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Observations by LAKSHMAN GUNASEKERA

"It is the people who constitute a kingdom; like a barren cow, a kingdom without people yields nothing," observes Kautilya in his Arthashaasthra. Even if the 'kingdom' the Arthashaasthra refers to, in those Mauryan and post-Mauryan times, may not be the same egalitarian tribal polity of previous eras with their vidatha, gana-sabha and samithi, Kautilya leaves no doubt that the communal or community-based identity of a polity is fundamental to its existence.

Just as much as the community, in the form of the tribe and clan, constituted the early gana republic, so does the community form the basis of the kingdom.

If the early South Asian tribal polities were svaraj (non-monarchic) republics as well as janarajas (popularly elected monarchies), it is clear, as indicated not only in the Arthashaasthra, but also in numerous other political-philosophic texts including Buddhist and Jaina treatises, that the popular nature of any polity has long been recognised in South Asian political theory although the nature of governance of that populace or community may range from egalitarian assembly-style rule to absolute monarchies and empires.

Although Kautilya has been perceived by the West as a theorist of non-democratic, conspiratorial despotism comparable to the much later Machiavelli (Machiavelli, too, did not focus solely on despotism), even his Arthashaasthra begins with the acknowledgment of the community as the bedrock of a polity.

However, by the time of the sage, society had become so stratified, exploitative and unequal that the political institutions had taken on completely authoritarian functions even if contemporary theorists did emphasise social accountability as being critical to social and political stability.

Minority leaderships

Even the A'in-i-Akbari (Institutes of Akbar) of the highly authoritarian Moghul period lists a "paternal love towards his subjects" as one of the first necessary attributes of the late medieval emperors. That is why, in our own time, it is important to retain our perspective of the social nature of the state, even as we set about re-structuring our Sri Lankan post-colonial polity.

If many Sri Lankans, including the liberal 'intelligentsia', for long scoffed at the arguments of ethnic minority leaderships as well as Left political movements for a re-structuring of our polity, today, most people, from the President downwards, are in a hurry to re-structure the State and 'federal' is the current buzz word.

Actually this President is an exception since she originated in the Left movement that advocated extensive power-sharing, even secession, from the early stages onwards of the ethnic conflict.

In fact it is her intellectual affirmation of the basic need for power-sharing and State reform that complements the Government's push for reform and sustains the momentum towards a permanent peace.

How far her political-philosophical origins still influence her thinking and policy will only be shown in her concrete support for, and encouragement of, constitutional reform and a permanent political settlement of the ethnic conflict.

political alternatives

Now all major political parties, including the governing UNP, whose rejection of power-sharing during previous regimes, notably under J.R. Jayewardene, helped prolong and worsen the conflict, are rushing to study 'federalism'. Interestingly, the otherwise dogmatically Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna is, despite its supposedly 'revolutionary' intent, the sole significant political actor refusing to explore political alternatives however piece-meal - to the current State and the current secessionist impetus.

However, the current search for the most apt 'federal' solution, is amazingly simplistic in approach and method, despite decades of experience of the sheer complexity of the conflict and the awareness (surely?) of the multi-dimensional nature of efforts to resolve it. There seems to be the recognition of only a single track or stream of political activity: that of the Government-LTTE negotiations and the supportive role of the political Establishment in this process. All other actors are barely acknowledged and certainly not given any validity even remotely approaching that of the role of the State/Government/LTTE.

There seems to be a strange reversal of roles in Sri Lankan society as far as solutions to the ethnic conflict is concerned. In the early stages of the conflict, it was the Left political movement and radical intelligentsia (e.g. the Movement for Inter-Racial Justice and Equality MIRJE) that joined the ethnic minority leaderships in advocating ethnic equality and a major re-structuring of the State while the ruling elite (of all ethnic groups) and the political establishment not only ignored this advocacy but actually harassed and intimidated the advocates and branded their activism as pro-'terrorist' and subversive.

It was the Left movement that, along with Tamil political movements that pushed for federalism, confederalism and other forms of power-sharing (including secession) in the 1970s and 1980s.

In other words, the initiative for justice and peace both militant as well as socio-political, came from within the mass of the people. If the militant, insurgent struggle emerged from within the (Tamil) people, the campaign for a peaceful solution by means of fundamental political reform also came from social movements embedded in the mass of the people. MIRJE, for example, was founded by no less than ninety-odd organisations including some of the biggest trade unions, religious leaders, religious organisations, grassroots social action groups and, Left political parties and groups, most of them based in the Sinhala-majority South. social movements

But if the initiative for ethnic justice and equality originated from among the people through social movements, today, the State and the political Establishment have taken it up while many of those social movements who were the original advocates are defunct or emasculated.

