Culture pfaffenberger 81

Source: TW

विस्तारः (द्रष्टुं नोद्यम्)

• The author wishes to express his gratitude to the Foreign Area Fellowship Program of the Social Science Research Council of Learned Societies for supporting field research in Sri Lanka during 1974-1975, to Burton Benedict, Gerald Berreman, and George L. Hart, III, of the University of California, Berkeley, for the encouragement they gave to my studies, and to the anonymous reader whose helpful comments were passed on to me by the Editor.

THE CULTURAL DIMENSION OF TAMIL SEPARATISM IN SRI LANKA
Bryan Pfaffenberger*

THE YEARS SINCE SRI LANKA became independent have witnessed the gradual deterioration of relations between the island’s most populous ethnic community, the predominantly Buddhist Sinhala folk, and its largest ethnic minority, the Ceylon Tamils, who are mainly Saivite Hindus.¹ The Sinhalese, who comprise over seventy percent of the population, dominate in the verdant southwestern region of the island country, while the Ceylon Tamils, who comprise eleven percent, dwell in two regions, the arid Jaffna District of the extreme north and the eastern coastal littoral. The worsening relations between the Sinhala and the Ceylon Tamil communities, exemplified most recently in the communal riots and the Emergencies of June and August 1981, present us with a classic example of the conflict-ridden “new nation”:² a country, established by Western colonial authority, whose recently independent administration must cope with a population deeply divided by cleavages of ethnic heritage, religious affiliation, language, and separate habitats.

So profound and obdurate are these cleavages that the country’s unity would seem tenuous at best. Predictions of the demise of the Sri Lankan state in its present form have been fueled not a little by the growth of a stridently separatist movement in the Tamil community. The strength of the separatist movement is debated in Sri Lanka, the Sinhala-dominated government insisting that the movement has fewer adherents than separatists like to claim.

[[1148]]

However strong the separatist movement might be, it is clear that the separatist cause is encouraged by a widespread fear among Ceylon Tamils that continued Sinhala domination will eventually eradicate not only the civil rights of Ceylon Tamils, but also their unique cultural tradition. This essay examines the cultural dimension of Tamil separatism, and argues that the separatist drive is animated not only by concerns about Ceylon Tamil prospects in the Sinhala-dominated state but also by the profound pride that Ceylon Tamils take in their cultural tradition.

That tradition, I wish to show, is seen by Ceylon Tamils to preserve ancient Tamil values and customs far better than the traditions of Tamils elsewhere, and for that reason there are few Ceylon Tamils indeed who do not feel at least some responsibility to protect it. And yet, for more than a few Ceylon Tamils, that pride is tinged with ambivalence. The tradition that Ceylon Tamils wish to preserve is redolent of the ancient patterns of caste and regional discrimination favoring the powerful and conservative Vellalar caste of Jaffna, a caste that has for centuries dominated the political and economic affairs of Tamil Sri Lanka.

While Tamil separatists by no means aim to renew the ancient forms of Vellalar predominance, it is nonetheless true that the cultural conservatism that helps to justify the separatist drive is insidiously tied to the legacy of Vellalar domination. For those sections of the Tamil community concerned not only with Sinhala domination but also with social reform, the conservatism implicit in the cultural dimension of the separatist drive cannot fail to raise vexing questions about the role low caste and other marginal groups would play in a Vellalar dominated state.

Tamil Separatism in Sri Lanka The rise of mass political participation has played no small role in the worsening relations between the two communities and in the rise of Tamil separatism, for the electorate is overwhelmingly Sinhala in ethnic identity and Buddhist in religion.³ In consequence it has responded to political parties stressing issues of interest to Sinhalese Buddhists. Political movements addressing the nationalist and employment aspirations of Sinhalese Buddhists elected governments that, in 1956, created legislation establishing Sinhala as the country’s “sole official language,”⁴ and, in 1972, wrote a new constitution mandating state protection and assistance for the Buddhist religion.[^5]

During the past twenty years, the Tamil folk of Sri Lanka have increasingly come to fear that their civil rights and their culture face extinction in Sri Lanka. In May 1976, a coalition of Ceylon Tamil political parties, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), issued a resolution charging that the Sinhala-dominated government of Sri Lanka, and particularly the Constitution of 1972, aimed to make the Tamils a “slave nation ruled by the new colonial master, the Sinhalese, who are using the power they have wrongly usurped to deprive the Tamil nation of its territory, language, citizenship, economic life, opportunities of employment and education thereby destroying all the attributes of nationhood of the Tamil people.”

