SRI LANKAN DIASPORA POWERS TAMIL POLITICS
Swapan Dasgupta
Last week, I sent a twitter message from Jaffna town which I was
visiting after 25 years. “There are more sandbags and police pickets in
south Delhi”, I observed, “than there are in Jaffna town.”
This terse message based entirely on my observation provoked howls of
protest. Various individuals responded denouncing me as “anti-Tamil” and
a stooge of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, the latest whipping
boy of the morally indignant. It is entirely possible that a brief
24-hour visit to a town where it was once common to find gun-totting
members of various para-military factions walking with a swagger, does
not qualify me to pass judgement on the totality of the situation in Sri
Lanka’s Northern Province.
Jaffna library |
Yet, it would be fair to say that the Jaffna I returned to was a very
different place from the war-torn but sleepy town that existed in the
late1980s. What I encountered was a mid-sized town with good roads and
lots of new buildings, bustling with activity. The Nallur temple looked
as grand as ever and the Jaffna library whose burning in the 1990s had
created so much tension was a picture of old-world serenity. The stadium
named after Alfred Duraiappah, whose murder was among the first of the
LTTE’s ‘hits’ seemed well maintained and there is even an Indian
Consulate in place in a carefully renovated bungalow. Yes, there were
the occasional signs of the bitter war that had ended barely four years
ago; but anyone who didn’t know that this town was once in the frontline
of one of the most ugly civil wars of all times would never have
guessed.
Sampanthan’s theory
This is not to say that everything is hunky dory. At a gathering of
members of Jaffna civil society, there were voices raised against the
acquisition of “Tamil lands” by the Sri Lankan Army in its security zone
adjoining the airport. There were complaints about “Sinhala colonisation”
of areas in the southern regions of the Northern Province.
And in Colombo, MPs belonging to the Tamil National Alliance
presented us (a five-member team invited by the Bandaranaike Centre for
International Studies) with a well-written account of Tamil grievances.
Its leader, the 80-year-old Rajavardayam Sampanthan, who resembles a
majestic Roman senator both in appearance and eloquence spoke about the
Sri Lankan government’s underlying desire to make the Tamil people
“extinct” from the Northern and Eastern Provinces.
Yet, at a lunch hosted by businessmen of Indian origin in Colombo, I
asked a Chettiar businessman how many Tamils there are in the capital
city. “About 30 per cent of the city” he replied. “And do you control 60
per cent of the business?” I asked smilingly. “Only 60 per cent”, he
retorted with a tinge of disappointment. “It’s more like 70 per cent” he
said with a hearty laugh. Clearly, the noble Sampanthan’s theory of
Tamils being an endangered breed in Sri Lanka doesn’t have too many
takers south of the Elephant Pass.
Military victory
The ‘Tamil problem’ that provides livelihood to the global human
rights industry and provokes indignation in some circles in India seems
essentially a Jaffna problem, and should be renamed as such. At the
heart of the problem is the term devolution which was recommended to the
Sri Lankan government as a possible solution to the problem by the
Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) set up by President
Rajapaksa in the aftermath of his famous military victory over the
murderous LTTE.
For India, which still takes a needlessly gratuitous interest in the
internal affairs of a sovereign neighbour, ‘devolution’ basically means
implementation of the 13th Amendment which formed a part of the
embarrassment called the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord signed by Rajiv Gandhi
and JR Jayewardene in 1987. This amendment promised two things: the
merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, the so-called Tamil
homelands, and the formation of Provincial Councils, akin to India’s
State Governments.
But two problems have arisen. First, the merger of the Northern and
Eastern Provinces was set aside by the Sri Lankan Supreme Court on
procedural grounds. Sampanthan calls it a “dishonest judgement” but the
de-merger is now a reality. Secondly, it would seem that apart from the
Northern and Eastern Provinces, the Sinhala areas aren’t terribly
enthused by the idea of Provincial Councils. Yet, elections to the
Provincial Councils have been held in all provinces barring the Northern
Province. At one time it seemed that the government was having second
thoughts about holding Provincial Council elections in the Northern
Province but President Rajapaksa has categorically announced that the
democratic exercise will be undertaken in September. The TNA, which is
certain to win the election, now says that the powers of the Provincial
Councils are inadequate. It wants the Local Government to control land
and the police. The government may concede the first point but there is
no way it will relax its control over all aspects of security in the
North.
Indian pressure
Who can blame Colombo for its reluctance? It’s just four years since
the LTTE was decimated and it’s just too early for the Central
Government to let down its guard. It is not that there is a desire to
militarise the province. The Sri Lankan Army is present in large numbers
in the Northern Province but it operates well below the radar.
Logistically, the army wants to insulate itself in the security zones,
build strategically located cantonments and operate as a rapid response
force just in case insurgency resurfaces.
Ideally, the TNA should have no problem with this arrangement because
its members were also murderously targeted by the LTTE. Moreover, it has
declared, perhaps under Indian pressure, that it is committed to the
territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. It may still believe in emotional
separatism but it has formally abjured political separatism and
abandoned the erstwhile TULF’s call for ‘self-determination’.
At the same time, its actions suggest that it wants to keep tensions
and the ethnic conflict alive. It doesn’t make sense until you realise
that Tamil separatist politics derives its main impetus not from the
ordinary people of Jaffna who are desperate for a breather but by the
Tamil diaspora, the ones who bankroll the seemingly respectable,
‘moderate’ politicians. With a view of the island that is frozen in
time, it is the diaspora that is proving to be the biggest impediment to
Sri Lanka getting over its troubled history.
Courtesy: Daily Pioneer
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