The 'TIGERS' – a loyalty test for the TULF

By Mervyn de Silva

(July 29, Coloombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) ‘Rival Palestinian groups fight and kill each other’s members but this does not destroy the PLO or extinguish Palestinian nationalism’ said a veteran Colombo-based Tamil lawyer who counts a brief career in politics. If his implied parallel holds, does that make the TULF the PLO of a yet unrealized ‘Eelam’?

‘Whateve may have lead those young men to shoot it out in Pondy Bazaar, Madras, the gun-battle and the political consequences here have certainly caught Amirthalingam in the crossfire’ observed a Jaffna don who is sympathetic to the ‘Sutantiran’ group.

On June 2, the first anniversary of the burning of the Jaffna Public Library by policemen on the rampage, the TULF (and Opposition) leader spoke ‘with a heavy heart’, publicly deploring ‘disunity’ among the Tamils but claiming 90% Tamil support for his party. Mathematics-minded Jaffna may give or take a few percentage points but there’s little reason to doubt Mr. Amirthalingam’s knowledgeable head-count. And now that Mr. Vimalarajah has been released after so many long months under detention without trial, the sad victim of a law which still boasts the unconsciously ironic title of Prevention of Terrorism (temporary provisions) Act, the TULF leader’s heart may be slightly less heavy.

Student strike

Even so, the Vimalarajah episode, the student demonstrations in the street, the campus strike and three-day fast, and the obvious show of sympathy by Jaffna shop keepers who put down shutters reflect the deeper problems now troubling the TULF and its top leadership. Mr. Amirthalingam (and his wife) and Mr. Yogeswaran, the Jaffna MP, were involved in various incidents and encounters all directly related to the Vimalarajah protest campaign, and all very embarrassing personally and politically. The Amirthalingams went through some rough verbal flak when their jeep had to weave its way past a winding street ‘demo’ protesting against the continued incarceration of Mr. Vimalarajah, the final year Jaffna University student.

It is widely believed that it was TULF and Mr. Amirthalingam’s personal intervention which helped wrench what seemed a government concession. Vimalarajah could study at the Gurunagar base, and sit his finals. But no. Vimalarajah was of tougher fibre. He refused to sit his exams unless he was released or brought to trial.

Mr. Amirthalingam and Mr. Yogeswaran (probably because he is the Jaffna MP, he is closer to the young radicals than most others) did visit the campus during the three-day fast. Alas, too late. Mr. Sarath Muttetuwegama, the sole CP MP (and a Sinhalese from distant Kalawana) had already been there. Some of the campus firebrands were heard to say that no photographs should be taken of the fasting students together with the TULF duo! Then came the humiliating incident of the bodyguard’s vanishing revolver!

Why TULF leader chose to go into the campus with his official bodyguard, a sub-inspector, nobody knows but it did give the anti-TULF group a chance to stage a ‘show’ of high publicity value and demonstration effect. The revolver of course was returned. Anyway, it was clear that the wave of anti-TULF feeling in Jaffna among a new, if still small, segment of Tamils was running high.

TULF’s trials

Trivial as they may seem, the campus incidents do indicate problems which have much to do with the TULF’s currently undefined and ambivalent relations with the UNP, and its increasingly evident inability to satisfy a long aggrieved Tamil constituency of wich it still remains undoubtedly the most authoritative spokesman. And these problems which thrust the TULF right into the vortex of the politics of ethnic and party conflict in Sri Lanka are seriously aggravated by a government which, it is equally evident, is nervously hesitant in granting even the TULF’s minimum demands in case such concessions entail the unacceptable risk of alienating majority Sinhala sentiment in this pre-election year.

For so many months now the TULF has been negotiating a ‘political settlement’ with the UNP leadership, starting with President Jayewardene himself, who has to approach the matter from two angles:

(a) De-fusing the ethnic tensions which have bedeviled his government’s work ever since the riots of July-August last year and improving UNP-TULF relations in the hope that the (Ceylon) Tamil vote outside the north and east will vote as strongly UNP as the Indian Tamil vote is expected to do.

