Dry zone colonisation and myth of demographic displacement of Tamils
Sinhalese assimilated into Tamil society in Dry Zone periphery by Prof. Shantha 
K. HennayakeDepartment of Geography
University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka 

It is clear the process of depopulation of the Sinhalese in sparsly populated Dry Zone had started even before the advent of the British and continued well into the early years of the 20th century. This was followed by the simultaneous infiltration of Tamils and Muslims from their populous pockets located along the eastern coast and also from Jaffna in the case of the former.

One of the most significant, yet hardly investigated or discussed facts about the changes in the ethnic population in the sparsely populated periphery is not one of spatial but sociological. It is a striking feature to observe, contrary to the popular and cultivated view held by both the Sinhalese and Tamils, that Tamils have been acculturated into the Sinhalese society, that the Sinhalese peasants who remained behind in the isolated rural villages in the Dry Zone periphery were in fact increasingly getting assimilated into the Tamil community. Then Assistant Government Agent Mr Lushington lucidly elaborated this process in his 1898 Administration Report:

Continue reading “Sinhalese assimilated into Tamil society in Dry Zone periphery” →

Washington, D.C. 01 March (Asiantribune.com): Fri, 2013-03-01 13:12 — editor

The term “ethnic cleansing”, incorporated into the English dictionary in 1990s has been extensively used by the international media in relation to the Yugoslav wars and has become a popular phrase from 1992 on-wards.LTTE Terrorists drove a lorry packed with explosives through roadblocks and set off a huge truck bomb outside the Sri Lanka’s holiest Buddhist shrine in central Kandy, killing 13 people and wounding 23. Two toddlers were among the dead. The temple, which houses a sacred tooth of Lord Buddha suffered serious damage from the bomb blast.

There is no formal legal definition of ‘ethnic cleansing’. A broad generalization, however, refers ‘ethnic cleansing’ as forcible deportation of a population and an act of crime against humanity, under the statutes of both International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Criminal Tribunal.

Continue reading “(The West) Eyes Wide Closed: Revisiting Tamil Tiger massacres in Sri Lanka” →

– by Shenali Waduge –

Abrahamic religions and the violence, expansionism and advocacy of conversion are nothing that can be kept hidden or denied. “Spreading the Good” has led to purging of territories and their wealth and excommunicating natives and their unique cultures.Current fears associated with the repetition of past colonial crimes needs to be empathized in view of the objective of both Christianity and Islam competing for world hegemony. The Church is Christianity’s first soldier and it is becoming more and more evident that behind most terrorists’ activities the Abrahamic religions prevail. LTTE was simply a pawn of the Church to advance a Pan-Christian political agenda that aims to create a satellite Christian autonomous state out of Tamil Nadu and North Sri Lanka (in a Sudan style divide). LTTE’s demise does not mean that ambition is over.

Continue reading “EELAAM IS A CHURCH FUNDED LTTE-DRIVEN PAN-CHRISTIAN POLITICAL AGENDA” →

Creating violence and then moralising is one of the WMDs used by the Christian church to destabilise native societies. The Karen rebels in Burma and Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka were well supported by the Christian church. They were in the forefront supporting the Tigers internationally. Their propaganda machines depicted the war as a fight between Buddhists and Hindus. It was not unusual to use a caricature of a Buddhist monk with an AK-47 in one hand and a grenade in the other as a tool to denigrate Buddhism in articles written in western media. This was done with a view to reinforcing the western mindset that non-western religions are dangerous cults, barbaric, primitive, intolerant and aggressive. – J. Goonetilleke

Christianisation was the third force of colonialism as best expressed by Jomo Kenyatta, the late Kenyan leader, who said: “When the white man came he had the bible we had the land. Then he said ‘let us close our eyes and pray’. When we opened our eyes we had the Bible he had the land.”

This is further confirmed by the fact that every British aristocratic family had a lord, a bishop, a businessman in the City, and a landed proprietor, confirming the active part played by Christianity in the colonial system. The church was well and truly involved in the subjugation and exploitation of the people in the colonies, and also had financial interests in the colonial system. It is well-known that the first bank that dealt in multi-currency dealings was the Vatican, to bankroll the money it acquired from the various countries. Colonialism has now been overtaken by Neo-Colonialism, but the part played by the church has not changed. Exploitation can only be continued if the natural cohesion in societies is disrupted by groups aligned to foreign forces. This is the aim of conversion.

Continue reading “Christian denigration of Buddhism and conversion of the vulnerable – J. Goonetilleke” →

April 04, 2009By Ranjan Jayakody, Mohan Gunaratnam and Ranjit Surendran

(April 04, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Desperate situations call for desperate measures and desperate measures can leak out material factors that may have begot or moulded certain movements, their hidden agendas and even ultimate intentions. It has been suspected for a long time that the powerful force behind the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was the Catholic Church continuing with the Catholic Portuguese colonial traditions of atrocities and carnage that was led by this church in Sri Lanka.

Continue reading “Catholic Church, an ally of Tamil Tiger terrorists” →

– by Shenali Waduge –

Abrahamic religions and the violence, expansionism and advocacy of conversion are nothing that can be kept hidden or denied. “Spreading the Good” has led to purging of territories and their wealth and excommunicating natives and their unique cultures.Current fears associated with the repetition of past colonial crimes needs to be empathized in view of the objective of both Christianity and Islam competing for world hegemony. The Church is Christianity’s first soldier and it is becoming more and more evident that behind most terrorists’ activities the Abrahamic religions prevail. LTTE was simply a pawn of the Church to advance a Pan-Christian political agenda that aims to create a satellite Christian autonomous state out of Tamil Nadu and North Sri Lanka (in a Sudan style divide). LTTE’s demise does not mean that ambition is over.

Continue reading “ELAAM IS A CHURCH FUNDED LTTE-DRIVEN PAN-CHRISTIAN POLITICAL AGENDA” →

While most Tamil people are Hindus, they also have significant populations of Christians and Muslims in both India and Sri Lanka.

The LTTE, the Sri Lankan ethnic Tamil separatist group that engaged in terrorist activities, was not a “Hindu group.” The tigers’ ideology on paper was mostly secular “Tamil nationalism”, but it also had anti-Hindu aspects to it such as its members shunning their given Sanskritic Hindu names to assume “native Tamil” (or Christian) ones, eg, Prabhakaran became Pirapaharan in later years.

One of the best kept secrets is that the LTTE had many ties to the Church. For example, most of the top cadre of the LTTE were apparently Christians:

Prabhakaran aka Pirapaharan (Christian convert, a lapsed Methodist)
S.P. Tamil Selvam – Christian
Balraj (Balasegaram Kandiah) – Christian
Pottu Amman (Christian)
Prabhakaran’s son Charles Anthony – Christian
Anton Balasingham – Christian
Soosai (Thillaiyampalam Sivanesan) – Christian
Thenmozhi Rajaratnam (nickname Dhanu), Rajiv Gandhi’s suicide bomber assassin – Christian

While the LTTE’s terrorist methods should be squarely condemned, one cannot lose sight of the fact that the Sinhalese majority was egregiously persecuting their Sri Lankan Tamil minorities since the country became independent from the British, such as denying jobs and seats in educations institutes to Tamils. Rajiv Gandhi tried to broker a peace agreement in the 1980s, but it backfired, with Christian suicide bomber Thenmozhi Rajaratnam taking his life in 1991.

The following news article mentions that Pirapaharan (Velupillai Prabhakaran) was a lapsed Methodist Christian.

Continue reading “LTTE-Christian-Ties” →