Currently, this blog contains my published articles. It started out as an outlet for my random writings, ramblings and ravings. Hence the name 'Ravings of a strange woman'. Blogs are like that famous first step outside one's door. No one really knows where it will all end up.
Well as you know I posted that first post “Inconsistent bits in Professor Nalin’s history of Tamils in the kalaya forum and now the discussion is progressing. I thought of posting my latest reply here because as before I don’t want to deprive my own blog of the pulsating, throbbing, virile, witty style which is all mine.
“Dutch had the burden of keeping the imported Vellalas in Jaffna. That is why they wanted to make a story for Vellalas to buy. We have to assume Pulavar's motive for writing this book is genuine (which is doubtful as he was employed by the Dutch for some purpose. What is the motive behind inviting Pulavar to write a history? Are we to propose that Dutch came here to explore the history of Sri Lanka?) to reason that it should have been consistent with the demography at the time of writing. His interpretation of Vijaya and the origin of Sinhalas are inconsistent with other historical evidence. He does write about Hindu kovils made by Vijaya around the country at the time even Hindu culture was yet to born. It seems that he had a different motive than being honest.”
Dasun, whatever a writer’s motives are it’s next to impossible to write a history which is not consistent with the writer’s current frame of reality. We are all very much creatures of our present and when we write about history we tend to take our present as a solid point of reference and explain how our present came to be. What all historians do whatever their motive is to try to answer the question, what went on before NOW? What are the events and incidents that led to the NOW? No historian can help it.
According to http://www.kalaya.org/files/r0003.pdf Mailvahanam Pulavar writes that under Jaffna rulers, Tamil families were brought from South India and settled in Jaffna. He writes that the Sinhala population was resisting the Arya Chakravarthi rule and getting themselves hanged, exiled or leaving in large numbers unable to take the harassment. He writes that the climax of this ruler- subject incompatibility came under Sankili who unleashed his rage against the many Sinhala Buddhists still living in Jaffna chasing them beyond the border, killing them, laying waste to their places of worship so that they took refugee in Wanni and Upcountry and nevermore came back to Jaffna. Isn’t it a simple thing to deduce from this the ethnic composition of Pulavar’s 1736 Jaffna?
However since you insist, let us examine the possibility that out of non genuine motives Pulavar wrote his history to be consistent not with his actual current reality but with a fabricated current reality. Then something along the lines of the following conversation would have taken place between Pulavar and the Dutch Governor.
Dutch Governor - Pulavar
Pulavar - My Lord?
Dutch Governor - I want you to write a history Pulavar
Pulavar - Of Yalpanam my Lord? I’ve always wanted to my Lord. I shall start right away (backing out of the presence)
Dutch Governor - Not so fast Pulavar!
Pulavar (stopping at once) - My Lord?
Dutch Governor - I want you to write this history with a twist!
Pulavar - A twist my Lord? I am afraid I don’t quite….
Dutch Governor - When you write this history I want you to imagine that at present the majority in Jaffna is Tamil and that there are next to no Sinhalese and then show with your ‘history’ how that transpired .
Pulavar - But they are here my Lord and they are more than us!
Dutch Governor (Chuckling evilly) - Not for long Pulavar not for long !
Pulavar (whispering conspiratorially) – What are you going to do with them your Lordship? (in a hopeful voice) Kill them?
Dutch Governor – Something much better and much less messy Pulavar! We or rather you or rather these hoards of Vellala laborers we have been bringing from South India since 1650 are going to absorb them!
Pulavar - Your Lordship!!!
Dutch Governor - You see Pulavar we want these Vellala hoards to make Jaffna their home and we want to do everything possible to make these Vellalas feel at home and when they read this ‘history’ they must feel that Jaffna is theirs and the Sinhalese have nothing to do with it and….
Pulavar (visibly upset) - But but my Lord these laborers, these plowers and tillers of the land, they can’t read!
Dutch Governor(Chuckling evilly and rubbing his hands together) - Oh they will read Pulavar. Not only read they will do greater things and this ‘history’ my dear Pulavar is really for them because when they can finally read your ‘history’ I don’t want them to get the slightest inkling that it was their coming which caused a Tamil majority Jaffna. I want them to go on believing that Jaffna was always theirs. These Vellala labors Pulavar even though you call them plowers and tillers of the land in your superior Brahmin fashion are the future. The future!
Pulavar - They are the future? No my Lord. We are the future. We Brahmins. We have always been the future!
