Mirage – the great Tamil novel of our time
When two distinguished authorities on the history of Jaffna -- Bishop S. Jebanesan of the Jaffna Diocese of the Church of South India, and Richard Fox Young who holds a Chair in the Princeton Theological Seminary, USA., – collaborated to translate the novel Mirage (Kanal in Tamil), depicting the plight of the despised Tamil outcasts (Dalits) of the North, it signified that the novel contains a value which was far above the rest of modern Tamil literature. In addition to recognising its literary merits, their selective act to translate this particular novel bestows a great measure of respectability and socio-political significance to the narrative written by K. Daniel, a Turumbar, the lowest of low-castes in Jaffna. The Turumbars were the dhobies to the dhobies of Jaffna.
A low-caste writer achieving this recognition is a rare honour. This translation opens up an opportunity for the silenced voices of the Tamils oppressed by the Vellalas, to be heard in the wide world and the translator (Bishop Jebanesan) and the editor (Young) must be congratulated for undertaking this task. Theirs is a valuable service because it throws light into the hidden horrors committed behind the ubiquitous cadjan curtains of the Vellalas of Jaffna. Unlike other scholarly studies which tend to drift in the conceptual world, Daniel’s delineation of the existential experiences that were burnt into his memory exposes Jaffna as the hell-hole of the Tamil outcasts. Reading this novel would certainly make you wonder how the world was taken for a ride by the Vellala propagandists who diverted attention from their historical role as victimisers of Tamils to be victims of the SinhalaBuddhist majority.
The two scholars who produced the translation describe the novel as “historical fiction”. Daniel too confirms that the novel is based on incidents that occurred in his little village and adds in his preface: “All of the characters who pass through it were people I saw with my own eyes. Some are still living (in the eighties). Each incident that occurs in the novel actually happened.” (p. xiv). Daniel states that the only difference is that he had changed their names. For instance, he introduces a Christian priest to the village as the alternative to Hindu Saivite Vellala oppressor. But he changed his name from Fr. Gnana Prakasar, a towering figure of Jaffna in his time, to “Chwami Nanamutar”. So there could not have been a more sensitive and truthful eyewitness of the Hindu Saivite Vellala crimes against their own Tamil people than that of Daniel, who viewed the dialectics of his caste-dominated, hierarchical, dichotomised, oppressive society through Marxist lenses.
Mirage, which was written in the eighties, has been hailed by those acquainted with Tamil literature as a mini-classic. But its value was played down by the wily Vellala elite who defined and determined, at all times, the parameters, the contents and the icons of Jaffna Tamil culture. For instance, they hero-worship as a literary lion Arumuka Navalar, the caste fanatic who revised Saivite Hinduism to elevate the Vellalas to the apex of the caste hierarchy. At best, he unearthed the old Tamil texts from S. India and reproduced them which led to a revival of the past glories of Tamil literature in Tamil Nadu. His works did not lead to a lasting Tamil renaissance in Jaffna. But the outstanding creative writer of Jaffna, Daniel, who exposed the savagery of the Vellala oppression is marginalised. His greatness is not only in breaking away from the artificiality of the rigid, formalised, conservative style of traditional Tamil that was in vogue and writing in the spoken idiom but also in daring to penetrate deep into the most oppressive and cruel culture of Jaffna society and exposing their hypocrisy and horrors which were hidden from the public eye.
It is in this context that the translation of Bishop S. Jebanesan, edited by Richard Fox Young, (2016) sweeps in as a breath of fresh air opening the hidden culture of the Vellalas. It lifts the novel from its obscurity to a new level. It not only introduces the novel to a wider audience but also elevates the novel as a brilliant study of the divided society of Jaffna in the throes of changing in the early decades of 20th century when Jaffna was still trading in fanams. In very light brush strokes Daniel dramatizes the evil and dehumanising culture of the Vellalas who denied the outcast Tamils to walk this earth even with a modicum of dignity. Daniel exposes, in quiet and sober tones, the Vellala masters who warped Jaffna society with unrelenting Vellala violence down the ages. The underlying theme that comes out of every tragic episode highlights the misery of the Tamils struggling to escape the inhuman cruelty of the Vellala overlords. This is something the Vellalas hate to admit. They loathe being confronted by their brutalities that reduced their own people to subhumans.
