Kashyap wrote:
Actually the Sinhalese and the Muslims get on quite well.
By playing one community against another, yea sure, now the sinhalese and the muslims co-exist as if they dont have a choice. Rewind back even twenty years, and read about the goings-on in your state, and all is not funny and cute. But but, here we have someone painting the sinhalese as uber-saints and buddha-offsprings, will sell for votes in the JVP country. Not here where people have some idea about the perfidy and insaneness that is SL politics.
There has only really been one major riot between the two groups and that was way back in 1915.
Oh how beautiful they get along. Only if someone did nt read much, could that be a truth that is uncontestable. Sorry. Here you go.
So far the Muslim community has allied itself with the majority Sinhalese on most national issues. On the strength of this alliance the community has been able to exploit the Sinhala-Tamil political lacunae to gain unwritten favours and privileges from the Sinhalese governments. Being a second minority this behaviour has its own political and economic rationale in the context of a parliamentary system based on party politics. However, after nearly fifty years of ethnic politics the two major political parties, the UNP and the SLFP have realized that the country cannot progress in a competitive global economy without national peace and harmony. There is also international pressure from global capitalism[13] on both parties to bring the crisis to an end, and one can see a sense of desperation in the search for a settlement with the Tamils. In this desperation lies the danger that the Muslim interest could be sidelined to appease the Tamils.
Although the relationship between the Sinhalese and Muslims in Sri Lanka has been mostly cordial there were periods when the Sinhalese leaders did not fail to show their actual hatred towards the Muslims. During such periods the Sinhalese leadership had been instrumental in instigating the Sinhalese masses to attack Muslim life and property. The racial riots of 1915 was the first major episode in this century when Sinhalese animosity towards the Muslims was violently expressed. The most celebrated Sri Lankan Buddhist revivalJar of that time, Anagarika Dharmapala, was a leading campagner against Muslim presence in the country. To him the Muslims were 'aliens' and 'foreigners' and deserved to be expatriated to Arabia.[14] Although Dharmapala is now dead, the echo of his sentiment can still be heard during times of Sinlaala-Muslim unrest. There is a perception among the commercial Sinhalese middle class that the Muslim hegemony in trade should be curtailed. Bioth the spiritual and secular branches of the Sinhalese bourgeoise share this perception, and it cannot be denied that most of the communal violence against the Muslims has had economic overtones. Even more recently, in the seventies, there were several instances of Sinhalese mob violence against the Muslims in places like Panadura, Galle, Mahiyangana, Puttalam, Kalutara, Gampola and Beruwela in which Muslim business establishments were looted and burnt. If such incidents have diminished in the eighties and nineties that was not because of any fundamental change in the attitude of the diehard chauvinists but because of their current obsession with the major problem of fighting the Tamils.
The Muslim achievements in the field of education and cultural affairs have been hailed as a mark of success to the art of compromising politics. These achievements although look impressive on the surface will have to be seriously scrutinized by the community to see whether those benefits have actually uplifted the Muslims to become competitive with the other communities in a world of shrinking opportunities to the mediocre and incompetent. In spite of this reservation the so-called educational and cultural achievements which were gained through political compromises and personal concessions from the Sinhalese governments inflicted a heavy price on the Muslims in other areas. For example, the Muslims in the Eastern Province have lost a large amount of agricultural land to the Sinhalese because of government sponsored colonization schemes and other economic and cultural project.[15] In the Puttalam and Kurunegala districts of North-West, such losses were incurred under the Paddy Lands Bill. In the South of the country the gem trade which was the traditional stronghold of the Beruwela Muslims was lost to the government under the latter's scheme to nationalize the gem business. In the capital Colombo, Pettah was once the center of Muslim business establishments and today it is no more; and the central zone of Colombo which was once heavily populated by the Muslims who were able to elect regularly two Muslim members to the parliament from the Colombo-Central electorate, was systematically injected with more Sinhalese under the state housing projects carried out by the Ministry of Housing in the seventies and after. Thus, while the governments were supportive of the Muslims to promote their cultural activities and religion-biased education they made every effort to reduce the Muslims' economic strength and political importance. The local Muslim leadership which always preferred to win privileges rather than rights could not openly protest against these setbacks. Even Badiuddin Mahrnud, the most charismatic politician ever produced by the Sri Lankan Muslim community and who had a lot of fighting qualities, could not prevent this economic erosion. All that Mahmud achieved was to create a sub-class of Muslim teachers and administrators, not all of whom were effective in their fields.