[[1147]]

The resolution called for the establishing of the “Free, Sovereign, Secular Socialist State of TAMIL EELAM” to “safeguard the very existence of the Tamil nation in this Studies of Tamil separatism show that bread-and-butter issuesemployment in government service, access to university admissions, and problems in communicating with Sinhala-speaking government officials-have played a decisive role in the increasingly intransigent Tamil position.

Ceylon Tamils complain bitterly of discrimination; job opportunities and university admissions for Tamils have been severely curtailed by government quotas, notwithstanding the high aspirations for jobs and education among the hard-pressed Tamil youth.⁵ Zeal for the separatist cause has reached its peak among the Liberation Tigers, a terrorist group allegedly composed of Tamil youths who could not be restrained by the older Tamil separatists. Spokesmen for the separatist cause insist that they hope for a negotiated, non-violent settlement, but the Liberation Tigers pursue their aims by slaying policemen and Tamil leaders who are seen to collaborate with the Sinhala-dominated government.

The consequences of terrorist activities in Jaffna, real or rumored, have been disastrous in recent months. In June 1981, for instance, Tamils living in Sinhalese regions of the island were attacked after a policeman was shot by militant Tamil youths. Despite the danger that terrorist attacks on policemen would unleash mob violence on innocent Tamils dwelling in southern Sri Lanka, the assassinations continued. Communal tensions erupted again in August 1981, when Tamil-owned shops and tea stalls were looted and burned throughout the Sinhalese areas of the island.

It is quite clear that among Tamil youths are persons who believe there is no future for themselves, nor indeed for any Tamil-speaking person, among the Sinhalese. Bread-and-butter issues have clearly exacerbated the separatist drive, but it is also clear that there is a more fundamental issue that animates the separatist drive. Ceylon Tamils deem themselves to be a unique people, set apart in their customs and their heritage from the Tamil people of South India.[^8] What Ceylon Tamils fear is not just the continuing decline of economic opportunities, but also the eventual extinction of their culture, which they regard as unique. Ceylon Tamils, particularly those of the Jaffna Peninsula, see themselves as preserving-far more than the Tamil folk of mainland Tamilnadu - the very essence of Tamil civilization, and the separatist drive is fueled in part by the sense of responsibility that Ceylon Tamils feel to protect those ancient traditions. Ceylon Tamils have not seriously considered unification with the Indian mainland, where many millions of Tamil speakers reside in the ancient heartland of their civilization.

Believing that they have no real connections with the mainland, Ceylon Tamils have long insisted on their uniqueness. To explain this view, most scholars have depicted Ceylon Tamil culture as marginal to that of Tamil South India, since it is said to show distinctive patterns because of early Malabar (Kerala) migrations and long interaction with Sinhala people.⁶ The Malabar influence is thought to be evident in Jaffna’s systems of dowry and inheritance,⁷ but recent anthropological research has questioned that interpretation. To be sure, there are aspects of Ceylon Tamil culture-costume and fence styles, to name two-that do indeed recall Kerala traditions,[^12] and without doubt much in Ceylon Tamil culture is shared with the Sinhalese South.[^13]

But to portray Ceylon Tamil culture as marginal to the South Indian tradition, as if it were poised in an interstitial zone between the centers of two civilizations,⁸ is to miss entirely the very nature of the Ceylon Tamil identity. Ceylon Tamils deem the mainland to have undergone such drastic social change that only they continue to adhere to the ancient patterns of social relations that constitute Tamil civilization. Among these patterns are the assiduous concern for female chastity, esteem for Brahmans and the generous support of Brahman temple priests, and the equation of a region’s excellence with that of its particular landholding caste.[^15] These patterns are indeed very old in Tamil civilization, and there is more than a grain of truth in the Ceylon Tamils’ prideful claim that they preserve them best.⁹

Yet not all Ceylon Tamil regions preserve them with equal enthusiasm. On the whole, it is felt among Ceylon Tamils that the culture of the Jaffna Peninsula best preserves the ancient ways, and in consequence, it is in Jaffna that the sense of Tamil distinctiveness and the fear of cultural extinction is the greatest.¹⁰ Jaffna’s extreme social and religious conservatism is well known to Ceylonese, who regard it as far and away the region of the island most addicted to tradition. East Coast Tamils and, especially, the Tamils of “Little Jaffna,” the Tamil district of Colombo, are far less rigorous in their observance of the minutiae of custom.

