Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

ESSAY

2004; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 27; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1479027042000186441

1479-0270

Michael Roberts,

Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes See A.J. Wilson, S.J.V. Chelvanayakam and the Crisis Of Sri Lankan Nationalism, 1947–1977 (London: Hurst & Co., 1994), p.140ff; and A.J. Wilson, The Break‐up Of Sri Lanka (London: Hurst & Co., 1988), p.224. Presented in his book Chelvanayakam. See esp. pp.60n, 64, 66, 106–7, 117 and 120–21. K.M. de Silva, ‘Separatism and Political Violence in Sri Lanka’, in K.M. de Silva (ed.) Conflict and Violence in South Asia, (Kandy: ICES, 2000), p.384. The pogrom of July 1983 made me very angry. See Michael Roberts, Exploring Confrontation. Sri Lanka: Politics, Culture and History (Reading: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1994), ch.12 and 13. Cf. Roberts, Exploring Confrontation, ch.12. Also see E.M. Thornton and R. Niththiyananthan, Sri Lanka. Island Of Terror. An Indictment (England: Eelam Research Organisation, 1984); and V. Kanapathipillai, ‘July 1983: The Survivor's Experience', in V. Das (ed.), Mirrors Of Violence. Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp.321–44. It would be tedious to detail all the statements that one could challenge, but for an instance of a preposterous claim, note: ‘Had their been no resistance from the Ceylon Tamils [to the policies of successive governments from 1947 to the 1970s] the traditional territories of the Tamils would have been rapidly “Sinhalised” ’. Wilson, Break‐up, p.54. G.H. Peiris, ‘Clandestine Transactions Of the LTTE and the Secessionist Campaign in Sri Lanka’, in Ethnic Studies Report, Vol.19 (2001), p.3; and R. Cheran, ‘The Sixth Genre: Memory, History and the Tamil Diaspora Imagination’ (Colombo: Marga Institute, A History Of Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, Monograph Series, No.7, 2001), p.2. Based on his knowledge of Tamil and close association with the movement for Tamil liberation, Peter Schalk has recently stressed that the most appropriate indigenous term for ‘Tamil’ is Ilavan or Ilavar, rather than the allegedly pejorative ‘Eelamist’. See Peter Schalk, ‘Ilavar and Lankans, Emerging Identities in a Fragmented Island’, in Asian Ethnicity, Vol.3 (2002), p.48. A more appropriate label for the goal of ‘Eelam’ would be Tamileelam (Thamililam). Indeed, it is this label that is most widely used by the LTTE and those favouring the Tamil struggle. This suggests that the term it is not seen as disparaging. A careful study of the references cited by those publishing from the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) in Kandy and those at the Social Scientists' Association in Colombo would yield an interesting picture. Wilson Break‐up, p.69. S. Sumathy, ‘Militants, Militarism and the Crisis of (Tamil) Nationalism’ (Colombo: Marga Institute, A History Of the Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, Monograph Series, No.22, 2002). For instance, Jayantha Dhanapala and C.R. de Silva, both resident in the USA during the 1990s. A.J. Wilson, Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism. Its Origins and Development in the 19th and 20th Centuries [hereafter TN] (London: Hurst and Co., 2000), p.74 (emphasis added). K.M. de Silva makes a similar point, but as a sharp reprimand to the Sri Lanka Tamils. See K.M. de Silva, ‘Separatism and Political Violence in Sri Lanka’, pp.386–7. Cf. Wilson's earlier comment: ‘Jaffna Tamils [in Colombo] showed no desire to enter into a full and complete relationship with the neighbouring Sinhalese population. Thus, flourishing Jaffna Tamil settlements that grew up in certain parts of the city of Colombo became self‐contained units’. A.J. Wilson, ‘Sinhalese‐Tamil Relations and the Problem Of National Integration’, Ceylon Studies Seminar, 1968/69 Series, No.1. See Wilson, TN, pp.11–12, 155–6. Personal communication from D. Nesiah, supplemented by email note from Lakshman Gunasekera, editor of the Sunday Observer. Note the manner in which de Silva celebrates the role of a ‘die‐hard empiricist’. See K.M. de Silva, ‘A Die‐hard Empiricist