Pain, Pride, and Politics

Social Movement Activism and the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora in Canada

Amarnath Amarasingam, Deborah Cowen, Nik Heynen, Melissa Wright

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780820348131, 9780820348124
• eBook ISBN: 9780820348148
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

Pain, Pride, and Politics is an examination of diasporic politics based on a case study of Sri Lankan Tamils in Canada, with particular focus on activism between December 2008 and May 2009. Amarnath Amarasingam analyzes the reactions of diasporic Tamils in Canada at a time when the separatist Tamil movement was being crushed by the Sri Lankan armed forces and revises currently accepted analytical frameworks relating to diasporic communities. This book adds to our understanding of a particular diasporic group, while contributing to the theoretical literature in the area.

Throughout, Amarasingam argues that transnational diasporic mobilization is at times determined and driven as much by internal organizational and communal developments as by events in their countries of origin, a phenomenon that has received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature. His work provides an in-depth examination of the ways in which a separatist sociopolitical movement beginning in Sri Lanka is carried forward, altered, and adapted by the diaspora and the struggles that are involved in this process.

PART I
Civil War in Sri Lanka and the Birth of the Tamil Diaspora

CHAPTER ONE
The Rise and Fall of Tamil Militancy in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, formerly the British colony of Ceylon, is a small island of a little more than twenty-five thousand square miles located off the southern coast of India. While the close proximity of the two nations has meant that religious, cultural, and social influences from India have always been present in Sri Lanka, the Palk Strait that separates the two has buffered the island nation from shifts in the Indian political climate (C. de Silva 1997, 9). Sri Lanka’s significant ethnic and religious diversity lies at the center of its social and political history. Of the 20 million people in Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese are the majority ethnic group, with 74 percent of the population. The Tamil community in Sri Lanka is made up of Sri Lankan Tamils (around 12 percent of the population) and Indian Tamils (4 percent), most of whom are Hindu, but with a significant number of Christians (mostly Catholics). The Muslims of Sri Lanka make up about 9 percent of the population (C. de Silva 1997, 3–5; McGilvray 2008). Smaller ethnic groups consist of the Burghers (0.4 percent), who are descendents of European settlers, and the Veddas, the indigenous peoples of Sri Lanka.

For over four hundred years, all or parts of Sri Lanka fell under the control of successive waves of European powers: the Portuguese (1505–1658), the Dutch (1658–1796), and the British (1796–1948). While talk of independence had begun in the early twentieth century, it was delayed by the outbreak of the Second World War. In July 1944 Lord Soulbury was appointed to head a commission tasked with examining a new constitutional draft proposed by Don Stephen Senanayake, the leader of the State Council, who was also minister of agriculture and vice chairman of the Board of Ministers. The Soulbury Commission eventually made recommendations that would form the basis of a new constitution for an independent Sri Lanka. The transfer of rule from the British colonial power was formalized with the Ceylon Independence Act of 1947.

The first elections in Sri Lanka, held in 1947, were easily won by Senanayake’s United National Party (UNP), a conglomerate of several parties including the Ceylon National Congress, the Sinhala Maha Sahbha, and the Muslim League. Prominent nationalists like Senanayake and S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike led the UNP and “attempted to establish an anti-communist, inter-communal parliamentary form of government” (Ross and Savada 1988). The UNP’S internal differences worsened over the years, with the most serious split coming in 1951, when Bandaranaike’s left-of-center bloc broke away from the UNP to form the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP). As most of the previous competition for the UNP consisted of communist / Marxist parties with little chance of success, the birth of the SLFP was the first major challenge to the UNP reign.

