Midweek Review

The Gift of Music:Sons and Fathers

Published

3 years ago

2023/05/10

Sahan Weerasooriya

Kanthi with baby Mala.

a film by Sumathy – Part II

by Laleen Jayamanne

There is a recurrent discussion among the film industry personnel in the film about the desirability of ‘originality’ in Sinhala music and also in films, which translates as the need to abandon copying Indian genre films or anything Indian for that matter. One opposing view interrogates the possibility of originality itself, asking ‘what is originality? Are we original?’ Yet another view is expressed by Upul Shantha Sannasgala, in favour of anything that creates box office success, citing the triangular plot of his new film which describe exactly the outrageously plotted, sexist film, Samiya Birindage Deviyaya (The Husband is the Wife’s God,) with the leading star and singer, Rukmani Devi and its arch villain, Domi Jayawardena. The desirability of nationalising the film industry and the creation of ‘our’ studios (meaning with Sinhala ownership, breaking the Tamil monopoly) is also expressed as the racial tensions outside reaches a critical point, when several army officers are killed by the LTTE near Jaffna and kindling the State terror of July 83. When Rex is put on the spot by friends and asked for his views on politics, he says he doesn’t know anything about politics and all he knows is music, adding that music has no race or country, while Sannasgala comes to his defence with; ‘Master is music, music is master!’

Writing or Drawing a Character

In the world’s oldest film school in the former Soviet Union (USSR), there was a practice of getting the students to first draw their characters and ideas on paper before writing with words. The teachers who devised the practice knew that drawing a line, as in a line drawing, would activate a mental process different from writing using words. Highly experienced mentors like Mikael Romm practiced this pedagogy with his students, one of whom was Andre Tarkovsky. The stimulation of the student’s imagination and extra-linguistic sensory powers was one of their aims. It is said that he urged his students to reach into their ‘darkness’ so that they might be able to find a way to speak, find a ‘language’. He protected his students from the communist thought police. Honouring this process of teaching and learning, as I try to do also in my writing, I like to resist asking a director why s/he did such and such, a sad and intellectually feeble resort. Such blunt questions blunt one’s own imaginative capacity to make multi-sensory connections, especially when it’s about cinema. Lucky’s haunting question ‘Appa, what language?’ requires a critic to become self-reflexive about how she uses linguistic-language in writing on film, which doesn’t behave like language as such. As Pasolini rather impatiently pointed out (to the eminent semiologists, including Roland Barthes, at the Pesaro Film Festival) that unlike language with its denotative, finite number of words, there is no dictionary of images we can draw on for film and nor are words similar to images.

So, it’s best not to ask directors what they meant either, because when trying to write a book on his cinema, I once asked Kumar Shahani why an ‘epic persona’ in his film did something, he said ‘I don’t know.’ Was he being a Zen Master, I wondered, a bit taken aback. But then chatting with him I realised the truth of what he was saying, that sometimes artists make their characters do stuff in such a way that it is fruitless to try to find out the motivation for an action, as though every act is a perfectly rationally explainable response to a stimulus, like Pavlov’s poor dog, salivating at the ring of a bell. Some artists want to be able to sustain a degree of freedom in their thinking, that is, keep that which is barely consciously sayable, especially to themselves (at three o’clock in the morning, as they say in the Blues) in a shadowy subconscious state. They might feel its necessity, without being able to put it into words and not even wanting to do so, as it might kill their evanescent impulses. Artists are creatures who trust their impulses and fluctuating sensations trying to harness them in a disciplined and skilled way, lest they get derailed, overwhelmed by their surfeit. But then, I believe that it’s a critic’s responsibility to think about what one sees and hears and feels by posing questions that might open up a train of thought for oneself at first. This is not like revealing hidden meanings, but rather, understanding how something works or doesn’t, its aesthetic logic and feelings, pulses, and how they might connect with some other thing through a style of writing, hoping that readers themselves might take it yet in another unforeseen direction.

sivamohan’s main characters, Rex, Kanthi, Lucky and the quiet Mala, are created and act in such a way that not all their feelings are transparent, nor are all their motivations explained or even explainable. They have an interiority we can sense but to which we don’t have a privileged access and I suspect that the director also might feel that about the people she has created. This may sound strange as sivamohan has said that she modelled Rex, in part, on Rocksamy’s history in the film industry and that Lucky was modelled on the well-known musician Anthony Surendra, the son of Master Anthony, himself a musician. That they have in various ways suffered greatly as Tamils in the film and music industry is an important fact, which sivamohan builds on, with some of the best dialogue I have ever heard in the Sinhala cinema, for sure. And I am thinking here especially of the serious ‘Civil-War Films’ by some of our most talented, senior filmmakers. Some of them have crafted a new ‘anthropological type’ it would seem, with the silent, traumatised young Tamil women doggedly following former soldiers without uttering a word. Here, I don’t wish to comment on these films except to say that they appear to have constructed ‘The Tamil Woman’ as an enigma in her silence. Why Sinhala male directors are drawn to create such figures is something the Sinhala cinephiles and critics themselves should really take up, making a sustained study of the films, especially because now, sex, whether consensual or coercive as in rape, is permitted on the screen by the National Censorship Board.

sivamohan does assiduous ethnographic research for drawing her characters, but they are not Bio-Pics of these particular artists and nor are they phantasmatic figures, but appear to be composites of several real persons in the film and music industries. Hers is not the problem of ‘Realism in the cinema,’ which codes expression in the three-act drama I referred to earlier, and which Stefan Brecht (cited at the beginning) rejects. Within the known historical discrimination suffered by the Tamils of Lanka, sivamohan (who has lived through civil war years both in Jaffna and the South and lost a sister and close friends to it), has created her characters themselves with a degree of opacity, with regard to their subjectivity (reminiscent of Robert Bresson’s Models) but none of them is enigmatic. For me, this is part of the charm and subtlety of these characters who form a multi-ethnic Lankan family. The different ways in which Kanthi and Lucky sing the same song, his ‘mother’s song’, adds a rich affective density to their characters and the ballad-like song itself. Rex at first seemed the simplest, the most transparent, with his open smile, and yet gradually he too becomes much more complex, dark (as he faces direct racist violence), lashing out at those closest to him in despair as his soul is destroyed.

‘Ammi, did he kill her to stop the music?’

