On power sharing with Tamils

By Malinda Seneviratne

(May 10, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) There was a time, a time that could be described as the heyday of federalism/separatism, when a vociferous set of shamelessly anglicized writers used the F-word as though its non-utterance would result in asphyxiation. Their writings were dominated by words like grievance, aspirations and traditional homelands. The arguments were full of half-truths, selective reference of history that could be substantiated in some way, and were deliberately Goebbelsian in temper, seeking to make the Eelam-claim a ‘goes-without-saying’ thing.

They did succeed in this, one must admit, but all that’s over now. Today we don’t hear the F-word. We don’t hear about traditional homelands. There has been a re-wording, a re-framing of things from that tiny sliver of the ideological spectrum. Today there is no talk of the LTTE being impossible to defeat. No insistence on talking with Prabhakaran. Today there is only fear that the Rajapaksa regime would in its moment of euphoria forget the Tamils altogether, substitute ‘development’ for ‘political solution’ and by and large hoodwink that community into accepting things as they are.

This fear is perhaps the main reason why these writers are today engaged in whipping up the bogey of Eelam being taken to another level of operation, i.e. the ‘diasporic’ avatar, and of course in rousing up the specter of the so-called Tamil Nadu factor. When one is invested in subverting the state and burying imagined specters of Sinhala Buddhist hegemonism, the first victim is reason. Politics takes over and soon after we have the crass indulgence in rhetoric. Stripped of all the frills, ‘The Aspiration’ now has shrunk much like the area controlled by the LTTE. Today the call is for ‘power sharing with the Tamils’.

Power, however, is not like a piece of cake that you can cut into parts as per your fascination or distribute as per the power behind the demand for share. You cannot slice the state in accordance with demographic data pertaining to various communities. The same goes for territory. You just can’t divide total area by share of total population enjoyed by particular communities. You can’t even engage in creative cartography by factoring in ‘majority areas’ without referencing history, geography and demography and of course the political ‘do-ability’ of such an exercise.

That referencing, that debate on claim and substantiation, has not taken place in any meaningful manner and until such time this is done such demands or articulation of ‘resolution’ are academically fraudulent and politically meaningless. It is no longer possible to scream ‘devolve!’ without answering the questions, why devolve, to which lines, on what basis in terms of history, geography, demography etc.

The reality of the LTTE allowed for much conjecture and extrapolation, especially since the perceived ‘reality’ included massive inflation which was at one time buttressed by effective propaganda. Not any more. On the positive side, the deflation of image to real life size does allow for a more reasonable engagement with the relevant issues, including the idea of ‘power sharing with Tamils’.

The notion of sharing power with the Tamils assumes that some non-Tamils are in possession of power and perhaps in quantities exceeding what is morally justifiable. The powerful are supposed to be the Sinhalese (some would say ‘Sinhala Buddhists’). I find the premise ‘Sinhala Buddhist President equals Sinhala Buddhist hegemony’ quite flawed. That’s like saying a woman as president would ensure gender equality or that a gay president would guarantee gay rights.

A more nuanced examination of social, political, economic and cultural factors would easily dismiss such mindless generalizations. Such an exercise would also reveal a multitude of social fault lines and corresponding marginalization. The fact that ethnic colours have deliberately been allowed to dominate the political discourse should not blind us to the more abiding realities of the political. The fading of ethnic colour would no doubt bring into sharper relief these other factors drowned by separatist/federalist cacophony. An insistence on the ‘ethnic hue’ in post-LTTE deliberations, I feel, would take this country into yet another cul-de-sac.

None of this should be taken to mean that there is no place for Tamil nationalism in a post-LTTE Sri Lanka. Nationalism, whether it is ethnicity-fuelled or nation-fuelled, can be a bad thing and a good thing, depending on how much of it is honest affirmation of cultural root and how much of it is political expediency. If one errs towards the latter formulation, then we are not speaking of grievances or aspirations, but crass ‘interests’ as my friend Anuruddha Pradeep put it recently. When interests clash, there are winners and losers, but most tragically, the true loser is the former formulation; that of affirming root, belonging and being.

Ethnic-wise ‘power-sharing’ has the added danger of deleting from the political equation the most significant element of political society. Citizenship. We have for too long ignored the importance of defining and entrenching the notion of citizenship in the affairs of the nation. Whereas power-sharing among communities is fraught with issues of historical claim, changing demographic realities and the untenable nature of geographic reference, that pertaining to investing the citizen with greater relevance is more crucial in the long run when it comes to nation-building, development and overall political stability.

The notion of power-sharing with the Tamils is nothing more nothing less than an obfuscation of what really needs to be done. It is a red herring not only for the Tamil community but for the entire population. If we are not citizens in the first instance, then we cannot be Sinhalese or Tamils in any meaningful way, and we cannot hope to live with one another and with other communities in a peaceful and beneficial way. If devolution goes some way in enhancing citizenship in general, then yes, it must be explored. But if the citizenship anomalies along ethnic and non-ethnic lines can be resolved in other ways (such as constitutional reform that is limiting on politician and enhancing of citizen) then that path should also be walked.

For all these reasons, the notion of sharing power with Tamils, which for some people is the be-all and end-all of resolving the political problems of this country, I believe is nothing more than the fascination of the intellectually slow and the politically devious. Not to be taken seriously unless articulated seriously and with relevant substantiation of claim and support of logic. The citizens of this country, regardless of identity, ethnic or otherwise, deserve more attention as per their location and relative relevance in the overall political structure and as a nation Sri Lanka can ill-afford to postpone the addressing of their grievances and certainly cannot use ‘ethnic’ as a proxy for their resolution.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who edits the monthly magazine Spectrum. He can be contacted at malinsene@gmail.com.

-Sri Lanka Guardian