{"id":205610,"date":"2019-10-19T03:12:42","date_gmt":"2019-10-18T21:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=205610"},"modified":"2019-10-23T12:15:23","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T06:45:23","slug":"how-we-came-to-this-pass-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/how-we-came-to-this-pass-v\/","title":{"rendered":"How We Came To This Pass \u2013 V"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sachithanandam Sathananthan<\/a> –<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Dr. Sachithanandam Sathananthan<\/p><\/div>\n

Politics of Tamil mandates<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

In an essay in 2013 we commented on Broker Politics,<\/a>[1]the essence of Tamil parliamentary politics.<\/p>\n

To be fair, ITAK (Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi<\/em>)<\/a>[2]leader SJV Chelvanayakam and his lieutenants relied on the tradition well established by Tamil leaders in the colonial regime\u2019s Legislative Council.<\/p>\n

For more than 7 decades, from 1833 and 1910, successive generations of Ceylonese notables were co-opted through the Legislative Council to serve the colonial master. They owed their modicum of political influence (not power) and social status to the generosity of the British Governor.<\/p>\n

The Governor appointed<\/strong>Ceylonese \u201cunofficial\u201d members at his pleasure if they ingratiated themselves with him and earned his favour. They were Ceylon\u2019s first generation of political brokers.<\/strong><\/p>\n

They performed two important functions. First they were go-betweens who conveyed the aspirations of elites of their respective communities to the Governor. Second, they simultaneously defended the colonial regime\u2019s interests by ensuring the respective elites expressed their ambitions without threatening the stability of the colonial regime. That was dignified as colonialism\u2019s indirect rule<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Most of the Lanka\u2019s flatfooted historians, however, regurgitated the bilge colonial rulers fed them, that the Legislative Council was the first altruistic step to tutor Ceylonese in so-called \u201cself-government\u201d!<\/p>\n

Unrepresented elites jockeyed for their own brokers. The Governor turned the pleadings for wider \u201crepresentation\u201d to the regime\u2019s advantage by selecting more supine Ceylonese satraps as unofficial members to broad base and further entrench the colonial regime. These Machiavellian machinations were dressed up as \u201cconstitutional reforms\u201d, such as the 1910 McCallum and 1920s Manning Reforms.<\/a>[3]<\/p>\n

The collaborationist politics of the Legislative Council\u2019s unofficial members set the framework (or template) for what is well known as \u201cPetition Politics\u201d.<\/p>\n

Petition politics<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan <\/a>[4]intervened to defend Sinhalese leaders incarcerated for their role in the 1915 anti-Muslim violence.<\/a>[5]They included DC Senanayake, FR Senanayake, DS Senanayake, DB Jayatilaka, WA\u00a0de Silva and FR Dias Bandaranaike.<\/p>\n

When Colonial Governor Sir Robert Chalmers ignored Ramanathan\u2019s plea to release the prisoners, at first he attempted petition politics. He delivered six resounding orations<\/a>[6]in the Legislative Council pleading for the Sinhalese leaders. But Governor Chalmers was not impressed, for power is not intimidated by speeches!<\/p>\n

To his eternal credit, Ramanathan shifted tack; he sailed to London. Apparently Ramanathan\u2019s Chanakya tactic was to pit London against Colombo. He convinced the Colonial Secretary the Governor\u2019s actions were short sighted, counterproductive, were inflaming passions and are likely to catalyse revolt among the subjects against the Crown. It appeared to have worked!<\/p>\n

London recalled Governor Chalmers and ordered the lifting of Martial Law and release of incarcerated Sinhalese leaders. Both Tamil and Sinhalese elites felicitated Ramanathan as a national hero on his return to Colombo. However, the ominous silence among Muslims was deafening.<\/p>\n

Our parents\u2019 generation lauded Ramanathan for bravely sailing through seas during WW1 in the teeth of the hostile German navy; that was true. They also claimed he achieved much because he \u201ccommanded respect\u201d in London; that was probably more myth than reality.<\/p>\n

Be that as it may, one cannot deny that Ramanathan stood head and shoulders above the rest of the yes-men in the Legislative Council. He overcame the congenital limitations of being weaned on feeble broker politics and the psychological burden of a \u201csubject\u201d in Britain\u2019s colony. He skilfully manipulated London\u2019s geopolitical concerns and singlehandedly manoeuvred the Colonial Secretary to recall the Governor and lift Martial Law.<\/p>\n