Rex and Kanthi

Shamala Kumar (in her hauntingly personal account in the island), on seeing Sons and Fathers with Malin her thirteen-year-old son, tells us that he kept asking her questions loudly while watching the film, to which she had to say ‘I don’t know.’ She says that about the many incomprehensible events of racialised violence shown, including the burning of the film director Venkat in his car. Later at home Malin had asked his mother, ‘did he kill her to stop the music?’ The mother comments on her child’s thoughtful question saying, it was as though he was pleased to be able to piece together a tentative reason for why Lucky fired that shot in a movie theatre. Lucky had come to a cinema where the film of the opening song and dance sequence is repeated in colour, this time round showing us an utterly absorbed audience in a few shots. Lucky, standing at the back of the theatre appears to take a gun out and point it at the screen. Though no gun is visible, we infer that it is one because we see the familiar gesture (seen in countless Westerns and Gangster films), hear the shot and see the dancer on the screen falling down. Some viewers rise up in consternation, one which we share. The reverse shot cuts to a close-up of the bleeding singer who appears to be ‘real,’ rather than a projected image, but films can wound us, make us cry as in life. The next cut shows a singular image, a painterly shot of a splash of red on a white surface. The entire series of shots are hard to make clear sense of, hence the child’s considered question to his mother. It is a puzzle for me as well, because it doesn’t quite compute as a sensory-motor action, say, as a shot fired in a gangster film would be. Usually such a generic shot is clearly motivated, the gun essential to the action as are the hero and villain. I feel a bit like Malin, baffled and startled by that scene. And each time I try to work out how it works, it slips away but returns to me unwittingly just as I drift off into sleep. I feel I can’t quite compute it. But slowly I was able to see why it’s a scene that troubles the mind in a manner quite different from the horrific sequence of the burning of Venkat in his car.

Through this comparison, it dawned on me that sivamohan shifts planes of action and composition (in all three of her films), at certain critical violent moments. She plays with fire; there is the burning tea bush in Ingirunthu which does not turn to ash, and in A Single Tumbler, the single metal tumbler catches fire in the microwave, a truly disturbing, scary image. The fire power of Lucky’s gun shot is slightly different, but all three instances shift gear, so to speak. They do something which impels our minds (if receptive like that of a child), to return to the scene repeatedly. What is it about these sivamohan scenes that make our minds to return to them irresistibly? They are not played out on a clear realist spatio-temporal plane, though these films have a precise sense of historical space/time.

On a meta-cinematic plane, Sivamohan is paying tribute to the process of Montage which created the magical appearances and disappearances, what Eisenstein called, the defining cinematic act of the medium of film. These singular scenes puzzle the mind because their violence is not like the realistically presented violence of say, burning a man alive or the mass destruction of buildings and property with fire. The violence of shooting at the image of the dancer (but not the flesh and blood actor/dancer), enacts a form of ‘counter-violence,’ as response to the normalised violence of racism, exploitation, torture and murder, which we have become all too familiar with as Lankans (we hear a victim of the pogrom say, ‘last time we lost all’). How many more times will history repeat itself with such horrific violence, one wonders.

A beautiful scene honours actual persons from the film industry, the editor Aliman (a Muslim), with his old editing machine to cut (the now obsolete) celluloid film, expertly handling the film, searches for the 28 missing shots with the director Siva (a Tamil). These two men from the film industry, with their dry humour, were well known personnel who did pass away quite poor.

Allegory as Counter-Violence

There is a large body of philosophical and programmatic writing on revolutionary- violence in anti-imperialist national struggles, as a form of ‘counter-violence.’ I am trying to use the idea differently though, not by citing chapter and verse from, say Lenin’s What is to be Done, or Che Guevara, beloved of the JVP of the April ‘71 rebellion. Rather, I want to understand the precise imaginative ways in which the shooting of the dancer has been staged allegorically, rather than realistically, which I would argue to be an ethico-aesthetic decision by sumathy in her film, which is also about the State sponsored pogrom against the Tamils in July 83.

sumathy’s allegorical scenes are not cliches that she whips up to resolve her films when the situation becomes unendurable, when the violence reaches a level of horror and ‘The Scream’ appears to be the only expression available. It’s the internal dynamics of the fascist violence of the State and of reactive terrorism of the LTTE which is displaced in the movie theatre, with an allegory of cinematic violence, countering the sure-fire ingredients of ‘Action, Sex and Violence’ (mentioned as desirable by a producer in the film), as ingredients of exciting marketable films now. The process of countering these violent logics of actions and reactions is linked to how the theatre scene is constructed as an allegory, what I am calling an enactment of ‘counter-violence’ through a film-allegory.

The Lens as A Brush

Godard, when asked once why there is so much blood smeared liberally on his characters, in one of his polemical post 68 experimental films famously snapped back, ‘It’s not Blood, its Red!’ Similarly, the striking splash of red on a white surface (which appears soon after the dancer is shot down bleeding profusely on the floor), punctuates the scene emphatically and calls attention to its minimalist painterly gesture. Why is this striking singular painterly shot inserted there between shots of the bleeding dancer on the ground? A white surface, whether a wall or the screen itself is not visible there in the theatre. We have heard Lucky being repeatedly called a ‘tiger cub,’ even by his best friend and the other Sinhala musicians refuse to work with him as the suspicion against all Tamil young men as potential terrorists intensifies in the South.

This trend reaches a peak when his ‘girl-friend’ Champa, on hearing Lucky sing his ‘mother’s song (Tharaka Hanga) at the club, asks him what it is and if he would teach it to her. Like the sweetly naive person he is, he agrees gladly. But instead of waiting, Champa goes to Lucky’s house and learns the song directly from his mother herself. As he returns home they meet unexpectedly at his door and sees her guile when she tells him that she is off to India to be trained as a singer. As she walks away Lucky shouts out her; ‘My father is not a Terrorist. I am a Terrorist. I will carry the Tamil newspaper gladly.’ His mother has previously warned Rex not to be seen carrying a Tamil newspaper. The sense of the crescendo of Lucky’s surprising outburst is muted as it’s a Tamil newspaper which he thinks to carry, not a weapon of choice for a terrorist of any ethnicity! It’s the repeated branding of Lucky as a terrorist by his peers which makes his persona as a ‘terrorist’ in the movie theatre credible. There, Lucky is presented as an actor in the ‘film within the film,’ who acts out an allegorical scene of shooting at an image. Because, if he is an actor playing a Terrorist, then his sole imperative is that he must kill. But if it’s an allegorical action, then the question as to motivation can have no realist answer. The splash of blood-red on the pristine white screen is a sensuous abstract image of ‘pure’ violence, enabled by Lucky’s equally abstracted gesture of shooting an image with an imaginary gun, in the film within the film Sons and Fathers that we have been watching for over an hour by then. So, I read the entire scene of Lucky shooting the dancer and the audience watching it, as a film-within-a-film (a meta-film) crystalising, in an abstract image of violence, the discussions on the need for racial and cultural purity, also encoded in the song Jaya Pita Deas. The sonic montage, the contradiction between the hybrid image and sound, and between images themselves, is the kind of sequence which Eisenstein called ‘Intellectual-Montage.’ They cut across the compartmentalised brain. These conceptually sophisticated audio-visual montage techniques, stimulating feelings and thoughts all at once, would have been why Sons and Fathers received the prize for music, at the Jaipur International Film Festival in 2019.