Dutch Governor- I think you forget yourself Pulavar! A little more respect please! You are not the future by the way. You too will get absorbed and disappear. And Pulavar please write that history exactly according to my brief. Or else…..
Pulavar - Or else?
Dutch Governor - Or else you can forget about sending your son to the William of Orange Royal Dutch Academy in the Dutch Republic! Among other things!
Are you really suggesting something like the above took place? Let’s not become ridiculous here.
If the Dutch were manipulative to that extent, can you explain why the following scene didn’t take place.
Back Ground - The Dutch governor has been reading the first draft of Pulavar’s ‘history’
Dutch Governor – Pulavar! What is this shit? This won’t do!
Pulavar- Shit my Lord?
Dutch Governor- Here you have written that it was some king of Ceylon who gifted the Jaffna kingdom to its first ruler. Are you mad to suggest that statehood and power only flowed to this kingdom from the crown of Ceylon? No you must write it to suggest that this was a sovereign State since time out of mind. And why have you written this nonsense about Jaffna rulers bringing over families from South India and colonizing Jaffna and then treating the Sinhalese natives and settlers alike and then persecuting the Sinhalese and driving them out? Why do you have to write about the Sinhalese at all Pulavar. They…were…never…here. Get that into your thick skull! The Sinhalese had nothing to do with Jaffna remember it was you people from the start. Go back man and bring back a more sensible ‘ history’
Can you tell me why the above scene did not take place if Pulavar and the Dutch Governor were so evil?
To counter your argument that history is something best left to historians and shouldn’t be mixed with politics I produce the following CARD. To say that this is a CARD is played by only Tamil Nationalists is misleading. This is a very popular CARD played by almost everyone wanting to position themselves as intelligent moderates. In the 30 year card party that went on while the non elite were killing each other this CARD was played over and over. Even now its popularity shows no sign of dropping.
The CARD was first introduced by Chelvanayagam and Co. It gave the LTTE its fabled ideological core which enabled many to say even though the apple is definitely rotten, there is a core worth preserving. This CARD was baptized in 1985 in Thimpu as the only framework within which any dialog aimed at the resolution of the ethnic conflict should be attempted.
Any deviation would henceforth be considered blasphemy and sacrilege.
Here is the CARD
Tamils in Sri Lanka constitute a separate nation
The north and the eastern provinces are the historical homelands /habitat of this nation
And they have the right of self determination which includes but is not limited to the right to agitate for cessation through non violent means.
The people the region and the spiritual dimension created by people identifying the land as theirs formed a trinity which will henceforth be referred to in this comment as THE UNIT. Because of the spiritual dimension involved the UNIT will be the natural, spiritual, cultural home of any Tamil living in any part of Sri Lanka or abroad even if not born there or with no ties.
THE UNIT is NOT an integral inalienable part of the entity called Sri Lanka.
It only became part of Sri Lanka by default when the British left
THE UNIT has a choice whether to remain part of Sri Lanka or not
It has such a choice because THE UNIT is special.
This specialness is not conferred on THE UNIT due to mere numerical majority for it’s not argued that Wattale or Colombo or Negombo or Hatton or Nuwara Eliya or Thalawakele, etc should enjoy self determination or a choice in whether to remain with SL or separate.
THE UNIT has a specialness which makes it unlike Wattale or Colombo or Negombo or Hatton or Thalawakele or any other area in Sri Lanka which only has a numerical majority
What confers that specialness on THE UNIT? It’s history. So you see Watson how history is the heart of the argument.
Meanwhile in another part of the forest …
People who like to call themselves people of Sri Lanka had another unit in mind. This unit henceforth to be referred as UNITm (m for Mother) was also made up of three dimensions; the land the people and the spiritual dimension created when people live on the land identifying it as theirs.
In order to deconstruct the holy cow called THE UNIT and to prove that THE UNIT is the myth while UNITm was the absolute shining reality people like Nalin De Silva was driven to analyze the history of Sri Lanka.
Anonymous asked “And would THEY be entitled to rights only if they were able to establish a historical presence?”
So ironic Watson. Change the question slightly to mean a different THEY and the answer is indeed yes.
In the Dudley Chelvanayagam pact there is a condition about the distribution of state land in the North and the Eastern provinces that preference should be given first to people living within the district (fine) second to people living within the province (also fine) and third to people of the Tamil ethnicity living outside the province (not fine and one of the many reasons people were not content to leave history to historians and felt driven to analyze it).
In fact An International Crisis Group report makes the following recommendation to the SL Government.