Ramanathan\u2019s unqualified success revealed a thorough grasp of the dynamics of power and a consummate skill in real politik<\/em>arguably unmatched in the history of Ceylon\/Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

His Tamil contemporaries, steeped in \u201cpetition politics\u201d, were blind to Ramanathan\u2019s power politics.<\/p>\n

They preferred instead to imagine Ramanathan \u201ccommanded respect\u201d from, and \u201cappealed to the good sense\u201d of, British power. A cursory reading of Sir Winston Churchill\u2019s racist rants against brown skinned Indians is sufficient to shatter notions of his British establishment\u2019s \u201crespect\u201d for, and \u201cgood sense\u201d towards, non-white peoples; he had contemptuously dismissed Indians as \u201ca beastly people with a beastly religion.”<\/a>[7]<\/p>\n

Regular parliamentary elections based on universal franchise introduced by the 1931 Donoughmore Reforms added an ideological imperative, of securing the \u201cmandate of the people\u201d as an indispensable criterion of political legitimacy.<\/p>\n

Politics of mandates<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Customarily a political party or leader obtained a mandate \u2013 \u201ctheauthority\u00a0granted by aconstituency\u00a0to act as its\u00a0representative<\/a>\u201d<\/a>[8]\u2013 from the people by garnering a majority of their votes through the electoral process.<\/p>\n

The organisation or individual who received the mandate is directly responsible to implement its terms.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ITAK claimed to have secured a mandate in the April 1956 parliamentary elections from Ceylon Tamils resident in the northern and eastern provinces, to pursue a constitutional reform towards a federal system<\/a>[9]of government. The party fielded 14 candidates and won 10 seats out of a total of 95 and set out to implement the federal mandate.<\/p>\n

Tamils\u2019 mandate gained immense importance after SWRD Bandaranaike\u2019s Sinhalese political party SLFP (Sri Lanka Freedom Party), and his allies in the SLFP-led MEP (Mahajana Eksath Peramuna<\/em>) coalition, legislated Sinhala as the sole official language \u2013 widely known as the Sinhala-Only law \u2013 in June.<\/p>\n

But Chelvanayagam reached a dead end: there were no takers on the Sinhalese side.<\/p>\n

Obviously ITAK had to apply countervailing force<\/strong>to compel Sinhalese politicians to concede the federal mandate. The party\u2019s Founder General Secretary and its radical minority faction\u2019s leader, V. Navaratnam was convinced Tamils must launch popular resistance\u00a0<\/strong>and urgently prepare for mass action\u00a0<\/strong>to enforce\u00a0<\/strong>the federal mandate.<\/p>\n

He had been weaned on the decisive role of mass action in India\u2019s independence struggle and instinctively understood power politics. He acknowledged Chelvanayagam\u2019s utter commitment to Tamil nationalism and appreciated ITAK\u2019s agitation against the Sinhala-Only law. However, Navaratnam regretted \u201cit all consisted of platform speeches to which people would come, listen, and then go their own way\u201d, which \u201cwas not going to have any impact on the government.\u201d<\/a>[10]<\/p>\n

What\u2019s worse, Chelvanayakam \u201cridiculed [mass action] as impracticable and a useless waste of energy\u2026he had no concept of the value of mass action\u201d in politics; Navaratnam added further: \u201cHe had no knowledge or understanding of the personalities of the Indian National Movement\u201d and nurtured \u201ca childish belief in parliamentary institutions.\u201d<\/a>[11]<\/p>\n

The radical group \u2013 Navaratnam, C.Rajadurai and others \u2013possessed a surer grip on the dynamics of power at the core of constitutional reform. Perhaps they imbibed the wisdom of Imponentes defendere libertatem non possunt<\/em>\u2013 \u201cThose without power cannot defend freedom.\u201dThey logically focussed on demonstrating and building Tamil peoples\u2019 power, their capacity for mass action, by organising the successful Long March,<\/a>[12]in which Tamils from the two Provinces converged on the Trincomalee esplanade for ITAK\u2019s August 1956 Convention.<\/p>\n

