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Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka

This book examines Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka and provides insights on
how Tamil nationalism has survived the destruction of the Tamil Tigers after
May 2009 and continues to thrive, despite the absence of a charismatic lead-
ership to lead it or a centralised organisation to mobilise the Tamils along
ethnic nationalistic lines.
The ethnic nationalist ideology shaped up by the Tamil Tigers continues to
remain the driving force of the Tamil polity in Sri Lanka and the Diaspora.
Using a Foucauldian counter-historical theoretical framework, the author
analyses and offers answers to these questions: What is keeping Tamil nation-
alism alive despite the demise of the Tamil Tigers over a decade ago? Why do
many Tamils in Sri Lanka and abroad refuse to accept a Sri Lankan political
identity? How are Tamils able to continue on a nationalist path despite the
absence of a unified political leadership? The book argues that Tamil nation-
alism has survived the latter’s destruction because it has become counter-his-
torical. It is this that has allowed, despite the internecine rivalries between
Tamil political parties and Diaspora groups, the Tamil nationalist spirit to
remain alive. The author also suggests that counter-history has, for many
Tamil political parties and Diaspora groups, become the means of waging
war, other than through an armed struggle, against the Sri Lankan state.
Based on field research, interviews and documentary analysis, the book pro-
vides empirical and unique insights on Foucault’s thesis that power is multi-
faceted and can function in the absence of centralised mechanisms.
This book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Politics and
International Relations, in particular those working on ethnic nationalism,
post-armed conflict peacebuilding/conflict resolution, the politics in Sri
Lanka, diaspora politics and Foucault.

A.R. Sriskanda Rajah has a PhD in International Relations and has taught at
Brunel and City, University of London, UK. He was also a member of
International Panel on Exiting Violence at Fondation Maison des Sciences de
l’Homme, France, with a special focus on peace-building and independence
movements. His previous publications include Government and Politics in
Sri Lanka (Routledge 2017).
Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series

148 Indian Literatures in Diaspora

Sireesha Telugu

149 Identity, Nationhood and Bangladesh Independent Cinema

Fahmidul Haq and Brian Shoesmith

150 Media Discourse in Contemporary India

A Study of Select News Channels
Sudeshna Devi

151 Health Care in Post-Independence India

Kolkata and the Crisis of Private Health Care Services
Amrita Bagchi

152 Understanding Afghanistan

Political Networks, Informal Order, and State Disruption
Timor Sharan

153 Bangladesh’s Quest for Inclusive Development

Challenges and Pathways
Mustafa Kamal Mujeri and Neaz Mujeri

154 Covid-19 in India, Disease, Health and Culture

Can Wellness be Far Behind?
Anindita Chatterjee and Nilanjana Chatterjee

155 Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka

Counter-history as War after the Tamil Tigers
A.R. Sriskanda Rajah

For the full list of titles in the series please visit: https://www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Contemporary-South-Asia-Series/book-series/RCSA
Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka
Counter-history as War after the Tamil
Tigers

A.R. Sriskanda Rajah

First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 A.R. Sriskanda Rajah
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work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sriskanda Rajah, A. R., author.
Title: Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka : counter-history as war after the
Tamil Tigers / A. R. Sriskanda Rajah.
Description: London ; New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2023. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022022917 (print) | LCCN 2022022918 (ebook) | ISBN
9781032294568 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032294575 (paperback) | ISBN
9781003301677 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Tamil (Indic people)--Sri Lanka--Ethnic identity. |
Nationalism--Sri Lanka. | Sri Lanka--Ethnic relations--Political
aspects.
Classification: LCC DS489.25.T3 S69 2023 (print) | LCC DS489.25.T3
(ebook) | DDC 305.894/81105493--dc23/eng/20220525
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022022917
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022022918
ISBN: 978-1-032-29456-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-29457-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-30167-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003301677
Typeset in Times New Roman
by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)
Dedicated to my late father, Thambipillai Sriskanda Rajah
Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Abbreviations ix

Introduction 1

1 Foucault and Counter-History 21

2 Consolidating Tamil Nationalism 41

3 Politics of Immortalisation 74

4 Politics of Memorialisation 100

5 (Re)conceptualising Global Politics 121

6 The ‘New’ Diplomatic Struggle 147

Conclusion 170

Index 173
Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to Dorothea Schaefter, the senior South Asia editor of

Routledge, for the interest she has shown in my research. Like my previous
book, Government and Politics in Sri Lanka: Biopolitics and Security, this
book has been possible because of her. I also thank the two independent
reviewers for their invaluable feedback during peer review.
A simple thank you would not be sufficient for Dr A. Stanislaus, who ded-
icated her time to review the contents of this manuscript and offered a
detailed feedback which has helped me bring this book to its final shape;
although, I take full responsibility for all of the contents, including any
errors. I am very grateful to her. Most importantly, I thank my eldest sister,
Mala, for her support and encouragement in the production of this book.
I also thank everyone in my family for their love, support and appreciation of
my work. Sadly, my late father, Thambipillai Sriskanda Rajah, is not alive to
read this book and I dedicate it to him.
Abbreviations

ACTC All Ceylon Tamil Congress

APPGT All-Party Parliamentary Group for Tamils
BTF British Tamils Forum
CHOGM Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
EPDP Eelam People Democratic Party
GTF Global Tamil Forum
ICC International Criminal Court
ICET International Council of Eelam Tamils
ITAK Ilankai Thamil Arasu Katchi
LTTE Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
OHCHR Office of the (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights
TCC Tamil Co-ordinating Committee
TGTE Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam
TNA Tamil National Alliance
TNPF Tamil National People’s Front
TPNA Tamil People’s National Alliance
TULF Tamil United Liberation Front
UNHRC United Nations Human Rights Council
UNP United National Party
UNSC United Nations Security Council
Introduction

Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon) remains a divided island, thirteen years after the
state’s security forces crushed the thirty-seven year secessionist armed strug-
gle of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), also known as the Tamil
Tigers. Since its inception, the LTTE presented itself as ‘the national libera-
tion movement of the Eelam [Sri Lanka’s] Tamils waging a relentless military
and political struggle for the total independence of the Tamil homeland’
(Balasingham, 1985: 4). Yet, the LTTE and its goal of carving a Tamil state
in Sri Lanka were seen by India, the West and other international powers to
be a threat to regional and global peace, security and stability (Lunstead,
2007: 14–15). For over three decades, political and diplomatic efforts by the
world’s powerful states, India, Norway, the UK, the EU, Japan and America,
to compel the LTTE to give up its secessionist armed struggle and accept Sri
Lanka’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity failed (see Armitage,
2002). It was against this backdrop that the international community of
states backed Sri Lanka when it launched an all-out military offensive against
the Tamil Tigers in July 2006. They had envisioned that the military defeat
and political decimation of the LTTE would compel Tamils in Sri Lanka and
the Diaspora to move away from their ethnic nationalist ideology and accept
a Sri Lankan political identity (Blake, 2009). The Sri Lankan government
was also expected to address the root causes of the ethnic conflict by devolv-
ing power to the Tamils (Krishna, 2009).
Yet, thirteen years on, ethnic reconciliation and power sharing have not
only become elusive, but relations between the island’s major ethnic commu-
nities – Tamils, Sinhalese and Muslims – remain tense, particularly ethnic
nationalist sentiments amongst the majority Sinhala Buddhists and the
Tamils. The ever-increasing ethnic divide was reflected in the parliamentary
elections of 5 August, 2020. President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s party, the Sri
Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), which contested the elections on a Sinhala
Buddhist nationalist platform, emerged triumphant in the predominantly
Sinhala-speaking areas of the island. In the predominantly Tamil-speaking
northern and eastern provinces, however, only Tamil political parties and
candidates contesting on a Tamil nationalist platform were able to secure
parliamentary seats.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003301677-1
2 Introduction
In the Tamil-speaking areas, 18 parliamentary seats for Tamils were up for
grabs and of those, 13 seats were won by three Tamil nationalist parties: 10
went to the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), 2 to the Tamil National People’s
Front (TNPF) and 1 to the Tamil People’s National Alliance (TPNA).
Although the remaining five seats in the Tamil areas were won by Tamil can-
didates aligned to President Rajapaksa’s party, all five candidates contested
the elections in the Tamil-speaking areas on a Tamil nationalist platform. In
the predominantly Tamil-speaking eastern province, Sivanesathurai
Chandrakanthan alias Pillaiyan, the leader of Thamil Makkal Viduthalai
Puligal (TMVP) (translated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil People), returned
to parliament using Tamil nationalist rhetoric. During the election campaign,
the party’s secretary P. Prashanthan (2020) claimed the TMPV was contest-
ing the election to ‘safeguard the existence of the Tamil people’. Likewise,
Sathasivam Viyalendran (2020b), who returned to parliament as an SLPP
MP, also contested the elections using Tamil nationalist rhetoric. Viyalendran
also used Tamil nationalist rhetoric to canvas support for Rajapaksa in the
presidential election campaign of November 2019. In one campaign rally,
Viyalendran (2020a) commenced his speech with a recitation of a line from a
Tamil nationalist song, ‘Our life and our resource is the ever bright Tamil
language’, and claimed Rajapaksa’s victory will ‘safeguard the existence’ of
the Tamil people in the east. In the north, the Eelam People’s Democratic
Party (EPDP), another Tamil ally of Rajapaksa’s party, also campaigned on
a Tamil nationalist platform and won two seats, claiming that it was contest-
ing the election so that the ‘Tamil nation can rise its head up’, and even going
so far to suggest that Tamil votes for the party will be ‘a mandate for libera-
tion’ (EPDP, 2020). Likewise, Angajan Ramanathan (2020), candidate of Sri
Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), a Sinhala Buddhist nationalist party, claimed
after his election victory the Tamils had given him ‘the mandate to advance
their political rights’. Thus, the influence of Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka’s
electoral politics remains powerful, long after the decimation of the LTTE.
The polarised nature of Sri Lanka’s politics were apparent when President
Rajapaksa (2020) claimed in his inaugural parliamentary speech, that as ‘rep-
resentatives of the people’, his government would ‘always respect the aspira-
tions of the majority’. His reference to the ‘majority’ refers to the Sinhala
Buddhists who constitute the largest ethnic group in the island and gave his
party a two-third majority in the parliament. Furthermore, he added that
only when the mandate of the majority is respected ‘that the sovereignty of
the people can be safeguarded’, another reference to the view that protecting
the interests of the Sinhala people is key to stability in the island. Rajapaksa
went on to note that his objective as president is to ‘protect the unitary status
of the country’, implying the Tamil demand for regional autonomy would
not be met (Ibid.). Further, pledging to ensure the supremacy of Buddhism,
Rajapaksa stated he had ‘set up an advisory council comprising leading
Buddhist monks to seek advice on governance’ (Ibid.).
Tamil leaders were no less nationalistic in their parliamentary speeches.
C.V. Wigneswaran (2020), the leader of the TPNA, citing Article 1 of Chapter 1
 Introduction 3
of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, urged the Sri
Lankan government to recognise the Tamils as a nation ‘entitled to the right
to self-determination’. Wigneswaran created a furore by re-stating the long-
standing claim of the LTTE (see Balasingham, 2004: 1) that Tamils were
the ‘first indigenous inhabitants’ of the island (Wigneswaran, 2020).
Gajendrakumar Ponnambalam (2020), the leader of the TNPF, went a step
further and suggested that the will of the Sinhala Buddhists is not applicable
to the Tamils inhabiting the northern and eastern parts of the island.
Ponnambalam claimed the Tamils of the northern and eastern provinces
had ‘given unanimously’ the ‘mandate’ for ‘Tamil rights’ and ‘identity’ to be
recognised (Ibid.):

Sri Lanka is a pluri-national country... there are two nations that exist in
this country; and our rights have to be equal; our status has to be equal;
and that along with that status, constitutional amendments have to be
made recognising the right to self-determination was unanimously
expressed in the last elections in the North and the East... So the fact that
we are a nation was unanimous in the North-East. That mandate cannot
be violated. That is a mandate that has been consistently given by the
Tamil people, right through the 72-year history of this country.

