Independent Thoughts on Independence Day: Tamil Politics in the Post War order

By Dayan Jayatilleka

(February 05, Geneva, Sri Lanka Guardian) On this 61st Independence Day the country and its peoples face a complex challenge. It is complex because it consist of seemingly contradictory aspects and calls for apparently antinomian qualities. This Independence Day needs to generate a tremendous emotional charge of popular support which can carry our Armed Forces like a tsunami over the last and toughest Tiger defenses, crushing all armed resistance and sustaining the military effort until the LTTE is destroyed as a fighting force.

We must also redouble our resolve that no outside force will prevent us from completing this task of reunifying our territory while eliminating the secessionist-terrorist enemy. Though there are manifest attempts to create a Kosovo type artificial “humanitarian catastrophe” via the Western media, potentially interventionist forces are overstretched militarily and financially or otherwise preoccupied with terrorist threats of their own.

We must commit to memory those who stood in our way and strove to prevent us from finishing this war which has plagued us, calling for a ceasefire even at this terminal stage, a slogan which can only serve the cause of the survival of the Tigers. These are fickle friends of Sri Lanka if they are friends at all. They are certainly not allies. On the other hand we must remember those states and agencies which did not attempt to retard, impede or prevent the liberation of our little island from terrorism, or bemoan our effort to do so. Except for some elements in the sub-region, we have been supported by the region and the vast continent we belong to, not to mention most of the global South and at least two permanent members of the UN Security Council. The support, from the tangible to the tacit, that we have received at this decisive moment in our long history shows us where we belong and who we are.

It is inevitable that national sentiment and public opinion will accord a post-conflict role to those who extended support to and solidarity with us, while disallowing or limiting the role of the hostile and the unhelpful, in the post conflict order.

The Tigers are shifting their centre of gravity overseas, to Tamil Nadu and the West. In that context, India and Sri Lanka must reinforce their security cooperation, now more than before. Any state which permits the assassin of a former Prime Minister and grandson of a legendary founding father, go unpunished, runs the risk of being perceived as a soft state and becoming a magnet for terrorist attacks. We must both learn the lessons of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The shared ideological provenance, the mutual interaction and cross-border commingling of the Afghan Taliban in retreat and the fledgling Pakistani Taliban, has triggered a revival of terrorism in Afghanistan and a surge of terrorism in Pakistan. Unless India cracks down hard on Tiger infiltration, infrastructure and influence in Tamil Nadu we are both at risk. If the West for its part chooses to permit the display of Tiger propaganda and cocoon Tiger terror cells, it does so at its peril, risking the osmosis of deadly example.

The Sri Lankan side must be realistic enough to recognize that the political price for cooperation with India cannot but be the full implementation of the 13th amendment.

What of the morning after victory? Once we win the quasi-conventional, large unit war, and while saturating the jungles with hunter-killer teams to ferret out the residual terrorists, we need to shift gear.

What is needed is a mutual realization on the part of both major communities. The Sinhalese must know the limits of the victory achieved, while the Tamils must recognize the extent of the defeat sustained. There must be no illusions on either side. The state – sustained by the majority-- has beaten the hard power of the Tamil separatist or ultranationalist cause. It has not yet beaten the soft power of Tamil separatism, which is global in scope and scale. One MIA may make up for thousands of Tigers KIA.

The only way in which the Sri Lankan state can beat the soft power of the Tamil separatist cause is by repairing its international profile as a law-governed model pluralist democracy, restructuring itself so as to offer the Tamils a political space regarded as fair by the bulk of the Tamil community as well as the outside world, especially India, while restoring economic growth throughout the island and for all social classes.

While Tamil separatist hard power could only be beaten by repression, by military means, its soft power can only be beaten by reform, by political methods. Is the state and are the Sinhalese capable of this shift of mode?

The State and its supportive majority must realize the importance of the global, the international as a unit of analysis, and the external as a dimension of reality, while the Tamils have to realize the importance of the national, the local, the island-wide as a unit of analysis and dimension of reality.

Which of the two are more important? Though each aspect- the international and the national—assumes a different importance over time and subject, the most important in the final analysis is the national, the local, the specific. Mao explains the importance of the internal over the external by saying that a hen may sit on a stone but it will never hatch, while an egg will, even if the source of heat is external. The external, says Mao, can only operate through the internal. As far as the internal factor goes, the preponderance of the Sinhalese and the predominance of the state must be borne in mind.

