Unreported by the international and local media,
This is why there are two parallel 'worlds' in
What is important here is the two different visions of who and what the Tamils of Sri Lanka are. We see ourselves as a nation, one with a distinct and valuable culture, tradition, language and heritage stretching back thousands of years. Our culture includes fine arts of various forms as well as dynamic popular forms. We see our traditional heritage as one comparable to others with millennia-long histories. However, the international community - especially the Western states - see us as a largely under-developed minority, one simply not capable of engaging with the intricacies of modern government or governance or, as a former
What is important here is how Sinhala and international conceptions of who or what the Tamils are have much more in common than appears at a first glance. The mytho-historic narratives of the Sinhalese, including the Mahavamsa, see the Tamils as the remnants of past invaders of a Sinhala island. This is the logic underlying Army chief Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka's assertion last week that the Tamils may remain but should not make undue demands on the Sinhalese. Separately, it is worth noting, as many international scholars have, how Sinhala mytho-historic narratives posit the non-Sinhalese on the islands as somehow sub-human. These logics are inherent to how the Sinhala military fights the Tamils: indiscriminate bombing and shelling, starvation by blockade, wholesale destruction of towns and cities, etc. Recall, for example, how General Janaka Perera who was assassinated last week, readily razed the Tamil town of
Our demand for an independent Tamil Eelam is based on two distinct aspects: firstly that the Tamils are being violently oppressed by a chauvinistic Sinhala state and have been since 1948 and, secondly, that we are a people versed in the philosophical, conceptual and practical dimensions of modern governance and are thus inferior to none. The basis for the international community's rejection of our demand (whilst often couched in terms of international law, international norms and so on), is ultimately based on a contemptuous view of the Tamils as an unsophisticated, undeveloped minority that is demanding things that it is simply not capable of coming to grips with. In that sense, we are not distinct: the former colonial powers - which includes the United States, as Filipinos know well - and likeminded states are still of the opinion that they know better than the masses of the non-West as to what's in their best interests.
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