Tamil Polity and the silent majority

By Sathiya Moorthy

(January 20, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The LTTE, as is known, enforced the 'sole representative' status by successive elimination of other militant leaders and their cadres from within the Tamil community. Moderate political leaders met the same fate if the LTTE saw in them the possibilities of becoming a new focus in the 'Tamil politics' of the island-nation. Even academics and administrators capable of thinking on their own did not escape the LTTE's wrath. In doing so, the Tamil militant groups as a whole, first, and the LTTE, more pointedly, hijacked the political agenda of the moderate Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF). They adopted the 1976 'Vadukkottai Resolution' of the TULF as their own agenda, and made 'Tamil Eelam' their sole cause.

For achieving this, the LTTE convinced itself that militancy tinged in autocracy was the sole way out – and that anyone opposed to the LTTE cause was also opposed to the larger Tamil cause. It's anybody's guess at this distance in time on the fate that might have awaited the 'founding fathers' had they lived to see the motive and methods of youthful militancy that crowded out the ageing moderate leadership from the centre-stage. This would be particularly so in the LTTE context. At least those who lived to see the unfolding scenario fell by the blood-soaked wayside, and literally so.

With the Sri Lankan armed forces 'clearing' more and more areas in the Tamil-majority Northern Province, the question needs to be addressed, sooner than later: "How 'representative' is the LTTE, to speak for the larger Tamil community?" If so – or, if not so – who else do 'represent' the Tamil aspirations, sentiments and mood – and also command popular support?

Time was when the LTTE had arraigned to itself the status of the 'sole representative' of the Tamil-speaking people in the island-nation. The Tamil-speaking Muslims also fell under the category. The implication was that what was good for the Tamils, nay the LTTE, was good for the Muslims. Not any more, it would seem – not after the forced 'mass exodus' from Jaffna in 1990, not after the 'Kathankudy mosque massacre', both involving the LTTE.

The LTTE, as is known, enforced the 'sole representative' status by successive elimination of other militant leaders and their cadres from within the Tamil community. Moderate political leaders met the same fate if the LTTE saw in them the possibilities of becoming a new focus in the 'Tamil politics' of the island-nation. Even academics and administrators capable of thinking on their own did not escape the LTTE's wrath.

In doing so, the Tamil militant groups as a whole, first, and the LTTE, more pointedly, hijacked the political agenda of the moderate Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF). They adopted the 1976 'Vadukkottai Resolution' of the TULF as their own agenda, and made 'Tamil Eelam' their sole cause. For achieving this, the LTTE convinced itself that militancy tinged in autocracy was the sole way out – and that anyone opposed to the LTTE cause was also opposed to the larger Tamil cause.

It's anybody's guess at this distance in time on the fate that might have awaited the 'founding fathers' had they lived to see the motive and methods of youthful militancy that crowded out the ageing moderate leadership from the centre-stage. This would be particularly so in the LTTE context. At least those who lived to see the unfolding scenario fell by the blood-soaked wayside, and literally so.

It's not just the LTTE. No single party in post-Independence Sri Lanka could claim to have been the 'sole representative' of the Tamil-speaking people for any length of time. It had begun with S J V Chelvanayagam walking out of the Ceylon Tamil Congress to float the Federal Party not very long after Independence. That there was a cause for Chelvanayam to project, unattended as it was by the existing Tamil political leadership, should go without saying.

It is again anybody's guess what shape would have the Tamil polity of the times taken, but for the differences between Chelvanayagam and G G Ponnambalam. It was as much personality-oriented as it was ideology-based, if that's the right phrase. Even as the 'ethnic issue' has supposedly united the larger Tamil community, and not just in the Tamil-majority Northern Province, the divisions have only increased.

It was not as if the northern Tamil polity was united at any point in time. Chelvanayagam had to settle for a 'Tamil United Front' of different parties, and re-christen it as the 'Tamil United Liberation Front'. As irony would have it, today you have two factions of the TULF. The better acknowledged faction has merged its identity with the four-party Tamil National Alliance (TNA). It is no different in the case of other constituents of the TNA. There are also other parties that do not form part of the TNA, but are very much a part of the Tamil political pantheon.

From time to time since the 'ethnic issue' blew up on the face of Sri Lanka in the early Eighties – or, even earlier -- some or all of the Tamil parties have formed part of whichever political coalition that came to power – with one or the other of the 'Sinhala political majors', namely the SLFP and the UNP, heading the Government. The political parties of the Upcountry Tamils and the Tamil-speaking Muslim community too are not exempt.

It is not as if the mainline Sinhala parties did not ever have a political base to call their own in the Tamil-speaking areas. When LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran hit the headlines, the slain Jaffna Mayor, Alfred Duraiappah, represented the SLFP. That does not mean that the Tamil grievances of the time were non-existent or unrealistic.

In the 1982 presidential poll, the North voted for the SLFP candidate, Hector Kobbekaduwa, followed by UNP's incumbent President J R Jayewardene. It was only in Jaffna district that the Tamil candidate, Kumar Ponnambalam, or C G Ponnambalam, Jr, arguing the case of a 'separate Tamil State', came on the top with 40.03 per cent of the popular vote – yet, woefully short of an absolute majority, and the 56 per cent combined vote-share of the two 'Sinhala majors'.

