A troubled history
Over dinner, the discussion turned back to the weather. Incredibly, the looming clouds had again dissipated. There had been little rain since October and everybody was waiting for the northeast monsoon to pick up belatedly. I had gained an indication of how wet the region usually is from mildew stains on the walls of some of the campus buildings. Overhead, one of the ceiling tiles also showed signs of recent water damage.
“Better get your roof fixed before the rains come back.” I said, pointing upwards.
“Oh that,” said Simon: “That happened a few months ago when people were throwing rocks at the house. One went through the roof!”
I sat up with a start. Looking closer, I saw that the window through which a breeze was blowing into the room was not open, but that the glass was broken. Thankfully, there was an iron grate in front of it
“What happened?”
It turned out that some of the villagers had taken exception to the fact that Rob and Maria were employing Tamils rather than Sinhalese in their household.
“People are jealous” Rob said: “They figure Tamils do not belong here. They are very racist.”
I had become aware of that from reading commentaries in the English language papers, some of which were pretty fascist in outlook. Both Tamil and Sinhalese commentators argued that they should have control over the country, based on where and when they had traditionally settled. The Tamils point out that the names of towns and villages in the arid zone are largely Tamil whereas the Sinhalese maintain they should retain control over the whole of Sri Lanka, because they had arrived a few hundred years before the Tamils. The whole thing had disintegrated into a slanging match where people accused each other of distorting historical facts. It was all non-sensical to me. If it came down to seniority, control of the country should be handed over to the Veddah, or Wanniya laeto (‘forest-beings’), whose ancestors are the original inhabitants of the island and who by now have been largely assimilated into modern society. Their few remaining villages have become magnets for tourism. This voyeurism is one of the most unsavoury aspects of the tourist industry — the Veddah do not complain about having their privacy invaded and do not want any money for it. A few of them are now asserting their traditional rights and intend to return to the bush and their way of life where, hopefully, they will be left in peace.
All this bickering serves to highlight Sri Lanka’s turbulent history. It is widely assumed that the ethnic conflict dates back to ancient times, but during the early centuries there seems to have been harmony between Sinhalese and Tamils. Both cultures initially inhabited the arid zone in the northeast where a complex irrigation-based civilisation had sprung up by 100 BC.
The Sinhalese derive from northern Indian immigrants who settled on the island around 500 BC. Their history is documented in the Mahavamsa, a chronicle of early Sinhalese-Buddhist royalty. It is uncertain when the first Tamil settlements were established, but trade between Sri Lanka and India was thriving by 300 BC, around the time Buddhism began to spread.
Over time, the country was divided into three regions, Uttaradesa (‘northern country’), Rajarata in the north-central area, with Anuradhapura as its capital and Rohana in the southeast. There were skirmishes between these kingdoms, but Tamils and Sinhalese were both represented in the leadership of the Rohana kingdom and both ethnic groups were involved in power-struggles between the Tamil kings in India and Sinhalese rulers — on either side.
Around 237 B.C., Sri Lanka was briefly ruled by Tamils for the first time then again in 145 B.C., when Elara, a general of the south Indian Chola dynasty, took over the throne and ruled for forty-four years. A Sinhalese king, Dutthagamani, waged a fifteen-year campaign against the Tamil monarch and finally deposed him. Dutthagamani is a heroic figure in the Mahavamsa, and this conflict is thought to mark the beginning of Sinhalese nationalism. However, Elara numbered a lot of supporters among the Sinhalese and the war was at least in part a dynastic struggle. After Dutthagamani’s victory, Anuradhapura became the focus of power on the island.
In the fifth and sixth centuries A.D., three Hindu empires had been established in southern India–the Pandya, Pallava, and Chola. All of them left their mark on Sri Lankan history. In the seventh century, the Pallavan rulers supported the Sinhalese prince Manavamma who seized the throne of Anuradhapura and established a dynasty which lasted for almost three centuries. During this time, Pallavan influences extended to architecture and sculpture. In the middle of the ninth century, Anuradhapura was sacked by the Pandyans who had assumed power in south India. Shortly after driving out the Pandyans, the Sinhalese invaded Pandya in support of a rival prince. In the tenth century, the Sinhalese again sent an invading army to India, this time to aid the Pandyan king against the Cholas. The Pandyan king was defeated and fled to Sri Lanka, carrying with him the royal insignia. Eager to regain the insignia, the Chola destroyed Anuradhapura in A.D. 993 under Rajaraja the Great and for seventy-five years, Sri Lanka was ruled as a Chola province from a new capital, Polonnaruwa.
