In this review H. L . D. Mahindapala questions the latest "history" re-written by the NGO pundits hired by MARGA and presents the history they have suppressed deliberately to glorify their Jaffna-centric agenda.

The latest pamphlets of MARGA — nineteen in all — linked under the common title of a "History of Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka: Recollections, Reinterpretations and Reconciliation", purports to survey the history of the north-south conflict that plunged the nation into depths of despair. Due to constraints of space it is not possible to review all the set pieces put out by MARGA. This review, therefore, is confined only to two publications: 1) Michael Roberts’s "Sinhala-ness and Sinhala Nationalism" and 2) ) Devanesan Nesiah’s "Tamil Nationalism" with passing references to  3) Godfrey Gunatilleke’s, "Negotiations for the Resolution of the Ethnic Conflict"; (4) C. R. De Silva’s and T. Bartholomeusz’s "The Role of the Sangha in the Reconciliation Process" and (5) Neville Jayaweera’s "The Role of the Churches in the Ethnic Conflict. Roberts and Nesiah were picked from the lot because their publications represent the central themes that intertwine to form the rigid orthodoxy of NGO and pro-Tamil ideologues.

This review is written to question the fundamentals and the details of this orthodoxy which is repeated once again in the latest MARGA "history". By and large, the nineteen contributors consist of the usual ideologues who are better known for their anti-Sinhala-Buddhist theories, recollections and reinterpretations. Nevertheless, it is only fair to evaluate this series on the claims stated by the editorial team consisting of  Roberts, Gunatilleke and Nesiah. According to them, they wrote their version of history "to develop the conceptual and intellectual foundations for the reconciliation of opposing viewpoints". This claim will be examined in due course. For the moment, it is suffice to note that the publications are fairly representative of the political agenda of the MARGA Institute, a company established in 1972 by Godfrey Gunatilleke to market information tailored to keep the Sinhala-Buddhists in a Western strait-jacket.

Taking the declared objectives as the starting point, it is pertinent to ask whether the new MARGA publications contribute "to develop the conceptual and intellectual foundations for the reconciliation of opposing points of view". Not surprisingly, neither the themes nor the contents go anywhere near this pious mission statement of the editorial team. Take, for instance, publications (1) and (2). Michael Roberts goes hammer and tongs at "Sinhala-ness" and "Sinhala Nationalism" while Nesiah struggles painfully to justify the mythical "Tamil Nationalism" for which, he says, he cannot find enough evidence. The double standards mock their declared objectives and their integrity. If "Sinhala-ness" and "Sinhala Nationalism" are projected as the evil twins by editor Roberts what justification is there for editor Nesiah to conclude that "Tamil-ness" and "Tamil Nationalism" are two politically correct moral and political ideals which are due exclusively to the Jaffna Tamils? They are not saying, like some "trans-national" proponents, that "nationalism" per se is a destructive force. No. They are saying selectively that "Sinhala Nationalism" is bad and that the "inaccurate Tamil nationalism" (Nesiah) is good. Where is the "even-handedness" proclaimed so earnestly by the editorial team in their introduction?

Predictably, Roberts’s recollections run on the routine track of demonizing Sinhala-Buddhism. Like most of the anthropologists who view Sri Lankan society only through their coloured lenses, he rides past the Mahavamsa, Dharmapala, "1956", "majoritarianism" — the usual route of the  anti-Sinhala-Buddhist propagandists — and comes to the conclusion (hold your breath readers!) that it is the "Dhammadeepa" and the "Sinhaladeepa" concepts that are at the bottom of the crisis. His breath-taking conclusion is that everything will be solved (Hey presto!) if "the devolutionary concessions are granted to the Tamil people". But, he says, "(T)o grant concessions to the Tamils was political suicide for   these (Sinhala) politicians. ÉThere was, in brief, an in-built restraint on concession to the Tamils (as distinct from the Muslims). In other words, there was no restraint on populism and on the extreme chauvinist positions on the Sinhala side. This encouraged/compelled the Tamil people, initially under the hegemony of the Jaffna activists, to move towards more extreme positions." (p.21)

Orthodoxy

This is his way of repeating the established orthodoxy of the NGO pundits whose fundamental premise is that Jaffna Tamil extremism and its concomitant violence were caused by the Sinhala-Buddhists. At the end of reading his mono-causal recollections one is compelled to ask whether Michael Roberts, after all these years of dabbling in anthropology, could only repeat a hacked theme that conveniently serves his master’s political agenda of demonizing the Sinhala-Buddhists? Besides, doesn’t all this have the "ring of tiresome dŽjˆ vu", as stated initially by Neville Jayaweera and retracted by him in the same breath, leaving him in a limbo of his confused configurations? Jayaweera eventually ends up not knowing whether his oracle, Godfrey Gunatilleke, is the new "epistemological paradigm" that should be emulated or whether he is a "dangerous" "deconstructionist" who should be offloaded unceremoniously. 

