Indians at Lanka play
by Susantha Goonatilake
The two speakers were M.R. Narayanaswamy and M.K.Tikku, both journalists;
the Chairman was Major General Ashok Mehta who had been with the IPKF. In
the audience were Varadaraja Perumal, the erstwhile Indian puppet Chief
Minister of the Northern and Eastern Provinces, Kalkat an Indian general who
had been a commander of the Indian occupation in the late 1980s, and two Sri
Lankan diplomats sitting stiffly behind like stuffed penguins. They were
speaking last week on "Sri Lanka on the Edge" at the Delhi India
International Centre (IIC), on Geneva and its aftermath. And there, was
another example of our continued belittlement.
Over the years, I myself had spoken at the Centre several times, thrice
as a participant in different conferences and once as sole speaker. This
time I was giving two theoretical papers at a conference on anthropology of
the South Asian region, when I accidentally saw the Sri Lanka talk being
billed as an event. I broke ranks from my own conference just as a very
efficient Indian bureaucrat was holding forth with quite intellectual ease
on topics of cultural interactions. For the umpteenth time in my life, I
sighed at the different levels of discourse between the bureaucrats and
academia of India and those of Sri Lanka respectively.
This seminar on Sri Lanka was Indians playing at indirect rule of Sri
Lanka.
Speakers
The chairman Mehta said that in some of his meetings on Sri Lanka there,
were more speakers than listeners. This time around, there was around 30.
Mehta added he was convener of a group aimed at "track two" diplomacy on Sri
Lanka, behind-the-scene discussions by informal actors while the formal
actors got about their official negotiations.
Let us be explicit. Such track two diplomacy does not operate for the
United States when it decides to bomb Iraq or Afghanistan or for that matter
when India decides to deal with an internal separatist movement like it did
in Punjab through massive military means. There was no track-two diplomacy
when the IPKF of which Mehta was a member did its unpleasant task.
Neither would India name discussions with an internal rebellious group as
an act of diplomacy which usually occurs only between two sovereign
countries. There was no track one or track two as far as India was concerned
in its internal conflicts, of which there were very many as I found out in
my other conference at the same venue.
I wanted to observe the Indians at this Lanka play. So, I kept silent
throughout. In his introduction, Mehta mentioned that the killing of
Kadirgamar, the sinking of the navy ship and other transgressions were
indeed all acts of war by the LTTE. The government had not responded to
these. All the speakers used the word "hard-line" to describe the JVP and
the JHU influence on the government. This new Sri Lankan dispensation had
changed the goalposts from federal to unitary. One speaker however said that
soon after being elected, the government had changed its earlier "hard-line
stance" and had softened, implying that the government had dropped its
electoral promises.
Train
Narayanaswamy was introduced as the person who had been invited by the
Sri Lankan government to train the Sri Lankan Geneva delegation as
Narayanaswamy was the best informed on the LTTE and Prabhakaran.
Narayanaswamy quickly demurred, dismissing such notions saying that he was
not a special expert on the LTTE and that he had not got an invitation from
Sri Lanka. This in fact went against the printed schedule of the training
session for our Geneva negotiators where his name had indeed been
prominently included.
From his information and from his own logical inference, Narayanaswamy
said, the Sri Lankan armed forces would certainly have been co-operating
with the Karuna faction. In the final communique at Geneva however, Sri
Lanka had agreed to disarm Karuna. Tellingly, he mentioned that the LTTE had
not moved from its goal of a separate state. Narayanaswamy however appeared
at least sympathetic to Sri Lanka. He pointed out that there were
differences between Jaffna Tamils, Eastern Tamils and those of Indian origin
- the last two considered by Jaffna Tamils as second-class and third class.
This was a reason for the Karuna split.
Voted
Tikku was no friend of Sri Lanka. Here he was apologising for the LTTE
saying that during the last election, the Tamils had not voted for either of
the two major parties forgetting that it was the LTTE ban that prevented
voting and that in areas like Wellawatte, Tamils had indeed voted in
significant numbers. He also claimed that the P-TOMS rejection had been a
denial by the Supreme Court of aid to Tamils.
In Sri Lanka he added profoundly, one must go against the constitution
saying that the Indian Accord had gone against the Constitution. This sage
further added that today Sri Lanka was back to the 1956 period of "Sinhala
only". All these were false.
Tamils had been denied their voting by the LTTE, tsunami aid to Tamils
continued and the Thirteenth Amendment legitimizing the Indian Accord had
only come through an amendment to the Constitution. Huge changes had taken
place since 1956 with today Tamil as an equal official language as opposed
to only the regional language it was accorded during that period 50 years
ago. It was apparent that Tikku would be the type of foreign journalist who
deliberately distorts who would be debarred by the Indians from their own
conflicts such as Kashmir or earlier - Punjab.