Despite the “benevolent guidance” of Senanayake, the UNP could not resolve many of the ethnic tensions that lay below the surface. One of the more immediate problems was the “Indian question”—concerning the political status of the Indian Tamils (variously called Estate Tamils, Up-Country Tamils, or Malaiyaha Tamils) who worked on the tea plantations—which the Soulbury Commission had left unaddressed (Ross and Savada 1988). The bulk of the Indian Tamil population on the island worked on the plantations and by 1946 constituted over half of the Tamil population in the country. The tendency of the Sinhalese population to view the plantation workers as temporary residents led to restrictions on their voting rights as early as the 1930s (C. de Silva 1997, 261; Wilson 1975). By the 1930s and 1940s, most Indian Tamils had been in Sri Lanka for several generations, and according to the Soulbury report of 1946, 80 percent of them had been “born in Sri Lanka or had resided in Ceylon for at least ten years” (quoted in Bass 2001, 10). The tensions between the Sinhalese population and Sri Lankan Tamils were equally difficult to diffuse. There was a real fear among members of the Tamil leadership that colonial domination would simply be replaced by Sinhala domination, to the detriment of Tamil culture.

Seeking to address the needs of the Sri Lankan Tamil people, the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC, or Tamil Congress) was formed in 1944 by G. G. Ponnambalam. By the 1930s and 1940s, Ponnambalam had galvanized Tamil political opinion in Jaffna and “stood poised to challenge the older Tamil leadership in the North” (C. de Silva 1997, 243). The formation of the ACTC in 1944 signals an attempt by the Tamil leadership to secure some sort of constitutional safeguards for minority populations in Sri Lanka. However, Tamil politics itself began to factionalize shortly after independence. In 1949 a dissident group within the ACTC, under the leadership of S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, broke away to form the Federal Party. A main point of contention was the issue of voting rights for Indian Tamils in Sri Lanka (see Bass 2012). From 1948 to 1949, three laws—the Ceylon Citizenship Act, the Indian and Pakistani Residents Act, and the Parliamentary Elections Amendment Act—disenfranchised almost all Malaiyaha Tamils, “leaving them in a legal limbo of statelessness that continued for several decades” (Bass 2001, 10).

The Ceylon Citizenship Act stipulated that anyone wishing to obtain citizenship had to prove that “his father was born in Ceylon, or his paternal grandfather and paternal great grandfather were born in Ceylon.” Under these stringent conditions, only about five thousand Malaiyaha Tamils could qualify for citizenship. Ponnambalam and the ACTC strongly opposed the bill, but, perhaps realizing that he could have more influence on these matters working from within the ruling party, Ponnambalam soon accepted a portfolio in Senanayake’s cabinet. As A. J. Wilson (2011, 509) notes, “He attached no pre-conditions, such as the establishment of two official languages (Sinhala and Tamil), an end to state-aided colonization of the Tamil homelands, the re-enfranchisement of the disenfranchised Indian Tamil plantation workers, or addressing the question of a national flag. His failure to resolve these issues before joining the cabinet caused a split in his party.” Ponnambalam reasoned, perhaps mistakenly, that he could better negotiate many of these matters as a member of cabinet. Indeed, he likely had some input into the framing of the 1949 Indian and Pakistani Residents Act, which granted citizenship to anyone who had lived in Ceylon without interruption for ten years (seven years for married individuals). Ponnambalam’s rejection of the Ceylon Citizenship Act alongside his later support for the Indian and Pakistani Residents Act contributed to the Federal Party’s split from the ACTC.

Chelvanayakam, the leader of the Federal Party, seemed to have believed that the Malaiyaha Tamils “were the original others of Sinhala nationalism” (Bass 2009, 141) and proclaimed, “Today it is the Indian Tamils. Tomorrow, it will be the Ceylon Tamils who will be axed” (Nadesan 1993, 176). Even with Chelvanayakam’s support, the Malaiyaha Tamils’ lack of political power was apparent over the next several decades. For instance, in 1964 and 1974, two pacts (the Sirimavo-Shastri Pact and the Sirimavo-Gandhi Pact) were signed between Sri Lankan prime minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Indian prime ministers that decided the fate of all Malaiyaha Tamils in Sri Lanka, by then numbering around one million people—thirty-seven thousand Malaiyaha Tamils were given Sri Lankan citizenship and six hundred thousand became Indian citizens (Bass 2001, 12).

