North and South cannot remain separate, Rajapaksa tells Jaffna people

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 31 December 2008, 08:57 GMT]
“The people of Jaffna peninsula should forget the tragic past and all people of the north and south should live as one people”, Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President of Sri Lanka, said in a special satellite television broadcast Monday night for the people of Jaffna peninsula, which has become an open prison under Sri Lanka Army (SLA) control. Another message, delivered by Mr. Rajapaksa to the people of Jaffna, was that he has taken steps to 'liberate' Ki’linochchi and Mullaiththeevu and very soon the people there will 'live like' the people of Jaffna.

"Just as the east had seen its dawn the north too would soon experience summer and action will be taken to unify north and south," the president who divided North and East, declared.

This message was live cast Monday night on the last day of the three day exhibition-carnival held in Jaffna Central College. Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa read the Tamil version of his message written in Sinhalese script.

The farmers of Jaffna are very famous for their industriousness among the people of the south while Jaffna people are aware of the friendship of southerners, Rajapaksa said,

While 'remembering' his journey to Jaffna decades ago on ‘Yaazhtheavi’ train he said that people [Sinhalese] from places like Matara in the south had their bakeries and hotels in Jaffna and the people of Jaffna were involved in commercial activities in the south.

“All the Tamil leaders of Jaffna in the past had wished the people of Ceylon to live united and it was the Tamil youth organization in Jaffna which had had engaged in struggles to prevent foreign powers from partitioning the country," said Rajapaksa, misinterpreting the history of the Jaffna Youth Congress.

The Jaffna Youth Congress, which came up in 1924, was the first to call upon the Tamil society to denounce the Donoughmore Constitution of 1931, and the Tamils fully responded to the call. This was the first public demonstration of silent non-cooperation and psychological disassociation of Eezham Tamils with the political system of Ceylon that upheld majoritarianism, paving the way for ethnocentric Sinhala Buddhist hegemony which Mr. Rajapaksa is representing with his "Mahinda vision" (Mahinda Chintana).

The Jaffna Youth Congress brought about the end to a half-century old trend in Eezham Tamil politics that based itself in Colombo. The Colombo based elite had collaborated with the British and prevented the inspirations of Indian National Movement reaching the Eezham Tamils.

The Youth Congress also invited Mahatma Gandhi to Jaffna in 1927.

Even though the Youth Congress, which was not a political party but only a youth movement, died out in a few years, the bearings of the political struggle as well as the internal struggle for social reformation that ensued the following decades were already set by the youth movement.