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Caution - Appu Army is LTTE
- Thread starter saraprobe
- Start date
ummm..I am pretty sure that Appu Army got nothing to do with "Red T-Shirt".. I saw them and yes, there were some people with the "red t-shirts" mingling with and around appu army band....but they werent a part of the appu army group..
..What the original article says is that there were some people wearing "red t-shirt" at the cricket with other sri lankans...
Either way, i dont think we can do anything to stop these people wearing pro-LTTE t-shirts. I've seen my self, there was a guy @ the sydney match wearing a t-shirt with LTTE "logo" .. what can we do, nothing....
..What the original article says is that there were some people wearing "red t-shirt" at the cricket with other sri lankans...
Either way, i dont think we can do anything to stop these people wearing pro-LTTE t-shirts. I've seen my self, there was a guy @ the sydney match wearing a t-shirt with LTTE "logo" .. what can we do, nothing....
ltte eka witharak newei unta kelinma ho vakrawa unath sahaya dena ewun wa api selakiya yutthe saturan widiyatai...
ruchira_jay said:
Was there??
I didnt see ne...
Anyway ai agree with what u say..what can we do abt it? nothing...
Even my fathers cardiologist use to be a tamil srilankan, who openly talkd abt his funding to the LTTE with my dad...
But my dad, stopd going to that doctor as it was quite annoying to listn to his storys... These pple do it very opnly, and they talk abt it openly as well, an i guess most of the srilanks that live here are quite used to it now...
even we do not approve of it, we cant do anything abt it ne...
It is shame to see, that some of our pathetic "Fans & ping pongs" are enjoying with the LTTE suporters' while our brave sons are fighting the LTTE terrorist in Northern jungles.
May your god protect you from the Boomarang of the justice...
May your god protect you from the Boomarang of the justice...
ruchira_jay said:
Yeah! well.. all this argument is IF Appu-Army printed those T-Shirts....
I seriously hope for SL Cricket's sake that's not the case! I like the idea of having a group of organized supporters too for SL Team but there cannot be any hidden agendas that's not acceptable!
ruchira_jay said:
That's exactly why they are doing it!
sri_lion said:I get your point perfectly! Next time you meet a guy says they fight for Tamil rights you ask them.. "If you fight for Tamil Rights then why Fight for a land? Ask him you fight for your rights or for a land or both?" because there's no evidence that Tamils ever owned North and North East as LTTE claims! SO AS IT SEEMS THEY CANNOT FIGHT FOR THIER RIGHTS WITHOUT FIGHTING FOR A LAND!!
Your Malaysian taxi driver speaks BULLSHIT, they can live under majority Chinese and Malay in Malaysia very nicely then why not in SL? Every Tamil person is not LTTE but as long as they remain Terrorist sympathizers or funding them there are as good as terrorists!
About political parties destroying the country part...well don't just blind bash because there are no "NICE" politicians in any country in the world! You shouldn't be asking me, what's the difference.. are you asking what's the difference between LTTE and Govt.? Well at least govt. doesn't send 12 years olds to battle front! Is that reason enough? or you want me to give more!
If you ignoring funding terrorism or terrorist sympathizers just because you are out of the country, SORRY TO SAY YOU ARE JUST BEING A PUSSY!
[SIZE=+1]The Tamil people of the island of Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka) constitute a distinct nation. They form a social entity, with their own history, traditions, culture, language and traditional homeland. The Tamil people call their nation 'Tamil Eelam'.[/SIZE]
As a nation, Tamils have the inalienable right to self-determination, a universal principle enshrined in the U.N. Charter that guarantees the right of a people to political independence.
Apart from the right to self determination, the Tamil Eelam may also be justified in terms of international law under the concept of reversion of sovereignty and the concept of effectiveness.
Before a succession of western nations (including the Portuguese, Dutch and the British) ruled the island, there were two distinct kingdoms on the island, the Tamil Kingdom in the north and the Sinhala kingdom in the South.
For ease of administration, the British amalgamated the two distinct nations into a single entity with its capital in Colombo. The British gave Ceylon independence in 1948, handing over control of the entire island to a Sinhalese government, based in Colombo, which renamed the island Sri Lanka.
The Sinhala state's oppression of the Tamil people began in various forms almost immediately, attacking everything that defined the Tamils as a nation.
A series of laws that discriminated against Tamils were implemented. These included making Sinhala, instead of English, the only official language of the country, i.e. Tamils could not be employed unless they learnt Sinhala. The educational structures were altered to restrict Tamil admissions to higher education. Investment in Tamil areas was minimised.
Recruitment of Tamils into the security forces was restricted. The Sri Lankan security forces are almost exclusively Sinhalese. The security forces have been responsible for and continue to carry out human rights abuses and atrocities against Tamil civilians on a genocidal scale.
Sinhala colonisation of traditional Tamil areas was started in the fifties, and was intensified in the eighties with the security forces wiping out Tamil villages and replacing them with Sinhala settlements. Colonisation continues unabated.
Anti-Tamil rioting, with the active participation of the Sri Lankan security forces, has claimed thousands of Tamil lives. Thousands more suffered torture and rape.
As the Tamil people sense of helplessness deepened, Tamil politicians advocated a separate Tamil state. In 1977, the Tamil United Liberation Front resolved in its Vaddukoddai Resolution to campaign for political independence on the basis of the Tamil nation's right to self- determination.
At the general elections of 1977, the TULF demanded a clear mandate from the Tamil people to launch a national campaign to establish the sovereignty of the Tamil homeland. These elections were effectively a referendum the Tamil speaking people voted overwhelmingly in favour of secession. The Tamil call for independence was met by island wide anti-Tamil rioting. The Sri Lankan government forced all elected MPs to take an oath that they would not seek a separate state
Tamils and the Meaning of History
By: Dr Hellmann-Rajanayagam
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Dagmar Hellmann-rajanayagam (1996),
Proceedings of the International Conference on conflict in Sri Lanka:
Peace with Justice, Canberra, Australia.
German-Malaysian Institute in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Doctoral thesis on Cultural Nationalism in Tamil Nadu, India, Sometime Visiting Fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies, Singapore and at St Anthony's College, Oxford, Sometime Associate Professor in Asian History at the University of Kiel, Germany
* Preliminary versions of this article were read in Colombo and Hongkong. I thank all my colleagues who made helpful comments and suggestions, especially Sudipta Kaviraj and Dietmar Rothermund who read drafts of the paper. The research was financed in part by the German Research Council and the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, both of whom I also want to thank in this place.