During this time, Hinduism flourished and Buddhism suffered a serious setback. The Chola were eventually driven out in A.D. 1070 by King Vijayabahu I who, during his forty-year reign, concentrated on rebuilding the Buddhist temples and monasteries. The king left no clearly designated successor to his throne, and a period of instability and civil war followed his rule until the rise of King Parakramabahu I, known as the Great (A.D. 1153-86) under whose patronage the city of Polonnaruwa became one of the magnificent capitals of the ancient world.
During the 13th century, a series of dynastic disputes hastened the break-up of the kingdom of Polonnaruwa. Incursions by Chola and Pandyan invaders created turbulence, culminating in a devastating campaign by King Magha of the Kalinga, an eastern Indian dynasty. His death in 1255 marked the beginning of the Sinhalese migration to the southwest, resulting in the eventual division of the island into distinct ethnic regions. The jungle that covered north-central Sri Lanka now separated the Tamils and the Sinhalese, with psychological and cultural implications. A separate Tamil culture emerged in the North, culminating with the establishment of a Tamil kingdom in Jaffna.
Foreign rulers took advantage of the disturbed political state of the Sinhalese kingdom, and in the thirteenth century, Chandrabhanu, a Buddhist king from Malaya, invaded the island twice. He attempted to seize the two most sacred Buddhist relics in Sinhalese custody, the Tooth Relic and the Alms Bowl. In the fifteenth century, King Parakramabahu VI (1412-67) reunited Sri Lanka and earned renown as a patron of Buddhism and the arts. Parakramabahu VI was the last Sinhalese king to rule the entire island. His capital Kotte, near modern Colombo, became an important trade centre. However, after his demise and with increasing fragmentation of the Sinhalese principalities, Kandy crystallized as the power base of the Sinhalese kings. The town’s remote location and the diplomacy of its rulers granted the Kandyan kingdom independence from successive colonial forces until 1815. Their skill in playing off the Dutch against the Portugese and the British against the Dutch backfired when the British assumed supremacy over the entire island. The last Kandyan king, a Tamil Hindu who had converted to Buddhism, was deposed by his Sinhalese commanders in accord with the British rulers.
With independence in 1948 came democracy and a commitment to religious neutrality. Both Sinhala and Tamil were declared national languages. It seemed, the country had a bright and prosperous future ahead. However, the harmony did not last; power struggles between political factions soon stirred up racial and religious unrest. The Tamils were perceived as privileged, holding a disproportionate number of administrative positions as a result of their traditional links with the former colonial rulers. The origins for the ethnic conflict were sown when the United National Party, which had formed the country’s first independent government, broke up into the UNP and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led by S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike who had been educated at Oxford where he suffered racist abuse. There would be grave consequences to his being bullied at school. On his return, Bandaranaike rejected Western values and embraced Buddhist nationalism, which he promoted as a force destined to eradicate the last vestiges of British colonialism from the country. The campaign for the 1956 election was highly charged as it coincided with the 2,500th anniversary of the death of the Buddha and the legendary landing of Prince Vijaya, founder of the Sinhalese. Bandaranaike won the election with a coalition led by the SLFP and passed the ‘Sinhala Only Act’, enshrining Sinhala as the only official language. This did not go down well with the Tamil minority and marked the start of decades of riots and, ultimately, war from which Sri Lanka only now emerges.
In 1959, the prime minister was assassinated by a Buddhist monk. His widow, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, became the world’s first female prime minister. She continued to further the nationalist agenda until she lost power to the UNP in 1965, but only for one term. She resumed power in 1970 with the three party ‘United Front’ coalition. Prime Minister Bandaranaike tolerated the radical left elements of the coalition at first but then lost control over them. Sensing mounting unrest, the government declared a state of emergency in March 1971. In April, the People’s Liberation Front (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna–JVP), a Maoist and primarily rural Sinhalese youth movement attempted a revolutionary uprising aimed at overthrowing the government. They nearly succeeded. Fierce fighting erupted in the central, and southern rural districts of the island; over 1000 people died. The military suppressed the movement and imprisoned the JVP leadership and about 16,000 suspected activists. This opened the door for the introduction of a new constitution in 1972, extending the powers of the military and enshrining Sinhala as the official language. Ceylon, as it was then, was re-named ‘Sri Lanka’ which means ‘Resplendent Land’, a name chosen to invoke the glory of the ancient Sinhalese kingdoms. The constitution conferred still greater status on Buddhism and removed many minority rights. It also gave the Sinhalese advantages when it came to university admission. All this left many Tamils disillusioned and disenfranchised.