Now this is not to say that East Coast Tamils and Colombo Tamils are any less proud of the Ceylon Tamils’ preservation of ancient Tamil ways; on the contrary, when asked whether those ways, such as the customs relevant to female chastity, are valuable, Ceylon Tamils are very likely to respond that these customs constitute civility itself, even if they do not observe them with the rigor characteristic of Jaffna. The Ceylon Tamils’ pride in their culture’s preservation of tradition nonetheless carries with it, for not a few Ceylon Tamils, a certain ambivalence. While nearly all Ceylon Tamils believe that their tradition is worth preserving, and indeed must be defended at all costs, it is nonetheless true, as I wish to show, that its constitutive traits are very closely related to the continued predominance of a traditional form of domination, that wielded by the landholding caste of the Jaffna Peninsula. That caste, called Vellalar, exemplifies the Indian pattern of the decisively dominant caste, one that has through numerical predominance seized nearly complete control of a region’s land, economy, political affairs, educational opportunities, and jobs. Jaffna is the only region of Tamil Sri Lanka that is so dominated, the other Tamil regions (such as the East Coast) being politically fragmented by contests between rival castes.

In consequence of their decisive dominance in Jaffna and the availability of superior educational facilities there, which Vellalars have nearly monopolized, Vellalars have emerged all along as the [[1149]] religious, political, and economic leaders not only of Jaffna but of the whole Ceylon Tamil community. The customs that Tamil separatists feel so much responsibility to preserve are ones that very few Ceylon Tamils reject, but at the same time they figure directly in the ideological and social foundations of Vellalar supremacy in the Jaffna Peninsula and refer, moreover, to Vellalar suzerainty in the most ancient form. That the rhetoric of the separatist drive is couched in the language of cultural preservation cannot fail, therefore, both to appeal to Ceylon Tamil pride and to raise concerns about the fate of non-Vellalar, Ceylon Tamil minorities, such as the East Coast Tamils and Jaffna’s many Untouchables, in a state that doubtless would be controlled by Vellalar leaders.

For those sections of the Ceylon Tamil community desiring not only freedom from Sinhala domination but also genuine social reform, the call for a separate Tamil state is at once animating and troubling. Tamil Tradition in Sri Lanka One of the most ancient and characteristic themes of Tamil culture is the enormous value placed on female chastity (karpu),¹¹ a notion that entails a variety of customary patterns: absolute premarital chastity, chaperoning, female initiation rituals, and the construction of a house to serve as a fortress against the intrusion of strangers. The maintenance of a girl’s honor is thought to be essential to the status of her family and caste.¹² But the notion is also saturated with the deepest religious meaning. A woman is seen to possess a supernatural power; so long as she remains chaste, a virgin before marriage and a faithful wife later, she will bring to her family an ambience of fertility, power, good fortune, and joy.¹³ As Jaffna Tamils of respectable caste rank understand their civilization, its great value was in discovering the truth of a woman’s power, and in laying down the social and ritual rules (muraikal) by which a happy, prosperous, and dignified life can be led.¹⁴

Implicit in these beliefs is the most profound anti-primitivism, or the conviction that the state of nature is miserable indeed. That state, which is for Jaffna Tamils epitomized by the Veddahs, Sri Lanka’s aboriginal tribal people, is one of suffering brought on by ignorance. The failure to observe the ancient rules (muraikal) opens families to a legion of hostile, supernatural forces, which destroy fertility, erase happiness, cause illnesses, and fuel animosities. The result of ignorance is, in the Jaffna Tamil view, hunger, sadness, sickness, and fighting, as well as a low level of civilization. The Veddahs, rather unsympathetically called “the fools of the jungle” (kattu mirantikal), are thought to be themselves responsible for their lowly state, and on that account are scorned.[^22]

