Acquiescence To Oppression: Caste, The Sangha & Government Office

Professor Ratnajeevan Hoole

By S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole 
(First Published in Colombo Telegraph.com)

We are supposedly living in a secular country, notwithstanding Buddhism being the foremost religion sponsored by the state.

And yet, when my friend and senior schoolmate, Mr. K.C. Nithiananthan was to come as Governor of the Northern Province, effective 6 April, it did not seem to happen and his old posting as Governor of the Western Province is still on the relevant website.

On inquiry I am told that our former Governor, Reginald Cooray, who had been posted to Kandy, had been rejected by the Mahanayakes there, saying a fishing caste Christian is unacceptable but they would allow a Christian if he is of the agricultural caste. Unbelievably, negotiations happened. Cooray and Nithiananthan had a meeting in Colombo with the authorities. The government apparently bought this line by the Mahasangha and, as I gather, Cooray will go to Kurunagala and a woman of the right caste will go to the Central Province!

This is against all the laws and principles we profess and a part of the fraud that Sri Lanka is – preaching high principles and doing the opposite. Welcome to Sri Lanka, perhaps the most racist and communalist country in the world. Worse, our non-agriculturists have acquiesced by accepting their slavery – there are so many powerful fishing caste people in government from whom we have not had a whimper. People are people, cut from the same rags I think. Wondering about this, I asked my driver who worships Arumuga Navalar and is not an agriculturist, whether he knows Arumuga Navalar’s teaching to agriculturist school children in his Paalar Paadam that if a low caste person or a dog sees his earthen cooking vessels, he ought to destroy them and buy new ones? My driver was aghast and said no one taught him that.

Why just today (Sunday 8th) I drove from Jaffna to Batticaloa to attend the fiftieth ordination celebration of my good friend The Rev. Fr. Joe Mary tomorrow Monday. I settled down in my car to read my Sunday newspapers. A prominent English language Sunday newspaper had its top, page 1 story with the headline emblazoned: New Year Gift to the North: Army to free 650 acres. They take our private lands and think they are giving us a gift by vacating it? The Editor, presumably the best of the Sinhalese intelligentsia, let that headline pass thinking he is really giving us a gift of what is ours. All the way from Vavuniya through Trinco and Moothur to Batticaloa, I saw all these encroached and forcibly settled lands, wondering what our future in this country is as Tamils.

I also recalled with bitterness my brother-in-law’s land which he had purchased in Keerimalai for a resort home, which has been taken over for the presidential palace. A government that promotes free trade cannot afford to violate people’s ownership rights over their property.

As we reached Batticaloa, I wondered if the people of Batticaloa who worship Pattini/Kannaki and at the same time had Navalar statues erected by their MP Yogeswaran, know that Navalar decried Pattini as a low caste Jaina Chetty goddess and demanded “What temples for that Chettichi?” The people of Batticaloa also have acquiesced to their slavery. We are all willing slaves to those who oppress us. It is the culture of oppression.

The root of this master-servant relationship can be traced to the Mahavamsa where in the Second Century BC (if the Mahavamsa is to be believed) King Duttugemenu’s son, the Prince Salya, marries a low caste woman, Asokamala. For this, he is banished. The only difference now is that we are doing the same horrible low-class thinking in the twenty-first century. Lord Krishna said in the Gita that he created the castes according to their moral qualities – the higher the qualities, the higher the caste. In Sri Lanka we have those claiming to be high castes exhibiting very low qualities in disrespecting the rights of those who are not agriculturist.

Until the worldly powers of clergy are removed we will always be a third rate country. In Jaffna, we have in Neduntivu (or Nainativu) a monk who has the Navy in his service. According to a reliable professional from there, he has fathered some 10 children through Tamil women. These ladies, like the fisher caste people who accept that they cannot be governors of the Central Province, are willing concubines while he claims to be the Mahanayake of the North. These ladies have acquiesced to their oppression.

I do not regard Nainativu as a part of my heritage because of how the Navy behaves and foisted criminals as our representative. I visited there for the first time only recently when a relation, on the occasion of my daughter’s marriage, gave us all a picnic-tour of Jaffna. The bus she hired took us at some point by ferry to Neduntivu. We walked about and a monk without asking any permission, came and sat on the front seat that I had been occupying. I politely told him it is a private bus, but he glared at me. I am a slave in Jaffna and knew I could not throw him out without the Navy coming to his protection. I too had acquiesced to my oppression.

Should we not rethink the foremost position for a religion that brings out the worst in man – acquiescence to our own oppression. All jobs should be open to everyone based only on qualifications. Does the government have a new policy on caste as a qualification?