The ultimate expression of anti-Sinhala racism was enshrined as the official history of Tamils in the Vadukoddai Resolution of 1976. It the scapegoat on which Jaffna politicians have been riding, partly to cover up their political sins of treating their own people as pariahs unfit for human society and partly to demonise the Sinhala-Buddhists – the indispensable political tool used consistently to gain political mileage both domestically and internationally.Ī common feature of Jaffna politics is the refusal to assess Sri Lankan history objectively without looking at it through the coloured lenses of either Ponnambalam, or S. Since then the anti-Sinhala racism of Jaffna politics has been the regular diet fed to the people of Jaffna. Bandaranaike, thanked him for giving a boost to the newly formed Sinhala Maha Sabha which was established to counter anti-Sinhala racism. It is his distortions of history that caused the first Tamil-Sinhala riots in Nawalapitiya in 1939. The usual litany of complaints against the Sinhalese, which began with Ponnambalam, was dismissed by the Soulbury Commissioners as stuff and nonsense, unsubstantiated by the available evidence.īut this did not stop him from attacking the Mahavamsa and Sinhala history. They survived in politics by rousing communal passions in Jaffna against the Sinhalese.
![srilankan tamil eelam srilankan tamil eelam](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mHLBaRj2HHA/maxresdefault.jpg)
Neither he nor any of his successors who held the leadership of Jaffna stood for any progressive, liberal, socialist, or pluralistic political programmes for peaceful co-existence. He became the champion of the Tamils by delivering a nine-hour lecture to the Soulbury Commissioners in which he blamed “the Sinhala government” for “discriminating” against the Tamils. Ponnambalam who launched his political campaign in the thirties by targeting the Sinhalese and their history.
![srilankan tamil eelam srilankan tamil eelam](https://i.cbc.ca/1.2181488.1382597742!/httpImage/image.jpg)
One of the main thrusts of peninsular politics was to distort Sri Lankan history and polarise the two communities to keep them apart on ethnic lines.
![srilankan tamil eelam srilankan tamil eelam](https://www.thestatesman.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Eelam.jpg)
Distorted history indeed played a central role in dividing the Sinhala-Tamil communities on ethnic lines. Part of the crisis we are facing today was caused by either deliberately hiding the realities of history, or by political activists distorting it to suit expedient politics and partisan ideologies.