In defence of Gotabhaya’s roadmap

Concluding reply to Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka :

Let me begin by thanking Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka for the lively encounters on the current critical issue of Indian interventions, particularly through the 13th Amendment, and concluding it on a cordial note, despite the occasional sparks that flew in the cut and thrust of our responses. As he said earlier, it is useful to engage in polemical debates to tease out and clarify issues while defending our respective positions.

Though we clashed publicly on ideological grounds, privately we maintained our long-standing personal relations, handed down from father to son, which I consider to be a hall mark of his intellectual rigour.

Our differences in essence were on who had a better grip on the realities facing the nation. He credits me with having the facility of telling things as I see it. And in the same breath he implies that he is the one who is in sole possession of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It is not for me to make such a grandiose claim knowing the fallilbilities of human judgement. All what I can do is to present my point of view and leave it to the reader and history to pass final judgement on each claim.

He also concludes by tut-tutting about the stance taken by Gotabhaya Rajapaksa -- namely, his resistance to surrender to big powers whoever they may be. On this score, Dr. Jayatilleka refers the readers to the historical debate on Melos, a small island, that resisted the mighty power of the Athenians in ancient times. There are some relevant parallels, no doubt. However, as he knows, history repeats itself but not always in the identical manner. The variations matter and it is most unlikely that in the 21st century the Indians are going to march in, with boots and all, to create another Vietnam when it is faced with internal and external threats of a huge magnitude at a time when they are poised to take off economically.

Melosian-Athenian debate

Here I am placing a question mark over India's role as a successful imperialist power in the region (though it has all the intentions of playing that role) because India still has a long way to go to lift the 600 million still living below poverty-line, irrespective of the rise of the 300 million middle class, for the centre to hold its diverse and fissiparous parts together.

Defence and Urban Development Ministry Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa

India, of course, can do what the Athenians did: invade and temporarily conquer Melos. But in the end it marked the beginning of the end of Athenian power. In retaliation the Melosians joined the Spartans, the rivals of Athenians, and crushed Athens. So what was seen as a "miscalculation of a small nation" proved to be the undoing of a big nation. Since Dr. Jayatilleka raised the Melosian-Athenian debate he should also factor in the final outcome, arising from the repercussions of big power interventions in the affairs of a small nation which will refuse to and curl up and die, as seen in its long history of Sri Lankan resistance to big powers.

This also proves the risks of making predictions too early, writing off small nations as inconsequential in big power play.

Dr. Jayatilleka will, of course, remember the profound -- not to mention the cutting -- remark of Chou En-Lai who replied when he was asked what he thought of the French Revolution: "It is too early to tell!" The echoes of that epoch-making Revolution, which buried feudalism and gave birth to bourgeois capitalism, still reverberate within the Great Walls of China. To the famous slogans of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity Deng Tsiao Peng added: "It's glorious to be rich"! In one sense it can be argued that the equality, liberty and fraternity was in the right to be rich individually, not collectively if it was possible in Marxism.

Muhammalai debacle

Getting back to his main contention of Gotabhaya Rajapaksa's rejection of 13th Amendment in toto he raises some curious issues. He says (1) Gotabhaya is not an elected representative; (2) the President and Commander-in-Chief has NOT rejected it in toto and (3) the Sri Lankan Tamil issue is pretty much said to be none of our neighbour’s or any other country’s business.

Re.1:

If Gotabhaya has no right to raise this issue because he is "not an elected representative" then what right has the I/NGOs, hired agents of foreign powers who do not represent the people of the nation in any shape or form, to raise this issue of devolution of powers at national and international levels? Besides, Dr. Jayatilleka knows, only too well, that if Gotabhaya decides to contest a seat of his choice he could win it hands down. Which seat can Jehan (Pacha) Perera, for instance, win to prove that he represents the people if he decides to contest a seat tomorrow? Though Gotabhaya is not an elected representative he is the unacknowledged representative of the people who fought and won the "unwinnable war". If, however, the argument is that as an official of the GOSL he has no right to voice his opinion why can't Gotabhaya do what Dr. Jayatilleka did when he was ambassador abroad: express his opinions which were contrary to the official position of the GOSL?

Re.2:

Dr. Jayatilleka's claim that President has NOT rejected 13 A in toto reminds me of a story that Gotabhaya told me regarding the Muhammalai debacle. Sri Lanka Forces got a severe beating. Cabinet Ministers sneaked behind Gotabhaya's back and told the President that the war is unwinnable. A shocked President summoned Gotabhaya and asked what would happen next.

French Revolution

Like all other soldiers who had faith in their capacity to defeat the enemy Gotabhaya told the President that we had lost only a battle and not the war and he went on to win it. He was, in short, leading his Commander-in-Chief to victory even though it seemed at the time it was going to be failure. Dr. Jayatilleka is right in saying that the President has not rejected the 13th Amendment in toto.

He doesn't have to. All what he has to do is to remove the unwanted sections -- like police and land powers and perhaps even the borders of Provincial Councils -- and retain the rest within the limits of District Councils.

Re.3 :

Gotabhaya is dead right in saying that it is no one's business to mess around with the domestic issues of the nation.

If we are to surrender to "the abiding geopolitical realities" then we would be forever a client state of India.

Under these circumstances the next best thing is for us to be a state of India and send all the Tamils to S. India, the original and only homeland of the Tamils. Furthermore, Mervyn de Silva was way out of geo-political realities when he said that national borders are vanishing.

The break-up of the USSR proved that cartographers had a busy time re-drawing the map of Europe to reinstate the pre-World War II nations suppressed by Communist imperialism.

Historical experience

Besides, one of the fundamental errors of Mervyn's (which Dayan has accepted) is that Sri Lanka "emulate(s) Israel in our treatment of the Tamils of the North." As I said earlier, unlike the Melosians we did surrender to India once and accepted its formula (the 13th Amendment) which no one -- including the Tamils -- wanted. Our historical experience with it for 25 years has proved beyond doubt that it has not worked. Nor will it ever work to satisfy either the North or the South in the future.

As a "political scientist" Dr. Jayatilleka will agree that there is no point in flogging this dead horse wrapped in the body bag of the 13th Amendment. So why perpetuate the agonies of 13 A when it is not going to serve either India or Sri Lanka? Must we subject our people to another bout of violence just to appease India? Mervyn, however, is absolutely right when he says "the borders in our own minds need to be erased..." These artifical borders of the mind were imagined and fabricated in the North and it need not be thrust down throats of the rest of the nation with the help of Indian imperialism.

Rejecting man-made borders and going back to the natural geographic borders, in which history was made down the ages, is the most logical and rational way out.

So can I kindly invite Dr. Jayatilleka, my friend, to clink our glasses to that as I conclude this book review.