The Political Construction of

Defensive Nationalism:
The 1968 Temple-EntryCrisis in
NorthernSri Lanka
BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER

IN THE SAME YEAR (1968) that students blockadedthe streets of Paris, the formerly
somnolent Jaffna Peninsula-the center of Tamil culture in Sri Lanka-was rocked
by its own version of civil unrest. Led by an activist affiliated with the "Peking wing"
of the Ceylon Communist party, several hundred "Minority Tamils" (mainly of the
traditionally "untouchable"Pallar and Nalavarcastes) sat in nonviolentprotest (satya-
graha) before the gates of Jaffna's most orthodox Hindu temple, the temple of Lord
Kandacami (Skanda) in the village called Maviddapuram. Hindus believe this large
and beautiful structure represents the very ideal of the reformed Saivite temple ad-
vocated by Arumuka Navalar (1822-79), Jaffna's champion Hindu reformer.Tradi-
tionally closed to untouchables, the Brahman-ownedtemple provided the setting for
a two-week campaign to gain admittance that was timed to coincide with the temple's
summer festival. After days of tense but peaceful confrontation, the demonstration
turned violent as dozens of self-styled "Defendersof Saivism," Hindus of high-caste
rank (VellMlarsand their domestic servants, the Koviyars), beat back the Minority
Tamils with iron rods and sand-filled bottles. Feelings ran very high throughout the
peninsula, and there were many incidents of violence, some lethal. To many Tamils
and outside observers, it seemed as though Jaffna was poised on the brink of an all-
out war between the castes (see, for example, Fontgalland 1968). Yet the conflict abated,
and although there were temple-entry skirmishes in Jaffna as late as 1978, the Ma-
viddapuramfracaswas followed by a process of political unification as the Tamil com-

BryanPfaffenberger is AssistantProfessorof Humanities,Schoolof Engineeringand Ap-

plied Science,and AssociateDirector,Centerfor South Asian Studies, of the Universityof
Virginia.
Researchon caste and socialchangein the JaffnaPeninsulawas supportedby a Foreign
AreaFellowshipof the AmericanCouncilof LearnedSocietiesand the SocialScienceResearch
Council(SSRC),as well as by postdoctoralfellowshipsof the SSRC,and I thanktheseagencies
for supportingthis work. This paperwas first presentedat a symposiumon the historyof
religionsin Jaffnaat the Universityof Uppsala,Sweden,andI wouldlike to thankthe members
of this symposium(and especiallyDagmarHellman-Rajanayagam, Peter Schalk, K. Siva-
thamby,andS. Pathmanathan) fortheirconstructivecriticism.Thanks,too, aredueto Kenneth
Davidandan anonymousreviewerforpenetratingandhelpfulcomments.Fora deepandcritical
readingof a laterdraft, I warmlythank A. JeyaratnamWilson. The opinions,however,are
mine alone, and not those of the personsor agencieswho havehelpedme so generously.
TheJournalofAsianStudies49, no. 1 (February1990):78-96.
C) 1990 by the AssociationforAsian Studies,Inc.

78

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 1968 TEMPLE-ENTRY CRISIS IN SRI LANKA 79

munity-Velllaars and Minority Tamils alike-joined hands to contest the declining

fortunes of Tamils in a country dominated by Sinhalese.
If the Maviddapuramconflict were merely an isolated incident in a sleepy and
unimportant backwaterregion, it might have deserved its present confinement to the
footnotes in Sri Lankanhistorical and political studies. And yet in the years following
the Maviddapuramconflict, a Tamil youth insurgency brought Sri Lankato the brink
of civil war, prompted the incursion of 60,000 Indian peacekeeping troops, destroyed
the nation's economy, and turnedJaffna into a wasteland of blasted houses, abandoned
fields, and ruined temples. The explosion of Jaffna society made world headlines and
earned Sri Lanka an unenviable reputation as the Beirut of South Asia.
For many Sri Lankansin 1968 there was nothing mysterious about the picture of
Jaffna society that the Maviddapuramconflict conveyed:it amply confirmed the wide-
spread stereotype of Jaffna as the most caste-consciousand conservative region of the
country. During the 1960s Jaffna, notwithstanding a growing sense of pride in the
Tamil language and its Tamil identity, had remainedalmost completely aloof from the
Tamil separatist movement in South India (Kearney 1967:115); the anti-Brahmanical
and egalitarian tone of the movement struck no respondentchord in Jaffna. In Jaffna,
unlike South India, there was no tradition of Brahmaneconomic dominance to rally
against; Jaffna Brahmansare, on the whole, the mere employees of Vellalars, the ag-
ricultural caste. Even though Vellalarsdefer to Brahmansin ritual matters, they are
clearly the Brahmans' masters in the secular sphere (Banks 1960:66-69). In sharp
contrast to South India, moreover,Jaffnaseemed intent on preserving the Brahmanical
element in temple worship (it was this element that Maviddapuramepitomized as the
site of one of the very few Brahman-ownedHindu temples in Sri Lanka). Although
there were calls for liberalization as a token of devotion to Gandhi and his ideals, the
emphasis on Brahmanical ritual included temple-entry discrimination against un-
touchables. A 1967 newspaper report, for instance, charged that of 1,309 Hindu
temples in the Jaffna district, only 17 percent were open to Minority Tamils (Ceylon
Observer, Sept. 26, 1967, p. 11). For virtually everyone the Maviddapuramconflict
symbolized the seemingly inevitable confrontation of "ancient tradition" and "pre-
modern caste relations" with modernity and social reform-and it looked as though
tradition and caste were winning.
Yet the Maviddapuramconflict was indeed relevantto Tamil separatism in its Sri
Lankan form. A point not often noted in studies of Sri Lanka'sethnic conflict is that
the call for regional autonomy in the Tamil north, and even for the partition of Sri
Lanka, emerged first from conservative sections of the Velllaar caste, which deeply
resented Colombo's interferencein what they consideredthe "private"matters of caste
relations and temple worship. Indeed, it was C. Suntheralingam, a retired Vellalar
political gadfly who had organized the "Defenders of Saivism," who issued an early
call for the creation of a separateTamil state in Sri Lanka("Eelam:Our Deity," leaflet
dated Dec. 18, 1959, quoted in Kearney 1967:112- 13). Vellalarshad long considered
the Jaffna Peninsula a private preserve for their interests (Banks 1960), which were
widely believed to haveerodedseverelyduring the liberalizationsinitiated by the British
and pursued with a vengeance by the independent(and Sinhalese-dominated)Colombo
government. In a newspaperinterview Suntheralingamclaimed that his real reason for
opposing untouchable temple entry was that the Minority Tamil groups were sup-
ported, guided, and funded by Sinhalese politicians (CeylonObserver, July 5, 1968, p.
11).
The Maviddapuramconflict is of interest, then, for reasonsthat go far beyond its
capacity to set Jaffna apart from the politics of Tamil Nadu. Woven into the conflict
are three strands of "premodern"social conflict that are threatening the political order

