Heritage Histories : A Reassessment of Arumuga Navalar, a.k.a. Candar Arumugavan By S,Ratnajeevan H.Hole Published by Thesam Publications
Professor S. Ratnajeevan H. Hoole’s book on Jaffna Heritage Histories is a fascinating critique of several strands of invented recent histories of Sri Lanka’s Jaffna Tamil society. The central narrative of invented history which he subjects to extensive critical scrutiny is the claim that Arumuga Navalar translated the Bible into Tamil.
Arumuga Navalar is for Sri Lanka’s Tamil Hindus is what Anagarika Dharmapala is for Sri Lanka’s Buddhists. Both were pioneers in the cultural nationalist resurgence in their societies during the British colonial time. Navalar was the senior of the two. While Navalar lived between 1822 and 1879, Dharmapala was born in 1864 and passed away in 1933. When the latter grew up to be the foremost cultural nationalist activist of Sinhalese Buddhists in British colonial Ceylon, he may have obviously heard and read about the former, although Dharmapala never mentions Navalar in his diaries or numerous other writings. It is perhaps the case that Sri Lanka’s Tamil Hindu cultural nationalism and Sinhalese Buddhist cultural nationalism have not crossed their paths, despite the fact that there are many historical and other parallels that have not yet been explored in Sri Lanka’s historical scholarship.
