{"id":166098,"date":"2016-08-04T12:24:32","date_gmt":"2016-08-04T06:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=166098"},"modified":"2016-08-11T12:00:01","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T06:30:01","slug":"what-is-wrong-with-the-tamil-leadership-in-sri-lanka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/what-is-wrong-with-the-tamil-leadership-in-sri-lanka\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Wrong With The Tamil Leadership In Sri Lanka ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Noel Nadesan<\/span><\/a> –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Dr<\/a>

Dr Noel Nadesan<\/p><\/div>\n

Present political climate in Sri\u00a0Lanka, especially the\u00a0Tamil\u00a0politics, reminds\u00a0me an ancient\u00a0Greek\u00a0mythology. King Sisyphus was condemned by the Olympian God Zeus to spend all the eternity in fruitless labour,\u00a0rolling a rock up a mountain until it rolled back down of its own weight, again and again. Nothing could be more absurd than a life of such futility. King\u00a0Sisyphus\u00a0was punished for his trickery and killing. The Myth of Sisyphus was used by Albert Camus to explain the absurdity and thereafter Danish Philosopher S\u00f8ren Kierkegaard\u00a0used this to compare man’s greed to earn money. Franz Kafka\u00a0 compared it to man seeking political power and aspiration.<\/p>\n

It was a philosophical metaphor that a person seeking power and money could not achieve them. Likewise, the Tamil politicians are asking power from the Colombo government but the ordinary Tamil citizens are not going to enjoy the fruits.<\/p>\n

During the two weeks I spent in Sri Lanka including in the North, I heard many Tamils\u00a0 praising Douglas Devanantha\u00a0MP\u00a0and Chandrakumar EX-MP. The main reason for this is that \u00a0 they have been a bridge between the ordinary people and the government and people found it easier to handle their issues. This is what we call\u00a0representative democracy. The Provincial government was elected to look after regional development in the North but they are also screaming for Tamils rights. They are not fulfilling people’s aspirations. Irregularities seem to be abundant in some of the more important sectors of the provincial government such as health and education.<\/p>\n

The most essential elements lacking in the North are moral, social and political leadership.\u00a0The Jaffna university incident<\/span><\/a>\u00a0has been\u00a0the clearest\u00a0example of failed leadership. I am not blaming the politicians alone for everything and even other sections of the society are not providing any guidance to the ordinary people. Temples are renovated from overseas money like\u00a0whitewashing\u00a0the tombstones. They do not provide any spiritual guidance to anyone. And the nature of Hindu religious establishment is that it lacked any authority. Everyone knows that Jaffna is a leading district in consumption of liquor while wall posters are seen in every nook and corner warning about narcotics.<\/p>\n

Tamil politicians are only available through their media statements in daily newspapers and their rhetoric is very old and rusty. They are so used to life in the opposition like a wallowing buffalo in muddy lake. I could not see anyone speaking with vision about the future or providing leadership. They only ensure keeping their seats warm so that they can occupy it until their demise.
\nThis has been our history. Crematoriums and cemeteries have seen numerous politicians with empty rhetoric.<\/p>\n

Futile and absurd politicking by Tamils started in 1927 with\u00a0the arrival\u00a0of\u00a0the Donoughmore Commission\u00a0in Sri Lanka. Eminent Leader Ponnampalam Ramanathan argued against the universal franchise because he did not approve voting rights for members of the Tamil non Vellala lower caste and the women. He further argued that giving voting rights to these groups would be a grave mistake and suggested that it would be anathema to the Hindu way of life.<\/p>\n

Just before independence,\u00a0another\u00a0Tamil leader G.G. Ponnambalam demanded from Soulbury Commission \u201850:50\u2019 representation (50% for the Sinhalese, and 50% for other minorities) when Sinhalese were more than 65 % of the\u00a0population at the time. His racist rhetoric in Nawalapitiya attacking Sinhala\u00a0Buddhists\u00a0and Mahawamsa\u00a0 provoked the\u00a0first racial riots\u00a0in Sri Lanka .\u00a0His speech was\u00a0a pretext\u00a0for S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike to establish branches of the Sinhala Maha Sabha in every part of\u00a0the south\u00a0of Sri Lanka. As a politician I will not blame S. W. R. D Bandaranaike to have made political capital out of G.G. Ponnambalam’s rhetoric.<\/p>\n

It was a sad state of affair that S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike brought the Sinhala only act after the 1956 general election, but later he attempted to correct it through the Banda \u2013Chelva pact. This was the time when everyone worked overtime to destabilize the government led by SWRD Bandaranaike. GG Ponnampalam too opposed it, adding to the opposition from the United National Party and Buddhist monks. A trivial issue cropped up in the Sri Lankan political\u00a0scene\u00a0in 1958 when buses were sent to the North with registration plates carrying\u00a0the Sinhala ‘Sri’ letter along with numbers. The Federal Party\u00a0organized a\u00a0country\u00a0wide protest resulting in the 1958 race riot.<\/p>\n

I am not condoning or appeasing Sinhala\u00a0politicians, but want to\u00a0point out that we Tamils have many skeletons too. Our\u00a0blunders resulted in\u00a0turmoil and destruction. Majority racial\u00a0attitudes\u00a0were not countered cleverly but instead we hoisted the\u00a0Tamil\u00a0racist flag high.<\/p>\n

It was the Federal Party\u00a0that was most insincere\u00a0by pushing\u00a0a federal solution\u00a0while calling themselves Tamil Arasu Kadsi\u00a0(Tamil Kingdom Party) at a time S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike\u00a0proposed\u00a0regional councils. In the same way the Tamil United\u00a0Liberation\u00a0Front was formed which\u00a0passed a resolution for an independent\u00a0Tamil\u00a0nation. If I were a Sinhala leader or Sinhala citizen these\u00a0concepts and titles would have created in my mind doubts and bitter feelings.<\/p>\n

Tamil politicians declared\u00a0separation, but\u00a0without\u00a0any preparation for the consequence. I heard from a prominent politician that Mr Amirthalingam was told off by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for his Eelam demand.<\/p>\n

It is true that President JR Jeyewardene\u2019s misadventure briefly made India to support the militants but very soon India realized their folly and tried to reverse the situation. But\u00a0the rhetoric of the Tamil leadership was so poisonous and powerful that many young people swallowed it including Velupillai Prabaharan. Words can be arsenic and kill\u00a0us, but\u00a0slowly.<\/p>\n

Velupillai Prabharan\u00a0and the\u00a0LTTE struggle for the last thirty years had cost a large number of\u00a0lives\u00a0and I do not want to go into this more as enough has been written already.<\/p>\n

Mao Zedong firmly believed in communism to help the billions of Chinese, but\u00a0Deng Xiaoping\u00a0said a cat can be skinned in many ways and opened the economy resulting in the Chinese economy almost overtaking\u00a0American economy. Why\u00a0are we still insisting\u00a0on confrontation, complaints and sulking, like children. In this day and age abstract notion of political right\u00a0is\u00a0very low down in the priority when considering the\u00a0economic empowerment of the people. In Sri Lanka the other two minority communities have already set an example and shown the way forward.<\/p>\n

I cannot understand the Tamil leadership. What do they have in their minds?\u00a0Are they thinking outside the orbit? What is happening? I just cannot find any common thread running through all the Tamil leadership except for the fact that most of them are trained lawyers who thrive on the deeds and misdeeds of people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[…]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":121988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat Is Wrong With The Tamil Leadership In Sri Lanka ? - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/what-is-wrong-with-the-tamil-leadership-in-sri-lanka\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What Is Wrong With The Tamil Leadership In Sri Lanka ? 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