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| Sunday, 3 July 2005 |
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Contours of a malaise Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake The political storm produced by the signing of the P-TOMS agreement between the Government and the LTTE on June 24 is bound to define Sri Lanka's politics at least until the next election whatever it might be in today's uncertain context. What is ironical is that these deep differences should have been created by an attempt to alleviate the sufferings produced by the worst natural and human disaster to strike the country in living memory and what is more a calamity which for a fleeting moment appeared to have brought the diverse political parties and the national communities together in a rare exercise in introspection. The reason, however, for the militant rhetoric and posturings of the last several weeks is that this agreement is being signed with the LTTE which in the eyes of its antagonists is tantamount to investing a terrorist group with legitimacy on par with the State. Similar storm But is this the whole problem? As early as 1957 when Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, the President's father signed a pact with the then Federal Party leader S. J. V. Chelvanayakam there was a similar storm of protest. Mr. J. R. Jayewardene, then in the political wilderness after his defeat at the General Election the previous year led a march to the Dalada Maligawa in Kandy saying that the linking of the North and the East to constitute a Regional Council was a betrayal of Sinhala interests and a stepping stone to a separate Tamil state. This mind you at a time when Velupillai Prabhakaran was only three years old and the main Tamil party was led by a man widely acknowledged even by his detractors as a pacifist in the Gandhian mould. This distrust of the Tamils on the part of mainstream Sinhala political parties, whether led by a Chelvanayakam, an Amirthalingam or a Prabhakaran, has deeper historical roots as we attempted last week to explain in these columns than a mere reflex action against the LTTE's gun-toting. Phobia about Tamils If last week we were occupied with the intermingling of history, myth and legend to create a phobia about the Tamils in the Sinhala mind let us now concentrate on recent history. Whatever effects this history might have had on the Sinhala mind one would have thought that these hang-ups would have been obviated by a common experience of subjugation to colonialism but the tragic truth was that British colonialism in particular sharpened the differences between the communities by its notorious policy of 'divide et impera'. Let us not forget that even India which was subjected to a tumultuous Independence struggle quite unlike Sri Lanka was left in two bleeding halves when the last Englishman withdrew from the sub-continent leaving his empty bottle of scotch. What is more in the case of colonial Ceylon the Sinhalese and the Jaffna Tamils, as the indigenous Tamils were called, lived in two quite separate parts of the country and it is ironical that whatever the historical legitimacy of the LTTE's claim to 'traditional Tamil homelands' mainstream Sinhala opinion should seek to ridicule the Tamil claims on this score. Irony Even more ironical was the fact that while average Sinhalese from the south of Sri Lanka lived in Jaffna mainly as traders the Tamils whom the Sinhalese were accustomed to knowing in Colombo were the Government servants who were seen in the Sinhala mind as occupying a disproportionate place on account of favouritism by the colonial state. In the absence of a freedom struggle therefore there was no unity of the Sinhala. Tamil and Muslim people on the ground and whatever spurious unity existed on the level of the elite too dissipated in the face of the machinations of the colonial power. In our moments of romanticism we are inclined to recall how Sinhala leaders had pulled the carriage containing Sir. Ponnambalam Ramanathan from the Colombo jetty to his home when he returned after making representations to the Colonial Office about the attacks on the Sinhalese, during the Sinhala-Muslim riots of 1915. But not long after came the Pan-Sinhala Cabinet when the luminaries of the same Colonial Office and their votaries in Colombo persuaded the Sinhala leaders that they would have to put up a united front if they were to obtain Independence, a mathematical formula evolved paradoxically enough by a Tamil genius, C. Suntheralingam, the first visionary of Tamil Eelam. If colonial policies of divide and rule drove a wedge between the two main communities the effete elitist leadership which inherited Independence failed to build the Sri Lankan State round themselves. To the credit of the first Prime Minister D. S. Senanayake it must be said that he held to the separation of Church and State, an article of faith with liberal democrats. But as if in compensation he was obsessed with an anti-Indian and anti-Tamil phobia. His disfranchisement of Tamil plantation labour and the opening up of the Dry Zone to Sinhala peasant colonisation inscribed him in the Tamil mind as a Sinhala communalist just as he was hailed on the same account as a patriotic icon. Paradox The paradoxical nature of contemporary politics was again revealed when Prime Minister Bandaranaike who routed the UNP on what the Tamils saw as a Sinhala communal platform proposed the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact a bare one year after introducing the Official Languages Bill which made Sinhala the sole official language. Since the scuttling of this Pact as a result of agitation by sections of the Maha Sangha and the UNP any attempt to confer any kind of autonomy on the Tamil areas has been stoutly resisted by Sinhala opinion. These have ranged from the District Council proposals of the Dudley Senanayake Government in 1968, the Indo-Sri Lanka agreement of 1987, the new Constitution incorporating the Union of Regions proposed by the first Chandrika Kumaratunga Government and now the Tsunami relief structure. The only exception was the MOU signed between the Ranil Wickremesinghe Government and the LTTE in 2002 but that was because of the sleight-of-hand practised expertly by that administration. Ruthless terror A close examination of the protests and agitations generated by these diverse measures to address the National Question will reveal that they have centred on quotas and proportions, on the ratio of Sinhalese to Tamils and Muslims. At bottom then it boils down to a fear on the part of the Sinhalese and the Muslims of being reduced to minority status in the North and the East while the Tamils feel that since they have historically inhabited these areas they deserve a larger say in the administration. Things have not been helped at all by the ruthless terror tactics of the LTTE directed at Sinhala peasants, the Buddhist clergy and even their own political opponents and their policy of 'ethnic cleansing' of Muslim areas in the East some years ago. The bifurcation of the SLMC, which was the direct product of these LTTE practices, has introduced a sharp political edge to the intra-Muslim clash. In such a situation only the most rosily optimistic of the P-TOM's advocates will see it as leading to peace in the long run. On the contrary it appears to have hardened extreme Sinhala opinion and deepened Muslim suspicions. If it is to work at all it will call for a great degree of understanding between the Government and the LTTE that has been markedly absent so far, flexibility on both sides and measures on the LTTE's part to allay Muslim fears. In the short run, however, it is the extremist Sinhala forces which have been strengthened. The JVP is back playing the game it loves best, beating the patriotic drum and there is bound to be a sharp contest between it and that section of the JHU led by Ven. Athuraliye Ratana and Mr. Champika Ranawaka. The P-TOMS has also been gnawing at Minister Dinesh Gunawardena's residual Sinhala Buddhist conscience while all kinds of rabble-rousers and agitators have also started crawling out of the woodwork. President's consistency The situation is somewhat akin to 1987 when also it was the Government in power and the Left parties which backed the Indo-Lanka agreement except that roles have been switched and the Government is led by the SLFP and not the UNP. To the credit of the President, however, it can be said that she supported the Indo-Lanka agreement at great political and personal cost to her party and her supporters. The UNP for the time being is content to watch from the touchline leaving it to Prof. G. L. Pieris to engage in some charmingly pedantic quibbling. But it is the JVP which has to be watched and it will be hoped that their
protests and agitation will be circumscribed by the parameters of democratic
opposition as befitting their new status of political adulthood. |
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