Thanthai Samuel James Veluppillai Chelvanayakam at the inaugural meeting of ITAK in Colombo, on December 18, 1949:
Remembering ‘Thanthai’ SJV Chelvanayagam ( Born: March 31, 1898, Ipoh, Malaysia
Died: April 26, 1977, Jaffna, Sri Lanka ) on his 123rd birth Anniversary, March 31, 2021:
Excerpts from speech rendered by ‘Thanthai’ SJV Chelvanayagam at the inaugural meeting of ITAK in Colombo, on December 18, 1949:
“Let us now see whether the fears of the Tamil-speaking people in the past have been justified. The present constitution, unwanted by the Tamil people, had been working for just over two years. The government is indulging in a series of discriminatory legislative and administrative acts too numerous to recapitulate here. A few outstanding cases are enough for our purpose: the government has passed citizenship laws whose one purpose is to de-citizenize half the Tamil people of Ceylon. The outward plea put forward is that these laws are directed against foreigners. This is specious. The real purpose of this legislation is to deny citizenship to about 7 lakhs of Tamil workers settled in the Central portions of Ceylon. A large majority of these people know of no other home; they are not Indians; they are Ceylonese. Their one fault is that they belong to the Tamil speaking group. Political power rests in numbers. Even counting these upcountry Tamils, the Tamil group has little political power. Deprive the Tamil group of this upcountry section and the rest are small enough to die a natural political death. Further these Tamil workers have now been deprived of the franchise; this is a most cruel blow. All those who have eyes must see that the Government's plans are either to drive these people out of Ceylon, though they have every right to be here, or to force them to become the chartered slaves of the Singhalese-speaking people.
On the question of the National Flag the attitude of the Party in power is an utter disregard of the feeling and rights of the Tamil speaking people. The lion flag was the flag of the Singhalese Kings; it is today identified with Singhalese sovereignty. The flag is being used administratively as the national flag of Ceylon. I do not know of any other country with a composite population which has adopted as its national flag the flag of only one section of the people. The Government's policy on the flag issued is symbolic of its attitude towards the Tamil-speaking people. The Government ignores their existence (sic) as a part of the body politics.
Even more dangerous to the Tamil speaking people the Government's colonisation policy. We have only the beginning of it in Gal-Oya. The land to be irrigated under the Gal-Oya scheme lies in the Eastern Province, a Tamil-speaking area. There is evidence that the Government intends planting Singhalese population in this Tamil-speaking a (sic) purely area. If this be true the Government is seeking to use its powers for the very unjust purpose of reducing the Tamil-speaking areas that now exist. If this policy is allowed to continue unchecked there will be no Tamil majority areas left in the course of a few decades.
At the same time the Government's language policy openly enunciated by the Minister of Finance is to separate the Tamil-speaking provinces from the point of view of language in administration, while making Singhalese the language of the administration of the other seven provinces. In two at least of these seven provinces there are very large concentrations of Tamil people forming a majority of the population in the districts they occupy. If the government were fatherly towards these people it ought to provide for the use of their language in the administrative machinery of other areas. But this is not to be the case.
By many such acts of the Government it has lost the moral right to rule over the Tamil speaking people of Ceylon. It only does so now by the physical right of power. “
Closing lines:
“I thank you all for patience with which you have listened to me. There are many men amongst you of whose courage I am personally aware. I am inspired by that courage. I pray that you will overlook all my faults and accept my effort as my humble contribution towards our programme of service. I now move the main resolution for the day. “
- SJV Chelvanayagm KC
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