Amirthalingam and the never ending story of Sinhala-Tamil politics

by Rajan Philips

At one level, to say that Amirthalingam was among the finest parliamentarians of his generation is to wallow in political nostalgia. At another level it is also a reflection on where our country could have been and where it is now. It is a reflection and a soul searching that this country and its leaders cannot evade if they are to avoid a relapse into even worse conditions. The bombings in Mumbai, the daily conflagrations in Iraq, and the latest al nakba (the catastrophe) in Israel/Gaza/Lebanon are evidence that things can get out of control and turn nasty very quickly.

Thirty years ago, younger and brasher, I described Amirthalingam in the course of a critical article carried in Hector Abhayavardhana's political weekly The Nation, as the "organic embodiment of the hopes and aspirations, however misguided, of the Tamil people." The following week, the TULF's Tamil weekly, Suthanthiran, carried a Tamil translation of the quote but omitting my caveat: 'however misguided'.

Reiteration

Looking back, I have no hesitation in saying that of all the Tamil leaders past and present, Amirthalingam was the most organic embodiment of Tamil hopes and aspirations. I will not call their politics misguided because to be misguided implies a better or more guided alternative is available. The Tamils have not seen any in the last fifty years - twenty three years of Amirthalingam's political life and seventeen years after his political murder.

He was libeled and lampooned a bourgeois parliamentary failure by the upstart Tamil liberation fighters with pseudo-Marxist quotes on their lips and brains mostly in their guns. All but the LTTE have given up guns, more out of necessity than through enlightenment, and have become part of the amorphous Tamil Democracy movement. The LTTE swears by the gun and the ceasefire at the same time. To all of them, the Tamil people could pose the question: you berated the parliamentarians for their barren politics of twenty years and you have taken us along the violent garden path for nearly thirty years. What have you to show?

Unfortunately, the Tamils are constrained from posing that question to their liberation fighters and to themselves because they are still on a political cul-de-sac within the Sri Lankan state formation. Fifty years after Sinhala Only, the government of Sri Lanka and the parliament of Sri Lanka are not in a position to tell the Tamils - not only the Sri Lankan Tamils but also the Muslims and the Upcountry Tamils - that the political, legal, institutional and security structures of the country will be transformed to ensure the equal citizenship of all Sri Lankans, not just the Sinhalese, regardless of their numbers.

What divides Sinhalese and Tamils?

I hasten to add that I am talking here about the political issues between the Sinhalese and the Tamils and other groups. There are hardly any social or cultural issues among the Sri Lankans. This is quite a contrast and a special blessing compared to other trouble spots of the world - be it Sudan, Israel/Palestine, Kashmir or Northern Ireland. Sinhalese and Tamils do not throw stones at each other's houses as a daily routine. They do not shoot each other on sight. There is no barrier whatever to their social interactions or marital consummations. It is politics that divides them, it is politics that sanctioned the periodical riots against minorities, and it is politics that has now institutionalised the suicide bomber of the LTTE and the military attacks of the government on its own minority citizens.

Perhaps, the government and parliament do not really want to make any changes. That was the case during Amirthalingam's political life and it has been more of the same after his death.

Amirthalingam lived through the humiliation and frustrations of the B-C Pact, Sirima-Shastri Pact, D-C Pact, First Republican Constitution, Second Republican Constitution, District Development Councils, the Sixth Amendment, the Parthasarathy Annexure, the Thimpu fiasco, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Since his death, we have seen the Mangala Munasinghe proposals, the failed Kumaratunga constitutional proposals, the tsunami retractions, and the continuing ceasefire shenanigans.

During Amirthalingam's time the famous Federal Party line was that the Sinhalese leaders were prepared to settle the Tamil question but their solutions were rejected by the Sinhalese masses. This line should have been challenged long ago.