The dŽjˆ vu stems from two factors: first, in the repetitive recollections, regurgitating the mono-causal demonology and, second, in the predictability of the conclusion derived from demonizing the Sinhala-Buddhists. These two factors question the motives and the integrity of the editors. How can they hope to reconcile the opposing points of view by demonizing the Sinhala-Buddhists (Roberts) and glorifying the Jaffna-centric politics (Nesiah)? This partisan view of history precludes them from taking into consideration the interaction of the multi-dimensional forces that have thrown contemporary history into an unmanageable spin.

Their "history" claims that there was only one-way traffic from the south to the north. They deny that the Yal Devi ever came down from Jaffna to the south. To maintain this theory of one-way traffic they area forced to exclude the mass of evidence that does not support their anti-Sinhala-Buddhist demonology. Consequently, their theories drift away from reality into outer space. History views the interaction of all complex forces. Propaganda invariably focuses only on a mono-causal theory. The MARGA "history" denies the complex interactions and accepts the mono-causal fantasy.

Michael Roberts stands out as the typical example of this mono-causal demonology. Mark you, he is writing in 2001 when monumental changes in the political landscape in the south have not resulted in commensurate changes in the north. Could it be that he sticks to his na•ve cause- ( Sinhala-Buddhists)-and-effect (Tamil violence) theory because he can’t stomach too much of reality? (Eliot).

Even if Roberts missed the visible landmarks of change in the south, he surely couldn’t have missed the insights of Radhika Coomaraswamy who has stated categorically that (1) the Sinhala community has moved significantly away from "1956" and opted for accommodation with the minorities and (2) it is the intransigent "Tamil nationalism"/extremism that is blocking the path to peace. The shifts in the Sinhala politics from "1956" to 2001 wink in blazing neon lights which he could not have missed unless  — unless, of course, his cerebral connections have gone into a reverse cycle, regressing in the evolutionary scale from the human to the simian. At this lower level of thinking Darwin’s pointed question is valid: "Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mindÉ?" (Cited in the "New York Review of Books", October 4, 2001)

The decline in Michael Roberts’s thinking is apparent given his failure to recognize the new realities, let alone finding new perspectives. With his latest publication he has hit rock bottom, embracing unreservedly the populist propaganda of the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kachchu (Tamil State Party). This is most disappointing because one expects him to maintain some higher, if not objective, standards. Instead he echoes faithfully the manufactured myths of "Tamil nationalism", embellished with a few selections from his knowledge of history. Is this worthy of an academic who continues to display proudly his D. Phil from Oxford as one of his professional trademarks? What is a D. Phil from Oxford worth if it cannot help him to recognize the signpost showing new directions in his environment?

All in all, it is not difficult to choose between the empirical evidence of Radhika Coomaraswamy and the fictitious "sociological imagination" of Roberts. While Radhika Coomaraswamy gravitated to the centre of mounting evidence confirming the radical shift in southern politics from "1956" Roberts has opted to deviate and flee from this incontrovertible centre faster than the speed of lightning. The increasing challenge to the NGO version of history, coming from their own ranks and others, is demolishing their conventional certainties. Faced with this frontal attack, they have rushed to re-write history, mainly (1) to put pressure on the political process to accept their version as the unalterable truth, and (2) to prescribe a solution based solely on their recollections and interpretations which are designed to deny Sinhala-Buddhism its legitimate place in history and enthrone its antagonist pretenders as the heirs to an undue share of the power by weakening the national centre and increasing power at the extremist periphery.

The "history of these ideologues make them look increasingly like "ideo-rogues" who are preparing to hijack history and hold it to ransom. These NGO "ideo-rogues" are identical to the obscurantist theorists who, in the heyday of the Catholic Church, proclaimed that the earth was flat. The few individuals (heretics!) who grasped the reality and challenged the hegemony of the anointed dogma of Church were persecuted, or marginalized. At the height of the ecclesiastical power, and for a long time after, the canonized ideologues did not give up the "flat earth" theory willingly. Financed by the institutional powers of the day they continued to mass produce justifications, theories, recollections and reinterpretations as a common ploy to keep the dead dogma alive, even though it meant retarding the progress of objective science.