“Ensure economic development in the East is equitable and inclusive and perceived as such by all communities by ….Wait for it dahlings……"by making a public commitment not to allow development to alter significantly the existing ethnic balance of the province”.
Now it’s next to impossible not to allow development to alter significantly the existing ethnic balance of anywhere. See what happened to Colombo, to London, France. So the question arises what’s so sacred about the ethnic balance/demography of the North and the East? Why is it so inviolate? Why is everybody going on about it? The answer is the historical habitats, THE UNIT again amen.
So various people who were no historians were driven to analyze history because a life and death need was felt by them to establish a Historical Presence in order to become entitled to various rights that THE UNIT concept was denying them.
Why history shouldn’t be left only to historians in SL is because history helps us to place demography in its proper place. It shows us no demography is sacred that is right and natural and desirable and inevitable that demography should change. That it can enrich a land.
Finally a proper analysis into the history of Sri Lanka is vital because it will help us reaffirm the right of the people of this country to keep their UNITm whole and intact.
Only it should be done in such a way that no people are swept under the carpet.
This is something I posted on the www.kalaya.org forum. I am also posting it here because it is mine and I don’t want to deprive my own blog of such a telling example of the vital, throbbing, pulsating, incisive style of writing which is all my own. Also there’s the possibility the forum moderators might edit it which will take away from the vital, throbbing, pulsating, incisive style. Also I haven’t posted since August 24th and my fabled readers must be getting impatient. Also if I don’t post within two months I am liable to be struck off kottu.
Inconsistent bits in Professor Nalin’s history of Tamils
I wonder if I may point out some inconsistent bits in Prof Nalin De Silva’s theories/hypotheses on the history of Tamils in Sri Lanka. He claims that Tamils became the majority in Jaffna only after the 17th Century when the Dutch brought over large numbers of Vellalas as agricultural laborers to cultivate Tobacco. Before that during the time span of roughly 400 years when the Arya Chakravarthi kings and then the Portuguese ruled and also during the early years of the Dutch rule, the majority in Jaffna according to Prof Nalin was Sinhala Buddhist.
“This is not meant to imply that there were no Tamil speaking people in Jaffna at this time. But it is clear that a distinct, significant, (dominant) Tamil culture did not prevail there”. http://www.kalaya.org/files/d090913.pdf
I am sorry but to me it’s far from pehediliy/clear. I can conjure three factors out of my knowledge pool that muddy this clearness.
One is Sankili, the last king of Jaffna, another is the person who wrote Yalpana Vaipamalei and the other is Prince Sapumal building the Nallur Kovil in Jaffna where he was sent to rule by King Parakramabahu vi the last king in Sri Lanka to realize the sacred aspiration of uniting the country.
Let’s take Sankili. According to what I learnt from http://www.kalaya.org/files/d090913.pdfSankili was a son of the previous Arya Chakravarthi king by a Tamil woman and while the king was away paying homage to the suzerainty of the Sinhala king, Sankili snatched the throne.
Why in the name of sacred hegemony did Sankili become Tamil? Born to a king of the Arya Chakravarthi dynasty whose race was not Tamil according to Professor Nalin, and to a mother who belonged to a minority community in a kingdom where the prevalent, significant culture was not Tamil why did Sankily identify himself as Tamil? Wouldn’t a son adopt the race of the father especially when the father is of a dominant race such as Royalty? As I see it in my no doubt limited understanding only three hypotheses can explain away Sankili’s Tamilness.
1)The Arya Chakravarthi kings were Tamil
2)The Arya Cakravarthi Kings were not Tamil but their subjects were majority Tamil. So adopting his mother’s racial/cultural identity was a strategic decision. King by reason of his father’s dynasty and also the king of his people. Finally a home grown king after all these foreign kings.
3)Sankili was illegitimate and not considered a rightful heir and therefore was not brought up in the Court but by his mother and her people. That’s why he snatched the throne by force and that’s why he was Tamil even after ascending the throne.
Before trying to decide between these three hypotheses let’s leave them for the time being and move on to the other two factors that according to me muddy the clearness of Prof Nalin’s claim that people of the region corresponding to the kingdom of Jaffna were majority Sinhala Buddhist, until Vellalas imported for tobacco cultivation by the Dutch took root in Jaffna under Dutch and British sponsorship.
