Shattering of a pipe dream

RAVI PERERA

It is clear that the LTTE, once pretenders to a de facto State in certain parts of the North & East of Sri Lanka, are now in their death throes fighting an overwhelmingly stronger army in a fast shrinking corner around the small township of Mullaitive.

With their inevitable destruction will end, perhaps spasmodically, one of the saddest as well as bloodiest chapters of the post colonial history of this island nation.

Much has been written about the origins and the aggravations that led to the hugely destructive conflict between a section of Sri Lankan Tamils, a vital minority mainly residing in the North/Eastern parts of the country, and the State of Sri Lanka.

Unfamiliar

Its tragedy is that the conflict could have been easily avoided. When the departing colonial power left, entrusting our then leaders with the unfamiliar powers accumulated at the helm of a modern State they by and large seem to have been seduced mainly by the aspect of power exercised purely as a self-serving mechanism. Cohesion and the integrity of a strong State cannot be built on mere dilettantism. Enduring institutions are built by personal attributes very different.

If the two communities had a leadership which could see a larger world the contemporary history of Sri Lanka would have been very different in deed. The death and destruction caused by the conflict as well as its direct impact on the general progress of the country is very large.

Challenge

A study of our national politics spanning from the era immediately prior to independence to about mid-1970s ( and even later) when the conflict emerged as a violent challenge to the State will amply demonstrate the parochial approach adopted by several of the community leaders on both sides.

Those who paid the bitter price for their follies were the subsequent generations. Naturally, the hardest hit has been the Tamil community who had to face the brunt of the fighting.

This is a community that one time was reputed for their learning and the devotion to its ancient culture. In academic fields such as the sciences, particularly in mathematics, they proved to be good students.

Until quite recently in this country many learned professions were dominated by them. In the legislature, public administration, judiciary and commercial activity the Tamils have contributed immensely.

The lunacy of divisive politics has changed all that. With hindsight the post-independence Tamil leadership appears bigoted if not selfish. Rather than work towards finding commonalities they seem to have often opted to demand a special status based on historical and regional particularities. Perhaps the intransigence of some of the Sinhala leaders pushed them to extreme positions.

It is pointed out by some academics that the Tamil community enjoyed a somewhat advantageous position vis-a vis the majority Sinhalese during the colonial period, a situation which was bound to change with representative form of government and wide spread free education.

Democratic systems we inherited from the departing British naturally increased the expectations of the voter.

To meet the high expectations of the electorate the economy needed to perform at a qualitatively different level. This we could not achieve. The leadership of the two communities reacted to the stresses caused by this difficult situation in a manner which set in motion the train of events that culminated in the bloody conflict.

Enormous

In the light of the enormous changes that have occurred since the Second World War era, it appears that our entire leadership since, whether it is the so called landed gentry, nationalists, socialists or even the red hot revolutionaries were ludicrously out of step with the fast evolving world outside.

When some of our leaders were talking about socialism, unbeknown to them that system had begun its irreversible implosion. Some other leaders spoke about language rights only to have their own children obtaining Visas to settle permanently in countries with completely alien cultures.

They spoke of inviting robber Barons to invest here at the time when the rest of the world had begun demanding high ethics and transparency in such matters.

Fundamental

The incredible revolution created by the growth of the inter-net, seems to have gone over their heads completely. This fundamental failure of the national leadership surely led to the havoc of the past three decades.

When in the early days Tamil grievances were articulated, their leadership in the form of the Chelvanayagams, Ponnambalams, Amirthalingams and the Tiruchelvams, despite their obvious failings, were educated men of breeding.

But when in the 1970s the nascent terrorist groups in the fringes of Tamil political organizations began killing unarmed Tamil civilians accused of collaborating with the State these leaders made absurd excuses for the killers, referring to them euphemistically as the “boys”.

It did not take long for them to realize they could not ride the tiger. Eventually many of the former Tamil leaders met bloody ends in the streets of Colombo where they had fled for safety at the hands of the “boys”.

The Tamil political expression had grown into the grotesque form that is the LTTE today.

Now the leadership of the Tamil community was in the hands of coarse men, armed and dangerous. The “Tigers” as they called themselves took great pride in their skill in murdering unarmed opponents, most times lulled into complacency by the pretended friendship of the killers.

The female suicide bomber who assassinated Rajiv Gandhi worshipped him in the traditional manner before detonating the bomb which killed them both. Tamils who had dissented in any manner with the LTTE could expect no mercy.

There was a time when Tamil leaders openly discussed and argued matters concerning their people. The LTTE leadership which is strictly mono-lingual with only a handful, who has studied beyond the advance level, has no such inclinations.

All decisions are made by Prabakaran, their undisputed leader, which are then carried out by the toadies and flatterers who surround him. Sure he had a few victories against the army, which really were due to its weaknesses than the prowess of the rag-tag LTTE. As it happens often in Sri Lanka accidental successes against enemies not up to scratch, gets interpreted as acts of genius.

But then the spurning of all peace offers and accommodations of the Sri Lankan Government, fighting the IPKF, Killing of Rajiv Gandhi , cancellation of the ceasefire, numerous mass scale killings and thousands of other atrocities also originated in the untutored mind of the LTTE leader who according to legend spends his leisure watching Clint Eastwood movies.

Community

For the community directly affected the consequences of such a situation are not hard to imagine. In the second half of the 20th Century we had the examples of Pol-Pot and Idi Amin who both spoke in terms of liberation.

Like Cambodia and Uganda, Sri Lanka is a poor country. Most of the poor Tamil youth recruited to the killing machine of the LTTE probably do not even understand the purpose of their sacrifices save for the indoctrination they have been subject to.

Today the poverty of that community is such that the rubber slippers on their calloused feet maybe one of the few prized possessions of the teenage LTTE recruits. Modern conveniences like mobiles, air-conditioners, refrigerators or even pipe-borne water do not generally come into the daily lives of the foot soldiers.

But deadly technology in the form of weapons, originally designed in the West, such as automatic rifles, land mines, hand grenades and rockets have been put in their young hands with exhortations’ to kill and be killed.

In the event they meet their death, the recruits are given an incongruous military rank, again of Western origin and are called martyrs. Studies, sports, music, travel, socializing, standard activities of the youth in a progressive wholesome culture, are taboo to the young recruits of the LTTE.

Indictment

It is an indictment on the past governments of Sri Lanka that it had allowed a brigand group like the LTTE to establish a base in a part of the country. The Tamil people confined both physically and psychologically by them, are citizens of this country and should have been liberated quickly and resolutely.

Our faint-hearted leadership, fearful and tiresomely subservient to every influence from foreign sources have allowed a relatively small terrorist threat become a chimera whose mere name sends shivers up their back. It is even more sinister that some bureaucrats and businessmen made the ‘war’ an opportunity to make money.

When we finally took on the LTTE seriously, it was proved that the emperor was really naked. The terrorist organization’s power was built on bluff and a cunning appreciation of the divisive politics of the South.

Eventually the reach and the strength of a legitimate State will triumph. Prabakaran’s pipe-dream of a large estate which he was going to vaingloriously call a State is about to shatter.