(b) In the absence of a TULF candidate at the Presidential elections, the vast majority of Tamils will vote JR as the least objectionable Sinhala leader.

DDC Issue [note: DDC stands for district development councils]

Besides questions like the setting up of ‘home guards’, the withdrawal of the army, the deployment of at least 50% Tamil-speaking policemen etc, the critical political issue is the powers of the newly created DDCs, now something of an empty shell. Without financial powers these DDCs will remain only nominally progressive experiments in devolution. The Trinco[malee] DDC learnt very quickly that it just didn’t have the authority to impose taxes on hotels in that flourishing resort area. If you cannot raise money, the DDC is little better than a YMCA or Student Council.

A sizeable section of Tamils in the north appear to believe quite honestly that President Jayewardene wants to grant financial powers to the DDCs as long as it does not look as if he is giving camouflaged ‘regional councils’ (or federalism!), which is precisely what the Sinhala Bala Mandalaya will start yelling if it half suspects it or is tipped the wink by, say, Mrs. B [andaranaike] who now enjoys the company of Dr. Neville Fernando according to the Island. (So much for the TULF’s 5 party bloc and Jaffna ‘honeymoon’ with Mrs. B.)

Vested with financial power, the DDCs can inch from genuine decentralization towards a measure of regional autonomy, and that will certainly be the kind of ‘political solution’ that can satisfy a majority of Tamils, at least for sometime. So the majority of Tamils in the north are backing the TULF and JR in the hopeful conviction that a settlement could also lead to (a) a less harsh military presence, (b) the ordinary Tamil going about his daily business in peace, and living with self-respect, and (c) a gradual equalization of opportunities (education, jobs) for the new generation of Tamils vis-à-vis. the Sinhalese in the south.

Such a lowering of the temperature (first between TULF and government, and then between Tamils and Sinhalese) would make conditions more difficult for the ‘Tigers’ who are in any case engaged in a furious fratricidal war of their own. A less active ‘Tiger’ operation would also put the armed forces in a better mood, and open the way to a phased withdrawal. This is the scenario in the minds of most thinking middle class, not too politicized, Tamils in the peninsula.

It is a scenario which is warmly supported by the Colombo Tamils because they are the first casualties in that vicious circle of violence and counterviolence we have known for the past 5 or 6 years: individual terrorism, state terrorism, racial outburst. Secondly, the upper crust of these Colombo Tamils, the group that wields economic power and political influence, is as much (if not more) pro-UNP as it is pro-TULF.

The trouble is there are too many irritants, drawbacks, and impediments for such a neat settlement to take place. Many Tamil youth groups, small in number but defiant in spirit, have never had much faith in the TULF. Some believe that the TULF’s ‘Eelam’ is more rhetorical than real, a short-cut to parliament. Even those who believe that it is necessary to have a solid working relationship with the TULF do so only as a tactic, only because the TULF has an enormous mass backing and because a parliamentary forum is also essential to the ‘struggle’. Some of these groups, notably, the Tigers, have taken to the gun. Others, biding their time, may now decide to fill the vacuum if the ‘tigers’, who are really non-ideological, engage in a mass kamikaze of sorts.

It is a new factor however that worries the TULF. With the protracted negotiations dragging on, with TULF passivity more evident, and the army presence looking more permanent, Tamil frustration and helplessness grows. The TULF is now being criticized from within its own ranks, and the leadership fears a slow erosion of its once well-established support base. A new radical group of highly respectable Tamils challenging the TULF leadership has grabbed the ‘Tigers’ issue as a ready-made cudgel to clobber the TULF. On whose side are you? With the government that wants extradition or with the Tigers who are ‘better off’ in Madras?