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80 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER

of regions throughout South Asia: violence against untouchables, socially conservative

religious reform movements, and ethnic separatism. Rooted in the "primordial sen-
timents" of premodernsocial affiliation (Geertz 1973), these three strands of violence
have posed perils to all South Asian nations. And in this one remarkablecase, all three
strands are present and dynamicallyinterlinked. The Maviddapuramcrisis marked the
culmination of a period of intercastetension that threatenedto tearJaffnasociety apart.
Moreover, the Maviddapuramtemple represented the culmination of a century-long
effort to reform Hindu practices in a way that was clearly advantageousto high-caste
Hindus. But both trends opened the peninsula to politically motivated interference
by Sinhalese political parties, leftist groups, and even Buddhist missionary organi-
zations, thus inspiring further demands for autonomy by conservativehigh-caste Hin-
dus. From all appearancesJaffna represents the classic case of a traditional society,
riven by hierarchicaldistinctions of caste and set apart from other regions on grounds
of unique ethnicity, in conflict with the external imposition of political modernity.
That, at least, is the appearance;as this article shows, what passes for "caste," "re-
ligion," and "ethnicity" in this conflict are of decidedly modern vintage, and an ap-
propriate interpretation of the conflict hinges crucially on recognizing this point.
The Maviddapuramcase also illustrates why internal strife and social change can
exacerbate a politics of defensive ethnic nationalism: politicians may be tempted to
emphasize such politics in a last-ditch attempt to unite a community that would
otherwise fall to pieces. To be sure, Tamil politicians had plenty of other reasons-
including the precipitate decline of Tamil employment and educational opportunities
in a Sinhalese-dominatedcountry-to emphasize a politics of defensive unity. Yet the
more the intercaste crisis deepened, the more the leading Tamil political party, the
Federalparty (FP), found itself tempted to direct attention away from the Jaffna Pen-
insula and toward issues around which all Tamils could be politically united. If the
party expressed support for either side in the Maviddapuramfracas, it would lose
support. In the end, the FP chose to direct public attention away from the conflict
by emphasizing the Colombo government's insensitivity to Tamil Hindu concerns,
which was manifested by several untimely policy decisions before and after the Ma-
viddapuramconflict. Without denying that Tamils had every right to regard the gov-
ernment's decisions as insensitive (at best), one can still chronicle how FP politicians
had yet one more reasonto construct a politics of defensive nationalism-a policy that
succeeded in rallying the community solidly behind their leadership and clearly led
the way to the separatist politics of the FP's successor, the Tamil United Liberation
Front (TULF).
To illustrate the unique Jaffna dynamics of caste tension, religious reform, and
the political construction of defensive nationalism, this article is divided into three
sections. The first seeks to uncoverthe complexpatterns of social and economic change
that had brought Jaffna'scastes to the point of internecinewar by the late 1960s. The
second shows that Jaffna's religious reform movement had contradictoryimplications
for the peninsula's social system: at the same time it played into the hands of con-
servative Velllaarinterests, it also provided an ideological basis for untouchabletemple
entry. The third section describes the FP's handling of the conflict.

Caste Relations and Caste Conflict in Jaffna

Throughout South Asia there are regions in which a single, large caste-a dom-
inant caste-maintains a stranglehold on land ownership, capital, commerce, ad-
ministrative positions, and political offices (Srinivas 1955, 1959; Raheja 1988). The

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 1968 TEMPLE-ENTRY CRISIS IN SRI LANKA 81

Jaffna Peninsula presents an example par excellence of such a region. The Vellalarsof
Jaffna, who constitute about half of the peninsula's population, are almost without
competition in the ownership of agricultural land; in addition, they predominate in
the peninsula's commercial affairs and maintain a near-exclusivemonopoly of profes-
sional, administrative, and political roles (Arumainayagam1976; Arasaratnam1982;
Banks 1957, 1960; David 1976; and Pfaffenberger1982). As in other regions where
dominant castes prevail, Vellalar domination in Jaffna is associated with very strong
opinions on regional autonomy: in the extreme, Vellalarssee the Jaffna Peninsula as
a Vellalarpreserve, and its social system as one ideally devoted to serving their interests
(Banks 1960:7 1).
Despite such views, Vellalar dominance is far from absolute. Most effective in
agriculturalvillages, Vellalardomination was traditionallyagrarianin nature and tem-
perament. Along the seacoaststhe Karaiyar,a deep-sea fishing caste, maintain a jealous
autonomy,which they expressedduring the sixteenth-century Portuguese era by wide-
spread conversionsto Catholicism.
Vellalarcontrol of the severalartisanalcastes (roughly 5 percent of the peninsula's
population) collapsed in the eighteenth century, almost immediately after British re-
forms dislodged the Dutch-built edifice of Vellalarcontrol. In the twentieth century
the brunt of Vellalardomination fell on the two untouchableagrestic laboring castes,
the Pallar and Nalavar, who together make up about 18 percent of the peninsula's
population. Well into the century Vellalarsinvolved Pallars and Nalavars in relations
that replaced the compulsions of slavery with economic compulsions. In the 1950s,
for instance, many Minority Tamils still lived on Velllaar-ownedpalmyrah groves or
wasteland; if they did not submit to Vellalar labor and service demands, they could
be threatened with expulsion. The economic compulsions were paired with informal
political controls: Minority Tamils who attempted to raise their position would find
their commnunitiesvictimized by Vellalar-organizedgangs of thugs, who burned down
huts and poisoned wells.
Elements ofJaffna'scaste system probablypredate the colonial incursion. However,
it would be a serious errorto ascribe the system's rigidity to the traditional system of
intercaste relations. As Arasaratnamhas demonstrated in an important study (1978),
the Dutch strengthened the dominance of Vellalarsfor their own revenue collection
purposes. Indeed, the Dutch prized the Jaffna Peninsula as one of their richest Asian
possessions. Jaffna appealed to the Dutch because of lucrative trade in one indigenous
product, the Asian elephant, and one imported one, American tobacco, which was
found to thrive in Jaffna. Toward the end of the eighteenth century Vellalar-grown
tobacco, which held an especially magnetic appeal to Malabarnostrils, made fabulous
fortunes for Vellalar cultivators and brokers. During Dutch times Jaffna exported an
astonishing amount of tobacco-more than 1 million pounds, for instance, in 1783
and earned an equally astonishing Rs. 80,000 in customs duties alone, a considerable
sum for those days (Arasaratnam1982:8). To ensureVellalarcultivatorsa steady supply
of field labor, the Dutch "preserved"indigenous caste customs by reinterpretingthem
in accordancewith Roman-Dutch law, so that Nalavarsand Pallars became slaves; the
Dutch and private individuals imported thousandsmore Pallarslaves from South India
during times of famine. Between 1694 and 1696, for instance, 3,589 slaves were
imported from the Coromandel plains by private individuals alone (Arasaratnam
1982:19). If Jaffna's caste system has struck modern observersas exceptionally rigid,
this rigidity is rightly ascribed not to the traditional system but to its distortions
under the extraordinaryconditions of a highly lucrative agricultural export economy.
Vellalarsencounteredexceptionaldifficulties in maintaining this rigid caste system
once the supportive frameworkof Dutch protection was removed by the British. At

