The trouble with the TNA

By Dayan Jayatilleka

(March 17, Singapore City, Sri Lanka Guardian) The sin of the Tamil National Alliance in the post-war period and the current electoral context is that of omission rather than commission. It has failed to qualify and de-limit its use of the concept of ‘self determination’ and thereby signal its full separation from separatism. It would be unfair
not to acknowledge the TNA’s significant shift and to denounce the alliance as committed to the cause of separatism. The TNA is not a hardcore separatist organisation. Its separatism during the war years was at the point of a gun, as my late friend DP Sivaram (‘Taraki’) used to gloat. Today its separatism is residual, tactical and opportunistic. If history offers an opportunity for a separate state the TNA will go for it or go along. Some elements within the TNA probably see themselves as working over the long term, for the separatist goal, and pray that the Sri Lankan state will not provide an alternative while others probably pray that the Sri Lankan state will in fact provide an alternative, thereby saving them from the travails of the separatist trajectory once again.

The TNA is caught between a rock and a hard place, or has chosen not to extricate itself from that spot. The pressures from the Diaspora make the TNA reluctant to formally abandon secessionism, which it retains in the guise of an unqualified invocation of ‘self determination’. This however, will place it at a disadvantage in negotiating with the State and place the State as a disadvantage in talking to the TNA. As myopically, it will place the TNA at a disadvantage in relation to a rising Asia when push comes to shove - however cordial its current dialogue with our neighbour India.

Self determination may be trendy in the West, but recent history has shown that Western support can easily be countered by any Asian state if it secures the support of the rest of the continent especially its neighbours. ‘Kashmir’ and ‘Tibet’ are the code-words which guarantee the aversion of the two major Asian giants to any notion of ethnic or ethno regional self determination within an existing state.

The TNA is ambiguous about the degree and definition of self determination: is it up to and including that of secession, i.e. of the setting up of a separate state? Or is it purely internal self determination, within the boundaries of Sri Lanka as it exists? The Oslo accords made for the consideration of internal self determination and federalism, but that was when the LTTE was alive and kicking, maintaining a state within a state ( thanks to Ranil Wickremesinghe’s CFA) and Tamil nationalism had a far stronger bargaining hand than it has now. All that’s gone now. The TNA would counter that it is quite willing to give up secession if provided with a suitable alternative, but that won’t do. Self determination up to and including secession or self determination without secession explicitly ruled out is no longer something that can be bargained with. Federalism is: the TNA can well say that it is willing to give up federalism or place it on the back burner for a specified or unspecified period in exchange for a viable alternative such as regional autonomy within a unitary Sri Lanka. Self determination is however something that has to be unilaterally abjured in its external variant. The TNA simply has to make a commitment that is unconditional and unilateral, to a solution within a united Sri Lankn state. This does not necessarily mean an unconditional unilateral commitment to a unitary form of state, but to a united, single country.

Self determination is an elastic concept and it has been debated as to which collectives are entitled to this right in full measure. Asbjorn Eide, UN expert clearly concluded that the Tamils of Sri Lanka, as a national minority or minority nationality, are not entitled to classic self determination but only to autonomy or at best , strictly internal self determination. Now it may be argued that Mr Eide’s views are irrelevant, for if the Tamils perceive themselves as a nation, they are, and there is some truth to this. It does matter that a collective perceive of themselves as a nation entitled to self determination and is willing to fight and die for that self image. That however is only part of the story. The other parts are that there is another notion of a larger Sri Lankan nation which is accepted as a legitimate entity by the international community and the narrower notion of a Tamil nation exercising its right of self determination runs counter to this. Furthermore, the Tamil notion of self determination up to the right of secession is contested by the Sinhalese, an overwhelming majority on the island. The third part of the story is that the Tamils fought and died for this concept and lost the war they fought for it.


The TNA must remember that the mere adherence to non-violence is a necessary but insufficient condition in most democracies. What is also need is a commitment to the unity of the country; an unconditional abandonment of anything that can be legitimately seen as a loophole for separatism. That certainly does not go for federalism, but it does so for unqualified self determination, as Sheikh Abdullah, who non violently advocated complete self determination for Kashmir, discovered during the tenure of that exemplary liberal democrat Nehru, and Herri Batasuna, the parliamentary representative of Basque separatism learned in enlightened European community member Spain. Let’s not even talk of the political space that would be available to a Kurdish equivalent of the TNA in secular, democratic Turkey.

The trouble with the TNA is analogous to that with the Federal party. The only way in which it could achieve its goals was if the South or a majority of it agreed, but the South never knew whether it was committed to the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam pact as an end state , a final status agreement, or as a stepping stone to federalism, and it never quite knew whether federalism would stop at that or whether the FP’s Tamil name, Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kadchi, or Ceylon Tamil State/Kingdom party, instead of the simpler, straightforward ‘Sandeeyam’ (federal) meant a Tamil Nadu like Tamil state within a federal Ceylon or a Tamil kingdom outside of it. The TNA is contesting the upcoming parliamentary election under precisely its old Federal party tag, the ITAK. It is incumbent upon it to clarify whether the A for Arasu in ITAK means ‘state’ or ‘kingdom’ and whether ‘state’ means autonomous region or independent state.

In short, the TNA has to demonstrate the firebreak between federalism and separatism, and that ‘self determination’ is not a bridge from the former to the latter. This is no Sinhala chauvinist demand; it only reflects a point made by the late Prof Urmila Phadnis when she wrote in her last work, that unlike in the ethnic politics of India, in Sri Lanka’s Tamil politics there is an observable and lamentable ‘autonomist-secessionist continuum’.