The different views expressed about Sinhala cinema and the desirability of ‘cultural purity’ appears as an open question here. Historically, these questions were resolved in favour of the Nationalisation of the film industry according to the recommendation of the Royal Commission into the Lankan Film Industry in the 1960s. The examination of the successes and problems of that policy, in the creation of a ‘truly national (Sinhala) cinema’ by instituting the State Film Corporation of Lanka, is best left to historians. But the question of whether the significant new national cinema, created in its wake, also ignored Lanka’s ethnic minorities from the desired national identity, is also one for our film critics to worry over. The allegorical gesture of Lucky, shooting down the film image, in the guise of a Sinhala persona allegorised as a Tamil Terrorist, still remains tantalising to my mind despite what I’ve written here. But we Sinhala critics will learn much, I believe, through serious scholarship and critical writing on Lankan cinema and exploring how sumathy’s cinematic project might be theorised within its dynamics. Such work will require interrogating the long-standing (taken for granted) Sinhala idea of sanguine ‘generational change’ among talented men, because ‘history’ is not a natural event.

The Mother’s Song and its Loss

Towards the very end of the film we see Rex, Kanthi and their daughter absorbed in something on their TV. For the first time we see them in large close-ups (rare in this film), while the camera tracks between them, bringing each of them very close to us. A cut to the TV reveals Champa singing Lucky’s ‘mother’s song’ with orchestration, in a polished, well trained, sweet voice, dressed tastefully in a matching sari and blouse, producing the requisite well-rehearsed gestures and artfully-wistful smiles for the camera. What we have heard and seen so far is of this song’s unusual circulation from a mother to a son whose childhood was nourished by his mother singing it often. We see its social circulation when Kanthi is invited to sing a song by her guests who appreciate her voice and the song. She sings with ease and grace, dressed now in an Indian sari, wearing a pottu and her knee length hair in a single braid. But we also hear the song at intense moments of fear and sadness, as when Kanthi sings it to herself after having looked at a photo album. But on the television it appears as a song ‘stolen’ from the family by Champa, without a thought for royalties, having violated something above and beyond the provenance of a song. As the threesome watch Champa’s polished performance of their own song, Kanthi begins to mouth it silently, while Rex looks on utterly bereft but still beating time to the song he composed for his beloved wife, while the camera rests on Mala who looks straight at us for the first time, as the shot ends. Was she angry I wondered, trying to read her contained intense expression. The careless, cool ease with which Champa becomes a professional singer and sings the song publicly contrasts starkly with a singular rendition of it by Lucky. While in his bedroom (with a blurred poster of John Lennon on his wall), Lucky spits out a snatch of Rock music, but in the club, he sings his mother’s song almost to himself, in a caressing whisper, before the band has to strike a ‘Happy Birthday’ with the sound of breaking glass in the distance; a complex sequence in montage.

Lucky is presented as a tender, generous and most vulnerable young man, and through his allegorisation as The Terrorist, at the movie theatre, we might be able to see how even such a person may become a ‘terrorist,’ cornered, crushed, with avenues for professional movement all blocked for him and his family. In doing this the director makes an exemplary figure of a Lankan artist whose cultural heritage is mixed, hybrid, not monoculturally pure. It’s nothing to do with his ‘pure blood’ (Sinha-ley,) but rather a matter of access to learning, fair opportunity and a shared understanding of a rich multi-cultural world (including India), open to the outside world. That it is a Sinhala actor who is personified as a Tamil Terrorist (who in his actual life sings in Tamil), is significant, because some of that brutalising process is ‘demonstrated’ through the political device of allegory. There is no ‘conversion’ of Lucky into a Terrorist because we see both Lucky and the persona of the Terrorist in his gesture of shooting at an image, with an invisible gun. In the movie theatre, he is not a symbol or a metaphor, but functions as an allegorical body. Allegory makes us see double, and stays with the unresolved duality, and lets it trouble us, as it did Malin and me. That splattered red on white appears as both blood and some red paint, and the white background both a movie screen and a pure white surface, both at once. Such a mode of allegorical viewing goes against our habitual and ingrained ways of consuming films.

Some of us, who have spent all our working lives teaching film and have also grown-up watching lots of all kinds of films (in a long-ago vanished Ceylon in my case) believe that when it’s time to take leave, the Angel of Death will arrive and give us a chance to see just two film clips one last time. Now, I will unhesitatingly choose Dharmasena Pathiraja’s film Ponmani, made with his Tamil friends, while he was teaching Sinhala literature and Media Studies at the Jaffna University in the ‘70. It’s the haunting funeral procession of Ponmani, with her coffin in a horse-drawn glass carriage, led by a slender man in shorts, filmed in a formal long-shot against a lagoon and an expanse of sky, with her father walking alone some distance away from the mourners, as his Vellala family was estranged from her. For having violated caste taboos, she was shot dead by a killer hired by her betrothed, as she came out of a church with her new kin group. The Karnataka song we had heard sung repeatedly, by a group of seated female singers (about longing for Krishna to appear), plays across this desolate shot one last time.

The other clip is of the seemingly every-day banal high-angle-shot of the family of three walking towards us on a railway platform. In long to medium shots from Sons and Fathers, we see Rex, Kanthi and Lucky as a boy, walking between them carrying small suitcases of their possessions. The couple has just got married at a registry (with minimal formality, with just four smiling in-laws) and are coming home to live with Rex. Kanthi is dressed in a Kandyan sari and Rex has long curly hair tied at the back. Seeing that shot of the threesome, who are being observed by an adult Lucky leaning on a railway bridge (a pensive ‘recollection image’), it becomes an iconic shot for Sinhala cinema, suggestive in its promise of rich potential for our art and much else. Variations of this shot, of them climbing the long steps of the station, are repeated several times like the refrain of Lucky’s beloved mother’s song.

sumathy wrote the lyrics for two of the four songs in the film. Vantharu Vanthachu (‘He is coming’ with apocalyptic events of bombs destroying the earth, elephants in trees, wrapped in a love song), is sung in Tamil. The Mother’s Song, written in English, is translated for the film by Amarakeerthi Liyanage, a Professor of Sinhala and a specialist in Comparative Literature. Anthony Surendra, the Tamil music director of the film, wrote, composed and sang My Heart (Ma Hade) in the film at a recording studio and is the song Kanthi hums to Rex’s accompaniment at the keyboard (and also to an infant Kamala), in a most unusual romantic scene. When asked, sumathy said that she was thinking of Desdemona’s Willow Song while writing what she calls ‘The Mother’s Song’ for the film. The Shakespearean ballad was given to Desdemona by her mother who had received it from her maid. She makes a significant change in her song, the ‘betrayal’ there is no longer sexual as in the original folk ballad sung by Desdemona before Othello kills her in a fit of jealousy. But in the film, it becomes Champa’s thoughtless, cunning betrayal of Lucky and his mother.