Jaffna Tamils extend the equation of unchastity and uncivility to Sinhala people, who are likewise thought to exemplify the pitfalls of a more easygoing sexual life. In the Tamil view, Sinhala people appear to be very easily angered and potentially violent, a character trait that, in Tamil ethnophysiology, is thought to stem from a lack of sexual and [[1150]] ritual diligence.[^23] What is more, Jaffna Tamils believe very firmly that the other Tamil-speaking groups of the island-the Tamil-speaking Muslims, the so-called Indian Tamils of the central highlands, and the East Coast Tamils-are also less diligent than Jaffna Tamils in keeping up the ancient ways, and on this account Jaffna folk rank them lower and refuse to marry them.

Because of their alleged lack of diligence in ritual, East Coast Muslims and Hindus alike are thought to have access to dark and polluting supernatural forces, and are greatly feared as sorcerers. A Jaffna Tamil travelling to the East Coast is advised to speak very courteously to everyone, lest he inspire anger and elicit a curse.

The Jaffna concern for female chastity and ritual diligence doubtless recalls the ancient values of Tamil culture, but it is probably true as well that the peninsula’s unique history has played a role in affirming its contemporary importance. Jaffna was the center of a very concerted missionary effort, which in the nineteenth century threatened to overwhelm the Hindu religion with a tide of Christian conversions.¹⁵ The missionaries, who were on the whole extremely puritanical and ethnocentric, sought to portray the Hindu religion as a depraved tradition of foul superstitions, sensual orgies, and obscene sculptures. Appropriating their viewpoint and reinterpreting it in line with Tamil notions, the Hindu reformers, led by their champion, Arumuka Navalar (1833-1870), tried to reassert the value of Hinduism by cleansing Jaffna customs of the alleged obscenities (e.g., dancing girls at temple festivals) and elevating to a supreme status the value and rites of female chastity.¹⁶ +++(removed devadAsIs??)+++

Few Ceylon Tamils dispute the religious value attached to chastity, for that value has become irretrievably tied to the polemic defense of all that is glorious and ancient in Saivism. And yet it is also true that the value plays a crucial role in the near-supremacy of the Vellalar caste in Jaffna ranking. Vellalars advertise the virtue of their women with stout, fenced houses and a remarkable variety of rites, all aimed at sustaining a woman’s power. But to claim a high rank on these grounds requires no small wealth, not only to build the houses and sponsor the rites, but also to dispense with the earning power of women outside the home.

Because Vellalars control virtually all of the peninsula’s land, jobs, educational opportunities, political offices, and foreign exchange remittances,[^26] many of the poorest castes are hardly able to sustain the appearance of chastity, which they themselves esteem. The association of unchastity and lowered status is clearly shown in the beliefs about the Veddahs, and indeed Vellalars liken the so-called Minority Tamils, the two Untouchable laboring castes (Nalavar and Pallar), to jungle folk. The association is driven home in everyday economic activity, for Vellalars prefer to hire Untouchable women in their rice fields and for gathering fodder, thus ensuring the common Jaffna vista of unchaperoned Untouchable women walking about in public. The chastity value is disputed by no one, but it is nonetheless a value tinged with the reality of Vellalar domination.¹⁷

Another theme of Jaffna culture with ancient roots in Tamil civilization is the alliance of Vellalars with Brahmans (temple priests). [[1151]] So characteristic is this theme of the Tamil way that South Indian historians portray it as a hallmark trait of the last millenium.¹⁸ The alliance, as it has been understood, permits Vellalars-a caste whose status in orthodox Hindu terms should not be all that high-to achieve (by virtue of the entitlement they receive from Brahman-sponsored rituals) a very high rank indeed.¹⁹

In Jaffna, Vellalars still accord to Brahmans the deference they traditionally received in South India.²⁰ And it is precisely on this account that Jaffna Tamils hold themselves apart from Tamils elsewhere, both in Sri Lanka and in India. The East Coast region was never dominated by Vellalars, but rather by Mukkuvars, who do not appear to have emphasized the Brahman alliance pattern.²¹ Recent decades of South Indian history have witnessed the rise of a virulent anti-Brahman movement,²² whose motivations and meaning have remained virtually incomprehensible to Jaffna Tamils.²³ +++(5)+++

