Anonymous (27 Sep. 2009)

Excellent, scholarly article as always, from Sachi Sri Kantha. I should like to add a footnote, however.

It is indeed ironic that S.W.R.D.Bandaranaike, who adopted a rabidly anti-Tamil political position in order to gain the support of Sinhala-Buddhist extremists and fulfill his political ambitions, thus setting in motion the persecution of Tamils in Sri Lanka that persists to the present day, was of Tamil descent.

His original ancestor was Neelaperumal, a pandarayam in a Hindu temple in the Ratnapura district, who betrayed some Kandyan Chiefs who were plotting another rebellion against the British, and was rewarded by grant of lands and position by the colonial rulers. The family gradually became Sinhalised, at first adopting the family name Kalukapuge as a halfway point and then adopting the ancient Kandyan name of Bandaranayake to which they had no right at all.

Subsequently, by inter-marriage with leading Sinhala families of the time such as the Obeyesekeres (themselves nouveau riche pseudo-aristocrats originally descended from a half-caste Portuguese soldier called Fernandez who had managed to become "Korala" of Galle under the Portuguese occupation, adopted the respectable Sinhala name of Obeyesekere and married a Sinhala lady) they became fully Sinhalised and later even claimed to be Sinhala aristocrats.

S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike's irrational hatred of Tamils was perhaps the result of a subconscious desire to deny his Tamil ancestry, just as Adolph Hitler's hatred of the Jews is believed to have been at least partly due to a desire to deny his Jewish ancestry.

Anonymous (28 Sep. 2009)

Reciting the 1959 tragedy of the late SWRDB serves only to strengthen the belief that things have gotten far, far worse to the torch lit by him around lingusitics, race and religion in 1956 as precursors to power.

Paraphrasing the down-to-earth Dahanayake\'s claim to resignging because he feared \"his throat might be cut in broad daylight\" has since visited more than a hundred thousand Tamils while another 300,000 in the Wanni face barbed wire and gunfire when trying to escape from the concentration camps!

Thanks to clever Sinhala political guile to turn \"their own assasins and throatcutters\" by pointing fingers at the Tamils rather than aginst themselves for theri own failures has been paying rich dividends unto themselves since those days. The Rajapakses regime is hence riding high on the diverted energies of their fellow countrymen and women.

Will history repeat itself? If the past is any prelude let\'s live and learn!