Introduction
At the moment, there seems to be a lull in the Sri Lankan crisis with the army apparently in control in Jaffna and the LTTE lying low. Nobody, however, should deceive themselves that the problem is solved or that the army is finally in command and the LTTE beaten. More has to happen to effect a solution in Sri Lanka than just military actions. Still, from the outside, nothing much can be done but wait and see. In the final event, the Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka have to find a solution among themselves, not one that is imposed from outside.
What we can do, however, is make suggestions and give advice, maybe in the manner of Bismarck's famous `honest broker'. But what is the place of the historian in this scenario? How can he give advice? Well, maybe not. That is not the task of historians. Their task is to elucidate the origins of events, to say why and how things happened to enable society to take actions on the basis of this. If, however, we try to do that, several questions arise at once, first, what is history, and second, what is the meaning of it for different societies. This is what I want to explore in this paper: what does history mean for the Tamils of Sri Lanka, and how does this perception influence the conflict and the shape it takes? I intend to demonstrate in this article that
History: a technical term
History is the relation of the past to the present. The remark made by the historian E.H. Carr[1] in the 60s might seem a truism nowadays, but that does not make it less true or less crucial to the craft. In the meantime, the concept has been polished, extended and modified, but its basic significance has lost nothing of its power: history is the link between past, present and, by extension, future. What we see much more clearly now is the nature of this relationship: from the past that exerts its influence on the present, we have now come to the present that influences and shapes the past as well: historical perception extends the present and its preoccupations into the past and thus sees the past with the eyes of the present.
The problem to address then is not so much what is history, but how is history used, to say it with a word by Habermas,[2] the 'public use of history', to what purposes is it put, by whom, and with which objectives? The use of history is inseparable from historical research and historiography.
To discuss history nearly always also means to compare. This, however, immediately raises questions about these comparisons:[3] If one's own history is comparable to that of others, what does that imply? In the first instance it implies several different histories, that, moreover, belong to different and distinguishable groups. On the other hand it means that they show certain common features as well, so that one is able to evaluate them against a given scale and see how they perform. But what is this given scale against which history can be compared: one of values, of achievement, of civilisation, of antiquity?
The second point then is, in what ways is this (my?) history different from others, in what way does it exclusively belong to me (or to us), in what way can it enhance my perception of identity, of being myself, of having a place in the world. And how does one judge the differences? Are they simply neutral in the sense of 'it takes all kinds to make a world'? Do they show up one's own sordid traits the more starkly? Or do they tend to enhance the sense of one's own worth: how much better are we than others?
This is the all-important question: what is the yardstick for measuring the differences and evaluating them? How and why do we compare? What makes my history so similar to another history that I consider it the same, but sets if off from a third one? Who decides about these differences, who draws the borders? From what common base do we proceed to discover differences, or is it all 'relative'? Is there a 'common base' at all, or are we all 'incomparable'? And there also lies the crux of this term 'the use of history': use of history for precisely what purpose and what function? And above all: who uses it?
Today in popular Tamil attitude the religious texts are often considered 'historically true' and much religious matter still finds its way unquestioned into historical tracts. But still there is a thin, but visible line between what is considered a historical text and a religious text. The difference between the two conceptions of history could simply be that in the West religion has become subsumed in history and in South India, history is subsumed in religion.
While this might well be the case, we are still plagued by the contradiction shown above: if we broaden our concept of history as described earlier, we would have to include in Tamil history a number of texts not hitherto considered as such by the Tamils themselves, as seen in the example of ÅArumuka Nåvalar. Historical texts were not deemed necessary for Tamil identity: history was not necessary, since it served other purposes. To establish identity, stories of the past were sufficient . Distinctions start to get blurred in the case of the talapuranams which relate the (hi)story of certain temples, their gods and founders in time and space, and always in Sri Lanka itself.
These therefore often carry other, historical information. This is especially true for Trincomalee where the available historical information is tied up in the Kø~[[perthousand]]car Kalve++u, the story of the Kø~[[perthousand]]car temple and the history has to be reconstructed from this.[20] This again proves the point: these talapuranams concern temples located in time and space, with a definite beginning. The god who causes the temple to be founded by his appearance has always been there, but chooses this particular spot to manifest himself.[21] The fact, however, that the Tamils had secular stories of the past to draw upon made it easier for the Christians and later for all of them to fashion a history not tied to religion and therefore to Tamilnadu, but tied to Jaffna and Ceylon. The contradiction might be solved if we realize that we are caught in a circular argument: by our concept of history, the Tamils did not need it to estab
By: Dr Hellmann-Rajanayagam
Article Tools
Dagmar Hellmann-rajanayagam (1996),
Proceedings of the International Conference on conflict in Sri Lanka:
Peace with Justice, Canberra, Australia.
German-Malaysian Institute in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Doctoral thesis on Cultural Nationalism in Tamil Nadu, India, Sometime Visiting Fellow at the Institute of South East Asian Studies, Singapore and at St Anthony's College, Oxford, Sometime Associate Professor in Asian History at the University of Kiel, Germany
* Preliminary versions of this article were read in Colombo and Hongkong. I thank all my colleagues who made helpful comments and suggestions, especially Sudipta Kaviraj and Dietmar Rothermund who read drafts of the paper. The research was financed in part by the German Research Council and the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft, both of whom I also want to thank in this place.
Introduction
At the moment, there seems to be a lull in the Sri Lankan crisis with the army apparently in control in Jaffna and the LTTE lying low. Nobody, however, should deceive themselves that the problem is solved or that the army is finally in command and the LTTE beaten. More has to happen to effect a solution in Sri Lanka than just military actions. Still, from the outside, nothing much can be done but wait and see. In the final event, the Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka have to find a solution among themselves, not one that is imposed from outside.
What we can do, however, is make suggestions and give advice, maybe in the manner of Bismarck's famous `honest broker'. But what is the place of the historian in this scenario? How can he give advice? Well, maybe not. That is not the task of historians. Their task is to elucidate the origins of events, to say why and how things happened to enable society to take actions on the basis of this. If, however, we try to do that, several questions arise at once, first, what is history, and second, what is the meaning of it for different societies. This is what I want to explore in this paper: what does history mean for the Tamils of Sri Lanka, and how does this perception influence the conflict and the shape it takes? I intend to demonstrate in this article that
- 1) the Tamil perception of history is different from that of the West even if the definition of history itself is borrowed from there,
2) that the political use of history determines its perception and limits its functions, and 3) that wider functions which we assign to history are, for the Tamils, located elsewhere (we will see where later in the discussion).