The radicals mobilised Tamil people\u2019s countervailing street power<\/strong>since politics is invariably decided by the balance of power in the street!<\/p>\n

The enthusiastic response across the two provinces, recounted Navaratnam, stunned members of the Chelvanayakam-led majority conservative faction. But they were incapable of graspingthe historic importance of Tamils\u2019 mass upsurge; nor could they lead the burgeoning movement. They simply couldn\u2019t fathom Navaratnam\u2019s emphasis on power play, which in many ways was reminiscent of Ramanathan\u2019s adroit manoeuvres in London.<\/p>\n

The conservative faction, guided primarily by lawyer-cum-politicians, believed through sheer force of habit they were carrying a brief (mandate) to defend their client (Tamils) based on the law of the land. They naively imagined the issue was primarily a matter of law<\/strong>, to be resolved by their \u201cmen who know the law\u201d in the Sinhalese-dominated parliament and courts.<\/p>\n

Blinded by Liberal shibboleths of \u201cequality before law\u201d and \u201cinclusiveness\u201d, Chelvanayakam, N.R.Rajavarothiam and their conservative associates viewed constitutional reform as an innocuous \u201csharing\u201d of political authority between the Tamil and Sinhalese elites. They failed to grasp securing Tamils\u2019 rights is a matter of power;<\/strong>that it fundamentally involved reducing the Sinhalese elite\u2019s power and correspondingly enhancing the power of the Tamil elite.<\/p>\n

The Sinhalese elite implacably opposed the Tamil elite\u2019s manoeuvres to diminish its powers, as all dominant elites do everywhere and always. Nationalist Sinhalese denounced federalism as \u201cdividing the land\u201d, which implied reducing the land available for the Sinhalese, and stoked fears for economic survival primarily their peasantry, who were weaned on hand outs under the Land Development Ordinance (see Part II).<\/a>[13]In this way the Sinhalese elite skilfully marshalled mass political opposition to granting Tamils\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n

When Bandaranaike suavely invited Chelvanayakam for \u201ctalks\u201d in 1957, the ITAK\u2019s main leaders apparently swallowed his glib story of a lofty wish to \u201cavoid violence\u201d in the streets. Instead they ought have recollected that Bandaranaike\u2019s self-alleged aversion to violence was nowhere seen in June 1956 when he had unleashed his goons on protesting ITAK politicians on Galle Face Green and instructed his police to look the other way.<\/p>\n

Unlike Chelvanayakam and his coterie, Bandaranaike in fact understood the power and political ramifications of the August 1956 Tamil upsurge in Trincomalee. He moved swiftly to decimate the challenge it posed to his power: he resorted to the standard counter-insurgency tactic; he proposed \u201ctalks\u201d.<\/p>\n

The ITAK\u2019s leading conservatives took Bandaranaike\u2019s ploy at face value, as his genuine desire to resolve the so-called \u201cTamil Problem\u201d.<\/p>\n

The starkly divergent approaches of Bandaranaike and Chelvanayakam are rooted in their differing political histories.<\/p>\n

Both are said to have been classmates in school. The similarity basically ended there.<\/p>\n

Bandaranaike waded into power politics in 1924 as Chairman of the Nittambuwa Village Council. He was elected to the 1931 State Council and was Member of the Executive Committee on Local Administration; in the second State Council (1936) he was Minister of Local Administration and chaired its Executive Committee.<\/a>[14]In 1947 he held the post of Minister of Health and Local Government. By the time he captured power in 1956 and anointed himself Prime Minister, Bandaranaike had been steeped in power politics for more than two decades.<\/p>\n

In contrast, Chelvanayakam practiced law till he was elected to parliament in 1947. He held no ministerial position. He had gathered some experience in electoral politics by the time his ITAK emerged as the leading Tamil political force in 1956 but had no experience in wielding executive power and consequently knew next to nothing about the rough and tumble of power politics.<\/p>\n

Consequently Chelvanayakam and ITAK\u2019s conservatives seemed woefully unaware of a crucial lesson of history: that power concedes nothing unless it is firmly confronted by a demand backed by the implicit or explicit use of force. Even then, the knee jerk reaction of power will be to first attempt to crush the challenge and, if that\u2019s impossible, then concede the bare minimum.<\/p>\n