The way Sumathy presents Rex Periyasami, Mudiyanselage Kanthilatha, Lakshman and Mala as a multi-ethnic family, makes one feel that they will survive the fire that set Lanka ablaze then, stronger in the essential values that bind them together, but no doubt at great cost to their livelihoods and futures, in creating the hybrid music, their very life-blood, which Kanthi says emphatically, ‘saved them’. Sumathy’s Sons and Fathers is her poetic tribute to those values that bind that family and the ethnically diverse Lankan popular film and music industry where those values also flourished, once.

However, Malin’s singular question to his mother, and Mala’s last look to the camera, perhaps of anger, make an old critic like me imagine that they must be big by now. And in so doing, I hear faintly Rukmani Devi singing, ‘mavila penevi rupe hade …swapneya chaya …’ (in my heart emerges a dream-image … of life) as I fall asleep, perchance to dream. (Concluded)

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Midweek Review

EPDP’s Devananda and missing weapon supplied by Army

Published

7 days ago

2026/01/7

Sahan Weerasooriya

March 15, 2009: Social Services and Social Welfare Minister and Chairman of Special Task Committee, Northern Province, Douglas Devananda visits the Menik Farm welfare centre to inquire into the health of the internally displaced people, temporarily housed in the camp. The visit took place amidst fierce fighting on the Vanni east front. The LTTE collapsed less than eight weeks later.

After assassinating the foremost Sri Lankan Tamil political leader and one-time Opposition leader Appapillai Amirthalingam and ex-Jaffna MP Vettivelu Yogeswaran, in July 1989, in Colombo, the LTTE declared those who stepped out of line, thereby deviated from policy of separate state, would be killed. Ex-Nallur MP Murugesu Sivasithamparam was shot and wounded in the same incident. In 1994, the LTTE ordered the boycott of the general election but EPDP leader Douglas Devananda contested. His party won nine seats in the Jaffna peninsula.

The LTTE also banned the singing of the national anthem and the hoisting of the national flag at government and public functions in Tamil areas. Devananda defied this ban, too.

The Eelam People’s Democratic Party (EPDP) played a significant role in Sri Lanka’s overall campaign against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The EPDP threw its weight behind the war effort soon after the LTTE resumed hostilities in June 1990 after India withdrew forces deployed in terms of the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord signed on July 29, 1987, under duress, in the aftermath of the infamous uninvited ‘parippu drop’ over northern Sri Lanka by the Indian Air Force, a modern-day New Delhi version of the Western gunboat diplomacy.

India ended its military mission here in late March 1990. Having conducted an unprecedented destabilisation project against Sri Lanka, India ceased the mission with egg on her face. The monument erected near Sri Lanka Parliament for over 1,300 Indian military personnel, who made the supreme sacrifice here, is a grim reminder of the callous project.

In fact, the United National Party (UNP) government reached a consensus with the EPDP, PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam), ENDLF (Eelam National Democratic Liberation Front), TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation) and EPRLF (Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front) for their deployment. Of them, the EPDP was among three groups ready to deploy cadres against the LTTE.

The LTTE ended its honeymoon (May 1989 to June 1990) with President Ranasinghe Premadasa. Within weeks after the resumption of hostilities, the government lost the Kandy-Jaffna A9 stretch of the road between north of Vavuniya and Elephant Pass.

It would be pertinent to mention that the above-mentioned groups suffered debilitating losses in the hands of the LTTE during the then Premadasa government’s honeymoon with the LTTE. At the behest of President Premadasa, the military provided tacit support for LTTE operations. But, in the wake of resumption of hostilities by the LTTE, the other groups grabbed the opportunity to reach consensus with the government, though they knew of President Premadasa’s treacherous actions.

On the invitation of the government, anti-LTTE Tamil groups set up ‘offices’ in Colombo. The writer first met Douglas Devananda at his ‘office’ at No. 22, Siripa Lane, Thimbirigasyaya, in November, 1990. There were scores of people. Some of them carried weapons. When Kathiravelu Nythiananda Devananda, wearing a sarong and short-sleeved banian, sat across a small table, facing the writer, he kept a pistol on the table. Devananda explained the role played by his group in Colombo and in the North-East region.

The so-called office had been used by the EPDP to question suspected LTTEers apprehended in Colombo. Those who are not familiar with the situation then may not be able to comprehend the complexity of overt and covert operations conducted by the military against Tiger terrorists. The EPDP, as well as other groups, namely the PLOTE and TELO, taking part in operations against the LTTE not only apprehended suspects but subjected them to strenuous interrogation. There had been excesses.

The UNP government provided funding for these groups, as well as weapons. In terms of the Indo-Lanka Accord signed on July 29, 1987, India and Sri Lanka agreed to disarm all groups, including the LTTE.

Following is the relevant section of the agreement: 2.9 The emergency will be lifted in the Eastern and Northern Provinces by Aug. 15, 1987. A cessation of hostilities will come into effect all over the island within 48 hours of signing of this agreement. All arms presently held by militant groups will be surrendered in accordance with an agreed procedure to authorities to be designated by the Government of Sri Lanka.

Consequent to the cessation of hostilities and the surrender of arms by militant groups, the Army and other security personnel will be confined to barracks in camps as on 25 May 1987. The process of surrendering arms and the confinement of security forces personnel moving back to barracks shall be completed within 72 hours of the cessation of hostilities coming into effect.

Formation of EPDP

An ex-colleague of Devananda, now living overseas, explained the circumstances of the one-time senior EPRLF cadre, EPDP leader switched his allegiance to the Sri Lankan government. Devananda formed the EPDP in the wake of a serious rift within the top EPRLF leadership. However, Devananda, at the time he had received training in Lebanon as a result of intervention made by UK based Tamils, served the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS). Subsequently, a group that included K. Padmanabah formed the General Union of Students (GUES) before the formation of the EPRLF.

The formation of the EPDP should be examined taking into consideration Devananda’s alleged involvement in Diwali-eve murder in Chennai in 1986. Devananda’s ex-colleague claimed that his friend hadn’t been at the scene of the killing but arrived there soon thereafter.

