Tamil identity politics did not die on the banks of Nandhikadal lagoon
by Dayan Jayatilleka
There have been three civil wars fought against the Sri Lankan state: 1971, 1986-89, 1979-2009. The Sri Lankan state prevailed in all three. These three wars settled three basic questions. The first uprising was about the character of the State, society and the economy and it was settled in favor of the market economy and multiparty democracy. The second civil war brought up the same questions but placed at the forefront the issue of centralization or devolution and power sharing (Wijeweera’s 300 page magnum opus was all about it), and with the victory of the state that too was settled in favor of the post Accord structural reform, the 13th amendment and provincial autonomy, with all parties including the militarily defeated JVP actually contesting the PC elections. This reform remained dormant because of the full-scale war waged in the North East by the Tigers.
The third civil war, just won, settled the question of one state (country) or two, in favor of the former. The armed Tamil Eelam project lost the war which was the last in a series of Tamil Eelam Wars spread over 35 years, and Tamil separatism will never successfully re-emerge as a serious armed challenger to the Sri Lankan state, i.e. as a parallel contending army or militia.
While the global Tamil Eelam movement also lost the war, it was not quite as decidedly as the Tiger army did. That struggle is still on.
Existential politics
The problem may be said to be existential. The reality of Sri Lanka ’s multiethnic character is such that the challenge of accommodating Tamil identity and reconciling it with Sinhala and Muslim identity will remain. To borrow a phrase of SWRD Bandaranaike, it is “a problem within a problem”. The Tamil issue remains a problem of collective identity and the state, located within the overall problem of nation-building.
How does the state reconcile the identities of the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims and accommodate them within an overarching Sri Lankan identity?
One of the basic errors of Sinhala ultranationalists’ discourse is the conclusion that Tamil ethnic politics or identity politics died on the banks of the Nandikadal. There can be a military victory over a military challenge but there cannot be a purely military victory over a political challenge. An enemy army can and must be defeated, an armed opponent can be killed, but a political challenge requires a political response and an idea can be defeated only by another idea. The idea of Tamil Eelam can be defeated only by the counter-idea of a reformed and restructured Sri Lankan state which may remain unitary but contains an irreducible autonomous political space for the Tamil people of the North and East. Armed Tamil secessionism can and has been defeated, but the politics of collective Tamil identity cannot be militarily defeated or suppressed; it can only be politically addressed and managed.
It will be necessary for any government to negotiate with the Tamil parliamentarians who will be present in greater numbers after next year’s parliamentary election, due to the system of proportional representation.
A grand bargain already exists. It is the 13th amendment. The Sinhalese have every reason to be securely reassured by the double guarantee of a united country and a unitary form of state, while the Tamils will enjoy self rule within those parameters and inevitable national security “red lines”. The 13th amendment, however elasticized, will remain the saddle-point between the Sinhala insistence on a unitary state and the Tamil demand for an authentic degree of self –governance.
It is true that political and cultural space are obtainable without a geographic referent, but that is only in where the state is secular, citizenship is equal, no ethnic community is constitutionally privileged over any other, and culture is open and in the process of constant incorporation. There is no Tamil party, however anti-Tiger and moderate, that is willing to accept a purely non-territorial formula for political reconciliation and anything smaller than the province as the unit of devolution. The recognition of a solution with a territorial unit has little to do with separatism. The Tamil Eelamists, the secessionists, explicitly rejected the 13th amendment as well as President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s proposals of 1995, 1997 and 2000. The Tigers’ interim slogans were the ISGA and PTOMS, while the TNA’s bottom line was CBK’s1995 package Plus (all three of which I have consistently opposed in the media).
Reform and reconciliation
The 13th amendment is historically significant and currently indispensable because it is the only structural reform of the centralized Sri Lankan state which devolves power, makes for some measure of autonomy and thereby provides a basis for the reconciliation of the Sinhalese and Tamil communities within a united and unitary Sri Lanka . Furthermore, it is the only such reform to take place after exactly three decades – since the abrogation of the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam pact of 1957 which sought to establish Regional Councils.
