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“It is Hinduism which is being deliberately targeted!”
This was stated by prominent Sri Lankan Tamil MP Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam at a meeting held in New Delhi on October 28 while referring to the current situation in the island nation’s northern and eastern provinces, which Tamils describe as the community’s traditional homeland.
Ponnambalam, elected for a fourth time to parliament in 2024, was speaking at a conference on “Transitional Justice and Human Rights in (the) Context of Ethnic Cleansing: Narratives of Sri Lankan Tamils and Kashmiri Pandits”. It was organised by the Australian Tamil Congress and the United States Tamil Action Group in collaboration with the All India Law Teachers Congress and the Indian Society of International Law.
An articulate speaker seen as a sympathiser of Tamil nationalist politics that holds the vanquished Tamil Tigers in high esteem, Ponnambalam, 52, admitted that the biggest challenge for his community was how to make the BJP government in India take a larger interest vis-à-vis accountability for what has happened to Tamils in Sri Lanka and to help the community reach a favourable political solution.
It is in this context that he underlined that Hinduism was the most distinct identity for the Tamils in Sri Lanka since Christians were in both the Tamil and Sinhalese communities. “It is Hinduism which is being deliberately targeted (in the north and east),” he added, pointing out that the government had budgetary plans to build 1,000 Buddhist viharas in the predominantly Tamil region.
“What is unique to Tamils is Hinduism. It is being attacked as well. Ancient Saiva (Shaivite) temples are being taken over by Buddhists (in the name of archaeology).”
The Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalist agenda, according to Ponnambalam, was to dismantle the identity of a potential Tamil nation. He quickly added that he was not advocating secession by referring to “Tamil nation”.
'...had been faced by Hindus in Kashmir'
Ponnambalam’s politico-religious theme was echoed more vociferously by M. Venkatesan, a national secretary of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) who underlined the common thread binding the suffering of the Kashmiri Pandits and Eelam Tamils.
Unlike Ponnambalam, who did not cross political red lines, the Chennai-based Venkatesan – who focuses on Hindutva in his writings – went hammer and tongs at the Sri Lankan state, giving rise to questions of whether he was articulating his party’s point of view or perhaps a line of thinking in the Indian establishment.
Giving a twist to history, the BJP leader claimed that Hindus were in a majority both in Kashmir and in Sri Lanka 200 years ago. “What (Tamil) Hindus are facing in Sri Lanka had been faced by Hindus in Kashmir.” According to him, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had ensured justice for Hindus in Kashmir.
He accused the Sinhalese of attacking Hindu temples just as, according to him, Hindu places of worship were targeted by Muslim separatists in Kashmir. The Sinhalese were grabbing land from Tamil Hindus. “Attempts are on in Sri Lanka to destroy Tamil language and Hindu religion.”
Unlike Ponnambalam, who normally stays away from talking about the India-backed 13 th amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution that gave rise to provincial councils, Venkatesan called for its implementation. He told the gathering that India was watching the Sri Lankan situation, and blamed “other political parties” (which he didn’t name) in Tamil Nadu of coming in the way of the Modi government’s attempt to ensure justice for Sri Lankan Tamils.
A Tamil political identity is being sought to be built around Hinduism
The conference theme and the key speakers – another Sri Lankan Tamil MP, Elayathamby Srinath, also spoke – made it clear what was been evident for some time: A Tamil political identity is being sought to be built around Hinduism, disregarding the long decades when religion rarely dominated the political lexicon. Even when the Sri Lankan military, deliberately or accidentally, targeted Hindu temples during the war in the north and east, it was seen as an attack on Tamils, not Hindus. This line is being carefully reversed.
Although the conference dealt with ethnic cleansing, none of the speakers even referred to the mass expulsion of tens of thousands of Muslims from Sri Lanka’s northern province in 1990 by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a humanitarian disaster which many Tamils now admit was one of the biggest blunders the Tamil Tigers committed.
Between October 15 and 30 that year, armed LTTE guerrillas drove away an estimated 72,000 to 75,000 Muslims from the five northern districts of Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Vavuniya, Mullaitivu and Mannar. Although the Muslims had lived there for centuries, they were told to scram within hours with just the clothes they were in plus Rs 300-500. Anything else they tried to carry, documents and jewellery included, was confiscated by LTTE fighters at checkpoints. Their house belongings were then stripped and sold to Tamils by the guerrillas.
One of the conference organisers, Anupam Jha, an academic, said that forcible displacement of people amounted to criminality. He too referred to the plight of Kashmiri Pandits and Sri Lankan Tamils but made no reference to what the LTTE – which claimed to represent the Tamil community – did to Tamil-speaking Muslims.
It was in the 1990s, as the Hindu Right in India began to surge politically, that the LTTE made its first known contact with the Shiv Sena leadership in Mumbai through intermediaries. By then, the expulsion of Muslims, who were reduced to destitution, was over. (The LTTE also massacred Muslims in mosques in apparent response to the killings of innocent Tamils by Colombo-backed Muslim Home Guards.) Although perennially suspicious of foreigners, the LTTE later allowed a Delhi-based representative of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) to function in its territory.
It is clear that sections of the Tamil diaspora and the community in Sri Lanka, primarily those still loyal to the LTTE ideology, want to give a Hindu angle to the Tamil saga in the island nation. In this, they have the support of the Hindu Right in India. It is for Tamils in Sri Lanka to ponder if this Hinduisation of the Tamil political struggle will be good for the community in the long run or not.
M.R. Narayan Swamy is a veteran journalist.
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