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| Sunday, 6 October 2002 |
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The way forward for the Tamil-speaking people: CIRCA 1963 Sunday Essay By Ajith Samaranayake 'In the twilight of its life the older generation (of the Tamil-speaking people) which grew up under foreign imperialism and the Donoughmore Constitution and which bears its share of guilt for the present impasse can be indifferent to the many matters now pressing for a revolutionary socialist solution. But others, and in particular the youth can be anything but indifferent.
Not only have they no responsibility for the inglorious past of the last few decades but their own interests demand that they find a road out of the blind alley in which they find themselves, because of their fathers 'and grandfathers' politics. They have to live a life and not only must they live as equal citizens but they must assure this inalienable condition to their children and their children's children. Individuals among them, because of the intolerable conditions at home might seek their salvation abroad, but the masses have nowhere to go but remain here to fight it out with those forces which oppress them. And this means, above all, their integration with the revolutionary socialist movement - only then shall the tocsin sound for the final struggle.' From The Way Out For the Tamil Speaking People - The Minority Problem and the Ceylon Revolution - by V. Karalasingham - A Young Socialist Publication October 1963. Regular readers of this column must bear with us for that rather long headpiece but who can deny that these words written a full 39 years ago in the penultimate page of the late Karalasingham's slim 52-page book have not been unerringly prophetic? As Bala Tampoe who wrote the introduction to the book (and who remains perhaps as the last of the old-guard of Tamil-speaking Marxists) reminds us that Karalasingham at the General Election of March 1960 polled over 5,000 votes against the undisputed leader of the then Federal Party S. J. V. Chelvanayakam as a candidate of the LSSP which had yet to enter into the pit of communal politics in alliance with the SLFP. In fact Karalasingham's booklet (and he is no mean writer) is a withering indictment of the Federal Party, then the unchallenged vanguard of the Tamil people, and the whole pith, essence and gravamen of his argument is that if the Tamil-speaking people are to transcend their state of oppression at the hands of the Sinhala-dominated state their destiny lay with the Left movement and the LSSP in particular and not be trapped in the narrow communal politics of the federal Party. Karalasingham's thesis assumes significance in the light of the current heated debate which has erupted over 'self-determination', 'homelands' etc. in the wake of Dr. Anton Balasingham's statement in Sattahip which has been gloriously interpreted by all the political pundits, foreign affairs sages, passing foreign correspondents (called firemen in the jargon of journalism) and others of various hues and persuasions, all strictly according to their own lights and vested interests. Some have outright doubted Balasingham's honesty when he (supposedly) disavowed a separate state. Others like Dayan Jayatillaka (who was one of the original proponents of the right of self-determination of the Tamil people in the glorious days of the 'Lanka Guardian') but who today advocates the military annihilation of the LTTE are indignant that Balasingham should even use the lexicon of Leninism. But putting aside for the moment those issues (to which we shall return next week) let us look at another time, almost another country, when Karalasingham could write his book and Tampoe its introduction and advocate with confidence that the struggle of the Tamil people for their democratic rights was inextricably bound up with the struggle of the Sinhala-speaking working classes for the overall and eventual overthrow of the State which he saw as being personified by both the UNP and SLFP, the major political parties of the day, or in Comrade Karlo's language the 'parties of the bourgeoisie.' That struggle of the Tamil people which Karalasingham referred hereinafter as 'Karlo' as he was indeed known all over advocated was, of course, not the armed struggle which the Tamil groups began in the late-1970s. These were still the days of innocence of the LSSP when Karlo could still see the perhaps not too distant dawn when the working classes would overthrow the state and usher in socialism after having completed the bourgeois democratic revolution which the SLFP and the UNP had been unable to do. In fact his main argument against the Federal Party was that by championing Tamil nationalism it had divorced the large mass of the progressive Tamil people from the mainstream of socialist politics in the country. To quote him again: 'Political monolithism under the Federal Party is not only futile but positively dangerous. Its advocacy by a party whose political appeal and influence are wholly restricted to a minority is a direct and open invitation to another party which bases itself entirely on the majority community to adopt similar propaganda methods. Tamil political monolithism must sooner or later beget Sinhala political monolithism and the first victims of the latter would be those parties and forces most sympathetic to the legitimate demands of the Tamil-speaking people, just as the first victims of Tamil political monolithism were the Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party. Herein lies the greatest danger of the Federal Party's bid for political monopoly. Without taking the movement for democratic rights one step forward, it may yet succeed in unifying and cementing the presently divided forces which are opposed to the Tamil-speaking people at the cost of eliminating their real allies. In doing so it would be inflicting a grievous bow on the very movement in whose name it claims to speak.' (Page 27) It must be borne in mind that these words were written in 1963 when Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike's SLFP Government was in power. At the March 1960 General Election the Federal Party had campaigned on the cry that neither the SLFP (which was then rudderless after SWRD's death) nor the UNP which had returned under Dudley Senanayake (after his own