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Yesterday Tibet! Today India! Tomorrow Ceylon?
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K. Vigneswaran | 02 Aug, 2021
The relationship between the Chinese and Tamil people date back to the
Han dynasty in the second century BC. There had been cultural and trade
relationships between the two peoples since then.
During the
Tamil Pallava rule in south India, Bodhidharma Thero visited China in
the year 527 AD, and introduced Zen (Dhyanamarga) Buddhism. He also
introduced martial art or Kung Futo China. Before he left for China from
Kanchipuram, he visited Tiriyai in Trincomalee which then was another
Centre of Tamil Mahayana Buddhism. Other Tamil Buddhist monks,
Gunavarman and Vajrabodhi had also visited Tiriyai prior to their
undertaking visits to China.
In the 8th century AD, the Tang
Dynasty forged a military alliance with the Pallava King Nandivarman II
to protect China from Tibetan expansionism. The Chinese people and
their rulers had always valued self-preservation and were against
expansionism. The Great Wall of China was symbolic of that doctrine.
In
the year 1409, a Chinese Admiral erected a stone tablet in Galle
harbour to signify the visit of the Chinese Navy to Lanka. The tablet
was only in Chinese, Tamil and Persian. These languages were, then and
now, recognized as three of the oldest living languages of the world.
Such was the relationship that the cultured Chinese people had with the
cultured Tamil people in the past. But things changed after the
People's Republic of China (PRC) was established in China in 1949.
A prophetical question asked 60 years ago It
was June 1962. The army of the PRC had intruded past India's northern
border and begun a war. We, the undergraduates belonging to the
Faculties of Engineering and Science in the Colombo Campus of the
University of Ceylon were agitated. The Colombo Campus housed only these
two Faculties. The Medical Faculty was inMaradana and the other
faculties were in Peradeniya.
The undergraduates were invited to
meet at the College House on Thurston Road, it being the 'common room'
of the students. Many acrimonious speeches were made. It was pointed out
that the government of the PRC was a hegemonic and expansionist
government. It had annexed the peaceful Buddhist country of Tibet in
1959. It had expelled the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and political head
of that country and had begun a process of cultural genocide. Now, the
PRC army had walked into northern India and attacked unsuspecting Indian
soldiers and butchered them with bayonets.
A resolution was
passed at that meeting to the effect that the undergraduates of both
faculties would undertake a protest march to the Chinese Embassy on
Turret Road, demanding withdrawal of its troops behind the international
border. The resolution was carried with more than two hundred
undergraduates voting in favour and around ten voting against. These
were the pro-communist undergraduates who wrongly understood the
proposed protest march as a protest against the doctrine of communism.
Protest march against China We
fashioned several placards, the most popular one being "Yesterday
Tibet! Today India! Tomorrow Ceylon?". There were other placards which
called for the Chinese to quit Indian Territory; Indians are our Kith
and Kin, and so on. We obtained permission from the Cinnamon Gardens
Police and commenced the protest march from College House. When we
reached the Chinese Embassy and began shouting slogans, a group of thugs
appeared suddenly from nowhere and attacked us with wooden clubs.
Around thirty students were injured, of whom seven had to undergo
treatment at the nearby Colombo General Hospital. In the same manner as
the thugs appeared, they suddenly disappeared, probably into the Embassy
building.
The student leadership, which included me, decided
that we should not disperse, but march along Turret Road, Flower Road
and Thurston Road to the Residence of the Indian High Commissioner. In
any case, India House was in the neighbourhood of College House.
Expression of Solidarity with India Outside
India House, we shouted slogans expressing solidarity with India.
Thereupon the High Commissioner B.K. Kapur invited the leadership of the
protesting undergraduates, three in number, which included me, into the
premises and to his residence. We expressed solidarity with India on
this issue. The High Commissioner thanked us profusely for our active
support of India. He told us that the event would be reported to the
Indian government headed by Jawaharlal Nehru. Thereupon the protestors
dispersed to College House and thence to their residences.
True nature of PRC During
the Second World War, the Republic of China was led by Chiang Kai-shek
who helped the Allies to win the War. However, Mao Zedong ousted Chiang
Kai-shek in 1949 and forced him out to Taiwan with his followers.
However, the establishment in Taiwan under Chiang Kai-shek was
recognized by the United Nations as the legitimate government of China,
despite the fact that the vast majority of the Chinese was under Mao.
Since
the majority of the Chinese people were under the PRC of Mao, the
Indian government led by Jawaharlal Nehru supported the claim of the PRC
under Mao to be recognized as the legitimate government of China. In
spite of such a favourable position taken by India, in 1962, the
government of the PRC decided to attack India on her northern border.
Recall the earlier sacking of Tibet by the PRC. Unfortunately, at that
stage, liberal India took up the position that Tibet was an autonomous
State, but subject to Chinese suzerainty.
Thus Nehru had
followed a policy of non-confrontation with the PRC and was confident
that China would never attack India. However he was disappointed. The
politics of the PRC had no morality. The intentions of the PRC were not
understood by Nehru. The PRC's ambition wasExpansionism followed by
Hegemonic subjugation of other nations.
A disappointed Nehru visits Ceylon In
October of that year, Prime Minister of Ceylon Sirimavo Bandaranaike
invited Nehru to visit Colombo, which he readily obliged. During that
visit, the undergraduates of the Faculties of Engineering and Science
invited Nehru to address a gathering of the students at King George's
Hall. He gladly accepted our invitation. I was one of the student
leaders who received Nehru when he arrived for the meeting. During the
course of his speech, he expressed disappointment with the PRC, both in
respect of Tibet and India.
PRC targets Sri Lanka (Ceylon) The
current political leadership of Sri Lanka has leased out the Colombo
Port City to the PRC. Earlier the Hambantota Harbour was similarly
leased out to them.The Sri Lankan political leadership had not
understood the Expansionist motive of the PRC. This should have been
clear to any intelligent person when Tibet was annexed in 1959.
Expansionist governments never support self-determination of people Agents
of the PRC have conveyed promises that if the Tamils of Sri Lanka would
support Chinese enterprises in the North and East, the PRC would create
Tamil Eelam for them. This promise has been conveyed to former and
current Tamil Members of Parliament. Tamil journalists and
journalist-politicians are being wooed by the PRC agents.
The
Tamil political leadership which had mastered the 'art of rhetoric' was
urged by a stupid section of the Tamil Diaspora to blindly support
Velupillai Prabakaran in his war against Devolution of Powers and
against India. The net result for the Tamils has been the migration of
1.5 million Tamils from Sri Lanka. The Tamils have now become a
politically powerless people.
We should recall the original
Chinese doctrine of self-preservation. Regardless of the mistake made by
the Sinhala leadership, the Tamils should be able to recognize the PRC
as Expansionist and Hegemonic. Let us not forget that the PRC stabbed
Nehru in the back sixty years ago, and has committed cultural genocide
in Tibet prior to that.
(The writer is former secretary to the
Chief Minister, North-East Province, Sri Lanka; Former senior advisor to
the Chief Minister, Eastern Province, Sri Lanka; Former MP; and
President of AkhilaIlankai Tamil Mahasabha. The views expressed are
personal)
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