IUSF was and is JVP’s cat’s paw

The JVP maintains the two outfits, IUSF and the so-called Socialist Students’ Union as separate entities, but that’s just eyewash:

Prof Gamini Samaranayake, whose doctoral work was on the first JVP insurrection (1971), is of the view that ‘1971’ was a turning point in Sri Lanka’s political history. Samaranayake, now the Chairman, University Grants Commission, argues that thanks to that adventure, the weakness of the State was revealed and this was a significant factor in steering Tamil politics away from democratic discourse to armed struggle.

The LTTE learned a lot from the JVP, it seems and Samaranayake makes a valid point here. On the other hand, there were as many differences as there were similarities. They were different in the fact that the LTTE was for the most part upfront about taking responsibility. Sure, they never said a word about Alfred Duraiappah or Rajini Thiranagama and were wont to pass the buck to ‘irate citizens’ when accused of numerous acts of provocation while the CFA was in force between 2002 and 2004; but by and large they were men enough to say ‘we did it’ when they in fact had done something.

Intellectual resources

The JVP was different. I am thinking of the JVP’s strange refusal to acknowledge its thick-as-thieves relations with the Inter University Student Federation (IUSF) which, the JVP says as do its leaders, ‘a different organization’. Those who have even marginal acquaintance with university politics would dismiss such assertions as bunkum and might even say danno danithi (those who know, know).

In the seventies, eighties, nineties and even in the first decade of the third millennia, the IUSF proves that it just doesn’t have the intellectual resources to stand up to interrogation of any kind. Lacking logic and intellect, they resort to violence in dealing with dissenting voices. If the objections are against the JVP, the IUSF sends it first and second year troops, largely made up of hot-headed, empty-’vessel’ radicals to ‘deal with things’. The JVP maintains the two outfits, IUSF and the so-called Socialist Students’ Union (their student wing, they tell us) as separate entities, but that’s just eyewash.

Bad guys

Back in the eighties, it was not the SSU, but the DSV (Deshapremi Shishya Vyaparaya) that acted as the bad guys. The IUSF was safe. At the national level, the JVP ‘did nothing’, all the ‘doing’ was the work of the Deshapremi Jathika Vyaparaya. These name-difference subtleties fooled no one.

Today, Udul Premaratne, the ‘Convenor’ of the IUSF, struts around as though the IUSF is independent of the JVP. I hope that someday he will realize that the people are not as dumb as he likes to think they are and I have a fairly good idea that this truth will dawn on him sooner rather than later when he faces the start reality that few, very few, are ready to buy the JVP lie.

Any student of radical politics in Sri Lanka would quickly find out that the JVP identifies potential student leaders, groom them to top positions in the IUSF and later absorb them into the top levels of their own political structure. All the student leaders of all the universities in the eighties ended up in the JVP’s ‘Politburo’. There were exceptions of course. Daya Pathirana (Colombo University), Gevindu Kumaratunga (Colombo), Champika Ranawaka (Moratuwa), Ven Athuraliye Rathana (Peradeniya) and a few others resisted. Pathirana was killed. The others were threatened. They survived. Many other objectors, such as Dharmasiri (Colombo) and others from other universities were killed.

No, no, no, NOT by the JVP. By ‘unknown gunmen’ or by patriots from the DJV, which organization never had any leaders and if it did, happened to be individuals people like Tilvin Silva cannot or would not identify as friends or acquaintances.

Student movement

Here’s the rub, ladies and gentlemen; the IUSF, the most reliable anti-Government noisemakers, went silent for a few months. Want to know when? 2001. This was when the JVP went into a so-called ‘probationary’ or parivasa arrangement with Chandrika Kumaratunga. The IUSF went silent when the JVP helped the SLFP form a coalition Government in 2004.

The JVP desperately needed the UPFA back then and when Comrade Tilvin stated that the UPFA needed the JVP, it took only a withering Bambuwa! from the SLFP’s Maithripala Sirisena to silence the man. Today the JVP needs the UNP far more than the UNP needs the likes of Tilvin. Guess who gets to be postman? That poor boy Udul of course!

This makes it possible for the JVP to say at a later date, ‘It was not us, that was Udul and the IUSF, not the JVP, no.’ Udul knows this, because he is not dumb. He is doing it not for the student movement, but for his party, the JVP.

Udul Premaratne just doesn’t have the guts to be honest. That’s the bottom line. And those who are dishonest are not revolutionary-material, sorry. They are and will remain spoilers, troublemakers and enemies of the people, even as they claim to be fighting on the side of the dispossessed and disadvantaged.

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