Arun Siddharthan is what we call a poi pothal(bag of lies) in Tamil. He is one of the many Tamil sidekicks of the Colombo ruling establishment who use people like him as a tool to spread misinformation and hatred amongst communities.
He models himself as a Tamil who speaks what the Sinhala Nationalists want to hear. He doesnt speak the truth, he doesn't have to as long he has people who would listen to what he has to say without fact checking or verifying everything that he blabbers.
In this blog i will be exposing a few of the lies that he has been saying about Tamils. I hope our Sinhala brothers and sisters pay attention to this. Our political battles will continue, we are going to disagree and fight.. but let us be true to ourselves, let us not allow such liars to use us as tools.
Arun Siddharthan models himself as a person who speaks against the Vellalars, the dominant caste of the North of Sri Lanka specifically Jaffna.
Casteism is a problem throughout the island. The Vellala elite amongst Tamils and the Govigama elite amongst Sinhalese have for a very long time used their casteist privileges to oppress their fellow brothers and sisters. The Vellala folk and the Govigama folk have even worked together for their casteists interests. Nobody is denying that, but Arun Siddharthan here paints Vellalars as the face of the Tamil resistance.
You as a Sinhalese may have many opinions and even hatred towards the Tamil resistance in the North, but there is one thing that you need to remember. The resistance had no casteist character to it and also dont forget that the resistance didnt start with the Tamil Tigers. Jaffna has its own rich political history of resisting oppression in all forms, primarily in the form of casteism. But ill discuss that in detail in another post. Let us now first look at some of the lies and misinformation Arun Siddharthan is currently trying to sell to the Sinhala audience.
Firstly he talks about the casteist slavery(Adimai Kudimai system) in Thesawalamai law
The Adimai Kudimai system is one of the worst forms of slavery that was practiced in the North and East during the colonial times. No one is denying that. However how did we the Tamil polity respond to it?
In fact it was Aarumugam Pillai Coomaraswamy who started the movement to abolish the Adimai Kudimai system. However he didnt live long enough to see it become a law in the colonial rule.
Aarumugam Pillai was the first Tamil representative of the Legislative Council of Ceylon that was established in 1833. It is considered to be the first form of representative government in the island. Being the first Tamil representative in such a system Mr. Aarumugam Pillai worked towards abolishment of the Adimai Kudimai slavery system that can be found in the Thesawalamai.
Through his rigorous campaign he mobilised support from representatives of all the communities and got enough support to get the colonial government to abolish it.
Furthermore the Tamil Tigers too opposed Theswalamai law.
Mr. E. Pararajasingham (Para), head of the Judicial Division of the Liberation Tigers said the following regarding Theswalamai
"A good portion of Thesawalamai as it stands is obsolete and ineffective. What Thesawalamai says about the slavery, adoption and caste are no longer valid; slavery and caste discrimination which Theswalamai talks about are abominable to the modern Tamil sensibility.
The Tamil Eelam Penal Code and the Thamil Eelam civil code, which were enacted in 1994. The Thamil Eelam Law College was another milestone. It was established in 1991. We made special laws for women regarding their property rights, rape, abortion etc. Under our laws women are totally free and on par with men in property transactions. As you know, this is not the case under Jaffna’s traditional law, Thesawalamai. Our civil code has done away with the stipulation in Thesawalamai that a woman should obtain her husband’s consent to sell her property. We made caste discrimination a crime. These could be considered some of the milestones of the Thamil Eelam judicial system."
Why doesn't Arun not mention all of this? Doesn't he know this or is he intentionally hiding this since it would damage his narrative of blaming Tamil politics and Tamils in general.
Then Arun Siddharthan talks about the Prevention of Social Disabilities Act of 1957, which prohibits discrimination against someone based on their caste.
He is full of praise for this act. But he fails to mention an important fact pertaining. The main person who was behind the campaign responsible for bringing this act is a politician from the Federal Party Member of Parliament Mr.Vanniasingam.
Vanniasingam was one of the popular politicians of Jaffna who created the 7 point social justice program in Thanthai Chelva's Federal Party to abolish caste. He was one of the leading voices of the social justice movement of Eelam.
His famous anti-caste speech related to the bill on 11/07/1956 is still regarded as the only speech in the Ceylon parliament against caste.
Not only that the Federal Party, even the Jaffna Youth Congress, the major civil society organisation of the North which gave the first independence proclamation for a free Ceylon was vehemently against caste and paved way for temple-entry movements, and other movements that fought for the rights of the oppressed castes.
Over 40+ anti caste groups existed during that period in Jaffna and most of the oppressed caste activists later became Federal party activists too.
I will go into detail about this in another blog. But why isnt Arun Siddharthan talking about this? Is it because it doesn't fit in his narrative that seeks to demonize the Federal Party and all Tamil political leadership?
Finally he brings a paragraph from a UN Report.
Well this is what you call cherry picking paragraphs based on your confirmation bias.
I recommend everyone to read this report because 99% of the report is about the ongoing slavery in tea estates.
Why doesn't Arun Siddharthan discuss that?.
He seems to be interested in a slavery practise of the past that was abolished, but isn't interested in the ongoing slavery in estates against the Malayagam Tamils.
Why isn't he talking about it? Is he worried that his Govigama masters might remove him from their payroll if he talks about it.
We Tamils don't care much about what the likes of what Arun Siddharthan says, because we know his agenda and his lies. That is why he chooses to fool our Sinhala brothers and sisters. Arun Siddharthan is a low budget Pillaiyan for the Rajapaksas and the Ranils of the Sri Lankan Government.
He doesn't represent us, the oppressed people of the Tamil Nation. He doesn't even care for us. After all he was a member of Aawa gang which was brought into existence by the Sri Lankan Government to terrorise Tamils. If you are going to listen to him, please do so, but kindly ask him to not shamelessly refer to his propaganda as facts or evidence, because there are nothing more than distortion and lies!
-Mr. பழுவேட்டரையர்
14/09/2023
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