Devananda, who had also received training in India in the ’80s, served as the first commander of the EPRLF’s military wing but never achieved a major success. However, the eruption of Eelam War II, in June, 1990, gave the EPDP an unexpected opportunity to reach an agreement with the government. In return for the deployment of the EPDP in support of the military, the government ensured that it got recognised as a registered political party. The government also recognised PLOTE, EPRLF and TELO as political parties. President Premedasa hadn’t been bothered about their past or them carrying weapons or accusations ranging from extrajudicial killings to extortions and abductions.

Some of those who found fault with President Premadasa for granting political recognition for those groups conveniently forgot his directive to then Election Commissioner, the late Chandrananda de Silva, to recognise the LTTE, in early Dec. 1989.

The writer was among several local and foreign journalists, invited by the late LTTE theoretician Anton Balasingham, to the Colombo Hilton, where he made the announcement. Chain-smoking British passport holder Balasingham declared proudly that their emblem would be a Tiger in a red flag of rectangular shape. Neither Premadasa, nor the late Chandrananda de Silva, had any qualms about the PFLT (political wing of the LTTE) receiving political recognition in spite of it being armed. The LTTE received political recognition a couple of months before Velupillai Prabhakaran resumed Eelam War II.

Devananda, in his capacity as the EPDP Leader, exploited the situation to his advantage. Having left Sri Lanka for India in May 1986, about a year before the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord, Devananda returned to the country in May 1990, a couple of months after India ended its military mission here.

Of all ex-terrorists, Devananda achieved the impossible unlike most other ex-terrorist leaders. As the leader of the EPDP and him being quite conversant in English, he served as a Cabinet Minister under several Presidents and even visited India in spite of the Madras High Court declaring him as a proclaimed offender in the Chennai murder case that happened on Nov. 1, 1986. at Choolaimedu.

Regardless of his inability to win wider public support in the northern and eastern regions, Devananda had undermined the LTTE’s efforts to portray itself as the sole representative of the Tamil speaking people. In 2001, the LTTE forced the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK)-led Tamil National Alliance (TNA) to recognise Velupillai Prabhakaran as the sole representative of the Tamil speaking people.

Whatever various people say in the final analysis, Devananda served the interests of Sri Lanka like a true loyal son, thereby risked his life on numerous occasions until the military brought the war to a successful conclusion in May 2009. Devananda’s EPDP may have not participated in high intensity battles in the northern and eastern theatres but definitely served the overall military strategy.

During the conflict and after the EPDP maintained a significant presence in Jaffna islands, the US and like-minded countries resented the EPDP as they feared the party could bring the entire northern province under its domination by manipulating parliamentary, Provincial Council and Local Government elections. The West targeted the EPDP against the backdrop of the formation of the TNA under the late R. Sampanthan’s leadership to support the LTTE’s macabre cause, both in and outside Parliament. At the onset, the TNA comprised EPRLF, TELO, PLOTE and even TULF. But, TULF pulled out sooner rather than later. The EPDP emerged as the major beneficiary of the State as the LTTE, at gun point, brought all other groups under its control.

During the honeymoon between the government and the LTTE, the writer had the opportunity to meet Mahattaya along with a group of Colombo-based Indian journalists and veteran journalist, the late Rita Sebastian, at Koliyakulam, close to Omanthai, where LTTE’s No. 02 Gopalswamy Mahendrarajah, alias Mahattaya, vowed to finish off all rival Tamil groups. That meeting took place amidst a large-scale government backed campaign against rival groups, while India was in the process of de-inducting its troops (LTTE pledges to eliminate pro-Indian Tamil groups, The Island, January 10, 1990 edition).

Devananda survives two suicide attacks

The Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) worked out by Norway in 2002, too, had a clause similar to the one in the Indo-Lanka Accord of July 1987. While the 1987 agreement envisaged the disarming of all Tamil groups, the Norwegian one was meant to disarm all groups, other than the LTTE.

Devananda’s EPDP had been especially targeted as by then it remained the main Tamil group opposed to the LTTE, though it lacked wide public support due to the conservative nature of the Tamil society to fall in line with long established parties and their leaders. A section of the Tamil Diaspora that still couldn’t stomach the LTTE’s eradication were really happy about Devananda’s recent arrest over the recovery of a weapon issued to him by the Army two decades ago ending up with the underworld. The weapon, issued to Devananda, in 2001, was later recovered following the interrogation of organised criminal figure ‘Makandure Madush’ in 2019. Devananda has been remanded till January 9 pending further investigations.

Being the leader of a militant group forever hunted by Tiger terrorists surely he must have lost count of all the weapons he received on behalf of his party to defend themselves. Surely the Army has lost quite a number of weapons and similarly so has the police, but never has an Army Commander or an IGP remanded for such losses. Is it because Devananda stood up against the most ruthless terrorist outfit that he is now being hounded to please the West? Then what about the large quantities of weapons that Premadasa foolishly gifted to the LTTE? Was anyone held responsible for those treacherous acts?

Then what action has been taken against those who took part in the sinister Aragalaya at the behest of the West to topple a duly elected President and bring the country to its knees, as were similar putsch in Pakistan, Bangladesh effected to please white masters. Were human clones like the ‘Dolly the Sheep’ also developed to successfully carry out such devious plots?

Let me remind you of two suicide attacks the LTTE planned against Devananda in July 2004 and Nov. 2007. The first attempt had been made by a woman suicide cadre later identified as Thiyagaraja Jeyarani, who detonated the explosives strapped around her waist at the Kollupitiya Police station next to the Sri Lankan Prime Minister’s official residence in Colombo killing herself and four police personnel, while injuring nine others. The woman triggered the blast soon after the Ministerial Security Division (MSD) assigned to protect the then Hindu Cultural Affairs Minister Devananda handed her over to the Kollupitiya police station on suspicion. Investigations revealed that the suicide bomber had been a servant at the Thalawathugoda residence of the son of a former UNP Minister for about one and half years and was considered by the family as an honest worker (Bomber stayed with former UNP Minister’s son, The Island, July 12, 2004).

She had been planning to assassinate Devananda at his office situated opposite the Colombo Plaza. The police identified the person who provided employment to the assassin as a defeated UNP candidate who contested Kandy district at the April 2004 parliamentary election.

The second attempt on Devananda was made at his Ministry at Narahenpita on 28 Nov. 2007. Several hours later, on the same day, the LTTE triggered a powerful blast at Nugegoda, killing 10 persons and causing injuries to 40 others. The bomb had been wrapped in a parcel and was handed over to a clothing store security counter and detonated when a policeman carelessly handled the parcel after the shop management alerted police.