Historian Responds’, Daily News (Apr. 1991); and Michael Roberts, ‘People Inbetween and Professor de Silva's Diehard History', Daily News (27 Mar. 1991). Wilson, de Silva and H.A. de S. Gunasekera were a close circle at Peradeniya University when I was teaching there in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Indeed, de Silva and Wilson were critical influences in the election of Gunasekera to the position of Dean, Arts, c. 1969. Since Gunasekera was a leading member of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Trotskyist) and de Silva's connections were with the right‐wing United National Party, these ties cut across party lines. K.M. de Silva's A History Of Sri Lanka was published by Hurst and Company in 1981 and it is likely that de Silva brought Hurst and Wilson together. The emergence of sharp political disagreement between de Silva and Wilson is suggested by Wilson's acid comment in Break‐up, p.30. Among the considerable body of evidence marking the discrimination and/or assaults on Tamils, see S.J. Tambiah, Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling Of Democracy (London: Tauris & Co., 1986); Thornton and Niththiyananthan, Sri Lanka. Island Of Terror; Kanapathipillai, ‘July 1983: The Survivor's Experience'; and Rajan Hoole, Sri Lanka: The Arrogance Of Power. Myths, Decadence and Murder (Colombo: Wasala Publications for the UTHR, 2001), pp.63–169. The various Eelamist forces also indulged in atrocities, sometimes directed against each other in the course of a struggle for power. Ibid., pp.324–5, 338–43, 425–8. The LTTE's carefully engineered assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in India may have been the catalyst that opened the eyes of international governments and led to a re‐evaluation of the Tamil Eelamist cause. Michael Roberts, ‘Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Perspectives: Barriers to Accommodation’, in Modern Asia Studies, Vol.12 (1978), pp.353–76. Written in 1976, this article anticipated the degeneration of the struggles into a warring situation of the type associated with Cyprus, Lebanon and Northern Ireland. This forecast was partially correct and partially erroneous. What has happened in Sri Lanka has been a greater disaster in terms of death, killing and destruction. Godfrey Gunatilleke, ‘Negotiations for the Resolution Of the Ethnic Conflict’ (Colombo: Marga Institute, A History Of the Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, Monograph Series, No.1, 2001), p.6. There is a sense in which K.M. de Silva also supports a similar thesis, though his summary is qualified by a conceptualisation of ‘separatism’ in broad terms to encompass the Federal Party's goals in 1949. See K.M. de Silva, ‘Separatism and Political Violence in Sri Lanka’, pp.388, 391–3. Both Gunatilleke and I have been roundly abused by H.L.D. Mahindapala, a former editor of a newspaper who is now residing in Melbourne and is widely identified with Sinhala hardliners. See H.L.D. Mahindapala, ‘Academics expose Michael Roberts’, 24 May 2002 [http://www.LankaWeb]; H.L.D. Mahindapala, ‘Tamil Racism boosted by Bogus Theories’, 25 May 2002 [http://www.LankaWeb]; and http://www.island.lk, 17 Nov. 2001 et seq. Again, in July this year (2002), the editor of the Daily News refused to consider some of my articles on Sri Lankan cricket—repeat ‘cricket’—on the grounds that I was ‘that LTTE political scientist’ (email note from an intermediary, 2 Aug. 2002). K.M. de Silva, A History of Sri Lanka (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1981); K.M. de Silva, Managing Ethnic Tensions in Multi‐Ethnic Societies. Sri Lanka 1880–1985 (Lanham: University Press of America, 1986); and K.M. de Silva, Reaping the Whirlwind. Ethnic Conflict, Ethnic Politics in Sri Lanka (Penguin Books, 1998) Notwithstanding the works of Thaninayagam, Arasaratnam, Sivathamby, Russel, Manogaran, Cheran, Narayan Swamy and Hellmann‐Rajanayagam among others. For signs of early extremism, see D.B.S. Jeyaraj, ‘The Composition, Ideology and International Dimension Of the Tamil Secessionist Movement Of Sri Lanka: An Overview’, in R. Premdas (ed.), The Enigma Of Ethnicity (St. Augustine, Trinidad: School of Continuing