The Malaiyaha’s relationship with the Sri Lankan Tamil population was also not so straightforward. While Chelvanayakam, taking a principled stance, broke away from Ponnambalam’s ACTC on the issue of Malaiyaha disenfranchisement, his Federal Party, as Bass (2009, 141) has argued, “seemed less committed to granting citizenship to stateless Indian Tamils than using their plight for political purposes as an example of the government’s anti-Tamil stance—a position taken by numerous Sri Lankan Tamil parties ever since. Sri Lankan Tamils have often employed political rhetoric of pan-Tamil unity to get Up-country Tamils behind their views and present a united front against Sinhala national politicians.” The tenuous nature of the Malaiyaha–Sri Lankan Tamil alliance was evident in the short history of the Tamil United Front (TUF), formed in 1972. The Ceylon Workers Congress, a powerful trade union that advocated for Malaiyaha Tamils and was led by the influential Soumiyamoorthy Thondaman, worked with Sri Lankan Tamil politicians in forming the TUF. In 1977, however, the TUF reconstituted itself as the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and adopted a separatist platform. As the separate state envisioned by Tamil politicians did not include the central highlands, home to most of the Malaiyaha, Thondaman withdrew the Ceylon Workers Congress from the TULF. As the journalist D. B. S. Jeyaraj (1999) notes, “Tamil Eelam will not help resolve the problems of plantation Tamils was [Thondaman’s] practical credo. He campaigned for the TULF in 1977 and enlisted TULF support for the CWC [Ceylon Workers Congress] in elections, but contested separately under the cockerel symbol instead of the rising sun symbol of the TULF.” Thondaman later joined the UNP government of Jayewardene in 1978.

As the 1952 election approached, ethnic tensions were on the rise. The ACTC, putting its support behind the UNP, lost much of its following to the new Federal Party. The UNP once again achieved an easy victory, with the SLFP emerging as a prominent opposition party. With its profound defeat in 1952, the SLFP, under Bandaranaike, became determined to take power in the 1956 election. Bandaranaike, educated at Oxford and coming from an Anglican Sinhalese family, eventually rejected many Western aspects of his identity and embraced Buddhism and Sinhala nationalism. He brought to the 1956 election an intimate understanding of the political usefulness of communal tensions. The founder of Sinhala Maha Sabha, a movement created to promote Sinhalese culture in Sri Lanka, Bandaranaike brought this breed of cultural nationalism to the SLFP, and in his 1956 campaign pronounced the need to protect Buddhism (Ross and Savada 1988). As Richardson (2005, 144) similarly points out, Bandaranaike had discovered early in his career “that appeals on behalf of Sinhalese language, religion, culture and interests caught the imagination of people who had been previously apathetic.”

Bandaranaike declared that the 1948 independence of Sri Lanka was not yet complete, as it still had links with the Commonwealth of Nations. He pushed for the nationalization of plantations, banks, and insurance companies and used the pro-Western stance of the UNP to his advantage. His wide-ranging platform allowed him to form a coalition, the People’s United Front, with the expressed goal of unseating the UNP. The issue of language was also one of the most important issues heading into the election. Following independence, it was assumed that Sinhala and Tamil would be given equal significance as the languages of administration in a united Sri Lanka. However, Bandaranaike stated that, if elected, only Sinhala would be given official status—implying that both Tamil and English were imported languages.

When the results arrived, it was clear that Bandaranaike’s coalition, the People’s United Front, had defeated the UNP, which was reduced to a mere eight (out of ninety-five elected) seats in Parliament. The Federal Party also emerged from the election as the dominant voice in Tamil politics, successfully defeating the Tamil Congress, which was seen by many Tamils as too closely associated with the UNP. All in all, following the election, it was clear to many observers that the conversation the country was having about itself was changing in tone and character. It was also evident that Bandaranaike’s opportunism would backfire in the long run. As Neil DeVotta (2004a, 63) has argued, “Though wallowing in communalistic rhetoric was antithetical to his core liberal proclivities, vanity had deluded Bandaranaike into thinking that the chauvinists he was manipulating could be tamed after obtaining power.” In Bandaranaike’s estimation, the fires of Sinhala and Tamil emotion could be stoked and snuffed out at will. He reasoned that Sinhalese passions would be abated following the passage of Sinhala-only legislation. Once things had calmed, he could then seek to appease the Tamil population. It would prove to be a profound misreading of the political climate.

