JVP - 46 years in politics:

The Red Rebellion

by Ranil Wijayapala

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna(JVP), founded in the mid 1960's, at a time when Sri Lankan politics as well as world politics were at the crossroads over political ideologies on the China-Soviet conflict and were moving towards a more revolutionary zeal to achieve its political ends.

Don Nandasiri Rohana Wijeweera, a young and intelligent medical student at the Lumumba University in Moscow, who opted to sacrifice his educational and career prospects to achieve his political ideology, wanting to fill the vacuum in leftist politics in Sri Lanka, which the ordinary working class thought the traditional Left had betrayed.

The JVP which was formed at a critical phase, when leftist parties joined hands with the left of the-centre parties to form governments, naturally faced reppression not only from major political parties in the country but also from the traditional Left too.

Although, the JVP initiated its political journey in the mid-1960's, to get the Communist Party to be more radicalised and on the Chinese side, the young Rohana Wijeweera ended up forming a new Marxist political party, attracting young blood and strove to have their voice heard through his thought-provoking oratory which many Sri Lankans is hard to match.

Broad-based political party

Inspired by the Cuban struggle led by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, what Rohana Wijeweera wanted was to form a political party, which would be ready for armed struggle, as they believed that forming a broad-based political party was an arduous task in Sri Lankan politics.

Young Wijeweera

The political force he organised with these radicalised youth by political indoctrination, earned the envy of major political parties in the country and it was pushed more towards a revolutionary path, long before entering mainstream politics .

It was amidst the arrest of its young and charismatic leader by the then United Front government on March 13, 1971, the party launched its first insurrection against the state. Though there are conflicting views about the first insurrection on April 5, 1971, by the second rung leadership of the party hierarchy which was in tatters at a time its leader was in jail, it could not defend itself from pushing the country towards anarchy, sacrificing young lives into state repression to achieve what they could not at that time.

Political repression

They were only six years in the political front at the time it launched its first insurrection but may have achieved much more to take politics in a new direction, if they had used their political acumen. But the fact that they were pushed towards such a situation, in the face of political repression, through draconian emergency laws to suppress their political movement cannot be ignored in toto, considering the events that unfolded prior to the 1971 insurrection.

Rising from the intense repression, the JVP made its way into mainstream politics in the early 1980's, when JVP leader Wijeweera contested his first election at the 1982 Presidential Election to testify its vote base on the ground and realised that popularity and political attraction do not always turn into vote bases.

This may be the reason that the JVP resorted to its second armed uprising in the late 1980's, based on public agitation against increasing Indian interference in the country during President J.R. Jayewardene's regime. Their struggle, which turned into a more enemy-targeted and violent one, compared to its first uprising, was once again suppressed during former President Ranasinghe Premadasa's regime and its leader Rohana Wijeweera led the insurrection which once again fell victim to the same repression machine, after he was captured while in hiding in an estate bungalow in Ulapane.

Almost all the top rung leadership of the JVP perished and the party came the hardway into mainstream politics, with its second rung leadership emerging during the second uprising. They systematically adjusted to the political realities in the country after entering the mainstream electoral politics.

They publicly assured that they would not resort to armed struggle and pledged to enter mainstream politics and continue to carry out their struggle through democratic means.

Somawansa Amarasinghe the only surviving politburo member of the JVP took over the leadership of the party and ran the party from exile, when the young leaders on the ground were giving a new face to the party.

They have always faced ups and downs and perhaps the longstanding conflict in the North and the East prevented them from resorting to another armed struggle. Having experienced two futile uprisings the JVP climbed the ladder in democratic politics and even joined hands with the main political parties to defend and form governments for the first time in its history, challenging even the very base concept of the formation of the political party to play the true role of a leftist party.

Political ideology

Now, after nearly half a century in politics and 45 years after its first insurgency, the JVP is still in the process of finding its true position in Sri Lankan politics and trying hard to convince their political ideology to the masses to win state power one day in local politics.

The generation of JVPers now in traditional party politics realise that political ideology and political needs of the people were different from each other and their political attraction and popularity will not bring them to power, unless they worked towards the needs of the people.