History: a technical term
History is the relation of the past to the present. The remark made by the historian E.H. Carr[1] in the 60s might seem a truism nowadays, but that does not make it less true or less crucial to the craft. In the meantime, the concept has been polished, extended and modified, but its basic significance has lost nothing of its power: history is the link between past, present and, by extension, future. What we see much more clearly now is the nature of this relationship: from the past that exerts its influence on the present, we have now come to the present that influences and shapes the past as well: historical perception extends the present and its preoccupations into the past and thus sees the past with the eyes of the present.
The problem to address then is not so much what is history, but how is history used, to say it with a word by Habermas,[2] the 'public use of history', to what purposes is it put, by whom, and with which objectives? The use of history is inseparable from historical research and historiography.
To discuss history nearly always also means to compare. This, however, immediately raises questions about these comparisons:[3] If one's own history is comparable to that of others, what does that imply? In the first instance it implies several different histories, that, moreover, belong to different and distinguishable groups. On the other hand it means that they show certain common features as well, so that one is able to evaluate them against a given scale and see how they perform. But what is this given scale against which history can be compared: one of values, of achievement, of civilisation, of antiquity?
The second point then is, in what ways is this (my?) history different from others, in what way does it exclusively belong to me (or to us), in what way can it enhance my perception of identity, of being myself, of having a place in the world. And how does one judge the differences? Are they simply neutral in the sense of 'it takes all kinds to make a world'? Do they show up one's own sordid traits the more starkly? Or do they tend to enhance the sense of one's own worth: how much better are we than others?
This is the all-important question: what is the yardstick for measuring the differences and evaluating them? How and why do we compare? What makes my history so similar to another history that I consider it the same, but sets if off from a third one? Who decides about these differences, who draws the borders? From what common base do we proceed to discover differences, or is it all 'relative'? Is there a 'common base' at all, or are we all 'incomparable'? And there also lies the crux of this term 'the use of history': use of history for precisely what purpose and what function? And above all: who uses it?
Today in popular Tamil attitude the religious texts are often considered 'historically true' and much religious matter still finds its way unquestioned into historical tracts. But still there is a thin, but visible line between what is considered a historical text and a religious text. The difference between the two conceptions of history could simply be that in the West religion has become subsumed in history and in South India, history is subsumed in religion.
While this might well be the case, we are still plagued by the contradiction shown above: if we broaden our concept of history as described earlier, we would have to include in Tamil history a number of texts not hitherto considered as such by the Tamils themselves, as seen in the example of ÅArumuka Nåvalar. Historical texts were not deemed necessary for Tamil identity: history was not necessary, since it served other purposes. To establish identity, stories of the past were sufficient . Distinctions start to get blurred in the case of the talapuranams which relate the (hi)story of certain temples, their gods and founders in time and space, and always in Sri Lanka itself.
These therefore often carry other, historical information. This is especially true for Trincomalee where the available historical information is tied up in the Kø~[[perthousand]]car Kalve++u, the story of the Kø~[[perthousand]]car temple and the history has to be reconstructed from this.[20] This again proves the point: these talapuranams concern temples located in time and space, with a definite beginning. The god who causes the temple to be founded by his appearance has always been there, but chooses this particular spot to manifest himself.[21] The fact, however, that the Tamils had secular stories of the past to draw upon made it easier for the Christians and later for all of them to fashion a history not tied to religion and therefore to Tamilnadu, but tied to Jaffna and Ceylon. The contradiction might be solved if we realize that we are caught in a circular argument: by our concept of history, the Tamils did not need it to estab
If the basic purpose of the use of history is to give people a place in the world, something to hold on to, we come immediately up against a contradiction, because in some cases, history does not seem to be called upon to do this. Identity - and that means place in the world - are often established by religion and myth. What use and meaning can history have in this context, since it is obviously answering a felt need?
History can only establish something above that, which is difficult to conceptualise, or something more basic: a right to be, a right to exist at all. Seen in this context, i.e. if we assume that in certain cases identity precedes history, and if history establishes the legitimation of existence, then identity, the consciousness of self, looks inward, towards the in-group. Only after this step historical consciousness can emerge to establish boundaries, to perceive differences and to stake claims over disputed terrain. History serves to forge added cohesion. This is a point of view not widely accepted. But remembering one's past need not necessarily mean antagonism towards others. What is, however, true, is that historical consciousness and the conscious use of history are two concepts going beyond mere identity affirmation.
From 'having a place in the world' and comparisons with other(s') histories we come to another vital point: whose history is it anyway: Who decides which history is the definitive one? Why is this acceted or rejected? How can the diverging histories of different social and political groups be the same or be merged into one history, distinguishable from other histories? And which one, in the case of divergence, is the definitive one? Is there a definitive one?
The so-called German Historians' Debate af few years ago is an extreme example of the eternal question: to whom does history belong, who can legitimately claim it and who is entitled to write the definitive history? There seems to be an even more fundamental problem in the Tamil case, namely to prove the right to be there at all. The Tamils are a numerically large people with a distinctive culture, literature, language, philosophy and a consciousness of belonging together, who were, however, seldom or never, unified as one 'nation' in one state or under one government.
The question is: 'what have they made of this'? One striking factor is that historically perceived secondary virtues like industriousness, diligence, economic skill etc. are cited as justifications to claim or retain advantages and privileges: a stand taken by a people on the defensive, and history is used as the last line of defence.[4]
We will come back to these questions when discussing Tamil and Sinhalese history and the perceptions to whom Ceylonese history belong. The possession of this history is fiercely contested by both groups. At the moment we will content ourselves with stating that people claim to have the definitive view of history and thus possess history. All other views are considered wrong or distorted. This is fairly uncomplicated as long as your history is sufficiently different from mine to not cover the same areas. But what if your and my history is acted out on the same terrain? When one and the same history is claimed by several groups with different interpretations?
History: a Problem of Perception
These are the questions thrown into bold relief by Tamil history in Sri Lanka and the Tamils' perception of it. Their emphasis on history, historical precedence, the proof orjudgment of history, in short, their perception and use of history, go to prove not who or what or how they are or how they came to be there (they know that), but to prove that they have a right to be there, a right to be. If we start off with this crucial assumption, a lot of things fall into place, and we can begin to study Tamil historiography in Jaffna from quite a new angle: The Tamils are trying to recover their history, thus assuming that somebody has taken it away from them, and this somebody are the Sinhalese who in turn try to protect their history from onslaughts and usurpation by the Tamils. Who possesses the history, possesses the country, possesses the right to rule, the right to exist.