Having lost control of areas it controlled in the Eastern Province to the military by July 2007, the LTTE was battling two Army formations, namely 57 Division commanded by Brigadier Jagath Dias and Task Force 1 led by Colonel Shavendra Silva on the Vanni west front. The LTTE sought to cause chaos by striking Colombo. Obviously, the LTTE felt quite confident in eliminating Devananda, though the EPDP leader survived scores of previous assassination attempts. Devananda had been the Social Welfare Minister at the time. The Minister survived, but the blast triggered in his office complex killed one and inflicted injuries on two others.

Hardcore LTTE terrorists held at the Jawatte Jail, in Kalutara attacked Devananda on June 30, 1998, made an attempt on Devananda’s life when he intervened to end a hunger strike launched by a section of the prisoners. One of Devananda’s eyes suffered permanent impairment.

Devananda loses Jaffna seat

Having served as a Jaffna District MP for over three decades, Devananda failed to retain his seat at the last parliamentary election when the National People’s Power (NPP) swept all electoral districts. The NPP, in fact, delivered a knockout blow not only to the EPDP but ITAK that always enjoyed undisputed political power in the northern and eastern regions. Devananda, now in his late 60, under the present circumstances may find it difficult to re-enter Parliament at the next parliamentary elections, four years away.

Devananda first entered Parliament at the 1994 August general election. He has been re-elected to Parliament in all subsequent elections.

The EPDP contested the 1994 poll from an independent group, securing just 10,744 votes but ended up having nine seats. The polling was low due to most areas of the Jaffna peninsula being under LTTE control. But of the 10,744 votes, 9,944 votes came from the EPDP-controlled Jaffna islands. Devananda managed to secure 2,091 preference votes. That election brought an end to the 17-year-long UNP rule. By then Devananda’s first benefactor Ranasinghe Premadasa had been killed in a suicide attack and Devananda swiftly aligned his party with that of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s People’s Alliance (PA).

The LTTE mounted an attack on Devananda’s Colombo home on the night of Oct. 9, 1995. It had been one of 12 such attempts on his life

Devananda, who had survived the July 1983 Welikada Prison riot where Sinhala prisoners murdered 53 Tamils detainees. He then got transferred to Batticaloa Prison from where he escaped along with 40 others in September of the same year, received his first Cabinet position as Minister of Development, Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of the North, and Tamil Affairs, North and East following the 1994 general election. Devananda lost his Cabinet position following the PA’s defeat at the 2001 parliamentary election. Devananda entered the Cabinet as the Minister of Agriculture, Marketing Development, Hindu Education Affairs, Tamil Language & Vocational Training Centres in North following the UPFA’s victory at the 2004 general election.

Devananda further consolidated his position during Mahinda Rajapaksa’s presidency (2005 to 2015). He earned the wrath of the LTTE and Tamil Diaspora for his support for the government that eradicated the LTTE. Over the years, the EPDP’s role in overall security strategy diminished though the group maintained a presence in Jaffna islands.

There had been accusations against the EPDP. There had also been excesses on the part of the EPDP. But, Devananda and his men played an important role though not in numbers deployed against the LTTE. The EPDP proved that all Tamils didn’t follow the LTTE’s destructive path.

Three years after the eradication of the LTTE, in May 2009, President Mahinda Rajapaksa sent Devananda to the UN Human Rights Council as part of the official government delegation to Geneva.

Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka, Ambassador/ Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations Office in Geneva, comment on Devananda’s arrest is a must read. Devananda’s fate would have been different if he remained with the EPRLF, one of the Indian backed terrorist groups installed as the first North East Provincial Administration in which Jayatilleke served as Minister of Planning and Youth Affairs.

The EPRLF administration was brought to an unceremonious end when India ended its military mission here in 1990.

While multiple LTTE attempts to assassinate Devananda failed during the war with the last attempt made in late 2007, less than two years before the end of the conflict, obviously the EPDP leader remains a target. Those who still cannot stomach the LTTE’s humiliating defeat, seem to be jubilant over Devananda’s recent arrest over a missing weapon.

Therefore it is incumbent upon the NPP/JVP government to ensure the safety of Devananda under whatever circumstances as he has been a true patriot unlike many a bogus revolutionary in the present government from top to bottom, who are nothing more than cheap opportunists. Remember these same bogus zealots who threatened to sacrifice their lives to fight Indian threat to this country, no sooner they grabbed power became turncoats and ardent admirers of India overnight as if on a cue from Washington.

Various interested parties, including the US, relentlessly targeted the EPDP. US Embassy cable originating from Colombo quoted Stephen Sunthararaj, the then-Coordinator for the Child Protection Unit of World Vision in Jaffna directing a spate of allegations against the EPDP. In attempting to paint black the relationship between the military and the EPDP, Sunthararaj even accused the latter of child trafficking, sexual violence and running Tamil prostitution rings for soldiers.

The diplomatic cable also quoted the World Vision man as having said… because of the large number of widows in Jaffna, men associated with the EPDP, often from neighbouring villages, are used to seduce women with children, especially girls, with the promise of economic protection. After establishing a relationship, the men then take the children, sometimes by force and sometimes with the promise that they will be provided a better life.

The children are sold into slavery, usually boys to work camps and girls to prostitution rings, through EPDP’s networks in India and Malaysia.”

It would be interesting to examine whether World Vision at any time during the conflict took a stand against the use of child soldiers and indiscriminate use of women and children in high intensity battles and suicide missions by the LTTE. Did World Vision at least request the LTTE not to depend on human shields on the Vanni east front as the area under LTTE control gradually shrank? Have we ever heard of those who had been shedding crocodile tears for civilians opposing the LTTE’s despicable strategies? Never.

Against the backdrop of such accusations the non-inclusion of Devananda in some sanctioned list is surprising. Devananda, however, is receiving the treatment meted out to those Tamils who opposed the LTTE or switched allegiance to the government. Ex-LTTE Pilleyan and his one-time leader Karuna are among them. But unlike them, Devananda never served the LTTE’s despicable cause.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Midweek Review

Historical context of politicisation of Mahavamsa, and Tamil translation of the last volume

Published

7 days ago

2026/01/7

Sahan Weerasooriya

The sixth volume of the Mahavamsa, covering the period 1978-2010 has been rendered into Tamil by N. Saravanan, a well-known Tamil journalist and activist based in Norway. The first three volumes of the Mahavamsa (including the Culavamsa) are now a part of the UNESCO world heritage. They were the work of individual scholar monks, whereas the modern volumes (V to VI) were produced through state-sponsored collective efforts [1].

