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| Sunday, 5 September 2004 |
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Editor, Sunday Observer. E-mail: [email protected] Snail mail : Sunday Observer, 35, D.R.Wijewardana Mawatha, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Telephone : 94 11 2429239 / 2331181 Fax : 94 11 2429230 The National Question Fifty-six years after gaining independence, Sri Lanka is yet unable to march forward. Besides problems of development and under-development it is plagued by the inability to ensure harmonious relations between the various communities that inhabit it. As is widely recognized the burning issue is the national question. Even this question is viewed in different ways by different sections of the people. To some, it is the Tamil problem. To some others, it is a terrorist problem. Still others consider it a question of minorities and their rights. In the opinion of certain others, there is no problem at all. The problem was bequeathed to us by the colonial rulers who used a policy of divide and rule to exploit the land. The colonial masters disrupted even the limited unity that prevailed amongst the different communities by promising various things to the Tamil and the Sinhala leaders in the National movement separately. Some servile leaders in the national movement did not even ask for self-rule. When India and Burma opted for republics, Sri Lanka was quite content with dominion status. It was 14 years later that Sri Lanka became a sovereign republic. The post-independence Constitution was itself drawn up by a representative of the colonial power. This Constitution sanctified the unitary state that has today become a stumbling block in the search for a negotiated peace in Sri Lanka. Our inability to solve the present problem arises from our failure to grasp its real nature and foresee its future development. The problem is not a simple majority-minority issue. Nor is it purely ethnic in character. The majority - minority syndrome in itself creates a notion of domination or subjugation. Those who reduce the problem to ethnicity do not see the national liberation aspect of the struggle of the Tamil people. The problem should be seen as one concerning the relations between principal communities in the island nation. As recent developments have amply demonstrated, there is also a third dimension to the problem - the Muslim factor. Nor can the Up Country Tamils be left alone in any Constitutional restructuring that is required to solve the burning issue. The first premise to start with is the recognition of four principal communities - Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and Up Country Tamil who have inalienable equal rights. They could be recognised as such by economic, political and cultural identities. The inability of the Sri Lankan polity to ensure harmonious development of all four communities hassled the situation from bad to worse. This is one reason why it cannot be solved within a unitary state. A solution requires movement beyond the contours of a unitary state. Obviously it has to be some type of federal or confederal state structure that could accommodate the interests of all communities. The East with its heterogeneous ethnic composition is a crucial link in any structural arrangement. That is why various forces with their own agendas are concentrating their efforts at winning over the East by whatever means. It has become a ground for violent contention among the Tamils. Muslim political forces are competing for power there even undermining the unity of their community and endangering their survival. The latest to join the fray in the East is the JVP which last week stage-managed a demonstration by outsiders (the residents both Sinhala and Muslim kept aloof). It is high time that all parties concerned realize the objective situation and worked towards a solution in a spirit of compromise. Intransigence does not pay at all. The ugly face of terrorism One of the saddest events of last week was the hostage taking by Chechen gunmen of more than 1000 persons including children in a school in the Southern Russian town of Beslan. They were children and their parents who attended a school function to mark the first day of the new school year. While the Russian authorities earlier ruled out the use of force to free the hostages considering the danger to the lives of the hostages, they were forced to do so since the gunmen started killing hostages. About 250 people died and over 700 hundred affected by the crossfire were hospitalized. This crime has to be condemned in the strongest terms since no cause, however laudable it may be in the eyes of its adherents, could justify the taking of lives of unarmed innocent people, especially children. It has already been revealed that among the dead hostage takers were several foreign persons connected to international terrorist networks. It would be interesting to see who are the financiers of these international terrorists and whether they are linked to intelligence agencies of rival world powers. |
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