Dear Dr.Michael Roberts

Comment on http://thuppahi.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/writing-history-and-myth/

Dear Dr. Michael Roberts. I have been a great admirer of you ever since I read your essay
'Narrating Tamil Nationalism: Subjectivities and Issues'. The intellectual rigor displayed by you there was just awesome.

But isn’t Shani, (the writer of this article) actually displaying mediocre scholarship and a lamentable lack of intellectual rigor when she says ;

“Scholars like H L Seneviratne and Michael Roberts have in recent contributions to the Island pointed out that there is no evidence of any distinctiveness in our ethnic identities. H L Seneviratne pointed out that many of the Kandyan chieftains signed the 1915 Convention in Tamil.”

By placing the second sentence after the first hasn’t Shani made out the second assertion to be some kind proof of the first assertion? But signing the Convention in Tamil is not indicative of any lack of distinctiveness of ethnic identity no? it is actually more an elitist thing isn’t it? Tamil was made the current language of the ‘inner circle’ by the Royal family and their powerful contingent of Royal relations present at court no? It’s rather like the pre revolutionary Russian nobility speaking French isn’t it or the way people speak and write in English in Sri Lanka even when they are among their own with no need of a lingua franca?

Meegapulle Arachchi, that member of the Jaffna royal family, now that seems to me to be a very telling case of a lack of distinctiveness of ethnic identity or rather a sign of merging or assimilation into a certain national identity (which we may not now name for fear of excommunication by the high priesthood of the politically correct and fashionable strand in the Sri Lanka ideologisphere)

Actually there’s another episode smacking of a lack of distinctiveness in ethnic identity that I have noticed again in Jaffna. This is given in Jaffna under the Portuguese by Dr. Tikiri Abeyasinghe .

Lancarote de Seixas suggests in 1630 that Portuguese casados should be settled in Jaffna on a large scale and the lands there be distributed among them. Goa refers this proposal to Lisbon. Lisbon consults two old Asia hands on them, one of them with a decade of experience as a captain in many parts of the island.

Then Lisbon makes its decision and that decision "is also found on misintelligence”

To quote from Jaffna under the Portuguese;

“This is clear from a statement in their letter of 15th march 1634 “…se nāo deve fazer novidade….porque de outro modo escandalizar junta tanta gente e de animos tāo inquietos e pouco fieis…” (no innovation ought to be tried…because otherwise people of such restless sprit and little faith will be scandalized…) But in referring to people of restless spirit and little faith, the Lisbon authorities were thinking of the Sinhalese of the Kotte Lands and not of the Tamils of Jaffna, as the phrase “como sāo os chingalas” (as are the Sinhalese) which follows the extract quoted above makes clear. Three decades of rebellion in the Kotte lands had implanted among the Lisbon authorities a wholesome fear of attempting anything likely to cause unrest among the Sinhalese. To that fear and to the misintelligence among the Lisbon authorities that Jaffna was inhabited by the Sinhalese, the Jaffna mudaliyars owed their survival.”

And in a footnote Dr. Tikiri Abeyasinghe says

“Such misintelligence was not confined to Lisbon. The Count of Vidigueira, after serving as viceroy at Goa for 7 years (in two terms) and after a term as President of the India Council in Lisbon, still believed in 1626 that the inhabitants of Jaffna were Sinhalese. ANTT Doc. Rem. Livro 24 doc 18 (no folio numbers) Even Fernão de Queiros’ work was not free from this error. See pp. 357, 361, 366, 371 etc.”

Now as I have heard, amongst all the Western forces to have doings with Ceylon, the Portuguese missionaries were the first points of contact. Those who visited Jaffna also had contact with all other maritime areas of the island and inland as well. Their contact was at the very grassroots and they talked to the natives, how else can you preach the faith. They had to have known the languages spoken in the island and that some natives spoke Sinhalese and some Tamil. So I had always wondered how this mistake could have been possible even by Queiros, specially by Queiros. Now I have the answer! There was a lack of distinctiveness in ethnic identities! Maybe they thought Jaffna was inhabited by chingalas speaking Tamil? Or maybe it really was. Doesn’t add up or does it?

Any way I am sure you Dr. Michael Roberts shall tell me. Finally, (Not quite finally I may comment here again on this very page. I got things to say. But now I have to stop and go back to making a living), let me express my pleasure that you are in cyber space interacting with the proletariat (the intellectual sort that is, not the sort whose dictatorship Lenin envisioned) and not in some ivory tower as Scholar of your caliber aught to be.