When Bandaranaike suggested \u201ctalks\u201d, Chelvanayakam ought have reflected on his anti-Tamil Galle Face pogrom, on his earlier fascination with the Nazi ideology of racial supremacy (see Part II). He may have surmise Bandaranaike was scheming to ruthlessly undermine the growing Tamil resistance, which had prodded him to negotiate and seen through Bandaranaike\u2019s altruistic claim to resolve the so-called \u201cTamil Problem\u201d as self-serving gibberish.<\/p>\n

Instead Chelvanayakam and his team, apparently lulled by Bandaranaike\u2019s Liberal rhetoric, blithely strolled into the first session of \u201ctalks\u201d like lambs to slaughter. They were utterly unprepared for what was in store.<\/p>\n

For starters, Bandaranaike invited Chelvanayakam to his Horagolla residence<\/strong>in Veyangoda. He did not schedule the meeting in the Prime Minister\u2019s office, which implied the discussions would not<\/strong>carry the imprimatur of the MEP Government. Chelvanayakam ought have smelled a rat; he should have insisted the meeting be convened under the auspices of Government, for instance in the parliament complex that would lend an official standing to the \u201ctalks\u201d. He didn\u2019t, we suspect, because of a poor grip on hardnosed power politics.<\/p>\n

In Horagolla Bandaranaike stonewalled on the Official Language by facetiously dismissing the law as hardly more than a \u201cgimmick\u201d; but he virtually shredded both ITAK\u2019s federal mandate and the Trincomalee Resolution, which insisted the Government establishes an autonomous state for Ceylon Tamils in the Northern and Eastern Provinces.<\/a>[15]He conceded nothing!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Three days later Bandaranaike held the second meeting, again in his residence<\/strong>at Rosemead Place, Colombo. By then the \u201ctalks\u201d had lost the veneer, if any, of an official dialogue. Bandaranaike sent Chelvanayakam and his associates \u2013 some were reputed constitutional lawyers \u2013 on a wild goose chase to dredge up alternative but diluted constitutional models to satisfy MEP\u2019s hardliners; and then he ruthlessly whittled them down to the point where they became virtually unrecognisable.<\/p>\n

The ever-perceptive Navaratnam instinctively sensed Bandaranaike\u2019s power play. For he wondered, \u201ccould it be that the whole effort was merely intended to put the [ITAK] off the track in its preparation for action in terms of the Trincomalee Resolution?\u201d<\/a>[16]Subsequent events proved him 100 per cent correct!<\/p>\n

The third and final meeting was held on 26\/27 July 1957 in the Prime Minister\u2019s office, obviously to lend a deceptive aura of legality. Bandaranaike needed an agreement to nip the Tamil nationalist upsurge in the bud and (Navaratnam suspected) apparently convinced the few dissenters in Cabinet to agree to ITAK\u2019s almost fatally vitiated terms, insinuating that they are unlikely to see the light of day.<\/p>\n

At the end of the \u201ctalks\u201d Bandaranaike arbitrarily called in the press and read out, with palpable contempt, a so-called \u201cagreement\u201d from Navaratnam\u2019s handwritten notes of the meetings\u2019 proceedings! <\/strong><\/p>\n

Bandaranaike did not sign a formal agreement with Chelvanayakam!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Nevertheless Chelvanayakam misread the situation. He apparently assumed Bandaranaike responded to the \u201crespect\u201d he (Chelvanayakam) supposedly commanded and displayed \u201cgood sense\u201d \u2013 the perennial myths of Tamil politics. That probably explains why Chelvanayakam \u2013 a lawyer \u2013 on Bandaranaike\u2019s dodgy verbal declaration,<\/strong>threw away his only trump card: he announced the ITAK would not<\/strong>pursue the mass campaign against the MEP Government.<\/a>[17]<\/p>\n

Bandaranaike completed the rout! Chelvanayakam returned home, without a signed document and leaving the Tamils\u2019 mass movement dead in the water. <\/strong><\/p>\n

That night, Navaratnam burnt the midnight oil to salvage a measure of dignity from the humiliating defeat. He drafted a statement in duplicate of the terms agreed between Chelvanayakam and Bandaranaike, which the former took to the latter the following noon. Both parties signed the document, later dubbed the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam (B-C) Pact.<\/a>[18]<\/p>\n