My support for the 13th amendment is also because it is already in place and does not have to be (re)negotiated. It has only to be implemented, and Sri Lanka ’s military triumph would be politically reinforced instantly. Tamil nationalism would be split between the hyper-nationalists who reject it and the moderates who accept and participate, the Tamil Diaspora would be divided, the North-South gap would have a bridge, a renewed cycle of conflict would be much less likely or possible, the impressive weight of India in the world system would be solidly with us, the international pressure on us would lift somewhat, our allies and friends in the international system would be relieved and vindicated, external financing would be more readily available, the anti-Sri Lanka global campaign would be severely weakened and the attempt to encircle Sri Lanka internationally would be defeated. All these strategic benefits are obtainable right now.
Indian factor
Those who say that the Indo-Lanka Accord and the 13th amendment were “hurried” and “externally coerced” forget the fact that from another point of view, they amounted to a Caesarean surgical intervention, bringing forth a power sharing solution that had been thwarted from 1957, through the District Councils of 1966 and the Indian facilitated negotiations of 1984 (APC/Annexure C) to 1986 (December 19th Chidambaram proposals). It is important to recall than none of these proposals for moderate power sharing were voted down democratically. They never had a chance to be. Our elected leaders such as SWRD Bandaranaike were besieged by extra-parliamentary lobbies and the parliamentary process aborted by extra-parliamentary agitation. A structural blockage enforced by domestic coercion was removed by external coercive intervention – an “externally propelled re-composition” of the state I had predicted 3 years before the Accord, while in my late twenties. (D. Jayatilleka, “The ethnic conflict and the crisis in the south”, in Committee for Rational Development, Sri Lanka: The ethnic conflict, New Delhi, 1984).
Some critics of India ’s role make the point that India ’s intervention precipitated the deaths of 60,000 youths in the late 1980s. That’s a partial truth. If Sri Lanka had devolved power in 1957, 1966, 1981 (DDCs), 1984 (Annexure c) or 1986 (Chidambaram), there would have been no Indian intervention. If the 1987 accord had been resisted by the JVP peacefully, there would have been no call for the Sri Lankan state to defend itself violently. In a striking mirror image, both the LTTE and the JVP violently opposed the 13th amendment and the North East provincial council. Both movements have been militarily defeated. It must also be recalled that the JVP took up the gun before a single IPKF jawan had appeared on Sri Lankan soil. Colombo university student leader Daya Pathirana was murdered in November 1986, and the entire left placed under violent siege for supporting devolution which was luridly portrayed as secessionism. This was the JVP’s second time out as an insurrectionary force, the first being in 1971, with no Indians around and a freshly elected centre-left administration in place. Thus the JVP’s violent denouement was in its very programming.
The death of 60, 000 youths, of whatever ethnicity, is a tragedy to be mourned. That which is true of the JVP is also true of the LTTE: these were youths who took up arms courageously, but wielded them barbarically and after a point, needlessly. They paid the inevitable price at the hands of the state, indeed the self-same Sri Lankan armed forces, including its top brass. That’s what a state is and what a state does.
Sri Lanka in the world system
Internationally things have changed: we have a universally respected US president (with a “transformational mystique”) who commented on Sri Lanka in his remarks on the White House lawn, we have UN Security Council informal briefings and a press statement on Sri Lanka; we have rumblings from Chile to South Africa and Mauritius.
The global campaign to de-legitimize the Sri Lankan state took a step forward in the last weeks with a statement by Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Nobel Prize winner and respected acquaintance of President Obama (who accompanied the latter to Buchenwald on June 5th, was referred to in Obama’s speech and in turn made a speech in President Obama’s presence). The campaign took a further step with the joint anti-Lankan letter to the US President by four organizations including The Carter Centre.
We must understand that there is an international system or world system. If during the Cold War, there were two systems, capitalist and socialist, and the international system consisted of the contradictory unity of these two systems, today there is one single world system, with all its unevenness and contradiction ( North/South, East/West). Sri Lanka is a peripheral unit of this world system. We can reduce the domination of and our dependence on the West by balancing off our natural allies the global South and East against them, but all this takes place within the world system.
