Looking back without anger
 

Next week Sri Lankans will celebrate the second anniversary of the end of the fratricidal conflict that tore our country apart for 26 years, the conclusion of three decades of lawlessness and wanton destruction.

The conflict didn’t start with Prabhakaran. It was true that the Tamil New Tigers, as they were called in the mid-70s, had carried out bank robberies and assassinations. It is true that the Tamil people, especially the intellectuals, had grievances.

However, there was no real sense of urgency. Jaffna was prosperous and its farmers, in particular, were thriving. There was rule of the law and a general belief in the system of governance based on the popular vote - and that grievances could be addressed within the limits of that system.

Che Guevara said that an armed revolution was a practical impossibility in a democratic system in which the people believed. Mao said that ‘the guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea’.

Democratic system

So it was that the Tigers were fish out of water, merely banditti skulking around the edges of the polity. Prabhakaran’s followers were few, his base of support small, his actions pathetic.

Then came the Jayewardene regime, under which justice became arbitrary, laws became mere impediments to political advancement and the democratic system just another plaything. Fear became normal; it was not a psychosis, it was the real thing - and it affected people of all ethnic groups.

In 1981 came the rigging of the Jaffna District Development Council election and the burning of the Jaffna library. The government had patently ceased to be of the people, for the people.

Even so, as late as the Presidential election in 1982, the Jaffna people showed they had faith in the electoral system, if not in the Jayewardene government, and voted for Hector Kobbekaduwa - someone whom the farmers identified with their days of prosperity.

Systematic lawlessness

The cusp between peace and war was not the killing of 12 soldiers in July 1983. It was the subsequent untrammelled onslaught on Tamil civilians in majority Sinhalese areas and the government’s silence in the face of it.

The people affected were the cream of the intelligentsia, whose lives were based in the South. Most of them had been supporters of the Jayewardene government and they had little in common with Prabhakaran.

Overnight, a new cohort of well-educated recruits to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, hitherto a small band of assassins centred around Prabhakaran, was born. More importantly, a sea in which the LTTE fish could swim was created.

The pity of it was that, in return for the random lawlessness of the Jayewardene regime, the Tamil people were given the systematic lawlessness of the Prabhakaran tyranny. The old Sinhalese saying, inguru dheela miris gaththa vagey (like exchanging ginger for chilli) is simply not emphatic enough to describe this barter.

The result was about 100,000 dead, a scorched Jaffna peninsula, a wounded Vanni and an entire generation of young minds - who had never witnessed anything but war - traumatised and damaged.

And it was not just the North, which bore the brunt of fighting. In the South there were suicide bombings, attacks on civilian aircraft, time bombs placed in public transport and vicious forays against civilians.

Freedom of movement

Two years ago, that era came to an end. People celebrated then, not at the death of Prabhakaran but at the death of the period of death and uncertainty which he represented. Now, the freedom of movement and the absence of that pervasive sense fear have become ordinary.

Most crucially, the writ of the democratic process runs once more from Dondra Head to Point Pedro. This is the most important defence against the recurrence of the horror of the past 30 years.

That Black July was important to the Tigers as a catalyst is shown by the numerous occasions on which they targeted innocent civilians in brutal attacks designed to recreate the same ethnic riots. They did not succeed because, at bottom, the diverse peoples of Sri Lanka do not hate each other.

At the height of the violence of July 1983, there were Sinhalese families who went out of their way to protect their Tamil neighbours. This was not a picture which fitted into the Tiger world view, which depicted Tamils on the one hand pitted against hordes of murderous Sinhalese and Muslims on the other.

Live in peace

One occurrence that gave the lie to this convenient picture of ethnic hatred was the reaction of ordinary people to the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004.

Citizens from all walks of life went to the aid of the victims, irrespective of ethnicity or creed.

It is this spirit that we have to build on in the future. We do not have particularly to like each other, just recognise that we are all equally inhabitants of this tiny island of ours and that we all have a right to live in peace.

What we require right now is national reconciliation, rebuilding our country not just economically, but socially. The genuine grievances of the minorities need to be addressed, as well as the anxieties of the majority. We need to look forward in hope, not backwards in anger.

One cause for optimism lies in the ongoing programmes to rehabilitate former LTTE cadres. Many of them were forcibly conscripted as children and sent to the front lines, where they experienced all the horrors of war. They were brainwashed into a violent mindset in which cruelty to one’s perceived enemy was the norm, but now they are being given new skills and a new outlook with which to re-enter society.

As the Bhagavad Gita says:

‘Out of compassion I destroy the darkness of their ignorance. From within them I light the lamp of wisdom and dispel all darkness from their lives.’