Seeing themselves surrounded, on the one hand, by other Ceylon Tamil groups that never emphasized the alliance, and on the other hand, by South Indian Tamils who seem to have abandoned it, Jaffna Tamils have convinced themselves that only they maintain this old Tamil custom. Few Ceylon Tamils dispute the value of the Brahman’s high position, or what is more, the religious conservatism that it entails. It is, nonetheless, a value saturated once again with the reality and the traditions of Vellalar domination. Vellalars support Brahmans, and in return receive from them, in public rituals, sanctified gifts that establish the Vellalars in the eyes of the village community as persons saturated with good fortune, the capacity to manage agrarian reproduction, and the right to command the services of non-Vellalar castes.

In no small measure as a result of their traditional, ritual relation with Brahmans, Jaffna Vellalars regard themselves as the masters of Jaffna, believing that the other castes lived there at their sufferance and for their convenience. They view the traditional social system of Jaffna as similar to the European medieval system, with Vellalars as the feudal chieftans surrounded by their slaves and retainers.[^34] These beliefs about the status of Vellalars are widespread even today in the more conservative, rural sections of the Vellalar community, as Michael Banks found in the early 1950s. Vellalars, he discovered, tend to suppose that “the whole social system [of Jaffna] is centred and focused on Vellalars.”²⁴

To be sure, there are many Vellalars, including the predominantly liberal leadership of the Ceylon Tamil political parties, who genuinely favor social reform to end caste-based discrimination, but Jaffna is without doubt the one region of Sri Lanka where the old, hierarchical ideology of caste relations is still very widespread. To preserve the status of Brahmans, then, is a laudable goal that few Ceylon Tamils, even of the more liberal persuasion, can reject, and yet the customs of the Brahman-Vellalar ritual relation figure very prominently in the aristocratic demeanor of Vellalars. In short, the value placed on Brahmans and their temples is certainly one of the hallmarks of Ceylon Tamil [[1152]] pride and cultural distinction, but it is, once again, a value that inevitably raises the issue of Vellalar domination.

Would Vellalars, having helped to create a nation that preserves their ideals, conceive themselves as entitled to dominate its affairs? There is yet another aspect of Ceylon Tamil identity that serves not to unite Ceylon Tamils but rather to divide Jaffna from the East Coast region. Recent studies of Tamil ethnogeography have shown that in traditional South India the most important unit of subcultural identity was the natu, or province. While there is a rather vague notion of a Tamil area civilization tamilakam, it is the natu that is seen as the more significant territorial unit for the purposes of political affiliation and identity.[^36] Very often the natu is defined socially in terms of its longstanding association with a particular large, agricultural caste, which rules the hinterland by virtue of an ancient, royal title.²⁵ The natu is judged to take on not only its cultural distinctiveness but also its overall moral quality from the diligence and traditionalism of its dominant, farming group.²⁶ The notion that many Jaffna Tamils have of their cultural distinctiveness is very closely tied to their idea of Jaffna as a single natu, the ancient realm of the Vellalars.

In contrast, the Batticaloa region is deemed, both in Jaffna and in Batticaloa, as the realm not of Vellalars but of Mukkuvars. The Mukkuvar ideal, as already suggested, is at variance (at least traditionally) with that of the Vellalars, and is long associated with Batticaloa’s political autonomy under the jurisdiction, in precolonial times, of its Mukkuvar chieftans (Vanniyar).²⁷ It was not the Mukkuvar regime but rather one very nearly controlled by Vellalars that Tamil separatists have in mind when they refer to the “restoration and reconstitution” (my emphasis) of the Tamil state of Eelam. That state, which prevailed in the Jaffna Peninsula from about the thirteenth century until its demise at the hands of Portuguese intrigue in 1618, was ruled from Nallur by its kings, Ariyaccakkiravartis, who were of South Indian, and doubtless of ksatriya, or royal, descent.²⁸ +++(Rather v1s!?? 4)+++ And yet, to a considerable extent, the state was controlled by Vellalars, who deemed themselves to possess the right to bestow the king’s crown.²⁹ Moreover, no king could rule Jaffna without the consent of his Vellalar chieftans.³⁰ It is not too far from the mark to say that the Jaffna regime, buttressed and controlled by Vellalar power, was in fact aimed at supporting Vellalar interests-in particular, Vellalar interest in the labor of the castes that were, by mandate of state law, obliged to serve their Vellalar masters.³¹ Jaffna Vellalars, moreover, remember the kingdom as “the golden age when Vellalars ruled all.”[^44] To refer, then, to the reconstitution and restoration of the precolonial state, this time including the East Coast, is to refer at once to a proud past and also to the spectre that Vellalars would once again dominate its affairs. There is the implied threat that the East Coast region would be denied its traditional autonomy under a Jaffna-controlled state whose many Vellalar citizens deem Batticaloa Tamils to be of inferior status.