Those who encourage us to implement the 13th amendment are not those who lectured us on federalism and the need to accommodate the LTTE. Those folks talk of war crimes tribunals, unfettered access, an UN role in political reconciliation, economic sanctions etc. These are the folks who were defeated in Geneva on May 27th. We are being encouraged to swiftly implement at least the 13th amendment, precisely by those who did not belong to that camp, and stood by us, helping us in various ways during the war. It is these friends who will be undermined and who will pull back if we fail to, leaving us vulnerable to the Tamil Diaspora driven West and a possible Indo-US policy pincer.
There are three perspectives on Sri Lanka ’s external relations and role in the world:
1. De-linking, involution, isolationism, coupled probably with a belief in the chimera of a co-religionists’ bloc of states
2. Return to the UNP- JRJ-Ranil-CFA mode of dependency on and appeasement of the West
3. A multi-vector policy generally identifiable with the SLFP, which engages the West (especially the USA) while maintaining Sri Lanka’s dignity, anchored in the neighborhood, the rising Asian region, and the Non aligned Movement/G77, while practicing a policy of multi-polar balancing to maximize our autonomy and defend our interests.
Perspectives 2 and 3 (and I am an adherent and practitioner of 3) take place within the framework and mainstream of the international system, unlike Perspective 1 which takes us outside it. While some international players (especially in “global civil society”) may wish to go beyond it, the implementation of the 13th amendment and concern for reform that accommodates Sri Lanka’s Tamils in a power sharing arrangement, is a bottom line consensus within the international system as a whole.
(These are the strictly personal views of the writer).
14 Comments
Dayan
You sound realist. But do you really think that Srilankan rulers got smarter over the last 60 years.
Article by Prasun Sengupta, Indian defence specialist, at livefist.blog
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Based on my personal interractions with both the Indian and Sri Lankan military hierarchy over the past five years, you can rest assured that India has unprecedented and total access to the Sri Lankan armed forces and when it comes to provision of technical type-training and product support for the Sri Lankan Air Force (SLAF) and Sri Lanka Navy, Colombo's reliance on India is near-total. The Sri Lanka Navy has been highly appreciative of the supply by India of one OPV and one AOPV. Today it is a routine matter if an Indian Navy midshipman is on board one of the Sri Lankan OPVs/AOPVs and if a Sri Lanka Navy midshipman is on board a frontline Indian Navy warship.
In terms of backstabbing, today the Sri Lankan economy is so dependent on India (thanks to the free trade agreement) that no sane Sri Lankan political decision-maker will even dream of hatching conspiracies of the type enacted by the likes of the late Ranesinghe Premadasa or late Lalith Athulathmudali.
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More by Prasun
While the SLAF will be responsible for first- and second-level maintenance of these new acquisitions, the Indian Air Force (IAF) and the Nasik-based India-Russia joint venture—Indo-Russian Aviation Ltd (IRAL)—will provide flying training, technical type-training and depot-level maintenance support for them. IRAL is currently providing similar product support to the SLAF's existing six Mi-17V-5s, 10 Mi-25s and three Mi-35Ps of No9 Attack Helicopter Squadron, and for the 10 ex-Ukrainian MiG-27Ms and one MIG-23UB trainer of No5 Fighter Squadron. In addition, state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) is likely to be involved in upgrading the SLAF's two Israel Aerospace Industries-built Kfir TC.2s, two Kfir C.7s and eight Kfir C.2s of No10 Fighter Squadron. The SLAF wants these Kfirs to be retrofitted with ELTA's EL/M-2032 multi-mode monopulse radars (which HAL is presently installing on board the Indian Navy's Sea Harrier FRS Mk51s) and armed with RAFAEL-built Python-3 air combat missiles. The SLAF has also requested the IAF and HAL to help upgrade its Mi-25s to enable them to have a modest night-fighting capability.
"This reform remained dormant because of the full-scale war waged in the North East by the Tigers."
