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Buddhist monks given training to ensure peaceful co-existence in Sri Lanka
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GamaRaala
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 30 Jul 2006 13:04:26 GMT Report for Abuse
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Lula,
You asked me THREE questions in order to determine wether SL Tamils are a Nation with a right to self determination in Sri Lanka. Here are my answers.
1. How many centuries should a group of people live in a clearly demarcated land area, as a majority within their land to call themselves natives of that land?
If a group of people arrive at an unoccupied land today, from today onwards, they are entitled to be called Natives. There are no other 'better' natives to compare and contrast with.
2. How long will it take for a group of people comprising of various ethnic origins that has been naturalized with a distinct identity, land area, language, religion and culture to call themselves a nation? (PS: I have given the definitions of a nation at 24 Jan 2006 04:56:10 GMT).
If a group of people arrive at an unoccupied land today, from today onwards, these migrant group of people can be treated as nation since there is no established nation in this land prior to the arrival of the new group of people.
The LEGITIMACY of the new nation is unchallenged, since no nation existed and occupied this land prior to them.
However, if this land was already occupied by a nation prior to the arrival of a new 'group of people', any attempts of the new group to establish autonomy/self-rule will be considered as a Foreign Invasion.
Hence, attempts of the South Indian(not just Tamils), Portuguse, Dutch and British groups of people to carve out parts of Sri Lanka were treated as Foreign Invasions by the already existing Sinhalese Kingdom. For that matter, eventhough the British ruled the WHOLE of Sri Lanka for 133 years, they are still INVADERS, and their rule carries ZERO legitimate rights. So does the Sun God's illegitimate rule, an invasion that carries no legitimate rights.
3. Is it mandatory that a group of people living in a well demarcated land area, and a majority within that area should create a new language/culture to call themselves a nation?
No. However, if a native language already existed in that land, the language of new migrants will not be called 'native'. In that sense, English is not a native language in the USA, Canada, NZ or Australia.
Edited By - GamaRaala - 30 Jul 2006 13:32:48 GMT |
shan
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 30 Jul 2006 13:41:02 GMT Report for Abuse
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Thanks Kula and Bonggo
Hope we are not wasting good weather sitting in front of the screen.
Gamma
When you resort to this bull before, both I and Mucha clearly explain to you how naive your assertion is. To remind you, Chola invasions did not introduce or create Sinhalese Buddhist Identity!!
Sinhalese Identity emerged as early as 5-6 CBC. That is when Sinhalese Identity was born. Get that clear.
So what?
It was not LuLa's hypothesis and he has mentioned the sources who have done some researches.
Ok you are happy with your following statement
Due to South Indian invasions, in 12 CAD, some of them separated from Sinhalese-Buddhist identity and assimilated into cultures of invaders from South India, and this is when SL Tamil identity was born. Nothing changed in Sinhalese-Buddhist Identity in 12 CAD.
Ok, we will take it to the face value,
People who had changed their identity in the N&E are happy with what they have got in hand. They were living with separate identity. Why is it bothering you? Do you want to take and over rule others wishes because you're numerically superior?
Because Sri lanka is an island and predominantly two languages is it always mandatory to have one language and one religion? See GB.
Say for example if there is a land connection between India and Srilanka where would have been the Sinhala kingdom then and now? Think sensibly. |
GamaRaala
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30 Jul 2006 13:54:49 GMT Report for Abuse
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Shan,
People who had changed their identity in the N&E are happy with what they have got in hand. They were living with separate identity. Why is it bothering you?
What is your point mister? No one is bothered with SL Tamils having a separate identity. They enjoy due rights of a minority race.
Do you want to take and over rule others wishes because you're numerically superior?
This question is convoluted. Some of who represent the SL Tamil Identity wants to carve out a land out of the already established Sinhalese nation-state by force.
Because Sri lanka is an island and predominantly two languages is it always mandatory to have one language and one religion? See GB.
I see Great Britain. I don't see Tamil language or Hindu religion be given equal rights. It doesn't matter with these Tamil speakers or Hindus are native white anglos who later assimilated (converted) into Hindu culture.
Increasing number of anglo-whites, who are native to GB, are turning into migrant religions like Buddhism and Hinduims. These native anglos, who are now assimilated into Hinduism and Buddhism DO NOT get equal rights for their religion in GB.