The Rise of the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC)
In the political arena the changes which were brought about by the 1978 constitution of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (which later came to be known as the De Gaullist constitution)[16] was a watershed in Muslim politics. This constitution by introducing a complicated system of proportional representation, rode any aspiring poliOclan to throw him/herself at the feet of a political party to win priority placement in that party's nomination list. The number of representatives elected to the parliament under a certain political party depended on the proportion of votes which that party polled in the entire election. The constitution also laid down the rule that if a parliamentarian decided to cross over from one party to another after being elected that member had to relinquish his seat and the party which lost him/her would nominate another. The constitution vitally made the model politician a prisoner of the party hierarchy. Althoigh the Muslims did not protest against this constitution at that time, it was generally feared that the community would stand to lose most under the new system of representation. M. H. M. Ashraf, a young Muslim lawyer from the Eastern Province, thought that the best option to the Muslims was to form their own political party. His political ideas were shaped by the thoughts of two other Muslim personalities, M. A.M. Hussain a retired District Judge and an uncle of Ashraf and Abdul Cader Lebbe the most renowned Muslim Tamil philosopher poet of Sri Lanka. These two personalities were eyewitness to the struggle for Pakistan in the thirties and forties, and they thought that if the Sri Lankan Muslims could unite under one political leadership as most sub-continent Muslims did under the Muslim League in the sub-continent, then they could rise to greater heights in all national fields. Moreover, to Hussain and Lebbe, the rising young lawyer from the East appeared to provide a striking similarity with Muhammad Ali Jinnah of Pakistan who was also a lawyer by profession but became the leader of the Indian Muslim League and eventually the first Prime Minister of independent Pakistan. With the intellectual support of Hussain and Lebbe young Ashraf and a few of his friends formed the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress in the early eighties which was formally registered as a political party in 1986. The Tamil-Muslim racial riots of April 1985 in the Eastern Province added an additional imperative to the formation of this party.
Although Ashraf claims that his party represents the interests of the entire Muslim community in Sri Lanka, the SLMC is actually a regional party based mostly on the support of the Muslims of the Eastern Province. The SLMC is relevant to the population landscape of the Eastern Province, but in the other provinces where each Muslim politician has his own bailiwick, a centralized Muslim political party is bound to be fragile. Yet, the rise of the SLMC has created a major challenge firsfly to national Muslim leadership which traditionally came from Colombo and its suburban areas and which did not favour the formation of any independent political party for the Muslims, let alone the SLMC. Throughout the parliamentary history of Sri Lanka the Muslims were able to steer their political destiny quite creditably without the necessity of a political party of their own. By dividing their support between the two major national parties, the UNP and the SLFP, they were able to avoid the ethnic party politics of the Tamils which, given the inevitable logic of such politics, has driven the country to its current state of political tragedy. In the views of the traditional Muslim leadership, Ashraf's strategy appeared to be damaging that healthy trend. That fact was driven home in a recent development following the formation of the present government.
In spite of the changes introduced by the 1978 constitution to reduce the political clout of the minorities, Muslim support became crucial when the SLFP won the general electohs of 1993 but with a slender majority. Without the support of the SLMC the present coalition government under the leadership of Chandrika Kumaranatunga could not have emerged. In return for this support Ashraf was appointed as the Minister of Shipping and Rehabilitation Affairs by the new government. This appointment increased the number of Muslim ministers in the cabinet to three; the other two being members of the $LFP. This was something which the Sinhala Buddhist supporters of the SLFP could not digest. To them, although the emergence of the SLMC was a welcoming factor in the fight against the Tamils, the position of Ashraf, as a minister in the present government in addition to two other Muslim ministers and Ashraf's flamboyant braggadocio that it was he and his party which were responsible for the formation of this government, was totally intolerable. This statement of Ashraf although it was factually correct, actually showed the political immaturity of an exuberant youngster. In any case, a section of the Buddhist population led by some leading Buddhist monks became agitated and as happened on several occasions in the past, anti-Muslim feelings were whipped up. Before the situation deteriorated, the Buddhist Sangha acted with wisdom to pressurize Ashraf to rescind his statement.