Very clever, Dayan, very clever. Unfortunately if we try to apply your logic to the general case of political reform, it fails miserably. Where was the LTTE when G.G. Ponnambalam's 50-50 was rejected? Or when the Dudley-Chelva Pact failed? Or when the Banda-Chelva pact failed thanks to protests by monks? These were all attempts to achieve political reform, within the context of a unitary state - in fact, the DDC's envisioned by Chelva were quite similar to the Provincial Councils now eschewed haphazardly by GOSL. My point being, it is easy to see that the failure to implement political reform to address minority grievances lies not with the LTTE, but with the State.
"How does the state reconcile the identities of the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims and accommodate them within an overarching Sri Lankan identity?"
Perhaps its time to do away with this Sri Lankan identity business. Every President since Independence has been a Sinhala-Buddhist from the South. All major institutions, including the military, are more than 95% Sinhala-Buddhist. Sarath Fonseka himself said it best - all non-Sinhalese are merely guests on the island. We can extrapolate this argument to no end, and come up with some rather interesting observations. For example, the Maha Sangha has always had more influence over GOSL legislative policy than any single Tamil politician or Tamil party. In any case, what needs to be acknowledged is that the "island" of "Sri Lanka" has distinct geographical regions with equally distinct histories. Even between Kandy and Southern Sri Lanka, the Kandyan vote in the last election went overwhelmingly to the UNP, whereas the South was UPFP. Does this not show the presence of differing mindsets existing in parallel? In fact, the Kandyans once supported a three-state solution for the island... whereas at no point since independence has the notion of a federal solution even been remotely considered in Southern Sri Lanka. In any case, once the regional differences have been recognized, the next step is to find a solution that recognizes such differences by way of maximum devolution. Short of a separate state, only federalism will do the job. There is no other alternative.
"The global campaign to de-legitimize the Sri Lankan state"
Sri Lanka has de-legitimized itself by rejecting Western standards of human rights accountability. We need to be cognizant of the fact that the modern democracy is essentially a Western concept. The idea of free public education, the idea of a Constitution based on checks-and-balances, capitalism, globalization, modern science, mass industrialization - these are the foundation stones upon which the 21st century society should (ideally) be built. The notion of "home-grown solutions", 113-man jumbo cabinets, Buddhist monks in the Parliament, etc. and all other such absurdities and redundancies belong to the feudal mindset that is caught in the throes of a post-colonial hangover. The solution is not to amplify these calamities by forming alliances with equally deluded nations - Libya, China, Iran. If Sri Lanka wants to go forward, like Japan, South Korea, Singapore, etc. it needs to accept, not reject the West.
Mr. Jayatilleka
Having read your previous contributions during the final phase of the war and immediate aftermath of the war I had formed an opinion of you as a Sinhala chauvinist albeit glossed over with a thin layer of liberalism.
Reading this piece my initial reaction was positive but overall one gets the impression that your opinion or plan regarding the 13th amendment is not to solve the genuine grievances of the Tamil citizens of Sri Lanka but just to avoid international castration or isolation.
Reconciliation has to come from the heart of the nation, as influential leaders its your responsibility to encourage that.
Instead your write up demonstrate vividly what an opportunist you are.
My second point is about the 60,000 youth who died during the 80s. “these were youths who took up arms courageously, but wielded them barbarically and after a point, needlessly. They paid the inevitable price at the hands of the state. That’s what a state is and what a state does”
You have collectively tired them and convicted all of them of anti state activity. Ask anyone who lived through that barbaric period, the majority who dies then and now are innocent.
Until the state vis-à-vis people like you admit that and try to find the truth and seek reconciliation there is no hope for our mother Lanka. In one way or the other there will be blood bath.
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Three civil wars in 40 years, there is something wrong in the way (sinhalese) rule the country.
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Even today, with many journalists out of the country, out of fear, and others are writing only about cricket, I understand that you want to write more, but you know the outcome.
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Simple logic is that, if Lankan Tamils can accept English and Christianity, why not Sinhalese and Buddhism?
Answer:- Don't force it.....
:-)
Congratulations Dayan Jayatilleke.
A good eye-opener for those hardliners who never evolve from past mistakes.