As I know, only founding cultures of GB enjoy the equal rights in GB. All other migrant cultures, regardless of how many centuries they have existed, do not enjoy equal rights.
Edited By - GamaRaala - 30 Jul 2006 14:21:51 GMT |
GamaRaala
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30 Jul 2006 14:19:17 GMT Report for Abuse
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Shan,
Say for example if there is a land connection between India and Srilanka where would have been the Sinhala kingdom then and now? Think sensibly.
You undoubtedly deserve the award for pointless arguments.
If there had been a land connection, things might have been different; we don't know. If there had been no such island called Sri Lanka, Sinhalese nation would not have existed. If the whole world stayed as one supercontinent Rodinia as it initially did, things would have been even more different. So what is your point? |
shan
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30 Jul 2006 14:23:18 GMT Report for Abuse
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Thank you Gama.
I like you to see GB with the perspective of English, Scottish and Walsh. English gained its world status through a natural process. I don't think it will happen to Sinhalese or Tamil as per Languages.
I have mentioned before if Sinhala language can reach the English standard as world language we have no problem learning. Only Tamils learning Sinhala at this moment is LTTE who are dealing with Sinhalayas in the south.
Rest of the histroy I am learning and I am open for informations. |
shan
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30 Jul 2006 14:29:27 GMT Report for Abuse
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They enjoy due rights of a minority race
I don't thing that was the case to Walsh and Scottish in the GB. |
GamaRaala
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30 Jul 2006 14:31:15 GMT Report for Abuse
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Shan,
I have mentioned before if Sinhala language can reach the English standard as world language we have no problem learning.
English to World, French to France, Italian to Italy and Sinhalese to Sri Lanka. As much as the international communication medium is English, lingua franca of Sri lanka is Sinhalese. There is nothing wrong with SL Tamils learning English.
Only Tamils learning Sinhala at this moment is LTTE who are dealing with Sinhalayas in the south.
That is partly due to the separatist mindset installed in Tamils due to the racists politics of politicians like SJV.
Edited By - GamaRaala - 30 Jul 2006 14:38:16 GMT |
shan
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30 Jul 2006 14:36:36 GMT Report for Abuse
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| It was not SJV in 12 AD decided against Sinhala. |
LuLa
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 30 Jul 2006 15:11:45 GMT Report for Abuse
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Shan,
You have given an excellent analysis to Bonggo.
Today, with the latest technology, the research on History/Archeology has taken a different path. Some of the theories put forward by the historians of the sixties like Prof. Senarat Paranavitana are found to be incorrect. Even prof. K. Indrapala accepts the fact that what he wrote in 1965 for his PhD thesis was only based on the information available at that time, but today, after 40 years, with all the new discoveries, it seems to be too early even to come up with any conclusions.
Prof. K. Indrapala says in his book, The evolution of an Ethnic Identity that it was in the nineteenth century, under the British rule, that the British officials adopted a keen interest in the history of the island. The European discovery of the Pali and Sinhala chronicles, the publication of early translations of the Mahavamsa and the acquisition of information relating to the ancient ruins lead to the first serious British attempt to write the early history of Sri Lanka in the middle of the nineteenth century.
It was in these early colonial writings, largely based on the uncritical acceptance of the local chronicles, that a new perspective of the ancient history of the island began to develop.
The view that the Sinhalese were the 'proper inhabitants' of the island in ancient times and that the Tamils were invaders came to dominate colonial historical writings.
Before long, the Sinhalese were identified with the 'Aryans' and the Tamils with the 'Dravidians'.
In recent years, several anthropologists and historians have shown how this perspective came to be developed in the colonial writings.
The British were the culprits, not only the above but they also changed the system of separate administration and brought the whole country under a single administration only in 1831, when Jaffna as an autonomous entity became part of a united Ceylon.
From 12 CAD, until 1831, the Sri Lankan kingdoms were federal in nature, and the Tamils had much more autonomy with their own kingdom. |
LuLa
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30 Jul 2006 15:23:04 GMT Report for Abuse
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GamaRaala,
Sinhalese Identity emerged as early as 5-6 CBC. Buddhism arrived in SL in 3 CBC -- that was when Sinhalese Identity was born, not in 12 CAD. Get that clear.
