History has proved LTTE wrong

Philip Fernando

LTTE believed that when State and ethnic group boundaries do not coincide, politics must remain ugly. That policy was prescriptive and agenda-driven and not based on winning rights or ventilating grievances.

LTTE ignored the fact that 55 per cent of the minorities live amidst the majority community in Colombo, Kandy, Galle, Matara, etc. Yet they actively pursued separation of peoples through expulsions, the redrawing of ethnic boundaries and the outright destruction of life and property to claim territories of their own. It had no chance of success.

Having lost most of their territorial domain, the LTTE still relied on partition as the only remedy.

Assumption

LTTE’s basic assumption that ethnicity must breed conflict is an example of a classical error sometimes called “the base-rate fallacy”. It is particularly seductive when events are much more visible than nonevents. How diversity thrived within 85 per cent of the country was ignored and they pursued violence in homogenising the LTTE led terrorists enclave in the North.

Time is ripe to understand how ethnic diversity is so blatantly obvious in Sri Lanka. There has not been a single instance of chaotic ethnic violence in Sri Lanka for decades even when numerous suicide bombers decimated families including infants, the Buddhist clergy and ministers of repute.

The propensity to understand and make sense of when ethnic differences generate conflict — and knowing how best to attempt to prevent or respond to them when they do has been a trademark of Sri Lanka for several decades now: a manifestation of a deeper understanding of how ethnicity works.

LTTE used the negative aspects of ethnicity towards achieving their own sinister ends.

It is obvious that the notion that ethnic diversity generates antipathies so deep that they cannot be realistically resolved, so separation becomes the obvious end, perhaps, the only feasible antidote has been proved to be wrong. In reality, political coalitions are formed along ethnic lines not because people care more for their own but simply because it is easier to collaborate with their ethnic peers to achieve collective ends.

People have rejected the so called tribal antipathies brought to the surface by the LTTE. The time to install initiatives that breakdown barriers to cooperation has arrived.

The best response may be greater investment in formal institutions so that individuals are assured that discrimination will be punished and that cooperation across ethnic lines will be reciprocated. Tragically, the Tamil Diaspora was forced to sacrifice millions of well- earned money ($ 300 million or so every year) for a cause they had no faith in. The generosity of the Diaspora for building bridges towards peace will emerge soon even without any attempt at extortion. There are no inherent impediments to foster unity that the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims would fail to capitalise.

It is opportune to invest in creating impartial and credible State institutions that facilitate cooperation across ethnic lines.

With such institutions in place, citizens would no longer need to rely disproportionately on ethnic networks in the marketplace and in politics. In this respect, modernisation may be the antidote to ethnic nationalism because we always rejected the destabilising idea that every separately defined cultural unit should have its own State.

Disruption

The LTTE may still cling to the notion that disruption and political introversion would automatically bring ethnic liberation. History has proved otherwise.

Sri Lanka has been more responsive to their ethnic minority communities than ever before. We also have more resources at our disposal than before.

They have responded to the basic requirements of language, freedoms of worship, assembly and right to education with greater fervor.

If Bretons, Punjabis, Quebecois, and Scots live quite well inside the bonds of multinational sovereignty and in some cases better than residents of other provinces with no claims of being a distinct nation, so can the Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and Burghers.

Prabhakaran’s rejection of the electoral and peaceful means to gaining freedom and his resorting to terrorism only, call into question the legitimacy of its quest for independence. His systematic destruction of dissent in the North doomed him for good. He had scant respect for Kadiragamas, Alfred Duraiappahs and Thiruchelvams, just to name a few of his victims who were far superior in intellect to him.

India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand contain different ethnic groups that have largely profited from the intense economic resurgence of their States. Northern and southern Vietnam is culturally different, but both have benefited from the country’s economic growth.

We are certain that Sri Lanka would respond to economic needs of all groups, and whatever its concerns, no single group need not seek separation to alleviate their needs. There is a sure fire alternative to partition: buckle down to work.