It was Navaratnam\u2019s position that \u201cthe B-C Pact was in the nature of an international treaty between the Singhalese and Tamil nations.\u201d<\/a>[19]That desperate positive spin is understandable though it unfortunately was a rather dubious stretch.<\/p>\n

The B-C Pact wasbetween two individuals written on plain paper<\/strong>by Navaratnam. As far as we know, it had neither the Seal of the Office of the Prime Minister nor was it adopted as part of the official policy of his SLFP or of the MEP. We are not versed in law. To our eyes, however, the Pact was neither legally valid nor constitutionally legitimate! It was unenforceable!!<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ITAK\u2019s leaders \u2013 many of them lawyers \u2013 must have known the Pact had no legal basis but nevertheless, to save face, continued to insist the MEP government was obliged to implement the Pact. But Chelvanayagam barely noticed his bargaining power slipping through his fingers as Bandaranaike used the Pact very effectively to eviscerate and destroy Navaratnam\u2019s mass movement.<\/p>\n

The balance of power decisively shifted in favour of Bandaranaike. Clearly he had handsomely won by grinding ITAK\u2019s Tamil mandate into the ground and arresting the growth of Tamils\u2019 mass movement. He was on the verge of being crowned the 20th<\/sup>Century\u2019s Duttugemunu!<\/p>\n

That was not to be for Bandaranaike\u2019s political nemesis, JR Jayewardene plotted to cut him down to size. Being a lawyer, Jayewardene too surely knew the B-C Pact was a toothless document, hardly worth the paper written on. But he skilfully exaggerated it as a historic sell-out of Sinhalese-Buddhists and whipped up anti-Tamil hysteria; he pointed to the tragically unwise self-aggrandisement by a few terribly unimaginative ITAK conservatives, who falsely alleged to their Tamil constituencies the Pact was the first step towards a federal State. Jayewardene also roped in Buddhist monks, the forerunners of today\u2019s BBS (Bodu Bala Sena<\/em>), and launched the Kandy March to demonstrate the street power of his UNP (United National Party).<\/p>\n

Thereafter it was but a matter time before Bandaranaike chose an opportune moment to jettison the essentially worthless Pact while earning maximum political dividend. He tore up the document on the lawn of his Rosemead Place residence, witnessed by extremist monks; it was political theatre! The ITAK couldn\u2019t challenge his arbitrary action because the Pact had neither legal validity nor constitutional legitimacy.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The next credible mass movement was to coalesce around the LTTE after almost two decades, from the mid-1970s. (More on that later.)<\/p>\n

Politics of \u201ca small chance\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The assassination of Bandaranaike in 1959 made the B-C Pact irrelevant.\u00a0 So both the SLFP and the UNP had the best of both worlds: they could cheerfully dredge it up to solicit ITAK\u2019s political support without being bound by the Pact<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The March 1960 general elections threw up a hung parliament. The UNP and SLFP vied for ITAK parliamentarians\u2019 support to cobble together a working majority. The ITAK claimed it had struck a \u201cdeal\u201d with Bandaranaike\u2019s widow and SLFP Leader Mrs Sirima Bandaranaike and voted to defeat the minority UNP government, which duly fell.<\/p>\n

The ITAK\u2019s conservatives and their Colombo-based advisers manipulated the balance of power. The infuriated nationalist Sinhalese media vilified Tamils as \u201cKing Makers\u201d and urged Sinhalese to close ranks.<\/p>\n

In the run up to the July1960 general elections the ITAK continued the balance-of-power game. It campaigned to support the SLFP, claiming under the pre-election “deal” there is \u201ca chance\u201d the SLFP would stand by the B-C Pact.<\/p>\n

But Chelvanayakam had frittered away peoples\u2019 power Navaratnam mobilised in Trincomalee three years earlier. He possessed no countervailing power whatsoever to enforce the \u201cdeal\u201d after the elections. When the SLFP won a comfortable majority, the inevitable happened; the party\u2019s leaders ordered ITAK parliamentarians to take a hike!<\/p>\n

The thoroughly humiliated ITAK\u2019s conservatives childishly accused the SLFP of \u201ccheating\u201d. Power politics is not a game of snakes and ladders. The Greeks spelled out the dynamics of power almost two thousand years ago. Historian Thucydides, writing on the Peloponnesian War,\u00a0placed in the mouth of an Athenian the immortal words:\u201cyou know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.\u201d<\/a>[20]<\/p>\n

