Forget the 13th, it’s all about the 17th Amendment

"The 13th Amendment was authored by India. It was thrust down our throats. It helped elevate the JVP from a political non-entity to a powerful force capable of launching a bloody insurrection that was in turn met with ten times its force of brutality, resulting in the unnecessary death of some 60,000 people in a matter of two years. Before that, India had a policy of training the LTTE."
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By Malinda Seneviratne

(June 23, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) There is a poster in the ideological wall. It has two words. ‘Political’ and ‘solution’. Now that the LTTE is gone and naked Eelam-speak is a thing of the past, separatism and Tamil chauvinism have down-graded the politics. The call is for ‘a political solution’. I agree. Where there are political problems, there should be political solutions. On the other hand one does not and should not resolve imagined problems or unrealistic aspirations. That’s where the Eelam dream died and that’s where any post-LTTE Eelam dream, watered down or otherwise, will also perish.

I am not really concerned about what the pro-LTTE lobby utters. I know where they come from and know where they can go. I take more serious what is written by those who have taken strong anti-LTTE positions. This is why I take seriously Dayan Jayatilleka’s piece ‘13th Amendment: why non-implementation is a non-option’.

I agree with Dayan when he says ‘The equitable expeditious treatment of the IDPs constitute the minimum requirement for Sri Lanka to retain (her) friends and allies in the face of a hostile Western project’. There is a lot of sense in his assertion that it is ‘the sole realistic option by which the Sri Lankan state, the Government, the Sri Lankan military and the Sinhalese can retain the support of the anti-Tiger Tamil democrats and through them the moderate Tamils on the island with whom coexistence and partnership are imperative’ although I would insert the qualifier ‘in the immediate future’.

At the same time, I find his conceptualization on the ‘imperativeness’ so to speak of the 13th Amendment inadequate. First, he says, and I agree, that the support of our neighbours (in particular India) is key in meeting the challenge of the Tiger Diaspora and the Western European bloc influenced by it. Dayan however slips in deftly what he believes to be key to winning this support. He says, correctly, that Sri Lanka’s relationship with India should be the cornerstone of her foreign policy, of her international relations, but adds that this is predicated on the implementation of the 13th Amendment. He does not explain why.

The 13th Amendment was authored by India. It was thrust down our throats. It helped elevate the JVP from a political non-entity to a powerful force capable of launching a bloody insurrection that was in turn met with ten times its force of brutality, resulting in the unnecessary death of some 60,000 people in a matter of two years. Before that, India had a policy of training the LTTE. Now if relations with India depended on pandering to India’s every whim, submitting to its directives and/or accepting its policies as facts of life, then in the very least it is nothing more nothing less than saying goodbye to sovereignty. I believe that foreign relations have to be something more than that.

The 13th Amendment didn’t fall from the sky. Well, the parippu droppings aside, it did have a ‘logic’ from India’s point of view. That ‘logic’ was based on perception of the Sri Lankan situation. But what was ‘situation’ in 1987 is not ‘situation’ in 2009 and will not be ‘situation’ 100 years from now. Nothing is cast in stone. ‘Federalism’ was a ‘foregone conclusion’ four years ago. It is not now. Things change.

Situations may change, grievances too and of course aspirations as well. Grievances, as such there may be, need to be addressed. They have to be stripped of the inevitable rhetoric that goes with the political territory. We still have not had that discussion. What are the Tamil grievances that can be pulled from a territory, a geographical diga palalai, which logically would necessitate a territory-based ‘resolution’? Is there a history (that can be substantiated) and demographical reality that supports such theses? It is quite likely that India did not do the research that needed to be done on this issue. India erred. To believe that India would stick with an erroneous conclusion out of arrogance and a misplaced notion of know-all-ness is to discredit the collective intelligence of that country.

If real Tamil grievances can be resolved only through the implementation and enhancement of the 13th Amendment, yes, by all means go for it; but if not, then it should be dumped where it belongs: the trash can.

The 13th devolved power to politicians, it didn’t sort out the problems of ordinary Tamil. The corrective could be an amendment to the 13th of course, but if the core text was based on erroneous assumptions, that would be an exercise in futility.

There is a problem in this country. It is a problem of citizenship rights. The resolution of this problem has been sidetracked by Tamil nationalism and the myth-making involved. The only piece of legislation that attempted to correct the larger citizenship anomalies of the country was the 17th Amendment, flawed and inadequate though it turned out to be. It is the amendments necessary to the 17th Amendment that should be focused on and not an out and out piece of rubbish such as the 13th Amendment which stands no scrutiny in terms of transferring greater sense of belonging, participatory power etc to the citizen, quite apart from the fact that it resolved imagined grievances rather than real ones.

Dayan also says that the 13th is ‘the minimum cost of accommodation between the Sinhalese who are the majority on the island and the Tamil who dwarf the Sinhalese outside it; the only way to balance the two aspects of Sinhala collective existence: a majority on the island and minority worldwide, as well as the dual character of Tamil collective existence – a majority outside the island and a minority within it’. With this Dayan has moved quite a distance from his general thesis that Sri Lankans should be at the centre of sorting out Sri Lankan problems. We have to listen to all Sri Lankans. We can listen to those who are outside, whether they be Tamils or Gujaratis or the Masai; we are not beholden to follow their diktat. Yes, they can exert pressure, but why ‘accommodate’ them? Why should the Sinhalese Sri Lankans accommodate anyone other than their fellow-citizens (and yes, the word ‘accommodate’ has all kinds of negative connotations as well).

The challenge is to remain Sinhalese, remain Tamils, remain whoever we want to be in terms of our identity roots, but also move towards a more meaningful sense of citizenship. The challenge is to work out the flaws of the 17th Amendment. We have had too many booboo men glaring down at us. I find it hard to believe that India is a booboo man and a South Asian Uncle Sam. That would be an insult to Dr. Manmohan Singh. And I find it utterly silly to think of the Tamil Diaspora as an entity we have to ‘negotiate’ with. That’s like the Parliament of Sri Lanka recognizing KP’s ‘Transvestite Government of Tamil Eelam’.

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who can be reached at malinsene@gmail.com

-Sri Lanka Guardian