The essence of Ponnambalam’s statement was that although the Tamil peo-
ple in the northern and eastern provinces were divided along political party
lines, they remained united when it came to the questions of Tamil nation-
hood, the Tamil homeland and the right to self-determination of Tamils,
the three principles of Tamil nationalism enunciated by the Tamil Tigers
during the Indian-mediated political negotiations in 1985 (see Balasingham,
2004: 78).
There is nothing unusual in seeing the predominantly Sinhala Buddhist
nationalist-led Sri Lankan state function with a majoritarian, victor’s men-
tality and give primacy to the well-being of the Sinhala Buddhists, over that
of Tamils and Muslims. What is unusual, however, is that Tamil political
parties are driven by the Tamil nationalist ideology previously advocated by
the LTTE, despite the latter’s decimation over thirteen years ago. Although
the commitment of Tamil politicians aligned to the Sri Lankan government
to Tamil nationalism is questionable, and their Tamil nationalist rhetoric is
most likely intended to garner the votes of the Tamil electorate, arguably, this
cannot be said of other Tamil political parties. Despite the absence of the
LTTE, these political parties advocate Tamil nationalism, which are also evi-
dent through the label ‘Tamil National’ they maintain in their names. When
the LTTE spearheaded the Tamil secessionist movement, any Tamil politi-
cian who strayed from the path of Tamil nationalism risked being branded a
traitor, and a number of them were assassinated for reneging on their Tamil
nationalist pledges or for collaborating with the Sri Lankan government (see
LTTE, 1985: 10 and 13). In 1989, Appapillai Amirthalingam, the leader of
the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), the political party that contested
4 Introduction
the 1977 general election seeking mandate from Tamils for secession but later
opted for devolution of power within a unitary state, was assassinated by the
LTTE (see Pirapaharan, 1989). The LTTE leader Velupillai Pirapaharan
went on the record to state that Amirthalingam was assassinated because ‘he
abandoned [the goal of] Tamil Eelam and became a traitor’ (Ibid.).
Pirapaharan even urged his cadres to shoot him if he was to abandon Tamil
Eelam: ‘Pirapaharan is not an individual. He is a representative of a race. If
Pirapaharan betrays Tamil Eelam like Amirthalingam, he should also be shot
dead’ (Ibid.).
With over a decade-long absence of the Tamil Tigers in Tamil politics,
there no longer exists a force that is capable of clawing back Tamil politicians
and political parties that stray from the Tamil nationalist path. Yet, over the
past thirteen years, many Tamil politicians and political parties have desisted
from engaging in such acts. The TNA, the largest Tamil nationalist political
party, a party that functioned as the proxy of the LTTE in the Sri Lankan
parliament between 2001 and 2009, lost three of its seats in the 2020 general
election to its rival Tamil nationalist political parties, the TNPF and the
TPNA, after some of its leaders were was seen to be drifting away from the
Tamil nationalist orbit or accommodating an anti-Tamil national rhetoric.
As we will see in Chapters 3 and 4, Rajavarothayam Sampanthan, the TNA
leader flirted with the idea of embracing a Sri Lankan national identity, and
M.A. Sumanthiran, widely viewed as Sampanthan’s protégé and heir, went
onto publicly criticise, a few months before the general election, the LTTE’s
nationalist political objectives and its armed struggle.
It is therefore apparent that despite the absence of the LTTE from the
Tamil political scene for over thirteen years, Tamil nationalism has not only
survived but continues to thrive. How has this been possible, especially when
a vast majority of surviving Tamil Tiger leaders and cadres have abandoned
Tamil nationalist principles and accepted the sovereignty of the Sri Lankan
state? When the Sri Lankan security force emerged victorious on 18 May,
2009, over 12,000 Tamil Tiger fighters laid down their weapons and surren-
dered to the government. Most of them after accepting Sri Lanka’s sover-
eignty were allowed to return to society. Even Selvarasa Pathmanathan alias
KP, who was the LTTE’s chief international arms procurer and proclaimed
as Pirapaharan’s successor by surviving LTTE cadres two months after the
end of the armed conflict (see LTTE, 2009), abandoned Tamil nationalism
after he was captured by the Sri Lankan intelligence agencies in Malaysia and
taken to Sri Lanka for rehabilitation. In an interview before the 2020 general
election, Pathmanathan (2020) expressed regret for his role in the Tamil
secessionist armed struggle and praised President Rajapaksa as the most suit-
able leader to govern the country. Toeing the line of the Sri Lankan govern-
ment, Pathmanathan claimed that Tamils require economic development and
employment more than political power (Ibid.).
The Tamils, either in Sri Lanka or the Diaspora, also do not have a charis-
matic leader capable of uniting and guiding them on an ethnic nationalist
path. Tamil political parties and Diaspora groups squabble with each other
 Introduction 5
over who should dominate the Tamil political landscape. It is against this
backdrop the survival and burgeoning of Tamil nationalism should be
explored. What is keeping Tamil nationalism alive despite the absence of a
leadership to sustain it?
There is no doubt that the Sri Lankan state’s persistent refusal to address
the root causes of the ethnic conflict, share power with the Tamils and hold
its armed forces to account for the mass atrocities they perpetrated during the
armed conflict (UN, 2015) has brought widespread resentment amongst
Tamils. But these cannot be attributed to be the driving forces of Tamil
nationalism. Had these been the driving forces of Tamil nationalism, mass-
scale agitations by Tamils would have been expected as was the case in the
1950s after the Sri Lankan state introduced some of its most notorious racist
legislations and Sinhalisation programmes (Wilson, 1974: 21; Harris, 1990:
213), or perhaps even a mass civil disobedience movement in the Tamil-
speaking areas similar to that of 1961 when Sri Lanka reneged on its promise
of devolving power to Tamils (Balasingham, 2004: 13; Welhengama and
Pillay, 2014: 202).
How to account for not only the survival of Tamil nationalism, but that it
is thriving in the post-LTTE period?
In this book, drawing on Foucauldian theoretical framework, I argue that
Tamil nationalism has survived the LTTE and continues to thrive, because it
functions in a counter-historical mode.
Counter-history is not a new concept and has been used by scholars from
various disciplines to develop critiques of the presentation of history. In
Perceptions of Jewish History, Amos Funkenstein (1993: 36) defined coun-
ter-history as ‘a specific genre of history written since antiquity’ with a
‘polemical’ function that leads to ‘systematic exploitation of the adversary’s
most trusted sources against their grain’. The aim of counter-history,
Funkenstein argued, ‘is the distortion of the adversary’s self-image, of his
identity, through the deconstruction of his memory’ (Ibid.). David Biale
(1999: 131), on the other hand, went a step further and defined counter-his-
tory as ‘a type of revisionist historiography, but where the revisionist pro-
poses a new theory or finds new facts, the counter-historian transvalues old
ones’. Marcia Landy (2015: x), in contrast, taking cues from Giles Deleuze
and Felix Guattari, defined counter-history to be discourses that ‘offer ver-
sions of the past and future that run counter [emphasis original] to received
views about historicizing’. Counter-history, in Landy’s view, is ‘an escape
from formal history to a world of affect, invention, memory, art, reflection
and action’ (Ibid.). In Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations
into Globalization, however, Gabriel Rockhill (2017: 3) claimed counter-his-
tory does not ‘propose an opposite history of contemporary reality that
would quite simply reverse a conventional conception of our conjuncture in
order to show the inverse’ but counters ‘a particular schematization of con-
temporary reality’. In other words, according to Rockhill, counter-history
‘specifically counters the historical order that underpins it’ (Ibid.). Thus,
‘instead of simply proposing another history, counter-history aims at
6 Introduction
changing the very meaning – and direction – of history and narrative (le sens
meme de l’histoire)’ (Ibid.). Domenico Losurdo (2011: vii), on the other hand,
argued, drawing from Alex de Tocqueville, that counter-history is simply
drawing attention to the aspects of history that have ‘hitherto been largely
and unjustly ignored’.
In his lecture series, “Society Must Be Defended”, delivered at the College
de France between 1975 and 1976, Michel Foucault (2004: 66) allowed us to
understand history beyond such structural conceptions, suggesting that it
had been, since antiquity, and continues to be, made up of discourses that
represent power and those who are in power. As we will see further in Chapter
1, understood in this sense, counter-history is a discourse invoked by those
who are not in power and thus seek power, although they may not necessarily
be powerless (Foucault, 2004: 69). In other words, counter-history can be
said to be the discourse of those who have no glory or who feel they have lost
their glory and seek to re-instate it by recreating memories of their past glo-
ries. As we will see in Chapter 1, neither history nor counter-history seek to
establish the truth. Instead, as discourses of those in power or discourses of
those concerned with gaining power, respectively, both history and coun-
ter-history go beyond narrating the past and seek to recreate them.
So what made counter-history the driving force of Tamil nationalism after
the LTTE?
As we will see in Chapters 2 and 4, for many Tamil nationalists, the de-facto
state of Tamil Eelam the LTTE managed to establish through an armed
struggle in the predominantly Tamil-speaking northern and eastern prov-
inces of Sri Lanka and ruled and defended till their military defeat and deci-
mation in May 2009 represented a key step towards reconstituting the
historical sovereignty of their pre-colonial Jaffna Kingdom (see, for example
Tamilnet, 2014). The pre-colonial Jaffna kingdom exercised sovereignty over
not only the Jaffna Peninsula in the north, but also the island of Mannar, the
principalities of Vanni and suzerainties of Manthai, Trincomalee and
Batticaloa, which make up the northern and eastern provinces of modern
day Sri Lanka (for a discussion on the pre-colonial Jaffna Kingdom, its prin-
cipalities and suzerainties, see Ribeiro, 1909: 3–4). In June 2003, after the
LTTE suspended political negotiations against the backdrop of mounting
pressure from international powers to negotiate a federal political solution,
Sivashakthi Anandhan (2003), a TNA parliamentarian wrote: ‘Tamils should
negotiate from the position of their uncompromised sovereignty’. Five years
later, as the armed conflict reached its final months, Balasingham Nadesan
(2008), the head of the LTTE’s political section, wrote to the then UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon: ‘there is only one path open to regain the
rights of the Tamil people and that is for the international community to
recognize the sovereignty of the Tamil nation’.
For the Sri Lankan state, on the other hand, the de-facto state the LTTE
had established over the Tamil-speaking areas and ruled for two decades not
only delegitimised its sovereignty over the entire island but also challenged its
institutionalised discourses that historically, the island had been the home
 Introduction 7
only to the Sinhala Buddhists, and others, including the Tamils and Muslims,
were immigrants. The Mahavamsa (1912: 3 and 53), a Sinhala chronicle
thought to have been compiled by Buddhist monks in the sixth century CE,
and now made an official document of history by Sri Lankan state, even
claims the island was ‘conquered’ by Lord Buddha for his doctrine to ‘shine
in glory’ and his religion to be protected by the Sinhalese.
In a television interview, Chandrika Kumaratunga (1998), the Sri Lankan
president from 1994 to 2005, went on the record to argue that Tamils were
not the original inhabitants of the island: ‘only a minority group is fighting
for a separate homeland, who are not even originals to this country’. At the
height of the armed conflict, Sarath Fonseka (2008) the then Sri Lankan
military commander and now a parliamentarian with the country’s opposi-
tion, also stated: ‘I strongly believe that this country belongs to the Sinhalese’.
Recently, reprimanding Wigneswaran for his claim that Tamils were the orig-
inal inhabitants of the country, Fonseka (2020) went on to state:

MPs such as Vigeneshwaran [spelling Fonseka’s] try to undermine the

status quo of the Sinhalese by stating that Tamil is the oldest language
spoken in this country. He is trying to imply that the Sinhalese arrived in
this island after the Tamils.