At the end of the two listed speakers, Kalkat and Perumal were asked for
their opinions. Kalkat recalled, how he prevented Jaffna being made the
capital of the merged Northern and Eastern provinces and instead had pushed
for Trincomalee. His underlying message was that with Jaffna as capital,
separatism would have increased.
On the Geneva final communique, he notes that thankfully the two
provinces still remained merged. He adds there was no mention of "federal"
in the communique. He also said: the LTTE would not give up on its goal of a
separate state. The Indian puppet Perumal had once been Chief Minister, -
one of his ministers then was Dayan Jayatilleke - and had made a Unilateral
Declaration of Independence. Perumal had in the meantime got very fat. The
way Ashok Mehta greeted him; he still was an Indian darling (perhaps being
groomed to be a puppet again?). Perumal now bemoaned that the LTTE could not
be trusted and that one of these days the LTTE would declare Independence!
He forgot to mention that he had himself once declared Independence.
Mehta remarked that in his track two work, he had been bringing various
Sri Lankan stakeholders in contact with each other. He implied this included
various factions among the Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. Back in Sri Lanka,
I checked whether in fact the JVP and JHU had joined the Major General's
circus. They had not, and it reminded me of a seminar which WAPS organised
in Oslo where the reluctant emissary from the Norwegian Foreign Ministry
falsely said that all factions in Sri Lanka were co-operating with the
Norwegians, going out of the way to mention the falsehood that the JVP was
talking with the Norwegians.
Tone
The tone here was generals trying to be governors and journalists trying
to be generals, although one must add that Narayanswamy was a reluctant
imperialist.
Mehta mentioned that behind the scenes, the good present Indian
Ambassador in Sri Lanka was trying to bring our factions together. This, one
should add, was in good imperial tradition, the ambassador slipping from her
earlier charm offensive to that of that obnoxious meddler Dixit. After
seeing the quasi imperious body language and demeanour of Mehta as he
conducted the meeting, I walked up to him and asked what his track two
organisation was. He gave a grandiose wavy hand and said to the effect that
they had done much work. I said with mock deference that he looked the role
of Governor of Sri Lanka.
I added that his moustache gave him a special imperial bearing. The
remarks went over his head. Either he was thick-skinned or imbued with
military gruffness, few words and few thoughts. One should encourage other
individuals or other countries to discuss Sri Lanka. But not with the tone
of condescending interference in this meeting. In intellectually developed
countries like India and the West, journalists' pronouncements depend on
academics' work. In Sri Lanka, virtually no academics had written serious
material from a Sri Lankan perspective. In Sri Lanka, I had also been told
that journalists rarely even ask questions at press conferences.
Here Indian journalists and generals were making grand, often simplistic
pronouncements.
Fudge
All the speakers here generally tended to agree that the Geneva
communique was largely a fudge; hiding the true realities on the ground. The
government delegation had accepted the ceasefire's conditionalities (which
were objected to by the two parties that had brought them to power the JVP,
JHU). Yet the government would not disarm the Karuna faction as they
promised.
The time in-between the next meeting in April would be time for both the
government and the LTTE to prepare them for an inevitable next round of war.
All tended to agree that Sri Lanka was still on the edge.
Yet, in all this talk of maintaining the ceasefire, there was no mention
that the continuing status quo of the faulty ceasefire would result in a
Cyprus type situation in Sri Lanka. Within our nominally sovereign state, an
illegal entity would continue to be tolerated and therefore legitimated.
Neither in government nor in opposition circles had the Cyprus scenario
entered their thick skulls.
Here were Indians at Sri Lanka play. When I privately asked the two Sri
Lankan diplomats who were at the meeting for their comments, they made some
silly remarks. Later, back home, I met a senior official of the Foreign
Ministry. He moaned that Sri Lanka's sovereignty had indeed been eroded - he
did not mention India. He detailed games Norway was playing to erode Sri
Lankan sovereignty. And so did, he point out, the so-called co chairs and
various international agencies erode Sri Lankan sovereignty. I would also
add to this list foreign funded NGOs of the "Traitors Inc" variety. The
senior official's tone was one of resignation. He added he was trying hard,
his best.
If that was the despairing attitude of my friend, I wondered how we had
come to this end.
This leaky Sri Lanka boat was being eroded at several points. If it were
Indian officials, would they display this resignation or in contrast, real
musculature? Would the media? Would the ruling politicians? I doubt it. They
would have all taken an obvious self-respecting line, distorted in our case
as "hard-line" by the country's enemies. And that is why India today is self
confident, like say Malaysia. Not the cringing cry baby that we have become.
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