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by E. V. Naganathan

I am sorry but I can’t agree with Mr. Dayan Jayatilleka’s speculative analogy in The Island of 20th November 06, of an alleged Indian intervention in this country with that of the US “invasion” of Iraq of 2003. It is my view that, whilst we should by all means invoke enlightenment from contemporary developments in other parts of the world when assessing this country’s position in relation to the geopolitical realities facing it, we should not turn a Nelsonian eye to our own acute vulnerability in terms of the same’ criteria, placed as we are next to Tamil Nadu, with no other neighbours on the horizon except Tanzania to the west, Malaysia to the east and Antarctica to the south. We should, with that ineluctable fact to anchor ourselves in, take a good hard look at this country’s long history of interaction with the South Indian states from time immemorial.

For until Don Lourenco de Almeida came sailing along, like a knight in shining armour in 1505, and drew us into the western orbit, thereby multiplying the variables that we could play with by selection or exchange, we had no other option, no other partners to choose to dance with or play musical chairs than the South Indian states; no other international role to play than to serve as the playing fields, or, in some instances, the killing fields for any South Indian state that was in the mood for a little horse or rough play, and on the spree. This country has always been the back yard of South India — not India. It is important to get that distinction clear in our minds, because this country has never been of any interest whatsoever to any of the other Indian states, big or small, whatever figments of imagination our Mahavamsa-manic academics, lay or clerical, may indulge in when allowing their megalomania to run riot.

Senanayake

D. S. Senanayake, who, as a true statesman, took the long view and who has, incidentally, been recently cruelly caricatured by a member of the country’s so — called administrative elite for a very frivolous reason, unworthy of a senior C.C.S. man, had his feet planted in the realities of the historico — geographico — politico — diplomatic dumps in which this country came to be stuck after independence, when he insisted on the defence pact with Britain and retention of Commonwealth membership. But it is the favourite pastime of our masochistic parochialists to cut their noses to spite their faces and close the escape routes from the mouse trap of their own making by letting go of those two life lines, thereby shutting the door to five centuries of free access to the greater world outside the South Indian syndrome within which this country has been imprisoned during the previous twenty centuries of its history. If Mr. Senanayake had his way there would have been no J.V.P. and no LTTE (which my kinswoman, Rohini Hensman, has so insightfully described as the alter — egos of each other) and the country’s destinies would have taken a different turn. Instead back again at square one are we! The mercantilist and thence globalist honeymoon with our more recent partners, Portugal, the Netherlands and Britain, is over.

JRJ

By the way, I find it difficult to believe that the administration of Mr. J. R. Jayewardene, who had an unprecedented five-sixth majority in the House, had a “crisis of legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the citizens”. One wonders who were the people who voted him into such power that he could architect the present Presidential constitution as well as the entire socio-economic configuration as we have known it since 1977. 1 should imagine that such a charge would more suitably be placed at the door of the present administration, which, after a full year in office, has not yet been able to get its act together and constitute a government of any stability or credibility and rule, which is the first duty of any government.

Be that as it may, I wonder what Raja Raja Chola, who sent his general Cholasingham Senathi Raja in 1055AD to conquer the island and bring it under direct Cholian rule as a province for the next 150 years, would have had to say about “slippery slopes” and the like, in the light of the historical fact that the restoration of independence of the territory was only brought about by much laboriously- crafted diplomacy involving enmeshing of the country’s destinies with those of the neighbouring South Indian states of Pandya and Kalinga. Especially the bonding with the latter was to remain a permanent feature of the country’s politics, both foreign and local, right down to the Portuguese era. Some light is shed on these historical realities if we note, without too much digression into detail, that Parakramabahu (from “vaghu” meaning hand in old Tamil) was patrilineally of Pandyan stock and took his name from the time-honoured regnal title of Pandyan royalty i.e. “Parakrama Pandya”. He chose to nominate as his successor his sister’s son, who was from Kalinga, thereby inaugurating the Kalinga connection that prevailed right down to Don Juan Dharmapala in Kotte and Dona Catherina Kusumasana Devi in Kandy. We may take leave of this subject by citing Dr. Paul E. Pieris’s quotation: “No one shall take the throne of Lanka who is not of the Kalinga, race, certainly not one of the Govi tribe”. The Kandyan nobility well understood this requirement when they chose King Narendrasingbe’s brother-in-law, who was a Nayakkar of Kshatriya descent, from Madurai to succeed him. Likewise, after Rajadhirajasinghe’s death without male heir, they again chose his brother-in-law, Sri Wickramarajasinghe to succeed him, though there was his son, Unambuwe, by his “yakadadoliya”, who was otherwise quite eligible.