A few months prior to Sri Lanka emerging triumphant against the LTTE,
Dayan Jayatilleka (2009), a Sinhala Buddhist academic and a senior Sri
Lankan diplomat, predicted that the military defeat of the LTTE would ‘leave
no space for the older, underlying project of Tamil nationalism’. After the
conclusion of the armed conflict, Jayatilleka (2010) even went on to argue that
Sri Lanka’s victory over the LTTE symbolised the re-instatement of the state’s
writ over the entire island and represented the victory of the ‘Sinhala spirit’.
The institutionalisation of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and historical
discourses disseminated by the Sri Lankan state could be said to have driven
and made it imperative for Tamil nationalists to develop a counter-history of
the Tamil people in Sri Lanka. The influence of counter-history in keeping
Tamil nationalism alive and burgeoning has been such that some Sri Lankan
leaders even fear that another Tamil secessionist armed struggle may become
a possibility in the future. Thus, marking the ninth anniversary of the state’s
military victory over the Tamil Tigers, the former Sri Lankan President
Maithripala Sirisena (2018), who also served as the acting defence minister in
the final days of the armed conflict lamented: ‘We have defeated the LTTE
physically and militarily but their ideology has not died. Their agents in the
Diaspora in the LTTE’s international network are very much alive. They are
still working to create their Eelam dream’. However, Kamal Gunaratne
(2016) Sri Lanka’s Defence Secretary and a retired military general who
played a key role in defeating the Tamil Tigers, put the blame for the survival
of Tamil nationalism on Tamil politicians in Sri Lanka, in particular the
TNA: ‘the agenda of the Tamil National Alliance is Eelam [the separate
state] and nothing else’.
8 Introduction
With Tamil nationalism alive and thriving in the post-LTTE era amongst
Tamil politicians, the Tamil populace and the Tamil Diaspora, who, or what
factors, are playing a crucial role in keeping Tamil nationalism alive? This
book suggests that the counter-history of Tamil nationalism is not rooted
either in the Tamil Diaspora or Tamil politicians in Sri Lanka. It is both a
united and a disunited discourse; it functions both in networks and without
networks; it is both a bottom-up discourse and a bottom-down discourse; it
is both a territorial discourse and a transterritorial one. It is also a discourse
that operates, as Foucault (1998: 88–89) famously noted, in Volume 1 of The
History of Sexuality, on the way that power functions, with the ‘king’s head
cut off’. Tamil nationalism is kept alive and burgeoning by a wide range of
actors, both in Sri Lanka and the Diaspora, ranging from politicians, polit-
ical activists, human rights defenders, civil society activists, journalists,
poets, academics, political commentators and religious leaders to even those
who actively use social media platforms to debate political developments in
Sri Lanka. As we will see in Chapter 2, supporters of the LTTE in the south
Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where emotions run high whenever the Tamil
issue in Sri Lanka comes to the forefront, also contribute to the burgeoning
of Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka. In some instances, as we will see in
Chapter 5, Western leaders have also contributed to the persistence of Tamil
nationalism. Despite the Sri Lankan state’s overriding objective to annihi-
late Tamil nationalism, its institutionalisation of Sinhala Buddhist hegem-
onic discourse too can be said to be making a contribution to the
counter-history of Tamil nationalism. The use of Tamil nationalist rheto-
ric to garner votes by Tamil politicians affiliated to or allied to mainstream
Sinhala Buddhist parties also contributes to the burgeoning of Tamil
nationalism.
Many works have been published on Tamil nationalism in Sri Lanka.
Whilst many of them were published when the LTTE was in existence, some
have also been published in the post-LTTE period. Regardless, the foci of
these were the origins and rationale behind the emergence of Tamil nation-
alism. In Sri Lankan Tamil Nationalism, Jeyaratnam Wilson (2000: 1) traced
the origins of Tamil nationalism to the period dating to British colonial rule
of Ceylon. Wilson (Ibid.) suggested that Tamil nationalism initially emerged
as a form of ‘Tamil national awareness’, primarily aimed at preventing
Tamils from becoming assimilated into other communities in British Ceylon.
In the later years of British colonial rule, it evolved into a form of ‘Tamil
national consciousness’, seeking to ensure that Tamils received equal rep-
resentation in the colonial state apparatus (Wilson: 2000: 2). However, in
the post-British years, driven by frustration ‘in the face of unyielding
Sinhalese nationalism’, Tamil nationalism became a phenomenon for
achieving the ‘self-determination and independence’ of Tamils (Wilson,
2000: 13). Sankaran Krishna (2000: 60) also saw Tamil nationalism in Sri
Lanka as ‘the story of a people driven from moderation and desired accom-
modation to secessionism because of Sinhalese chauvinism’. In War and
Peace, Anton Balasingham (2004: 9), an academic and the late theoretician
 Introduction 9
of the LTTE, posited Tamil nationalism ‘as an ideology’ and ‘a concrete
political movement’ which ‘arose as a historical consequence of Sinhala
chauvinistic state oppression’. Stokke and Ryntveit (2000: 297), on the
other hand, suggested that ‘Tamil nationalism should be understood as a
post-colonial political phenomenon’ that first emerged as ‘an elite-led strat-
egy for political mobilisation from “above” and from the political centre’,
and later, with the emergence of Tamil militancy, became an ‘oppositional
movement of marginalised Tamil youth from the political periphery’.
Challenging these, Gnanapala Welhengama and Nirmala Pillay (2014: 3), in
The Rise of Tamil Separatism in Sri Lanka, From Communalism to
Separatism, a work published in the post-LTTE years, define Tamil nation-
alism as a ‘separatist ideology’ that evolved from ‘communalism’ to ‘feder-
alism’ that culminated into ‘a secessionist armed struggle’ (emphasis
original). Welhengama and Pillay (2014: 4) argued that ‘Tamils feared
becoming an ethnic minority in post-independence Sri Lanka’ and this
sowed the seeds of Tamil separatism. Madurika Rasaratnam (2017: 4 and
242), on the other hand, in her work published eight years after the decima-
tion of the LTTE, identifies Tamil nationalism to be the consequence of the
‘absence of a shared understanding of national identity’ amongst Ceylon/
Sri Lanka’s Tamil and Sinhala Buddhist communities, primarily due to the
Sri Lankan state’s failure to accommodate Tamils in its post-colonial
national identity.
This is not another book that traces the origins of Tamil nationalism in
Sri Lanka or seeks to identify the rationale behind its emergence. Nor does
this book develop a counter-history of Tamil nationalism. Instead, this
study explores the role that has been played, and continues to be played, by
counter-history in making Tamil nationalism survive and thrive after the
annihilation of the Tamil Tigers. In this sense, this is the first book to apply
Foucault’s concept of ‘counter-history’ to Tamil nationalist politics in Sri
Lanka. Although the title of this book is Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka, the
study includes the Tamil Diaspora, which is largely concentrated in Western
countries but plays an influential role in Tamil nationalist politics in Sri
Lanka. The novelty of the book also stems from the fact that it will also be
expanding the empirical case for Foucault’s reconceptualisation of the term
‘war’, with a particular focus on Sri Lanka, first developed in this author’s
previous book, Government and Politics in Sri Lanka: Biopolitics and
Security.
The book does not suggest that counter-history, in contrast to history,
establishes the truth by accurately narrating the events of the past. In “Society
Must Be Defended” Foucault (2004: 163–164) suggested that what is estab-
lished to be the truth by one could also be established by another to be com-
pletely false. In his subsequent lecture series, The Birth of Biopolitics, Foucault
(2008: 20) went on to argue that a ‘regime of truth’ is even capable of making
‘something that does not exist’ to ‘become something’ real. Referring to pol-
itics and economy, Foucault argued that these ‘are things that do not exist
and yet which are inscribed in reality and fall under a regime of truth
10 Introduction
dividing the true and false’ (Ibid.). Further, Foucault (1980: 131) even sug-
gested that power and truth do not exist in isolation but are intertwined:

The important thing here, I believe, is that truth isn’t outside power, or
lacking in power: contrary to a myth whose history and functions would
repay further study, truth isn’t the reward of free spirits, the child of
protracted solitude, nor the privilege of those who have succeeded in
liberating themselves. Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only
by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects
of power. Each society has it regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of
truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function
as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish
true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the
techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the
status of those who are charged with saying what counts are true.

