If not for the Black July of 1983 the ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka would probably not have developed into the cruel war that is raging. However, it does not mean that there was no growing dissatisfaction among the Tamil people. The fact is that although there was discontent among them they had not been forced to react violently. Certainly, some militant sections of the youth were adopting a violent course of action but their numbers were not very big and they did not appear to have much acceptance among the Tamil people.
Clearly the events of July 1983 brought about a complete change in the situation. There had been attacks on the Tamil people before but what happened this time was perhaps equal to the combined strength of all the violence of several decades to come, concentrated into several days. According to official police records the number of persons killed in the first seven days was 471. The number of the injured was 3769. There were 3835 cases of plunder and 8077 case of arson, and, the official estimate of those in refugee camps in Colombo alone was as large as 64,000. Almost every Tamil living in the Sinhala areas became a refugee.
It was undoubtedly the Black July of 1983 that forced the Tamil people to conclude that there was no alternative to taking up arms either for the purpose of setting up a state of their own or for taking revenge. That was when the democratic political movements like the Tamil United Liberation Front lost credibility among the Tamil people and organisations like the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam found acceptance among them.
Although the Government proscribed the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, the Communist Party of Sri Lanka and the Nava Sama Samaja Party on July 30th on the grounds that they were responsible for the July events which led to the turning of the ethnic crisis into a devastating war, it is obvious that those three parties were in no way responsible for them. If so, who was behind them? Were those events a random consequence of the explosior of Sinhala anger against the Tamils? Otherwise, were the events a result of a well thought out conspiracy on the part of some specific forces?
There are indeed various interpretations made. Some Tamil leaders believe that the Government had a direct link with the events. Commentators like Jonathan Spencer, Gananath Obeysekera and James Manor too have expressed similar views. However, what all those Comments said was only that some racist leaders in the Government had a connection with the events. But I say that those events were the result of a scheme well planned and executed by the Government itself. I say this on the basis of information I had two years ago from a Tamil politician of the Government party.
This, in short, is what happened:
On a certain evening I, along with a Tamil friend of mine, visited the home of member of a foreign delegation for a chat with him. When we went there, there were two other visitors. One of them was well known to both of us. The other was a stranger only to me. This other was Mr. K. Ganeshalingam who was the Treasurer of the United National Party and the Deputy Mayor of the Colombo Municipal Council.
Although that was my first meeting with Mr. Ganeshalingam I knew that he was a good friend of the late Cyril Mathew. One of the problems for which I wanted Mr. Ganeshalingam’s explanation was how a Tamil like him was able to have a close friendship with a rabid Sinhala chauvinist leader like Mr. Cyril Mathew.
When I questioned him about it he said that Cyril Mathew was not anti-Tamil. He said that although Mr. Mathew acted like a Sinhala racist for the purpose of gaining acceptance among the Sinhala community where due to caste he had no acceptance, he was not a racist in his heart.
Then I told him that I had several anti-Tamil books written by Cyril Mathew, he said, as far as he knew Cyril Mathew was not capable of writing even a letter in Sinhala to say nothing of writing a book, and that probably he had in his name, books written by others.
When I questioned him about Cyril Mathew’s contribution to irregularities at the District Development Council elections in Jaffna in 1981.
He said he belonged to the group of United National Party members who went to Jaffna from Colombo at that election and although it was true that they committed election offences in Jaffna, persons like Gamini Dissanayake and Cyril Mathew who belonged to the group had no hand at all in the crime of setting fire to the library. Ganeshalingam said that it was caused to be done by Edward Gunawardene the boss of the Jaffna police at that time, and that Cyril Mathew or Gamini Dissanayake or anyone who went there from Colombo was not responsible at all, and that they all were shocked by the news.
The next question I put to him was whether Mr. Cyril Mathew had no connection with the incidents of July 1983. His reply was that not only Cyril Mathew but all the main leaders of the Government at the time had a hand in it and that those incidents were planned and implemented by the Government.
When I asked him what the Government’s aim was in doing it he said the Government feared that the anger that was growing among the Sinhala people at that time against the Government might become an anti-Government insurrection and that it was done to direct the people’s anger away from the Government. the Government did not expect that there could be such far-reaching consequences as have ensued.
When I questioned him as to why he, being a Tamil, participated in such a vicious conspiracy which became a turning point in Sri Lanka’s political development, Ganeshalingam, who was now somewhat drunk, seemed to come back to normal. Realising that he had gone too far, he gave up any further revelations and started begging me not to publish anything he had said. I refrained from writing about this for two years in defence to his pathetic request. I wrote this note because I felt that the 10th Anniversary of those important, vicious and violent events that changed the course of political development in Sri Lanka was the most appropriate time to divulge to the people the revelations made by Mr. Ganeshalingam. I apologise to Mr. Ganeshalingam for any inconvenience caused to him.