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82 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER

first the British maintained Dutch policies, but because they did not attempt to play
one caste off against the others, as the Dutch had, Vellalarswere able to consolidate
their dominance. But by the middle of the nineteenth century a new, liberal bent in
British administration attempted increasingly to undermine Vellalardomination. The
1844 abolition of slaveryput an end to slave-basedtobaccofarming, at least in principle;
in fact, many Pallarsand Nalavarssold their labor to Vellalarsfor subsistence payments
(Banks 1960:73-74). Subsequently, the courts refused to honor the legality of tra-
ditional-caste service obligations, and Vellalarsfound it more difficult to prevent sub-
ordinate castes from liberating themselves-or changing their identities. One result
was that the ranks of Vellalarsswelled significantly: from 1790 to 1950 the proportion
of persons claiming to be Vellalarrose from 30 to 50 percent of the region's population
(Banks 1957:411). This mobility into the Vellalarcaste is well known in Jaffna, where
a wry proverb speaks of low castes that are "slowly, slowly becoming Vellalars"(Ar-
asaratnam 1978:385).
An artifact of a colonial plantation economy, the caste system of Jaffna could be
maintained only by force-and forcehas indeed been used. To preventMinority Tamils
from "slowly, slowly" becoming Vellalars, the high castes have used extralegal social
controls to impose sumptuary restrictions on Nalavars and Pallars, which visibly and
publicly brand them as Minority Tamils. These restrictionshad the force of law under
the Dutch and the early British regimes and even into the 1960s. In Jaffna in the
1940s and 1950s, for instance, Minority Tamils were forbidden to enter or live near
temples; to draw water from the wells of high-caste families; to enter laundries, barber
shops, cafes, or taxis; to keep women in seclusionand protect them by enacting domestic
rituals; to wear shoes; to sit on bus seats; to register their names properlyso that social
benefits could be obtained; to attend school; to cover the upper part of the body; to
wear gold earrings; if male, to cut their hair; to use umbrellas; to own bicycles or
cars; to cremate the dead; or to convert to Christianity or Buddhism (Holmes
1980:232-34). To enforce these restrictions extralegally,Vellalarshave fielded gangs
of thugs to punish upwardly mobile Pallars or Nalavars. These gangs pollute un-
touchablewells with dead dogs, fecal matter, or garbage;burn down untouchablefences
or houses; physically assault and beat Minority Tamils, and sometimes kill them.
Preceding the Maviddapuramcrisis there had been several altercations in which Mi-
nority Tamils died (Timesof Ceylon,Feb. 17, 1968, p. 1).
Vellalars have clearly viewed the persistence of these sumptuary restrictions as a
crucial boundary-maintenancedevice. As Banks notes (1957:415-16), without the
imposition of these features,
whatwoulddistinguisha Vellalafroma Palla?Therewouldbe nothingto stop Pallas
frombehavingas VellalasandcallingthemselvesVellalas. . . andwithin a shorttime
probablybecomingindistinguishablefromVellalas.Casteas it is at presentwould
ceaseto exist and therewould simplybe largernumbersof endogamousgroupsall
claiming to be equal to, or higher than, the others. . . . Once such a relativity of
rankingwas introduced,intermarriage would no doubt followin time, as memory
of whichwereorwerenotrealVellalasfellaway,andthedistributionof wealthchanged.

To maintain the social boundary between Vellalars and untouchables, Vellalars

employ ritual to sustain a belief that Minority Tamils are a non-Tamilian, "aboriginal"
people of a despicably low status (Pfaffenberger1982). In Vellalar-sponsoreddomestic
and temple rituals, Vellalarsoblige their untouchableservantsto remove from Vellalar
premises, and later to imbibe or discard, offerings believed to be afflicted with the
substance of highly disordering spirits or demons (cf. Raheja 1988 for NSorthIndian
examplesof similar status-degradationrituals). These rituals are intended to orderand

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 1968 TEMPLE-ENTRY CRISIS IN SRI LANKA 83

civilize the space within Vellalarhomes and temples by removing substances thought
responsible for disorder, madness, sterility, uncontrollable mental states, and other
afflictions of primitivity, with which-as other observershad noted-Vellalars spe-
cifically associate Minority Tamils (Banks 1957:6). Having had contact with or im-
bibed these substances, the Vellalars'untouchableservantsare believed to be contam-
inated and afflicted with these maladies to such an extent that no purification could
ever remove their stigma. According to extreme Vellalarthinking, this stigma denies
Minority Tamils full membership in the Tamil community. The Nalavars'and Pallars'
recent historical origins in Dutch-sponsored immigrations from South India and their
putatively darkerskin serve to deepen the Vellalarsense that the Minority Tamils are
a people apart from the mainstream.
The internal divisions within the Jaffna Tamil community pose severe challenges
to politicians hoping to build a unified political base for the ethnic contest with Co-
lombo. If Vellalarsdeny that Nalavars and Pallars are Tamils, as some indeed did in
the early 1970s, where are the grounds for unifying the Tamil community? The Mi-
nority Tamils have long laid claim to full membership in the Tamil community, but
in a way that could not fail to alarm Vellalarsand stimulate a defensive reaction. As
Kenneth David has noted, the Pallars of Jaffna expressly conceive themselves to be
descended from one of two Vellalar brothers; after the older brother's death, the
widow-a "bad woman," according to the tale-made the younger one into a landless
slave (David 1976:189-90). Thus, Minority Tamils' claim to full membership in the
Tamil community is also a claim to Vellalarstatus-which is precisely why Vellalars
have fought their mobility campaigns with such vehemence.
With its origins in a plantation economy and a status configuration maintained
only through the use of force and degradationrituals, the status boundary separating
Vellalarsfrom Minority Tamils is exceptionallyvulnerableto outside interference.This
point was made clear to Vellalarsduring the earlyVictorian period when liberal British
officials embarked on a single-minded campaign to free their colonial subjects from
the ancient restrictions of caste, serfdom, and slavery.After liberalizations that abol-
ished untouchableslaveryand destroyedthe legal bases for caste servitude, untouchable
mobility campaigns began in earnest. An assistant government agent noted in the late
nineteenth century that
greatchangesaregoing on in Jaffnanativesociety,whicharebitterlyresentedby the
conservativepartof the population.The (so called)"lowcastes"are becomingmore
rich, and having acquiredproperty,most of them naturallydecline to follow old
customs, by which they were prohibitedfrom wearingjewels, riding in carriages,
using tom-tomsformarriages,andothersocialfunctions.... The Vellalasknowthat
the nextstep in the progress. .. will be thatof wearingjewelryandassumingVellalar
customs.
(Citedin Arumainayagam 1976:11)

In short, the colonial experiencebefore 1900 createdan exceptionallytense and unstable

relationship between Vellalarsand Minority Tamils, which could be maintained only
by naked force, state support, and ritual stigmatization. Twentieth-century social
change has altered Vellalar-untouchablerelations in ways that have, if anything, ex-
acerbated their underlying volatility.
A prominent feature of twentieth-century social change in Jaffnahas been the rise
of significant new elements-education and employment-in the overallVellalarstrat-
egy of regional domination. By the late nineteenth century it was clear that agriculture
by itself was far from a secure adaptation:tobacco was particularlysusceptible to price
fluctuations and political changes over which Jaffna cultivators and brokers could

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84 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER

exercise no control whatsoever.Facedwith stiff foreign competition and an unfavorable

