With Vakarai in military hands the land from Trincomalee down to the Verugal river is now officially ‘cleared.’ At least for now.

Although President Rajapakse has presented his latest military victory as part of a second ‘war for peace,’ Sinhala Buddhists will see the capture of Vakarai as the unfolding of a larger and more important story.

The recent military adventure is simply the latest phase of a Sinhala Buddhist project to reclaim the northeast as part of a mythical Sinhala civilization ‘lost’ to recurrent Tamil invasions.

The strategic importance of recent offensives in the east has to be set against the backdrop of President Rajapakse’s decision to support the demerger of the north east province.

The 1987 Indo – Sri Lanka accord recognised the merged northeast province as the Tamils’ historic habitation.

By sanctioning the demerger the Rajapakse government has removed the only mark that the Sri Lankan state recognises the Tamils as a distinct people with a historical right to exist on the island as a culturally and politically cohesive group.

With the demerger in place, the Tamils are once again reduced to a minority whose claim to political and economic rights must always be at the sufferance of the Sinhala Buddhist majority, the ‘rightful owners’ of the island.

In the mythology of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism, the Buddha himself dedicated the entire island to the Sinhala race and the Buddhist faith, thus sealing the holy trinity of race, language and faith.

From the late nineteenth century Sinhalese politicians have embraced the ideology of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism as articles of faith and have sought in different ways to reclaim the island as a pure Sinhala Buddhist land.

During the 1920’s and 1930’s as the British slowly handed control of the island over to majority rule, Sinhala politicians used their new found power to pursue an aggressive policy of colonising the northeastern Tamil areas of the island with settlers from the Kandyan and southwestern regions of the island.

While the policy was justified in reference to the high levels of landlessness amongst Sinhalese peasants, Tamil politicians complained of discrimination against landless Tamils and argued that the real intention was to change the demography of the Tamil speaking areas.

Census figures bear out early Tamil fears that colonisation schemes were leading to massive demographic change.

In the strategically and culturally important Trincomalee district alone the percentage of Sinhalese rose from 4.4 per cent to 33.6 per cent between 1921 and 1981 while in the same period the proportion of Tamils in the population dropped from 53.1 per cent to just 33. 7per cent.

Sinhala leaders who championed the colonisation schemes projected themselves in the image of Buddhist kings reclaiming an ancient civilisation that had been lost to Tamil invaders.

Despite his anglicised manners and appearance, D. S Senanayake, Ceylon’s first prime minister was not averse to revelling in the glory of his allegedly ancient and Aryan Sinhala heritage.

Claiming to be the direct descendent of the mythical king Duttugemunu, who vanquished the aged Elara, the Tamil king from the north, Senanayake made colonisation of one of the central policies of his government.

Although colonisation was justified as necessary to relieve landless and increase food production World Bank reports from the 1950’s and 60’s argued that the schemes gave very low returns on investments.

However, as the development economist Mick Moore has argued the land polices ‘and the ideologies which support it, have in general focussed much more on the control of land than on the cultivation or use of land.’

As the rate of demographic change increased Tamil leaders demanded that a self a governing Tamil unit in the northeast was needed to protect the economic and political viability of the Tamil - speaking peoples as distinct political entity.

Pacts negotiated by the Tamil leader S. J. V Chelvanayagam in 1956 and 1961 with Sinhala prime ministers recognised the Tamil claim on the northeast.

But these pacts were abrogated and Sinhala colonisation continued unabated.

The population change in the eastern districts was so massive that in the thirty years from 1946 the Sinhalese population in the colonisation areas grew from 19 per cent of the population to a staggering 83 per cent.

The rate of growth was so great that in 1959 the Amparai electoral district with a 91 per cent Sinhalese population was carved out of the previously Tamil majority eastern province.

The 1977 electoral victory of the right wing and pro- western United National Party (UNP) gave a renewed momentum to the demographic cleansing of the northeast.

Backed by massive funding from western donors, the UNP government embarked on an ambitious programme to further extend existing irrigation and colonisation schemes.