In the Mahabharata more than a thousand years earlier Duryodhana delivered a similar message to the powerless Pandavas, who then declared war and established parity of power.<\/p>\n

Anti-imperialist revolutions in India, China, Vietnam and Cuba, for example, conclusively demonstrated how the less powerful could achieve parity of power and trump the more powerful by drawing from the wellspring of all power \u2013 the people.<\/p>\n

Evidently ITAK ignored these lessons of history. Nevertheless Chelvanayagam, who by then had matured into the revered leader of Ceylon Tamils,belatedly sought to rekindle people\u2019s power through the 1961 Satyagraha, \u201cto bring pressure upon the government by non-violent means to make it realise the just demands of the Tamil speaking people.\u201d<\/a>[21]<\/p>\n

In other words, he attempted Mahatma Gandhi\u2019s idealistic \u201cdirect appeal to the soul of the oppressor\u201d,<\/a>[22]to reform the oppressor. In Ceylon, the Satyagrahis bravely demonstrated noble non-violent direct action at its best.<\/p>\n

But, the ITAK made a fundamental (ontological) category mistake, in which people \u201cbelieve two things with similar properties are necessarily part of the same category.\u201d<\/a>[23]<\/p>\n

The party mimicked Gandhi\u2019s Satyagraha against British colonialism. But in India the majority<\/strong>of 400 million Indians challenged a minority<\/strong>of British rulers and their Indian satraps across the length and breath of the country.<\/p>\n

Instead, ITAK ought have drawn lessons from the Gandhi-led failed<\/strong>non-violent movement of the minority<\/strong>Indian population against the South African Apartheid State, which brutally put the resistance down.<\/p>\n

In fact, Martin Luther King\u2019s experiments with non-violent campaigns similarly reached a dead end. He soon discovered it was ineffective since the African-American minority<\/strong>could not withstand the onslaught of the white-supremacist State. Some Black activists believe King had begun distance himself from non-violence and gravitated towards the Black Power movement and, especially, the Black Panther Party (BPP); that, they claim, swiftly precipitated his assassination.<\/p>\n

In Ceylon, Chelvanayakam used a very similar unproductive technique; he marshaled a numerically smaller Tamil community against a State backed by the vast majority of Sinhalese. His category mistake was to expect Gandhi\u2019s approach, backed by the overwhelming majority in India, to be equally effective in the diametrically opposite ground condition of resistance by the smaller Tamil group against the Ceylonese State.<\/p>\n

To make matters worse, despite the overwhelming advantage in numbers and terrain, Gandhi\u2019s success was dubious at best. Plaudits heaped on him ignore the pivotal contribution of Subhas Chandra Bose\u2019s INA (Indian National Army), the violent mass uprisings against the colonial regime,<\/a>[24]and the debilitating impact of WW2 on British Power.<\/p>\n

In short, despite the bravery and self-sacrifice, Tamils\u2019 non-violent Satyagraha was destined to collapse as it did when the military violently swooped in to disperse the activists, incarcerate the leaders and place the northern and eastern provinces under a military administration.<\/p>\n

The Tamil parliamentarians were left to drag the Tamil Mandate, by then diluted into the impotent B-C Pact, pleading the Sinhalese politicians to implement it. This political clowning was dressed up as \u201cnegotiations\u201d, for ITAK was utterly bereft of political power; nor was it remotely capable of building armed power.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of the 1965 general elections, Dudley Senanayake too humoured ITAK when he sought its parliamentarians\u2019 support to prop up his minority government. The go-between was a prominent Tamil lawyer Murugeysen Tiruchelvam.<\/p>\n

Like Bandaranaike, Senanayake too dodged the issue of State-aided Sinhalese land colonization. When Navaratnam insisted on restricting Sinhalese colonisation, \u201cSenanayake threw up his arms and cried, \u2018then where are my people to go for land\u2019\u201d.<\/a>[25]<\/p>\n

Clearly the UNP had not outgrown its congenital obsession with land distribution and opposition to broad based industrialization going back to DS Senanayake in the 1930s (see Part II). Navaratnam also noted Tiruchelvam had been bought over by the promise a Ministry, for he mumbled about making changes from within the UNP government.<\/p>\n

