Disillusioned sections of Saiva activists transform into Hindutva extremists in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 26 May 2018, 21:02 GMT]
Alarming hate-speech evidence has emerged in Jaffna on Thursday causing concerns among the Tamil national grassroots circles that a new brand of North Indian Hindutva extremism is induced into the Tamil society challenging the secular Tamil nationalism at one of its bedrocks. The latest controversy and a hate speech highlighted in Tamil language media come as a reaction to the insignificant issue of 33 cows getting purchased for meat by a slaughterhouse in Chaavakachcheari following the due civic procedures in Jaffna. The Hindutva-influenced sections were staging a protest against what they termed as Islamic slaughter of cows regarded as sacred animals by Buddhists and Hindus.



The cows were slaughtered for the consumption of Vavuniyaa-based Tamil-speaking Muslims during the Ramadan. UPFA parliamentarian Kader Masthan had placed the order with the slaughterhouse, the protesters claimed.

The protest also comes a day after a section of Muslims in Jaffna at Naavaanthu'rai protesting against a Tamil businessperson planning to put up a hotel in a densely populated Muslim area. However, there was no extremist background to the protest by the Muslims.

The hate speech against the Muslims in the island was uttered on Thursday by a veteran Tamil national activist, ITAK senior member, publisher, an excellent diplomat and a soft-spoken senior activist, who was once very close to grassroots activists such as Gandhiyam S.A. David.

He has now slowly but steadily transformed into a Hindutva extremist after becoming a Saiva activist and witnessing the deteriorating conditions of Saiva temples and societies in the North and East.



Such extremist transformation would not have been possible without a powerful influence coming from the North Indian Hindutva sections operating from Tamil Nadu, academic sources in Jaffna said citing similar changes also observed among the respected Eezham Tamils who are residing in Tamil Nadu.

The visible forces behind the manifestation in Jaffna are outfits such as Siva Senai and Chinmaya Mission. Some Indian funded outfits are operating from Colombo and in the East.

There is a real danger that traditional Saiva organisations such as Saiva Maha Sabha getting misled into a wrong direction by these outfits.

“This is Hindu and Buddhist soil. It does not belong to any others,” was the utterance coming from the disillusioned senior persona.

TamilNet dares to publish the recorded video evidence of the hate speech but will include it here in the future for the historical record.

The controversial hate speech was targeting Muslims collectively. Those behind the hate speech were also joining hands with an extremist Sinhala Buddhist monk from the Nagavihara in Jaffna city.

It was a shocking scene to those who do not grasp the underlying patterns of ideological and elitist collaborations that exist between the North Indian Hindutva and the State-sanctified versions of Buddhist Establishments such as the ones in ‘Sri Lanka’ and in Myanmar.

It was not a surprise to those who understand the civilisational and ideological matters, especially after witnessing the trends behind the anti-Muslim campaigns, violence, war and finally genocide as being experienced by Rohingyas in Myanmar.

The ideology is known as the ‘Mahavamsa mindset’. It is the ideological drive behind the Tamil genocide in the island.

The Hindutva establishment is fully backing the genocide of Rohingyas. It regards the Establishment of ‘Mahavamsa mindset’ as its natural ally in the island.

Interestingly, the Buddhist monk in Jaffna was speaking in Tamil to reach out the Tamil audience with his sophisticated anti-cow slaughter message directed against the Tamil-speaking Muslims.

Many remember him also for his claim that the Tamil village Puththoor was a village of Buddha. The monks are working closely with the occupying Sinhala military to convert the poverty-stricken Tamils in Puththoor to Buddhism.

The US-trained political and military counter-insurgency establishment of genocidal Sri Lanka and the New Delhi Establishment traditionally opposed to Tamil uprising in the South are seeking for opportunities like the one which was witnessed today to destroy the inclusiveness of the secular Tamil national discourse.

Western educational outfits, especially sections of social-anthropologists with vested career interests, have been preoccupied with caste-studies with an orientalist paradigm to sustain the bandwagonism of their States.

The US officials visiting Jaffna after 2009 and their funded outfits have been claiming that Tamils waged ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Muslims during the times of war.

Eezham Tamils are bereft of a protective force of their own. Their homeland is situated in the strategically located island in the Indian Ocean Region, and they are particularly exposed to external forces seeking to cause divisions to exploit these for their agendas. Eezham Tamils need to be very cautious in dancing to the tunes being set by the foreign directors.

Eezham Tamils need increased awareness of the regional and global powers deploying religious and civilisational conflicts to wage modern warfare to their strategic purposes.