The latest series of MARGA publications come within the category of the "flat-earth" theorists, fighting to defend an outdated orthodoxy. The publications are clearly designed to breathe new life into its Sinhala-Buddhist bogey – a fixation tattooed in their minds. From various dogmatic angles the theorists re-write a slanted history essentially to demonize the Sinhala-Buddhists. Roberts is in the forefront of this army of re-writers of a concocted history. In the main, he has not deviated from the political line of the vellahla racists who first manufactured it to demonize the "other".

Without this demonization separatist politics and the accompanying northern violence would not have taken off nor taken root to perpetuate an 18-year-old war. The rationalizations manufactured by NGO pundits to demonize the Sinhala-Buddhists are central to the northern violence. Chandra de Silva and Tessa Bartholomeusz, states: "Those building a ‘civil society’ must ensure that no group becomes the ‘demonized other’É.(p.24). Advancing this point, they add that "the education of the sangha and education about the sangha should be policies deserving the highest of priorities".  Doesn’t this call for the re-education of Roberts "about the sangha"?

The extent to which the Sinhala-Buddhists have been projected as the "demonized other" by the pro-Tamil ideologues becomes evident in the scale of suicide bombers produced by the Tamil Tiger terrorists. According to Jane’s Weekly, Tamil suicide attacks constitute one-third (169 civilians) of the total suicide bombings of the world. This killer squad did not come out of a vacuum. They were produced by those who interpreted history to promote a racist ideology that demonized the Sinhala-Buddhists as the "other". What makes the suicide bomber tick is the bitterness fed into his mind by the ideologues. The loaded interpretation of history has been the tactical technique in the hands of the myth-makers to criminalize the minds of the individual suicide bombers.

It is not the individual psychology that drives the suicide bomber to self-immolation. It is the inculcation of an ideology of hate that goes to criminalize the minds of suicide bombers that makes them assassins. They are not mad men or women running berserk. They are highly alert and conscious agents injected with the deleterious virus of hatred. They are driven by the ideologies of venomous hate spun by the intellectuals to demonize the "other". The history of political violence is invariably preceded by ideologues preparing the grounds for a climate of hate. The manipulative justifications manufactured by the hired and partisan intellectuals energize the fanatics to commit any task of violence assigned to them.

What the intellectuals and the ideologues have begun at the top end is completed and executed by the political manipulators at the bottom. In Jaffna-centric politics, the political correctness defined by the pro-Tamil ideologues culminate in the ultimate ritual at the Last Supper with the Nazi-style Supremo in the wilds of Wanni who anoints suicide bombings as a religious or holy act executed for his political glory. Having manufactured the ideology of hate, and seeing it in action along with the brutalities that flow from it, the intellectuals sit back and then pontificate on the correctness of their analyses and justifications as if they had nothing to do with the unfolding consequences of their perverse sociology, anthropology and now historiography.

Their demonology is not dissimilar to the anti-Semitic theories concocted by the Nazi intellectuals and ideologues in Hitler’s Germany. In fact, their role is identical to that of the intellectuals who went along with the manufactured anti-Semitic ideology which is primarily responsible for criminalizing the behaviour of the German people. The existentialist philosopher, Martin Heidegger, was among the intellectual apologists who justified Hitler’s racism. Though he was a gifted with the power of raising some of the awe-inspiring questions ( "Why something and not nothing?" ) he failed to ask the basic questions related to the dehumanizing of Germany and his role in it. Like the Nazis, the Sri Lankan ideologues turn a blind eye to the relevant questions because slimy intellectuals, then as now, fear to raise the issues that disturb the prevailing orthodoxy and the patronage and perks that go with it. . 

Consider, for instance, the most visible scenario. The New York Times (June 26, 1995) branded Velupillai Prabahakaran as "the latest Pol Pot of Asia."  The University Teachers for Human Rights (Jaffna) has focused on the horrors perpetrated on their own Tamil people by the so-called "liberators" of Tamil Eelam. The forcible recruitment of Tamil children sacrificed to glorify the personality cult of the fascist leader, Prabhakaran, is one criminal act denounced unreservedly by the UTHR. Radhika Coomarasawamy condemned the dehumanization of women recruited into suicide squads. Shocked by the monstrosities that came out of the womb of Jaffna UTHR asked: How did this happen? (Prof. Rajan Hoole, Wake Up Tamils – Nov. 6, 1995, Sunday Times). Quintessential questions like this should have stirred the conscience of Godfrey Gunatilleke, Michael Roberts and D. Nesiah. Instead, they merrily massage the Tamil ego with the myths of "Tamil nationalism" that leads to disastrous consequences.

Continued tomorrow