Thus, for Foucault (1980: 133), truth is not something that is to be ‘discov-
ered and accepted’. Instead, it should be ‘understood as a system of ordered
procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and oper-
ation of statements’ (Ibid.). Yet, it is also ‘linked in a circular relation with
systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which
it induces and which extend it’ (Ibid.). In this sense, neither history nor coun-
ter-history are discourses of truth, even though they are claimed to be the
truths. As we will see in Chapter 1, as a discourse of power, history, since
antiquity, was not only made up of verified or established accounts of past
events but was also, and continues to be, constituted by myths, legends, fables,
unverified or unsubstantiated claims and even lies. As we will see in Chapters
2–6, being a discourse of those who seek power, counter-history is no
different.
Although this book is the first to explore the use of counter-history in
Tamil nationalism, this does not mean counter-history is a new phenomenon
in Tamil nationalism, or any other ethnic nationalism in Sri Lanka. During
its existence, the LTTE used discourses, some of which could be identified as
counter-historical, to justify the Tamil secessionist armed struggle. For exam-
ple, in War and Peace, Balasingham (2004: 1–2), challenging the state-backed
Sinhala Buddhist nationalist narrative of history that the Sinhalese are the
original inhabitants of Sri Lanka, developed a counter-history of Tamils
(although not using the term) positing them as ‘indisputably the earliest set-
tlers’ in the island, who had, from ‘the 13th century onwards, until the advent
of foreign colonialism’ lived ‘as a stable national formation in their own king-
dom, ruled by their own kings, within a specified territory of their traditional
homelands embracing the northern and eastern provinces’. Balasingham’s
(2004: 80) objective in developing a counter-history of Tamils was most
probably intended to develop the context and justifications for the longstand-
ing position of the LTTE and other Tamil nationalists during political nego-
tiations, beginning with the Indian facilitated Thimbu talks in 1985, that ‘the
 Introduction 11
Tamils of Eelam or Tamil Eelam, constituted a nation with a common herit-
age, a common culture, a common language, and an identified homeland’ and
being ‘a subjugated people’, had the ‘inherent right to free themselves from
alien subjugation’. It is not only Balasingham within the LTTE who used
counter-history. As we will see in Chapter 3, the LTTE’s poet laureate
Puthuvai Rathinathurai also used counter-history to burgeon Tamil nation-
alism. However, both Balasingham and Rathinathurai used counter-history
in different forms and sought to achieve different objectives. Being aimed
largely at an international audience, Balasingham’s counter-history assumed
the form of a political discourse that was grounded on established facts.
Rathinathurai’s counter-history, however, aimed at the Tamil population in
Sri Lanka and abroad, assumed a literary form and incorporated myths and
legends in addition to the established facts.
Regardless, in the post-LTTE period, the use of counter-history in Tamil
nationalism is different in many respects. First, during the time of the LTTE,
as the work of Balasingham demonstrates, counter-history was used to jus-
tify at the international level the Tamil right to self-determination and state-
hood. Second, as we will see in Chapter 3 (in the case of Rathinathurai’s
literary works), it was also used to whip-up Tamil nationalist sentiments so
that the LTTE would be able to mobilise Tamils on a mass scale to recruit
fighters to its military formations and raise funds to finance the armed strug-
gle. In the post-LTTE period, there is no armed struggle, let alone there being
a political struggle, to achieve the political independence, or even the politi-
cal rights, of Tamils. There is also no mass mobilisation of Tamils. Nor is
there a centralised leadership to regulate Tamil nationalism. Yet, Tamil
nationalism survives and thrives, and it is against this backdrop the signifi-
cance of counter-history should be explored. Whilst during the time of the
LTTE it was the armed struggle that drove Tamil nationalism forward and
counter-history played the peripheral role of justifying the Tamil cause and
whipping-up Tamil nationalism, in the post-LTTE period counter history
has become the driving force of Tamil nationalism, keeping it alive and
thriving.
As we will see in Chapter 3, counter-history has also been used (though,
again, not using the term) by Sinhala Buddhist nationalists in colonial Ceylon
to present the Sinhalese as the descendents of a great Aryan people. These
narratives were further developed in post-British Ceylon/Sri Lanka, to be
inscribed into the island-state’s official history, including school text books
(Kapferer, 1988: 35). As Bruce Kapferer (1988: 35) has examined in Legends
of People, many narratives were developed in post-British Ceylon by Sinhala
Buddhist nationalists, ranging from ‘political propaganda, commentary in
the press’ and ‘popular histories’ to ‘the learned arguments of Buddhist
priests and some lay scholars’ to inscribe the idea that Sri Lanka belongs to
the Sinhalese. These often led to myth becoming ‘historical reality’ and ‘his-
tory myth’ (Kapferer, 1988: 34). Although many scholars consider national-
ism to be a phenomenon ‘related to modernisation and industrialisation’ (see,
for example, Gellner, 1983: 1), in their narratives on the history of the
12 Introduction
Sinhalese, however, some Sinhala Buddhist nationalists have even sought to
trace the origins of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism to the war between the
ancient Tamil monarch Ellalan (written Elara in Sinhala) and the Sinhala
prince Dutthagamani (also written as Duttagamunu) in 162 BCE, in which
the latter emerged triumphant (Rahula, 1956: 79). This way, these sections of
Sinhala Buddhist nationalists sought to depict Sinhala Buddhist nationalism
to have ‘survived in some form for two millennia’ (DeVotta, 2007: 3). However,
as will be discussed in Chapter 2, in contrast to Tamil nationalism, the coun-
ter-history of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism in post-British Ceylon was a
counter-history articulated in the form of history.
This author is conscious of the fact that ‘nationalism’ is a contested term
and lacks a single definition. However, as the scope of this study is not on the
origins or the evolution of Tamil nationalism, this author does not feel it is
necessary to develop a theory on it. Further, this author believes that the
Foucauldian framework of counter-history provides the sufficient theoretical
basis for analysing the factors that allow Tamil nationalism to survive and
thrive after the annihilation of the LTTE.
This author is also conscious that this work may be prone to criticism that
it has placed post-LTTE Tamil politics in Sri Lanka and the Tamil Diaspora
as Tamil nationalism, when Tamil political parties in Sri Lanka seek power
sharing within an undivided Sri Lanka, whilst almost all of the Tamil
Diaspora groups advocate political independence (International Crisis
Group, 2010: 12 and 17). Further, Tamil political parties in Sri Lanka differ
in the type of power sharing arrangement they seek. For example, the TNA,
in its manifesto for the 2020 general election stated that it would seek a polit-
ical solution ‘through a constitutional arrangement on the model of federal-
ism within a united Sri Lanka’ and this solution would be on the basis of the
idea of ‘shared sovereignty’ (TNA, 2020: 2–3). The TNPF, on the other hand
posited a ‘federal’ political solution based on ‘the union of sovereign [Tamil
and Sinhala] nations’ (TNPF, 2020: 4–5). The TPNA, however, stated that it
would seek a ‘federal’ political solution incorporating the ‘highest form of
autonomy with sovereignty’ (TPNA, 2020: 23). Despite these, all three polit-
ical parties affirmed in their manifestos the principles of Tamil nationhood,
the Tamil homeland encompassing the northern and eastern provinces and
the Tamil right to self-determination (see TNA, 2020: 3; TNPF, 2020: 4;
TPNA, 2020: 23), the core principles to any political solution short of sepa-
ration that the LTTE articulated during the Indian facilitated Thimbu talks
in 1985, which was agreed by all Tamil militant groups and political parties
and have since been referred to as the Thimbu Principles (Balasingham, 2004:
78). Likewise, the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE), one
of the largest Tamil Diaspora groups that advocates Tamil secession, has
claimed since its inception that it seeks to ‘win the freedom of the Tamil
people on the basis of their fundamental principles of Nationhood,
Homeland and Right to self-determination’ (Transnational Government of
Tamil Eelam, 2010) (capitalisation original). From these, one can clearly
draw the conclusion that despite the absence of a concrete theory or
 Introduction 13
definition of the term ‘Tamil nationalism’, it is possible to ground it in the
Thimbu Principles. It is the articulation of these principles, or the articula-
tion of discourses around or aimed at realising them by Tamil political par-
ties, Diaspora groups and other politically active actors, which allows this
author to conceptualise them as discourses of Tamil nationalism. Further,
Sri Lanka’s Sixth Amendment to the Constitution criminalises secession, and
as such, as the TNPF leader Ponnambalam told this author in 2021, the
question of Tamil political parties in Sri Lanka articulating ‘a separate state
does not arise because there is no space to articulate it’ there. It would there-
fore be a fallacy to assume that only the Tamil Diaspora advocating seces-
sionism is being Tamil nationalist.
This book is the result of over a decade of research carried out by this
author, both during doctoral research (though not part of it) and afterwards.
The research materials include primary and secondary sources, and the main
methodology used is documentary analysis. The research is also based on
findings this author was able to make through semi-structured interviews and
discussions with a wide array of actors engaged in Tamil nationalist politics.
Many of those who provided insights on Tamil nationalism wanted to remain
anonymous, and this author respects their wishes. As part of the research,
this author has also been observing and evaluating the proliferation of Tamil
nationalist discourses on social media platforms, in particular Facebook,
YouTube, Tamil nationalist blogs and a number of Viber and WhatsApp
groups run by Tamil nationalist political parties and groups in Sri Lanka and
the Diaspora. Some of the findings are also based on this author’s in-person
observation of events held by Tamil nationalists in the UK, and an analysis
of videos and photos of events in other countries.