SLFP Rule and Rising Ethnic Tensions

The SLFP dominated Sri Lankan politics for the twenty years that followed, even while the UNP was in power in early 1960 and from 1965 to 1970. Among other things, the period was marked by a desire to protect “Sinhalese and Buddhist interest even at the risk of alienating minorities” (C. de Silva 1997, 283). Shortly after the 1956 election victory, Bandaranaike proposed the Official Language Act, which declared Sinhala to be the only official language in Sri Lanka. It would prove to be a long-running symbol of Sinhala nationalism and would solidify in the minds of many Tamils the belief that the Sinhalese leadership could not be trusted to uphold the rights of minority populations. In FACT, many of those I spoke to in the diaspora, young and old, continually referred to the Language Act as a prime example of why Tamil Eelam was necessary to safeguard the Tamil community. As DeVotta (2004a, 73) has argued, “The Official Language Act of 1956 was unfortunately not a law designed for the common good. On the contrary, its goal was to enhance the majority community’s socioeconomic possibilities, while imposing relative deprivation on the minorities” (see also DeVotta 2002, 2005a).

There was immediate backlash against the Language Act by Sri Lankan Tamils, represented by the Federal Party, who argued that the legislation placed their language, culture, and economic position in jeopardy. The Federal Party launched a satyagraha (nonviolent protest) beginning in June 1956, during which around two hundred Tamils assembled on Colombo’s Galle Face Green across from Parliament and were soon attacked by Sinhala protesters, who beat and pelted them with stones, wounding and hospitalizing many. Bandaranaike, perhaps a little taken aback by the violence, spoke to the Sinhalese crowd outside Parliament, telling them, “I will give you the Sinhalese language. Give me one thing. Co-operate with me and go home peacefully” (quoted in DeVotta 2004a, 83). But the Sinhalese counterprotesters did not stop there. Large-scale anti-Tamil riots spread across the city and to other parts of the island, leading to over a hundred deaths in the Eastern Province.

Leaders on both sides were shocked by the spread of violence, and an agreement was signed on July 20, 1957, between Chelvanayakam and Bandaranaike. According to the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact (or B-C Pact), Tamil was to be recognized as “the language of a national minority” and would become the “language of administration” in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. The Tamil leadership in turn agreed to abandon its demand for linguistic parity and suspended its plan to initiate an extended period of nonviolent resistance (see, for example, DeVotta 2004a, 102; C. de Silva 1997, 264–265). The B-C Pact met with opposition from both the ACTC and Sinhalese nationalists. G. G. Ponnambalam of the ACTC argued that the pact represented a “complete and abject surrender of the cherished fundamental right of the Tamil people to live on terms of equality, dignity, and self-respect with the Sinhalese in the whole island” (quoted in DeVotta 2004a, 104). Similarly, a peaceful protest by Buddhist clergy, backed by the UNP, denounced the pact as a “betrayal of Sinhalese-Buddhist people” (Ross and Sevada 1988; see also Kearney 1978). With opposition mounting, the B-C Pact did not get off the ground, and Bandaranaike abrogated the agreement in April 1958 (for more on the Official Language Act, see DeVotta 2004a, 92–142).

Tensions increased in May 1958 when a rumor that a Tamil had killed a Sinhalese sparked nationwide riots, the first true instance of communal violence since independence (see Vittachi 1958). Hundreds of people perished, and the riots left a “deep psychological scar between the two major ethnic groups” (Ross and Savada 1988). The government soon declared a state of eme...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• PART I Civil War in Sri Lanka and the Birth of the Tamil Diaspora
• PART II The Tamil Diaspora as a Social Movement
• Conclusion
• Notes
• References
• Index