...and yet the one man who needs to publicly order the implementation of the 13th amendment seems to be doing everything to delay it...
since the end of the LTTE the president first said we must have a "homegrown solutino" and now said "solution only after an election".
At what point should we assume that, once again, a Sinhalese leader has missed a golden opportunity to consolidate a multiethnic nation?
The hope I had in May that now there was no excuse not to implement 13th amendment has evaporated
I see you are far removed here from your customary role defending your employer – no matter what. You are here in your element – reasonable, practical, intellectually clear and honest. But can you sell a reasonable set of solutions to the reincarnation of those imposing “structural blockages enforced by domestic coercion” whose ranks appear to have grown steadily since and who wield political power from the inside - whereas they were on the outside in 1956 and 1987? You inspire when you stay consistent and faithful to the 13th Amendment as a starting point to resolution but can you get your varied coalition partners - with their diametrically opposed chunks of Chintanaya - to usher in some form of workable solution that you steadfastly hold? How many in the Govt’s coalition ranks will see “the ideal of Eelam can be defeated only by the counter-idea of a reformed and restructured Sri Lanka – unitary but providing autonomous space for the Tamil people of the North-East” I bet Wimal Weerawansa and ilk, who carry far greater weight than the votes they can bring in the administration, will hound you out although they will never be in your intellectual league. What is the status of the APRC and the dedicated labour of Tissa Vitharana – now humiliated with another charade only when he was about to present something worth consideration. The same creatures who hounded out “elected leaders like SWRD who was besieged by extra-Parliamentary lobbies” are very much at play now. In threatening to bring “half a million Sinhalese to the streets” they are once again in the black-mail path. These are but attempts again “to abort the Parliamentary process by extra-Parliamentary agitation” bringing home the wisdom of Santayana. You are on the ball when you say “the struggle is on” although the 3rd war is won. You are in a different league from those in your pack when you remind “ a political challenge requires a political response” which, Sir, I am afraid has never been seen around. What we have seen around is trickery, villainy and crass procrastination – such as “I will allow the people to decide at the next Elections” after electoral victory after victory from a military victory-drunk Sinhala electorate. SM Krishna is not Karunanidhi. He is a different cup of tea. When he says “GoSL has given us assurances they will deliver more than the 13th Amendment” he means GoI takes word for word on what has been assured. This is probably why your Boss has now taken the cane to his hands and warns the “perali men” to behave. They appear to, in the fear of losing their cushy positions. I wonder if you know of a guy who fought for the country and environment against sand-mining and publicly proclaimed he will not allow
more than a thousand cubes a week. The equation changed and the man sat in the chair. It is said he released 7,000 cubes a day on the consideration of Rs.3,000 per cube. This is good money though poor ethics and against all environmental norms. Yet these guys can change and take to the streets in the name of the religion and Motherland – and, that is worrisome. But India may not be patient anymore and the “coercive external intervention” so distasteful to you and me is still on the cards. I hate to bring India into this but that is the stark reality of our infantile political mishandling. I sincerely hope your good and visionary counseling will have the day – in the interests of all of us and the country.
ISS
Dear Alex, and all others,
The answer to your problems and doubts is ight on this website in this very correspondence. it is contained inthe post by Shyamsunder and quotes prasun sen gupta. Given the objective material facts set forth there, it is clear that the most powerful agency of change and reform has also been identified. So there is no need to fear. On the other hand, if that vehicle is impervious to certain claims then these are not achievable. And if it remains impervious to all claims and demands, then maybe the tamil community should look hard in a miror at itself and ask why, given that there are 70 million Tamils in tamil nadu. In fact there are two questions that the tamil community has to ask itself: why did the tamil nadu and indian voters vote the way they did, despite the agitation? why did the Tigers lose so utterly against the Sri Lankan state which the diaspora and the tamil community in the main, reviled as fools, cowards or bribable foes.