self-exile) would get a majority and that they of the FP would be able to swing the deal and as Karlo points out they came to a whisker of doing it. The results were as follows: UNP - 50 SLFP - 46 FP - 15 LSSP - 10 MEP - 10 CP - 3 (Page 24) The UNP and the SLFP both sought the support of the FP to form a stable Government but as karlo points out neither party gave a concrete assurance to the FP about the rights of the Tamil people. The UNP Government which was formed under Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake collapsed after the Speech from the Throne was defeated and when the SLFP (now under Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike) was able to form a Government with an absolute majority in July 1960 the FP's hopes were dashed. It had to return to extra-parliamentary action such as the Satyagraha of January-April 1961 (when the FP even brought out its own postage stamp) but as again Karlo points out although that action was a total success (which made Prime Minister Bandaranaike send the later UNP Cabinet Minister and then civil servant Nissanka Wijeyeratne as the virtual military Governor of the North and the East) the Federal Party still could not win its demands. Karlo's book, of course, ends with 1963 and perhaps only those with long political memories will remember the situation which then prevailed. To quote him at length again. 'Undoubtedly on a number of matters including questions of language and citizenship the minimum programme of the LSSP-CP-MEP Parliamentary Bloc does not represent the traditional Marxist position. But what is of significance is that other organisations to the agreement have now taken up positions which are an advance of the views advocated by them in the past. Even more important than the gain of drawing in the MEP to support a formulation that goes some way to meeting the demands of the Tamil-speaking people is the fact that the implementation of the minimum programme in respect of language and citizenship would mark a distinct advance from the actual existing situation. Thereafter the very dialectic of this limited reform must compel those who today lack the necessary theoretical understanding to take further measures towards the final solution of the minority problem. This would not be the first time in history when declared opponents of a particular solution were driven by the inner logic of events to adopt the very measures they opposed. It is well-known for instance that Abraham Lincoln who was not an abolitionist of slavery when he assumed office was himself compelled to abolish slavery by the very exigencies of the fight against the Southern slave owners, although it was apparent to Marxists long before that the very development of American capitalism required the creation of a free labour market. Similarly the very implementation of the economic sections of the minimum programme like the nationalisation of estates and the banks and the resultant fight against the resistance of the capitalist class must necessarily create the conditions for the realisation of the legitimate demands of the Tamil-speaking people since only on this basis is the socialist development of Ceylon possible.' (Pages 46-47). To read this after the passage of 39 years is, of course, to be seized by a sense of almost elegiac nostalgia and deep sorrow. Months after Karlo's tract was published the LSSP joined the SLFP in a coalition government leaving behind both the CP and the MEP. The MEP later gravitated to the UNP at the General Election of March 1965 and the CP joined the SLFP-LSSP alliance (now in opposition) soon after. Both Karlo and Bala Tampoe left the LSSP along with Edmund Samarakkody, Merril Fernando and others (although incurable cynics will be quick to point out that Karlo did return to the LSSP eventually and even became a Director of Air Ceylon when Leslie Goonewardene was Minister of Communications). But again who is to say that Karlo has not been prophetic again? The Federal Party again failed to win its demands through the UNP when the District Council scheme was scuttled by the SLFP-LSSP-CP coalition (the two latter one time stalwarts of the Tamil-speaking people now having embraced the infamous 'Dudleyge Bade Masala Vadai' line) and the late 1970s were to see the steady marginalisation and alienation of the Tamil people from the mainstream of politics until the cry for Eelam (first raised by Vavuniya MP C. Suntharalingam who as Karlo reminds us was defeated in favour of an FP candidate in the March 1960 General Election) and later taken up in unison by the TULF and the armed Tamil groups led to a fratricidal war. But if the minimum economic programme referred to by Karlo which included the nationalisation of estates (accomplished by the late Ministers Hector Kobbekaduwa and Colvin R. de Silva) could not lead to socialism (the LSSP being ejected by the SLFP soon after) who is not to say that the very dialectic and logic of global capitalism which has now reached its apotheosis in a unipolar world has not led the present United National Front Government of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe whose UNP opposed region Councils (proposed by Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike) and proposed District Councils (under Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake and duly opposed by the SLFP-LSSP-CP coalition now constituted as a United Front) to sit down for talks not with the TULF (the present avatar of the FP) but the hated LTTE itself for what many see as the last chace not merely for the Tamil-speaking people (whose cause V. karalasingham championed courageously to the last) but also for the country, the nation and the people although there will be others (as it has always happened down the path of Sri Lanka's post-Independence history) who will brand it as a sell-out? Note: V. Karalasingham's book was published by Sidney Wanasinghe and was dedicated to Reginald Mendis who lost his hand as he went to the defence of Dr. Colvin R de Silva when he was attacked with a bomb while returning from the LSSP public rally at the Colombo Town Hall grounds opposing the Sinhala Only Act in 1956. Reginald Mendis died a few years ago. Next Week: The cry for separation and V. I. Lenin on 'On the National Question and Proletarian Internationalism.' |
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