Through projects such as the World Band funded Mahaveli diversion and the Canadian assisted Madhura Oya irrigation plan over 390, 000 acres of new land was irrigated, mainly in the eastern province and over 140,000 families were settled.

Although the massive foreign funding for the schemes was secured using the rhetoric of liberal economics, the local propaganda made it clear that Sinhalese Buddhists were yet again the intended beneficiaries of the schemes.

A leaflet from the Ministry of Plan Implementation, that oversaw the new colonisation schemes stated that the developments bore ‘testimony to the glorious past of the Sinhalese Buddhist civilization of Sri Lanka.’

The leaflet went onto describe the ideal Sinhala Buddhist society that would be created with internationally funded government aid.

“The Mahaweli authorities will not only lead the settlers towards material prosperity, but also provide them with spiritual guidance to make them morally upright. On Poya Days every family has been advised to go to temple, offer flowers, perform other rites, listen to sermons and observe sil (Buddhist precepts).”

While the government was busy consolidating the Sinhala Buddhist hold on the northeast, voluntary efforts to resettle Tamils displaced by the state aided anti Tamil pogroms of the UNP era were violently disrupted.

For example, between 1977 and 1981, Gandhyam a Tamil run voluntary organisation resettled 85, 000 Tamil civilians displaced from the Hill Country in the Tamil majority Vavuniya district.

As the small co-operative farms created by Gandhyam flourished, government ministers began claiming that the settlements were hiding terrorists and helping to consolidate the Tamils’ claim on their homeland.

The security forced began harassing the settlements and eventually in April 1983 a joint police and army operation raided the offices of Gandhiyam, arrested staff, seized documents, destroyed farm buildings and burnt crops.

Dr. Rajasunderam, Gandhyam’s organising secretary was arrested along with the president Mr. S. A David and both were subjected to physical torture as well as cruel and sadistic treatment.

The Tamils’ claim on their homeland was finally recognised by the Sri Lankan state when it signed the 1987 Indo – Sri Lanka Accord: the treaty designated the northeast as the ‘historic habitation of the Tamil -speaking peoples.’ 

This recognition provided a measure of legal protection to the political and physical integrity of the Tamil - speaking peoples.

A further measure of contemporary recognition was also given through the now infamous ‘Oslo Declaration’ of 2002 that again recognised the northeast as the Tamils’ historic habitation whilst suggesting federalism as a possible solution to the conflict.

Although these legal measures have not protected the Tamils from Sri Lankan military onslaughts they have undermined the political viability of further demographic change by recognising a collective Tamil claim on the northeast.

As a consequence, since the late 1980’s, when the Indo – Sri Lanka accord was incorporated into the Sri Lankan constitution, there have been no new large scale government sponsored colonisation schemes in the northeast – although illegal encroachments have continued unabated, assisted by military operations.

Now, with the demerger in place, the government will once again pick up the pace of colonisation schemes.

The military campaign in the east has already displaced 72, 000, mainly Tamil civilians.

Whilst most of the Sinhalese and Muslim civilians who had been displaced by fighting around Mutur in April 2006 have been resettled, the Tamil civilians cleared out of Sampoor, Eachilampatu and now Vakarai are unlikely to return to their homes in the near future.

As in previous pre - colonisation clearances, displaced Tamil civilians will be maintained in refugee camps and made dependent on government handouts while their fields and homes are handed over to armed Sinhala colonists.

The international community, which remained silent whilst civilians were being bombarded in Vaharai and Sampoor, will now mobilise to build camps to intern displaced Tamils in government - controlled areas.

Thus, once again, the international community and the aid agencies will be complicit in ethnically cleansing the Tamils from their homelands.

In the coming months the Rajapakse government’s military and political efforts to dilute the Tamils’ presence in their historic homelands will unfold.

As the international community connives in these efforts the Tamils must once again ask themselves what or who will guarantee their right to exist with dignity as a people in lands of their ancestors.