Treachery

In like manner one may surmise King Kulasekhera Pandya’s amused reactions to the reference to “descent into a quagmire” in the context of the fact that it was his energetic young general Prince Ariyasingham Chakravarti, who was a scion of the Eastern Ganga branch of the great Kalinga dynasty, whose ascent rather of the battlements of Yapahuwa fortress in 1275AD resulted in the capture and spiriting away into King Kulasekhera’s custody in Madurai of the Dalada. After the old king’s death, Prince Ariyachakravarti established the Northern kingdom which remained with its “sovereignty and integrity” (to quote the phrase that trips off the lips of present day government apologists) intact till General De Azevedo’s conquest in 1618 (fully 16 years after Kotte had passed tamely and without a sword — cut into Portuguese hands). Indeed, as I have detailed in a previous study it was the fifth attempt on the part of the Portuguese forces to subdue the kingdom that succeeded at last due, in part, to treachery by the pro-Portuguese faction, led by Kakkai Vanniyan (Karuna’s proto — type, no doubt).

In the context of the above, I don’t agree that this country will ever be India’s, or rather, South India’s Iraq, since if any state in the world can claim a permanent interest in this country, it is South India. The “dynamics”’ (to use a pet phrase of Mr. Jayatilleka’s) are already manifesting themselves, when we recall the boast of the first Mahaweli Minister that this country would be supplying power to South India, only to find now that it is just the reverse, with this country’s turning to South India, with its not only indigenous hydro, thermal and coal, but nuclear power as well, to make good its growing shortfall in that respect. The parallel that I would recommend to Mr. Jayatilleka is rather between this country and Ireland, so perilously isolated next door to England and exposed to centuries of depredation by the latter till “hey, presto!” the look-out on the mast rigging of the “Santa Anna” called out, “Land, ahoy” and Columbus had discovered the New World, which set right the wrongs of the old and restored a semblance of balance between the two countries. But where are the inhabitants of this country to seek succour except take a leaf out of Dutugemunu’s book and jump into the southern seas, as some stalwarts of the JHU keep tendenciously threatening to do.

China

Historical precedent again excludes any possibility of China’s obliging by donning the mantle of protector, which is the pet expectation of persons with a JVP and JHU orientation, because as the famous Galle inscriptions disclose, which are, incidentally, in Tamil, Persian and Chinese, the two visits of the Chinese eunuch admiral with his floating city of a fleet in 1411 AD, purportedly to make an offering of extraordinary richness to the Devinuwara, on behalf of the reigning T’ang emperor, ended with the capture of the royal family, then ruling in Raigama, and the Dalada as well. Whereas the former were duly restored after due payment of ransom and acknowledgement of Chinese suzerainty. The attitude of the present Chinese regime in keeping mum on this issue is evidence of the supreme disdain bordering on contempt that the “celestial” race holds this South Asian island and its people in. Some facts, alas, are stubborn.

Talking of Iraq, if Mr. Jayatilleka is interested, the analogy Iraq shares with this country and its special relationship vis-`E0-vis South India, is really to be traced historically to the role that Iraq has played as the backyard of Iran and Turkey, the latter as successor to Byzantium. That is the key to the mistake made by the U.S. Iraq is well outside its historical sphere of influence. The Turks, who knew their business quite well, governed Iraq as three separate pashaliks, Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, to represent the Sunnis, Shias and Kurds, respectively. So stable was the country under these autonomous arrangements that it defied all attempts at conquest by that prototype of Napoleon Bonaparte, the 18th century Iranian, warrior-emperor Nadir Shah, who elsewhere successfully extended the frontiers of the empire to those previously placed by Darius on the Oxus on the north—east, and on the north-west fixed it where it at present stands along the Caucasus, by treaty with the Russian empress, Anna (Peter the Great’s elder daughter). Interestingly he handed over Chechnya but kept Dagestan. Of course, he invaded Moghul India under Mohamed Shah walking away with the Peacock throne and the Kohinoor, but taking a cue from Alexander the Great did not stay put there.

Iraq as it is presently constituted was an artifact of Messrs Sykes and Picot, who drew its boundaries to suit the oil interests of Britain and France, respectively, post World War 1. It is not tenable in its present unified state and needs to revert to the confederal structure installed by Sulaiman the Magnificent, when he conquered it in the 16th century, and which has stood the test of time and bestowed peace and order on the country all these many centuries. Nadir Shah, like Napoleon, spent most of his life in military expeditions, but, notwithstanding its easy accessibility, he could make no impression on Iraq to the south — west where his several invasions were stoutly repulsed by the Pasha of Basra.

Conclusion

In conclusion may I say that it is a waste of time trying to ventilate these matters in Delhi, where they neither know nor care, as the history of this country is a closed book to them. But to South India where at least once in a century, no sooner had one of the states taken off on a bout of aggrandizement than it was knocking on the gates of Anuradhapura et al, it is a live issue. BBC, broadcasting a programme the other day about the situation in Lebanon today, had a senior Lebanese leader disclosing that whilst they were a people who traditionally sought their fortunes, abroad, and the country consequently derived around 35 per cent of its GNP from foreign remittances, in the most recent diaspora, caused by the Israeli attacks this year and two prominent political assassinations within a space of two years, despite the presence in the country of a strong pro-Syrian and pro-Iranian faction, with the Hezbollah as its military arm, there was no indication of any flight of Lebanese to these two countries. A paradox. On the other hand, we, in this country, are witnessing a steady stream of refugees travelling across the mainland from Vakarai, Sampur and other places in the east to set sail from Mannar in the west for refuge in South India. Facts speak for themselves and we must draw our conclusions accordingly. [island.lk]