Ominously, the currently fashionable discourse does not even allow for 'social movement' but instead idolises something called 'civil society'. And the dangers of such idolisation can be seen in the farcical reality of these 'civil society' groups lagging far behind the State and the political Establishment in the search for a political solution.

The State and the Establishment is necessarily coy about the search for a 'federal' solution given that devolution, power-sharing and ethnic equality is fundamentally opposed to the logic of the current Sri Lankan State and its politics. But at least the Government as well as the Presidency (the latter extremely ambiguously) are forging ahead in this new search for the 'federal' with the major parties following suit.

It is entirely to the credit of the United National Front Government that it is very bravely proceeding with the federalist project in the teeth of Parliamentary Opposition criticism, Sinhala ultra-nationalist criticism and despite the humiliation of having to eat its own anti-federal and anti-power-sharing words of previous UNP regimes. At least Ranil Wickremesinghe and colleagues have the sophistication to eat humble pie when necessity dictates rather than sit on aristocratic high horses and endlessly manoeuvre to remain on high. civil society

Unlike the social movements that showed the way to peace in the past, the 'civil society' groups of today are unable to fulfil any concrete role other than serve as applauding bystanders or as 'consultants' or 'think-tanks' for the Government. Even in this, they seem to lag behind the Government and the main parties as well as the LTTE which have, firstly, boldly put in place an ad hoc, interim political framework that approximates a con-federal set-up and secondly, are busy trying to evolve a formal political framework that would concretise and constitutionalise this set-up.

In short, while 'civil society' nervously explores limited forms of federalism and are busy echoing their Western paymasters in cautioning against loosening up the unified capitalist State too much, the Government, LTTE and the ruling elite have already gone far in loosening up the Sri Lankan State and are eager to evolve new political structures that would fit the new political ground realities.

What remains of the social movements of the past are greatly emasculated, precisely because of the privileging of so-called 'civil society'. These remnants, such as the People's Peace Front and the smaller Left political groups, nevertheless are actively pushing the frontiers of new political conceptions of 'Sri Lanka' although their voices are not heard nor given an adequate hearing by a media industry that focuses on the fashionable 'civil society' given that civil society's adulation of 'the media' as an upholder of so-called liberal democracy.

Civil society groups, meanwhile, are trapped in the limited nation-statist theories of western-style liberal democracy and can do little to help the main actors, the Government and the LTTE, proceed in their search for creative formulations that would constitutionalise a new Sri Lankan polity. In a sense, this 'civil society' is actually an affiliate of the political Establishment and can do no more than perform a subsidiary role.

While the Government and the LTTE must proceed as they are doing in the search for a federalist solution within the constraints of their respective political power interests, only mass-based social movements can truly and significantly complement this search by providing an equally creative outlook for State reform free of the constraints of the power interests of the main actors.

And it is only a creative meeting of these two broad streams, the dominant political actors being the Government and the LTTE on the one hand, and mass-based social movements for State reform on the other that will ultimately bring about the fusion of ideas as well as socio-political interests that will give birth to a new, post-colonial Sri Lankan polity.

Hence, it is vital to see the search for a permanent political solution in the form of a multi-track dynamic with a multiplicity of forces in action, some of them moving in more a less the same direction but with varying, sometimes contradictory, interests (such as class interests). This is necessarily an anarchist conception of the peace project.

democratic forces

While the Government (and ruling class) and the LTTE are locked in a tightly orchestrated dynamic that is forging ahead with creditable speed and efficiency, it is imperative that the limitations of this dynamic are recognised and the equal validity of other dynamics and other actors is also recognised. These other actors, especially mass-based democratic forces and social movements may have socio-economic interests that may be opposed to the ruling class. In fact their conceptions of State reform may have contours that do not directly coincide with the interests of either Government or the LTTE. That is, the permanent solution will initially be a conglomerate of a multiplicity of interest-based proposals that will then be finalised via negotiation, at different levels among all these interest groups.

It is important that the ruling class, the Government and the LTTE realise that these social movements do (and will) have a common interest in easing ethnic tensions, ending the war and fundamentally reforming the Sri Lankan polity.

In the long run, the support of these social movements will be essential for the necessary political 'consensus' for the constitutional reform process.

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