“For India, or any other country or organisation to get involved in the Sri Lankan affairs, it is not enough that there is a consensus among the Tamil parties and groups, on whom they want – but they should also arrive at a consensus on what they want. It would require a greater and larger consensus from within the ‘Sinhala South’, again on who it should be, what it should be and how it should be.”______________________
Read Part 01
by N Sathiya Moorthy
(April 29, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) War and violence in Sri Lanka have come a long way, since it all commenced in the early Eighties. So has the Indian involvement in trying to find an amicable political solution, and helping to implement it on the ground. From direct political and military involvement of the Eighties, New Delhi’s role in Sri Lanka is today confined to subtle diplomatic measures and initiatives aimed mainly at mitigating the sufferings of the Tamil-speaking community in the country.
It is not as if a more positive approach by the LTTE would have helped to bring around New Delhi to take the peace initiative all over again years after the ‘Rajiv Gandhi assassination’. Instead, the on-again-off-again LTTE criticism of the Indian Government reflects a mindset and method that leaves little scope for evoking trust and confidence in the organisation.
On the moderate political front, the LTTE-sympathetic Tamil Nationalist Alliance (TNA), which has the single largest number of 22 members for any party/group of Tamil-speaking people in the Sri Lankan Parliament, remains a hostage to the circumstances. There is of course truth and validity in the TNA’s submissions that New Delhi cannot forsake the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement of 1987. However, they have let ground realities overtake principled perceptions. With each passing day now, the ground realities dictate that putting the clock back may have become more cumbersome than on the earlier day. The May 10 Provincial Council election in the de-merged East, while debatable, is only a pointer.
As is known, all other political parties other than the TNA are participating in the polls. The list includes the political parties representing the numerically substantial Tamil-speaking Muslim community, and their non-Muslim brethren in the Province. There is also an equal number of Sinhala-Buddhists in the East, whose claims to be original inhabitants of the East is however contested by the likes of the TNA.
At the same time, it is essential for the party to ask itself if the Sri Lankan Tamil community and polity are any more ready to abide by the Indian commitments for and on their behalf than they were at the time of the Indo-Sri Lanka For India to get involved, if ever, in the aborted peace process in the midst of the pending ‘Rajiv Gandhi assassination case’, in which Prabhakaran is the main accused, a political face like the TNA alone would help. The vast experience of the TNA leadership in politics and public affairs of the Tamil community, including the early negotiations processes on the ethnic issue, should keep the Tamil community in good stead.Yet at the Oslo conference organised by the Art of Living group, Vaiko, and not any TNA leader – not to speak of any member of the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora -- was seen as speaking for the Tamil community in the island-nation. He also interacted with Norwegian peace facilitators, obviously at the instance of the Sri Lankan Tamils at large, if not for the LTTE – but not certainly for the Government of India.
At the Oslo conferencer, Norwegian facilitator Jon Hanssen-Bauer declared that his country favoured ‘internal settlement’, to which the LTTE had committed in an early round of talks before the CFA became possible. Norway also seems to have come around to acknowledging the current Indian position that a future peace settlement in Sri Lanka should address the concerns of ‘all communities’, including the Tamils.
Where does that leave India? Media reports in recent times claimed that India was in fact behind the Norwegian facilitation, to begin with. Maybe, India did not have any reservations to Norway or any other member of the international community taking the initiative where it had burnt its fingers already, but did it automatically flow from this that New Delhi had invited Oslo to try revive the peace process in Sri Lanka? If so, who then invited/involved Japan, which too tried its hand at one stage – or ‘sounded out’ a host of other nations that had considered the possibility, or are possibly waiting on the wings, to do so, now or later?
After talks with Jon Hanssen-Bauer and Minister Eric Solheim, who heads the Norwegian peace efforts in Sri Lanka, Vaiko called upon New Delhi to pressure Colombo into finding a workable solution. For his part, Jon Hanssen-Bauer also said that India as the “best placed regional power to actually help Sri Lanka” would play a “decisive role” in solving the ethnic crisis.
For India, or any other country or organisation to get involved in the Sri Lankan affairs, it is not enough that there is a consensus among the Tamil parties and groups, on whom they want – but they should also arrive at a consensus on what they want. It would require a greater and larger consensus from within the ‘Sinhala South’, again on who it should be, what it should be and how it should be.
For now, the APRC process has provided a platform for trying to evolve a ‘southern Sinhala consensus’, though it also includes a spate of political parties representing Tamil interests, including the Muslims and the ‘Malayaha Tamils’.
It is in also this context, APRC-APC Chairman Tissa Vitharana’s reiteration on the existence of a ‘consensus’ on 90 per cent of the power-devolution issues assumes significance. It does not stop there. President Rajapakse’s decision on the revival of the Thirteenth Amendment having kick-started a controversy, it may be time for the Government to reassure the stake-holders that it would stand by the APRC recommendations and proceed to the next stage – of involving Parliament and civil society, as well, in the consultative and consensus-building process.
For its part, the ruling SLFP has acknowledged the Thirteenth Amendment route of the erstwhile Government of late President J R Jayewardene, and thus accepted Province-centric power-devolution the ‘Prelude’ to a political settlement. Acknowledging in essence the current position of the Government, the rival UNP to which the later Jayewardene belonged, is now contesting the Provincial Council elections in the de-merged East.
Minister Vitharana has indicated that he is still in touch with the UNP, and expressed the hope that the GoP of Sri Lanka would re-enter the APRC process. Yet, the initiative for this may lie in President Rajapaksa, whom the UNP has not forgiven for splitting the party only weeks after the two parties had signed a MoU, to work together on the peace front.
If there is thus a southern consensus on what it should be that the Sri Lankan Government could offer, then it is half the battle won. The need for a facilitator, leave alone a negotiator, would then be next to nil, so to say. India has cause for concern on this score, and also has a lot to offer by way of multi-ethnic politico-administrative experience. The Government of India, with Sonia Gandhi’s Congress Party heading the ruling coalition, had welcomed the Colombo decision to implement the Thirteenth Amendment, when announced in January this year. More recently in Colombo, former Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha, belonging to the Opposition BJP, expressed support for the measure. For years now, independent of whichever party is in power in New Delhi, the Government of India has also reiterated the need for a negotiated settlement within a united Sri Lanka, holding that no military solution was possible to the ethnic strife.
The consistency in the continuing Indian perception and approach to the Sri Lanka’s ‘national problem’ cannot be denied. The inconsistency is on the other side, where different stake-holders in Sri Lanka keep speaking in different voices at different times, and to different people.
In a Tower of Babel, India can be expected only to try and make some sense out of the cacophony and keep its counsel to itself. Is anyone, out there, listening?
(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), the Indian policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. The views expressed here are those of the writer and not of the Foundation. email: sathiyam54@hotmail.com. Blog at: http://chanakyam.blogspot.com )
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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