configuration of customs duties, Jaffna's agricultural exports, particularly tobacco,
declined under the British; from 3.5 million pounds in 1820, exports declined to only
750,000 pounds in 1830 (Arasaratnam1982:34). More liberal economic policies pro-
duced another peak period of production in 1880-90, when the highest export of
10,244,752 pounds of tobacco was recorded, but a glut in the market brought about
a steep price decline, and by 1902 the figure had fallen to 3,870,000 pounds (Ara-
saratnam 1982:36). Seeing which way the winds were blowing, Vellalars came to
emphasize English education as well as agriculture. Excelling in mathematics, engi-
neering, medicine, and public service, JaffnaVellalarssucceeded brilliantly within the
British colonial context; by 1921, some 10,185 Tamils were employedin "publicadmin-
istration and the liberal arts" (Arasaratnam 1982:40), winning what the Sinhalese
later saw as a disproportionate share of public service and professional positions in
twentieth-century colonial Sri Lanka-and beyond. At one time, for instance, it is
said that every station agent on the Malaya Railway was a Jaffna Tamil. A significant
Tamil colony, which eventually contained almost 10 percent of the entire Sri Lanka
Tamil population, arose in a Colombo suburb. By the twentieth century, then, edu-
cation and employment had added a significant resource to the Vel-
lalars' traditional monopoly on export agriculture, which, although subject to price
fluctuations, continued to play a key role in the Jaffna economy well into the 1970s.
When combined with regularemploymentearnings, pensions, and foreign remittances,
the VellJalaragricultural strategy was rendered far more secure and stable. And not
surprisingly, this development was accompaniedby extralegal measures that kept un-
touchables out of the peninsula's schools after the second or third grade.
As Jaffna Vellalars turned away from an exclusive concentration on export agri-
culture, one would think they would have shown correspondinglyless interest in main-
taining traditional caste relations, which had been toleratedand even strengthened by
the Dutch and earlyBritish regimes to fuelJaffna'svibrantagriculturalexport economy.
One would predict that an "educated class" would repudiate the old ways. And there
are indeed many Vellalarswho were and are cosmopolitan in precisely this sense. Yet
many other Vellalars, even those living in Colombo or Malaya, continued well into
the 1970s to show a keen interest in maintaining their family's Jaffna prerogatives in
landholding and access to the traditional services of subordinate castes. The reasons
for this phenomenon are attributableto Jaffna'ssystem of dowry and inheritance(Tam-
biah 1973), which linked the two strands of the Vellalaradaptation (employment and
agriculture). A remarkablefeatureof Jaffna'straditionalkinship system, one that links
it not with India but rather with the rest of Sri Lanka, is that dowries include not
only movables, such as jewelry, but also lands-including agricultural land-and a
house (Banks 1957). It is often said in Jaffna that a young man marriesfor the lands
and the house, not for the young woman. That being the case, a daughter endowed
with copious property can legitimately demand an exceptional young man-an ed-
ucated, English-speaking suitor from a "good caste" who has a professionalposition.
In this way the Jaffna system accommodated the new world of education and careers
into the old world of agricultureand landholding and gave even highly educated Tamils
ample reason to remain highly conservativein matters of caste.
In Jaffna, caste conservatism pays off handsomely in providing access to the un-
believably lucrative capital transfersthat take place in high-status marriages. Tradi-
tional indices of rank play a key role in gaining access to such transfersby helping to
distinguish between "real"Vellalars, with provablelines of descent from the genuine
Vellalarsof the Dutch period, from "pseudo"VeliaJars(called cinnaVe/ld/a-ars in Jaffna),
who have moved into the caste from outside. To say that a prospective bridegroom is

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 1968 TEMPLE-ENTRY CRISIS IN SRI LANKA 85

of "good caste" is to say that his family is of genuine Vellalar ancestry, which must
be proved by such "evidence"as the possession of Dutch writs or entitlements that
specifically attest to Vellalar status, the maintenance of caste service relations with
low-caste families over a period of several generations, and sedulous commitment to
the maintenance of the traditional caste system in all respects. The payoff is marriage
to a young woman endowed with rich agriculturalland and a house, the value of which
may well exceed the cost of comparableproperty in ruraldistricts of England. In other
words, a highly educated youth will find it in his vital economic interest to maintain
traditional caste relationships.
By the middle of the twentieth century Vellalarswere enforcing the low status of
Minority Tamils for two reasons: first, to ensure a continued supply of inexpensive
labor and, second, to attest to the high traditional status of one's family within the
Vellalar status category (which is internally subdivided into hundreds of subcastes).
Yet these two rationalesled Vellalarsto deal with Minority Tamils in two very different
and indeed contradictoryways. To maximize profits in agriculture, Vellalars seek to
lower the compensation they give to Minority Tamils. To achieve this aim it is far
better to let Minority Tamils dwell in their own marginal settlements, eking out a
living in peripheral employment and wage labor, instead of supporting them pater-
nalistically as the traditional system mandated. Such settlements were already well
underwayin the 1960s, when Minority Tamils received significant portions of crown
lands under the auspices of the Village Expansion Scheme legislation. To realize the
status gains of possessing traditional low-caste servants, however, the old pattern of
paternalistic relations, in which Vellalarstreated Minority Tamil clients "as a father
treats his sons," was required.
The evidence suggests that by the 1960s these two contradictory interests had
been resolved in the following way: a Vellalarfamily could maintain links with a few
untouchable families to fulfill traditional service obligations; its other relations with
Minority Tamils could be treated on a narrowly economic basis. As Holmes notes
(1980:208-9), the resolution may have been forced by inflation in the price of rice.
By the late 1970s the price of paddy had doubled or tripled, and landlords realized
that the traditional payment in kind was more valuable than the equivalent in cash.
Landlordstook advantage of their "all-powerfulposition" to revise the contract uni-
laterallyso that laborerswere given only paddy equal to a day'swages. Minority Tamils
could do little to protest this significant change in intercaste economic relations: "If
a laborerobjected, he was apt to find that his serviceswere no longer needed" (Holmes
1980:209).
As Vellalars were increasingly content to let excess Minority Tamils eke out an
independent subsistence on marginal lands, a rural lumpen proletariatarose that had
good reason to challenge Vellalardominance. Two markedfeaturesof economic change
in Jaffna since the 1950s have been the expansion of the cash economy and the growth
of the service sector, which includes many marginal economic roles (such as fish mar-
keting) that untouchableshave learnedto exploit. With new sourcesof support outside
the traditional frameworkof Vellalar-dominatedagriculture, Minority Tamils began
in the 1960s to resist the Vellalarimposition of sumptuaryregulationsand other indices
of degraded caste rank-including temple-entry restrictions. To be sure, many Mi-
nority Tamils were still involved in at least some economic relations with Vellalars;
that is one reason the temple-entry campaign targeted Maviddapuram'sBrahman-
owned temple. Had a Vellalar-ownedtemple been targeted, the temple owners would
surely have penalized any low-caste clients found to belong to the demonstrators. But
for growing numbers of Minority Tamils, Vellalar-imposedeconomic sanctions had

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86 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER

little significance. Already weakening, the caste system of Jaffna was being rendered
even more unstable by the increasing economic independence of Minority Tamils.
The volatility inherent in Jaffna'ssystem of caste relations was heightened by the
fast pace of population increase:the population of the Jaffnadistrict has nearlydoubled
since the Second World War,leading to extremepressureson land. Populationdensities
for the 436 square miles of the Jaffna Peninsula are among the highest in the island;
in 1966 densities in agricultural areas were commonly as high as 3,000 persons per
squaremile (Selvanayagam1966:172). New land can be developedonly with difficulty;
a major capital investment is required to pulverize the surface limestone, clear rocks,
and drill wells. The scarcity of land has caused land prices to soarfar beyond reasonable
levels; in 1952-54, for instance, agricultural land was more expensive in Jaffna than
in England (Banks 1957:28). Populationincrease, coupled with the operationof dowry
and inheritance customs, has led to the extreme fragmentation of agricultural plots
and to rising landlessness, even among Vellalars(Selvanayagam1966:175-76). The
net effect of these changes is to reduce sharply the outside labor demands of any one
household, both because less labor is requiredfor the shrinking plots and because more
family labor is availableper acre. At the same time technological innovations of the
green revolution-specifically, herbicides, fertilizers, pesticides, and tractors-further
reduced labor demands and further marginalized low-caste labor. By the late 1960s
these social and technological changesfavoredintensive marketgardening on very small
plots with substantial investments of familial labor and green revolution agricultural
inputs, with a concomitant lessening of demand for large-scale field operations by
Minority Tamil laborers.
To sum up, by the late 1960s economic change had marginalized untouchable
labor vis-a-vis Vellalaragriculturaloperations, and at the same time, Minority Tamils
were finding new (if still very marginal) niches in an expanding service economy. With
a modicum of autonomy, Minority Tamils were ready to fight for their "right to be
Sanskritized," as K. Sivathamby puts it (private communication, Oct. 15, 1988).
Standing in their way, however, was the land-rich and highly educated upper crust of
the Vellalarcaste, which continued to view the Minority Tamil community as a natural
resource to be exploited for its labor and status-elevation functions.
Complicating an alreadyvolatile situation was the Colombo government'sdecision
to intervene. In 1957, in part to embarrassthe Vellalar-dominatedTamil political
leadership, the Sinhalese-dominated Parliament passed the Prevention of Social Dis-
abilities Act, aimed at outlawing caste discrimination. Although the law proscribes
discriminatory acts found sometimes within Sinhalese caste relations, its text specifies
the actual forms of intercaste discrimination in Jaffna with an accuracy that would
elicit praise from a social anthropologist. It forbids the imposition of a "social disa-
bility" on any person on grounds of caste ("socialdisability" being defined as preventing
or obstructing a person from entering educational institutions, shops, public restau-
rants, wells, barbershops,laundries, crematoria,public conveyances, and temples). It
also forbids the dress codes that were specifically used to mark caste statuses in Jaffna
and elsewhere (Jayawickrama1976:71-73).
Little effort was made, however, to enforce the Prevention of Social Disabilities
Act after its passage, confirming Sinhalese suspicions that the Jaffnapolice-in Tamil
hands at this point-were partial to the high castes (as Minority Tamils were later
to charge; Timesof Ceylon,Feb. 17, 1968, p. 1). A 1962 newspaper article entitled
"The Shame of Jaffna" claimed that a full one-quarterof the Jaffna Peninsula's pop-
ulation was still subject to social disabilities (CFeylonObserver,June 12, 1962, p. 1).
Such reports fueled the politically motivated Sinhalese argument that Tamils should

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 1968 TEMPLE-ENTRY CRISIS IN SRI LANKA 87

not be granted regional autonomy. In response to Tamil claims of Sinhalese discrim-

ination against Tamils, for instance, a Sinhalese senator replied,

If thereis any tyrannyimposedon the Tamilpeoplein this country,I makebold to

say it is the tyrannyof the Vellala.The VellalaTamilswill not permitTamilsof the
depressedclassesto drawa bucketof waterfroma well or entera temple.The Vellala
man is not preparedto concedethe fundamentalright to his Tamilbrotherto enter
a templeand enjoy freedomof worshipand be on a level with him in the act of
communingwith god.
(Citedin Kearney1967:100)

The volatile and discriminatory caste system of Jaffna exposed the peninsula not
only to intervention by the Colombo government but also to interferenceby new mis-
sionary organizations-not Christian but Buddhist. Claiming their religion does not
recognize caste, Buddhist missionaryorganizationssought to convert Minority Tamils
to Buddhism by offering them incentives such as education in the Sinhala language.
Just before the Maviddapuramfracasthree prominent Buddhist monks visited Jaffna
villages that had been torn by caste-relatedviolence (Chankanaiand Kankesanthurai)
in an effort "to bring about a settlement between Minority Tamils and high-caste
Hindus"-a settlement that Tamil political leaders, it was pointedly stressed, had so
far failed to achieve (Timesof Ceylon,Feb. 17, 1968, p. 1). Fearwas widespreadamong
Tamil leaders that the Colombo government might use the conversions to launch a
government-fundedpolitical base in Jaffna (Kearney 1978:529). With the enactment
of the 1972 constitution, which guaranteed state support for the Buddhist religion,
Tamil Hindus feared that such movements would become a massive, state-sponsored
frontal attack on the very substance of the Hindu religion in Jaffna. Yet that religion,
like the caste system itself, is in part an artifact of the colonial experience, and no
treatment of the Maviddapuramconflict's extraordinarydynamics is complete without
an examination of it.

Religious Reform and Its Social Implications

Hindus in Sri Lankaconsiderthe Maviddapuramtemple to representthe crowning

achievementof Jaffna'sHindu revival movement, which has long sought to ensure that
the region's shrines are constructed in strict accordanceto medieval temple-building
manuals called the Saiva Agamas(Cartman 1957:26). These texts-or so claimed the
temple management-prohibit untouchable temple entry. With its stately walls and
gaily decorated towers (gopuram),the temple is the very pinnacle of textual orthodoxy
in Hindu Sri Lanka, and Hindu attitudes toward the temple are in keeping with its
stature. The god of the temple is none other than the beloved god Murukan, the object
of much devotional religion (bhakti)in Jaffna. But he appearsat Maviddapuramin his
Sanskriticguise (that is, as Skanda),and his chief religious function is to accept annual
offerings on the behalf of the deceased members of one's patrilineage (sapinda)-a
Brahmanicalrole that is out of keeping with the essentially Dravidian identity of this
god in virtually all other contexts. The last day of the temple's annual car festival
coincides with the astrologicallydetermined day (adi amavasa)on which such offerings
are customarily made. In times of trouble, few would think of making a vow (nertti)
to the god of the Maviddapuramtemple; he is judged to be austere and remote.
For Jaffna Hindus, Maviddapuramis the sum of all that is ancient and glorious
in the Hindu tradition. Yet even though there is archaeologicalevidence of ancient

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88 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER

shrines in the immediate area, the present structure itself is very recent-as indeed
are all shrines in the Jaffna Peninsula. After bringing down the Hindu king of Jaffna
in the sixteenth century,the Portuguesedestroyedhundredsof Hindu temples in Jaffna,
and the Dutch permitted none to be built save in exceptional cases (as inducements
to immigrant artisan groups). So almost all Jaffna temples date from the early British
period, when religious freedom was granted. Whatever the temple tradition of Jaffna
may have been in precolonial times, it had to be reinventedin the nineteenth century.
A crucial figure in this reinvention process was Arumuka Navalar (1822-79), a
Christian-educatedJaffna Tamil of the Vellalar(agriculturalist) caste (see Sathasivam
1979; Hellman-Rajanayagam1989). In some respectsa Hindu counterpartof the great
Buddhist reformerAnagarikaDharmapala, Navalar'scareeras a religious reformercan
only be understood in the context of the ferventChristian proselytizationthat occurred
in the 1840s and 1850s, when his commitment to religious reformwas made. At that
time Christian missionaries attacked the Hindu religion on grounds of its alleged
primitivity and atrocities. In defending Hinduism Navalar conceded that current
Hindu practices were corrupt and indefensible and offered in their place a reformed,
purified Saivism that would be carriedout in strict accordancewith the scriptures of
the Saiva Siddhanta tradition. Much of Navalar'swritings are devoted to attacks on
corruptionthat he alleged had crept into Hindu practice in Jaffna, such as the worship
of the goddess Kannaki ("aJaina goddess from the Chettiyar caste"). Opposed to more
obvious liabilities, such as nautch girls, Navalar also attacked virtually any ritual
observancethat lacked a foundationin the Saivite scriptures, such as ritual involvement
by low castes and sacrifice. Perfectlyexemplifiedby Maviddapuram,Navalar'sreformed
and purified Saivism is devoid of many practices that have their foundation in folk
religion.
Navalar's single-minded campaign sought to privilege the textual dimensions of
Saivism at the expense of all others. In this respect it differs radically from those of
other Hindu reformers(and from that of Dharmapala):Navalar was simply not inter-
ested in reforming Hindu society. Some argue that he was a "caste fanatic" whose
underlying aim was to buttress the existing system of caste relations. Others argue,
however, that he was a social reformerwho liberalized caste and laid the foundation
for Tamil unity. As Hellman-Rajanayagamhas shown (1989), neither interpretation
can be reconciled with what Navalaractually wrote and did. Nevertheless, his reforms
have significant social implications. By privileging the Saivite scripturaltradition with
its emphasis on purity and pollution and by repudiating all forms of folk ritual, Navalar
created a purified Hinduism that would actually have deprived Vellalarsof one of the
key elements by which untouchable statuses were stigmatized, namely, the sacrifices
and other ritual services that produce highly disordered substances, which Minority
Tamils remove from Vellalar homes and temples. From Navalar's very Brahmanical
point of view, such servicesexpose Vellalarsto ritual pollution and cannot be tolerated.
There is evidence that many Vellalarssedulously opposed Navalar'scampaign to purge
Hindu practices of folk elements such as sacrifice, but the general twentieth-century
trend has been toward the elimination of sacrificial rituals (and with them, their in-
vidious implications for Minority Tamils). For Navalar and his followers the slogan is
simple: Popular Hinduism must go (e.g., ShivapadaSundaram 1954:69-80).
At the same time that Navalar'sreformsdiminished the status-degradationfunc-
tions of Vellalar-sponsoredhousehold and temple rites, they provided Minority Tamils
with a potent and convincing rationale for temple entry. If caste status is merely a
matter of purity or pollution (as opposed to the far more degrading stigmas of abo-
riginality and disorder), then a caste can raise its status by dispensing with impure
customs. In this regard Nalavars and Pallars are clearly distinguished in Jaffna from