Dr. Michael Roberts responded to this comment in

Ethnic Identity in Sri Lanka’s Pre-capitalist Past: Shanie, Darshanie and Roberts

What’s the high octane to bullshit ratio of MR compared to… let’s say S.W.R.D?

In Stephen King’s Dead Zone a character says the following remarkable thing;

"It’s been my experience that ninety-five percent of the people who walk the earth are simply inert, Johnny. One percent are saints, and one percent are assholes. The other three percent are the people who do what they say they can do…….I’ve got people in the mills that take home eleven thousand dollars a year for doing little more than playing with their dicks. But I am not bitching. I’m a man of the world, and all that means is I understand what powers the world. The fuel mix is one part high-octane to nine parts pure bull-shit."

I remember this piece when I look at the 2010 calendar featuring Mahinda Rajapakse’s family. Since it’s the only calendar I’ve got on account of all our so called clients being stingy with calendars this year, I have no choice but to look at it every day. In fact I need to look at a calendar every day because I am not good with dates and when I don’t keep up a deliberate acquaintance with a calendar on a regular basis, I tend to turn up at work on public holidays, forget when certain people are arriving from abroad and display behavior patterns incompatible with impressing the general public with my sanity. So everyday I make it a point to take a good hard look at this Rajapaksa family calendar and what do I see?

Five people; four chubby and one slim. The slim person, the youngest son is the furthest and the least visible, so overall the impression one gets is of a family gotten as fat and as sleek as seals, fat cats gotten fat off the fat of the land. Not a cheek bone, not a jaw-line in evidence among the lot. A far cry from the the Obama family, you can’t help noticing or even the Bush family or the Blair family. There you get sculpted cheek bones and jaw lines sharp enough to cut through butter on top of slim waists and hips. My point is that if one were to judge based on appearance, the high octane to bullshit ratio of the Obama family, the Bush family, the Blare family seem to be on the high side, that is there seem to be more high octane than bullshit in those families, while our first family’s appearance suggests the exact opposite. This is all to do with the mental conditioning we have received courtesy of Hollywood and her satellite media, who have over the last hundred years launched insidious propaganda to the effect that integrity has an inalienable affinity with visible cheekbones, jaw lines and waistlines.

In Sri Lanka there was another character whose high cheekbones, refined jaw line, slim silhouette and elegant facial planes immediately suggested zero bullshit and full high octane. That was S. W.R.D Bandaranaike. On 28th May, 1957, Prime Minister S.W.R.D received a letter from Professor C. Sunetheralingam, who after a distinguished career as a member of the exclusive Indian and Ceylon civil services, professor of Mathematics at the University College, Colombo, lawyer and cabinet minister pre Independence and during the early years of Independence, was by the mid 1950s, exploring new vistas as the most prominent ideologue of Tamil separatism. In his letter to S.W.R.D, he said,

“You are aware that until the Portuguese arrived in Ceylon in 1505, Ceylon was divided throughout the full course of its checkered history of over 2000 years, into two or more kingdoms of which one was always the Tamil kingdom- except for two short periods aggregating to about 22 years, under the reigns of Parakrama Bahu I and Parakrama Bahu VI. The Tamils as a whole, were not ruled by Sinhalese kings; and even Dutugemunu when he defeated Elara, could not secure sway over the North of Ceylon!”

Consider the following reply:

“My Dear Professor Sunetheralingam,
I am aware of no such thing. All I was made aware of, reading your letter was that you must have come across some good pot. As you know since my Oxford days, the opportunities to indulge in pot have been few and far between, what with one thing and another. But your letter brought home to me in its inimitable, learned and measured style, what a very great pleasure I have been foregoing; the ability to boldly go where no one has gone before (Remember the preceding line professor, within the next 20 years Hollywood is going to copy it) and stay there despite intrusive attempts by mundane reality, is not something to be dismissed lightly. I am convinced now that pleasures such as this aught not to be deferred with flimsy excuses of affairs of State, prior engagements or familial obligations. Therefore I am determined to have your delightful company (together with your delightful hoard of pot need I add?) at Horagolla this very weekend. We will visit all possible worlds within all possible universes, choose the one which takes our fancy the most and stay there the whole weekend disregarding all interruptions. All right?”

