posted August 10, 2001 09:45 AM            

By: A Thamilan, Jaffna.

If you are not a Tamil, you might not have read or heard about what I am going to write about in this article. The following is what most Tamils - a good guesstimate would be well over 90 per cent — think and talk among themselves about the Bandaranaikes. Since Independence in 1948, Sri Lanka has been ruled by ten rulers. Out of them, three belong to the Bandaranaike family - father, mother and daughter. The following is a very brief account of how they treated the Tamils.

From 1948 to 1955, the UNP was in power and we had three rulers, D. S. Senanayake, Dudley Senanayake and Sir John Kotelawela. The first Prime Minister himself started the downward journey by disenfranchising the up-country Tamils. The real problem of lack of proper representation of the Kandyan Sinhalese could have been solved by creating multi-member constituencies. But hatred and prejudice won over love and kindness. The up-country Tamils had seven MPs in the first Parliament but none in later Parliaments till the multi-member constituency of Nuwara Eliya was created in 1976. Dudley Senanayake and Sir John Kotelawela followed. They shared a little power with the Sri Lanka Tamils and the Muslims but the up-country Tamils remained outside the pale.

Came Bandaranaike in 1955 with the slogan of ‘Sinhala Only in 24 hours’ in his unscrupulous pursuit of power by any means. He won the election in April 1956, became Prime Minister and started implementing the promise on which he rode to power. Overnight we Tamils became second class citizens. For the first time after independence, there was not a single Tamil Cabinet Minister. A fringe group known as the Federal Party, which would have died a natural death, if not for Sinhala Only, suddenly became popular among the Tamils and won many seats in Parliament.

After Bandaranaike’s assassination in 1959 and a few months of Dahanayake’s and Dudley Senanayake’s rule, his widow Mrs. Sirimavo Banadaranaike swept to power in July 1960. Again there was no Tamil Cabinet Minister. A senior leader of the Tamils told me that they could not even get an appointment to meet the Prime Minister to discuss their problems. If Bandaranaike pere only hit our dignity and pride, his widow hit us where it hurt most. The Tamil areas are poor in natural resources and even rainfall is much lower than in the rest of the country. The only path for upward mobility is education. Mrs. Banadaranaike suddenly introduced media wise standardisation to lower the number of intelligent Tamil children entering the universities. Teenagers who were pretty sure of a university career, based on their earlier school performances, were suddenly shut out of the universities....Casper, if you are reading this from your hideout, note this...Ranjan The young people concluded that the non-violent Gandhian methods of political agitation of the Federal Party and later TULF were useless to produce real results. Shooting practice using small arms and improvised guns started on the beaches at night. There is no doubt at all that Mrs. Bandaranaike’s action directly caused the rise of the violent movement among the Tamils.....note Mr. Hammer...Ranjan

The daughter swept to power on a peace platform in 1994. But we should have been forewarned. She had displayed ruthlessness before her ascent to power, fighting with her own mother and pushing aside her own brother. Her ego is so enlarged that she failed to study why two very intelligent, experienced and tough old men, J. R. Jayewardene and R. Premadasa, who had clawed their way to power fighting many odds, failed to solve the ‘Tamil problem’. She failed to study what ‘time’ and ‘agreements’ meant to a tough, ruthless, guerrilla leader lurking in the jungles. She was not prepared sufficiently, she had not studied her opponent, she did not trust or carry her cabinet with her and sent second rate personal emissaries. The talks failed.

Fighting resumed and the war has gone on for six of her seven years as ruler. If the father made us second class citizens and the mother hit us in the stomach, the daughter has caused destruction, rape and death on a massive scale. Just pay a three day visit to Jaffna to see and appreciate the scale of the destruction. ...Please Note Mr. Hammer...Ranjan

As you travel from Palaly to Jaffna town, you will see a large number of houses, with the roofs blown off and trees growing inside, sometimes reaching beyond roof level. Each destroyed house represents the lifetime earnings of a hard working Tamil person. Large extents of very fertile red soil land has been taken over from their private owners near the Palaly airport and Vavuniya airport, for security reasons. The second largest town in Jaffna, Chavakachcheri has been razed to the ground, together with a 125 year old school, Drieberg College.

To Hindus, rape of a woman is unimaginable horror, worse than death. The religion is stricter than other religions about their women being chaste. The practice of ‘sati’, of a widow immolating herself on the funeral pyre of her husband, is a sad part of Hindu history. While Islam and even Roman Catholicism allow widows to remarry, Hindu society expects widows to remain single. A girl found to have just written a love letter to a boy during her schooldays finds it difficult to get married later. Women in all communities pay the price of rape, but Hindu women more so. The modus operandi to sexually assault a Tamil woman is very simple. If an attractive schoolgirl or young woman has to pass a checkpoint on her way to school or work, and she takes the fancy of one of the ‘guardians’ at the checkpoint, all that is needed is to stop her, open her bag, put in a hand grenade and take her into custody as a terrorist.

Krishanthi Kumaraswamy was a tiny tip of the iceberg. What a noise the government made about bringing the culprits to book! Two learned men of the law holding high office in the government went round the world singing hosannas about the action the government had taken to bring the gang rapists and murderers to book. But what about the young Brahmin mother, gang raped, and killed in one of the islands? What about the woman in the East in whose private parts a grenade was exploded to remove the traces of rape?

What about the unmarried 42 year old woman raped near Meesalai? We were amazed to hear the government communique that the LTTE had raped her in order to put the blame on the armed forces of the Government. Not one Tamil would have swallowed this story. It is true that the LTTE has perpetrated some terrible atrocities and heinous crimes, but rape is not one of them. Must give the devil his due.

Innocent, unarmed civilians are killed, always ‘caught in the crossfire’. How many have died? Have there been proper investigations?

Mrs. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga will be Sri Lanka’s ruler for at least another five years. We who live in Sri Lanka will have to live under her ‘management’ for at least five more years. She is Head of State, Head of Government, Minister of Defence, Minister of Finance, and the Department of Wildlife and Sri Lankan Airlines also come under her purview! I wonder why George Bush is Head of State and Head of Government of the United States but has other people as Secretaries of Defence and Treasury. In UK, Tony Blair is not the head of state but only of the government and does not hold a single portfolio. He came to power after Mrs. Kumaratunga and has devolved power to Scotland and Wales, to the extent they wanted. Now there is a Scottish Parliament and the first Chief Minister has passed away and the second is holding office. In India, with over one billion people, Mr. Vajpayee does not hold a single portfolio. He has already created a new state out of Uttara Pradesh and two more are on the cards. India is developing, particularly in the technological field.

In Sri Lanka, the President while directly ‘managing’ so many subjects, TALKS of power sharing, devolution and non-discrimination. But out of the 44 Ministry Secretaries she appointed, which she can do at her sole, absolute discretion, 40 are Sinhalese, with two SL Tamils, one Indian Tamil and one Muslim. So the 75 percent majority has 91 percent of the Ministry Secretary appointments, by the grace of the fair minded President. The situation is worse in other public and corporation sectors. She wants to change the constitution so that she can enjoy power longer.

We Tamils have no place here. We are second class citizens in the land of our birth. Our women are unsafe whether in the north or East or in the metropolis. The economy is in a shambles. The plane named ‘Sri Lanka’ has crashed. The cause can be summed up in two words, ‘Pilot Error’. It is better for our children to migrate, tolerate being second class citizens for may be one generation but lead their lives in more peaceful, law abiding, civilized nations.

The Island - August 09th, 2001