And here we confront the problem mentioned above: whose history is being recovered? To whom does the history of Ceylon belong? Now we see for the first time clearly the differences between the Tamil and the Sinhalese perception of history: Tamil history becomes more and more inclusive, Sinhalese history is exclusive: the Tamils include all Ceylonese history in their history which can assume two ways: either the whole Ceylonese history is legitimate history as that of the two peoples living in the island, or all Ceylonese history is subsumed under the bracket 'Tamil history'.
For the Sinhalese, on the contrary, only Sinhalese history can be Ceylonese history, everything else is an intrusion and an assault. Among the Tamils the inclusion works on the internal as well as on the external level: The external one can be illustrated with Elara (see below), the internal one with the filtering down of the term Tamil from only applicable to Vellalars to all castes. The filtering down of Tamil history creates solidarity among Tamils against an outgroup who has no Tamil history at all, but it is always a precarious unity: Indian Tamils and Tamils in India are excluded, geography and politics play their part. On the other hand, when history filters down, changes occur, history does not trickle down in a pure form, it gets mixed with the history from below, and this creates new, and often violent, contradictory, perceptions.
Having got so far, we can now concentrate on the way history is perceived, written and used among the Tamils. Of course, the Tamils are not unique in using history for political ends, on the contrary, peoples in the 19th century who strove to become nations have had similar problems and used history to prove who and what they were and where they came from and that they therefore had a right to nationhood. But that is exactly the point: other peoples proved who and what they were, but I doubt whether they set out mainly to justify their very existence: they established existence in history, but not through history. The small emerging nations in the 19th century said 'we are a great people, so we have a right to exist as a nation or at least to be recognised as a nationality', whereas the Tamils say: we are a great people, we have a right to exist.
Why History?
This raises three questions, namely,
To be sure, history (here in the sense of tales of the past) plays a part in this, but we should not project our theoretical understanding of history or of historical consciousness onto a culture which perceives these things differently, and even if these phenomena are historical, they are not perceived as such by the Tamils. For them to be Tamils, a history of the Tamil state or the Tamil empire or even the Tamil people is incidental, they feel not less Tamils because this empire is spurious or because there never might have been a Tamil state.
This is not vital to their identity as it is to that of the Sinhalese, for whom the existence of a Buddhist state in time is a precondition of their own identity. But to prove that they have a right to exist, to be there at all and then to be there as Tamils, i.e. as Jaffna or Ceylon Tamils, they do indeed need history, in this case history decisively in the form of history of a state, and this is an essentially modern phenomenon (see below).
This approach seems to be contradicted by a recent study by Bruce Kapferer on myths of state, nationhood and violence,[5] where he propounds the very interesting theory that the mythical understanding of their past provides a very unique and very historical theory of history: he claims that the Hindu-Buddhist doctrine of karma is practically the essence of history and historical theory.[6] Persuasive as this sounds, I am not sure that it applies to the Tamils in SL, to say nothing of those in India. For the Sinhalese it might well be true, but for the Tamils the sources show that if the Tamils had a 'sense of history' it was only marginally connected with karma (which is an individual, not a group concept).[7]
On the other hand, Kapferer's linking of karma with history is, in my mind, a stroke of genius which puts paid to many fond theories of the Indians not 'having history': what could be more 'historical' than a theory of constant development and evolution, where the past always exerts a decisive influence on the shaping of the present and the future, where present and future are always predicated on events of the past? But perhaps we approach the problem from the wrong angle: maybe we should broaden our concept of history. In trying to do that, we come up with two observations:
History in the West and in the East: same term, same difference?
Western theories of history and historiography have mainly looked at Europe and either denied that other people had a 'proper' history at all (or at best an inferior one),[9] or completely overlooked them. Seldom has it been acknowledged that history and historiography might have different meanings for other cultures: for some who are we, for some, why are we here, how did we come here and why, but for some also, what right have we to exist? And depending on which of these questions history is expected to answer, where are answers to the remaining questions to be found: in religion, culture, myth!?
Here we come up against a seeming contradiction: for the Tamils in the late 19th century, only the past and the history constructed and furnished by the West were accorded the status of 'history' and 'historical', whereas the past of the East was termed 'religious' and 'mythical': a definition, at the same time containing a statement of value, of history coined by the West, but accepted by the Tamils. Yet the function given to this history was quite different from that of the West.
If we accept this, we can then deduce the intentions with which 'Tamil histories' or 'Histories of Jaffna' have been written and the purposes they were being put to. These purposes, I would argue, are entirely and openly political and I would add, since all history is political, partisan. And if we look at the controversies that have raged in this context, we can see that the facts, let alone their interpretation, are in many case the bone of contention: was there a kingdom of Jaffna, were there groups like the Tamils and the Sinhalese at all, who ruled the island, who were the first settlers, even, was there a Vijaya and if so, who was he, and so on.
This leads on to secondary controversies over the relationship between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, over the events which brought about immigration, whether 'ethnic' antagonism concerned the population or only the rulers, and so on. I am certainly not setting out to decide these controversies one way or the other, but to point out the direction they took and what were the arguments used in the debate.[10] In a recent paper Sudipta Kaviraj mentioned that with the awakening of historical consciousness and 'national consciousness' in India or Bengal came the question not who are we, but what can we wreak on the world with our numbers' because we are Bengalis.[11] While this certainly applies to the Sinhalese equally, it would apply less to the Tamils, at least in Sri Lanka: not 'what can we wreak on the world', but 'what can we get out of the world' (because we are Tamils).
History can only establish something above that, which is difficult to conceptualise, or something more basic: a right to be, a right to exist at all. Seen in this context, i.e. if we assume that in certain cases identity precedes history, and if history establishes the legitimation of existence, then identity, the consciousness of self, looks inward, towards the in-group. Only after this step historical consciousness can emerge to establish boundaries, to perceive differences and to stake claims over disputed terrain. History serves to forge added cohesion. This is a point of view not widely accepted. But remembering one's past need not necessarily mean antagonism towards others. What is, however, true, is that historical consciousness and the conscious use of history are two concepts going beyond mere identity affirmation.
From 'having a place in the world' and comparisons with other(s') histories we come to another vital point: whose history is it anyway: Who decides which history is the definitive one? Why is this acceted or rejected? How can the diverging histories of different social and political groups be the same or be merged into one history, distinguishable from other histories? And which one, in the case of divergence, is the definitive one? Is there a definitive one?