The above reply, or a reply couched in similar terms and expressing similar sentiments, sent by Mr. S.W. R. D to Prof. Sunetheralingam has not been found among the personal effects of either gentleman. So it seems reasonable to assume that such a reply was never sent. But it seems to me the least we could expect from such a high octane- no bullshit gentleman, the ‘Silver Bell of Oxford’ according to urban legend. Professor K.M.de Silva Sri Lanka’s leading historian in his The “Traditional Homelands” of the Tamils - Separatist Ideology in Sri Lanka: A Historical Appraisal, which was my source for the above extract of Prof Sunetheralingam’s letter, says

“The historical data in these extracts from Sunetheralingam’s writings is a weird mixture of fantasy, invention and distortion…”

.

You might ask how come S.W.R.D’s failure to reply to Prof. Sunetheralingam in the vein it deserves reflects badly on the PM’s zero bullshit-high octane status? Is a prime minister supposed to send long replies to every letter he gets from every citizen? Isn’t a thankful acknowledgement the usual way of dealing with such letters? I have to admit that it is.
Then consider this, S. W. R.D. Bandaranaike signed the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact with the Ilankai Thamil Arasi Kachchi (ITAK).

This is what?; one high octane gentleman sitting down with another and confronting in the early stages, a potentially volatile and complex issue and attempting to negotiate with the considerable high octane powers at their disposal, the most humane and equitable solution possible under the circumstances…only to be stymied by the 100% bullshit-zero high-octane elements then prevailing in the country. Right?

Or one high octane gentleman of visionary foresight daring to confront the essential and inescapable dichotomy within the Sri Lanka body politic, the inherent ethno national dimension as it were, which births the contradiction, which the Unitary State neither senses nor is equipped to address….and then being forced to back off before the high bullshit forces nurtured and mobilized by himself in his rise to power. Right?

Well let’s see. The whole thing fairly reeks. Whether of bullshit or leaked high-octane fuel let’s find out.

To be continued…

What a gorgeous bitch!

At the time this photo was taken things were not at all well with me. But honey every thing is relative and whatever else I haven’t achieved down the line, a sense of perspective ain’t one of them. For those of you who aren’t that much into convoluted sentence structures let me give the translation, ‘down the line, I have achieved a sense of perspective’. So that means I realize that compared to folks who had lost limbs, all their money, their parents, their children, their husbands, fiancés and fiancées , deprived of their looks in acid attacks and accidents, found out they have cancer, had to juggle a career, an education and back stabbing colleagues while at the same time witnessing their fathers and mothers die slowly and painfully at home, in relation to the entire cataclysmic range of potential human suffering I was really having a picnic; I suppose some would say; my mother for instance, who with robust good sense has consistently insisted that the only thing wrong with me was that I had it too easy.

But still things were pretty bad for me at the time this photo was taken. Forces of darkness were assailing me and instead of busting a gut laughing at how very trivial, how petty, how dismissible these forces were, I was keeling over, turning up my toes and getting ready to die, loosing hope, doing a cop out, hanging the closed sign on my shop door while the day was still fine and customers were still queuing up outside.

I was seriously out of shape (everything is relative, just keep that in mind reading that statement) and didn’t have the motivation to do anything about it. I felt I was pathetic and unpleasant and nobody worthwhile would ever want to have anything to do with me. It was going down hill and not even trying to pull the brakes, because of the certainty that they won’t work.

I literally felt the darkness. I would get up from a nap in the afternoon (I took a lot of naps because the only time I felt at peace was when I was sleeping) and for a moment between sleeping and waking; actually see that the day had darkened around me. My bio rhythms were slowing down, my aura was turning murky. In a nutshell dear friends and neighbours, I didn’t have my shit together. I was several light years from having my shit together.

This photo was taken during such a time. I don’t remember the exact year, but guess it was the middle of the naughties (for those among my friends who don’t have the hip quotient to understand the term naughties; and that is most of you except maybe ashan dilgith; I am well aware what an unhip bunch of friends I have got; see there were the eighties, the nineties and then the naughties. Ged it you unhip clod hoppers? Heh heh)

To come back to the point, all the other photos from this session look horrible and nauseating at least to me and I would have you know that I have consigned them long since to the flames. But this pic… Ah this is another story altogether. At this moment, the camera has managed to capture the essential me. Me before the petty darkness came; me for whom every day used to be a day under the sun. It’s sort of a miracle because unless you are a ballet teacher with real keen eyes scouting for talent, you can’t even see that it’s an out of shape bod. The only explanation I can think of is that, even when malignant, pathetic personalities are in the driving seat of our psyches, the real personality struggles all the time to wrest control; and from time to time actually succeeds at least for a fraction of a second, and during such a millisecond of my life, the camera captured it.