Even on earlier occasions Muslim ministers in the Sri Lankan parliament had created Sinhala-Muslim communal tension because of their rash statements and shortsighted politics; but because they happened to be members of the ruling national party the government was always quick to take measures of damage control. This time it was not a national party minister but a coalition parmer whose loyalties to the government was contractual. Fortunately for the nation and to the Muslim community, that parmer did not carry the bulk of the Muslim support. However the incident helps one to understand the enormous risk involved in forming a single ethnic party to represent the entire Muslim community. The emergence of the SLMC has also created problems for the Tamil parties and particularly for the LTTE. Recent statements by LTTE spokesmen reveal that LTTE now appears to regret the damage it has done to Tamil Muslim relationship. The task of repairing that damage has been made difficult, however, by the rise of SLMC which stands to gain by keeping the two communities divided. It is an impasse situation and there is no quick solution to it. Irrespective of these developments, the rise of the SLMC has brought the Muslim factor to the frontline of any permanent solution to the ethnic crisis.
Relations between the Muslims and Tamils, however, haven't been so rosy especially since the arrival of the LTTE. The Muslims were ethnically cleasned from the northern province and faced attacks in the east.
Sure, they have nt been rosy between Tamils and the Muslims. They have nt been rosy between Sinhalese and Muslims either.
But the fact reamins that Tamils are the only subcontinental non-Muslim community who have provided suicide bombers to the world, and we are not talking minor here.
Anyone who takes a gun and kills and maims people with a pan-societal cause is committing a crime. The Tamils may have had suicide bombing squads. But the sinhalese are not far off in either the scale and degree of violence or the ruthlessness of destruction on their own who dont conform or on others who resist. Thanks for the moral preaching though.
There are more than 1 billion Muslims and some 55 million Tamils, yet the Tamil community have provided more suicide bombers to the world than the more than 1 billion Muslims.
So the 30000 sinhalese killed in the 1987-90 JVP instigated riots in South Sri Lanka when the IPKF was holding fort in the North so that Jayewardene's troops could go down south and slaughter fellow-sinhalese who sided with JVP is a part of some magic figure that does nt count because ah-noone used a soosai bum?!
Tamils created and ran a terrorist group that is banned in India, US, UK, EU, Malaysia etc and the FBI called it one of the
most deadliest terror groups in the world.
And once upon a time, the two main parties SLFP and UNP provided succor to the JVP and its clones. Anagarika Dharmapala, the foremost sinhalese supremacist monk of the yesteryears was in the forefront of instigating anti-Muslim and anti-Tamil relations. What more needs to be said about a chauvinist state that neither understands the idea of dharma, but has nuff enthusiasm to make it the state prerogative.
Tamil terrorists were the only ones who have succeded in killing two heads of states. Even Pakistani terror groups have not tasted that much success, although I am sure would dearly love to assasinate Mr Manmohan Singh.
There was a sinhalese soldier who made an attempt on Shri Rajiv Gandhi's life before the LTTE got to him. Who would count that, your father?!
Kudos to you for trying to spin this into a Buddhist vs Hindu thing.
Noone is putting a spin on things, it is all there in black and white for those who want to be informed. SL's history and its raising of the mahawamsa over the last century has been an act of Buddhist revival that has seen its relations with other religions as a zero-sum game. You can either learn to accept facts about your country or put up evidence to the contrary especially when someone has the balls to throw in historical evidences to such a thesis. In short, put up or shut up.
Perhaps someone has forgotten that mahinda rajapakse himself was an actor to start with. How come the forward Sri Lankans follow the tactics of the backward Tamil Nadu folks?!
How many Sri Lankans know this? Which movies? Does anyone even know? What about Chandrika, Ranil, Premadasa, DS Senanayake, Wijetunga, the two Bandaranaikes? How many temples are built for movie stars in Sri Lanka? How many are there in Tamil Nadu?
