Dayan
Jayatilleka replies to Prof Peter Schalk
( November 19, 2012, Paris, Sri Lanka Guardian) My
last conversation with Prof Peter Schalk was in the faculty dining room at
Georgetown University in the fall of 2005, when I was a visiting professor at
the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University in
Washington DC. We were speaking at seminar on conflict in the Asian region
hosted by the East–West Centre of the University of Hawaii. At brunch I believe
it was, I reiterated with emphasis, to Prof Schalk what I had said at the
seminar, namely that the Tigers strategic military achievement was unimpressive
to me from a comparative historical point of view; that they were clearly
inferior as an irregular fighting force to the Hezbollah for one, and that the
next war, which was imminent, could and would result in the military defeat of
the LTTE. This, I might add, was before the election of Mahinda Rajapaksa as
President of Sri Lanka. I made the same points as a panellist at a
seminar hosted by the Georgetown Centre for Strategic and International
Studies, roughly around the same time.
Now Prof Peter Schalk makes a critique of my
presentation at the CNRS in Paris. He goes further, and criticises that
prestigious institution, the chair, the other distinguished panellists, an
eminent scholar who spoke from the audience, and the audience itself. The
problem then arises: why on earth didn’t he make these points at the seminar
itself? Why didn’t he debate me and thus try to convince the audience? Why, in
fact, did he remain utterly and absolutely silent? Indeed I didn’t notice that
he was in the room, and know that he had been present only when reading his
diatribe on Tamilnet.
Prof Schalk’s main objection seems to be that I
advocated autonomy within a unitary state. His main contention seems to be that
this is, by definition, a structural impossibility. He also claims that
therefore, no social scientist would have advocated the solution that I did.
Since Prof Schalk is not himself a social scientist, I suppose we might excuse
him for not knowing that a great many states which choose to define themselves
as unitary, do in fact have autonomous units. These range from the UK to the
Philippines. What is most ironic about Prof Schalk’s position is that the Tamil
National Alliance (TNA) main, democratic political party of the Tamils of Sri
Lanka’s North and East, many of whose leaders have been murdered by Prof
Schalk’s pin-ups, the Tigers, have received and accepted an invitation to visit
China, a unitary state if ever there was one, precisely to study arrangements
for regional autonomy. The Chinese constitution which defines the state as
unitary, also enshrines the concept of ethnic regional autonomy--so perhaps
Prof Schalk should direct his absurd, politically fundamentalist objections to
the leadership of the TNA and the Chinese Communist party, rather than to me.
Dayan Jayatilleka, PhD; Ambassador Extraordinary and
Plenipotentiary of Sri Lanka to France & Permanent Delegate to UNESCO
 My last conversation with Prof Pet...){kind=link}