I am putting this up to tell you that, no matter how dark you think it is, the real you is still down there, still struggling to come on top and do keep on fighting to give the poor bastard or bitch a chance. Because she or he is the best part of you and deserves a chance.

Pretty corny what? All this fuss over a perfectly ordinary pic some of you might think. Well I don’t think so. So there! Take it or leave it.

The beginning 4

Continued from the previous post

Prof Indrapala continued

“on the basis of the present evidence we could say that it was only by about the tenth century that permanent settlements of Tamils began…These settlements were by no means extensive but their importance lies in the fact that they formed the nucleus of the later settlements that covered the greater part of northern Sri Lanka”

“… on the slender evidence at our disposal it would be rather far fetched to claim that there were permanent or widespread settlements of Tamil trading communities in the first millennium AD.”

“But evidence for extensive settlement bearing the signs of a date earlier than the tenth century is lacking”

“On the Tamil side the chronicles that are extant are those written nearly three centuries after the foundation of the Tamil kingdom in the island in the thirteenth century.

These are the Kailayamalai, Vaiyapatul, Vaiya, Yalpana vaipava malai, and the Mattakkalappu- manmiyam......With the possible exception of the Yalpana vaipava malai, the other works cannot be dated exactly. But, as we shall see presently, certain references in those works make it clear that these were all written after the fifteenth century........The Yalpana vaipava malai is a prose chronicle of the Jaffna kingdom, as stated in its preface, when the Dutch Commandant Ian Maccara (Mekkarun) was administering Jaffna (A.D. 1736).

The sections of these works dealing with the period prior to the thirteenth century, i.e., the period during which the earliest Tamil settlements were established- are full of legendary material and are wholly unreliable. The Tamil works of South India have no notable allusions to the activities of the Tamils in Ceylon.”

After this spree of negativity a glimmer of positivity,

"…only by about the tenth century that permanent settlement of the Tamils began and the Cola conquest of the Anuradhapura kingdom in the late tenth century seems to have given an impetus to the migration of Tamils into the island.” Indrapala Early Tamil Settlements in Ceylon pp 54-55

As stated in an above quote,

“…These settlements were by no means extensive but their importance lies in the fact that they formed the nucleus of the later settlements that covered the greater part of northern Sri Lanka”

However these settlements “became fairly extensive early in the eleventh century”

Apparently this was the first phase of Tamil settlement in Sri Lanka and their location was

“…still outside the Jaffna district. Of the present day Tamil areas only the upper half of the Eastern Province and parts of the western coast had Tamil settlers in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The main stage in the process of Tamil settlement which led to the transformation of the present Northern Province into an exclusively Tamil speaking area had not yet been reached in the twelfth century. That stage was reached with the conquest of Magha and it is doubtful that the Tamil settlements of the period before the thirteenth century would have resulted in the division of the country into two linguistic regions”

“second and most important stage of the Tamil settlements are covered by the whole of the thirteenth century”

“no genuine traditions of the Tamil settlement or invasions were preserved by the Tamils until they established a stable kingdom in the thirteenth century”

Then finally the Kingdom!

"The invasion of Magha (of Kalinga) with the help of Tamil and Kerala mercenaries was far more violent than the earlier invasions. It’s chief importance lies in the fact that it resulted in the permanent dislodgement of the Sinhalese power from north Ceylon, the confiscation of lands and properties belonging to the Sinhalese by the Tamil and Kerala mercenaries and the consequent migration of the official class and several of the common people to the south western regions. These factors more than any other helped the transformation of northern (Sri Lanka) into a Tamil region and directly led to the foundation of a Tamil kingdom there. In the second phase, with the foundation of an independent Tamil Kingdom, a deliberate policy of settling Tamils in the Jaffna district and the Vanni regions was followed by the first rulers of the Tamil kingdom. This led to a migration of peaceful settlers from the Tamil country (in Southern India). It was this peaceful migration that was largely responsible for the Tamil settlement of the Jaffna district. It was a deliberate and organized process…” Indrapala Early Tamil Settlements in Ceylon p. 62