From feudal and colonial periods to modern times Jaffna remained as an abominable gulag of Vellala violence. They dare not face their guilt. Their defence is to parade in the theatre of the world at large as the innocent victims of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority. But Daniel, a Catholic turned into a Marxist, refuses to focus on this aspect which looms large in the minds of the Vellalas. His silence is a virtual rejection of the Vellala accusation. There isn’t a single reference to the politicised accusations of “Sinhala oppression” or “discrimination”, the common cry of Northern politics, His narrative is focused entirely on the internal factors that turned the hidden layers of Jaffna society into a perpetual perdition from which there was no escape.
The theatre of all action in the Mirage is the little village of Pirikattayali where the Vellalas rule with an iron fist. It is a microcosm of the overarching Vellala fascism that reigned supreme right across the Jaffna peninsula during feudal and colonial periods until the late nineties. There are still doubts as to whether Vellala casteism has been eradicated totally from Jaffna even today. There are no heroes and heroines in Mirage. There are only protagonists and antagonists playing out their respective roles, highlighting, every step of the way, the internal contradictions clashing at all levels. Both as a political force and a Hindu ideology Vellalaism reigned supreme riding roughshod over any rival force. They either absorbed the rival castes (e.g., Madapallis) into their fold or crushed the rivals under their jackboots.
A dark, ominous ambience hovers and haunts the grim village of Pirikattayali ruled by the Vellalas. Those below them survive as slaves. They were kept alive, on minimum wages and provisions, to serve the agricultural, domestic, social, political, religious (nautch girls dancing in temples) and even sexual needs of the Vellalas. Daniel’s village is in perpetual conflict with the ruthless ruling class/ caste. There are only two dominant figures that play their dialectical roles: 1. the Vellala landlord, Tampapillaiyar, ordering, threatening, or enforcing his will with force, or bribing the authorities, to have his way in the village and 2. Chwami Nanamutar, the Catholic reformer, who steps into the village as a “liberator”. The oppressed Nalavar and Palla converts expect the priest to bring salvation through the Church and take them to the promised land. In the end the Church too succumbs to the overbearing forces of Vellalas and divides the Church pews into the Vellalas and non-Vellalas. The villagers who suffered under Vellala servitude are told by the new messiahs that they are “slaves of Jesus”. It as if they had exchanged worldly slavery to an ethereal slavery imposed by invisible dictators sitting in the skies. Before long, the Church becomes the ally of the Vellalas in maintaining the oppressive status quo. The poverty, the misery, the suffering and the hunger remains unabated. The Church goes along with the contractors who exploit the low-castes on starvation wages. The Church becomes a part of the establishment. The mirage is in seeing the Church as the liberator.
The coming of the missionaries to Jaffna was also a period of confrontation. It was the first serious invasion of modernity challenging the feudal Hindu structure. It opened up a transitional phase which failed to deliver their expectations of escaping Vellala servitude. In any case, the Vellala Hindus, led by Arumuga Navalar, resisted the Christian invasions. They saw it as a threat to their supremacy with the Church backing the low-castes. The conversions by “the Christian beef-eaters” were limited mainly to the low-castes who saw them as their redeemers, socially, politically and spiritually. But in the end it was the Vellalas who won. The powerful Vellalas took on every new ideological, political, social, religious force that threatened to challenge their supremacy and crushed them. They remained throughout the feudal, colonial, and post-independent periods as an ineradicable force. In the last resort, when their Hindu theology was running out of steam to sustain their divine right to rule the low-castes, they turned Jaffna into an enclave of mono-ethnic extremism. The SinhalaBuddhist became the bogeyman in the post-Donoughmore period. Their biggest selling point was to claim victimhood, accusing the Sinhala-Buddhists as the victimisers, while hiding under the carpet their unrelenting role, over the ages, as the most vicious victimisers of the Tamils.
Their success in propagating this myth is a remarkable feat in caste/ class history. They turned Marxism on its head and proved that a decadent, oppressive class need not necessarily collapse under the revolu- tionary forces of the oppressed. The Vellalas proved, time and again, that they could manufacture “a false consciousness” and survive successfully by donning the Emperor’s clothes of saviours/liberators. Daniel’s unique place as a Tamil intellectual was in his refusal to buy this anti-Sinhala-Buddhist line. A Catholic turned Marxist, he views the internal struggle convulsing Jaffna in class terms. Not in racist terms.
The Vellala political elite, on the