[[1153]]

Far less appealing is the idea of Tamil Eelam to Jaffna’s Untouchables, who comprise about one-fourth of the Jaffna Peninsula’s population.[^45] Untouchable political leaders have complained that the Ceylon Tamil political parties, which are overwhelmingly dominated by Vellalars, pay only lip service to the ideals of social reform.[^46] Upon the rise of the separatist fervor, Jaffna was still reeling from a serious and violent confrontation between Untouchables, who sought the privileges (such as temple entry) that were guaranteed them under the 1957 Social Disabilities Act,³² and conservative Vellalars, who were prepared to use force to maintain their supremacy.[^48] Throughout the confrontation, the Tamil political leaders maintained their liberal positions,[^49] which is alleged to have cost them some support among conservative Vellalars.[^50] In any case, the confrontation was followed in 1971 by legislation mandating jail terms for offenders under the 1957 Act,[^51] and by extension, because of fear of prosecution, temple entry and other privileges to Untouchables throughout the peninsula. The separatist controversy has, however, entirely distracted conservative Vellalar attention from the social reform issue, and may have played a role in restoring solid Vellalar support to the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), whose liberal Vellalar leadership favors social reform.³³ However that might be, the real gains in social reform have been achieved, not by TULF rhetoric, but rather by the active intervention of the Colombo regime in Jaffna caste relations. Recently, Ranasinghe Premadasa, the Sinhalese Prime Minister, drove home this point while on a visit to Jaffna by opening a model village for Untouchables in one of Jaffna’s most caste-conscious areas.[^53] A separate state would end that intervention and on that account the TULF platform doubtless appeals very much to the most conservative portion of the Vellalar community. The TULF, to be sure, maintains its liberal stance, and there is every indication that the laws of the new state would proclaim Untouchable rights. But the question that is uppermost in the minds of minority Tamils is whether, in an independent Tamil state, those liberal ideals and their implementation could withstand the considerable political pressure against reform that conservative Vellalars would doubtless exert.

Conclusion

The cultural dimension of Ceylon Tamil separatism is, in conclusion, fraught with notions of identity that at once celebrate Ceylon Tamil cultural distinctiveness and raise the specter that conservative Jaffna Vellalars might dominate the independent state. It is possible, to be sure, to speak of the Ceylon Tamil identity in terms that encompass all Ceylon Tamils, for very few of them dispute the religious conservatism and traditionalism shown in the esteem for female chastity, for Brahmans, and for the legacy of the precolonial Jaffna state. And yet these values are redolent of the religious and political foundations of Vellalar domination. The TULF leadership, to be sure, has taken steps to allay the suspicion that a separatist victory would be little more than a Vellalar victory.

But the problem nonetheless remains that the cultural [[1154]] dimension of Tamil separatism, which celebrates the cultural distinction of Ceylon Tamils on grounds of their religious and political conservatism, is hardly likely to carry an immediate appeal to those sections of the Tamil community who desire social reform and regional autonomy, even in the face of the manifold inequities that all Tamil folk conceive themselves to suffer under the Sinhala-dominated regime.

What remains to be seen is whether the ambivalence reform-minded Ceylon Tamils feel about the separatist cause will continue to outweigh the ominous trends towards violence and toward geographic polarization as members of the two communities find it increasingly impossible to live and to work outside of their own community’s home regions. The bitterness left in the wake of communal riots like those that marred the summers of 1977 and 1981 may encourage even the ambivalent to embrace a campaign for the partition of Sri Lanka.

BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.

NOTES