The term Sihala is found in the Mahavamsa only in its first few opening chapters, where it is said that the followers of Vijaya were called Sihala because his father killed his father - a lion - and hence was called Sihabahu.
However it was the advent of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, that saw the distinctive evolution of a new nation known as the Sinhalayas - a mixture of the original inhabitants (Naga, Yaksha), Tamils who had been in Sri Lanka for a long time and who embraced buddhism and the Vijayan colonists. They were united by Buddhism and the newly developed Sinhela language.
The Mahavamsa does not mention the term Sihala or its derivations any further. Infact though the Mahavamsa says that when Mahinda introduced Buddhism in circa 250 B.C, he preached in the language of the Island. It does not say whether the language was Sinhala or Tamil. A liberal use of the term Sihala is found only in the Culavamsa which is said to have been composed in the 12th. C. A. D. Even the term Sihaladvipa is found only in the Culavamsa. We also find that both in the Mahavamsa and Culavamsa, it is the term Lanka which is almost always used to denote this Island. There are four or five occasions where the term Tambapanni - another pre-Vijayan term and a Pali corruption of the Tamil term Tamraparni - is also used.
Due to South Indian invasions, in 12 CAD, some of them separated from Sinhalese-Buddhist identity and assimilated into cultures of invaders from South India, and this was when SL Tamil identity was born. Nothing changed in Sinhalese-Buddhist Identity in 12 CAD.
No, the Tamil identity also existed, as per KI?s book(page 4):
Scholars have also accepted that the prakrit form of the Tamil name is Dameda occurring in the Brahmi inscriptions of SL datable to about the 2nd century BC. In some of these early records, the variant Damela is found to occur. The origin of a separate Tamil group in SL, whatever its characteristics over the centuries, will have to go back to this early Dameda group.
It was only the ?Tamil Hindu? identity that originated after the Chola invasion after the introduction of Saivisim, a religious conversion.
If a group of people arrive at an unoccupied land today, from today onwards, they are entitled to be called Natives. There are no other 'better' natives to compare and contrast with.
AGREED.
If a group of people arrive at an unoccupied land today, from today onwards, these migrant group of people can be treated as nation since there is no established nation in this land prior to the arrival of the new group of people.
AGREED.
However, if this land was already occupied by a nation prior to the arrival of a new 'group of people', any attempts of the new group to establish autonomy/self-rule will be considered as a Foreign Invasion.
Ha! Ha! Ha! He! He! He! Hu! Hu! Hu! Hooooo! Hooo! Hoo!
Now you are making me laugh.
There were indigenous tribal people (the yaksha, nagas etc - who may or may not be related to the Tamils) who lived long before Vijaya arrived. Indeed archeological records confirm the existence of humans in Sri Lanka, long before Vijaya.
It is also believed that a Naga kingdom existed in the Island before Vijay?s arrival. There are a number of pre-Vijayan settlements all over the Island. All excavated such sites show evidence of a pre-Vijayan civilization, some of them congruous with that of South India.
Hence, as per your argument, not only the Portuguse, Dutch and British groups of people but the Tamils and Bengalis who later became Sinhalese and then SL Tamils should be treated as Foreign Invaders by the already existing pre-Vijayan Kingdom.
However, even then the fact that SL Tamils evolved in SL after the 12 CAD and have been in Lanka as a separate identity in a separate land, had their own independent kingdom mean that they too have the same right to call the land they lived as their home, just as the Sinhalese can call Sri Lanka home.
If the SL Christians also lived in a separate land area with their own language, culture and kingdoms, of course they have all the rights for autonomy.
GAMARAALA,
Throughout my argument with you, I found that you are repeating the same thing over and over, starting at one point, going round in circles and coming back to square one and you are not accepting what is mentioned in KI's book.
I see Kula has discontinued further discussions with you because it is just a waste of time. It's like pouring water on duck's back.
My advice to you is, first, try to find a copy of KI's book and read, and then let us discuss further.
Until then, have a nice time.
Cheers,
LuLa
Edited By - LuLa - 31 Jul 2006 07:52:15 GMT |
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