{"id":31961,"date":"2014-07-13T20:46:32","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T00:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=31961"},"modified":"2014-07-13T20:51:07","modified_gmt":"2014-07-14T00:51:07","slug":"dutu-gemunuellaalananuradhapurapolonnaruwa-and-the-invasion-of-raja-raja-chozhan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=31961","title":{"rendered":"Dutu Gemunu, Ellaalan, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and the Invasion of Raja raja Chozhan"},"content":{"rendered":"

By N. Sathiya Moorthy<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"DGE92312\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Coming as it did after the Aluthgama incident, BBS leader, Ven Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero\u2019s call for Pope Francis to apologise to Sri Lanka\u2019s Sinhala-Buddhists for alleged atrocities committed by Christian colonialists in the past centuries thankfully did not receive the kind of media attention that it might have got. Not to embarrass the Pope and themselves, too, when the Pope is set to visit the country in January 2015, all segments of the Sri Lankan society and government seem to have ignored the Thero\u2019s call.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrevious Popes have publicly apologised to certain countries because they destroyed, they killed. We had a similar situation, where most of the Buddhist temples were destroyed by them and Buddhist monks were killed. We would like to see a public apology from the Pope,\u201d Gnanasara was quoted by the local media as telling a meeting with foreign correspondents in Colombo, recently. \u201cWe are waiting till the Pope visits us to see what he is going to say about the crimes here,\u201d he reportedly said adding, \u201cThe Portuguese, Dutch and the British are all the same to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Thero and his Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) have been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the past couple of years, all pertaining to anti-Muslim violence in the nation\u2019s Sinhala areas. The inevitable and mostly justified negative coverage of the two has only increased after the Aluthgama incident in mid-June. It\u2019s unclear how Gnanasara wants the Pope to apologise to the Sinhala-Buddhists for the alleged past sins of \u2018Christian-colonialists\u2019 when not all of them belonged to the Roman Catholic denomination, which alone the Pope heads.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Even more untenable is the Thero\u2019s expectation for the Pope to apologise for \u2018past sins\u2019 when the BBS does not seem to have expressed any remorse (leave alone apology in whatever form) to the Muslim community in the country, to the present violence, which has now become periodic and unending, if not pre-determined on every occasion. The \u2018repeat performance\u2019 of the kind has only made the Muslim community in the country feel insecure and unwanted.<\/p>\n

The collective feeling that the Sri Lankan State and Government are either unable or unwilling to \u2018protect\u2019 them has only worsened the situation on the ground. The helplessness of the situation stands out even more when Muslim Ministers from the political parties representing the community\u2019s cause and concern at the national-level are unable to quit the Government or be able to protest strongly, as they too seem to have been convinced that they are not going to help, either.<\/p>\n

Majority with a minority complex?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Through the decades of \u2018ethnic issue\u2019, war and violence involving the Tamil community since Independence, critics have often said that the Sinhala-Buddhist majority in the country has behaved with a \u2018minority complex\u2019 of insecurity. There is some truth in this, just as there is truth in the observation that the Tamil minority had behaved with a \u2018majority complex\u2019. Whatever the truth, the same cannot be said of the Muslim community in the country \u2013 or, most of its members.<\/p>\n

Political parties in post-Independence Ceylon too have used the \u2018ethnic card\u2019 in electoral terms. In other democracies, similar constituency interests and concerns are whipped up from time to time. This is done with sophistication, hence is more visible in the Third World. In Sri Lanka, combined with the relatively high incidence of socio-economic backwardness across most of the lower layers of caste-ridden Sinhala-Buddhist society, education, employment and enabling instruments like language, became a politico-electoral tool.<\/p>\n

It was no different in the case of the \u2018minorities\u2019, particularly the Tamils. But in Sinhala-Tamil comparative context, Tamils came to occupy the middle-rung and later higher rungs of available government jobs, the only source of family incomes and accompanying social status in the pre-Independence past. It\u2019s easy to blame the \u2018divide-and-rule\u2019 of the British ruler of the day, as has happened elsewhere, too.<\/p>\n

The socio-economic structures of the times meant that Tamils from the dry northern belt wanted\/needed the jobs more than the Sinhalese in the South, with its rich soil and copious rains, for tending to their agriculture. They jumped at it. The Sinhalese lower class\/castes were slow in catching up, controlled as they were by their aristocracy, which had used them as cheap farm labour.<\/p>\n

The two \u2018JVP insurgencies\u2019 hold a candle to the socio-political churning processes of the time. The first insurgency of 1971 was the inevitable trickle-down effect after the \u2018Sinhala Only\u2019 law has unified these segments of the majority community under a common banner. This was particularly so after the universal adult franchise scheme did not deliver to the lower rungs of the Sinhala-Buddhist community, particularly the rural masses, what it had promised without being clear about anything, only a decade or more earlier.<\/p>\n