Overview of Chapters
Chapter 1 provides the theoretical framework for the argument in the book
and therefore explores Foucault’s concept of ‘counter-history’. As a theory
chapter, it explores how, in “Society Must Be Defended” Foucault allowed us
to re-think our understanding of history beyond structural conceptions. In
particular, the chapter provides further insights into Foucault’s concept of
‘counter-history’ by offering a detailed analysis of the counter-historical dis-
courses of the English jurist Edward Coke and the French nobleman Henri
de Boulainvilliers, discourses which lead to seismic political changes in
England and France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, respec-
tively. The chapter also posits that these discourses that eventually created the
effects of battle, i.e., the weakening of the powers of the monarchy in
England, or in the case of France the complete elimination of the monarchi-
cal system of government, were wars (not metaphorical ones, but ones waged
through means other than military action) waged by Coke, Boulainvilliers
and their contemporaries and successors against absolute monarchies. In
doing so, the chapter expands on the re-conceptualisation of war this author
had offered, drawing on Foucault’s work, in the previous book, Government
14 Introduction
and Politics in Sri Lanka: Biopolitics and Security (for a detailed discussion
on the re-conceptualisation of the term ‘war’, see Rajah, 2017: 16–25).
Applying Foucault’s concept of counter-history to Tamil nationalism in
Sri Lanka, Chapter 2 explores how Tamil nationalists in Sri Lanka and the
Diaspora, and the supporters of the LTTE in Tamil Nadu, have developed
their own narrative of history in the post-LTTE period and have succeeded
in challenging and balancing the victor’s version of history developed by
the Sri Lankan state and Sinhala Buddhist nationalists. The chapter also
delves into how Tamil nationalists have, over the past decade, invoked their
ancient, medieval and modern day ‘glories’ to obscure their status as a
defeated people and instead imagine and project themselves as a nation
with a great past. In doing so, the chapter is able to draw some parallels
between post-LTTE Tamil nationalism and the rise of Sinhala Buddhist
nationalism in British-ruled Ceylon in the late nineteenth century and the
first half of the twentieth century. The chapter points out that Tamil nation-
alism articulated by some individuals in Tamil Nadu runs the risk of
becoming a racist discourse not unsimilar to the Sinhala Buddhist racist
discourse entrenched by the Sri Lankan state. The chapter also examines
how, as part of their counter-historical narratives, Tamil nationalists, espe-
cially those in the Diaspora, have adopted the concept of remedial sover-
eignty, in contrast to the LTTE’s focus on historical sovereignty during the
armed struggle, to articulate and legitimise their case for a future interna-
tional intervention in Sri Lanka and the creation of an independent Tamil
state.
On 19 May 2009, the Sri Lankan government announced that its armed
forces had killed the Tamil Tiger leader, Pirapaharan (Sriyananda, 2020). It
was a historic victory for the Sri Lankan government. For over three decades,
successive Sri Lanka’s governments had failed to either kill or capture
Pirapaharan. Though there were a number of occasions when the Sri Lankan
government came close to killing Pirapaharan and claimed several times to
have killed him, every time the Tamil Tiger leader emerged unscathed and
strengthened. However, the Sri Lankan government showed a body to
national and global media, purporting to be that of the LTTE leader (Leahy,
2009). The initial response of Tamil nationalists to these images was disbe-
lief: their invincible leader could not be dead. Pathmanathan sobbed on a
Tamil Diaspora television during an interview where he claimed the death of
the leader. Yet, within days, Tamil nationalists hit back and began denounc-
ing the government’s claims, and that of Pathmanathan, even asserting the
Tamil Tiger leader was safe and well, and the body the government had
shown was ‘fake’ and ‘propaganda’ (International Crisis Group, 2010: 18).
Vaiko (2009), a Tamil Nadu politician known for having had direct contacts
with the Tamil Tiger leader, claimed a few days later: ‘There is not an iota of
doubt in me that he [Pirapaharan] is alive. He would surface at the right
moment to redeem Eelam’. Pirapaharan has never made a reappearance, yet
the vast majority of Tamil nationalists persist in their belief, as Vaiko did,
that he will emerge when international conditions are ripe for creating a
 Introduction 15
Tamil state in Sri Lanka. Further, despite the breadth of Tamil politicians in
Sri Lanka with their various representations of Tamil nationalism, none has
been able to secure the position of unchallenged ‘national leader’ of the
Tamils in Sri Lanka in the way that Pirapaharan did. This inevitably poses
the question of why this should be the case? Chapter 3 explores how Tamil
nationalists have drawn on Pirapaharan’s military legacy and nationalist ide-
ology and succeeded in immortalising the Tamil Tiger leader. Thus, function-
ing amidst two contradictory ‘truths’ (or perhaps more than two) on
Pirapharan’s fate, the Tamil polity today, despite being a ‘headless’ one, has
been able continue its nationalist path. The chapter therefore explores
Foucault’s expositions on how power is able to function without a central
mechanism to manage it.
Memorialisation is another method that Tamil nationalists have capital-
ised on in the post-Tamil Tiger period. This includes the holding of regular
memorial events to mark past atrocities against Tamils by the Sri Lankan
security forces and Sinhala Buddhist extremists, the romanticisation of the
armed struggle of the Tamil Tigers and the depiction of dead Tamil Tiger
fighters as ‘guardian angels’ and freedom fighters. This is in contrast to their
denouncement of as ruthless, terrorists by the Sri Lankan state, international
powers and the international media and policy makers as having ‘forcibly
recruited children, carried out political assassinations or were responsible for
scores of civilian deaths’ (International Crisis Group, 2010: 18). Defining this
politics of memorialisation to be an integral aspect of Tamil counter-history,
Chapter 4 examines how this set of events has provided the conditions for
Tamil nationalism to survive and thrive further.
The military defeat and destruction of the Tamil Tigers in May 2009 sug-
gested to the Tamils that their aspiration for creating a Tamil state in Sri
Lanka might not be feasible in the immediate and long term future. When a
powerful military organisation such as the Tamil Tigers can militarily be
defeated and politically destroyed, how could it be possible for the Tamils to
achieve their goal of secession? Tamil nationalists, however, did not see the
destruction of the Tamil Tigers as the end of their nationalist struggle, but
rather the opening of a new chapter. For many Tamil nationalists, the Sri
Lankan government was able to defeat the Tamil Tigers because it had the
backing of international powers, and if they too could gain support from
these powers, in particular the support of the West and India, they would be
able to turn the tables around and the establishment of a separate Tamil state
in Sri Lanka would be feasible. With over a million Tamils of Sri Lankan
origin scattered across the world, there was an optimism amongst Tamils that
they could gain international political and diplomatic support. In particular,
it was thought that if the Tamils abandoned a commitment to armed struggle
and embarked on a non-violent path, the Sri Lankan government would be
denied the opportunity to depict Tamil nationalism as terrorism (see for
example, Tamilnet, 2009). Chapter 5 explores how Tamil nationalists have
been actively working for the past thirteen years to garner Western support
by depicting themselves as committed to liberal values and democracy. They
16 Introduction
have also sought to capitalise on the geopolitical interests of India and the
West in Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean region, lobbying for the creation of
a Tamil state through a UN-sponsored referendum process in the Tamil-
speaking areas, especially as Sri Lanka continues its tilt towards China. The
chapter shows how a counter-history has enabled Tamil nationalists to recon-
ceptualise global politics to keep the Tamil nationalist spirit alive.
Extending the analysis undertaken in the previous chapter, Chapter 6
explores how another section of Tamil nationalists in Sri Lanka and the
Diaspora have capitalised on the interest shown by Western governments
and the UN in holding the Sri Lankan armed forces to account for their
past atrocities. Previously, the Tamil Tigers cited the failure of Gandhian-
style non-violent struggles of their predecessors to justify their armed
insurgency (Balasingham, 1985: 6–7). In the post-Tamil Tiger period,
leading Tamil politicians and lobbyists claim that they are now engaged in
a ‘new’ diplomatic struggle to achieve their political goals (see, for exam-
ple, Sampanthan, 2012). This so-called diplomatic struggle is nothing
more than the lobbying of Western governments and the UN for an inter-
national judicial investigation to hold the Sri Lankan security forces
account for their past atrocities. Yet, with some of these lobbying activities
yielding results, such as the 2014 UN Resolution that mandated office of
the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate allegations
of international crimes in Sri Lanka, Tamil nationalists have become
convinced that their ‘diplomatic struggle’ is on course to reach its goal. As
a result, Geneva, where the UN Human Rights Council has its headquar-
ters, has become the battleground in the ‘battle’ between Tamil national-
ists and the Sri Lankan state. The role played by Tamil Diaspora groups
and political parties in Sri Lanka in effecting pro-Western, pro-Indian
regime change in Sri Lanka in the presidential election of 2015, though
reversed in the 2019 presidential election in which Sinhala Buddhist
nationalists overwhelmingly voted in the anti-Western, pro-Chinese
President Rajapaksa, has made Tamil nationalists believe that they are not
pawns in the games of global powers but kingmakers. Chapter 6 will
explore these developments.
The central contention of this author in Chapters 2–6 is that whilst keep-
ing Tamil nationalism alive and burgeoning, counter-history has also created
some effects of battle on the Sri Lankan state and Sinhala Buddhist nation-
alism: it has tarnished the Sri Lankan state’s image at the international level,
thus weakening its ability to emerge as an economic power-house and a par-
adise for Western tourists, and prevented Sinhala Buddhist nationalism that
emerged victorious against the LTTE from annihilating Tamil nationalism in
Sri Lanka. In this sense, readers will be able to see that counter-history is a
form of war being waged by Tamil nationalists in the post-LTTE period
against the Sri Lankan state.
Summing up the arguments in the previous chapters, the conclusion allows
readers to consider what the survival and burgeoning of Tamil nationalism,
thirteen years after the military defeat and destruction of the Tamil Tigers,
 Introduction 17
means for the future of Sri Lanka’s sovereignty, unity and territorial integ-
rity; and for ethnic reconciliation and peacebuilding, if there would be any.

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1 Foucault and Counter-History

The term ‘history’, originating from the Latin word historia has been under-
stood in different ways by different people. The Cambridge Dictionary
(2022), for example, defines history as ‘(the study of or record of) past events
considered together, especially events of a particular period, country, or sub-
ject’. Immanuel Kant (1784/1963), who is today hailed as the patriarch of
liberal internationalism, suggested history as ‘narrating’ the ‘appearances’ of
‘human actions’ or ‘the freedom of the will’. Hegel (1956: 1 and 72), on the
other hand, claimed history to be ‘the development of Spirit in Time [empha-
sis original]’ and divided it into three subcategories: original history, reflec-
tive history and philosophical history. In The Holy Family, Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels (1845/1956) defined history as ‘the activity of man pursuing
his aims’. Later, in The Communist Manifesto, both Marx and Engels
(1848/1983: 12) claimed: ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the
history of class struggles’. Francis Fukuyama (1992: xii), who wrote The End
of History and the Last Man that hailed the collapse of communism and the
triumph of liberal internationalism at the end of Cold War to be the end
stage of the ideological evolution of humankind, defined history ‘as a single,
coherent, evolutionary process, when taking into account the experience of
all peoples in all times’.
This chapter explores Foucault’s understanding of history set out in his
lecture series, “Society Must Be Defended”. In his lectures, Foucault (2004:
66), called for the conceptualisation of the term ‘history’ beyond structural
discourses, primarily liberal and Marxist, and instead for it be recognised as
a representation of power. This chapter will first explore how Foucault
defined/re-defined history. It will then examine his concept of ‘counter-his-
tory’, with reference to the works of the English jurist Coke and the French
nobleman Boulainvilliers. This will be followed by an analysis of how coun-
ter-history became a way of waging war against absolute monarchies in
England and France in the early modern period.

(Re)defining History
In his lecture series, Foucault suggested that history (2004: 66), from antiq-
uity to the end of the Middle Ages, served the interests of those in power.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003301677-2
22 Foucault and Counter-History
History was hardly written by the common man or woman. Instead, it was
largely written (or recited where mode of writing was in primitive stages) by
those appointed by rulers. Any other form of history was largely cast into the
shadows; and many of them never re-emerged from the darkness they were
plunged into. The main role of history, and historians, then for Foucault
(2004: 66) was to justify and reinforce the power of rulers. In Western socie-
ties, historians, beginning with the Roman annalists, primarily wrote of the
‘right of the power’ of rulers (Ibid.). In doing so, they sought to ‘intensify’
rulers’ ‘luster of power’. In other words, by recounting the history of rulers,
their might, their victories and even sometimes their defeat, historians strived
to ‘establish a juridical link between’ them and their power over the territories
that they ruled (Ibid.).
Genealogy was one of the three axis on which history then functioned
(Foucault, 2004: 66–67). Defining genealogy as ‘coupling together of schol-
arly erudition and local memories’, Foucault (2004: 8–9) suggested that it led
to the ‘insurrection of knowledges’. Functioning on this axis, history was
able to speak of the ‘antiquity of kingdoms’, bring ‘great ancestors back to
life’ and re-discover ‘the heroes who founded empires and dynasties’
(Foucault, 2004: 66). This way, history sought to ‘ensure the greatness of the
events or men of the past could guarantee the value of the present, and trans-
fer its pettiness and mundanity into something equally heroic and equally
legitimate’ (Ibid.). In other words, by developing narratives of ‘ancient king-
doms and great ancestors’, rulers were able to assert their right to rule; and,
to a large extent, delegitimise any challenges posed by their rivals (Foucault,
2004: 66–67). History thus allowed rulers to claim that their right to sover-
eignty was ‘ineradicable’ as they had descended from great ancestors who
created great kingdoms, and in some cases powerful empires (Ibid.). History
even allowed rulers who had not achieved any great feats or who were the first
to establish an empire to ‘magnify’ themselves by invoking the greatness of
their ancestors (Ibid.).
Religion, rituals and legends formed part of history and drove it forward
(Foucault, 2004: 68). But history was not only an ‘image of power’ that the
subjects were bound to: it was also a way of ‘reinvigorating’ power (Ibid.).
Foucault (2004: 68) used the Roman god Jupiter, who was known both as a
binding god and a god who hurls thunderbolts, as an example of these dual
roles played by history. Ika Willis (2017: 34–35) suggests that the Roman poet
Virgil’s epic, Aeneid, illustrates the dual roles of pre-modern history identi-
fied by Foucault. Although Foucault did not cite Aeneid in the lecture series,
and the only Roman historian he named was Livy, Willis (2017: 35) suggests
that his invoking of ‘Jupiterian’ theory is a summoning-up of Virgil’s epic.
However, examining Aeneid one does not find Virgil referring to Jupiter as a
binding god (Virgil, 1909: 320). Instead Virgil refers to him as a god who
‘imparts his grace’ upon ‘those of shining worth and heav’nly race’ (Virgil,
1909: 216). Regardless, in Aeneid, Virgil does draw ‘certain parallels between
his fictional [Trojan] hero and the princeps Augustus, transforming his Greek
sources to achieve one of his many political aims – constructing a national
 Foucault and Counter-History 23
identity for Rome as glorious and ancient as that of Greece’ (Bell, 2008: 11;
also see Virgil, 1909: 238). This is similar to Foucault’s (2004: 66–67) sugges-
tion that history allowed rulers to magnify their power by invoking the great-
ness of their ancestors.
Memorialisation was another axis on which history functioned (Foucault,
2004: 67). Referring to Roman annalists, Foucault suggested that they
recorded the day-to-day actions of their rulers so that their actions would be
remembered in ‘perpetuity’ (Ibid.). That is, history was used to transform the
‘slightest deed or action’ of a ruler into a ‘dazzling action and an exploit’
(Ibid.). In doing so, history also ‘inscribed’ the ruler’s actions as ‘law for his
subjects and an obligation for his successors’ (Ibid.). Thus, history made the
power of the ruler perpetual even after his death. In this sense, history played
the role of fascinating people by using the ‘almost unbearable intensity of the
glory of power, its examples and its exploits’ (Foucault, 2004: 66). These, in
Foucault’s (2004: 66–67) view, are the ‘dazzling, binding and subjugating’
effects of history that allow it to serve as ‘an operator of power, and intensi-
fier of power’.
Another axis on which history functioned was circulation. This primarily
took the form of ‘living law or resuscitated law’ (Foucault, 2004: 67). History
allowed the present to be judged by the past and thus stronger laws to
be created (Ibid.): that is, the glories of the past – the deeds of past rulers –
circulated into the present and became the laws of the present (Ibid.).
In sum, for Foucault (2004: 68), history, from antiquity to the end of the
Middle Ages, was a discourse of those in power: a discourse that dazzled,
subjugated, fascinated and terrorised the subjects of the sovereign. This,
however, began to change at the threshold of modernity.
Foucault (2004: 69) calls the discourses of history that began to emerge
at the threshold of modernity as counter-history. Unlike history, coun-
ter-history was not centred on the sovereign or sovereignty (Foucault, 2004:
69). In Foucault’s view, narratives and discourses that emerged in England
from the beginning of the seventeenth century that glorified Saxon rule
prior to the Norman ‘conquest’ were early examples of counter-history
(Ibid.). For Foucault, ‘the history of the Saxons after their defeat at the
Battle of Hastings was not the same as that of the Normans who were the
victors in the same battle’ (Ibid.). What seems to be ‘right, law or obliga-
tions’ for the victorious Normans was the ‘abuse of power, violence and
exaction’ for the defeated Saxons (Ibid.). Foucault also claims that whilst
the history of the Normans was modelled on traditional Roman discourses
of history, the Saxon’s counter-history was an anti-thesis of it (Ibid.). In
other words, counter-history was both anti-Roman and non-Roman history
(Ibid.).
Willis (2017: 36) challenges Foucault’s contention that counter-history
emerged at the threshold of modernity. For Willis (2017: 36), counter-history
also had Roman origins. Willis (2017: 36) claims that in the same way that
Foucault’s expositions on the Roman origins of history can be recognised in
Virgil’s Aeneid, some of the features of counter-history can also be found in
24 Foucault and Counter-History
‘a Latin epic poem from the Julio-Claudian period: Lucan’s De Bello Ciuili
(On the Civil War, also known as the Bellum Ciuile [The Civil War] and the
Pharsalia)’.
In Aeneid, Virgil prophesised that Julius Caesar would emerge as the
‘divinely descended [Trojan] bringer of order, power, and glory to Rome’
(Willis, 2017: 37). Virgil’s central contention was that Julius Caesar’s rule
would end wars in Rome and bring about a peaceful society signified by law-
ful institutions (Willis, 2017: 19). To cite the epic in this context:

An age is ripening in revolting fate

When Troy shall overturn the Grecian state,
And sweet revenge her conqu’ring sons shall call,
To crush the people that conspir’d her fall.
Then Caesar from the Julian stock shall rise,
Whose empire ocean, and whose fame the skies
Alone shall bound; whom fraught with eastern spoils,
Our heav’n, the just reward of human toils,
Securely shall repay with rites divine;
And incense shall ascend before his shrine
Then dire debate and impious war shall cease,
And the stern age be soften’d into peace:
Then banish’d Faith shall once again return,
And Vestal fires in hallow’d temples burn;
And Remus with Quirinus shall sustain
The righteous laws, and fraud and force restrain
(Virgil, 1909: 85)

Virgil’s epic, in essence, sought to write the history of those who held power:
it was a history of the victors, and legitimised their violence and tyranny by
invoking legends of the past.
Lucan’s De Bello Ciuili, however, sought to do the opposite. Making
Caesar the ‘chief antagonist’ of Rome, Lucan’s epic articulated ‘a vision of a
bleak, violent disordered universe in a state of permanent war, where history
is written by violent criminals who have won power through victory in the
civil war’ (Willis, 2017: 37). To cite De Bello Ciuili in this context:

The madness of war is upon us, when the power of the sword shall vio-
lently upset all legality, and atrocious crime shall be called heroism. This
frenzy will last for many years; and it is useless to pray Heaven that it
may end: when peace comes, a tyrant will come with it.
(Lucan, 1928/1962: 51)

Though Lucan was a friend of Emperor Nero, he committed suicide at the

age of twenty-four, after he was found to have taken part in a conspiracy
against him (Willis, 2017: 41). Lucan therefore represented the defeated; and
his epic was a narrative of those who had lost power.
 Foucault and Counter-History 25
Thus, for Willis (2017: 46), by coining the term ‘counter-history’ to refer to
discourses of history that emerged at the threshold of modernity, Foucault
did not discover ‘the “truth” of a historical moment of emergence’ but merely
reactivated ‘a past discourse’. Nonetheless, Foucault’s use of the concept of
‘counter-history’ allows us to understand how history was not only written
by the victors, but was also written, and could even be re-written, by the
defeated.
Whilst breaking up ‘the unity of sovereign law’ and the ‘continuity of the
glory’ of the sovereign, counter-history that emerged at the beginning of the
seventeenth century in England shed light on the history of the defeated, who
were, until then, largely left in ‘shadows’ or cast ‘into the darkness’ (Foucault,
2004: 70). In other words, counter-history emerged as ‘the discourse’ of those
who had ‘no glory’; or of those who had ‘lost it’ (Ibid.). For Foucault, unlike
history which functioned on the ‘great and glorious’ axis of ‘genealogy in
which the law and power’ flaunted themselves in the ‘power and glory’ of the
victors, counter-history paved the way for the defeated to come out of shad-
ows (Ibid.). In short, counter-history helped the defeated narrate the ‘misfor-
tunes of ancestors, exiles and servitude’ (Foucault, 2004: 71).
This does not, however, mean that counter-history was devoid of myths. In
fact, Foucault (2004: 71) conceded that counter-historical discourses were
also, in many respects, similar to ‘epic, religious, or mythical forms’. That is,
both history and counter-history made generous use of myths to construct
their own narratives of ‘truth’. But it was not only the construction of narra-
tives of ‘truth’ that counter-history was concerned with. It was also con-
cerned with re-establishing ‘both the rights of old and the glory that has been
lost’ (Foucault, 2004: 71).
Yet, it would be wrong to assume that counter-history was the discourse
of those who were powerless (Foucault, 2004: 76). The defeated may have at
one point of time been defeated and were not in power, but when they began
invoking counter-history, they were not a completely ‘enslaved’ polity; nor
were they a completely ‘oppressed’ polity; and their discourse of history was
also not ‘a discourse of the people, or a history that was claimed and spoken
by the people’ (Ibid.). As Foucault (2004: 73) notes, counter-history was ‘not
only a critique of power, but also an attack on it and a demand’ for the
reinstatement of lost rights and power. Counter-history, declared war on
power ‘by declaring rights’ that had ‘not been recognised’ (Ibid.). When it
emerged, it had ‘greater ability to circulate, a great aptitude for metamor-
phosis, or a sort of strategic polyvalence’ (Ibid.). After all, in Volume 1 of
the History of Sexuality, Foucault (1998: 95) noted: ‘Where there is
power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is
never in position of exteriority in relation to power’. Thus, the resistance
counter-history offered to power can be understood to be a manifestation of
power, like history.
So, how were these counter-historical discourses developed at the thresh-
old of modernity? Who were the key protagonists of these discourses that
Foucault identified in his lecture series?
26 Foucault and Counter-History
Counter-History and the Struggles for Political Power
Petrarch, the poet of early Italian Renaissance, was the first person, accord-
ing to Foucault (2004: 74), to have articulated a historical model alternative
to the mainstream one centred on Roman history that had dominated
Western societies for over a millennium. In his lecture series, Foucault (2004:
74) claims that Petrarch had once asked: ‘Is there nothing more to history
than the praise of Rome?’ Although Foucault did not provide any direct ref-
erences to the work of Petrarch in which this question was posed, in
Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, published fifteen years before
Foucault’s lecture series, Erwin Panofsky (1960/2011: 10) claims Petrarch to
have stated: ‘history was nothing but the praise of Rome’.
Foucault (2004: 71) also claimed that counter-history of the early modern
period resembled in many respects the mythico-religious discourse of the Jews
and the use of the Hebraic form of the Bible in Middle Ages by Christians to
justify insurrections ‘against the unjust laws of kings’ and the ‘despotism of
the church’. That is, counter-historical discourses in the early modern period
were articulated in the ‘great biblical form of prophesy and promise’ (Ibid.).
However, the person that Foucault (2004: 106) identified to have been the
patriarch of counter-history was Coke, who advocated the powers of the
English Parliament in the early seventeenth century. For Foucault (2004:
105–106), more than establishing the sovereignty of the English Parliament
over the Crown, Coke sought to ‘re-establish [the] Saxon right’ over Norman
rights by developing a counter-historical discourse on Saxon laws. In his lec-
tures, Foucault (2004: 106) stated that Coke had claimed to have discovered
an ancient manuscript called the The Mirror of Justices, containing an
account of Saxons law, both public and private, and practices of jurispru-
dence before the ‘conquest’ of England by William the Norman in 1066 AD.
Indeed, in the Preface to Part Nine of Reports, Coke (2003a: 288) claimed
to have had in his possession an account of English laws beginning from the
time of the legendary King Arthur:

I have a very auntient and learned treatise of the Lawes and usages of
this kingdome whereby this Realme was governed about 1100 years past,
of the title and subject of which booke the Author shal tel you himeselfe
in these words. Which summary I have intituled, The Mirror of Justices,
according to the vertues and substances embellies which I have observed,
and which have been used by holy Customs since the time of King Arthur,
&c. And soon after.
(emphasis original)

Challenging Coke’s claims, Frederic William Maitland (1895: x), in the

Introduction to The Mirror of Justices, edited and reprinted by the Selden
Society in 1895, suggested that the so-called treatise containing Saxon laws
was most likely to ‘have been compiled before the reign of Edward I’ in the
fourteenth century (that is three centuries after the Norman conquest) by an
 Foucault and Counter-History 27
individual called Andrew Horn. This renders the authenticity of Coke’s
claims that The Mirror of Justices contained laws written from the time of
King Arthur contentious. In Maitland’s (1895: ix) view, ‘many things were
added’ to The Mirror of Justices by Horn, which Coke later relied on to assert
the supremacy of Saxon laws. In other words, The Mirror of Justices con-
tained a number of unverifiable and incredible accounts that are mythical in
character. For example, The Mirror of Justices (1895: 5) claims the summary
of laws presented in it were ‘extracted from ancient customs warranted by
Holy Writ’. Another myth found in the ‘treatise’ (The Mirror of Justices,
1895: 6) was that the England was given to the Saxons by God:

After that God had abated the nobility of the Britons, who had recourse
to force rather than to law, He delivered the kingdom to the humblest
and simplest of all the neighbouring nations: to wit, the Saxons, who
came to conquer it from the parts of Almaine.