In 1976, the Tamil leadership (then Tamil United Liberation Front or TULF) advocated a separate Tamil state for the first time. The underground separtist LTTE emerged and quickly grew from a handful of guerilla fighters into a well-organized military unit. Meanwhile, the UPF coalition crumbled under the division between the leftist and right-wing elements. In 1977 the UNP resumed power under a new leader, R.R. Jayewardene. During the election campaign, many Tamil youths began to engage in sometimes violent measures in their bid for a separate state. These incidents precipitated a Sinhalese backlash. A rumor that Sinhalese policemen had been killed by Tamil terrorists, combined with alleged anti-Sinhalese statements made by Tamil politicians, sparked rioting that engulfed the island within two weeks of the new government’s inauguration. In 1978, Jayewardene invoked radical alterations to the constitution, introducing a presidential system based on the one in France. The president was to be elected for a six-year term and empowered to appoint, with parliamentary approval, the prime minister and preside over cabinet meetings. Jayewardene became the first president under the new Constitution. He afforded important concessions, restoring Tamil as a national language and abrogating the ‘standardization’ policy for university admissions. In addition, he offered some top-level positions to Tamil civil servants. It proved too little too late. Sporadic rioting continued and acts of terrorism were perpetrated by several Tamil groups. Tamil political influence deteriorated until, in 1982, the TULF was expelled from parliament for refusing to voice allegiance to the constitution. In July 1983, the LTTE ambushed an army patrol which sparked riots by the Sinhalese who flattened the largely Tamil Pettah district in Colombo killing hundreds in the process. The rioting spread across the country, the police and army stood by while over a period of several days properties were raided and people were beaten and even burnt alive. More than 150 000 Tamils fled, mainly to India. It was the start of the war and an escalation of atrocities on both sides. Repeated early attempts to end the bloody conflict remained fruitless and the involvement of an Indian peace-keeping force in the late 1980s proved disastrous, drawing opposition both from the LTTE and Sinhala nationalists.
In 1994, the UNP lost power to a coalition of parties termed the People’s Alliance (PA) under Chandrika Kumaratunga, leader of the SLFP and daughter of S. Bandaranaike, who became the country’s president. However, her efforts to enter negotiations with the LTTE broke down repeatedly until in December 2001 Ranil Wickremasinghe, leader of the UNP, was elected Prime Minister. Mr. Wickremasinghe had negotiated secretely with the LTTE and now conducted peace talks with mediation from the Norwegian government. The ceasefire agreement was finally signed in Febrary 2002. By then, 65 000 people had been killed and many hundreds of thousands have been displaced.
The ceasefire is holding despite the LTTE’s continued demands for a separate state, including control over marine and offshore resources in the northeast, which they presented in the ‘Interim Self-Governing Authority Presentation’ on Nov 1st 2003. It is holding despite the on-going quarrels between president and prime minister, on opposite political sides, which led the president to declare a State of Emergency in November and strip the prime minister of many of his powers, including control over defence. The peace talks have stalled, but the guns remain silent. Sri Lanka is tired of war.
The LTTE have declared that they will continue to abide by the truce and are prepared to resume peace negotiations once a stable political leadership is in place. However, the only way out of the stalemate are elections. On 7th February 2004, the president called elections for the second of April. The date is well-chosen, being close to the new year. There would be the equivalent of Christmas spirit in the air. Goodwill to all men. Hopefully. The country is holding its breath in anticipation of renewed violence. But maybe this time, the political drive for a lasting peace is unstoppable.
Here in Kandy, the tension was palpable. Once again I glanced at the curtain fluttering in the breeze blowing through the broken window. Rob recalled what had happened just a few years before, when he was warden in one of the halls of residence. A bloody feud broke out between a political faction of students and local villagers. The students massacred several people and impaled their heads on poles erected in the central campus roundabout. The picture of severed heads on sticks is a haunting one.
“It will get worse before it gets better,” he said.
All this stood in stark contrast to the sense of optimism I had experienced around Trincomalee where armed soldiers patrol the streets.
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Denni