By: Brian Senewiratne MA,MD,FRCP,FRACP (Speech delivered at the Seminar organised by The International Tamil Foundation (ITF) on 24th June 2001 in London.)
Democracy is the practice of political, legal and social equality so that all citizens would have equal political rights and have these protected by free and fair elections and other guarantees. Like the freedom from slavery or the urge for freedom from foreign, it cannot be denied or suppressed. It was developed by the ancient Greeks even before the 5th century BC. It is such a powerful idea that even the most dictatorial regimes label themselves “Democratic”. Thus, in 1972, Sirima Bandaranaike and the Left dealt a severe blow to democracy, withdrawing the Constitutional safeguards that there for the protection of the minorities and changed Ceylon to “The Democratic Republic of Sri Lanka”. In 1977, J.R. Jayawardene dismantled democracy completely and thought it necessary to call his regime “The democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka”.
What’s in a name? Everything. It is easier for a “democratic” country to get aid to “fight Terrorism” than to kill its own people – which is what has been happening in Sri Lanka for nearly two decades.
Democracy was devised for the governance of small city sates of homogeneous citizens e.g. Athens. When applied to the governance of larger nation-states with a heterogeneous population divided in ethnicity, religion, culture etc., there are problems. In these states it is usually the national minorities, which suffer discrimination at the hands of the majority.
Can democracy work in a heterogeneous population? Yes it can, provided that there is enlightened leadership or if the minorities agree to lose their identity and merge with the majority i.e. be “assimilated”.
Enlightened leaders we have not had even in British days, much less so after Independence. What we have had are leaders who have espoused ethno-religious chauvinism as a means of getting into or remaining in power i.e. populist politics. As for the “assimilation” of minorities, it depends on the background of the “minority”. If they are an ancient people with a proud heritage, an ancient culture and language, they will not agree to lose all this and be “assimilated”. There are many examples across the world. – the Karens of Burma fighting to prevent assimilation into the Burmese mainstream, Basque separatists in Spain fighting to retain their identity, the Turks in Cyprus fighting to prevent assimilation by Greeks etc. There are many more.
It is therefore not surprising that the Tamils, with an ancient culture and heritage are fiercely fighting to prevent assimilation into a country with a Sinhalese-Buddhist ideology. It is to destroy this ancient culture that Jayawardene had the Jaffna library with some 90,000 volumes and ancient manuscripts burnt.
Democracy is not an end in itself. It must lead to good governance. This we have not had since British times. The British, like all colonial powers, proclaimed the freedom of man at home but trampled upon it abroad. Perhaps a reversal of the mistakes made by the British government and later, the Sri Lankan governments, is needed if the current mess is to be sorted out.
A little bit of history
I need hardly explain to an audience such as this that there are two major ethnic and religious groups in Sri Lanka - the Sinhalese (Buddhists) who comprise the majority (70%) of the population and the Tamil (Hindu) “minority”. The Tamils comprise two completely separate groups – the Sri Lankan Tamils who have been in the country for as long as the Sinhalese (if not longer) – some 2,500 years, and the Plantation (Indian) Tamils, indentured labourers imported by the British post-1820 to work on the tea plantations.
Who came first – the Sinhalese or the Tamils? My answer is, “Who cares?” Here we are, in the UK, Canada, US and Australia. We arrive on Monday and expect, entirely justifiably, to live without discrimination on Tuesday. In Sri Lanka, we are arguing about something that happened 2,500 years ago! It is ridiculous.
More important is what happened after these people arrived (from India) some 2,500 years ago. There were wars, protracted wars between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. They finally decided to separate and exist (and develop) than to try to unite and end up fighting, destroying each other. So, they established 3 separate kingdoms, Jaffnapatam in the North (Tamil), the Kandyan kingdom in the Centre (Kandyan Sinhalese) and the Kotte kingdom in the South (Low-Country Sinhalese). This existed for hundreds of years and was the setup when the Portuguese arrived (1505), the Dutch took over (1638) and even when the British arrived (1796).
When the British finally took control of the massive Kandyan kingdom (1815), their governance was so poor that there was a major rebellion (the Kandyan Rebellion of 1817-18, which the British crushed.
In an attempt to prevent further rebellions, they decided to unify the country and centralize power in Colombo (the Colebrooke–Cameron “reforms” of 1833. A single nation, “Ceylon”, was a British construct to keep the natives (in particular, the Kandyans) “under control”. In fact, the first people to ask for separation (as a federal State) were not the Tamils but the Kandyan Sinhalese in their submission to the Donoughmore Commission in the early 1930s.
The abuse of democracy under the British
The land grab and the Plantation Tamils The British appropriated i.e. stole, thousands of acres of land from the Kandyan peasants and others for their plantations, enacting laws to legitimise robbery.
The crime would have been less heinous if the local population had been given employment in the plantations that arose. Instead, the British imported half a million South Indian Tamils from (British) India, as they did in Fiji and many other countries. To ensure that this work force would remain captive and pliable, they prevented integration (or even communication) with the local people.
Cutting off the blood supply – irrigation and rice production Major irrigation works developed by the ancient Sinhalese, and already damaged by Chola invasions, were damaged even more by the British under the guise of suppressing the Kandyan rebellion. The restoration of this damage was minimal. The production of rice, the staple food of the people, fell dramatically and a rice exporting country became a major rice importer, with massive government subsidies to enable people to buy the imported rice. The democratic right of the people to exist was being violated.
Language, Religion, Education and Employment The language of the people (Sinhalese and Tamil) was replaced by English which even after 150 years of British occupation, was spoken by less than 7% of the population! The majority of the people (both Sinhalese and Tamil) were seriously disadvantaged.
The religions of the people (Buddhism and Hinduism) lost State support and Christianity was enthroned. The Christian missionaries were entrusted not only with converting the people but of educating them, in English, of course – so that the British could employ them in their administration.
In education, the vast majority of the population who had no access to the Christian mission schools were seriously disadvantaged in both education and in (government) employment.
The American missionaries had set up some outstanding schools in the Tamil North, which churned out English-educated people. It was they who got employment in the British administration. It was not a question of favouring the Tamils. It was a direct result of misadministration by the British (the inability to set up an adequate number of good schools in the South, as the American missionaries had done in the North.)
It is in this setting that the anti-Tamil, anti-Christian, pro-Sinhalese Buddhist, movement arose in the mid-1950s, which has been exploited by every Sinhalese leader since to get into and remain in power.
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