Senator M Tiruchelvam QC

Book  Review of Senator Tiruchelvam's Legacy by Dr. Harischandra Wijayatunga, Leader of the Sinhalaye Bhumiputra Partry

Editor:

Ram Balasubrarmaniyam

Publisher:

Vijitha Yapa Publications

Review:

Harischandra Wijayatunga B.Sc.; Ph.D.; Attorney-at-Law

Mr. Murugeysen Tiruchelvam was a well- known figure about three decades ago.

He was a Queen’s Counsel and a leading advocate, a member in the Cabinet of Ministers of Mr.  Dudley Senanayake’s Government, a Senator and one of the leaders of the Tamil political party known as the Tamil Arasu Katchi (Tamil State Party) founded by Mr. S. J. V. Chelvanayagam. For a long period, he held the high post of Solicitor General of Sri Lanka.

Mr. Ram Balasubramaniyam, (RB), the Editor of this work, a qualified lawyer has been the Private Secretary of Mr.Tiruchelvam and also the instructing attorney in some of the Court cases where Mr. Tiruchelvam appeared. Quite rightly Mr. RB says that his position provided him with a ring-side view of Mr. Tiruchelvam career and the struggles that he faced. 

The Tamil Arasu Katchi was fortunate in having the support of a large number of lawyers, doctors, Engineers and the like, the so called educated class, and also the support of the Tamil  business community,  Marxists  and the Church.

But however their politics was, to put it mildly not agreeable to a vast mass of Tamils themselves. Mr. Ponnambalam, another Tamil lawyer of 50/50 fame most vehemently opposed them.

 The Sinhala people abhorred Mr. Chelvanayagam’s politics. Now the position is totally different. Ponnambalam. Chelvanayagam and Thiruchelvam  are deceased a long time ago.

Their politics is in the hands of their heirs, the gun toting, brain washed Tamils who have not seen a world beyond the range of their guns.

Mr. Tiruchelvam, the veteran lawyer who rose to the high position of Solicitor General  is also a graduate in history.

Speaking on the Higher Education  Bill  on  September 11,  1966 in the Senate,  Mr. Thiruchelvam  says:

“The great defect of the University College of Ceylon was that we were studying through a curriculum set from London.

I was reading history, but I had not read the history of the Cholas in Ceylon. I was studying history but I did not know anything about Dutugemunu and Parakrama Bahu.

Mr. Thiruchelvam  is quite right and frank. This is the agony of the so-called  educated class.  They were foreigners in their land of birth.

 This explains why Mr. S.J.V. Chelvanayagam, a Christian came all the way from Malaya, founded a political party, at a time when Mr. Ponnambalam was asking fifty-fifty,  50 percent for 85 percent Sinhalese and 50 percent for about 12 percent Tamils started demanding: 100 percent for Tamils in a separately carved-out state.

Chelvanayagam named his party in Tamil and called it Tamil Arasu Katchi meaning Tamil State Party. For the consumption of the non-Tamil speaking people of the country, who constituted the overwhelmingly large majority he called it the Federal Party.

With this unheard of nomenclature,  Tamil politics that was all this time dealing with numbers started to deal with ownership of land. Obviously the Tamil Arasu Katchi had a hidden agenda. Even Mr. Dudley Senanayake, the Prime Minister was duped by the Federal slogan.

Mr. Senanayake, with very good intention of bringing amity between the Sinhalese and the Tamils and in all sincerity accommodated the Tamil Arasu Katchi in Cabinet and appointed Mr. Tiruchelvam to the Senate.

In his introduction to the book, Mr. R.B. says how Mr. Tiruchelvam together with other lawyers defended Mr. Amirthalingam and three other MPs at the trial-at-bar of 1976 and how Mr. Tiruchelvam made use of that opportunity to highlight the rights of the Tamil speaking people under International Law and also highlighted the sovereignty of the Tamil Nation’ [p .5].

This is the fundamentally erroneous thinking that was propagated by the Tamil Arasu Katchi.

Simply because there are Tamils in a country it does not constitute what is called a Tamil Nation. There are no Tamil Nations in India, Australia, Singapore, Malaya, Canada or the United Kingdom where the Tamil population is quite sizeable.

In these countries when Tamils get citizenship they would be exercising sovereignty as citizens of that country and not as Tamils. Can there be a difference in this country only? In Sri Lanka there has never been a Tamil Nation even in mythology.

This book consists of three parts, the first being some tributes to Mr. Tiruchelvam made by respected personages on his demise which happened under natural causes.

They are of course normal nice words, even when they come from political opponents, that we hear at the obsequies on the passing away of a person.

The second part of the book is tilled My Father, My Self and is written by his son, Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam.

It is an important piece of writing and is clearly biographical portraying the father and the man.The third and the largest part of the book is a collection of 12 selected speeches by Mr. Tiruchelvam that he made in the Senate.

One of his most important and learned contributions of the speech that he made in 1970 on the Constitutional Assembly created consisting solely of the members of the House of Representatives to draft a new Constitution.

This is a speech that should be read and re-read by all those who were drafting Constitutions as a cottage industry a few years ago.

Unfortunately Mr. Tiruchelvam was not there when President  J.R. Jayewardene promulgated the present Constitution taking undated letters of resignation from MPs and not presenting the draft to the sovereign people either to adopt or to reject.

This is a fundamental defect in all the three Constitutions.

Sovereign people have not adopted any of the drafts, either that of Soulbury, Sirima or J.R. Jayewardene.

We have umpteen number of times shown this mistake. The sacred rights of the original inhabitants, the Bhoomiputhras, are being trampled under the feet of aliens coming from U.K, U.S.A, India. Malaya etc., mainly in the company of MPs and un-elected MPs. arrogating constitutional power to themselves and performing constitutional jugglery inside parliament.

What led to Mr. Tiruchelvam leaving Mr. Dudley Senanayake’s Cabinet crossing over to the opposition is related in his own words in one of his speeches [p 184].

 The main reason seems to be the Prime Minister’s reluctance to declare the Koneswaram Kovil area in Trincomalee a sacred area.

The present kovil was erected on the living Buddhist temple site only after the riots of 1958.

The original Buddhist temple which stood on the site was almost completely destroyed by the marauding Portuguese Catholics leaving only a pillar and the massive sacred Bo Tree.

These facts were proved beyond all doubt by Mr M.H. Sirisoma, Deputy Commissioner of Archaeology, at the Sansoni Commission, 1977, where the present writer was defending Sinhala-Buddhist interests.

 It is clear that Prime Minister, Dudley Senanayake knew history correctly and objected to handing over an age old living Buddhist site to another faith, a thing that even Portuguese invading fanatics did not do.

Mr. Tiruchelvam‘s speeches consist of gems of legal arguments, burning embers of Tamil sentiments and ephemeral fantasies of pseudo-history.

However one has to thank Mr. R.B. for presenting the material to the present day reader who  otherwise would have to do research in libraries.