The reality was that ITAK once again had no power to enforce the ensuing Dudley-Chelvanayakam (D-C) Pact.<\/a>[26]So the party deluded itself that Tiruchelvam, who by his own admission was neither an ITAK member nor an elected parliamentarian,<\/a>[27]ought be slipped in through the Senate and parked in the UNP government to ensure the Pact is implemented. It\u2019s the old mindless tactic of sending \u201cmen who know the law\u201d!<\/p>\n

There is hardly any other action by Chelvanayakam and his associates that so comprehensively revealed their utter political naivet\u00e9. Senanayake let Tiruchelvam twiddle his thumbs in the Ministry long enough to keep his UNP government afloat with ITAK parliamentarians\u2019 help. Then flushed them all down, together with the D-C Pact!<\/p>\n

From 1965 ITAK and, later, its avatar the TULF (Tamil United Liberation Front) refined the politics of mandates by adding the theory of small chances. At every election it beseeched Tamils for their mandate. After every election they concocted a lie: that there is \u201ca small chance\u201d one or another Sinhalese leaders may grant \u201csomething\u201d to Tamils. After all, if there were no chance at all, why would Tamils give a mandate?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The ITAK\/TULF deceitful propaganda masked the obvious question: why on earth should Sinhalese leaders implement the mandate Tamils gave their own Tamil politicians? How often do Sinhalese politicians honour the mandate given by their own Sinhalese voters? <\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>Every Sinhalese president from 1994 onwards, for example, asked for, and received, a mandate to abolish the Executive Presidency.Did any of them execute the mandate? Did any of them perform the bizarre political jugglery of asking Tamils to implement that mandate?<\/strong>Indeed, The collapse of the 1977 election mandate based on the Vaddukottai Resolution is emblematic of ITAK\/TULF\u2019s duplicity. Tamil parliamentarians thumped their chest and pawed the ground, that they were taking the mandate to the Sinhalese parliamentarians; they, as always and appropriately, contemptuously threw it out!<\/p>\n

Memories also flow back of a 1993 conversation we had with a firebrand TULF politician at his residence. His party was gearing up for the 1994 parliamentary elections in which it hoped to secure a fresh mandate to hold \u201ctalks\u201d on Tamils\u2019 rights.<\/p>\n

Quite out of curiosity we asked him what he intended to do with the mandate. \u201cWe\u2019ll take it to the Sinhalese people. They must accept it.\u201d \u201cThey won\u2019t\u201d, we interjected. Visibly annoyed, and perhaps expecting us to wilt as his party minions do, he vigorously slapped the table for emphasis: \u201cit will be the democratic mandate of the Tamil people\u201d; and wagging a thick finger (which inevitably drew attention to the subsidised parliament cafeteria), \u201cthey [Sinhalese] have to accept it.\u201d We smiled but persisted: \u201cperhaps; but they\u2019ll not accept it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2016, a very senior ITAK\/TNA politician said to us, with an aura of mystery, there is \u201ca small chance\u201d the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government \u201cmay\u201d grant Tamils\u2019 rights! He harboured the same childish belief in parliamentary manoeuvres as Chelvanayakam had done about seven decades ago. We could only feel deeply sorry for that man!<\/p>\n

Tamil parliamentarians in ITAK, TULF and now the TNA (Tamil National Alliance) bamboozled Tamils to send them to parliament with a mandate in each election from 1965 to the present. They would fumble through \u201ctalks\u201d where possible and return empty handed each time to weep about being betrayed by Sinhalese politicians. They have carried on this duplicitous charade for more than five decades while Tamils\u2019 rights have been systematically denuded.<\/p>\n

Tamils in the north and east could continue to give mandates to the same lot for the next five decades; but nothing will change for the better.<\/p>\n

For how much longer would Ceylon Tamils in the north and east tolerate this political fiasco? How soon would they throw up a new, young leadership that can actually defend the rights of Tamils in the streets??<\/p>\n

