Top Image: Indian migrant workers in Trinidad Tea Plantation labour in Ceylon – circa 1890s
Dr. Sudath Gunasekara Secretary to Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandarnayaka and President Sri Lanka State Administrative Services (1991-94)
18.9th. 2024.
Malabar immigrants, both Tamils and Muslims in this country, must reconcile and integrate with the Native Sinhalese or depart. As Putin once said to Muslims in Russia, we never invited you to come here. Either you came on your own or you were brought here by the medieval colonial invaders as their coolies’ slaves and left behind when they left abandoning you behind destitute. A such your grievances lay with them Not with us.
The present-day so-called Tamils in the north and East and all Tamil speaking Muslims (Marakkala people who identify themselves as Muslim) living all over this country must first accept that this was the Sinhala Buddhist country from the inception of history and therefore they are the De facto and De jure owners of this country. In this historical backdrop, therefore if you want to live here and earn your living, then accept that historical reality as a prerequisite for reconciliation and there after integrate with the native Sinhalese, the de facto and de jure owners of this country for millennia under conditions laid down by them or depart without demanding the sun and the moon at gun point. In order to do that first, you have to give up all your crazy demands including the right for self-determination, right to have your own law, language and right to have their identity as a separate nation within separate parts of the country. And then you should at least now fully integrate with the native Sinhalese or depart. There is no need for the natives Sinhalese to reconcile with the immigrants as demanded by the so-called international organizations and the unpatriotic vote hunting local politicians who does not know the history of this Island nation.
Those who call themselves Tamil in this country are the descendants of Malaba cooly labourers imported by the colonial invaders. They were not called Tamil when they were brought to this country by the Dutch and the British, from time to time starting in late 18th century in pursuit of their colonial ambitions of filling their coffers at homes. They call themselves Tamil as they speak Tamils. But it is strange those who profess the Islam, though they also speak Tamil call themselves Muslims, going by their religion and try to Identify as a nation, though there is no nation by hat name anywhere in the world.
Malabar immigranats were named as Ceylon Tamils only in 1901 by Arunachalam Ponnamabalan as the first Registrar General, who himself was a descendant of a Malaba cooli, instigated by the British, as a peg of the treacherous colonial policy of divide and rule policy practiced in their colonies. Ever since they were brought to this country these Malabar people have been injected with racial, ethnic religious and communal viruses setting them against the native Sinhalese. They were also given the privilege of practicing new law called Thesavalamaeyi (Law applicable to the Malabar inhabitants of the peninsula by definition). They were also given preferential privileges over the native Sinhalese and provided with better English education. For example, by 1845 Jaffna district had 45 English schools run by the Church, mostly operated by American Missionaries, whereas the whole Island had only 105 Schools (KML De Silva). With these discriminatory facilities they were also provided with better employment opportunities in the Government sector as against the majority Sinhalese. What was interesting was these Malaba coolies were elevated to higher echelons of the social strata to build up a formidable and artificial stratum over the Southern Sinhalese with a view to transfer political and administrative power to these Malaba Indians, some of them were married to English women (Coomaraswamy clan) and many were Knighted. Arunachalam Ponnambalam was the first Ceylon Civil Servant to be Knighted and in no time, he was appointed as the first Registrar Genera, with a special agenda and got him to declare all Malaba immigrants as Ceylon Tamils. The aim of the colonial rulers by these tactics was to raise them as a superior elite class over the native Sinhalese and make them the future rulers of this country. Concurrently the British also took over all the lands belonging to the native Sinhalese and settled an army of 1. 2 million south Indians Tamil labourers in the former Kandyan Kingdom, right at the center of the country, with a view to creating a future Malayanadu with a long-term plan to convert the entire Island in to a Tamil country on a future date and thereby to eliminate the Sinhala Buddhist civilization from this country in order to take revenge for successfully preventing the invaders talking over the whole country for 310 long years from 1505 to 1815, in spite of their invincible military powers. This was how the colonial rulers planned and conspired to destroy the Sinhala Buddhist civilization in this country in the long run.
However, now that the so-called northern Tamils are divided beyond any future reconciliation, there are only two options available to these Malabar immigrants some of whom in the like of Wigneswaran who now claim outright ownership of his country has only two options claiming that they were the original owners of this country and even Ravana was a Tamil King.