The so-called German Historians' Debate af few years ago is an extreme example of the eternal question: to whom does history belong, who can legitimately claim it and who is entitled to write the definitive history? There seems to be an even more fundamental problem in the Tamil case, namely to prove the right to be there at all. The Tamils are a numerically large people with a distinctive culture, literature, language, philosophy and a consciousness of belonging together, who were, however, seldom or never, unified as one 'nation' in one state or under one government.
The question is: 'what have they made of this'? One striking factor is that historically perceived secondary virtues like industriousness, diligence, economic skill etc. are cited as justifications to claim or retain advantages and privileges: a stand taken by a people on the defensive, and history is used as the last line of defence.[4]
We will come back to these questions when discussing Tamil and Sinhalese history and the perceptions to whom Ceylonese history belong. The possession of this history is fiercely contested by both groups. At the moment we will content ourselves with stating that people claim to have the definitive view of history and thus possess history. All other views are considered wrong or distorted. This is fairly uncomplicated as long as your history is sufficiently different from mine to not cover the same areas. But what if your and my history is acted out on the same terrain? When one and the same history is claimed by several groups with different interpretations?
History: a Problem of Perception
These are the questions thrown into bold relief by Tamil history in Sri Lanka and the Tamils' perception of it. Their emphasis on history, historical precedence, the proof orjudgment of history, in short, their perception and use of history, go to prove not who or what or how they are or how they came to be there (they know that), but to prove that they have a right to be there, a right to be. If we start off with this crucial assumption, a lot of things fall into place, and we can begin to study Tamil historiography in Jaffna from quite a new angle: The Tamils are trying to recover their history, thus assuming that somebody has taken it away from them, and this somebody are the Sinhalese who in turn try to protect their history from onslaughts and usurpation by the Tamils. Who possesses the history, possesses the country, possesses the right to rule, the right to exist.
And here we confront the problem mentioned above: whose history is being recovered? To whom does the history of Ceylon belong? Now we see for the first time clearly the differences between the Tamil and the Sinhalese perception of history: Tamil history becomes more and more inclusive, Sinhalese history is exclusive: the Tamils include all Ceylonese history in their history which can assume two ways: either the whole Ceylonese history is legitimate history as that of the two peoples living in the island, or all Ceylonese history is subsumed under the bracket 'Tamil history'.
For the Sinhalese, on the contrary, only Sinhalese history can be Ceylonese history, everything else is an intrusion and an assault. Among the Tamils the inclusion works on the internal as well as on the external level: The external one can be illustrated with Elara (see below), the internal one with the filtering down of the term Tamil from only applicable to Vellalars to all castes. The filtering down of Tamil history creates solidarity among Tamils against an outgroup who has no Tamil history at all, but it is always a precarious unity: Indian Tamils and Tamils in India are excluded, geography and politics play their part. On the other hand, when history filters down, changes occur, history does not trickle down in a pure form, it gets mixed with the history from below, and this creates new, and often violent, contradictory, perceptions.
Having got so far, we can now concentrate on the way history is perceived, written and used among the Tamils. Of course, the Tamils are not unique in using history for political ends, on the contrary, peoples in the 19th century who strove to become nations have had similar problems and used history to prove who and what they were and where they came from and that they therefore had a right to nationhood. But that is exactly the point: other peoples proved who and what they were, but I doubt whether they set out mainly to justify their very existence: they established existence in history, but not through history. The small emerging nations in the 19th century said 'we are a great people, so we have a right to exist as a nation or at least to be recognised as a nationality', whereas the Tamils say: we are a great people, we have a right to exist.
Why History?
This raises three questions, namely,
1) why have the Tamils to justify their very existence,
2) why by the means of history, and why 3) do they not prove who and what they are by means of history, as many other groups do?
To be sure, history (here in the sense of tales of the past) plays a part in this, but we should not project our theoretical understanding of history or of historical consciousness onto a culture which perceives these things differently, and even if these phenomena are historical, they are not perceived as such by the Tamils. For them to be Tamils, a history of the Tamil state or the Tamil empire or even the Tamil people is incidental, they feel not less Tamils because this empire is spurious or because there never might have been a Tamil state.
This is not vital to their identity as it is to that of the Sinhalese, for whom the existence of a Buddhist state in time is a precondition of their own identity. But to prove that they have a right to exist, to be there at all and then to be there as Tamils, i.e. as Jaffna or Ceylon Tamils, they do indeed need history, in this case history decisively in the form of history of a state, and this is an essentially modern phenomenon (see below).
This approach seems to be contradicted by a recent study by Bruce Kapferer on myths of state, nationhood and violence,[5] where he propounds the very interesting theory that the mythical understanding of their past provides a very unique and very historical theory of history: he claims that the Hindu-Buddhist doctrine of karma is practically the essence of history and historical theory.[6] Persuasive as this sounds, I am not sure that it applies to the Tamils in SL, to say nothing of those in India. For the Sinhalese it might well be true, but for the Tamils the sources show that if the Tamils had a 'sense of history' it was only marginally connected with karma (which is an individual, not a group concept).[7]
On the other hand, Kapferer's linking of karma with history is, in my mind, a stroke of genius which puts paid to many fond theories of the Indians not 'having history': what could be more 'historical' than a theory of constant development and evolution, where the past always exerts a decisive influence on the shaping of the present and the future, where present and future are always predicated on events of the past? But perhaps we approach the problem from the wrong angle: maybe we should broaden our concept of history. In trying to do that, we come up with two observations:
1) history as we know it is obviously not vital for the identity of the Tamils, and 2) the concept of what constitutes the past and what constitutes one's own past is vital.
History in the West and in the East: same term, same difference?
Western theories of history and historiography have mainly looked at Europe and either denied that other people had a 'proper' history at all (or at best an inferior one),[9] or completely overlooked them. Seldom has it been acknowledged that history and historiography might have different meanings for other cultures: for some who are we, for some, why are we here, how did we come here and why, but for some also, what right have we to exist? And depending on which of these questions history is expected to answer, where are answers to the remaining questions to be found: in religion, culture, myth!?
Here we come up against a seeming contradiction: for the Tamils in the late 19th century, only the past and the history constructed and furnished by the West were accorded the status of 'history' and 'historical', whereas the past of the East was termed 'religious' and 'mythical': a definition, at the same time containing a statement of value, of history coined by the West, but accepted by the Tamils. Yet the function given to this history was quite different from that of the West.