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 1968 TEMPLE-ENTRY CRISIS IN SRI LANKA 89

the untouchablepar excellence, the drumming and scavenging Paraiyar.Unlike Parai-

yars, Nalavars and Pallars do not follow the traditional occupations that conferred
impurity on them, such as scavenging or leatherworking. They claim to rank higher
than Paraiyarsbecause it is their custom to avoid beef (although their detractorsallege
that they eat beef anyway). It is often argued in Jaffna that the Nalavars are impure
because they tap toddy. Liquor is said to be wicked and contrary to true religion:
according to a classicalHindu text, the sourcesof pollution are "excreta,urine, semen,
blood, fat, marrow,liquor, and intoxicants" (Kane 1975:316). What is not acknowl-
edged in this claim is that the bulk of the toddy they tap is destined for Vellalar
consumption; if the Nalavar is impure, then the Vellalarwho drinks his toddy would
surely be polluted (kuram). In short, if the scripturallanguage of purity and pollution
is privileged above all other forms of status reckoning, then the low rank of Minority
Tamils appears to be nothing more than an artifice forced on these castes by Vellalar
power. The Maviddapuramtemple-entry campaign was aimed squarelyat this artifice:
it sought to lay its logical inconsistency open to public view.
Minority Tamils have themselves pointed out the incapacityof the textual language
of purity and pollution to explain their low rank. In testifying before the 1951 Hindu
TemporalitiesCommission, a Minority Tamil organization called the Saiva Viruththi
Sangam stated:
We are treatedas depressedclasses,but no one has definedwho is a depressedclass
person.Manyof us are fairlyclean, vegetarian,well-conductedand even rich. But
all of theseareof no avail.... Whereis the logic of the Agamasin allowingdhobies
andfishermento enterintotemplesandkeepingus out?Eventhoughwearevegetarians
and are engagedin occupationswhich by no stretchof imaginationcan be called
unclean,we arenot allowedto entertemples.But dhobieswho washthe dirtyclothes
of everybodyand fishermenwho engagethemselvesin the occupationof killing and
eating fish, are freelyadmitted.Don't you think we havereasonto be dissatisfied?
(Quotedin Hindu Temporalities Commission1951:29)

As Navalar'sscriptural version of Hinduism has become more widely accepted by

Jaffna Hindus, more Hindus have come to agree with the Minority Tamil position
that there is no scriptural foundationfor temple-entryprohibitions so long as Minority
Tamils bathe and dress in clean clothes before coming to the temple. The 1951 Hindu
TemporalitiesCommission, a state-appointed commission of Hindu members of Par-
liament, found that of 185 Hindu (and mostly high-caste) witnesses who testified
before the commission, 127 favoredopening temples to all castes. Even more signif-
icant, the commission noted that, although the most vociferous opposition to un-
touchable temple entry came from Jaffna, the most advancedviews on the subject also
came from Jaffna, and what is more, such views came from high-caste Jaffna Hindus
as well as from others (Hindu TemporalitiesCommission 1951:68). Furthermore, de-
spite the conservative view that untouchable temple entry would defile a temple and
ruin it, the entry of Minority Tamils into the twenty or so Jaffna shrines that had
already opened to Minority Tamils did no such thing, judging from the continued
popularity of these shrines. Indeed, the annual festival at the Nallur temple had grown
steadily in popularity after the temple's doors were opened to Minority Tamils, some
years before the Maviddapuramconflict. And after the conflict the temple of Murukan
at Celvacannatiexperiencedunprecedentedcrowds after opening its doors to Minority
Tamils (Timesof Ceylon,Aug. 26, 1968, p. 3).
The reformed tradition of Hinduism that Maviddapuramsymbolizes is a tex-
tualized Saivism emphasizing the Brahmanicaltradition of purity and pollution. Cou-
pled with its pronounced hostility to folk religion, this tradition removed one of the

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90 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER

foundations of the Minority Tamils' low rank at the same time that it provided them
with a rational argument in favor of temple entry-a view with which many high-
caste Jaffna Hindus agreed. It could very well be argued, in short, that at the same
time the reformmovement placed increasedemphasison prohibiting untouchabletem-
ple entry, it also removed one of the major traditional rationalesof untouchablestatus
and provided a convincing rationalefor permitting purified untouchablesto pass the
temple gates. If the removal of legal and political buttresses had caused Jaffna'scaste
system to teeter on the brink of collapse, religious reform had hastened the process
by handing untouchablesa scriptural principle by which one index of this traditional
status-the prohibition on temple entry-could be effectively challenged.

The Political Constructionof Defensive

Nationalism

Before the Maviddapuramconflict, the Federalparty had begun to unite the Tamil
community in an effort to forceconcessionsfrom the Colombogovernment. The party's
platform called for the devolution of political power and state resourcesin significant
amounts to the provinces, along the lines of the United States's federal organization.
Having entered into an electoral coalition with the United National party (UNP), the
FP looked forwardto a modest payoff: the UNP had promised to introduce a District
Development Council (DDC) bill, which would devolve a very modest amount of state
resources to new elected institutions at the local level.
The temple issue soon posed major problems for both the FP and the UNP. In-
creasing caste tension in the northprovidedthe UNP's enemies with ampleammunition
for opposing the UNP's ties with the Federalparty. In the midst of the Maviddapuram
conflict, a caste-related clash in the village of Mattuvil resulted in one death and five
serious injuries. The conflict, villagers said, followed years of "harmonyand peaceful
existence" (CeylonObserver, July 11, 1968, p. 3). After the conflict, a high-caste man
died in caste-relatedviolence in Atchuvely, where an untouchablewell was ruined after
unknown persons poured insecticide into it (Timesof Ceylon,Aug. 21, 1968, p. 3). In
an effort to undermine the DDC proposal (and the UNP), the opposition Sri Lanka
Freedomparty (SLFP)introduced a bill in Parliamentto "inquire into and report upon
the disabilities and discriminations experienced by persons on grounds of caste [in
Jaffna], and to recommend measures including if necessary the amendment of the
Prevention of Social Disabilities Act of 1957 to end caste discrimination" (Timesof
Ceylon,Jan. 26, 1968, p. 1). The SLFP'slinkage of the DDC devolution proposal and
caste issues was further bolstered by the All-Ceylon Minority Tamils' United Front,
an organization widely believed in Jaffna to have received substantial assistance from
the SLFP.In the letter, the Minority Tamil organizationrequested the prime minister
to stay the implementation of the district councils until steps had been taken to guar-
antee not only the human rights of Minority Tamils but also their safety against violent
Vellalarreprisals. The Minority Tamils claimed, furthermore,that the DDC bill would
provide high-caste Tamils "with a weapon to reduce our people to slavery" (Timesof
Ceylon,Mar. 9, 1968, p. 3). Although FP leadershad declared two years earlier that
it was imperative to removethe stigma of untouchability and caste injustices, Minority
Tamil organizationscharged that such apparentlyliberal sentiments were insincere and
nothing more than a coverforVellalarinterests. In the faceof Minority Tamil opposition
to the bill and massive resistance from the UNP's Sinhalese Buddhist constituency,
the prime minister dropped the bill in mid-1968.

