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By Susantha Goonatilake

Slicing up the East for Taliban and Tigers

Decades ago as a young engineer, I rode a Jeep along the Eastern coast during a two-month stint there. I then saw clusters of Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese habitations in a multi-cultural set up. But no more. Last month I drove again up the East Coast through its present different slices of Sinhalese, Muslims and Tamils.

Although the Pottuvil pansala is deserted after a Sinhala mill owner who supported it fled, the town still has a few Sinhalese traders. Pottuvil southwards is multicultural. The Akkaraipattu pansala was attacked by Tigers. Its Sinhala traders have run away, due to Muslim pressure. In the adjoining Tamil area, I hear from the LTTE office denunciation of Muslims. The Tiger spokesman -- claiming to have attacked the Colombo oil depots, and has a damaged eye to show for it -- says that Sinhalese and Tamils have commonalities but not the Muslims. This was the anti-Muslim LTTE party line I had heard six months ago in a Tiger office near Seruwawila. Among Eastern Muslims I spoke to, anti-Tiger views prevailed. All were against a merger of the Northern and Eastern provinces.

Multicultural diversity was hardening in the East into different mono-ethnic slices. The LTTE's present Jaffna mono-ethnicity was being replicated. The only difference was that in the East both the Tamils and the Muslims seem to be appealing to a Sinhalese audience to make their different cases.

The ideological underpinning for the Tamil-only slice was the Vaddukkoddai Declaration of 1976 with its mischievous invention, the "traditional Tamil homeland". A few days ago, another completely fictional traditional homeland was invented, this time for the Muslims and announced as a special Declaration at Oluvil (earlier known by the Sinhala name Oluwila). Muslims who had once been given refuge in the East by the Sinhala kings when they were attacked by the Portuguese were now inventing their own separatist ideology to support an emerging Islamic fundamentalist presence.

Muslims in Sri Lanka were multicultural like those of Indonesia and Malaysia. But now marks of a very narrow interpretation of the Quran and fundamentalism are appearing. For example the fundamentalists' female dress -- complete black from head to toe -- is now seen in the South Eastern University. Already the museum of the University built by government money distorts Sri Lanka's history. In addition to a few exhibits of Qurans, it has also secular artifacts, for instance recent coins and even an old mammoty. But it ignores completely the well known Buddhist history of this area of which evidence is found in chronicles, stone and brick remains, inscription and numerous statues. An intolerant Taliban ideology is being openly created here under government patronage.

For a brief period there was a small kingdom in Jaffna (in fact only a "kinglet" the term used by the Portuguese to describe it). Unlike the new Muslim entity it was a historical fact. Muslims in the Eastern Province, however, were actually first settled in the East by Sinhala kings when they were attacked by the Portuguese.

Before 1932, there was also no Northern Province or Eastern Province as such. The Dutch-Sinhalese Treaty of 1766 and the English-Sinhalese Treaty of 1815 affirmed Sinhalese sovereignty of the Eastern Province. Tamil settlements of any significance are only from the mid 19th-century; the British Governors Torrington in 1848 and Ward in 1856 settled Tamils in the coastal areas of the Eastern Province.

On my recent tour, I gave a lecture at the South Eastern University on Arab-Asian science interactions but found in some students' questions undercurrents of blind Islamic fundamentalism. I was reminded of a lecture I had given in Jaffna University in 1982. I then interpreted Siran Deraniyagala's excavations in Anuradhapura of a prehistoric megalithic stratum found also in South India. The Jaffna university hall was packed and the Tamil newspaper coverage was exultant. I later realized that Tamil separatists were trying to misuse, as now in my lecture in the "Muslim" East, my multicultural approach. (Post script: Deraniyagala's later digs indicate that North Indian culture had first entered Sri Lanka and then to South India.)

A relatively integrated society in the country has become sliced over the past few decades. The PA's "union of regions" whose absurd assumption was that Sri Lanka was not multicultural earlier sanctified this artificial slicing up of a once multicultural entity. Just the opposite was actually true. The present slicing up is partly due to both PA and UNF actions.

The two invented entities, namely a Tamil and now a Muslim homeland, are now contending in the Eastern Province. These artificial slices are in place, ready for future battle, especially between Tamils and the Muslims. The Sinhalese and the Central Government are there more as bystanders. But this situation has been partly created by the Central Government, of both the President and the UNF; both through encouragement of separatist and fundamentalist tendencies among the Muslims and by ignoring the Tiger buildup after the ceasefire. Wait for the fire next time in the East. In the meantime, blame the culprits by default. Our Government, hers and his, both.

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