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by Kumar David

Slovo and First were no less courageous in their unrelenting defiance of apartheid than Mandela or Sisulu. It would therefore, for like reason, be egregiously untruthful to say that no Sinhalese can take an enduring stand, with equal courage, against a long history of chauvinist ethno-politics in our social and political mainstream.

It would, however, be reasonable to assume that their visceral images will not have the same emotive content as a Tamil who suffered the horrors of 1983, or military excess in the 1970s and 1980s, or fretted over perceptions of life-long humiliation.

An endeavour to empathise with this state of mind will go some way in helping the Sinhalese community gain a holistic appreciation of what many see as a baffling contradiction in the complicated nexus between the Tamil and the Tiger. Politically informed Sinhalese simply cannot understand why the LTTE has such a substantial degree of support among Tamils (exactly how substantial is anyone's guess until a free and fair election takes place) despite the hard time they face in holding on to some semblance of democratic and human rights in the land of the Tiger.

What the rest of this article says is palpably obvious to most Tamils and it is not breathtaking news for the sensitive Sinhalese either. But it is not quite so candidly and blandly stated, without apologetic frills, in the columns of newspapers. So it is time to say it, to let the catharsis flow and to invite responses.

In his emotive heart the Sri Lankan Tamil feels that the Tigers have allowed him to stand up again. There are two sides to this. He feels that the humiliation and the beatings have been banished, that another 1983 won't happen for fear of reprisals and that the army cannot run amok again in Tamil areas without risking a bloody nose. The balance of terror leads to mutual deterrence, the Cold War has taught us.

Secondly, in his conscious mind he reckons that there would never have been any serious interest on the part of the national political establishment of whatever hue, to even recognise an ethnic conundrum, let alone negotiate a settlement, unless the Tigers had fought the army to a standstill. Both of these, in the minds of the Tamils, have been won on the battlefield. This I think I can say without risking much rebuttal, is the judgment of the great majority, including those who are not, and never have been, fellow travellers of the LTTE.

For this reason, the Tamil people will not settle their accounts with the Tamil Tigers until they have first settled their accounts with the Sinhala State.

There are indeed a lot of accounts to settle on both balance-sheets; with the former stakeholder, about the hegemony of the rights of the people over and above the gains and benefits for a military outfit; with the latter stakeholder, about the form and content of a new constitutional dispensation.

Now true, this strictly serial ordering of events is a little simplified, the world is never entirely linear, but it does get an important point across. The better we understand this correlation of variables the better we can deal with both sides of the equation and overlap progress on both issues.

To this end one consideration is especially paramount; the political powers-that-be must maximise devolution short and long term, and minimise permitted restrictions on democracy in the interim arrangements. Unfortunately, the thinking in the government and the South seems rather the opposite - mean on devolution and generous on letting the Tigers chew on the democratic rights and institutions of the denizens of the Northern and Eastern Provinces.

This is the worst kind of myopia. Giving the Tamil people the highest possible degree of autonomy to manage their own affairs is the only way they can grow and develop and put right whatever accounts they need to put right.

Neither the Sinhalese nor the State can sort out their internal problems, but they can help. How? Simply by insisting on minimal restrictions, for the shortest necessary interim period, on elected bodies, representative mechanisms, internationally supervised freedoms of assembly, press and organisation, and so on in exchange for a highly devolved constitutional arrangement.

The obsession in the South seems to be that devolution, incorporating a high degree of autonomy - Asymmetrical Devolution in the best case - will be the first step towards secession. This is wide of the mark intrinsically, but also because Thamil Eelam is not possible without international support and Indian complicity.

The manifest ebb in international support for secession can turn to flood again only in the converse situation, that is, only if it becomes clear to the outside world that substantial autonomy to manage their own affairs is being denied to the Tamils.

As for India, surely the blast that dispatched Rajiv Gandhi also interned in his casket any hope of Eelam. Can a febrile outfit in a pint-sized island murder a past and potential future prime minister of India and not pay the crippling price of forever relinquishing its fondest dreams?

In recent weeks the door to devolution has opened wider in the South as well. The JVP and the JHU sought to turn the Local Government elections into a referendum on the government's backsliding on several provisions included in Mr Rajapaksa's presidential election-manifesto as a consequence of agreements reached with the two parties.

No doubt it was some fireworks from the Tigers, costly in military lives that motivated the President, very wisely, to "backslide", if you want to call it that. Notwithstanding this commonsense, the JVP alleged at its 12,000 meetings that the "unitary State" concept was likely to go the way of the rest; imagine the fanfare from the rooftops if the JVP and JHU had scored handsomely.

The upshot is that it is now fairly obvious that had Mr Rajapaksa said, before the Local Government elections, that he was interested in looking into both unitary and federal options, the outcome of the JVP-JHU beckoned "referendum" would have been no different. The shackles are now removed and he should go forward boldly with an open mind.

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