(June 16, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The assumption of office as EP chief Minister by the TMVP’s Chanthrakanthan, formerly known as Pillaiyan, together with the support of Hisbullah, should be regarded as one of the most momentous developments that have ever taken place on the ethnic front. Chanthrakanthan struck the right note in his inaugural speech when he proclaimed that he looked forward to restoring ethnic harmony in the EP and making it another Singapore. Furthermore, both he and Hisbullah have been showing qualities of statesmanship in handling the dangerously troubled situation in the EP. Should they succeed in their endeavours it will be shown that the restoration of ethnic harmony all over the island is possible, and furthermore that a workable model of devolution within a unitary system might also be possible. All of that would amount to a gigantic leap towards the solution of our ethnic problems.
But that of course is the best case hypothesis. We have to bear in mind a worst case hypothesis, and other possible outcomes in between the two. This is because several factors could militate against a satisfactory outcome in the EP. Obviously the LTTE would want to sabotage any satisfactory outcome at any cost. The UNP will probably want to play an obstructive role, after the accustomed manner of whichever of our two major parties happens to be in the opposition. The SLMC has already given signs of wanting to play an obstructive role in tandem with the UNP. The Sinhala extremists would probably want the EP Tamils and Muslims to fight each other, exterminate each other, drive each other out, so that the EP becomes a predominantly Sinhalese area. The Government itself, or a substantial segment of the ruling coalition, may go along with that strategy, depending on developments that cannot be foreseen.
The final determinant however may be whether or not the EP Muslims and Tamils really want to live with each other in peace, amity, and co-operation. The bad blood already there between them – the situation on the ground, so to speak – may make that impossible. A full-fledged civil war between them could ensue. That is the worst case hypothesis that I have in mind. If in addition the attempt to defeat the LTTE militarily gets interminably protracted, the international community may come to be disposed to write off Sri Lanka as "ungovernable", a failed state. India could then come to feel free to impose its solution.
The present situation is an extremely confused one. We know more or less what has been happening over the last few weeks, but not what they really signify. That is to say, quite often we know that something was done, but not by who and why. All that requires clearing up by the investigative reporter. As I cannot function as one, I will try in this article to do something else that could be useful and indeed necessary. I will focus on some of the fundamentals that underlie the problems of the Eastern Province, and I will do so mainly from a Muslim perspective.
My starting point is the rather exceptional relations of peace, amity, co-operation that prevailed between the EP Tamils and Muslims in the past, though there were occasional and infrequent disturbances between them. Usually in the traditional plural societies of Afro-Asia different ethnic groups lived apart from each other and interacted only in the market place, according to the famous thesis of Furnivall. In the EP, on the other hand, Tamils and Muslims lived side by side – with for instance two Tamil farms interspersed by a Muslim one between them – and they interacted not just in the market place but all the time. Their relationship was to some extent symbiotic. It was an unusually close relationship, though not perhaps unique.
How did that relationship come to be so disturbed, in fact practically destroyed? The broad answer is to be found in the travails of what is called "modernity", more specifically in economic development, the novel prospects for upward mobility, and the resultant struggle for scarce resources. According to that model Tamil-Muslim rivalry and conflict, nurtured by economic factors such as scarcity of land, can be expected to continue, perhaps resulting in outright civil war. But it is possible to think of an alternative model. Way back in the eighteenth century the West realised that wealth is not something of which there is only a limited quantity, something that is usually grabbed by the strong at the expense of the weak. On the contrary it is something that can be created and made to grow with the creative utilisation of natural resources, labour, and capital. Today the decisive factor has come to be seen as "knowledge". Chanthrakanthan’s reference in his inaugural address to Singapore – the pre-eminent economic success story based on "knowledge" – was apposite. The EP Tamils and Muslims can choose their economic model, and consequently their destiny, if they have the will, the foresight, the statesmanlike leadership, and provided of course that they can keep at bay the destructive factors that I have pointed to in my second paragraph above.
However, all that is at a somewhat abstract level. What happened concretely to virtually destroy the symbiotic kind of relationship that prevailed earlier? According to Muslim perceptions – which have now become a rigid orthodoxy – the LTTE suddenly decided to drive out the Muslims from the North at short notice, and to massacre the EP Muslims while at prayer in their mosques. It was apparently part of an LTTE drive to assert total Tamil dominance over the North-East. The actual antecedents to that ethnic cleansing have been forgotten.
The following is an extract from an International Crisis Group publication of 29 May 2007 under the title Sri Lankan Muslims: Caught in the Crossfire: "Security forces were implicated in several violent confrontations between Muslims and Tamils. One of the worst was an attack on the (Tamil) village of Karaitivu of April 1985, when Muslims youths, apparently with the support of the security forces, went on a rampage, killing several people and burning hundreds of houses. Thereafter, violent incidents became relatively common between Tamil militants and Muslims. Some Muslims were armed by the government for their own protection but they were also involved in vigilante action against neighbouring Tamils, provoking more reprisals."