The credit for having the voices of the \u2018silent majority\u2019 from within the \u2018majority\u2019 Sinhala-Buddhist community heard \u2013 and in clear, electoral terms \u2013 should also go to the \u2018Christian colonialists\u2019. This one owed incidentally to the British rulers of the Thirties. Under the Donoughmore Constitution, Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, became the first country in Asia to have universal adult franchise.<\/p>\n

Politics in Sri Lanka, and social structure within the Sinhala-majority community would not be the same again. Democracy has the inherent capacity to cause the crumbling of traditional social structures and keep re-working and re-shaping them all the time. Sri Lanka was no exception.<\/p>\n

One thus can blame it, if at all, on \u2018western democracy\u2019, not necessarily on religion \u2013 other than as exceptions to any rule. Of course, Sri Lanka was among the exceptions. Elsewhere in the western world itself, the European colonialists were driving local communities in the Americas and Africa to near-extinction. There was no feeling of guilt at the time. There is no feeling of remorse just now. Incidentally, the UK is not governed by the papal theological law and leadership. The Anglican Church takes care of the same.
\n
\nHijacking \u2018Sinhala nationalism\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Blame it on the forced abortion of the first JVP insurgency, or on the untenable \u2013 and at time unserviceable, yet highly imaginative \u2013 \u2018five classes\u2019 of JVP founder Rohana Wijeweera, the second insurgency could not have taken off from where the first one had left. Instead, it had to necessarily hijack the \u2018Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist\u2019 agenda of an upcoming section of the ruling, majority UNP, the nation\u2019s GoP, basing the political hopes and electoral aspirations, if any, on ethnicity-linked \u2018Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism\u2019.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, factions within the Sinhala-Buddhist ethnic majority, namely, under the new UNP President Ranasinghe Premadasa and the JVP, had to fight it out among themselves \u2013 even to the exclusion of the LTTE terror-groups. With the Sri Lankan State\u2019s armed forces at its command, and the JVP too not drawing the red-line that its militant cadres should not have crossed even if an armed insurgency against the State (alone) were to have been justified for argument\u2019s sake, the ruling class could not have but finally won.<\/p>\n

The irony of it showed all along. Fighting \u2018LTTE terrorism\u2019 in the name of defending the \u2018Sinhala-Buddhist\u2019 majority\u2019s right and rightful place, the Premadasa Government struck a deal with the very terror group, to have the IPKF out. Throughout the period, and later, too, the JVP has never ever raised a banner of revolt against the LTTE, in militant\/military terms. Yet, both claimed to be the competitive defender of \u2018Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism\u2019.<\/p>\n

Colonialists, Yes, But\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

Competitive \u2018Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist\u2019 political cause and its electoral exploitation would not have become possible but for the inherent sense of insecurity among a particular segment of the community as a whole. There is truth in the criticism that some colonialists targeted the population where they landed, either to proselytise, or to persecute them, or both.<\/p>\n

In its time, Sri Lanka did not escape it at the hands of some early colonialists. The Sinhala-Buddhist population was the worst affected. The colonialists had chosen to land in the soil-rich, rain and river-bed areas of the South to the near-exclusion of the dry and sun-hit North for reasons of expanding their commercial \u2013 and later political \u2013 control. The scars remain centuries later.<\/p>\n

The scars remain to date, and so do the symbols and symbolism from the past. In the names of individuals and families, they are visible. Many Sinhala-Buddhists thus continue to carry European\/Christian names and titles, forced on them either when proselytised, or very rarely, otherwise. It hurts. It angers. It sends down a chill, even generations down the line.<\/p>\n

The community\u2019s elite down the decades and centuries, now respectfully at times and derisively otherwise dubbed the \u2018Colombo Seven\u2019, did more to curry acceptance from the colonial rulers than in assuaging the hurt and fear of their own people, those that were tending to their vast acreage of lands and farms \u2013 later, the tea plantations that the colonialists brought in, but had to leave behind. It was also a sure recipe first for non-militant traditional socialism and communism and later for JVP militancy and insurgency.<\/p>\n

It is this sense of genetically codified \u2013 and unmodified \u2013 apprehensions and fears that rule the minds and mindsets of individuals and local and localised communities. It is more so in the case of those particularly the less educated, exposed and travelled. It is a vicious cycle, whose mode the \u2018Sinhala Only\u2019 might have helped break (even if it meant at the cost of meritocracy on the one hand, and the integration of the \u2018minority communities\u2019 in an independent Ceylon).<\/p>\n

Neither of it happened. Instead, everyone lost. The religious class worked on those apprehensions, seeking to defend the faith under wholly changed circumstances.<\/p>\n

The political class in those very circumstances sought to exploit those apprehensions, electorally \u2013 if only after a time. By then they have understood the advantages of constituency-driven \u2018Sinhala-Buddhist nationalist cause\u2019 as never before.<\/p>\n