The first option for them is, to stop thinking that they are Tamils anymore and renounce that they are no more descendants of Malabar inhabitants of south India brought here by the colonial invaders to labour to fill their coffers in Europe. They also have to forget their mythological and legendary Tamil Civilization and the concept of Lost Land of Lemuria/Kumari Kandam, the mythical homeland of Tamil civilization, where Sri Lanka was also a part of it, for good and integrate with the native Sinhalese, the legitimate and de facto and de jure owners of this country for the past 2500 years without a brake and decide to live as brothers and sisters forgetting their mythical Tamil mentality, without day dreaming of an EELAM on this land of the Sinhala race. Give up your crazy day dream of a separate Tamil motherland dream on this land of the Sinhalese. Accept De facto and De jure position. Reconcile with the native Sinhalese without running after the Indian moguls and Kautillyan IAS mandarins and the European invader conspirators for their support over an unachievable day dream that will never come true and get ready to live as one nation in one country, the historical Homeland of the great Sinha Buddhist Nation, that had been so, for the past 2500 years at least. This was what all your ancestors who migrated to this country from the inception of civilization had done in the distant past, if you are seriously concerned with reconciliation with the native Sinhala Buddhist community, the legitimate owners of this country.
On the other hand, if you people are not prepared to reconcile with the natives that way, then the only alternative for you is to get back to your own traditional and historical Motherland, in South India from where you ancestors were tethered here as slaves and try to get your identity and dignity, you deem to have lost and restored on your own traditional motherland Tamilnadu, where your ancestors had lived for millennia. You should agitate and demand the immediate abolition of the 1963 Nehru Act against cessations which prohibited your claim for separation from mainland India as a separate nation called Tamil under the Dravida Mun Nethra Kashagan theory and make it your dream homeland.
That is the best advice I can give to you to make your day dream of inventing your lost utopian Tami homeland.
I must also tell you that there were no Northern and Eastern provinces before the advent of the Western invaders in this country. They created in 1833 by the colonial British as a part of their divide and rule policy to divide this 2500-year-old land of the Sinhalese.
Why don’t you realize at least now that you all are still day dreaming to do something that your South Indian ancestors have failed from 2nd Century BC up to the 12th C and subsequently by that lunatic Prabhaakaran, known as the leader of the most dangerous terrorist organization in the world, the Tamil politicians have created. Instigated by Chelvanaaygam, (a Catholic Tamil migrated from Malaysia at the age of 11 years). and subsequently by all Tamil recist and communal politicians, he played havoc from 1980 for 30 years with all the support openly given by India and all the colonial West. Now it is past history.
I call upon you the intelligent and the pragmatic sector of that part of the country, as people who knows the ground realities of that time, to forget the mythical past and reconcile with the native Sinhalese, if you want to live here with the kind of dignity and self-respect you are talking about. As a first step I advise you to dissolve all communal separatist Tamil political and join the national parties in the country and openly display your genuine willingness to change.
At the same time, you people will have to forget about the mythical stories like, Sri Lanka being a part of Kumari Kandam founded by Mathivanan, then Chief Editor of the Tamil Etymological Dictionary Project of the Government of Tamil Nadu just to advance the EELAM myth. According to him Kumari Kandam civilization is supposed to have existed around 50,000 BCE, and is supposed to have submerged around 16,000 BCE. Talking about the Kumari Kandam theory you must also realize that there are many other speculatory theories such as the Lemuria concept and another theory of Continental drift by Alfred Wegener that says all the five continents have been once called Pangaea- a supercontinent, got drifted west and east until it a came to the present situation. This has occurred about 200 million years ago according to Wegener.
It is a well-known fact that geologically India and Sri Lanka were together with all continents under Pangaea at one time. You should not get confused with these mythologies. Let us go by the documented known history and accept the fact that even before the Ramayana time (5000 BC) Sri Lanka and India had been two separate countries and even at that time this Island was called Lanka inhabited by four native tribes called Yaksha, Raksha, Naga and Deva who were the ancestors of the Sivhela-who later became Sinhala and amalgamated with the Sinha clan Prince Vijaya who migrated to this in 543 BC.
Instead of digging in to the past mythical history reality suggests that we should go by the ground realities as they are discernible at present. Wrong thinking must be replaced with right thinking. That is the gate way to success.