The person who wrote Yalpana Vaipamalei now. Who was he? Was he a recently domiciled Vellala agricultural laborer brought over by the Dutch around 1650? According to what I learnt on http://www.kalaya.org/files/r0003.pdf Yalpana Vaipamalei was written around 1736. It seems reasonable to suppose that the author Mailvahanam Pulavar can’t have been a Vellala laborer turned writer as it would take time for laborers to become learned writers steeped in the lore and legend of the host country and according to Prof Nalin the Vellalas brought by the Dutch didn’t really settle here at first. They kept going back to India after each harvest season. So the Dutch gave them land rights through thesavalamei in 1707. But they still went back. So it took the British to really make them settle down. Let’s listen to Prof Nalin,
“The Vellalas were brought by the Dutch in large numbers and as they did not come voluntarily they wanted to go back to their homeland after the harvest each season and in 1707 the Dutch had to codify the Thesavalamai Law, which was a law found among the Muslims in South India, according to late Mr. Gamini Iriyagolle, in order to prevent the Vellalas going back to India. However, even that failed and it was left to the British to reintroduce the Thesavalamai and take other measures to retain the Vellalas in Jaffna. Naturally the Vellalas cannot have a continuous history going back to a date beyond the seventeenth century…..”
Mailvahanam Pulavar. Lets look at him across the 274 years that separate us. He was no imported Vellala laborer . He represents the Tamil community of the kingdom of Jaffna before the radical demographic changes set in motion by the Dutch and consolidated under the British changed the natural order and character of that community. I can see him now. Setting out to write a historical mythological epic on the invitation of the reigning Dutch governor feeling a warm glow perhaps that he was following the time honored tradition of writing epics on the invitation of the reigning king.
It has become the accepted wisdom now among Sinhala historians of a certain ideological persuasion to attribute sinister agendas and anti Sinhala motivations to Pulavar and his literary patron. But that feels wrong to me. I think from a distance of 274 years we can safely look at Mailvahanam Pulavar without attributing to him all the evil motives and vested interests of a Channel Four journalist. For example rather than looking askance at him for writing that king Vijaya of lore and legend was a Hindu and he built Hindu kovils all over Sri Lanka and had to bring exiled and lost Buddhists to colonize the island because no Hindu was willing to come to such a godforsaken jungle, we should be able to understand that this was how Pulavar and his community internalized the prevalent Vijaya lore. A community of people will only absorb the prevailing legends of the land by making those legends theirs by modifications. That’s why the Siri Pada is Adams peak and means something else to Muslims. That’s why we have our own princess in the tower story; Unmade Chitra.
It’s tempting to go on trying to de-villainize Pulavar and make a case for why Yalpana Vaipamalei should have its proper place in Sri Lanka’s historical record and literary archives. But that’s not my objective. Without going that deep and without relying on Mailvahanam Pulavar’s bona-fides, purity of motives and historical accuracy it’s possible to prove that even before the imported Vellalas took root, even before Mailvahanam Pulavar’s old Jaffna Tamil community got drowned in the huge influx of imported Vellalas, the majority inside the boundaries of what used to be the Arya Chakravarthi kingdom of Jaffna were Tamil and the Sinhalese were a dwindling minority.
Think about it. You are Pulavar, writing a history of the Jaffna kingdom on the invitation of the Dutch governor and you write that the Arya Chakravarthi kings brought over Tamil families from South India and chased away the Sinhalese who were always resisting the Arya Chakravarthi rule, conspiring, getting themselves hanged or exiled. You write that during Sankili’s time the violence and the persecution unleashed against the resisting Sinhala Buddhist population reached its pinnacle and he demolished the Buddhist monuments and places of worship and chased away all the Sinhalese and they took refuge in the Wanni and in Kandy and never more came back to Jaffna. After writing all this wouldn’t Pulavar look silly if the majority in Jaffna was still Sinhala Buddhists in his time? Wouldn’t he look silly writing that by Sankili’s time Sinhala Buddhists had been all but eliminated from Jaffna, if the Dutch remembered how they found a Sinhala majority when they came to Jaffna?
If I wrote a history about how the Sinhala population was eliminated from Jaffna it follows naturally that in my time the Sinhala population was nil or dwindling in Jaffna. Because if on the contrary the Sinhala population was very much thriving and a majority in Jaffna then my history would instantly get invalidated and become a laughing stock. This is so elementary that I wonder why Prof Nalin De Silva did not notice this.