If we accept this, we can then deduce the intentions with which 'Tamil histories' or 'Histories of Jaffna' have been written and the purposes they were being put to. These purposes, I would argue, are entirely and openly political and I would add, since all history is political, partisan. And if we look at the controversies that have raged in this context, we can see that the facts, let alone their interpretation, are in many case the bone of contention: was there a kingdom of Jaffna, were there groups like the Tamils and the Sinhalese at all, who ruled the island, who were the first settlers, even, was there a Vijaya and if so, who was he, and so on.
This leads on to secondary controversies over the relationship between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, over the events which brought about immigration, whether 'ethnic' antagonism concerned the population or only the rulers, and so on. I am certainly not setting out to decide these controversies one way or the other, but to point out the direction they took and what were the arguments used in the debate.[10] In a recent paper Sudipta Kaviraj mentioned that with the awakening of historical consciousness and 'national consciousness' in India or Bengal came the question not who are we, but what can we wreak on the world with our numbers' because we are Bengalis.[11] While this certainly applies to the Sinhalese equally, it would apply less to the Tamils, at least in Sri Lanka: not 'what can we wreak on the world', but 'what can we get out of the world' (because we are Tamils).
Histories instead of stories
At this point, I want to mention a difference in the meaning of the term 'history' in European and Asian languages. Etymologically, neither the Sanskrit word itihåsa nor the Tamil word VaralåÂu or Carittiram convey the same meaning as history, which derives from the Greek to see. Both are nearer to the German term Geschichte[12] in the sense of what has happened: itihasa means 'that which has happened like that', and both VaralåÂu Carittiram mean 'that which came about, what happened, the course of events, also the origin of events'. So there is a strong connection with the question: where do we come from and how and why are we here, what is our claim to be here? It is a much less 'objective' and detached, one could perhaps say, a more personalised concept than the Greek 'that which has been seen'.
Once the Tamils must or want to prove their right to exist, their right to be there, then the purpose of history is to prove that 'we have always been here, we have more rights to be in this particular place than anybody else, and we can prove and justify this with 'historical facts'. It becomes clear then, that the historical problem and the problem of being there is not at all a general Tamil problem, but that of a particular group of Tamils: namely those in Sri Lanka.
For the Tamils in India, the problem is there, but it is muted, covered by the attempts not to prove their right to be there, but to fend off central attempts to subsume them under a dominant culture and language by claiming the superiority of the one over the other. It is then sufficient to establish the equal excellence of Tamil culture to counter this attack (and to establish the former's antiquity, which in reality means timelessness: Tamil has no beginning in time, it was always there.)
And while the Indian hierarchy subsumes, but does not destroy, for the Sri Lanka Tamils, being subsumed under a dominant culture always means immediately being robbed of their right to be there, of their right to exist, of being extinguished (probably physically) as persons as well as Tamils.[13] Therefore, religion, culture, way of life, are not sufficient to prove that right, and history has to come in. The origin and beginning in time of Tamil existence on the island has to be fixed and proved to be earlier than that of the Sinhalese. So the statement is not like in Tamilnadu: Tamil has always been there, but we Tamils have always been here.
Thus, history in our sense seems not to unite Tamils all over the world, because they are already united by religion, culture, language, and way of life, but to divide them into groups, as the Bengalis have been divided into Bangla Deshis and Bengalis. So are the Tamils divided into Indian Tamils and Jaffna Tamils. History as history of state, needed to justify existence in the Tamil case developed strong linkages with nationalism, but linkages that divide rather than unite: instead of affirming the Tamil identity, nationalism wrenches it apart, splits it up into all sorts of different Tamil nationalisms.
At this juncture, the question of territory, irrelevant for Tamil identity as such, becomes vital: the fatherland and the mothertongue. But this was not always so. It started when the Tamils acquired and accepted the mentioned western-style historical consciousness. This was a very specific 19th century phenomenon. It was a view of history propounded predominantly by German scholars that history was the history of great men and of nations, that civilisations had their birth, zenith and decline, and that there were 'people without history' which bore a stigma of 'primitivism' and 'savagery'. To have legitimacy, a western-style 'great' history was therefore deemed necessary.
Yet while saying this, we must remember that it were western scholars who fell to discovering the 'past' of Ceylon with a vigour enhanced by the fact that Ceylon had a unique collecton of historical sources which were considered 'historical' even in the western sense: the chronicles Mahavamsa and Culavamsa. In contrast to the Indians who were considered to think 'unhistorically', here was a people that did not do so, and the Mahavamsa was taken as literal truth. There were no obvious comparable sources existent on the Tamil side. Only much later was it acknowledged that as far as 'historical' accuracy was concerned, the formerly spurned Indian and Ceylonese inscriptions might provide firmer ground than the chronicles.
There was, to be sure, a chronicle on the Tamil side, a compilation from the beginning of the 18th century, ordered to be collected by a Dutch governor and based on some older chronicles and traditions, partly extant and partly lost. Yet it was never considered 'historical' in the way the Mahavamsa was. With hindsight, this seems rather strange: The Mahavamsa is as full of myth and superstition as the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai is thought to be.
And while the Mahavamsa is certainly datable to the 6th century, the Culavamsa, its successor, had constantly been modified and added on until British and even our times. The truth of the Mahavamsa could only be verified or otherwise when one began to check it against South Indian inscriptions. Yet the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai was not deemed magnificent enough to stand up beside the Sinhalese chronicles and the South Indian inscriptions, though the Tamils who considered it a most reliable source, could and later did prove that not all in it was pure fiction.
However that may be, history of Ceylon in the 19th century was history of all Ceylon as the history of the Sinhalese.[14] Again, this is a departure from the past: the colonial powers had before this always emphasised that Ceylon was inhabited by different 'races' with different traditions and rulers: Burnand, Bertolacci, Cleghorn, to name a few.[15] In the 19th century, however, the 'Aryan' Sinhalese were given pride of place and the Tamils termed 'immigrants' with a negative connotation of the term.[16]
History Recovered
This view of history did not go unopposed by the Tamils and their European sympathizers, mainly missionaries who in the 40s of the 19th century began to challenge the view of the history of Ceylon with the remark that the history of the Jaffna kingdom had been neglected and should be written.[17]
Most interestingly, it was a Christian Tamil paper that voiced this demand for the first time, and for a long time, Christians were in the forefront of Tamil historiography in Jaffna: Casie Chitty, UT, Henry Martin, John and Daniel Samuel, Christpher Brito, C. Ñå~appirakåcar.
These Christians were most eager to discover the historical roots of the Tamils. There was a simple reason for this: they could not rely for their identity on the religious context of the Hindus, on sacred texts like the sthalapuranas, epics and the Saiva Siddhanta literature, therefore they were eager to find a non-religious Tamil tradition to justify themselves, their existence and their identity.
