Remembering the Tamil Dead – one last time?
By N Sathiya Moorthy
A bipartisan US congressional resolution, calling for ‘independence referendum’ to Sri Lankan Tamils as the (only) way out of the ethnic conflict is this year’s offering on the 15th anniversary of the ethnic war that lasted twice as many years. Of course, there was also the UNHRC report calling upon the Colombo government to ‘ensure accountability’, the Tamil remembrance events both inside the country and outside, each group silently vying with the other to prove that theirs was a bigger and better show than others’, and the Sinhala-South displaying utter indifference and boredom, only to look for what was new and what was not.
This should sum up the plight of the victimised Tamil community from the past decades, which also gave it good in violent terms until they were so overwhelmed by the Sri Lankan State – which continues to the present. It may do so well into the future, who knows, until the last of the Sri Lankan Tamil (SLT) in the country has left the shores as ‘political’ or ‘economic’ refugee – that is their choice or that of the host-nations. The alternative is to accept subjugation of the Upcountry Tamil variety after the community was disenfranchised in the very year of the nation’s Independence – in which the SLT polity was in cohorts with what they since have been calling the Sinhala-Buddhist ‘majoritarianism’.
It is also the truth. Today, the SLT middle-class, urban and rural, wants to escape to the West, where their earlier generations had ‘fled’ (!), fearing racial discrimination, attacks and a ‘State-sponsored’ war. If they still choose neighbouring India, it is only as a launch-pad to escape elsewhere. On the other hand, Tamils in government-run camps in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, take a free ride to Sri Lanka, if and only if they are guaranteed a seat in a leaky boat that some human-trafficker had promised him, for a huge price.
It is the poor, both urban and rural, who are stuck in the land of their forebears. They have nowhere to go, no uncle, cousin or brother or sister in a western country, first to sponsor his trip, and then to feed him on landing there. Surely, these souls overseas, if they are already there, do not have the wherewithal to defend if their ward from home gets caught by the local immigration authorities, for violating whatever provisions of the laws that they had allegedly violated. Surely, they do not have the kind of networks and local community support system that is available only to a select few with the ‘right connections’ within the community leadership out there.
Great leveller
At the height of the Aragalaya protests that highlighted economic deprivation all across the country, the SLT community was telling their southern brethren how it was their own turn to go through it all, they having undergone worse sufferings, physically, mentally, financially, et al, for three long decades. What they forgot at the time and are coming to realise it now is the fact that just because the southern Sinhalas’ plight has worsened, their fate has not changed for the better.
They are however yet to acknowledge that whatever is the national cake, the best and large pieces would go only to the Sinhala-Buddhists in the south. Whatever remains, if at all, alone would be considered to be thrown at, at the SLT, Upcountry Tamils and Muslims, not necessarily in that order. Now, when the economic crisis still remains at the individual’s level and the nation is making do with whatever it can get, month by passing month, if not day by day, as used to be the case during the Aragalaya, the SLT community and the rest are not getting much out of it.
You cannot blame the political class in a democracy, not that it is a politically sound or morally acceptable argument. The leader gives only the voter who backs him whatever he can when he has. The Tamils are not the favourites of the Sinhala-Buddhist political leadership, whatever their outwardly promises and proposals.
No-brainer
President Ranil Wickremesinghe is still seen as the most ‘liberal’ of all liberal Sinhala leaders but under him, the government has only followed the divisive governmental agendas of people-ousted predecessor Gotabaya Rajapaksa, considered a rabid Sinhala majoritarian. His breakaway political rival Sajith Premadasa, who is a contender for the presidency in the national elections later this year, has promised the full implementation of the 13th Amendment that confers a lot of rights to the Tamils, but only on paper.
However, Premadasa’s subjective class that he would do it by ensuring the support of the Sinhala majority – or, words to that effect – is a dampener. So have been the vague promises of JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake — another presidential aspirant who has been the front-runner in pre-election polls through the past months — during his two visits to the Tamil North, in recent months. He sounded vague on resolving the ethnic issue. At best, he would only talk about ‘Sri Lankan nationalism’, which in effect is a no-brainer.
That leaves the Rajapaksas, the war victors for the Sinhala-South. They are the official under-writers of the Ranil presidency since the exit of one of them, Gota R. They are thinking about backing relatively more acceptable Ranil in the presidential elections and are also talking about fielding a candidate of their own. If they have a greater vote-share than pollster-predicted five per cent, and it is also substantial, it is the ‘Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarian’ constituency that had gone President Mahinda’s way through his decade-long, two-term presidency from 2005.