Although state-sponsored writing of history has been criticised, even the first Mahavamsa, presumably written by the Thera Mahanama in the 5th CE, probably enjoyed Royal Patronage. Furthermore, while it is not at all a sacred text, it is clearly a “Buddhist chronicle” compiled for the “serene joy of the pious” rather than a History of Ceylon, as compiled by, say the University of Ceylon. The latter project was a cooperative venture modeled after the Cambridge Histories. Unlike the Mahavamsa, which is a religious and poetic chronicle, the University effort was an academic work using critical historical methods and archaeological evidence. Hence the criticism [2] leveled against the Mahavamsa editorial board for lack of “inclusivity” (e.g., lack of Muslim or Hindu scholars in the editorial board) may be beside the point. The objection should only be that the ministry of culture has not so far sponsored histories written by other ethno-religious Lankan groups presenting their perspectives. In the present case the ministry of culture is continuing a unique cultural tradition of a Pali Epic, which is some nine centuries old. There has been no such continuous tradition of cultural historiography by other ethno-religious groups on this island (or elsewhere), for the cultural ministry to support.

Consequently, there is absolutely nothing wrong in stating (as Saravanan seems to say) that the Mahavamsa has been written by Buddhists, in the Pali language, “to promote a Sinhala-Buddhist historical perspective”. There IS no such thing as unbiased history. Other viewpoints are natural and necessary in history writing, and they too should be sponsored and published if there is sufficient interest.

While this is the first translation of any of the volumes of the Mahavamsa into Tamil, there were official translations of the Mahavamsa (by Ven. Siri Sumangala and others) into Sinhalese even during British rule, commissioned by the colonial government to make the text accessible to the local people. Although the Legislative Council of the country at that time was dominated by Tamil legislators (advisors to the Governor), they showed no interest in a Tamil translation.

The disinterest of the Tamil community regarding the Mahavamsa changed dramatically after the constitutional reforms of the Donoughmore commission (1931). These reforms gave universal franchise to every adult, irrespective of ethnicity, caste, creed or gender. The Tamil legislators suddenly found that the dominant position that they enjoyed within the colonial government would change dramatically, with the Sinhalese having a majority of about 75%, while the “Ceylon Tamils” were no more than about 12%. The Tamil community, led by caste conscious orthodox members became a minority stake holder with equality granted to those they would not even come face to face, for fear of “caste pollution”.

There was a sudden need for the Tamils to establish their “ownership” of the nation vis-a-vis the Sinhalese, who had the Pali chronicles establishing their historic place in the Island. While the Mahawamsa does not present the Sinhalese as the original settlers of the Island, colonial writers like Baldeus, de Queroz, Cleghorn, Emerson Tennant, promoted the narrative that the Sinhalese were the “original inhabitants” of the Island, while Tamils were subsequent settlers who arrived mostly as invaders. This has been the dominant narrative among subsequent writers (e.g., S. G. Perera, G. C. Mendis), until it was challenged in the 1940s with the rise of Tamil nationalism. Modern historians such as Kartihesu Indrapala, or K. M. de Silva consider that Tamil-speaking people have been present in Sri Lanka since prehistoric or proto-historic times, likely arriving around the same time as the ancestors of the Sinhalese (approx. 5th century BCE). Given that Mannar was a great seaport in ancient times, all sorts of people from the Indian subcontinent and even the Levant must have settled in the Island since pre-historic times.

Although Dravidian people have lived on the land since the earliest times, they have no Epic chronicle like the Mahavamsa. The Oxford & Peradeniya Historian Dr. Jane Russell states [3] that Tamils “had no written document on the lines of the Mahavamsa to authenticate their singular and separate historical authority in Sri Lanka, a fact which Ceylon Tamil communalists found very irksome”. This lack prompted Tamil writers and politicians, such as G. G. Ponnambalam, to attack the Mahavamsa or to seek to establish their own historical narratives. Using such narratives and considerations based on wealth, social standing, etc., a 50-50 sharing of legislative power instead of universal franchise was proposed by G. G. Ponnambalam (GGP), including only about 5% of the population in the franchise, in anticipation of the Soulbury commission. Meanwhile, some Tamil writers tried to usurp the Mahavamsa story by suggesting that King Vijaya was Vijayan, and King Kashyapa was Kasi-appan, etc., while Parakramabahu was “two-thirds” Dravidian. These Tamil nationalists failed to understand that the Mahavamsa authors did not care that its kings were “Sinhalese” or “Tamil”, as long as they were Buddhists! Saravanan makes the same mistake by claiming that Vijaya’s queen from Madura was a Tamil and suggesting a “race-based” reason for Vijaya’s action. This would have had no significance to the Mahavamsa writer especially as Buddhism had not yet officially arrived in Lanka! However, it may well be that Vijaya was looking for a fair-skinned queen from the nearest source, and Vijaya knew that south Indian kings usually had fair-skinned (non-Dravidian) North Indian princesses as their consorts. In fact, even today Tamil bride grooms advertising in matrimonial columns of newspapers express a preference for fair-complexioned brides.

The 1939 Sinhala-Tamil race riot was triggered by a speech where GGP attacked the Mahavamsa and claimed that the Sinhalese were really a “mongrel race”. It was put down firmly within 24 hours by the British Raj. Meanwhile, E. L. Tambimuttu published in 1945 a book entitled Dravida: A History of the Tamils, from Pre-historic Times to A.D. 1800. It was intended to provide a historical narrative for the Tamils, to implicitly rival the Sinhalese chronicle, the Mahavamsa. SJV Chelvanayakam was deeply impressed by Tambimuttu’s work and saw in it the manifesto of a nationalist political party that would defeat Ponambalam’s Tamil congress. So, the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi, seeking a high degree of self rule for Tamils in their “exclusive traditional homelands”, saw the light of day in 1949, in the wake of Ceylon’s independence from the British.

G. G. Ponnambalam and SWRD Bandaranaike were the stridently ethno-nationalist leaders of the Tamils and Sinhalese respectively, until about 1956. After the passage of the “Sinhala only” act of SWRD, Chelvanayagam took the leadership of Tamil politics. The ensuing two decades generated immense distrust and communal clashes between Sinhalese and Tamils parties, with the latter passing the Vaddukoddai resolution (1976) that called for even taking up arms to establish an Independent Tamil state – Eelam– in the “exclusive” homelands of the Tamils. It is a historical irony that Vaddukkodai was known as “Batakotta” until almost 1900 and indicated a “garrison fort” used by Sinhalese kings to station soldiers (bhata) to prevent local chiefs from setting up local lordships with the help of south Indian kings.