Studies, University of West Indies, 1993) pp.289–90; and note the activities of the Pulip Padai from 1961 onwards, in M.R. Narayan Swamy, Tigers of Lanka. From Boys to Guerrillas (Delhi: Konark Publishers, 1994), p.24. Nor should one forget that G.G. Ponnambalam's attempts to protect Sri Lankan Tamil interests in the 1930s and early 1940s rendered his politics an obstacle to the reform of the existing Donoughmore Constitution in the direction of independence. In effect, he sought to work with the British. See M. Roberts (ed.), Documents Of the Ceylon National Congress and Nationalist Politics in Ceylon, 1929–1940, Vol. III (Colombo: Dept. of National Archives, 1977), item 114, pp.2483–98. While Wilson is critical of Ponnambalam, he fails to bring this out in an incisive manner in either TN or Break‐up—in part because he is totally unaware of Documents Of the Ceylon National Congress. For other evidence of extreme forms of Tamil chauvinist sentiment as early as the 1930s, sitting alongside extreme forms of Sinhala chauvinism, see Jane Russel, Communal Politics under the Donoughmore Constitution, 1931–1947 (Dehiwala: Tisara Prakasakayo, 1982). S. Arasaratnam, ‘Nationalism, Communalism and National Unity in Ceylon’, in P. Mason (ed.) India and Ceylon: Unity and Diversity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), p.274 (emphasis added). Michael Roberts, ‘History as Dynamite’, Island Special Millennium Issue (1 Jan. 2000), p.34. Note my arguments on these lines in mid‐2001. Michael Roberts, ‘Thoughts on Peace in Sri Lanka’, 31 July 2001, draft memo for Marga discussions. This picture is contradicted by K.M. de Silva in Reaping the Whirlwind, pp.150, 154; as well as a quotation from a policy statement by the Federal Party in 1951 quoted in Robert N. Kearney, The Politics Of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973), p.116. Thus, see the news report on the public meeting of the All‐Ceylon Tamil Congress on 10 April 1937 and the memorandum (to the British government) submitted by the president of the All‐Ceylon Tamil Conference in July 1937. See Roberts (ed.), Documents Of the Ceylon National Congress, Vol. III, items 91 and 93, pp.2100ff, 2140ff. The concept ‘community’ was used widely to refer in the third person to all groups, e.g. the Malays, Burghers, Mohammedans, etc., and was also adopted as a self‐description. On the Jaffna Youth Congress, see Devanesan Nesiah, ‘The Claim Of Self‐Determination: A Sri Lankan Tamil Perspective’, in Contemporary South Asia, Vol.10 (2001) pp.59–60; Devanesan Nesiah, ‘Tamil Nationalism’ (Colombo: Marga Insitute, A History Of Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, Monograph Series, No. 6, 2001), pp.9–13; and Russel, Communal Politics under the Donoughmore Constitution, pp.26–51. R. Cheran, ‘Cultural Politics Of Tamil Nationalism’, in South Asia Bulletin, no.12 (1992), pp.44–6. Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi, ‘The Case for a Federal Constitution for Ceylon’ (Colombo: 1951), as quoted by Robert N. Kearney, Communalism and Language in the Politics Of Ceylon (Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 1967), p.94. Michael Roberts, ‘Meanderings in the Pathways Of Collective Identity and Nationalism’, in M. Roberts (ed.), Collective Identities, Nationalisms and Protest in Modern Sri Lanka (Colombo: Marga Publications, 1979), pp.38–9; and Michael Roberts, ‘Sinhala‐ness and Sinhala Nationalism’ (Colombo: Marga Insitute, A History of Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, Monograph Series, No. 4, 2001), p.22. Also see Cheran, ‘Cultural Politics Of Tamil Nationalism’, p.46. See the ‘CCP's Resolutions and Memoranda and the CNC, Oct–November 1944', being item 124 in Roberts (ed.), Documents Of the Ceylon National Congress, Vol.III, pp.2574–91 (emphasis added). The words here are virtually verbatim from Josef Stalin's famous pamphlet Marxism and the National and Colonial Question (London: Lawrence & Wishart Ltd., repr., 1940). With emphasis added, this quotation is from Chelvanayakam's ‘Presidential Address’ in 1951 as quoted by Kearney, Communalism and Language in the Politics Of Ceylon, p.93. K. Kailasapathy, The Cultural and Linguistic Consciousness Of the Tamil Community in Sri Lanka (Colombo: 1982). A Sinhala scholar of the same vintage as Wilson, E.R. Sarachchandra, makes a similar mistake in his early work when he remarks that ‘the national and religious revival [in the Sinhala medium at the grassroots level in the British period] was almost completely divorced from the political movement [for constitutional reform] that started about the same time.’ See E.R. Sarachandra, The Folk Drama Of Ceylon (Colombo: Ministry of Cultural Affairs, 2nd ed., 1966), p.213. I have marshalled evidence against this type of approach in numerous publications. See Michael Roberts, ‘The Political Antecedents Of the Revivalist Elite within the MEP Coalition Of 1956’, in C.R. de Silva and Sirima Kiribamune (eds), K.W. Goonewardena Felicitation Volume (Peradeniya University, 1989), pp.185–220; Michael Roberts, Exploring Confrontation, ch.12, 3 and 6; and Michael Roberts, People Inbetween. Vol.1. The Burghers and the Middle Class in the Transformations within Sri Lanka, 1790s–1960s (Ratmalana: Sarvodaya Book Publishing, 1989), ch.1. Sumathi Ramaswamy, ‘The Nation, the Region and the Adventures Of a Tamil “Hero” ’, in Contributions to Indian Sociology, n.s., Vol.28, (1994), pp.295–322; and Sumathi Ramaswamy, Passions Of the Tongue. Language Devotion in Tamil India, 1891–1970 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). M.S.S. Pandian, The Image Trap (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1992). Cheran, ‘Cultural Politics Of Tamil Nationalism’, pp.42–56. This argument is developed in greater detail, quite tendentiously and through selective choice of data as much as an instrumentalist perspective, in Wilson's Break‐up. See, for example, pp.7–8, 15, 17, 22, 29–32, 60. My verdict is based on the work put into the book‐length introduction to Roberts (ed.) Documents Of the Ceylon National Congress as well as memories derived from extensive interviews in the late 1960s with British and Ceylonese civil servants of that era, besides a few political activists (eg. A.W.H. Abeyesundera, R.S.S. Gunewardene, A.P. Jayasuriya, D.H.S. Nanayakkara, and Dr S.A. Wickremasinghe). A.J. Wilson, ‘The Crewe‐McCallum Reforms, 1912–1921’, in Ceylon Journal Of Historical and Social Studies, Vol.2 (1959), pp.84–120; A.J. Wilson, ‘The Development Of the Constitution’, in K.M. de Silva (ed.), History of Ceylon. Vol. 3 (University of Ceylon Press Board, 1973), pp.359–80; Roberts (ed.), Documents of the Ceylon National Congress; Roberts, ‘Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Perspectives’, pp.353–76; Michael Roberts, ‘Stimulants and Ingredients in the Awakening Of Latter‐Day Nationalisms’, in M. Roberts (ed.), Collective Identities, Nationalisms and Protest in Modern Sri Lanka (Colombo: Marga Publications, 1979), pp.214–42; Russel, Communal Politics under the Donoughmore Constitution, p.332; K.M. de Silva, ‘The Reform and Nationalist Movements in the Early Twentieth Century’, in K.M. de Silva (ed.), History of Ceylon. Vol.3 (University of Ceylon Press Board, 1973) pp.381–407; and K.M. de Silva, A History Of Sri Lanka (Delhi: Oxford University Press. 1981), ch.27–32. Wilson's new position seems to have been reached in the mid‐1980s and is quite marked his 1988 book Break‐Up. Roberts, ‘Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Perspectives’, pp.355‐6; Russel, Communal Politics under the Donoughmore Constitution, pp.333–4; and Arasaratnam, ‘Nationalism, Communalism and National Unity in Ceylon’, pp.261‐2. Cf. Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction Of Communalism in Colonial North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), ch.1. As, indeed, I have argued, by contrasting the more flexible position adopted by C.E. Corea and young S. W.R.D. Bandaranaike in the 1920s with that of the other leaders. See Roberts, ‘Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka and Sinhalese Perspectives’, p.359. Samerawickrame was known among his peers as the ‘keeper of the nation's conscience'. See H.A.J. Hulugalle, The Life and Times Of D.R. Wijewardene (Colombo: Associated Newspapers of Ceylon, 1960), p.vii of index and pp.74–5. See Wilson's references to Manning in his rather dry