\n

End Notes<\/p>\n

<\/a>[1]Sathananthan, Sachithanandam, \u201cTamils: broker politics or democratic action?\u201d Colombo Telegraph<\/em>, 7\/aug13.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/tamils-broker-politics-or-democratic-action\/<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[2]Wikipedia, \u201cIllankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi\u201d. 15\/sep\/19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Illankai_Tamil_Arasu_Kachchi<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[3]Wikipedia, \u201cLegislative Council of Ceylon\u201d. 15\/sep\/19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Legislative_Council_of_Ceylon<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[4]Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan<\/em>. 15\/sep\/19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.jaffnaroyalfamily.org\/ponnambalam.html<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[5]Verite, \u201cRevisiting 1915: lessons from a violent past\u201d. 15\/sep\/19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.veriteresearch.org\/2018\/05\/07\/revisiting-1915-lessons-from-a-violent-past\/<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[6]Rajasingam, K.T., Sri Lanka: The Untold Story, Chapter 3<\/em>. 17\/apr\/19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/sangam.org\/sri-lanka-the-untold-story-chapter-3\/<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[7]Tharoor, Ishaan,\u201cThe dark side of Winston Churchill\u2019s legacy no one should forget\u201d. Washington Post<\/em>, 3\/feb\/15.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/worldviews\/wp\/2015\/02\/03\/the-dark-side-of-winston-churchills-legacy-no-one-should-forget\/<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[8]Wikipedia, \u201cMandate (politics)<\/em>\u201d. 15\/sep\/19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mandate_(politics<\/a>)<\/p>\n

<\/a>[9]Sri Kantha, Sachi, \u201cAnointed Federalists and Anandasangaree\u201d, Ilankai Tamil Sangam<\/em>, jul\/07. 15sep19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.sangam.org\/2007\/07\/Federalists.php?print=true<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[10]Navaratnam, V, Fall and Rise of the Tamil Nation<\/em>. Toronto: The Tamilian Library, 1995. p.113.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/noolaham.net\/project\/139\/13860\/13860.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[11]Ibid., p.115.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[12]Ibid., pp. 118-19.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[13]Sathananthan, Sachithanandam, \u201cHow we came to this pass – II\u201d. Colombo Telegraph, 25\/jun\/19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/how-we-came-to-this-pass-ii\/<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[14]S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike. 27\/sep\/19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.revolvy.com\/page\/S.-W.-R.-D.-Bandaranaike?cr=1<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[15]Navaratnam, op.cit. pp. 122.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[16]Ibid., p.129.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[17].Ibid., pp.124-131.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[18]Wikipedia, \u201cBandaranaike\u2013Chelvanayakam Pact\u201d. 15sep19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bandaranaike%E2%80%93Chelvanayakam_Pact<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[19]Navaratnam, op.cit. p135<\/p>\n

<\/a>[20]Long, Roderick T., \u201cAncient Greece\u2019s Legacy for Liberty: Thucydides and the Gods of Melos\u201d. 16\/may\/16; accessed 2oct19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.libertarianism.org\/columns\/ancient-greeces-legacy-liberty-thucydides-gods-melos<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[21]Sri Kantha, Sachi, \u201cSatyagraha of February 1961 in Eelam\u201d.\u00a0Ilankai Tamil Sangam<\/em>, 20\/feb\/11. Accessed 6\/oct\/19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/sangam.org\/2011\/02\/Satyagraha_1961.php?uid=4252<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[22]<\/strong>Ojha, Anil K,Relevance of Satyagraha as a Weapon of Conflict Resolution<\/em><\/strong>. Accessed 7\/oct\/19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.mkgandhi.org\/articles\/relevance-of-Satyagraha-as-a-weapon-of-conflict-resolution.html<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[23]Norton, Sean, \u201cHow to Define a Category Mistake\u201d. 30\/jan\/19. Accessed 6\/oct\/19.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/medium.com\/@sean.d.norton\/how-to-define-a-category-mistake-and-why-some-category-mistakes-are-mistaken-about-categories-418959a6fe63<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[24]Navaratnam, op.cit. pp.194-96.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[25]Ibid., p.224.<\/p>\n

<\/a>[26]Dudley Senanayake – Chelvanayakam Pact.<\/em>24\/mar\/65.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/peacemaker.un.org\/sites\/peacemaker.un.org\/files\/LK_650324_Dudley%20Senanayake%20-%20Chelvanayakam%20Pact.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>[27]Navaratnam, op. cit., p.230.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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