-By Colombo Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -02.May.2025, 11.00 PM) It was May Day in Bogawantalawa — that misty emerald perch above the tea valleys — and as usual, it came with pageantry, slogans, and an outsized share of theatrical monologues. But this year, the most theatrical of them all came not from a battle-hardened unionist or a class warrior incensed by global capital, but from Jeevan Thondaman, scion of the most enduring political dynasty in upcountry Tamil politics.
“There are people in the current government who are not qualified to talk to Prime Minister Modi about Malayaga Tamils!” thundered Thondaman, to cheers and chants, his voice reverberating through the speakers like a gospel in a temple of memory. One could almost see S. Thondaman — the great patriarch — raising an eyebrow from the heavens.
One imagines that even the tea leaves twitched in disbelief.
This, from a man who — at just 30 — has enjoyed privileges that the average Malayaga Tamil cannot even pronounce, let alone possess. Oxford and McGill did not teach him political discretion, it seems. Nor did they educate him in the remarkable irony of a hereditary trade union leader, who has spent more time behind podiums than plantation gates, now dictating who is “qualified” to represent his people.
Of course, one should pause here and clarify: it is absolutely legitimate for Mr Thondaman to speak for his constituency. After all, he is elected. But so too are the upcountry NPP ministers he now so casually dismisses. They too carry the democratic imprimatur of the same electoral process — one, incidentally, that the Ceylon Workers’ Congress (CWC) has long treated less like a sacred civic ritual and more like an inherited fiefdom.
Thondaman’s real grievance, cloaked beneath the rhetorical bravado, was not that the NPP government had ignored the Malayaga Tamils. On the contrary, his own speech admitted that discussions had taken place between the Indian Prime Minister and the NPP about upcountry Tamils — and further, that the government had allocated billions for the social upliftment of their community.
If anything, his was not a complaint of policy, but of prestige. What irks the man, perhaps, is that he wasn't invited to the table.
Jeevan Thondaman speaks the language of plantation pain. But he does so with an accent of privilege so thick, it might as well be poured into a decanter.
Raised and educated in the West, housed in Colombo mansions, fluent in both Queen’s English and political inheritance, he is the very embodiment of a postcolonial paradox — the princeling of a labouring class. His pedigree is stitched not in the sweat of the estate workers but in the unbroken power of a family that has turned plantation politics into a trust fund.
For decades, the CWC collected dues from estate workers — many of whom survived on less than $3 a day — all in the name of collective bargaining. But it is an open secret that those funds greased the wheels of privilege. Union leaders drove SUVs while workers walked barefoot. The only thing the average tea-plucker inherited from the CWC was disappointment.
And now that the Thondamans are out of government — their portfolios snapped up by a new regime unfazed by feudal tantrums — there seems to be a sudden rediscovery of injustice.
May Day is supposed to be a commemoration of labour struggles, not an occasion for dynastic melancholy. But Jeevan, unable to accept political exile with grace, appears to have mistaken personal irrelevance for systemic betrayal.
What his speech betrayed was not concern for the Malayaga community, but resentment that the NPP had managed to speak to Modi — and perhaps worse, be heard — without passing through the customary filter of Thondaman approval. It is a form of political jealousy dressed up as populist rage.
The NPP, for all its flaws (and there are many), has done something novel: it has tried to sever the umbilical cord between the Malayaga vote and the Thondaman dynasty. For once, Malayaga people are being spoken to, not through. And this, more than any ideological difference, is what has rattled the CWC’s glass chandelier.
Let us not pretend, however, that Prime Minister Modi’s involvement is some panacea. The Indian state’s track record in protecting Tamils — either in Tamil Nadu or in Sri Lanka — has been erratic, often transactional. The occasional gift of buses, housing schemes, or development grants is less an act of solidarity and more a soft-power investment.
Still, the symbolism of the Indian Prime Minister meeting with Sri Lanka’s NPP government and discussing the plight of the plantation community matters. It signals a tectonic shift in both geopolitics and local representation. That Jeevan Thondaman was left out of the room is telling — and for him, humiliating.
Modi may be many things, but he is not a man to waste time on those who do not hold the levers of power. The Thondamans, for the first time in a generation, are on the outside looking in.
The elder S. Thondaman, patriarch and political negotiator extraordinaire, was a shrewd tactician. He knew how to play Colombo against Delhi, and unions against parliaments. His command of the estate Tamil psyche was part charisma, part control.
But the world has changed.
A generation of young Malayaga Tamils no longer define themselves solely by union affiliations. Social media has made them witnesses to the global vocabulary of rights. Education, though still a luxury, is no longer a myth. And the image of the plantation worker as a silent, suffering serf is giving way to a more assertive, questioning political subject.
Into this new world, Jeevan Thondaman marches in — waving old flags, recycling old grievances, and expecting new applause. But the crowd, while polite, is restless.
They want results, not royalty.
When Thondaman accuses others of being unqualified, it is worth asking: what qualifies him? Is it his surname? His Canadian schooling? The fact that he once held a ministerial post he now views as birthright?
The true qualifications to speak on behalf of the Malayaga people are proximity, humility, and credibility. Not one of which can be monopolized by a single family, no matter how storied its past.
To see Jeevan stand at the podium in Bogawantalawa and cry foul about being left out of a process — while conveniently omitting how many others he has historically excluded — is political theatre of the most performative kind.
It is as if Marie Antoinette had returned to mourn the scarcity of cake.
The NPP has not solved the upcountry problem. But it has reframed the grammar. Instead of genuflecting before feudal brokers, it is trying — clumsily, at times — to speak directly to the people. Billions have been allocated. Consultations have begun. And while the proof, as ever, will be in the execution, the intention marks a departure from the politics of personality.
That is what irks Jeevan. Not the lack of action — but the redistribution of attention.
It is hard to lose a spotlight you grew up believing was yours by divine right.
In the final analysis, May Day 2025 will not be remembered for policy announcements or visionary pledges. It will be remembered for the moment a young Thondaman — once a princeling, now a backbencher — stood before a crowd and revealed not their plight, but his own panic.
He did not speak truth to power. He merely shouted entitlement to the void.
And in doing so, he reminded everyone — from the estates to Colombo to Delhi — that political capital, like actual capital, must be earned. Not inherited.
Because in a democracy, surnames are no longer shields. And if you cling too tightly to the past, you risk losing your marbles.
-By Colombo Correspondent
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by (2025-05-02 17:55:07)
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