Before we get to this bullshite, India is a democracy and any citizen can compete in elections. If the people elect a legitimate candidate, he/she rules. That is the rule of the law. The fact that he may have been an actor/actress is immaterial to this. And there have been enough actors all over the world who have been smart enough to run their countries/states. Nothing, especially common sense, precludes this. So why whine around when you have a better hypothesis to fight?
Oh so its "linguistic pride" for Tamils but linguistic chauvinism for anyone else? Let me rephrase your reply:
Tamils did not want Tamil to be accorded the numero uno status in the Indian Constitution. They wanted equal rights for all languages. On the contrary, the sinhalese wanted their language, culture and religion to be the pre-dominant one. Ergo, apples and oranges. Sinhalese are chauvinists, Tamils are equal-right seekers. Yes, sinhalese are chauvinists.
You have been railing against Hindi on this board previously. The fact that you attempt to try and explain away Tamil extremism in your post just goes to show that it is an issue.
There are no justifications for unequal rights for citizens of India, whether they speak Tamil or Hindi. Any GoI or state government that does such an act deserves opprobrium and vilest condemnation. In that aspect, surely the Nehru government of 47-62 was short-sighted. There was course-correction and such a course-correction was applauded by Tamil politicians, essentially from what you call the backward Tamil film industry. There have been less issues once both parties have compromised on goals that are attainable. What goals have been understood between the Tamils and the sinhalese in SL? There is as much anger and condemnation between the sinhalese and Tamils, as there has been between the other two combinations. Thank you.
Tamil Nadu has been one state that has run a hate campaign against Hindi and which refused to really accept Hindi.
Yes, and even today TN will refuse to accept Hindi if it is unilaterally bombarded by the force of the GoI. If people do accept it out of their volition, noone (definitely not me) has an issue. Enemies are not seen everywhere, but discriminatory policies are well-understood. So in that sense, the TN population is far more intelligent and accepting of the nuances of the situation that are hot-headed sinhalese extremists. The very fact that the Dravida naadu movement died down is a fact that TN people are intelligent. So take that.
Nirupama Rao, Shashi Tharoor and MK Narayanan are all Malayalis.
Smt. Nirupama Rao was born in what is now Kerala, but is a Kannadiga. Certainly she is one of the most brightest Foreign Service personnel India has ever seen. So shove your comments about Tamils hating her for being a "Malayali." Noone cares about where she was born, she is the Indian Foreign Secretary and holding such a high position as she is, and being in SL before, she knows the TN's viewpoint far better than neanderthals in SL.
Get used to it, TN will always be the "monkey wrench" in what you call India-SL relations. There are no two things about it. GoI and GoTN policies are synchronized and if there is a lack of consensus, it will be hammered out. GoTN has hardly whined about GoI in public, so you have no locus standi on this issue.
Yes, Sri Lanka's constitution accords Buddhism "foremost position" in the country. But this does not change the fact that Sri Lanka has a far better record of religious harmony than does India.
The proof of that claim is in the pudding. SL has a far better record is a statement that is only a statement unless everyone around you believes it. You choose to believe what you do, but the fact remains that the SL constitution is a bigoted one, as is Malaysia's bhumiputra policy. The two cases are similar, one is islamic, the other buddhist. No two things about it.
Seems like I touched a nerve
You are welcome.
...prev page made things clear.
)
-- we are soooo proud of it) in the early/mid 2009. Just one year passed and you can see how the Sinhalese started changing their tune. Wait for few more years for the full implication of that destruction 
It is to Sri Lanka's advantage to do so at this stage. Has played the balance quite well so far. As you yourself admit, Indian Tamils (ie Tamil Nadu) will continue to exert an influence on India's policy towards Sri Lanka. That will affect Indo-Lankan relations. It's upto India, not Sri Lanka to balance that with its national interest. That China and Pakistan are in the picture is India's fault, not Sri Lanka's. If you want to blame anyone, please blame your policy makers who chose not to have a full defence relationship with Sri Lanka during the war.