Great consolidator
The real problem however for the Tamils are the Tamils themselves. In death, LTTE’s Prabhakaran has proved what a great consolidator he was, even if he achieved it all only at gun-point. Looking back, his most moderate predecessor S J V Chelvanayagam, the ‘Tamil Gandhi’ for the islanders, began embracing the ‘separate state’ solution only when he was unable to keep the flock together – and the youth of the day began splintering away, in ideological or casteist ways. In some cases, as in the rest of South Asia, ideology and caste went together.
It is thus often said, especially by Sinhala nationalist academics, how the LTTE killed more Tamils than they killed Sinhalas, or Sinhalas killed Tamils during the war. But the last-battle of the conclusive ‘Eelam War IV’ seemed to have reversed the argument for good.
Yet, the Tamils and their international backers are yet to respond why they have taken great pains to bury the fact of the Sri Lankan armed forces saving close to 300,000 Tamil civilians that the LTTE was holding as ‘human shield’ at gun-point. The way the Sri Lankan state, the armed forces and the supposedly impartial Colombo civil society have shied away from talking about it even once in the past ten years or so, raises the question if that event happened at all – as even international agencies, governments and the media had reported at the time, February-March 2009.
Economic solution
Yet, a decade and a half after the war, what the Sri Lankan Tamils need is not an SJV and not certainly a Prabhakaran. They need a leader well-versed in political economy and social reconstruction, both inch by inch, brick by another brick. If the other two failed, it was because neither new economics though both acknowledged that the Tamils’ denial would lead only to their economic ruin – which they wanted to avert and alleviate.
Between them, SJV was an argumentative politician and Prabhakaran was a gun-toting self-styled ‘Tamil nationalist’. Both thought that they (alone) had all the answers for the problems of their people – but neither had. Even on the moderate front, Appapillai Amirthalingam who succeeded SJV and was shot dead by the LTTE for being the other power-centre within the Tamil society whom the international community heard more, and his successor R Sampanthan, were political manipulators passing off as leaders in their limited ways.
Sampathan, or ‘Sam’ to his western friends, was followed by a man of his choice. Justice Wigneswaran, like the rest of them all, proved to be a huge hollow, both as a politician and even more as a political administrator. Elected Northern Province’s only post-war chief minister in 2013, he wasted five full years of his term fighting shadows, whether nearer home in Jaffna or in distant Colombo. He left behind a legacy that is disastrous and non-performing, when the community wanted him to do what he was not qualified to do – delivery.
Common candidate
Today, when the Tamils need unity more than anytime during the post-war years, their political leaders are divided and religious leaders are inching towards hijacking the centre-stage – a divisive agenda. According to some reports, egged on by rich and casteist Diaspora groups and individuals, some Tamil religious leaders are aiming at consolidating their social power as a tool to reclaim the political power for their hidden masters, overseas. If it took a serious turn, it could then lead to a religious-divide that could weaken the Tamil consolidation of the previous decades.
Right now, the SLT polity is divided sixes and sevens, on a decision to field a common Tamil candidate for the presidential poll, if only to send out a message to the rest of the nation and to the international community, which uses them at will – and which, they too use by choice but are able to do it only occasionally or rarely. Intertwined into it all is the imminent split of the mainstay ITAK – or, what used to be the mainstay – whose ‘supreme leader’ Sampanthan has once again taken sides in the ‘common candidate’ contest drama. He is old and sick, yet, by taking the centre-line in the ego issue flowing out of the unprecedented ITAK presidential poll in decades, he has denied the opportunity of playing the honest broker.
Sampanthan’s open call for not fielding a common candidate, that too without outlining his rationale as the other side has done, only identifies himself with one of his other post-war finds in lawyer-parliamentarian, M A Sumanthiran. As is known, Suma lost the party presidential poll to fellow-MP and a hard-liner, S Sritharan. While he may have done well to play along, the other side also needs to remember that Sumanthiran too polled a substantial number of votes – votes of traditional moderates who had all along formed the core of the ITAK leadership and support-base.
Where do the SLT community and polity go from here? Apart from ITAK, there are multiple groups, of whom those like TELO boss Selvam Adaikalanathan seems too eager to usurp what was Sampanthan’s once-dominant place without his kind of reach, out-reach and acceptance, both inside the Tamil community and outside, the international community included. His unilateral statements on a common candidate may not go down well with his long-term colleagues outside his subservient party that does not count much even otherwise.
All of it has only one message; It is not impossible that by the time they observe the 16th anniversary of the war, there may not be even an apology from a Tamil polity – whether or not there is a common candidate. That is precisely what the Sinhala nationalists are waiting for – for the SLT community and polity to weaken itself more than in the previous year, post-war, fighting among themselves and having no common and clear approach and leadership to take on the Sri Lankan State onslaught, now or ever!
(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)
