Abstract:
- The Jaffna Youth Congress emerged around
the early 1920s in Jaffna as an anti-colonial formation.
This organization was mainly comprised of educated
middle class Tamil youth. It organized various protest
activities, boycotts and national cultural programs in
the Jaffna peninsula and agitated against imperialism.
The members were also strongly against the backward
social customs that prevailed in Jaffna society. While
emphasizing equality and promoting liberal policies,
the Jaffna Youth Congress strongly espoused national
unity, ethnic harmony and justice for all the people
in the country. Eventually, they focused on achieving
‘PurnaSwaraj’ (Complete Freedom) from British rule.
In respect of that, this research mainly intends to find out
the historical importance of the Jaffna Youth Congress
to Jaffna politics during the 1920s and 1930s period.The
data collection mainly depended on secondary sources.
This research convincingly revealed that the Jaffna
Youth Congress acted as a significant force in the socio political scene of Jaffna during that period. The Youth
Congress played a remarkable role in comparison with
the main contemporaneous independence movement in
the country’s mainstream politics. This latter movement
was led by a multi-ethnic, westernized, elite class group
that was willing to be a subservient partner under British
Dominion rule and never demanded complete freedom,
unlike the Jaffna Youth Congress. The Jaffna Youth
Congress followed rather radical political methods, but
the elite politicians preferred to adopt a conventional
political approach. Whereas the Youth Congress insisted
on equality based social concepts the elite group showed
a lack of concern about the neglected bottom layers
of society. Besides, even though all ethnicities were
represented in the elite group’s mainstream politics,
harmonious relations did not exist between the Sinhala
and Tamil elite politicians. Both groups worked towards
constitutional privileges focusing on their own ethnic
interests. Even though it was just a young Tamil group
from the North, the Youth Congress showed great maturity
by laying strong emphasis on the importance of ethnic
harmony. This is remarkable because that was the most
critical historical era during which the grassroots causes
of ethnic tensions that later ravaged the country emerged.