The LTTE\u2019s targeting of innocent Sinhala-Buddhist villagers and their great places of worship only went on to revive the dying flames of those apprehensions. Combined with the \u2018Second JVP insurgency\u2019 (1987-89) nearer to their homes and villages, the LTTE\u2019s war(s) on the Sri Lankan State, not very long away, but still removed from their immediate concerns and consciousness, the large populace of innocent Sinhala-Buddhist villagers could not have been expected to distinguish one threat from the other, and one cause from the other.<\/p>\n

The immediate cause and concerns of these individuals was to save enough pennies to make that holy pilgrimage to Buddhism\u2019s sacred places of worship in northern India \u2013 near, but not near enough, considering in particular the cross-sea travel that it entailed from time immemorial.<\/p>\n

The more recent attacks on Sinhala-Buddhist pilgrims in the south Indian State of Tamil Nadu have not only brought out the fact of these annual pilgrimages. Video-footage also showed up the age and socio-economic background of these pilgrims, and on more than one occasion. <\/p>\n

\u2018Triumphalism\u2019 and more<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet, all these do not explain the purported\/suspected Sinhala-Buddhist \u2018triumphalism\u2019 over their young king, Dutugemunu, slaying the local Tamil ruler, Elara, then of Anuradhapura, in the era before Christendom. The fact that Elara was a Chola King from South India, and another, later-day Chola King, Rajaraja, based out of his south Indian Tamil kingdom, captured parts of Sri Lanka, full thousand years, later, did not help, either.<\/p>\n

The Tamils another thousand years later, in the post-Christendom twentieth century would see Rajaraja\u2019s invasion as avenging Elara\u2019s defeat two thousand years back.<\/p>\n

The Sinhalese would want to see it as a humiliation that had gone unpunished. LTTE\u2019s Prabhakaran would only haunt those hurt feelings by choosing the Cholas\u2019 \u2018Tiger\u2019 standard as his symbol.<\/p>\n

The Sinhalese in general and the Sri Lankan State, otherwise, saw it as a symbolism, particularly after India got involved after the anti-Tamil \u2018Pogrom-83\u2019. Not to let matters rest, the Tamil moderates, politicos and the people at large, did see India\u2019s engagement much as the Sinhalese did \u2013 and with opposite effect on their own psyche.<\/p>\n

The LTTE\u2019s perception was even worse.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It paid the price for the same, not very long after, but only after inflicting enough and avoidable damage on the innocents, both Tamils and Sinhalese.<\/p>\n

That the LTTE too did not spare the Muslims in its time is another sad footnote that the nation and the community cannot forget \u2013 though forgive, they seemed to have done long ago.<\/p>\n

The question is whether the \u2018Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism\u2019 was born out of a sense of victimisation in their own land and circumstances in more recent centuries, or owed it to the \u2018triumphalism\u2019 from the era of Dutugemunu, a full millennium and half earlier. This is a question that the religious scholars in the country, particularly of the Sinhala-Buddhist faith, and political historians, should be asking themselves \u2013 and finding answers, too.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s happening instead is that some of them of the two beliefs have ended up quoting from the past, selectively, to argue an otherwise unarguable \u2018chauvinistic\u2019 case. Like elsewhere in the world, early \u2018history\u2019, if it could be called so, is etched in religious texts in Sri Lanka, too. Here, it\u2019s the\u2018Mahavansa\u2019, the Sinhala-Buddhist chronicle of the \u2018great dynasty\u2019, dating back to the fifth century after Christ. It has conferred on the current-day claims the kind of unquestioned sanction and acceptance unavailable to later-day historic works with relative proof.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Mahavansa\u2019 incidentally does not bad-mouth Elara, or Ellaran in Tamil. It describes him as among the wisest and just kings, \u2018Manuneedhi\u2019 Chola, as he was otherwise known in native south India. That Elara ruled from Anuradhapura, which is among the holiest of places of worship of the Sinhala-Buddhist community as a whole.<\/p>\n

The LTTE would target Anuradhapura, the seat of the holy \u2018Maha Bodhi Tree\u2019 and Temple. Like Kandy, the seat of Buddha\u2019s \u2018Tooth Relic\u2019, or \u2018Dalada Maligawa\u2019, Anuradhapura too became the target of the LTTE, this one particularly in the closing months of the decisive \u2018Eelam War IV\u2019. Cadres of the \u2018Black Tigers\u2019 suicide-squad in particular would successfully target the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) base in Anuradhapura, taking over a dozen and half of SLAF\u2019s air assets, though said to be from their trainer fleet. Curiously, LTTE\u2019s Prabhakaran was said to have code-named the attack, \u2018Operation Ellalan\u2019. <\/p>\n

The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By N. Sathiya Moorthy Coming as it did after the Aluthgama incident, BBS leader, Ven Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero\u2019s call for Pope Francis to apologise to Sri Lanka\u2019s Sinhala-Buddhists for alleged atrocities committed by Christian colonialists in the past centuries thankfully did not receive the kind of media attention that it might have got. Not …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Dutu Gemunu, Ellaalan, Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and the Invasion of Raja raja Chozhan’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31961"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31965,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31961\/revisions\/31965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}