Yet, Coke brushed aside the fact that these were myths and invoked the ‘trea-
tise’ to emphasise the importance of enacting laws through the Parliament.
For example, during a conference with the Lords in the Painted Chamber on
8 March, 1621, Coke (2003c: 1205) argued:

It’s recorded in a book called the Mirror of Justices… In those days par-
liaments were accounted necessary every year. And is there not the same
necessity still? The kingdom and commonwealth may be likened to a fair
field and a pleasant garden, but if the field be not tilled and the garden
often weeded, infaelix lolium et steriles nascuntur avenae [there rise up
barren tares and wild oates]. And all ill humors increase in the body and
hurt the body if they be not purged, humores moti non remoti corpus
laedunt [humours hurt the body when they are disturbed, not when they
are removed]. So likewise abuses and corruptions increase in the com-
monwealth. Therefore often parliaments are necessary that good laws
may be made to prevent and punish them, ut poena ad paucos metusad
omnes perveniat [that a penalty administered to a few may strike terror in
everyone].

Examining The Mirror of Justices, one finds Coke’s claims to be true. In fact,
the ‘treatise’ claims the Parliament to be supreme, and as having the power,
since antiquity, to hold the monarch to account: ‘if the king should by his
fault sin against any of his people… the king should have companions
[counts] to hear and determine in the parliament all the writs and plaints
concerning wrongs done by the king’ (The Mirror of Justices, 1895: 7).
However, the mythical element of Coke’s claim is obviously evident in the
‘treatise. To cite the treatise:

For the good estate of his realm King Alfred caused his counts to assem-
ble, and ordained as a perpetual usage that twice a year or more often if
28 Foucault and Counter-History
need should be in time of peace, they should assemble at London to hold
parliament touching the guidance of the people of God, how the folk
should keep themselves from sin, and live in quiet and receive rights
according to fixed usages and holy judgements.
(The Mirror of Justices, 1895: 8)

Coke’s reliance on myths has led to modern commentators arguing that his ‘use
of history was often unhistorical’ (see Holdsworth, 1935). Holdsworth (1935:
337) claims Coke’s work was woven with myths because he was an incredulous
man when it came to dealing with non-professional texts. Ian Williams (2012:
111), on the other hand, suggests that Coke’s reliance on myths was ‘a result of
his desire to obtain historical support for particular views’ – i.e., eclipsing the
powers of the monarchy and asserting the supremacy of Parliament. As a
learned jurist who held high offices during the reigns of three English mon-
archs, it is less likely that Coke acted with incredulity. Instead, it was most
probable that he was using myths to legitimise the struggle that he was engaged
in to establish the supremacy of Saxon laws over the Norman ones. After all,
Coke was a man of contradictions. During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I,
Coke was well known for his ‘reverence for the crown’ (Holdsworth, 1935: 333),
which only changed during the reign of King James I. He was also infamous
for torturing prisoners whom he prosecuted when he was attorney general dur-
ing the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Ibid.). Yet, in his later life he denounced the
torture of prisoners to be unconstitutional (Ibid.). Regardless of these contra-
dictions, Coke always held the view that common law – the Saxon laws – to be
supreme (Holdsworth, 1935: 334). This left him on a collision course with King
James I, who believed the monarch’s ‘prerogative was in the last resort supreme’,
meaning common laws were always inferior (Holdsworth, 1935: 334). Therefore,
it is clear that the struggle Coke was engaged in to establish the supremacy of
Saxon laws was central to his reliance on myths.
Interestingly, an examination of Coke’s work reveals that his counter-­
­histo­rical discourses were, to an extent, also based on the Roman model of
history. For example, in the Fourth Part of the Institutes, Coke (2003c: 1133–
1134) cites Virgil’s Aeneid to justify his claim for Parliamentary sovereignty
(also see Coke, 2003a: 196–197). Scrutinising Aeneid, one finds that Coke was
not wrong in citing the epic to suggest the sovereignty of the Parliament (which
Coke finds to be synonymous with the Senate). In the Tenth Book of Aeneid,
Virgil (1909: 326) writes: ‘The sov’reign senate in degrees are plac’d’. Likewise,
in the Fifth Book of Aeneid, Virgil (1909: 207) also claims that laws are made
by the senate from the people:

This part is nam’d from Ilium, that from Troy,

And the new king ascends the throne with joy;
A chosen senate from the people draws;
Appoints the judges, and ordains the laws.

William Holdsworth (1935: 337) suggests that Coke cited Virgil in his epic
simply to ‘enliven his text’. However, a close examination of Coke’s work
 Foucault and Counter-History 29
suggests that he may have done so with the objective of gaining legitimacy for
his counter-historical discourse also in the Roman model of history. But
more interestingly, like Virgil, in Part Three of the Reports, Coke (2003a: 64)
also invoked the Trojan myth to develop his a counter-historical narrative on
the origins of the English people, claiming the ancient laws of the English
were written in Greek:

First, they say that Brutus the first king of this land, as soone as hee had
settled himselfe in his kingdome, for the safe and peaceable government
of his people wrote a book in the Greeke tongue, calling it the lawes of
the Britans, and hee collected the same out of the Laws of the Trojans.
This king, they say, died after the creation of the World, 2850 yeares, and
before the Incarnation of Christ 1130 years, Samuel then being Judge of
Israel. I will not examine these things in a Quo warranto, the ground
there of I thinke was best knowne to the Authors and writers of them;
but that the Lawes of the auncient Britans, their contracts and other
instruments: and the Records and judiciall proceedings of their Judges
were written and sentenced in the Greeke tongue, it is plaine and evident
by proofs luculent & uncontrolable.

Though this weakens Foucault’s (2004: 69) claim that counter-history was
anti-Roman or non-Roman and departed from the Roman annalists and
their successors’ reliance on the Trojan myth, and further strengthens the
suggestion of Willis (2017: 36) that counter-history also had Roman origins,
i.e., in the form of Lucan’s De Bello Ciuili, it, nevertheless, does not invalidate
Foucault’s concept of ‘counter-history’. After all, the objective of coun-
ter-history was the reinstatement of the power of the defeated (Foucault,
2004: 73). In this sense, counter-history allows us to comprehend the multi-
plicity of power relations involving discourses of history.
Ironically, whilst citing Virgil and making recourse to the Roman model of
history to justify the supremacy of the English Parliament, Coke (2003a: 66)
also claimed English laws had preceded those of the Romans: ‘I think it is
sufficiently proved that the lawes of England are of much greater antiquity
than they are reported to be, & than any the Constitutions or Lawes imperiall
of Roman Emperors’. Arguably, these aspects of Coke’s claims can be said to
have made his counter-historical narrative to be partially non-Roman and, to
an extent, pre-Roman.
Despite engaging in a struggle to assert the supremacy of Saxon rights
and laws over Norman ones, Coke was careful not to suggest that the conti-
nuity of Saxons laws was disrupted by William’s ‘conquest’ of England; nor
that William replaced Saxon laws with Norman laws. For example, in his
commentaries on Statute of Merton, Coke (2003b: 920) claimed: ‘Here our
common laws are aptly and properly called the lawes of England because
they are appropriated to this Kingdom of England as most apt and fit for
government thereof, and have no dependency upon any forreigne law
­whatsoever’. Citing a letter purported to have been written by King Henry
I, the son of William the Conquerer, to Pope Pascal, Coke (2003b: 918–919)
30 Foucault and Counter-History
went on to argue that even the William’s successor had refused to change
England’s laws:

Notam habeat sanctitas vestra, quod me vivente (auxiliante Deo) digni-

tates & usus regni nostri Angliae non imminuentur, & fi ego (quod absit)
in tanta me dejectione ponerem, optimates mei & totus Angliae populus
id nullo modo pateretur [May your holiness take note that while I am
alive, by the help of God, the dignities and usages of our realm of
England will not be diminished, and if (which must not be) I fall down in
such matters, my nobles and the whole people of England will in no way
allow it.].

Therefore, in Coke’s view (2003b: 919), changing Saxon laws, and the rights
conferred by those laws, which King James I, and later and Charles I, had
attempted to do during their reigns, were both dangerous and illegal: ‘And it
is worthy the observation, how dangerous it is (as elsewhere hath been often
noted) to change an ancient Maxime of the Common Law’.
More importantly, in an attempt to assert the continuity of Saxon laws,
Coke (2003a: 77) even went to the extent of claiming that the conquest of
England by William was not a conquest at all. Coke (2003a: 215) argued that
the Dukedom of Normandy had long remained ‘under the actual obedience
of the Kings of England’. Thus for Coke (2003a: 77), William ascended to
the English throne as an English Duke and the successor of King Edward,
and not as a foreigner: ‘King Edward the Confessor, from whom William
Duke of Normandie did derive the title, by colour whereof he first entered
into the crowne of England’. Coke was careful not to accuse William, or
those who had succeeded him, to have denied the sovereignty of Parliament
and Saxon laws. Instead, his counter-historical discourse was aimed at King
James I and Charles I.
Though Coke did not elaborate on this claim that William was not a
conqueror, analysing his works and those of parliamentarians of the seven-
teenth century, Foucault (2003: 103–104) suggested that their arguments
rested on the belief that Edward the Confessor, before his death, had ‘des-
ignated William as his successor’ and that Harold, who died at the Battle of
Hastings whilst fighting William, had ‘sworn that he would not become
king of England, but would surrender the throne or agree to let William
ascend the throne of England’. Examining Coke’s (2003b: 753) Second Part
of the Institute, one finds he not only refused to recognise laws enacted
during the reign of Harold, but went to the extent of denouncing him as an
usurper:

It is to be observed that in Domesday Haroldus, who usurped the Crown

of England, after the decease of King Edward the Confessor, is never
named per nomen Regis, sed per nomen Comitis Haroldi, seu Heraldi [By
the name of king, but by the name of Earl Harold, or Herald]; And
therefore we have omitted him.
 Foucault and Counter-History 31
But can we say Coke’s claim that William was not a conqueror was solely
intended to establish the continuity of Saxon laws? Or did it also have another
purpose? Examining The Mirror of Justices, which Coke relied on extensively
to uphold Saxon rights and laws, one finds a reference to foreigners and their
right to dwell in England. The ‘treatise’ claims that ‘no [alien] should dwell in
the land for more than forty days’ (The Mirror of Justices, 1895: 14). Maitland
(1895: xl) suggest that this was added to the text by Horn. To this end,
Maitland (1895: xxxviii) notes that Horn never mentions anything about the
Norman conquest. It was therefore most likely that Coke, who held the The
Mirror of Justices to be cardinal, felt that denouncing William as a conqueror
would backfire on his claim on the continuity of Saxon laws and his reliance
on the ‘treatise’ to assert the supremacy of the English Parliament and Saxons
laws.
It thus becomes clear that counter-history, as developed by Coke, resem-
bled, in many respects, history which existed from antiquity to the end of the
Middle Ages. That is, as well as narrating the events of the past, counter-his-
tory also relied on myths, unverified accounts and even distorted facts. Yet, it
served as a powerful weapon in the struggles to assert Saxon laws.
But this counter-historical discourse did not end with Coke. After Coke, in
England, it was both adopted and adapted by the parliamentarians, the
Levellers and the Diggers (Foucault, 2004: 102–104). Myths, however, were
not eliminated from those discourses. For example, in An Historical Discourse
and Political Discourse of the Laws and Government of England, written thir-
teen years after Coke’s death, Nathaniel Bacon (1647/1688: 70), a parliamen-
tarian, compared the Saxons to have lived like the Jews before the Norman
conquest: ‘Thus the Saxons became somewhat like the Jews, distinct from all
other people; their honourable laws for the King, easy for the Subject, and
their Government, above all other, likest unto that of Christ’s Kingdom’.
Like Coke, Bacon (1647/1688) also suggested that William the Conquerer
was not even a conqueror, but one who ascended to the English throne by
swearing an oath, during his coronation, to uphold Saxon laws and follow the
traditions of Saxons during his reign:

His Coronation questionless was the same with that of ancient Saxon
Kings; for he was crowned in the Abbey of Westminster by the Archbishop
of York… At his Coronation he made a solemn Covenant to observe
those Laws which were bona, & approbate, & anti-qua legis Requi; to
defend the Church and Church men; to govern all the people justly.