As for Dinesh, ok fine but where were the Sinhala chauvinists in 1987-88, when JRJ signed the accord, Vijaya Kumaratunga lost his life defeding it, the Sri lankan armed forces in the North were in barracks and in the rest of the country were fighting a civil war against southern extremism, the tigers were offered 7 out of 11 seats in an interim council for the merged north-east and 70,000 indian troops were on sri lankan soil to enforce it? It was Prabhakaran who went to war against the IPKF which was as intelligent as the KLA of Kosovo going to war against NATO or the South Ossetian militia fighting against the russian peacekeepers, which of course, neither was moronic enough to do! And where was the tamil diaspora, when this was happening? Even a few months back they were arrogant enough to insist that india intervene and save the tigers without even an apology for killing Rajiv gandhi. It is because India ( not just the state but the voters) remembered all this, and didn't buy the Dineshian narrative that it was all or chiefly the fault of sinhala chauvinism ( which may have been so until 1987), that it basically allowed -- and if Prasun and Shyamsunder are to be believed, enabled and assisted -- the sri lankan ( 'Sinhala') state to run the Tigers through a meatgrinder several times over.
Think about it.
Dayan,
You have made a fine case to prove that the civil war III is not over. GOSL won the last battle, but has still not secured the peace. Till then the war is technically still not won.
Dayan, As an Indian, 99% of Indians and 75% of Indian tamils felt in 1987, that the Sri Lankan tamils got a very good deal and the Sri Lankan tamils were arrogant to attack the IPKF. In the 1989 Parliamentary election, the anti-LTTE Rajiv + Jaya won 38 of the 40 seats in Tamil Nadu, vs just 2 for the pro-LTTE Karunanidhi
Indian army doctors wearing the red cross uniform were sniped by LTTE. Indian POWs were necklaced by LTTE
and Indian army officers were targeted and sniped by LTTE
Those IPKF soldiers have now become the Indian establishment and have a deep distaste for the LTTE
After the assasination of Rajiv, the Indian establishment felt that VP was an uncontrollable maniac and it was easier to strike a deal with the Sinhalese
Dear Mitt,
C'mon man, I bet you cannot cite any recognised authority on war who uses a single yardstick according to which the sri Lankan war is not yet won. When the entire leadership is wiped out, all fighting units are put out of commission, the naval wing is decimated,armed resistance has ceased except for some stragglers being hunted down in the Eastern jungles, ten thousand combatants are in custody as surrendees, armed caches are uncovered daily thanks to those in custordy singing like canaries, there can hardly be a more complete description of a war having been won.
One may argue that the crisis or even the conflict is still on....but unless one has lost all reason and intelligence, not, the war. That's over, man, and your side lost, utterly and completely....Everyone knows it, except you.
Gopalapillai and others think that Sri Lanka should adhere to the standards of those countries who conquered and stole the wealth of Asia for their Own benefit? LOL! That MENTALITY has been bred well into Tamils in the Diaspora. The Western HYPOCRITES break their own HUMAN RIGHTS Standards as and when they feel, do you really think Sri Lanka should go kissing up behind them??? The Tamil mentality towards Sri Lanka is beautifully illustrated by the likes of Senguttavan and Gopalapillai... It does not matter what is done, or what is devolved for Tamils.... IT WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH. Their goal is not for Unity or Co-Existence... it is to be as SEPARATE as possible.... The spirit of any agreement of Devolution is to foster brotherhood but still maintain Ethnic Identity, but if you look at the Tamil Mentality you can see that there is absolutely no desire for any of this. We are wasting our time entertaining the idea that the 13th Amendment will achieve this. It will be the consolation prize that Tamils will grudgingly take yet not accept, it will just be what they can get for now till they can regroup and reorganize another campaign to begin another Ethnic Conflict. This will always be the case as long as that POISON Mentality they possess continues to exist.
Why bother even giving them the 13th? Give them nothing, its not like they would be thankful for it in the first place...! And if we are to start afresh and eliminate TAMIL COMMUNALISM once and for all then the seeds must be set that will destroy the COMMIE MINDSET of Tamils. There must be an enforced Nationalism and those who refuse to adhere to it should start calling up their Travel Agents for cheap flights to Toronto or wherever would have them.
That is why I have to disagree with Dr. J. on this issue.
Note to future government appointees: Just brainlessly tow the line. And be a spin doctor for government policy.