Undermining the TNA?

“The TNA is already there, and the Diaspora or none other need to invent anyone new. The TNA, along with other Tamil parties back home, knows what is happening on the ground, and what is achievable – and in what all ways and through what all means.”
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By N Sathiya Moorthy

(September 28, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) The revived interest of the international community in the ‘IDPs issue’ in Sri Lanka should come as a relief to all those wanting them resettled early on. It helps keep the Sri Lankan Government to be on its toes in meeting the six-month deadline that it had set for itself. At the same time, there should be a method to these efforts lest it should end up undermining the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which has commenced talks with the Government on precisely the same issue.

The IDP issue is alive and immediate, unlike the larger political concerns and aspirations of the Tamil people. For the TNA, representing all those sections of the Tamil polity not identified with the Government, it has become the first issue on which to commence talks with the Government in the post-war era. It has also thus become the first issue for the TNA to test the Government’s will and willingness.

In a way, it is the international pressure on the one hand, and the TNA’s dialogue nearer home that is expected to do the trick. However, in the weeks after the TNA began talks – and only the first round is over, though with a promise of a second one at the very least – representatives of foreign governments and international agencies, starting with the UN and its affiliates have been harping on the same subject in meetings with Sri Lankan Government leaders, both in Colombo and in global capitals.

In doing so, the global community should take care to ensure that it does not overdo things in a way that the Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa comes under greater internal pressure on what is increasingly becoming an ‘externalised issue’ all over again. The gains of the pressure thus exerted on human rights and humanitarian issues, both from the end-game of the war and in the IDP camps, should not end up being lost in a new wave of old suspicions between ethnicities and communities inside Sri Lanka

As is known, hard-line sections from with the Sinhala polity and society have often charged their Tamil counterparts with seeking to ‘internationalise’ the issue at every turn – and thus also charging them with complicating the issues on hand beyond recognition.

It is not the whole truth, as the fact remains that no solution was forthcoming when the ‘ethnic issue’ remained an internal affair of Sri Lanka, then Ceylon.

It is not as if the internationalisation of the issue has helped, either. The Tamils have also understood it, particularly given the loss and destruction that three decades of war entailed without any great gains to show, by way of results.

The TNA’s willingness and interest in honouring the invitation for talks extended repeatedly by President Rajapaksa should be seen in this context.

That being the case, there is a greater need now for the stakeholders from within Sri Lanka to engage in a dialogue that would help them sort out all issues on the ethnic front for all time to come. It is not going to be easy – but it is not going to be difficult, either, if they put their heart into it. Where there is will, as they say, there is a way.

As often said, given the post-war euphoria rightfully created in the Sinhala society, no one can stop the Rajapaksa leadership from giving the Tamils their legitimate due(s). Nor can the TNA, which was outside the pale of governmental engagement until the war was over, afford to let down the larger Tamil community in its hour of grave crisis and confusion.

Those sections of the international community that is taking up the larger Tamil cause in general, and the IDP issue in particular, should be alive to the ground situation in Sri Lanka.

Their efforts should be aimed at promoting the dialogue between the stakeholders in Sri Lanka in a way that produces tangible results on the ground.

The same applies to the vociferous Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora, which seems getting increasingly divided in the weeks and months after the war. Earlier divisions of the kind were reflective of the conceptual differences within the Sri Lankan Tamil society and polity, represented often by their one-time militant youth. The Diaspora discourse on the subject often reflected this.

There is no denying the lead-role played by the Diaspora in internationalising the ethnic issue, and even arming and training the Tamil youth in the art of war.

In the process, the Diaspora found – and also contributed to -- the leadership of the larger Tamil movement passing on to the militant youth back home, with their voice being stifled with as much increasing regularity as the moderate voice nearer home was stuffed out.

It is thus that the Diaspora ended up playing second fiddle to the LTTE leadership – and doing nothing more, either by way of guiding the movement, or introspecting on its behalf, as used to be the case once upon a time. Today, once again, the Diaspora divisions are not over political philosophies but over processes.

This may have to change in the changed circumstances in which the Diaspora finds itself – as is the Tamil community that they have left behind in Sri Lanka.

To begin with, the Diaspora has to understand that all those global calls for ‘war crimes tribunals’ and the like on Sri Lanka could hurt them even more.

Already, there are suggestions that it was not the Diaspora that used the local polity in host countries, but was the other way round. A divided Diaspora with a weakened will can end up handing over the ethnic issue on a platter to all those who want to use it to beat the Sri Lankan State with – and achieve nothing much for the Tamil people. Trade-off is the name of the game in global diplomacy.

More importantly, the Diaspora -- whose interest in returning home or re-investing their large overseas earnings in the Tamil areas of Sri Lanka during the CFA period was not all that encouraging -- should accept that reality.

They should leave the Tamil issues in the country to be handled by the moderate local leadership that shares the pains and sufferings of the Tamil people. Their mistake last time was to hand it over to a monolithic militant leadership that would brook no opinions, leave alone dissent.

The TNA is already there, and the Diaspora or none other need to invent anyone new. The TNA, along with other Tamil parties back home, knows what is happening on the ground, and what is achievable – and in what all ways and through what all means.

The Diaspora, too, thus needs to ensure that neither its emerging divisions, nor its excessive campaigns end up undermining the TNA or its efforts to restore normalcy to the lives of the Tamils back home, and honour and dignity to those lives.

[Editor's Note: The writer, director of the ORF (Chennai chapter), and contributor to the Daily Mirror , Colombo based daily, where this piece appears]

-Sri Lanka Guardian