In Honour Of ‘Shanie’: Rethinking Patriotism; Re-Imaging The Patriot
“There can be no patriotism without justice… As soon as the right of one individual is violated, the right of everyone is jeopardised”. - Georges Clemenceau[i]
In the morning of January 13th 1948, Mahatma Gandhi began the final fast of his life.
The target of Gandhi’s last fast was not the Colonial rulers but the government and people of newly independent India. His demands were equally unusual. Gandhi wanted Hindu refugees to vacate the Muslim homes/mosques they had seized, even if it meant returning to the wretched refugee camps, in the bitter cold of Delhi-winter. He also wanted Indian government pay Rs.550 million it owed to Pakistan. Nehru and Patel were withholding the payment because they knew that some of the money would be used by Jinnah to buy weapons to be used against India; they also feared Hindu/Sikh fury.
Shanie - Lankanesan Nesiah
Gandhi’s conditions caused consternation; many of his followers (in the polity and in society) believed they were anti-Hindu and anti-Indian. But the Mahatma understood that he was fighting for the honour of India and the moral integrity of her Hindus. And as the fast continued, the political/public mood started changing. “The loss of Mahatma Gandhi’s life would mean the loss of India’s soul”[ii] Nehru told his people, and they began to agree.
The fast ended successfully. Indian government released the payment to Pakistan. Hindu refugees gave up Moslem dwellings/mosques voluntarily. A political-civic agreement was reached to end the boycott of Muslim shops and to guarantee the safety of Delhi’s Muslims.Read More
No, You Can’t Have Jam Yet Professor Sitrampalam!
By Darshanie Ratnawalli -August 18, 2013 |
Darshanie Ratnawalli
Professor S.K Sitrampalam is the former professor of history in the University of Jaffna, a vice president of ITAK (euphemistically known as the Federal Party) and a specialist in South Asian history and Archaeology. He can be relied on… To take your breath away by bizarre displays of ignorance that is hard to explain away even with the excuse; ‘nationalist historian’. Unless ‘nationalist historian’ is a polite euphemism that really means ‘unsound operative’. Here is a demonstration from his “Tamils of Sri Lanka: Historical Roots of Tamil identity” (2003).
“At this juncture it is pertinent to quote Geiger who studied the Sinhala language in depth. He has divided its development into three phases. They are: Sinhalese Prakrit (3rd century B.C – 4th century AD), proto–Sinhalese (4th century AD – 8th century A.D) Sinhalese proper (after 8th century A.D). Elu, is the original language from which the later Sinhalese developed. However, data from the Brahmi inscriptions show that the Elu would have been either old Tamil or a dialect of Tamil. In the light of the evidence from the Brahmi inscriptions it is now evident that the proto–Sinhalese speakers, namely the Elu speakers came into contact with Prakrit, the language of Buddhism.”
The only appropriate way to respond to this is to imagine that one is a pre-school teacher and Professor Sitrampalam a tiny tot. “Oh honey” one would say “Come here. Sit. Wait let me wipe that jam off. You want to know what Elu is? You know ‘Dharma’? It’s Sanskrit. ‘dhamma’ is the Pali form. Dam and daham are the Elu forms. Shall we see what the Old Sinhala or Sinhalese Prakrit form is? Here, this is the glossary of Inscriptions of Ceylon Vol. 1[i]. Page 110. It’s ‘dama’- truth, law, religion, virtue, etc. It can be seen in inscription number 923 as ‘dama-katika’- the expounder or preacher of religion. Shall we see the actual inscription? Here let me…there’s jam on your fingers. ‘Damakatika Tisa….Pusaha (Tisaha lene)’.
Shall we move on to another book[ii]? Turn to “Works and Persons in Sinhala Literary Culture” by Charles Hallisey. “Sinhala literary culture during these centuries (he means between 10th and 15th centuries AD honey. It’s in the previous paragraph) was internally diglossic, employing one “alphabet” for writing Sinhala poetry and one for Sinhala prose. The script was the same for both; the difference between the two was the number of permitted letters (aksaras), prose, having fifty seven, against thirty-six for poetry. The alphabet for poetic Sinhala (elu) prevented the use of many Sanskrit loanwords (tatsamas) because it lacked letters for the aspirated consonants of Sanskrit, although Sanskrit loanwords became as common in Sinhala prose as they later were in the literatures of other local languages else-where in South Asia. Sanskrit loanwords apparently became common in spoken Sinhala too, as well as in Sinhala Buddhist discourse: the Sanskritic dharmaya(Truth, the Buddha’s Teaching) is far more common than daham or dähäm, found in elu, whereas there is notatsama in Sinhala from the Pali equivalent, dhamma.” Read More
