novices in the Mahaveli Board and allied state agencies had created Tamil Eelam in their mind during that fatal year of 1983.

In contrast to what these people who pushed this government policy imagined, the true posi- tion of Tamils then, in contrast to what was imag- ined by the former, was exemplified by the forc- ible transportation of Tamil victims in Trincomalee who had been refugees from vio- lence at least twice. This was described at the end of Chapter 5. They were utterly helpless against the machinations of the State.

The 6th Amendment to the constitution ban- ning separatism, a disingenuous attempt to ex- orcise another ghost, was presented in Parlia- ment on 4th August 1983. The Supreme Court had returned the proposed amendment with minor reservations such as the excessive severity of the penalties. Prime Minister Premadasa presenting the amendment stated that the TULF or any other party with similar [separatist] objectives could no longer exist in this country. He was to more than swallow his words by providing arms to the LTTE in 1989. He could not have been serious when he presented the amendment.