By Michael Roberts
(April 22, Melbourne, Sri Lanka Guardian) In their moral anguish the human rights activists of compassionate heart took little note of this powerful element in the firmament embracing the northern Vanni. None of them spelt out the means by which the LTTE could be persuaded to release the people in their besieged territory (as pointed out in one comment in groundviews). Take Lionel Bopage’s first response in groundviews to my first Dilemmas article: "there is an urgent need for the involvement of an international body such as the UN, to create a safe passage to affected civilians and ensure their protection." The peremptory demand bears an evangelical strain: an expectation of some miraculous happening through the agency of the UN or some other international outfit. Even with my limited expertise in the field of international affairs, this seemed to be a utopian anticipation: the UN machinery is quite cumbersome, while the global politics bearing on penetrations into the sovereign territory of nation states is labyrinthine (as events proved).
I wondered to myself at that point if some of the leading activists would offer to make up a team that would combine with LTTE sympathisers of the diaspora, say, the Editor of the Tamil Guardian, in order to helicopter into LTTE territory under a white flag organised by local ICRC personnel; and there, in that forlorn context, attempt to persuade the Tiger leadership to lay down arms and abstain from any bargaining demands (the other object of the LTTE exodus exercise). "Let the people go" voiced by personnel who are not enemies could have been a powerful appeal. If such a successful emergency intervention had taken place at that point, then, of course, I would have been pleased to eat all my words.
Dilemmas focused on the immediate situation in early February 2009. As Bopage knows well, I remain firmly committed to "a political solution which genuinely devolves power to address the issues that gave rise to the war in the first place" (Bopage’s words immediately after the part-sentence that I have quoted). Arguably, though of course debatably, the military defeat of the LTTE may facilitate that process, if -- a big IF this -- Sinhala triumphalism and the chauvinist forces within the governing coalition do not climb to reigning position.
Political devolution and a process of development that equalises job opportunities for the people of north and east are both integral to such post-war goals. This urgent project of the immediate future must enshrine the fundamental rights of Tamil, Muslim and all other citizens of Sri Lanka in ways that do not render them subject to the whims of new elected governments and all-powerful Presidents. The Sri Lankan Tamil peoples’ struggle for dignity and self-determination from the 1950s, after, all, did not seek this status as a gift from the Sinhalese, but as the rights of citizens of Sri Lanka. The principle of a consociation of nationalities within the Sri Lankan nation, or a "new form of confederative alliance that gives scope to the majoritarian force of the Sinhala nation without subsuming the Tamil nation and Muslim community" (Roberts 2000b), a principle that rejects the subordination of whole (Sri Lankan) within part (Sinhalese), must, as I have insisted consistently (Roberts 2000c, 2002, 2008a, b and c), be a pillar in this new scaffolding.
The nature of the possible political settlement in the coming months is not the issue I raise here. That vital focus has already been signalled by GROUNDVIEWS in its appeal for suggestions on the subject (see one note by me – Roberts 2009e). Important suggestions have been presented by web-articles by Rajan Philips, Dushy Ranetunge, et cetera. As self-evident, the terrain I cover in the two sets of articles addresses (A) the cultural ingredients conditioning and motivating the sacrificial dedication to cause demonstrated by the vast majority of Tiger fighters -- not just the karumpuli; (B) the relationship between the LTTE regime and the Tamil people in the lands they ruled; and (C) the degree of coercion and/or popular participation in the exodus activated by the LTTE in the northern Vanni in late 2008 when the Sri Lankan army juggernaut got rolling and the LTTE mounted what must, in military terms, be considered a magnificent retreat in the circumstances.
Ironically, some GOSL spokesmen and some human rights agencies/activists seem to be agreed in their conclusion that the Tamil peoples of exodus were "forced" into moving with the retreating Tigers. This, in my view, is a sweeping generalisation. The fact that some 65,000 of these civilians have struggled out of Tigerland in the past three months is not proof of the government contention as generalisation.
