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| Sunday, 6 July 2003 |
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Reversing the Kataragama pilgrimage? Observations by LAKSHMAN GUNASEKERA Lord Skandha needs to be reassured. Usually, at this time of the year, for the past thousand years and more, the pilgrimage is from North to the deep Rohana to the sylvan (no more?) banks of the Menik Ganga for the annual festival in Karthikeyagrama. The Good Lord knows, for sure, though, that the band of faithful are already on their way south in the annual Paada Yaathraa to His Shrine to be rejuvenated and inspired by their celebration of his joyful communion with his consorts. Let Him take heart that the sudden flow of pilgrims from South to North is not a reversal of the Paada Yaathra but rather, perhaps, a complementary effort to appease the currently angry spiritual forces of love and justice. Let Lord Skandha's fury, so powerfully expressed by multiple blood-lettings in both North and South in recent decades, be calmed by these twin pilgrimages. By 'pilgrims from South to North', am here referring to the continuing pilgrimage of Ambassadors and High Commissioners and other Distinguished Emissaries of various governments and national and international agencies to the LTTE-held Vanni in the on-going bid to get the talks process on track again. I hear that the Norwegian Foreign Minister may also trek to Kilinochchi shortly. Vavuniya should be a boom-town with all this VIP travel or, will the canny Tigers bag the 'business travel' windfall for Kilinochchi or some other township in their area? Big-shots The people of the war ravaged Vanni may deserve the entertainment. After all, they never get to see so many 'big-shots' in their lifetimes as do the people of the privileged South (the South also was privileged to experience the worst counter-insurgency massacres in the shorter time). Of course, the war-battered, modern (!), Vanni-la-e Aththo could now be so cynical that they may just want hard cash and the freedom to spend it, not big-shots. Last week it was the High Commissioner for Canada who went up North. Interesting how, the Americans, whose action of shutting out the Tiger, from what Washington itself billed as the 'decisive' pre-Tokyo aid meeting, was the origin of this hiatus, have not so far, done the Vanni pilgrimage. I suppose Washington sees itself so much as the sole imperial power (the once-revered Time magazine calls it a 'kindly' and 'caring' imperialism) that it chooses to ignore its faux pax and, prefers to derogate the job of appealing to the Tigers to others willing to do menial labour. After all, the Washington aid meeting exercise was intended to show that Tokyo was to be a mere formality after Washington had called the shots. The current ostensible delay in the peace process is the holding up of negotiations due to the Govt.-LTTE debate over an interim administration and some security and confidence-building measures (CBMs). I say 'ostensible' because I feel that that, actually, is a kind of 'red herring', to use a phrase often used in old British detective fiction: in the sense that that is not really the delaying factor. I believe that the real delaying factor is domestic both to the Sri Lankan State and to the semi-state that is run by the LTTE in the 'uncleared' areas as well as, to varying degrees of political-social-administrative control, in the 'cleared' areas of the North-East and also within the Tamil community elsewhere in the country. The overt and seemingly immediate issue of the hiatus in talks is largely due to an external factor rather than an internal one. The external cause of the current suspension of talks I have pointed out in previous recent columns, in my discussion of the origins of the LTTE's withdrawal from the talks process. As I have stated above, the talks process was paralysed by the action of the United States government in shutting out the LTTE from a very crucial stage in the talks process: the preliminary (and "decisive") aid meeting convened by the US government in Washington. But the crucial thing to be noted is that even some months after the suspension of talks, and despite several provocative incidents - including seriously provocative ones like the destroying of Tiger re-supply vessels - there is no indication of either side moving towards a resumption of military hostilities. Of course this does not mean that war cannot break out at some point. What it does mean is that the suspension of the talks process itself has not caused a return to war, unlike in the past. This is a crucial development in comparison with the previous peace efforts where war was resumed either immediately with the collapse of talks or, because of the failure to revive the talks process. Today's sustained Ceasefire is an indication that both sides in the war do not want the war to continue or resume within the context of the current military-strategic balance. As I have pointed out previously, it is the basic military-strategic symmetry that is sustaining the Cease-fire. Thus, despite the collapse of the actual talks process itself, the continuing symmetry of the current military-strategic balance is sustaining the