study, ‘The Development Of the Constitution’, pp.359–80; as well as Wilson, ‘Sinhalese‐Tamil Relations and the Problem Of National Integration’. A.J. Wilson ‘Politics and Political Development since 1948’, in K.M. de Silva (ed.), Sri Lanka. A Survey (London: Hurst & Co. 1977), p.285 (emphasis added). See K.M de Silva, A History Of Sri Lanka, pp.390–5 for a summary of Manning's activities. Detailed analysis is in K.M. de Silva, ‘The Ceylon National Congress in Disarray, 1920–1: Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam leaves the Congress’, in Ceylon Journal Of Historical and Social Studies, n.s., Vol.II (1972), pp.97–117; and K.M. de Silva, ‘The Ceylon National Congress in Disarray II: The Triumph Of Sir William Manning, 1921–1924’, in Ceylon Journal Of Historical and Social Studies, n.s., Vol.III (1973), pp.16–39. As problematically, he invests the Sri Lanka Tamils of the 1920s and 1930s with the same faith in the British: ‘They hoped’, he says, ‘that Britain would remain in the island until the majority and minorities had time to reconcile their differences’. See TN, p.80. This seems to be a gross misreading of the anti‐colonial sentiments of the Jaffna Youth Congress as well as all those Tamils who joined the Leftists. For contrary evidence, see Nesiah, ‘The Claim Of Self‐Determination’, pp.59–60; and Cheran, ‘Cultural Politics Of Tamil Nationalism’ pp.46–8. Nor must one forget that some Tamils, such as M.A. Arulanandan, Dr S. Muttiah, Dr E.V. Ratnam and C.S. Rajaratnam, remained within the Ceylon National Congress in the 1920s. My adjectival insertion ‘Sri Lankan’ thereby distinguishes the so‐called ‘Indian Tamils’ or Malaiyaha Tamils from the Sri Lankan Tamils. Chandrakanthan, typically, makes no such differentiation. In a hegemonic move he subsumes the sentiments of the latter within his own. Indeed, he proclaims confidently that Prabhakaran's fame and mythical status has ‘partly helped the gradual intra‐ethnic unification of the Tamil community’. See TN, p.161. For Sinhalese forms of k ā vya, see the sand ē sa (message) poems. For an excellent translation of one, the Pärakumba sirita, see K.D.P. Wickremasinghe (ed.), Pärakumba Sirita (Colombo: M.D. Gunasena and Co., 1970). For a succinct note on k ā vya in India in the past, see Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), p.232. Chandrakanthan has provided a transliteration that matches the aural sound. The correct rendering should be tarkotai, with appropriate diacritica. The term tarkotai is of new coinage, linking the word tan meaning ‘self’ with kotai meaning ‘gift’. This innovation may be a play on the word for suicide, namely tarkolai. In any event, it raises the act of using one's body as a weapon or tool of protest to a higher sacrificial level than the ‘normal’ act of taking one's life. For elaborations on the sacrificial world of Tamilian heritage, see A.K. Ramanujan, Poems Of Love and War (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985); Denis Hudson, ‘Violent and Fanatical Devotion among the Nayanars: A Study in the Periya Purānam Of Cekkilār’, in A. Hilfbeitel (ed.), Criminal Gods and Demon Devotees (Delhi: Manohar, 1990), pp.373–405; David D. Shulman, The Hungry God. Hindu Tales Of Filicide and Devotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp.16–47; and from a non‐specialist, Michael Roberts, ‘Filial Devotion and the Tiger Cult Of Suicide’, in Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol.30 (1996), pp.245–72. Note the form of sacrifice, or yajna, involving ‘the literal enactment of violent loss’, one that requires the giving of ‘some part or parts of the self’ in ways that ‘[touch] the deepest levels of experience’. See Shulman, The Hungry God, p.16. Margaret Trawick, Notes on Love in a Tamil Family (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp.26, 30. In southern India the actor‐turned politician, MGR, was called puratchi talaivar as well as ithaya deivam, namely ‘revolutionary leader’ and ‘lord of our hearts’. See Frontline (9–22 Jan. 1988); and Pandian, The Image Trap, p.117. The terms thesai and thalaivar have been spelt in the text in the style adopted by Chandrakanthan, which is the popular Sri Lankan manner. The