Not the people, but the leaders

It is not the Sinhala people who repudiated their leaders, but it is the leaders who have not had either conviction or courage to put to the Sinhala people the devolution question. As Ranjith Amarasinghe has shown in his scholarly history of the LSSP, most of the seats that the Party (and this is applicable to the CP also) won in the 1956 election while campaigning for language parity were in strong Sinhala Buddhist areas. Chandrika Kumaratunga won her path breaking 1994 election on a platform of peace and constitutional change. The LSSP did not form the government in 1956 but Dr. N.M. Perera and the Party were steadfast in their opposition to Sinhala Only. Kumaratunga won a landslide victory promising change but squandered her political and ethical capital for nothing worthwhile in return. The JVP managed to hamstring President Rajapaksa as a condition of his election last November.

History showed its kindness to NM even before he was cremated. In a resounding tribute that surpassed Pieter Keuneman's predictable peroration at NM's funeral in 1979, and with J.R. Jayewardene sitting behind sphinx like as usual, Amirthalingam asserted: "had Dr. N.M. Perera's stand on the 'parity of status' (between the Sinhala and Tamil languages) been accepted by other Sinhalese leaders in 1956, I would not have been forced to adopt the political position that I am pursuing today and incur the displeasure of the vast majority of the people of this country." In 1979, Amirthalingam was Leader of the Opposition and leader of the TULF that claimed to have won the mandate for Eelam in the elections two years earlier. In a Parliament that was bereft of talent and turned into a bazaar, he was the lone star. He strove to maintain the young tradition that NM had started cultivating meticulously. His finest moment was in defending Mrs. Bandaranaike against the government's move to deprive her of her civil rights. But there was no one defended him when he and his wife were subjected to Cyril Mathew's foul abuse in Parliament. Unique in Commonwealth parliamentary histories, Amirthalingam was assaulted in Jaffna by the Police despite his being the Leader of the Opposition. His official residence was attacked and set fire to during the 1983 riots while trekked to India in disguise via Mannar. Finally, it was the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution enacted in the wake of the 1983 riots and not the Tiger bullets that snuffed the life out of Tamil parliamentary politics. Politically, the Sixth Amendment had killed Amirthalingam long before the LTTE turned its guns on him.

In a rare judicial obiter in the course of its artful ruling on the tenure of Kumaratunga's second term in office, the Supreme Court blamed the Sixth Amendment for the subsequent emergence of the LTTE as political force. It is true that the LTTE has its own agenda, places its organisational interests over the interests of the Tamil people, and could be more disruptive than constructive in working towards constitutional changes. On the other hand, every one of the Southern parties and leaders has been disruptive at some point or another. And the fact remains that no Sri Lankan government or parliament has ever come up with a consensual proposal that would be acceptable to most of the Tamils and international actors.

The insistence that the LTTE is not the sole representative of Tamils becomes vacuous, even mischievous, if it is not followed up by actions that will appeal to the rest of the Tamils. Mindless retaliations to even more mindless LTTE provocations will only lead to situations like in the Middle East.

After 12 years of discussions and education on devolution and federalism in the South, and with most members and supporters of all other southern parties supporting change, why should the political agenda be handed on a platter to the JVP and other opponents of change? Allowing the JVP and its allies to usurp the agenda neatly plays into the hands of the LTTE who paints all Sinhalese with the Mahawamsa mindset and ignore the hard and dedicated work of many Sinhalese organisations in promoting devolution and peace.

The need to erase 'Unitary' spots

No one can blame the Tamils if they tend to be sceptical about President Rajapaksa's new initiatives - the All Party Committee, the Experts Committee and the search for made-in-Sri Lanka devolution. The Tamils have been on this long road before - both before and after the LTTE. As they say in the US, it's deja vu - all over again!

It might seem worse now, given the intransigence of the JVP and the composition of the Experts Committee many of whom have been over zealous opponents of any measure of devolution or state transformation. If they do not erase their unitary spots there can be no hope in hell of stripping the LTTE of its Eelam stripes.