I am advocating a "truth and reconciliation" approach to the problems between the EP Tamils and Muslims. Let both sides acknowledge the wrongs done to the other side as the necessary prelude to the reconciliation without which ethnic harmony will never be restored. Let neither side think of itself purely as the victim of the other side. I cannot possibly explore the subject in this article, but it seems to me that what I call "the victim syndrome" is one of the most destructive psychological disorders to which a human group can succumb, both self-destructive and potentially destructive to the other side as well.
I will now make some observations on the present situation. It appears that most EP Muslims feel that they were cheated at the recent elections. That has to be expected for various reasons, including the fact that there have never been entirely free and fair elections since 1977, except perhaps for the one held in 1994. I will not put down the reasons why I feel that the recent elections were free and fair enough. Instead I will point out that if the UNP had won the ground situation would have been just the same, and the EP Muslims would have had to face the same problems as they do at present. In fact their position might have been worse in one respect. It appears that the UNP and the SLMC are in favour of a North-East merger, supposedly on a temporary and provisional basis. The EP Muslims, Tamils, and Sinhalese are against a merger
The UNP and the SLMC want a decommissioning of TMVP weapons. It is a problem on which the EP Muslims must do some thinking. The European Commission delegation which came recently for talks had also expressed concern over the presence of armed groups in the EP. The Government statement on that was admirably succinct, pointed, and in my view unanswerable. Foreign Secretary Kohona had asserted the principle that only the government security forces and the police had the legitimate right to bear arms, and that all armed groups including the LTTE must be disarmed.
The statement went on, "However, he noted that in the past, particularly in the aftermath of the signing of the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA), which required the disarmament of groups other than the LTTE, members of these groups had been systematically and brutally eliminated by the LTTE." Would the EP Muslims want to see that happen to the TMVP, possibly paving the way for a reassertion of LTTE power in the EP?
I believe however that the proper case for the TMVP retaining its weapons has not been made out by the Government so far, though I stated it some time ago. It is generally regarded as a para-military group, which I think is a misleading description. The dictionary defines "para-military" as "having a status or function ancillary to that of military forces", which implies that it has been set up by a government or is under its control, no more in fact than a creature of the government. That amounts to ignoring the actual genesis of the TMVP. It arose out of the will of the EP Tamils – whom we used to call "Batticoloa Tamils" – to assert their autonomy against domination by the LTTE and the "Jaffna Tamils". It should be seen as a group fighting together with the armed forces to secure the rights of the EP Tamils in an undivided Sri Lanka. I see no case for disbanding it or trying to take away its weapons. Of course those weapons can be misused, but that does not invalidate what I am saying in this paragraph.
I come now to the Islamic factor in the EP. In trying to understand that factor the non-Muslim Sri Lankans in particular should bear in mind an important distinction, namely the one between the move towards a strictly religious fundamentalism which has no obviously discernable political content on the one hand, and the move towards a militant Islamic fundamentalism on the other. The non-Muslims in Colombo and elsewhere may conclude that Islamic fundamentalism is all the rage after noting that more and more Muslim females are taking to the strictest form of the hijab, leaving only the eyes open. I take that as signifying a need to assert ethnic identity because of a deep sense of insecurity. I know Muslim females wearing that form of the hijab who are devout orthodox Muslims with nothing of fundamentalism in their beliefs and practice. The situation is different in the EP where clashes have taken place between the adherents of a mystical movement and orthodox Muslims who seem to be strongly influenced by fundamentalism. In my view that does have a political significance for the Muslims, but it does not affect their relations with the Tamils.
Militant Islamic fundamentalism, in the supposed form of a Jihad movement, is coming to be much talked about these days, too often in highly sensational terms. The word Jihad used about what is going on in the EP offends the religious susceptibilities of many Muslims. It means Holy War, it requires a religious authority to declare a Jihad, and is not to be assumed by just about any group of young militant hotheads. Furthermore, the violent incidents taking place between Tamils and Muslims in the EP have behind them secular ethnic tensions which have no religious dimension at all. Another point to be borne in mind by non-Muslims is that the word Jihad could give the wrong impression that Islam is essentially a violent religion. Actually Islam makes a distinction between Jihad meaning a Holy War fought in defense of Islam and the "higher Jihad" meaning a non-violent inner struggle by an individual to realize his highest potential. In the moral and spiritual scale of Islam the latter has a higher value.
The truth however is that though the word Jihad is thoroughly inapposite, it has come to be freely used in the EP. It has been difficult to get a clear picture of what exactly is going on there. Definitely there is no single Jihad movement as such. Instead there seem to be several small groups whose members use the word Jihadis to describe themselves. There has been interaction for religious reasons with groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan – allegedly also with militant groups – and behind it all is supposedly the power of Saudi Arabia. Some of the Jihadis are armed. There certainly is a volatile and dangerous mix among the EP Muslims which can be used by extremists to foment something like a civil war. On the other hand it can be contained.
The final determinant however is whether or not the EP Tamils and Muslims really want to live in peace, amity, and co-operation with each other, restoring something like the symbiotic relationship that used to prevail at one time. To bring about that happy outcome they have to be able to withstand the forces that could work against it, forces that I have mentioned in my second paragraph above. They have to withstand also what looks like an in-built human propensity to violence and war. It was recognized and given enduring expression long ago in the Bible: "The Son of Man goes forth to war."
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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