LTTE, JVP and campus politics

By Nalin de Silva

(March 04, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Though it sounds as a banal statement, it is not a tautology to say that the LTTE and the JVP has differences as well as similarities. The LTTE is a product of Tamil racism that was created by the Dutch and the British and nurtured by the latter while JVP is a product of the Marxist movement in Sri Lanka. Both the LTTE and JVP have been established in order to fight for the "downtrodden" as recognised by their parental movements namely Tamil racism and Marxism. They both thrive on lies and it is difficult to say which organisation has the better machinery to create lies.

The LTTE has been sponsored by the western countries (including Japan) and India, but the JVP not only does not get that sponsorship, it is opposed by the same countries. The LTTE though may not be speaking for the Tamils now, at one stage it was thought to be the "boys" who represented the Tamils by the leaders of the so called Tamil moderates. On the other hand, the JVP does not represent the working class or the proletariat though the Party has some trade union leaders at least in their inner bodies such as the central committee.

The Marxist movement in Sri Lanka at least in theory wanted to establish a socialist state and was "preparing" for a revolution to defeat the capitalist class. They were mainly influenced by the Trotskyite movement and the leaders were trained in the tradition of the trade union movement in Britain, though there were exceptions from the very early beginnings. The Marxists in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in Asia, Africa and South America were not nationalists as such but were internationalists. In Sri Lanka these internationalists when fighting against the western colonialism of western Christian modernity appeared to lead national independence struggles in the eyes of a few nationalistic personnel such as the Sangha, the village teacher, the physician. However, in general the people who belonged to this category did not consider the "Marxists" to be nationalistic and thought that the UNP of the Senanayakes represented the nationalist movement.

The Marxists in general were doomed after the nationalist parties were established in the non-European countries. They had an existence only until at least a section of the people considered these parties as nationalistic forces. It was also clear that in Sri Lanka the LSSP and the CP were not interested in a revolution. However only a few were interested in a revolution and once the nationalistic parties were formed most of the people who had supported the Marxist parties left them and joined the former. In Sri Lanka the support that the LSSP and the CP had among a section of the population began to wane after the SLFP became a nationalistic party around 1954. Some "revolutionists" may still think that it was the coalition politics of the LSSP and the CP that brought the downfall of those parties but then the fact that the parties formed by these anti coalition "revolutionists" have not been able even to take off has proved that coalition politics is not the reason for the former to lose their attraction.

In the sixties the Maoist movement gained currency and the Maoist parties were able to attract people in the non European world with its nationalistic outlook. In Sri Lanka some of those who had been dissatisfied with the LSSP and CP for not being revolutionary and/or nationalistic joined the JVP that was established along Maoist lines. The JVP was not interested in Marxist purity and was prepared to "adopt" Marxism in the context of the Sri Lankan situation. It was consistent with Maoist politics and JVP was able to be more nationalistic than the Stalinists and especially the Trotskyites who were incorrigible internationalists. The JVP diluted or distorted most of the Marxist concepts in order to adopt them to the Sri Lankan situation. The proletariat that cannot be found anywhere in the world became the "nirdhana" (those without wealth or money) and the youth in the villages were able to understand those diluted or distorted concepts easily. It does not mean that the Marxist concept had been understood properly by the youth of the previous generation. I know that most of them do not know what dialectics is all about and they go on referring to a so called dialectic method without realising that this method has been imprisoned in a formal framework. Those who are interested may refer to "Apohakaye Rupikaya" (Formalism of Dialectics) that remains to be answered seventeen years after it was published.

The class struggle had been turned to a "panthi vairaya" (hatred) among the village youth and they were ready to take up arms against not only the state but the "rich" individuals in the villages as well. The village youth believed in the simple slogans of the JVP that mixed a vulgarised form of Marxism with nationalism and were convinced after five classes that they could transform the society in a one day revolution. The JVP leadership oscillated (vacillated) between their version of Marxism and nationalism and on occasions worked with the "Jathika Vyaparaya" as well. They could form an alliance with the NSSP and two years after form a front with the nationalistic forces. However the underlining feeling and hence the driving force among the members of the JVP was "vairaya" whether it was against imperialism, non national forces or the village mudalali. It was not only the mudalali that became their target but anybody who had a better social status than them. Though the LSSP and the CP may disown the JVP it was conceived in the womb of Marxism. The leadership of the JVP was against the leadership of their parent parties (Vijeweera had been a member of the CP before he joined the Maoist CP of Shanmugadasan and he had apparently been disillusioned with the latter due to the latter’s racist policies.) and it turned out to be a "vairaya" against them.

The Tamil racism at the beginning was against Sinhala Buddhist culture and the leaders had been influenced by the British since the nineteenth century. The Tamil leaders with the connivance of the British governors and other officials had wanted to become the rulers of the entire country staying in Colombo. When Chelvanayakam found that it was an impossible dream to realise he founded his Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi or Ceylon Tamil State Party to establish a separate state. He went round campaigning for a Tamil Eelam and in the early seventies Tamil youth probably having taken a leaf from the JVP strategy took up arms against the state and also the Sinhala and Tamil individuals. They were also beginning to be disillusioned with the old leaders and Chelvanayakam in 1976 with the Tamil youth adopted what was to be called the Vadukkodai resolution.

The western Christian modernity that teaches to separate issues had been successful in training the older generation who had their education in elite schools to separate politics and policies from personalities. Even today one finds people who had their education in the elite schools taking pride of the fact that they studied together with students from other communities and with other political views without losing their friendship. However over the years something went wrong as far as western modernity is concerned and the separation of political and other views from personalities became almost impossible for some students. This has nothing to do with segregation of students into different media of instruction but reflected a problem that modernity encountered with education in the country. This phenomenon could be found among the Sinhala as well as Tamil students. The majority of these students who were attracted to the JVP and the LTTE found it almost impossible to separate their views (political as well as other) from personalities.

-Sri Lanka Guardian