The last volume of the Mahavamsa that has been translated into Tamil by N. Saravanan, covers the contentious period (1978-2010) following the Vaddukkodai resolution and the Eelam wars. This is the period regarding which a militant Tamil writer would hold strong dissenting views from militant Sinhalese. The tenor of Saravanan’s own writings emphasises what he calls the “genocidal nature” of “Sinhala-Buddhist politics” via vis the Tamils. He asserts that the Sri Lankan state used this “Mahavamsa-based ideology” to justify the Eelam War and subsequent actions he characterises as genocidal, including the alleged “Sinhalisation” of Tamil heritage sites.

We should remember that the Eelam wars spanned three decades, while many attempts to resolve the conflict via “peace talks” failed. A major sticking point was the LTTE’s position that even if it would not lay down arms. Saravanan may have forgotten that the Vaddukkodai resolution, though a political declaration, used the language of a “sacred fight” and its demand for absolute separation provided the political framework for the ensuing civil war. So, if the justification for the Eelam wars is to be found in the Mahavamsa, no mention of it was made at Vaddukkoddai. Instead, the “sacred fight” concept goes back to the sacrificial traditions of Hinduism. The concept of a “sacred” or “righteous” fight in Hinduism is known as Dharma-yuddha. While featured and justified in the Mahabharata and Ramayana, its foundational rules and legal frameworks are codified across several other ancient Indian texts. The Bhagavad Gita provides the spiritual justification for Arjuna’s participation in the Kurukshetra War, framing it as a “righteous war” where fighting is a moral obligation. The Arthashastra is a treatise that categorises warfare, distinguishing Dharmayuddha from Kutayuddha (war using deception) and Gudayuddha (covert warfare). While acknowledging Dharmayuddha as the ideal, it pragmatically advocates deception when facing an “unrighteous” enemy.

Saravanan claims that “the most controversial portion is found in the first volume of the Mahavamsa“. He highlights specific passages, such as the Dutugemunu-Elara episode, where monks allegedly tell the king that “killing thousands of Tamils” was permissible because they were “no better than beasts”. This statement is untrue as the monks did not mention Tamils.

What did the monks say to console the king? The king had said: ‘How can there be peace for me, venerable ones, when countless lives have been destroyed by my hand?’ The Theras replied: ‘By this act, there is no obstacle to your path to heaven, O ruler of men. In truth, you have slain only one and a half human beings. One of them sought refuge in the Three Jewels, and the other took the Five Precepts. The rest were unbelievers, evil men who are not to be valued higher than beasts.

This discourse does not even single out or target “Tamils”, contrary to Saravanan’s claim. It mentions unbelievers. The text is from the 5th Century CE. As a person well versed in the literature of the subcontinent, Saravanan should know how that in traditional Hindu scripture killing a Brahmin or a holy person is classified as one of the most heinous sins, ranked higher than the killing of an ordinary layman or killing a person holding onto miccātiṭṭi – (misbelief). The ranking of the severity of such sins is given in texts like the Manusmriti and Chandogya Upanishad, and align with the concepts in the Hindu Manu Dharma that dictate how “low caste” people have been treated in Jaffna society from time immemorial. Hence it is indeed surprising that Sravanan finds the discourse of the monks as something unusual and likely to be the cause of an alleged genocide of the Tamils some 16 centuries later. It was a very mild discourse for that age and in the context of Hindu religious traditions of the “sacred fight” invoked at Vaddukoddai.

Furthermore, Sarvanan should be familiar with the Mahabharat, and the justification given by Krishna for killing his opponents. In the Mahabharata, Krishna justifies the killing of his opponents by prioritising the restoration of Dharma (righteousness) over rigid adherence to conventional rules of war or personal relationships. This was exactly the sentiment contained in the statement of the monks, that “Oh king, you have greatly advanced the cause of the Buddha’s doctrine. Therefore, cast away your sorrow and be comforted.’

So, are we to conclude that Sarvanan is unaware of the cultural traditions of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism and the ranking of sins that exist in them, and is he now using the Human Rights concepts of modern times in trying to damn the Mahavamsa? Does he really believe that the majority of the 15 million Sinhala Buddhists have read the Mahavamsa and are activated to kill “unbelievers”? Does he not know that most of these Buddhists also frequent Hindu shrines and hardly regard Hindus beliefs as Mithyadristi? How is it that the majority of Tamils reside in Sinhalese areas peacefully if the Sinhalese are still frenzied by the words of the monks given to console King Dutugamunu 16 centuries ago?

Instead of looking at the ranking of sins found in Indian religions during the time Mahanama wrote the Mahavamsa, let us look at how unbelievers were treated in the Abrahamic religions during those times, and even into recent times. As unbelievers, infidels and even unbaptised men and women of proper faith were deemed to certainly go to hell, and killing infidels was no sin. Historical massacres were justified as divine mandates for the protection of the faith. The Hebrew Bible contains instances where God commanded the Israelites to “utterly destroy all (unbelievers) that breathed”. Medieval Christian and Islamic authorities viewed non-believers or heretics as a spiritual “infection.” Prelates like Augustine of Hippo argued for the state’s use of force to “correct” heretics or eliminate them. Some theologians argued that God being the creator of life, His command to end a life (specially of an “infidel”) is not “murder”.

In contrast, in the Mahavamsa account the king killed his enemies in battle, and the monks consoled him using the ranking of sins recognised in the Vedic, Jain and Buddhist traditions.

If looked at in proper perspective, Sarvanan’s translation of the last volume of at least the Mahavamsa is a valuable literary achievement. But his use of parts of the 5th century Mahavamsa that is not even available to the Tamil reader is nothing but hate writing. He or others who think like him should first translate the old Mahavamsa and allow Tamil-speaking people to make their own judgments about whether it is a work that would trigger genocide 16 centuries later or recognise that there is nothing in the Mahavamsa that is not taken for granted in religions of the Indian subcontinent.

References:

[1]https://www.culturaldept.gov.lk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=36&Itemid=178&lang=en#:~:text=The%20Mahavamsa%20(%22Great%20Chronicle%22%20is%20the%20meticulously,epic%20poem%20written%20in%20the%20Pali%20language.

[2] https://www.jaffnamonitor.com/the-roots-of-sri-lankas-genocidal-mindset-and-anti-indian-sentiment-lie-in-the-mahavamsa-writer-n-saravanan-on-his-bold-new-translation/#:~:text=Share%20this%20post,have%20been%20silenced%20or%20overlooked.

[3] Jane Russell, Communal Politics in Ceylon under the Donoughmore Constitution, 1931-1948. Ceylon Historical Journal, vol. 36, and Tisara Publishers, Dehiwala, Sri Lanka (1982).

by Chandre Dharmawardana
chandre.dharma@yahoo.ca