They found it in Tamil, Indian, and Ceylonese history and in the kingdom of Jaffna which had been a Hindu kingdom, but had also created literary and scientific works acceptable to all Tamils and had in its resistance to the Buddhist Sinhala kingdom of the South shown a spirit of autonomy most welcome to the Christians.
Remarkably, the famous Hindu reformer, ÅArumuka Nåvalar, who had the fiercest controversies with the Christians over matters of religion and tried to reform the Saiva religion and ritual and purge the texts from unacceptable parts, never pronounced on Tamil or Jaffna history, nor did he doubt the representation of it by these authors. He left history to the Christians and missionaries, since for his identity it was irrelevant.[18]
In 19th century Jaffna society as a whole history was not needed because Tamils had other means of identification. They felt a common bond with Tamils in South India and religious texts sufficed to tell them who they were and where they came from: their past was their present.
Though in the light of the foregoing discussion we should better say, history in the western sense of the 19th century was not needed, since the functions fulfilled by history in the West were taken over by religious and mythical texts. However, once the Tamils discovered history in the western sense it was not religious texts proper (as among the Sinhalese) which were used as historical evidence, but quite different, secular, epical texts, like the KuÂal, Puranå~ËÂu, Cilappatikåram. Religious texts, like the Sthalapuranams or the Må~ikkavåcakam, if they were thought to contain historical information, were used occasionally, but their primary function was not historical.[19]
Today in popular Tamil attitude the religious texts are often considered 'historically true' and much religious matter still finds its way unquestioned into historical tracts. But still there is a thin, but visible line between what is considered a historical text and a religious text. The difference between the two conceptions of history could simply be that in the West religion has become subsumed in history and in South India, history is subsumed in religion.
While this might well be the case, we are still plagued by the contradiction shown above: if we broaden our concept of history as described earlier, we would have to include in Tamil history a number of texts not hitherto considered as such by the Tamils themselves, as seen in the example of ÅArumuka Nåvalar. Historical texts were not deemed necessary for Tamil identity: history was not necessary, since it served other purposes. To establish identity, stories of the past were sufficient . Distinctions start to get blurred in the case of the talapuranams which relate the (hi)story of certain temples, their gods and founders in time and space, and always in Sri Lanka itself.
These therefore often carry other, historical information. This is especially true for Trincomalee where the available historical information is tied up in the Kø~[[perthousand]]car Kalve++u, the story of the Kø~[[perthousand]]car temple and the history has to be reconstructed from this.[20] This again proves the point: these talapuranams concern temples located in time and space, with a definite beginning. The god who causes the temple to be founded by his appearance has always been there, but chooses this particular spot to manifest himself.[21] The fact, however, that the Tamils had secular stories of the past to draw upon made it easier for the Christians and later for all of them to fashion a history not tied to religion and therefore to Tamilnadu, but tied to Jaffna and Ceylon. The contradiction might be solved if we realize that we are caught in a circular argument: by our concept of history, the Tamils did not need it to estab
At this point, I want to mention a difference in the meaning of the term 'history' in European and Asian languages. Etymologically, neither the Sanskrit word itihåsa nor the Tamil word VaralåÂu or Carittiram convey the same meaning as history, which derives from the Greek to see. Both are nearer to the German term Geschichte[12] in the sense of what has happened: itihasa means 'that which has happened like that', and both VaralåÂu Carittiram mean 'that which came about, what happened, the course of events, also the origin of events'. So there is a strong connection with the question: where do we come from and how and why are we here, what is our claim to be here? It is a much less 'objective' and detached, one could perhaps say, a more personalised concept than the Greek 'that which has been seen'.
Once the Tamils must or want to prove their right to exist, their right to be there, then the purpose of history is to prove that 'we have always been here, we have more rights to be in this particular place than anybody else, and we can prove and justify this with 'historical facts'. It becomes clear then, that the historical problem and the problem of being there is not at all a general Tamil problem, but that of a particular group of Tamils: namely those in Sri Lanka.
For the Tamils in India, the problem is there, but it is muted, covered by the attempts not to prove their right to be there, but to fend off central attempts to subsume them under a dominant culture and language by claiming the superiority of the one over the other. It is then sufficient to establish the equal excellence of Tamil culture to counter this attack (and to establish the former's antiquity, which in reality means timelessness: Tamil has no beginning in time, it was always there.)
And while the Indian hierarchy subsumes, but does not destroy, for the Sri Lanka Tamils, being subsumed under a dominant culture always means immediately being robbed of their right to be there, of their right to exist, of being extinguished (probably physically) as persons as well as Tamils.[13] Therefore, religion, culture, way of life, are not sufficient to prove that right, and history has to come in. The origin and beginning in time of Tamil existence on the island has to be fixed and proved to be earlier than that of the Sinhalese. So the statement is not like in Tamilnadu: Tamil has always been there, but we Tamils have always been here.
Thus, history in our sense seems not to unite Tamils all over the world, because they are already united by religion, culture, language, and way of life, but to divide them into groups, as the Bengalis have been divided into Bangla Deshis and Bengalis. So are the Tamils divided into Indian Tamils and Jaffna Tamils. History as history of state, needed to justify existence in the Tamil case developed strong linkages with nationalism, but linkages that divide rather than unite: instead of affirming the Tamil identity, nationalism wrenches it apart, splits it up into all sorts of different Tamil nationalisms.
At this juncture, the question of territory, irrelevant for Tamil identity as such, becomes vital: the fatherland and the mothertongue. But this was not always so. It started when the Tamils acquired and accepted the mentioned western-style historical consciousness. This was a very specific 19th century phenomenon. It was a view of history propounded predominantly by German scholars that history was the history of great men and of nations, that civilisations had their birth, zenith and decline, and that there were 'people without history' which bore a stigma of 'primitivism' and 'savagery'. To have legitimacy, a western-style 'great' history was therefore deemed necessary.
Yet while saying this, we must remember that it were western scholars who fell to discovering the 'past' of Ceylon with a vigour enhanced by the fact that Ceylon had a unique collecton of historical sources which were considered 'historical' even in the western sense: the chronicles Mahavamsa and Culavamsa. In contrast to the Indians who were considered to think 'unhistorically', here was a people that did not do so, and the Mahavamsa was taken as literal truth. There were no obvious comparable sources existent on the Tamil side. Only much later was it acknowledged that as far as 'historical' accuracy was concerned, the formerly spurned Indian and Ceylonese inscriptions might provide firmer ground than the chronicles.