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 1968 TEMPLE-ENTRY CRISIS IN SRI LANKA 91

The SLFP'slinkage of the caste issue with the issue of devolving power to Jaffna
created serious problems for the Federal party as well as for the UNP. Despite the
Minority Tamils' charge, it is probably not accurate to say that the FP represented
the interests of rich Vellalarpeasants. The FP was a political organization, and its first
priority was to win elections. Its strategy was not to favor rich Vellalarinterests over
all others but rather to incorporatenon-Vellalargroups into the party's institutional
frameworkin a way that would not seriouslyalienate conservativeVellalaropinion. As
the temple-entry and caste issues came to the fore, however, pressuregrew on the FP
from both sides of the social spectrum to take a stand on the Maviddapuramissue.
The FP was also experiencingpressurefrom youth organizationsdemanding a more
militant policy. Faced with mounting youth unemployment, the FederalParty'sYouth
League was showing signs of increasing radicalism in early 1968 in response to gov-
ernment delays in bringing the DDC bill before Parliament;indeed, a Youth League
spokesman told a Colombo newspaperreporterthat he had lost all confidence not only
in the government but also in the Federal party (Timesof Ceylon,Jan. 14, 1968, p.
1). In reply, a Federalparty spokesmanurged the Youth Leaguers"not to embark upon
anything in haste that would endangerthe unity between the two majorcommunities"
and called for "toleranceand compromise" (Timesof Ceylon,Jan. 30, 1968, p. 1). In
the same month, however, the youth chief of the Federal party, C. Rajadurai, failed
to show up for an important FP strategy session (Timesof Ceylon,Jan. 30, 1968, p.
1). ForJaffnayouths, the DDC bill's collapse may have been the proverbialstraw that
broke the camel's back; violent guerrilla youth groups such as the Liberation Tigers
rose in the 1970s, seeking to force Sri Lanka'spartition by acts of terrorism.
Standing against the Minority Tamils and the increasingly radical youth groups
were conservative Vellalars and, more broadly, the whole institutionalized edifice of
Vellalardomination, which wedded (literally) the new world of education with the old
world of agricultural domination. Drawing much of its support and most of its mem-
bers from this community, the Federal party could hardly be expected to ignore its
sentiments-as the party's experience with the conservative Vellalar electorate had
made only too clear. K. Kanagaratnam,the liberal Hindu who chaired the 1951 Hindu
TemporalitiesCommission that advocated temple reform, lost his parliamentaryseat
in the next election (1952), and a conservativeSaivite temple managers'organization-
the All-Ceylon Saiva Practicesand ObservancesProtection Society-claimed in 1968
that the defeat proved that the public did not approve of his committee's efforts for
social reform. This association, which was responsive to conservativeVellalar consti-
tuencies, made the point quite clear as it enunciated a position utterly opposed to
untouchable temple entry, whether achieved by coercion or the voluntary opening of
the temples. The spokesman of the "Defendersof Saivism," C. Suntheralingam, did
not put the point quite so strongly. He stated that the objection was not to untouchable
temple entry per se but rather to any attempt to coerce the temple management into
changing its views (and to any interferenceby the Colombo government in Hindu
religious affairs;CeylonObserver,July 5, 1968, p. 2). He declared to a reporterthat he
had in fact played a role in the voluntary opening of another majorJaffna temple, the
Nallur Kantacami Temple, to Minority Tamils some years before the Maviddapuram
fracas and had campaigned for temple-entry reform in his youth. "Even now I am for
temple entry,"he said, "but not by force" (CeylonObserver, July 20, 1968, p. 4). Sun-
theralingam may very well have been sincere, but his statements were widely taken as
just so much rhetoric intended only to sugarcoat the conservativeposition.
Faced with the temple-entry conflict, the Federal party found itself in a no-win
situation and, in the face of contradictorypressures, showed signs of attempting to
avoid the issue. The member of Parliament for the district in which Maviddapuram

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92 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER

is situated, S. J. V. Chelvanayakam,attempted to keep a low profileduring the conflict,

but conservativeVellalarswanted to forcethe issue: they demandedthat Chelvanayakam
resign his seat and contest it on the temple-entry issue "because the public had lost
confidence in him" (Timesof Ceylon,Aug. 9, 1968, p. 1). The party seems to have
taken conservativeVellalaropposition seriously.For instance, at the beginning of the
conflict, a Federalparty senator,S. Nadarajah,told the demonstratingMinority Tamils
that his party would back their campaign (Timesof Ceylon,July 20, 1968, p. 1); he
was quickly reined in, however,and party officials told the rank and file to "make no
statement on the caste issues" (Timesof Ceylon,July 31, 1968, p. 1). A. Amirtha-
lingam, the FP's leader, later declared weakly that the party had "kept away from the
Maviddapuramtemple" because it "did not want to take politics into the temples"
(Timesof Ceylon,Aug. 12, 1968, p. 3).
Ultimately, the FP's responsewas not to develop a coherentand principled position
on the temple-entry issue but rather to divert public attention away from issues that
divided the Tamil community. In this responsethe UNP governmentwas an unwitting
conspirator. In the wake of the failed temple-entry campaign, the prime minister-
apparentlyin response to pressurefrom SinhaleseBuddhists-abolished a commission
that had been considering whether to establish a sacred precinct on government land
at Trincomalee, where the ruins of a huge Hindu temple called Koneshwarem had
recently been excavated. The Koneshwaremtemple, destroyed by the Portuguese, was
one of the greatest of Sri Lanka'sancient Hindu temples, and on this subject all Hindus
had profound emotions. The FP could make a major issue of this decision without
posing any threat to the unity of its constituency, and that is precisely what it did:
the party withdrew from its coalition with the UNP (Timesof Ceylon,Sept. 18, 1968,
p. 1). In the midst of the crisis, the Tamil community once again threw its full support
behind the Federal party. From this experience the FP leadership learned once again
that defensive nationalism pays off politically. Chelvanayakam,the MP whom con-
servative Vellalarshad asked to resign, soundly beat Suntheralingamin the 1970 elec-
tions, just two years after the Maviddapuramconflict. To cement its gains and incor-
porate Minority Tamil communities without threatening Vellalarinterests, the FP (and
its successor, the Tamil United Liberation Front) pursued a policy of fielding a few
Minority Tamil candidatesand securing their election (Pathmanathan 1979:156- 59).
In this case, the party emulated a strategy that had been used earlier to assuage East
Coast Tamil fears about Vellalardomination; the third and fourth presidentsof the FP
were East Coast Tamils (Kearney 1967:101-2).
The Maviddapuramconflict itself ended inconclusively,with the Minority Tamils
withdrawing after the government agent promised to intercede with the Colombo
government to put more teeth into the Prevention of Social Disabilities Act. There
followed a number of public "temple openings," in which a few Minority Tamils were
quickly ushered in and out of temples in what bore all the hallmarks of carefully
orchestratedpublic-relations campaigns, addressedmore to the Sinhalese audience in
the south than to Minority Tamils (Sivathamby 1988). Subsequent prosecutions of
temple managers, however, persuaded most large temples to open their doors to un-
touchables. In the villages, small Velllaar-ownedtemples continued to be closed to
Minority Tamils, and the 1970s were marked by intermittent skirmishes as Minority
Tamils sought to gain entry into them. In 1973, for instance, Pallars attempted to
enter a Velllaar-ownedtemple in Karainagar,resulting in a "caste riot"; Pallar houses
were burned, Pallars were beaten up, and wells were poisoned (Skjonsberg 1982:128).
The FP's campaign for unity may have created an electorateunited behind the politics
of defensive nationalism, but its politics produced no program for social and economic