The Tamils have to sell the Sinhalese something they would be willing to buy at a price they would be willing to pay. The military defeat of the LTTE is not only the defeat of Tamil separatism, it also leaves no space for the older, underlying project of Tamil nationalism, namely that of Federalism. The inability of the old Federalism to stand up to armed separatism, indeed the continuum of Tamil federalism and separatism (Vadukkodai, the TULF), means that there is no life for the federalist project after the failure of the Tigers. It has to be recognized that not only has Tamil separatism failed, so have almost six decades of Tamil federalism.

This does not mean however, that the cause of Tamil autonomy has been defeated or that the case for devolution has no space. Tamil political discourse has to rediscover the heritage of Tamil progressivism. That progressive past had three generational layers: the Jaffna Youth Congress, the Marxist Left from the LSSP to the Maoists, and the Eelam Left. The Tamil Left of the earlier generation thought only of the island as whole but not as much as it should have of the Tamil majority areas. The Eelam Left thought of both the North and East and also of the island as a whole, which is why the term they chose was Eelam, not Tamil Eelam—for which they were criticized by the Tigers and the TULF.

What is necessary is the revival of two aspects of these three generations of Tamil progressivism. It is almost totally forgotten that the Tamil Marxists of the LSSP, CPSL and CCP (Trotskyite, Muscovite and Maoist) all critiqued and rejected the policies, ideology and slogans of the Federal party. Unfortunately, Tamil progressives today, mainly in the Diaspora, have forgotten this critique and the reasons for it, and have converted to federalism.

Also forgotten is the no less important fact that the Communist trend within the Tamil Left, which was the preponderant trend unlike within the Sinhala or Southern Left (an interesting asymmetry), stood precisely for regional autonomy, and after the founding of the Federal Party, indeed counter-posed regional autonomy to federalism.

While the Eelam Left could realistically conceive of an alliance only with an internationalist Southern vanguard or proto-vanguard (in reality, focos), the earlier Tamil Left, especially the Communists had conceived of its demand for regional autonomy as part of a programme for the broadest possible national democratic united front of anti-imperialist forces. It is this latter understanding of the need for integration with the Southern anti-imperialist, nationalist and progressive mainstream, that has now to be revived by a realistic Tamil politics.

The politics of exile hardly works in a functional if damaged and distorted democracy. If Diaspora-driven or off-shore sourced (Tamil Nadu), Tamil politics will remain a virtual reality or theme park. If they are pro-Tiger, para-Tiger or Tiger proxy projects rather than authentically post-Tiger/non-Tiger projects, they will be legitimately suppressed by the Sri Lankan state. What is needed is a grassroots, from the ground up, Tamil political project which is reformist, autonomist and simultaneously integrationist.

Tamil politics after Prabhakaran’s defeat must be governed by stone-cold Realism. Realism dictates that Tamil political leaders identify the political space actually open to them; understand its contours and boundaries. This is the political space on the ground in Sri Lanka, not in the suburbs of Chennai, London or Toronto, which are irrelevant except for the emotional gratification of the Diaspora. Tamil Nadu agitation shows no evidence of causing a relaxation of the resolve of the Sinhalese and/or the state; on the contrary it hardens opinions and shrinks space. As the case of Cuba demonstrates, a blockaded island finds unaffordable, concessions and compromises containing the slightest risk of the centrifugal.

The optimal conditions for the Tamil nationalist project were when the Sri Lankan state had morally discredited itself after July 1983, and India (not just Tamil nadu) was supportive of the Tamil armed movement. Those conditions have not been present for decades and are unlikely to return. Even in those highly favourable circumstances the maximum that could be obtained for the Tamils was the Indo-Lanka Accord and the 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, making for Provincial autonomy. Nothing further was possible, despite 70,000 Indian troops being on Lankan soil. Today and tomorrow, the struggle must be for the preservation of these gains. All Tamil politics must be in the context of the full implementation of the 13th amendment. Any slogan which goes further will not only be Utopian but may provoke a backlash and a rollback of even this space.

Tamil politics must concentrate on the electoral space that will re-open at all levels. This re-enfranchising of the Tamil people in a system of proportional representation will give Tamils considerable representation in Parliament. If they opt wisely to form a coalition with Mahinda Rajapakse, they can neutralize and even outweigh the influence of the Sinhala hard-line parties, ensure the full implementation of the 13th amendment, prevent any unjust legislation, push for the elimination of all forms of discrimination, and accelerate the economic development of their areas. If they ally with the unpopular, unelectable Rightwing Opposition of Ranil Wickremesinghe they will further damage his political prospects as well as their own.

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(These are the strictly personal views of the writer)-Sri Lanka Guardian