Nobody claims that Mailvahanam Pulavar was suffering from a contemporary reality distortion disorder. In fact the article http://www.kalaya.org/files/r0003.pdf says Yalpana Vaipamalei is on the whole, in the general drift consistent with other sources of Sri Lanka’s historical record specially during the Arya Chakravarthi era and the inconsistencies are only in the details; for example the omission of any mention of Prince Sapumal who ruled Jaffna after Parakramabahu VI defeated the incumbent Arya Chakravarthi and took the region back under Sri Lanka’s crown. So nobody accuses Pulavar of being out of touch with his contemporary reality which was the pre- Vellala post Arya Chakravarthi era Jaffna. It would not be possible for him to be out of touch with his current reality because he was writing for a contemporary audience, the Dutch governor who at least had to have been in touch with current reality of Jaffna by 1739. The only contemporary reality consistent with what he wrote was a Tamil majority Jaffna.
Mailvahanam Pulavar therefore demolishes Prof Nalin’s hypothesis that it was the Dutch and British sponsored influx of Vellalas which changed the Jaffna kingdom’s Sinhala majority demography. He does this unintentionally, unknowingly and with effortless ease simply by being alive in 1739 and writing Yalpana Vaipamalei, a historical mythological epic of the kingdom of Jaffna in the island of Sri Lanka, which among other things gives a consistent explanation of how the Sinhala Buddhist majority demographic pattern in the rest of the island got altered within the kingdom of Jaffna under the reign of Arya Chakravarthi kings.
If you remember or if you don’t go to the beginning of this article, I said that three things muddy the status of clearness enjoyed by Prof Nalin’s hypothesis that Jaffna was Sinhala Buddhist majority until the advent of Vellalas. The third thing or factor is Sapumal’s behavior once he was sent to rule Jaffna. Among other things he is supposed to have built the Nallur Kovil. For whom did he build a kovil? For himself? While it’s true that he was the adopted son of Parakramabahu vi, being the true son of some South Indian VIP, Sapumal unlike Sankili was Sinhalese by adoption, assimilation and royal decree.
“This is not meant to imply that there were no Tamil speaking people in Jaffna at this time. But it is clear that a distinct, significant Tamil culture did not prevail there”.
So for whom did Sapumal build this Kovil? For the Hindus Prof. Nalin will say. The Hindus comprising of more Velakkara Malayalams than Tamils, Prof Nalin will say following his usual tendency to sweep the Tamils under the carpet
As in
“This is where Mr. Sivakumaran’s argument goes against what he tries to establish. He claims that there were Tamils and other Dravidians living in Sri Lanka at least from the seventh century. I would add further that there were more Malayalam speaking people than Tamils at that time. Even if it was not the case, if Malayalam speaking people have no continuous existence since then up to the present what special quality was there for the Tamils alone of all the Dravidian groups to have a continuous history from the seventh century to the present?” http://www.kalaya.org/i090722.html
But let me ask a question. What special quality was there in the Tamils that caused them to be so scarce in Jaffna prior to the importing of Vellala labour by the Dutch despite the repetitive claims in Yalpana Vaipamalei that many Tamil families were brought from South India by the Arya Chakravarthis and settled in Jaffna?
I feel like a scientist who has unearthed a fossil that bridges a vital gap in the fossil record or like an archeologist who has discovered artifacts of a lost civilization. I believe I have uncovered an invisible people through excavations in the www.kalaya.org web site.
“Naturally the Vellalas cannot have a continuous history going back to a date beyond the seventeenth century and the question one has to answer is whether there were any Tamil speaking people in Jaffna before the seventeenth century……”
These people gave Sankili his cultural and racial identity and some of them were massacred by Sankili when they gave in to the Portuguese and converted to Catholicism
They belonged to the Jaffna Hindu community for whose benefit prince Sapumal built the Nallur Kovil.
Mailvahanam Pulavar who wrote Yalapana Vaipamalei was of these people and in his living memory his people, these Tamil speaking people were the majority within the boundaries of the kingdom of Jaffna.
These people existed before the mass influx of a large number Vellalas transformed the Jafna Tamil community to a Vellala dominant caste hierarchy and so they were a natural Hindu community where the dominant caste was Brahmin. One can even surmise that Mailvahanam Pulavar was a Brahmin because he was a man of letters.
As for the three hypotheses that I gave earlier to explain why Sankili became a Tamil I haven’t enough knowledge to decide among them.
I have also noticed that even though Sankeliyan Elankesan keeps referring almost hysterically in his article http://www.kalaya.org/Elankesan_i060621.html to the existence of Dravidian Brahmic inscriptions in Sri Lanka prior to the introduction of North Indian Brahmic inscriptions, Prof Nalin has never within the articles to be found in Kalaya countered that claim or put forward a hypothesis that can incorporate it.
And those semi autonomous rulers of Wanni what were they?