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 1968 TEMPLE-ENTRY CRISIS IN SRI LANKA 93

change to resolve the smoldering class and caste animosities that persisted well after
the Maviddapuramcrisis was over.
This discussion would not be complete or fair without indicating that there were
many other reasons why Tamil politicians adopted a politics of defensive nationalism,
including the imposition of the Sinhala language in government affairs and discrim-
ination against Tamils in employmentand university admission. These are the reasons
usually cited for the FP's politics of defensive nationalism. And yet, as the stress and
tension fostered by the Maviddapuramconflict demonstrates clearly, this politics also
had the very appealing benefit of diverting attention away from internal stresses and
divisive intercaste issues, and its value in this regard cannot be dismissed as a con-
tributing factor in the rise of a politics of ethnic separatism in Sri Lanka.

Conclusion:Politics and the Not-So-Primordial

Sentiments of Caste, Religion, and Ethnicity

If the Maviddapuramconflict shows us a picture of a traditional society violently

resisting social reform and modernity, then it must be stressed that the appearance
belies the reality. On the surface, one sees a "premodern"caste system and an "ancient"
temple tradition in conflict with "modern"values and social change. Looking beneath
the surface, however, one finds that this "premodern"caste system is actually a gro-
tesque relic of a colonial plantation economy, a fundamentally unstable system that
could be maintained only by the regular applicationof force. The temple tradition that
excluded untouchables, but neverthelessprovideda rationalefor temple entry once they
adopted vegetarianism and washed themselves, was likewise no artifact of ancient tra-
dition but rather one that had been textualized and sanitized so that it could ward
off the inroads of Christian proselytization. And the politics of defensive nationalism
that the FP emphasized drew on no ancient tradition of the unity of Vellalars and
Minority Tamils; on the contrary, that unity had to be politically and rhetorically
constructed, chiefly through the FP's strategy of incorporatingrestive groups by field-
ing candidates from them and granting them highly visible (but often ceremonial)
positions. We do not see "premodernsocial forms" at war with modernity at Ma-
viddapuram. On the contrary,we see traditions at work that have already been fun-
damentally transformedby their interaction with colonialism and modernity; at Ma-
viddapuram, modernity is at war with itself.
In creating a politics of electoral unity, Tamil politicians had to navigate a con-
tradictoryand dangerousmine field. They succeeded, but only by deflecting the Tamil
community's attention away from the peninsula and toward the broken promises and
discriminatoryactions of the Sinhalese-dominatedgovernment. This was a politics that
tiptoed quietly away from issues that would divide Tamils; it created electoral unity
around the program of defensive nationalism but without really devoting any attention
to the fundamental issues of social and economic inequality within the Tamil com-
munity itself. The FP's politics of defensive nationalism was a politics of avoidance:
it refused to deal constructively with the death throes of the plantation economy.
The FP's politics succeeded in unifying the Tamil community for elections, but
this unity was chimerical. In the face of it, the Colombo government still refused to
make needed concessions to the Tamil community until it was far too late-the Tamil
community in Sri Lankais simply too small to affect the outcome of national elections,
and Sinhalesepolitical parties have little to gain (and much to lose) by granting conces-
sions to it. By the mid- 1970s manyJaffnaTamils believed that the moderatepoliticians'

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94 BRYAN PFAFFENBERGER

strategy was completely bankrupt. As the chief theoretician of the leading militant
Tamil youth group puts it, "it became very clear to the Tamil masses and particularly
to the revolutionaryyouth that the Tamil nationalist leaders. .. havefailed to formulate
any concrete practical programme of political action . . . [but] still cling onto Par-
liament to air their disgruntlement" (Balasingham 1984:25). Such sentiments ulti-
mately drove the discredited moderateTamil politicians from the Jaffnapolitical scene;
indeed, two of them were killed by disgruntled militants in the early 1980s, and most
of the rest fled the country. So completely discredited are moderate Tamil politicians,
in fact, that the TULF could not return to power even under the guarantee of 60,000
Indian peacekeeping troops, as the results of the 1989 Parliamentaryelection dem-
onstrated dramatically:TULF candidates with ties to the old, moderate wing of the
party failed to win a single seat.
It was at the hands of the Tamil youth insurgency that the dominance of rich
Vellalarpeasants finally collapsed (and with it the role for moderateTULF politicians).
Significantly, virtually the entire spectrum of Jaffna society, from the sons of high-
caste Vellalarsto those of Minority Tamils, participates in the militant youth groups.
In Jaffna these groups form a movement for social and economic change as much as
for ethnic separatist rebellion. Dedicated to social reform and the abolition of caste,
they reflect a deeper unity-if at times a troubled one (Pfaffenberger 1984)-than
the superficialelectoral unity that was the object of Federalparty politics. Indeed, the
most successful (and currentlydominant) group, the LiberationTigers of Tamil Eelam,
is led by V. Prabhakaran,a Karaiyar,traditionally a marginal caste in Vellalar eyes,
and significant numbers of the LTTE's fighters are drawn from Minority Tamil com-
munities as well as from Vellalar communities. Whether the LTTE can succeed in
winning continued Vellalar support is unclear.
Given the peculiarities of this case, one can only speculate whether Jaffna's ex-
perience stands to increase our comprehensionof ethnic separatist conflicts in other
regions of South Asia. But this one exampleclearlyindicates that the separatistpolitics
of defensive nationalism does not necessarily stem, as Alexandra George and others
would argue, from some premodernor precolonialcultural identity that persists despite
all attempts to incorporateit into a broadernationality. On the contrary,it may well
stem from the dynamics produced by a colonial economy and a revitalized (and tex-
tualized) religion as both are brought face-to-face with the political context of mod-
ernity. As politicians try to reconcile these prodigious internal stresses with the values
of parliamentarydemocracy,a defensive ethnic nationalism-a policy that directs at-
tention awayfrom divisive internal issues-may well prove irresistible. As the example
of Tamil Sri Lankashows all too clearly,however,the politics of defensive nationalism
may not succeed in domesticating internaltensions. It may succeed only in legitimating
the political violence of far more radicalgroups that, once on stage, are likely to sweep
political moderatesout of the picture permanently.As this case demonstrates, a politics
of avoidance, which fails to resolve internal conflicts, may well sound the death knell
of political moderation. The untouchablesgathered before the temple gates in 1968
were precursorsto a massive social rebellionthat, paired with violent Tamil separatism,
brought the entire edifice of Vellalardomination to its knees.

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 1968 TEMPLE-ENTRY CRISIS IN SRI LANKA 95

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