That is to read the present into the past of, say, August-November 2008. We must allow for a change of minds. And I insist that the relationship between LTTE regime and people between 1990 and mid-2008 had some symbiotic strands and participatory faith/hope/ oneness. The kudumbum (m?v?rar familie) and the kinfolk of active LTTE cadres had stakes in the regime – rather like the soldier families settled on Saipan by the Japanese state. In both instances I refuse to believe that all the civilians had no agency and were mere ciphers responding to the dictates of the command state when they joined in the exodus in Sri Lanka or jumped en masse off Banzai Cliff in Saipan in mid-1944. Readiness to negate one’s being for the higher purpose of an ultra-nationalist cause is a possibility that I present as counter-point to views that treat all the people as corks on water. This is a question, a quarrel really, about agency.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bopage, Lionel 2009 "Colombo, English, Human Rights, IDPs and Refugees, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Politics," www.groundviews.org, mid-February.
Jeyaraj, D. B. S. 2009a"Top Tiger leaders killed in a major debacle for LTTE," www.transcurrents.com, 6 April.
Jeyaraj, D. B. S. 2009b "Theepan of the LTTE: Heroic Saga of a Northern Warrior," Daily Mirror, 11 April 2009.
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko 2002 Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms and Nationalisms, The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History, University of Chicago Press.
Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko 2006 Kamikaze Diaries. Reflections on Japanese Student Soldiers, University of Chicago Press.
Roberts, M. 2000b "History as Dynamite," Prav?da, vol. 6, no. ?, pp. 11-13. Also published in the Island Special Millennium Issue, 1 Jan 2000, pp. 43-44.
Roberts, M. 2000c "The Sri Lankan Identity," Lanka Monthly Digest, November 2000, vol 7: 4, pp. 43-44.
Roberts, M. 2002 "Hyphenated Identities," Lanka Monthly digest, August 2002, pp. 129, 131.
Roberts, M. 2008a "Split Asunder: Four Nations in Sri Lanka," www.groundviews.org, 13 January 2008.
Roberts, M. 2008b "Addressing the Nations of Sri Lanka," in www.groundviews.org, 27 January 2008.
Roberts, M. 2008c "Issues for Tamil Nationalism: Revisiting Publius," www.groundviews.
org, 24 March 2008.
Roberts, M. 2009c "Dilemma’s At War’s End: Thoughts on Hard Realities," www.groundviews.org, 10 Feb. 2009 and Island, 11 Feb. 2009.
Roberts, M. 2009d "Dilemmas at Wars End: Clarifications & Counter-Offensive," www.groundviews.org, 17 Feb. 2009.
Roberts, M. 2009e "The Needs of the Hour," www.groundviews.org, 1 April 2009.
Victoria, Brian D. 2003 Zen War Stories, London: Routledge.
Victoria, Brian D. 2004"The Ethical Implications of Zen-related Terrorism in 1930s Japan," AAR Zen Seminar, San Antonio, November 2004.
Victoria, Brian D. 2006 Zen at War, 2nd edn. New, York: Weatherhill.
Home Unlabelled LTTE and Tamil People: Setting the scene–II
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So you think Kumar David, Bopage, Dushy Ranatunga, and Tisaranee Gunasekera, Pakiyasoothy and friends will head for the No Fire Zone holding a white Flag?
That requires commitment and purpose.
These are all members of the empty-headed chattering class who absorb it on the rocks. They are NOT friends of the Tamils or the Sinhalese. They are the left overs of the colonial regime, and this includes people like Kumar David and Wikramabahu, and even Rajan Philips, by a dialectical turn of events where the left becomes the right, and right becomes the left, and all become confusion in their minds.
THey write article for each other and talk about it in the evening. Thus, for these people, the LTTE is a reflection of the "freedom struggle of the Tamils". Some aspect of this may have been presented as such by the Federal party, some 40 years ago, but NOT VALID TODAY. In fact, not since at least a decade or more. That too defines the age of people like Kumar David, and the time they grew up. Some of this applies to this writer (Roberts) as well. These people are OUT OF DATE, and out of touch, in their thinking. My generation of Tamils have lived in Colombo, and see what Karuna and Pilliyan and others may do for us, and what Thondaman Sr. managed to achieve for the up-country Tamils, without the confrontation started by SJVChelva and other oldies.
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