Tamil Separatism and the Christian Church by "Kumbakarna"

The agitation carried out by the Catholic church and other Christian denominations against the date for the PC polls ended in a victory for them. A special feature of this agitation was the demand for "the rights of the minorities". Up to now, this had not been addressed directly by the church, but rather by the network of non-governmental organisations funded by Christian countries.

It is after a long time that the Christian and Catholic churches have become politically active. In 1961, the campaign against nationalisation of schools was led by Thomas Cardinal Cooray. On that occasion, the effort was to "save the schools of God from the heathens". This time, the political rights of the chosen people are being addressed.

After the violence and corrupt practices of the NWPC polls, it was primarily the criticism levelled by the church which forced the govt on to the defensive. Next, despite the fact that the Supreme Court was already deliberating on the question of the date for the next polls, the church got God’s people out on the streets.

An interesting feature of this demonstration was the English slogan on placards carried by some of the participants, which read "LET US PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF MINORITIES". This is of course a standard slogan of Tamil separatism. Strangely, none of the Sinhalese slogans on display was a translation of this, but rather dealt with the reason for the agitation announced earlier, i.e. the presumed difficulty of worshipping on Good Friday if the polls were held the day before. It is obvious that there is a deliberate effort to feed the Tamil separatist agenda to Sinhalese Catholics and Protestants.

When the Dollar and Kent farm colonies were wiped out by the LTTE, and the Sinhalese Catholic fishing community at Kokilai was slaughtered and their church burnt down, the silence of the Catholic church was deafening. When the ‘Christian Brothers’ were murdered because they kept their schools open in defiance of the LTTE, there was not a word uttered about the ‘freedom of worship’. In the face of the LTTE’s ethnic cleansing, carried out by the slaughter of Sinhala villagers in the northern and eastern provinces, there was nothing said by the church about ‘rights’.

On the other hand, what the church is most eager to do is to ‘negotiate’ with the terrorists. The latest effort in this regard was the trip to the Vanni by Bishops Malcolm Ranjith and Kenneth Fernando.

It is worth examining why the official institutions of the Christian and Catholic communities are trying so hard to further the aims of Tamil rascism and separatism.

Internationally, the spread of the various denominations of the Christian faith has progressed slowly but steadily. Catholics, GreekOrthodox and Protestant Christians make up 36% of the global population at present, while at the beginning of this century it was 32%. However, their hold on economic power has been slipping. While 84.2% of manufacturing output was in the hands of Christian nations in 1928, it is projected to be 51% in the year 2000. There have been demographic changes as well. While 57% of Christians were ‘white’ at the beginning of the century, this number has declined to 40% now.

The struggle for converts is virtually over in Africa and Latin America. While the latter is more or less completely Catholic or Protestant, in Africa the lines between the Islamic north and the Christian south are clearly drawn. The battleground now is Asia, particularly the impoverished south. Providing assistance to the pan-Tamil agenda of people like Bishop Emannuel is a preliminary step towards the creation of a Christian, albeit Tamil, nation-state. The cry of ‘protecting minority rights’ and the call for the intervention of western (read Christian) govts is part of the process. Perhaps it is a matter of time before we hear the call for a NATO ‘implementation’ force to follow a western-brokered ‘peace accord’.

The church attempts to justify its support for the separatist cause in the following manner. If the Buddhists are permitted to defeat Tamil militancy, the argument goes, they will next attack the Christians. So backing the Tamil agenda is presented to Sinhalese Christians as self-preservation.

Buddhist-Christian relations were strained by the agitation over the nationlisation of schools in 1961. Further damage was caused by the subsequent conspiracy of Christian military officers, and schemes like "Catholic Action". Do the churches want to proceed further down the same road? It should be borne in mind by the leaders of these institutions that it is easier to prevent a fire than to put it out.