My recent articles on the origins of Sri Lankan Muslims engaged howls from expected quarters in the past few days. I suggested that the claim of a small number of Muslims here they came from Arabia and elsewhere is not consistent with history because almost all of them have South India origins. The Island (7/9/04) carries and article (Page 3) that puts the question to rest through the scholarly pronouncements of visiting academics from India - namely Prof Farazeen Sulthana, S. Sheik Dawood and Abdur Rahman - who are all in unison as to where our Muslims came from. Not denying this historical reality former Minister for Muslim Affairs AHM Azwer states, quite interestingly "it is politically, and in other ways, advantageous to have a separate identity as Muslims here". So, we are now faced with a situation while historical facts being what they are, it is sometimes "politically and in other ways advantageous" to be otherwise.
SLMC leader Rauf Hakeem in the same report say "conditions" in Tamilnadu and Sri Lanka are different. In other words, whatever the historical reality is one must also play by the present "conditions". I am informed way back in the early 1970’s Dr. Badi-udin-Mahmud, who was a Minister in Mrs. Bandaranaikes UF government - took the incredible position that the language of the Sri Lankan Muslims was not Tamil but Sinhalese and added the colour of their flag is not green but black. There was a howl of protests then from other Muslim leaders here - all then with the UNP.
However Dr. Mahmud changed positions thereafter. In Madras after the 1983 events in Sri Lanka and Tamilnadu came from the same stock and therefore will have to take care of each other. "After all" he said, "we are due to his own perceptions then of "advantages" and "right conditions." O tempore! O mores!