In Bacon’s (1647/1688: 70) view, William did not ascend to the English throne
through conquest but became a conqueror and tyrant after becoming the
accepted King of England.
But the Levellers took a different view and developed a different coun-
ter-historical narrative. Like Coke and the parliamentarian after him, the
Levellers continued to develop the mythical narrative that England was a
great nation when it was ruled in the past according to Saxon laws. However,
32 Foucault and Counter-History
they took a different view when it came to the question of William’s conquest
(Seaberg, 1981: 791 & 795). John Lilburne (1647), for example, in a pamphlet
entitled Regal Tyrannie Discovered, published in 1647, denounced William as
‘the Invader and Robber, and Tyrant, alias the Conqueror’. Like Coke,
Lilburne (1646: 227) also relied on myths in The Mirror of Justices to suggest
that tyranny was virtually non-existent when Saxon laws prevailed in England.
For Lilburne (1646: 227), everyone in England before William’s conquest
were ‘free in grace by Christ’ and William who came to England ‘by the
Sword’ had sabotaged this state of affairs by introducing a ‘wicked and
unchristian-like custom of villainy’. Similar biblical arguments were also
advanced by the Diggers. Gerrard Winstanley (1649), for example, who even
referred to the English people as the ‘English Israelites’, claimed the conquest
of England by William was in contravention to the Eighth Commandment in
the Old Testament.
Counter-history also played a key role in the struggles of the French nobil-
ity from the end of the seventeenth century in their attempts to eclipse the
powers of the French bureaucracy and challenge absolute monarchy
(Foucault, 2004: 126). The French nobleman Henri de Boulainvilliers was, in
Foucault’s (2004: 128) view, the patriarch of counter-history across the
English Channel. Developing a counter-history of France, Boulainvilliers
attempted to assert the powers of the nobility (Foucault, 2004: 133). In doing
so, his discourse of ‘history’ sought to ‘sustain the aristocratic version of
Frankish and Feudal France’ (Buranelli, 1957: 477). Boulainvilliers’ conten-
tion was that ‘political power should be the privilege of the nobility because
the Second Estate had had such power when the monarchy was founded’
(Ibid.).
In Volume 1 of An Historical Account of the Antient Parliaments of France
or States-General of the Kingdom, despite claiming that he was recounting the
history of France, Boulainvilliers (1739: 13) admitted that history did not
always represent the truth: ‘history being a heap of facts independent of one
another, the truth of which is doubtful, in proportion as it is not sufficiently
authorised by proofs, which do not always discover themselves at first sight’.
Boulainvilliers (1739: 28) also conceded that historians had often taken the
sides of those who had committed evil deeds, and in writing history some had
even sought to depict these evil deeds as good ones. For Boulainvilliers, a
good historian is one who ‘is a faithful, disinterested, impartial and just esti-
mator of virtue’ (Ibid.). Any historian who is unable to do so ‘risks passing
his infamy down to posterity’ (Boulainvilliers, 1739: 28). It is one thing to
profess something as a virtue: yet it is another thing to practice it.
Boulainvilliers was not an exception.
What is most striking about the work of Boulainvilliers is that it resembles
in many respects the counter-historical narrative of Coke. For example,
Boulainvilliers (1739: 34) claims that the French were ‘originally a free peo-
ple, who chose chiefs, under the title of kings’ to see ‘laws [being] executed
which they themselves had made’. Like Coke’s depiction of England as a
 Foucault and Counter-History 33
paradise under the Saxons, Boulainvilliers depicted ancient France as a land
of freedom (Ibid.). Referring to the French as a ‘naturally free people’,
Boulainvilliers (1739: 38–39) even went on to claim electing their rulers was
‘the primitive right’ of the French people. In his work, Boulainvilliers (1739:
40), like Coke, also made a strong call for ‘re-establishing’ the sovereignty of
the Parliament. If Coke made recourse to legends and unverified accounts
found in The Mirrors of Justices to justify his claim that the English Parliament
had remained sovereign during the time of Saxon kings and met twice a year,
Boulainvilliers, a renowned historian of his time, was no different. Citing
Hincmar, the archbishop of Reims in the ninth century and a propagandist
of Charles the Bald, Boulainvilliers (1739: 46) claimed, like Coke, that in
ancient France, the Parliament met twice a year. Boulainvilliers (1739: 40),
again echoing Coke, claimed that in ancient France, the Parliament had the
power to try the sovereign.
However, Boulainvilliers’ objective in attempting to make the nobles the
legitimate heirs of political power in France becomes apparent from some of
the claims he made in his treatise. For example, he claimed that it was only the
nobles who sat in the French Parliament from the time of King Hugh Capet
(Boulainvilliers 1739: 172). Boulainvilliers (1739: 173–174) even suggested,
citing an ordinance made by the nobles in the French Parliament in CE 1222,
that the sovereign was bound by the laws made by the nobles. Moreover, he
went to the extent of suggesting that the nobles were ‘the sole conquerors of
Gaul’ and held not only legislative but also judicial powers, which they later
lost to clerks (Boulainvilliers, 1739: 142–143).
Like Coke’s counter-history, Rome was also not completely absent from
Boulainvilliers’ counter-history. Although Boulainvilliers did not directly cite
the works of Roman annalists, poets, or their successors, to develop his nar-
rative on the origins, rights and powers of the French nobility, he mirrored
many of their methods of writing history (Buranelli, 1957: 479). Vincent
Buranelli (1957: 479) suggests that Boulainvilliers’ theory of social origins
resembles the work of the Roman poet, Lucretius, found in Book V of De
Rerum Natura. Writing about origins of humanity, Lucretius (1948: 217) sug-
gested that early humans lived a peaceful life, content with what nature had
given them and not even quarrelling with each other:

What sun and rains had brought to birth, what earth had created
unasked, such gift was enough to appease their hearts. Among oaks
laden with acorns they would refresh their bodies for the most part; and
the arbute berries, which now you see ripening in winter-time with scarlet
hue, the earth bore then in abundance, yea and larger. And besides these
the flowering youth of the world then bare much other rough sustenance,
enough and to spare for miserable mortals. But to slake their thirst
streams and springs summoned them, even as now the down rush of
water from the great mountains call clear far and wide to the thirsting
tribes of wild beasts.
34 Foucault and Counter-History
Likewise, though not citing Lucretius, in Abrege d’histoire (an undated and
unpublished work available at Bibliotheque Mazarine, Paris (No. 1578), with
no page numbers) Boulainvilliers (n.d.) claimed:

We see throughout the northern parts of Asia, the greater but above all
in America, that entire peoples live separated not only by languages and
by the natural boundaries of forests that lie between them but separated
from family to family to individual – without laws, without government,
without politics, without the need of one another, each sufficient unto
himself in the kind of life he leads. The earth, the chase, or his flocks and
herds provide him with abundance of the necessities.

Regardless, for Foucault (2004: 271), what was striking about Boulainvilliers’
counter-history is that although it was written by a man from a decentred
camp, it was not presented as the history of a vanquished polity. As Foucault
notes in the Course Summary of “Society Must Be Defended”, in making the
claim that France was founded by the nobles through conquest, Boulainvilliers
was demanding the rights of the nobles ‘in the name of the victor’ (Ibid.). In
other words, ‘the French aristocracy claims a right of conquest, and there-
fore preeminent possession of all the lands of the kingdom and absolute
domination over all its Gaulish and Roman inhabitants’ (Foucault, 2004:
271). Unlike the counter-historical discourses developed by many of the
‘vanquished’ in England who sought to assert Saxon rights and laws over
those of the Norman ‘conquerors’, although, as we saw earlier, Coke and
some parliamentarians refrained from referring to the latter as such, the
counter-historical narrative developed by Boulainvilliers was a ‘history of
how the king usurped and betrayed the nobility’ (Foucault, 2004: 271).
Foucault (2004: 69) calls counter-history as a discourse ‘about races,
about confrontation between races, about the race struggle that goes on
within nations and within laws’. Although Foucault (2004: 77) admits that
unlike in the twentieth century, race at the threshold of modernity was ‘not
pinned to a stable biological meaning’, he nevertheless goes on to argue that
race, then, was also ‘not completely free-floating’. However, Foucault’s use
of the term ‘race’ has drawn criticism from scholars. For example, Robert
Bernonsconi (2014: 578) claims that it would be incorrect to call
Boulainvilliers’ ‘a theorist of race war’. In Bernonsconi’s (2014: 578) view,
Boulainvilliers was simply a ‘spokesperson of the nobility’ and thus he
should better be ‘understood as a theorist of class’. Yet, an examination of
Boulainvilliers’ work reveals that he conceptualised the nobility as a ‘race’
(see Boulainvilliers, 1739: 60).
Does this mean that we should conceptualise counter-history as a dis-
course of race and racism? In his lectures, Foucault makes a clear distinction
between discourses of races and discourses of racism. For Foucault (2004:
81), as long as counter-history remains a ‘race struggle’, it cannot be consid-
ered racism. However, when ‘racial purity replaces… race struggle’ racism is
born and ‘counter-history begins to be converted into biological racism’
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 Transcriber’s Note
The printer employed the diaeresis in words like
‘coördination’ or ‘coöperation’. On p. 157, the first
syllable of ‘coöperating’ fell on the line break, and the
word was hyphenated as ‘co-operating’, since the
diaeresis was not needed. The word has been joined
here and the diaeresis employed as ‘coöperating’.
The following words appear both with and without a
hyphen: to-day, non-entity, half-way, inter-connected,
non-entity.
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have
been corrected, and are noted here. The references are
to the page and line in the original.
20.10 restraining g[i/o]vernment. Replaced.
21.31 is kept in contact w[ti/it]h Transposed.
57.30 Now the scientific philosop[h]y Inserted.
69.9 no other way of putting[s] Removed.
things
77.6 these relationships Added.
constitute[s] nature.
157.20 societies of c[o-/ö]perating Replaced.
organisms.
160.8 These divis[i]ons are Inserted.
176.3 extends beyond[s] the spatio- Removed.
temporal continuum
177.6 by the reali[z/s]ation of pattern Consistency.
177.25 character of spatio-temporal [of Removed.
]extension
183.5 radiate its energy i[s/n] an Replaced.
integral number
195.4 history of the Christi[o/a]n Replaced.
Church
195.7 apocalyptic forecast[e]s Removed.
202.21 This divis[i]on of territory Inserted.
213.10 what anything is in i[t]self. Inserted.
245.27 even [al]though any such Removed.
discrimination
274.14 its sta[k/t]e of rapid Replaced.
development
276.17 The task of coö[r]dination is left Inserted.
279.22 What I mean is art [(]and Removed.
aesthetic education.
288.33 mutually coö[o]perate. Removed.
290.3 it bars coö[o]peration. Removed.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCIENCE AND
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