There was, to be sure, a chronicle on the Tamil side, a compilation from the beginning of the 18th century, ordered to be collected by a Dutch governor and based on some older chronicles and traditions, partly extant and partly lost. Yet it was never considered 'historical' in the way the Mahavamsa was. With hindsight, this seems rather strange: The Mahavamsa is as full of myth and superstition as the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai is thought to be.
And while the Mahavamsa is certainly datable to the 6th century, the Culavamsa, its successor, had constantly been modified and added on until British and even our times. The truth of the Mahavamsa could only be verified or otherwise when one began to check it against South Indian inscriptions. Yet the YåÒppå^a Vaipava Målai was not deemed magnificent enough to stand up beside the Sinhalese chronicles and the South Indian inscriptions, though the Tamils who considered it a most reliable source, could and later did prove that not all in it was pure fiction.
However that may be, history of Ceylon in the 19th century was history of all Ceylon as the history of the Sinhalese.[14] Again, this is a departure from the past: the colonial powers had before this always emphasised that Ceylon was inhabited by different 'races' with different traditions and rulers: Burnand, Bertolacci, Cleghorn, to name a few.[15] In the 19th century, however, the 'Aryan' Sinhalese were given pride of place and the Tamils termed 'immigrants' with a negative connotation of the term.[16]
History Recovered
This view of history did not go unopposed by the Tamils and their European sympathizers, mainly missionaries who in the 40s of the 19th century began to challenge the view of the history of Ceylon with the remark that the history of the Jaffna kingdom had been neglected and should be written.[17]
Most interestingly, it was a Christian Tamil paper that voiced this demand for the first time, and for a long time, Christians were in the forefront of Tamil historiography in Jaffna: Casie Chitty, UT, Henry Martin, John and Daniel Samuel, Christpher Brito, C. Ñå~appirakåcar.
These Christians were most eager to discover the historical roots of the Tamils. There was a simple reason for this: they could not rely for their identity on the religious context of the Hindus, on sacred texts like the sthalapuranas, epics and the Saiva Siddhanta literature, therefore they were eager to find a non-religious Tamil tradition to justify themselves, their existence and their identity.
They found it in Tamil, Indian, and Ceylonese history and in the kingdom of Jaffna which had been a Hindu kingdom, but had also created literary and scientific works acceptable to all Tamils and had in its resistance to the Buddhist Sinhala kingdom of the South shown a spirit of autonomy most welcome to the Christians.
Remarkably, the famous Hindu reformer, ÅArumuka Nåvalar, who had the fiercest controversies with the Christians over matters of religion and tried to reform the Saiva religion and ritual and purge the texts from unacceptable parts, never pronounced on Tamil or Jaffna history, nor did he doubt the representation of it by these authors. He left history to the Christians and missionaries, since for his identity it was irrelevant.[18]
In 19th century Jaffna society as a whole history was not needed because Tamils had other means of identification. They felt a common bond with Tamils in South India and religious texts sufficed to tell them who they were and where they came from: their past was their present.
Though in the light of the foregoing discussion we should better say, history in the western sense of the 19th century was not needed, since the functions fulfilled by history in the West were taken over by religious and mythical texts. However, once the Tamils discovered history in the western sense it was not religious texts proper (as among the Sinhalese) which were used as historical evidence, but quite different, secular, epical texts, like the KuÂal, Puranå~ËÂu, Cilappatikåram. Religious texts, like the Sthalapuranams or the Må~ikkavåcakam, if they were thought to contain historical information, were used occasionally, but their primary function was not historical.[19]
Today in popular Tamil attitude the religious texts are often considered 'historically true' and much religious matter still finds its way unquestioned into historical tracts. But still there is a thin, but visible line between what is considered a historical text and a religious text. The difference between the two conceptions of history could simply be that in the West religion has become subsumed in history and in South India, history is subsumed in religion.
While this might well be the case, we are still plagued by the contradiction shown above: if we broaden our concept of history as described earlier, we would have to include in Tamil history a number of texts not hitherto considered as such by the Tamils themselves, as seen in the example of ÅArumuka Nåvalar. Historical texts were not deemed necessary for Tamil identity: history was not necessary, since it served other purposes. To establish identity, stories of the past were sufficient . Distinctions start to get blurred in the case of the talapuranams which relate the (hi)story of certain temples, their gods and founders in time and space, and always in Sri Lanka itself.
These therefore often carry other, historical information. This is especially true for Trincomalee where the available historical information is tied up in the Kø~[[perthousand]]car Kalve++u, the story of the Kø~[[perthousand]]car temple and the history has to be reconstructed from this.[20] This again proves the point: these talapuranams concern temples located in time and space, with a definite beginning. The god who causes the temple to be founded by his appearance has always been there, but chooses this particular spot to manifest himself.[21] The fact, however, that the Tamils had secular stories of the past to draw upon made it easier for the Christians and later for all of them to fashion a history not tied to religion and therefore to Tamilnadu, but tied to Jaffna and Ceylon. The contradiction might be solved if we realize that we are caught in a circular argument: by our concept of history, the Tamils did not need it to estab
apppa reallyshenigirl said:Yeah, i will....
What suprises me is, that these so calld"Appu Army" was seated just a few rows in front of me at the SCG game...
And all it lookd to me is that it was just a bunch of uni students who was having some major fun..And i didnt notice anything other than that,only that they were the tipical srilankan guys, who was using tipical srilankan guy language...
Ps..I guess it was the appu armys as they had the appu army poster with them..and they were showing it off..:S
xx_varun_xx said:
Oh! Damn! I didn't see this JOKER!!!
Can I ask you 2 questions here?
1. If all this is true.. then isn't the true candidate for a separate nation is Tamil Nadu? Then why wont you ask for a EELAM there?
2. If you say there were no kingdoms before English, Dutch or Portugese arrived here.. then
I dunno how dumb that claim is!!! My question is... then how come still there are ruins of a lost Buddhist civilization in the North?Either Tamils were Buddhists those days and suddenly the whole Tamil population became Hindu or they've populated the land after Sinhalese... so which one is it?
I've got more questions.. but I'll wait for your answer for this one first!
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u cnt change da truth dude!
LTTE supporters in Australia!
http://www.elakiri.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66387
LTTE supporters in Australia!
http://www.elakiri.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66387
xx_varun_xx said:
Did you even read that 1 Km long article you have posted in the first place??? Are you that miserable??
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xmrddx1 said:
Really?
So you created another account? so we would'nt know its you... and this account cannot be blocked? WOW!! BRAVO MATE!!What a genius!!
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