ceasefire. Therefore, it is absolutely critical that this military-strategic symmetry, this very delicate balance (achieved through so much violence, tragedy and destruction), is not disturbed in any way. If that is the case, then it is easy to see that the insidiously negative effects of some poorly calculated interventions of the US government in recent times are the principal causal factor for the current obstacles faced in the negotiating process. Thus, while the external factor has paralysed the talks process, the internal equilibrium is yet sustaining the ceasefire. In a certain sense, it may be possible to describe what has happened since the December 2001 unilateral ceasefire of the LTTE, as the first stage of a yet successful peace effort by both sides in the war. That is, both direct protagonists in the actual war have succeeded in initiating and consolidating an end to the military hostilities. The success of this consolidation can be seen in the way the Ceasefire is holding despite the external mess-up and the tactically provocative incidents that have strained the Ceasefire. And this is due to the acknowledgement by both sides of a military-strategic symmetry. In terms of recent Sri Lankan political history this 'symmetry' means the attainment of a 'strategic stalemate' in the war. However, while this symmetry may assure the sustaining of the Ceasefire, on its own, it cannot provide for the success of the overall peace process. The search for an overall political settlement needs the contribution of far more factors than merely that of the military one. That is why the talks process ran into the current doldrums following the American blunder. The Washington faux pax brought to an end the first stage in the peace process. Both the Government and the LTTE must be complimented for their perseverance in maintaining the recognition of the military-strategic symmetry. And all those who are attempting to tilt the symmetry either way, towards an asymmetry in favour of either protagonist have to be soundly condemned for dangerously tilting the country towards war again. With the on-going success of the Ceasefire, the next stage in the current peace process must necessarily be more political, even if it need not directly or immediately approach the very fundamental issues of formal State re-structuring. In fact, it was the gradual, and inevitable, intrusion of political, social and economic aspects of peace-making into the talks process that pointed to the need to go beyond the original framework of ceasefire maintenance. The need now is to build on the consolidated ceasefire by taking up procedures of administration, reconstruction and socio-economic management that would, on one hand, ensure that the current military-strategic symmetry is not disturbed by focusing beyond it, and, on the other, create social confidence in the long term peace project by sowing the seeds of social security, improved administration and economic recovery. This will be the second stage of the peace process. And this requires far more than the recognition of military-strategic balance. In fact, it is possible to argue that attempts to prioritise military-strategic issues (and attempts to tilt the balance in any side's favour) betray a continued militaristic outlook towards the ethnic conflict. Obviously, even if, at formal political level, there is an acknowledgement of the 'strategic stalemate' (very few in the South would like to describe it as a victory for the non-State forces), at the deeper social-psychological level, militaristic/defensive attitudes remain and there is no transcendence to a new attitude of post-military, civilian politics, of seeing a future political settlement as the real 'victory'. Twin Paada Yaathraas This is where the twin Paada Yaathraas are spiritually and politically significant. Both must be seen as affirmations of people's reasonable and legitimate needs: spiritual and political. The pilgrimage to Kataragama itself is the direct worship of the Lord, and in that rite, the celebration of the Love and inclusive Community that He manifests. The pilgrimage by the big-shots and small shots to the Vanni is the acknowledgment that, whatever super-power principalities might say or wish, the people and their immediate leaders do count and count fundamentally. However, the numbers of the faithful remain too small to fully appease the extreme fury expressed by Lord Skandha these past decades. The ecology of the Shrine needs to be revived and conserved in Kataragama and this must strengthen the rustic, pastoral and ascetic spiritual community that once nurtured the holy site. On the other hand, the war-ravaged Vanni needs far more than mere cash. It needs the infrastructure of an efficient, locally responsive and reasonably autonomous administrative framework to rebuild life in the North-East and, thereby, build on the success of the ceasefire. Both these yaathras need a far greater political will in Colombo and that is crucial to this second stage. It has to be a will based on genuine political consensus and a greater social-collective acknowledgment of a non-militarist political community. |
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