Tamil-Sinhala rift remains

By Balbir Punj

(May 29, New Delhi, Sri Lnaka Guardian) What happened in Sri Lanka in the local Tamil people's battle for asserting their rights in that multi-ethnic country is a matter for all of South Asia to think over and draw appropriate lessons. Sri Lanka’s success was the result of President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s determination to end the menace of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam threatening the internal security of his country by resorting to random killings. At the end of it all, the LTTE struggle was a failure. Its human cost is yet to be computed.

All interventions by other countries, including India, for a compromise were rejected. The Sri Lankan Army had its own reasons for going for the kill as Velupillai Prabhakaran had tried to assassinate its chief. And Mr Rajapaksa had won the election on the promise of ending the LTTE menace.

It would be instructive to recall the last chapter of this battle as it unfolded in the context of the general election in our country. It was natural that the people of Tamil Nadu were distressed by television images pictures of thousands of Sri Lankan Tamils wading through the lagoons of Mullaithivu, dragging their women and children along, and seeking refuge in the open with no facilities whatsoever.

What surprised many in other States of our country was the sudden rush of sympathy for the LTTE and even Prabhakaran among Tamil Nadu’s politicians. AIADMK was a bitter opponent of the LTTE for decades, but now, Ms J Jayalalithaa was asking for the Indian Army to move into Sri Lanka to save Prabhakaran. The ruling DMK, too, was swept into this demonstration of sympathy for the LTTE, changing its stand of opposing the human bomb expert.

Suddenly there was a spate of demonstrations in the support of the LTTE in many parts of Tamil Nadu. And then, as suddenly as the demonstrations surged in Chennai, Madurai and other cities of Tamil Nadu, there was also a counter reaction, cutting this problem to size. The election results showed that the supporters of the LTTE had only marginal support among Tamil Nadu’s masses. When it comes to the crunch, militant postures and killings in the guise of ideology, do not find favour with India’s voters.

Prabhakaran perfected the art of developing ‘human bombs’ as a strategic weapon. Rajiv Gandhi’s killing was a demonstration of his brutality. Over the years, it is this cruelty that led to Prabhakaran losing any sympathy he may have had among the people. In the end, perhaps it was the systematic elimination of rival Tamil leaders and also the successive killing of Sinhala leaders like President Premadasa (once Prabhakaran’s collaborator in opposing the IPKF’s presence in Sri Lanka), that put off everyone, even the Tamils.

That violence does not pay, or even if it pays it only leads to more violence, has been proved true once again. If we were to analyse what happened in Punjab a similar lesson would emerge. In Jammu & Kashmir militancy is increasingly losing popular support — this was supported during last year’s Assembly elections and the recent Lok Sabha poll.

The end of the LTTE’s armed struggle, however, does not eliminate the root cause of the ethnic divide in Sri Lanka. The root cause is the extremism of some leaders of the majority Sinhala community and the competitive militancy they adopted to promote themselves. Fanned by political and ethnic rivalries, the Tamils who during British rule had been quick to take to English education and enterprise and had prospered, were treated as second class citizens. The principle of ‘2:1’ in Government jobs and university admissions, loaded against the Tamils, proved to be the breaking point - the ethnic divide deepened under successive Governments in Colombo.

When the United National Party adopted the ‘Buddhist only’ policy in areas where there were supposed to have been Buddhist temples at once upon a time, the Tamils were horrified. The writing on the wall was clear: They would be forcibly removed from areas near Buddhist Viharas that were to be resurrected, especially in the eastern province. From then onwards, there has been no peace in Sri Lanka.

Ultimately the Tamils were pushed into the northern region of Jaffna, driven out of the prosperous urban areas of Colombo and other cities. The Tamils of Sri Lanka have been residents of that country for the last six or more centuries, and are distinctly different from the labour that was indentured by British plantation owners.

A question now haunts the Tamils: Will the defeat of the LTTE encourage the extremists among the Buddhist Sinhalas to introduce more discrimination or will it lead to a fair arrangement for sharing power. In mid-1980s when the then Sri Lankan President JR Jayawardane, had sought Rajiv Gandhi’s assistance to work out a compromise power-sharing formula, a reasonable arrangement had been worked out.

But the LTTE sabotaged that agreement and the Sinhala extremists led by the then Prime Minister and later President Premadasa were not far behind in doing the same. Every effort at compromise throughout the 1990s and in recent years was blocked by the politically active Buddhist clergy and politicians.

The Sinhala leaders have also been seeking to play China and Pakistan against India, knowing well that it is successive Indian Governments that have been of great help to Sri Lanka. The other day the Sri Lankan Army chief disclosed that he had turned to China for sophisticated arms required to fight the LTTE after India refused to provide them.

The tendency among Sinhala politicians to raise the bogey of India may become a hurdle to a rational policy of winning over the Tamils. So, Prabhakaran’s end may not necessarily mean the end of the Sinhala-Tamil conflict.

(The writer can be reached at punjbk@gmail.com)

-Sri Lanka Guardian