correct transliteration would be tesai, talaivar, etc. Thus the burning of the Jaffna Library in 1981 (by reservist policemen avenging the killing of a Tamil colleague) is presented as ‘the beginning of a systematic cultural genocide’ (p.160). Cf. K. Sivathamby, ‘The Ideology Of Saiva‐Tamil Integrality. Its Socio‐Historical Significance in the Study Of Yālppānam Tamil Society’, in Lanka, Vol.5 (1990), pp.176–85. By its very nature this picture excludes the ‘Indian Tamils’ who came in the British period to work in the city of Colombo, the railways and public works departments and, above all, on the plantations. These people comprised as much as 12.9 percent of the total population in 1911 and 17.1 percent of the population of Colombo (as opposed to 12.9 and 7.1 percent respectively for those called ‘Ceylon Tamils’ in that census). When a significant segment of these people reside in the south‐western lowlands and outside the plantations, the description that prevails today, that of ‘Plantation Tamils’ or ‘Malaiyaha Tamils’ is a misnomer. However, some lineages in the towns may have become Sinhala speakers over time. When a highly educated Sinhalese scholar like Jehan Perera, one who is a genuine grassroots worker for multi‐cultural accommodation, is unaware (personal comment in late Jan. 2000) that the eastern coast of Sri Lanka was an integral part of the Kingdom of Kandy from the late sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, the gaps in information—and the success of Tamil propaganda—are starkly manifest. H.C. Ray (ed.), History Of Ceylon, Vol.1, Part I (Colombo: Ceylon University Press, 1959), p.35; and S. Paranavitana, Sigiri Graffiti being Sinhalese Verses Of the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956). TN, p.14 (emphasis added). This type of claim is not new. Russel's researches indicate that the claims of original settlement were being presented by Sri Lankan Tamil propagandists in the 1930s, if not earlier. Russel, Communal Politics under the Donoughmore Constitution, pp.147–50. One writer argued against the teaching of ‘Ceylonese history’ in schools because that would be a means of ‘belittling us our past and humiliating us vis‐a‐vis the Sinhalese’. Speaking at Nawalapitiya in 1939, G.G. Ponnambalam even contended that the ‘greatest Sinhalese Kings were Tamils’ and suggested that the Sinhalese were ‘a nation of hybrids without a history’. Ibid., p.148. S. Pathmanathan, The Kingdom Of Jaffna (Colombo: A.M. Rajendran, 1978) pp.1–32. This sketch indicates that the Tamil immigrants were mainly merchants and soldiers, including armies in the service of invaders or local kings who hired mercenaries. It notes that the ‘Tamils living in the island were concentrated in towns like Māntai and Anurādhapura, while the rest were scattered in the market towns and military outposts’ (p.28). By its very nature the fragmentary data cannot indicate whether the Tamil speakers remained Tamil speakers over the centuries that followed. Subsequently, in the last chapter of TN, Wilson presents two other statements that are open to question: (i) when he says that the Tamil armies of the north were ‘poised to capture the whole island’ in the fourteenth century (p.176); and (ii) when he suggests that the Tamil‐speakers of the first millennium CE considered themselves to be one of the ‘founding races’ of the island (p.177). The concept of founding races, presented in single quotation marks by Wilson, appears to be his invention. It is a phrase I cannot recall seeing in the early twentieth century representations. In any event, it functions in TN as a historical charter for the Tamil claims. Cf. the acid comments on the manipulation of history by Tamil politicians as well as some scholars in K.M. de Silva, Reaping the Whirlwind, pp.152–3; and K.M. de Silva, ‘Separatism and Political Violence in Sri Lanka’, pp.383–4. I stress that Pathmanathan, in his Kingdom Of Jaffna, does not indulge in such outrageous statements. In fact, note the paraphrase of his carefully circumscribed statements in fn.59 above. K. Indrapala, ‘Dravidian Settlements in Ceylon and the Beginnings Of the Kingdom Of Jaffna’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1965), pp.273, 