This envoy of the Indian Government has also urged the Tamil
National Alliance to join the Parliamentary Select Committee, thereby
effectively snubbing that party for attempting to use India as an instrument to
arm-twist the Sri Lankan Government into submitting to their (the TNA’s)
proposals. This too, is good, subject to
the cautionary footnote, ‘too much should not be made out of appearances’. For example, the TNA can ‘concede’ by
accepting the PSC and the Government could thereafter get the PSC to come up
with ’13 Plus a la India’s
preferences’. It’s good to be
alert.
A Tamil daily newspaper has quoted TNA leader R. Sampanthan
saying that Menon had expressed India’s losing patience about a solution not
materializing. Now if it is Sri Lanka’s
internal matter, then the timeframe should be Sri Lanka’s and not India’s
concern. However, to the extent that the
Sri Lankan Government accepts that there is a problem, then foot-dragging is
something that cannot be condoned, either on the part of the Government or the
main articulator of grievance, the TNA.
The TNA is yet to articulate substantiated grievance and the Government
is yet to ask the TNA to do so. Both
parties have opted for the convenience of barb-exchange. That’s good politics, but bad statesmanship.
As for India’s ‘impatience’, quite apart from the fact that
it smacks of interference, regional political realities should not be
pooh-poohed by the Government. India has
legitimate concerns insofar as the so-called ‘Tamil problem’ plays a role in
Indian power configurations. Indian
politics demands those in power and those aspiring for power to use and abuse
the ‘Tamil Issue’ as a political football.
This is how Sri Lanka (and of course Tamils in Sri Lanka) gets factored
into the Indian political equation.
Diplomatic niceties notwithstanding, it is prudent for the Government to
be mindful of these realities and play its cards without compromising its own
political interest and more importantly the overall aspirations of all Sri
Lankans.
To this end, firm steps should be taken to overcome the
current impasse, and these should include calling the TNA’s bluff by demanding
a full statement on grievances, investigating their true dimensions and
resolving for the same, with or without the TNA’s involvement.
Perhaps what’s really telling is Menon’s claim that India
stands for a ‘United Sri Lanka’. What it
most important about the word ‘united’ is that it refers to something that is
impossible to obtain through legislation. The word is often used by the TNA and
other federalists in post-LTTE Sri Lanka when referring to a ‘solution’, for
example, ‘A solution within a united Sri Lanka’.
‘Unity’ can be obtained in all kinds of political and
constitutional formations. People can be
united in a unitary state and they can be united under a federal
constitution. There is nothing to say
that either ‘unitary’ or ‘federal’ automatically produces ‘unity’.
The obtaining of unity then is dependent on acknowledgment
of anomaly (and this is not limited to ethnic issues), an even greater focus on
commonalities and a consistent privileging of reason over emotion, fact over
myth, lived reality over communalist exaggeration of grievance and the
political expedience of inflating aspiration.
As for ‘solution’, the relevant parties should always keep
in mind that all things have outcomes, and for this reason, the following are
musts, a) the citizens should be kept informed, b) what the PSC (or any other
deliberating forum) comes up with must be treated as ‘proposal’ and subject to
public appraisal, c) the political fallout must be deliberated on and not
something future generations are made to live with and die for. The 13th Amendment, if anything,
is a case in point where India’s arm-twisting and J.R. Jayewardene’s
malleability produced a curse which wrecked political stability and produced a
bloodbath. ['The Nation' editorial of July 1, 2012. Other editorial comments are available at www.nation.lk]
1 comments:
The 13th Ammendment obviously has provincial pilfering and plundering advantages. This, I guess is the reason for political complicity and continuation.
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