Elections-82 happened full five years after the Tamil community had 'endorsed' the 1976 'Vaddukottai resolution' unflinchingly in the parliamentary polls only a year later – and elevating the TULF as the main Opposition party in Parliament. In a way, Tamil political leaders who often cite the 1977 election as a watershed in their fight for a 'separate nation' need to revisit the past to make an unemotional and impartial assessment.

At the height of the 'ethnic war' in the mid-Nineties, there was clear proof of a groundswell of Tamil public support for the presidential candidature of Chandrika Kumaratunga. More recently in 2005, the LTTE's enforced bar on the Tamil voters from exercising their franchise implied that it was afraid of the purported popularity of UNP UNP leader and presidential nominee, Ranil Wickremesinghe.

One recurring question that would crop up every time a political solution for the ethnic issue comes to be discussed would relate to the re-merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces. It flows from the demand contained in the 'Vadukkottai resolution' -- and enshrined in the India-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987 and the consequent Provincial Council Act, accompanying the Thirteenth Amendment.

The question emerges from the 2006 decision of the Sri Lankan Supreme Court, holding the 1987 merger bad in law. In doing so, the court cited a procedural flaw– in the President, and not Parliament ordering the 'merger'. It also cited the provisions of the Provincial Council Act, which stipulated that the LTTE should lay down arms before any such merger could be effected.

The procedural flaw could be rectified through a parliamentary law or resolution. The question would then arise if re-merger would be an option in the unlikely event of the LTTE laying down arms. That the Accord, and also the Provincial Council Act provide for a referendum but only in the multi-ethnic East was unacceptable to the pro-merger groups then. It continues to be so, now.

To set the record straight, there was no historical linkage of any great kind between the Tamil-speaking people in the North and the East, particularly in the political context. Though 'Standardisation' became a big issue for the Sri Lankan Tamils in the early Seventies, making backwardness of a district the bench-mark for fixing lower marks for university admission benefited the Tamils of the East as much as the Sinhalas of the South.

The 'merger question', if anything, is of a more recent origin. Political circumstances may have compelled Chelvanayagam to hold the first national conference of the Federal Party in the eastern port-town of Trincomallee in 1951. The TULF followed it up by naming Trincomallee the capital of a 'Tamil homeland' in the Vadukkottai resolution.

Even when Chelvanagayam wanted to take up the twin issues of 'disenfranchisement' and 'Statelessness', the Upcountry Tamils of Recent Indian Origin wanted to be left alone. They had earlier felt 'betrayed' by the established polity of the Sri Lankan Tamils when the issues had cropped up. In these years after the exit of Soumiamurthy Tondaman, the Upcountry Tamils are a divided lot in political terms.

The emergent differences involving sections of the Sri Lankan Tamil polity – and society -- in the two Provinces too did not start with the 'Karuna faction' breaking away from the monolith LTTE in more recent years. In the post-Independence era, more Tamil leaders from the North may have lost elections in the Tamil-majority areas of the East. The list includes the slain TULF strongman, Appapillai Amirthalingam.

Like in the North, even in the East, the 'Sinhala polity' has had its base among the Tamil-speaking people. As the 1982 presidential polls showed, UNP incumbent J R Jayewardene came on the top even in the Tamil-majority Batticaloa district, with 40.05 per cent vote-share. The Tamil candidate, Kumar Ponnambalam, came second with 39.29 per cent votes. SLFP's Hector Kobbekaduwa polled 18.06 per cent votes. Not only did the Tamil candidate fell substantially short of the halfway- mark but his vote-share was also well short of the combined vote-share of the UNP and the SLFP.

The less said about the multi-ethnic Trincomallee, the better. Here, the Tamil candidate obtained only 10.76 per cent votes, as against the UNP's 48.64 per cent and the SLFP's 33.87 per cent. Incidentally, it was possibly the last round of elections conducted with an updated Census figure, recorded in 1981. Subsequent polls that had returned LTTE-sympathetic Tamil lawmakers and others were held under the LTTE's care and scare.

This does not mean that the LTTE and/or TNA do not represent the larger Tamil community. It only means that neither can claim to be the 'sole representative'. Nor can the rest of them claim to be so. They all have a role to play. Collectively executed, it could benefit the larger Tamil community that they claim to be serving – than otherwise.

The message is clear. That the Tamil-speaking people in the country want peace, power-devolution and prosperity. They would back whoever is ready to promise it to them – but with a credible scheme for speedy implementation. If it is the Tamil polity they would welcome it. If not, they would not dither, either.

There is also a message in all this for the Sri Lankan State and the Sinhala polity --- whichever party or whoever is in power. Whenever a credible Sinhala leader at the helm in Colombo promised/offered a peace package, they supported it. It was so with the India-Sri Lanka Accord and the Thirteenth Amendment, the Chandrika Package, and later the ceasefire agreement (CFA). At every such turn, it was the LTTE's muscle power that changed the course of history, and with that the Fate of the larger Tamil population.

Now with the LTTE pushed to the corner, there is a case for the Sri Lankan Government and the Sinhala polity to come up with an honest package, addressing the aspirations of the larger Tamil community. It would be welcomed, and allowed to be implemented.

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The writer is the Director of the Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF-C), the Indian policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. The article an originally published by the Daily Mirror, daily news paper based in Colombo. - Sri Lanka Guardian