282. Also see K. Indrapala, ‘Early Tamil Settlements in Ceylon’, in Journal Of the Royal Asiatic Society, Ceylon Branch, n.s., Vol.13 (1969), pp.43–63. Significantly, Indrapala's dissertation held in the library of the University of London has disappeared since I worked through it in 1995. Quite poignantly, Indrapala, who is Sri Lankan Tamil by upbringing, retired prematurely from academia after rising to the position of Dean of the Arts Faculty at the University of Jaffna and has since become a recluse in Sydney. I suspect that it is the weight of pressures from within community that enforced these directions in his life. Ray (ed.), History of Ceylon, Vol.1, Part 1, pp.33–40, 66, 82–3; and Paranavitana, Sigiri Graffiti, pp.xii–xxxii, clxxi–clxxv, ccxiii–ccxv, ccxvi–ccxxi, esp. paras. 198, 565, 714 and 718–21. Most of the graffiti have been dated in the eighth and ninth centuries, though a few are said to be tenth century inscriptions. The only passing comment in TN is late in the day and not all that explicit. See p.176. See any history of the Portuguese period (1505–1656) and the maps attached to them; for example, Maps 1 and 2 in G.H. Peiris, Development and Change in Sri Lanka (Kandy: ICES, 1996), p.17. Also see Donald Ferguson, The Earliest Dutch Visits to Ceylon (Delhi: Asian Educational Services, repr., 1998). Indeed, the rulers of the Kingdom of Kotte claimed authority over the whole island and the terms Sinhalaya, Sinhal ē, Tunsinhalaya etc. expressed this cakravarti notion. Thus, a form of ‘ritual sovereignty’ operated. See ‘Sri Lanka in the Early 16th Century: Political Conditions’, in K.M. de Silva (ed.), History Of Sri Lanka Vol. II (Colombo: Sridevi, 1995), p.11. I would call it ‘tributary overlordship’ based on rites of gift‐giving homage. This is a complex issue that I cannot develop here. Indeed, if one goes further back in time to the era of the Rajarata civilisation in, say, the fifth to twelfth centuries CE, as Wilson and every Sri Lankan knows only too well, the eastern regions as well as the Jaffna Peninsula were ‘the traditional habitat’ of Sinhala speakers. ‘Tradition’ and ‘history’ constitute a cake that can be cut in many ways. See G.H. Peiris, ‘An Appraisal Of the Concept Of a Traditional Homeland’, mimeo paper presented in 1985 at the National Workshop on the Economic Dimensions of the Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, ICES, which then informed the 1987 work by K.M. de Silva, The ‘Traditional Homelands’ Of the Tamils (Kandy: ICES. rev. 2nd ed. 1995), and that of Vidyamali Samarasinghe, ‘Ethno‐Regionalism as a Basis for Geographical Separation in Sri Lanka’, in Ethnic Studies Report, Vol.6 (July 1988), pp.24–51. Indeed, one of the key features of K.M. de Silva's booklet is the series of figs. 4 to 6 by Gerald Peiris. For printed versions of this seminal article, see G.H. Peiris, ‘An Appraisal Of the Concept Of a Traditional Homeland’, in Ethnic Studies Report, Vol.9 (1991), pp.13–39; and for further work see G. Peiris, ‘Irrigation, Land Distribution and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka: An Evaluation Of Criticisms, with Special Reference to the Mahaveli Programme’, in Ethnic Studies Report, Vol.12 (1995), pp.43–88; and G.H. Peiris, ‘An Appraisal Of the Concept Of a Traditional Homeland in Sri Lanka’, Island (24 Mar. 1999). The latter article is a measured demolition of the 1990 attempts by Peebles and Shastri in the Journal of Asian Studies to rebut his original article, while also pinpointing errors in C. Manogaran's Ethnic Conflict and Reconciliation in Sri Lanka (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987). Roberts, ‘Meanderings in the Pathways’, pp.74–5. Volume Of Speeches and Minutes Of Sir Henry Ward (Colombo, 1864). It is to Farmer's credit that he read Ward's Minutes on his journeys in the Eastern Province of that day. See B.H. Farmer, Pioneer Peasant Colonization in Ceylon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), pp.102n, 105n. See the detailed description of the village of Panama in Nur Yalman, Under the Bo Tree. Studies in Caste, Kinship, Marriage in the Interior Of Ceylon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp.310–24. Also