The new group includes Dr. S.A. Dharmalingam – uncle of the Jaffna MP, the highly regarded son of Mr. S.J.V. Chelvanayakam – the Gandhian father figure of the Tamil movement, and Mr. Mahesan – the editor of Sutantiran (SJV’s daily paper) and Mr. Eelavendan – the sacked Central Bank official. Mr. Chandrahasan left for Madras, a day after the arrests.

The Test

If the ‘Tigers’ are the ‘test’ imposed by the radical Tamils, it is the self-same test that Mr. [Cyril] Mathew and like-minded Sinhala patriots always insisted upon in confrontation with the TULF. Mr. Mathew, extraordinarily quiet after the President cracked down hard on the racialist mavericks in the UNP (they were ‘heroes’ the previous month) now finds time to say a few complimentary words about the TULF leaders….but only because what the Lanka Guardian called the revanchist ‘Dutugemunuism’ has slipped has slipped away into the hands of Dr. Fernando, the monks, Mr Siri Perera, the Bala Mandalaya, and is rapidly moving towards its natural ally, Mrs. B.! (It is their demand for the restoration of Mrs. B.’s civic rights which has alarmed the UNP…)

Mr. Mathew used to ask the TULF the same question…where do you stand vis-à-vis the Tigers? The more responsible UNP leaders, eager anyway for a deal with the TULF, make a more modest demand: disclaim terrorism, disown the Tigers. This the TULF does…but not unambiguously enough and in too soft a voice to satisfy the Sinhalese. Yet it is loud enough to incense the Tamil youth and TULF critics.

Tigers and Tamil Nadu

How quickly the ‘Tigers’ became a sensitive issue in the tangled politics of Tamilnadu. The story that the Sri Lankan ‘Tigers’ had chief minister MGR on the hit list may be somebody’s fanciful yarn. Yet it is no secret that the Tigers (and some of the TULF leaders) are much closer to Karunanidhi’s DMK than to MGR’s ADMK which has warm contacts with Mr. Thondaman.

But the poster campaign, the protest marches, the rallies and the petitions to Mrs. Gandhi about the Sri Lanka request for extradition [of Prabhakaran] had their effect on MGR and the ruling party whose Central Committee finally decided to take the same pro-‘Tigers’ line for fear of being outflanked by the DMK. As a result, MGR rejected out of hand the suggestion that these ‘terrorists’ should be sent back for trial in Colombo. Crimes in Sri Lanka? What crimes, he asked. Terrorists? Wasn’t Subhas Chandra Bose also called a terrorist?

Tigers and Foreign Policy

With his usual dry humour, President JR chose the Baden Powell Commemoration meeting to announce that ‘the Tigers have been tamed’. Will they turn out to be nice little boy scouts, trusty, loyal and helpful? Or will they just slip into their jungle hide-outs for the time being, while the gang war takes precedence over the battle against the security forces? But if this is indeed the end of the ‘Tigers’, will some other group move in to fill the vacuum?

Meanwhile, the Tigers, willy-nilly, have taught the UNP a lesson in the importance of foreign policy, a subject which Sri Kotha has traditionally spurned. Friendship with India has always been the cornerstone of JR Thought on Foreign Policy, whenever he did speak on the subject in opposition. But the UNP’s economic strategy, its heavy reliance on western aid, its economic model (Singapore/ASEAN) forced a gradual drift in its nonalignment ASEAN-wards. The Premier’s Manila announcement came only a fortnight after the first South Asian Forum met in Colombo. The pull was away from India and the subcontinent.

Foreign policy is not the same as national security, but a foreign policy that does not give high priority to security is meaningless. For small countries foreign policy is forward defence. While ‘security’ is often spelt out in ‘external’ terms (threats from outside), internal security is now a more worrying Third World problem. The Tigers could not exist, let alone thrive, without escape routes, without sanctuary outside, and a favourable political environment. That was Madras and Tamilnadu, and it is the Madras police who have broken the back of the clandestine movement.

[Lanka Guardian, June 15, 1982, pp. 3-5.]

-Sri Lanka Guardian