The beginning 3

Continued from the previous post

Then in ‘Myths and Scholars III’ http://www.kalaya.org/i990421.html Prof Nalin again quotes Prof. Indrapala to deal with Mudaliyar Rasanayagam,

“Unlike the early works, Ancient Jaffna is the result of an attempt to trace the history of the Tamils of Ceylon from the earliest times to the sixteenth century. It has been based on a wider variety of sources and much effort has gone into it. For the first time the Sinhalese sources as well as the South Indian inscriptions were consulted. It marks a leap forward in the research into the history of the Tamils of Ceylon. But despite its distinct merits, Rasanayagam's work suffers from several serious defects. The work has been marred by an earnest attempt to prove the thesis that the Tamils were settled in Ceylon from pre-Christian times and that there was an independent kingdom in northern Ceylon which existed from about the fifteenth century B.C. to the seventeenth century A.D. In his attempt to prove this thesis, Rasanayagam has used methods which are questionable and materials that are totally unrelated to the history of the Tamils in Ceylon. These have been briefly pointed out in our work."

Professor K.M.de Silva’s ‘A history of Sri Lanka 2005 edition also quotes Prof. Indrapala extensively about the period before 1000 A.D.

‘Looking back on the whole body of evidence that is available …we have to conclude that there was no widespread Tamil settlement before the tenth century. The settlements at Pomparippu and the possible settlement at Kathirvelu (on the east coast) have to be treated as isolated earlier settlements”. Indrapala, Early Tamil Settlements in Ceylon p.24

Prof. K. M. de Silva says in ‘A History…’,

“Sri Lanka’s close proximity to southern India has been the basis for the assumption that there were Tamil settlements on the island in the early years of its history. Certainly Tamil and other literary sources point to substantial urban and trading centers in south India in the third century B.C. Very probably there were trade relations between them and Sri Lanka and it is also highly probable that the island’s trade with the Mediterranean world could have been through these south Indian ports. By the third century B.C. Dravidian intrusion into the affairs of Sri Lanka became more marked. In 177 B.C. two south Indian adventurers usurped power at Anuradhapura and ruled for twenty two years, to be followed ten years later (in 145 B.C.) by another, Elara who maintained himself in power for a much longer period-for forty-four years, according to the Mahavamsa- and earned an enviable reputation for justice and impartial administration. These Dravidian attempts at establishing control over the Anuradhapura kingdom appear to have been motivated partly at least by the prospect of influence over its external trade.

Apart from this there is evidence from archeological investigations conducted at Pomparippu in the north west of the island in 1956 and 1957 of a culture which bears some resemblance to the south Indian megalithic culture(on the Pomparippu excavations and their significance see S.P.F. Senaratne, Prehistoric Archaesology in Ceylon;pp.29-31;Indrapala, ‘Early Tamil Settlements in Ceylon’, pp. 15-33) the similarities are most noticeable in the Adichchanallur site just across the water from Pomparippu(Since the Adichchanallur finds have been dated at around 300 BC, the same date is tentatively assigned to the Pomparippu complex which is regarded as being roughly contemporary with them.) There are striking similarities in the style of urn burials and the characteristics of the pottery and the associated objects found at these two sites.

The settlement at Pomparippu and a possible one at Katiraveli in the east of the Island need to be treated as isolated occurrences, not as evidence of widespread Tamil settlements. (Indrapala, Early Tamil Settlements in Ceylon’, pp.23ff;Kiribamune, Tamils in Ancient and Medieval Sri Lanka’, pp. 9-23. See also P. Raghupathy, Early Settlements in Jaffna, pp.179-87.)These two settlements could be dated between the second century B.C. and the third century B.C. For many centuries thereafter there is no inscriptional or other archeological evidence, or literary evidence of Tamil settlements in the country. There were of course, Tamil mercenaries who were brought to the island occasionally from about the fifth century A.D, but more particularly from the seventh century AD onwards. Their presence in the early stages was for short periods and served a political purpose. They fought on behalf of aspirants to the throne and on behalf of rulers whose position was insecure. Thus, Sri Lanka from very early in its recorded history had seen groups of persons from southern India enter the island as traders, occasionally as invaders and as mercenaries but their presence was of peripheral significance in the early demography of the island.

To be continued