see Jon Dart, ‘The Coast Veddas: Dimensions Of Marginality’, in K.N.O. Dharmadasa and S.W.R. de A. Samarasinghe (eds), The Vanishing Aborigines (Delhi: Vikas Publishing for ICES, 1990), pp.67–83; and Gananath Obeyesekere, ‘The Historical Implications Of Vädda Ethnicity’, paper presented to the Neelan Tiruchelvam Commemoration Symposium, 31 Jan. 2000. On the processes by which Vaddas were incorporated as Buddhists and Sinhalese in recent centuries, see G. Obeyesekere, ‘Where have all the Väddas gone? Buddhism and Aboriginality in Sri Lanka’, in Neluka Silva (ed.), The Hybrid Island (Colombo: Social Scientists' Association, 2002), pp.1–19. Quite independently, Peiris himself stressed that his findings are ‘subject to all the limitations attached to census data’. Personal communication, Mar. 2002. Wilson, Break‐up, p.37 (emphasis added). Also see pp.30, 38, 60, 73, 75. While granting that I must re‐visit the literature and the evidence, these are based on memories of readings over the years that encompass Sir Hugh Clifford, ‘Some Reflections on the Ceylon Land Question’, in Tropical Agriculturist, Vol. LXVIII (1927), pp.290–2; the report of the Land Commission published as Sessional Paper XVIII of 1929; Farmer, Pioneer Peasant Colonization in Ceylon; and Vijaya Samaraweera, ‘Land Policy and Peasant Colonization’, in K.M. de Silva (ed.), History of Ceylon. Vol. 3 (University of Ceylon Press Board, 1973), pp.446–60; as well as my recollections of interviews in the late 1960s with former Ceylon civil servants (see fn. 80 below). Farmer's coverage is comprehensive and encompassed implementation as well as policy. To the best of my knowledge there was no other work of this sort anywhere in Asia at this time. Farmer also inspired a generation of scholars working on agrarian transformation in South Asia within Britain, for example Gerald Peiris, John Harriss, Barbara Harriss, Robert Chambers, and Madduma Bandara. It would be feasible to suggest that during the time of the British occupation most Ceylonese took pride in the achievements of the Rajarata civilisation. Thus, see Arunachalam's note to himself: ‘what a glorious thing it would be for Ceylon to emulate and excel her glorious past’ (diary extract according to notes taken by James T. Rutnam). Again, the research that resulted in the book People Inbetween indicated that most Burghers and others regarded ‘Ceylon’ as a Sinhala country. I did not take specific references, however, because it was not an interest I was pursuing then. Other than Farmer's Pioneer Peasant Colonization in Ceylon (esp. pp.141–60), other reviews of early land settlement policy can be located in Samaraweera, ‘Land Policy and Peasant Colonization’; and Mick Moore, The State and Peasant Politics in Sri Lanka (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp.35–49, 95–8, 164–6, 196–201. Significantly, Kanagasundram ‘helped greatly with the contents’ of the chapter in Farmer's book titled ‘Achievement in Colonization, 1931–1953’. See Farmer, Pioneer Peasant Colonization in Ceylon, p.142n. Other than Kanagasundram who had died prematurely, I interviewed every one of those named, as well as A.N. Strong and C.E. Tilney, during the Roberts Oral History Project of the late 1960s. Lal Jayawardena, ‘The Supply Of Sinhalese Labour to Ceylon Plantations (1830‐1930). A Study in Imperial Policy in a Peasant Society’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1963); and my recollections from pertinent interviews during the Roberts Oral History Project. My interview with G.L.D. Davidson, 9 Dec. 1965; Samaraweera, ‘Land Policy and Peasant Colonization’, pp.450–1; and Moore, The State and Peasant Politics in Sri Lanka, pp.38–9. Thus during one of our conversations Godfrey Gunatilleke (himself a district land officer in the 1950s) noted in passing that his father (a Sinhala Catholic who was by no means chauvinist) adhered to this assumption. Also see Arasaratnam's reading of the ideological foundations supporting the Sinhala‐only forces of the 1950s. See Arasaratnam, ‘Nationalism, Communalism and National Unity in Ceylon’, p.265. C.R. de Silva, Sri Lanka. A History; and Peiris, ‘An Appraisal Of the Concept Of a Traditional Homeland’.