The Conflict in Sri Lanka: Ground Realities - Ilankai Tamil Sangam

e trusted on a permanent basis. Their pacts, pledges and
promises can never be taken to their face value. Mr. Pirapakaran
who is acclaimed by a vast majority of Eelam Tamils both inside
and outside of Sri Lanka as their National Leader enunciated
recently the historically tested conviction of almost all Tamils,
in his Great Heroes’ day Address, when he said, ‘…The Sinhala
nation continues to be entrapped in the Mahavamsa mindset, in
that mythical ideology. The Sinhalese people are still caught up
in the legendary fiction that the island of Sri Lanka is a divine
gift to Theravada Buddhism, a holy land entitled to the Sinhala
race.” 12 It is unfortunate that even influential Sinhala historians
who claim to have had reasonable training in critical academic
disciplines, maintain without any hesitation that Mahavamsa
gives “a surprisingly full and accurate account of the island’s early
history 13 ” It is therefore not surprising that the Tamil National
leader concluded that “it is because of this ideological blindness,
the Sinhalese people and their political and religious (Buddhist)
leaders are unable to grasp the authentic history of the island and
the social realities prevailing here. They are unable to comprehend
and accept the very existence of a historically constituted nation of
Tamil people living in their traditional homeland in north-eastern
Sri Lanka, entitled to fundamental political rights and freedoms.
It is because of the refusal by the Sinhala nation to perceive the
existential reality of the Tamils and their political aspirations the
Tamil national question persists as an unresolved complex issue. We
do not expect a radical transformation in the social consciousness,
in the political ideology, in the Mahavamsa mental structure of
the Sinhalese people. The scope and power of Sinhala-Buddhist
hegemony has not receded, rather, it has revived and taken new
forms, exerting a powerful dominance on the southern political
arena. In these objective conditions we do not believe that we can
gain a reasonable solution from the Sinhala nation. We have to fight
and win our rights. We have never entertained the idea that we
could obtain justice from the compassion of the Sinhala politicians.
This has always been the view of our liberation organisation.” 14
In essence, after engaging in almost a quarter century of a
politico-military liberation struggle Velupillai Pirapakaran came
to the conclusion that the Sinhala political leadership has always
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