Let's unpack the query in 'Tamil National Question'

President Ranil Wickremesinghe has called all parties to get together and solve what he calls the ‘ethnic-problem’ that has remained ‘unresolved’ for decades. Meanwhile, parties that claim to represent ‘Tamil interests’ have put forward a set of demands: a) stop ‘land grabs in the Northern and Eastern Provinces by armed forces the state institutions while releasing all lands so acquired earlier by them in those two provinces, b) hold provincial council elections forthwith after implementing all provisions in the Constitutions and other laws in respect of power devolution, and c)  implement power devolution under a federal framework through a new Constitution are the three demands.

Any private lands acquired by the state for military purposes should be returned to original owners provided that doing so does not compromise strategic interests. It is hard to imagine that there are ‘strategic interests’ that are vital that such an exercise should be ruled out. Using state lands for state-purposes is of course another matter.

State operations may one day be carried out entirely in virtual space. Maybe state institutions would one day be moved to floating facilities in the sea or in the sky. Until then, they need land and there’s no logic in demanding that they should be located in or out of a particular province. Calling it ‘land grab’ is downright silly. The use of the term ‘land grab’ is interesting. A Freudian slip, in fact, considering the entire discourse of Tamil nationalism, sorry, chauvinism.

Holding provincial council elections, on the face of it, is a legitimate demand. However, it is strange that these very parties have been conspicuously silent about elections not being held for years! It’s almost as if they’ve never been serious about devolution of power. More importantly is the fact that provincial council were set up illegally via a constitutional amendment forced on Sri Lanka by India in a do-it-or-else manner following the infamous dhal-drop by that country’s Air Force.

The third demand is fine: power devolution under a federal framework through a new constitution.  Anyone (including Tamil chauvinists who were vociferous approvers of terrorism and terrorists) has the right to demand anything. Whether such demands can be met is another matter. They can and should be considered. That’s what one expects from a functioning democracy. There should be mechanisms for this and if such don’t exist then they need to be put in place.  

There’s a problem though. Why federalism? Why devolution? On what basis? Grievances, did someone say? What grievances? And, if such do exist, what logic dictates ‘devolution’ as the one and only way of resolving them? Well, Tamil chauvinists are pretty thin on all this.  History is not on their side. Archaeology is not on their side. Demography is not on their side. Geography is not on their side. And even economics is not on their side.

There are serious problems with Tamil nationalism and nationalists.  Substantiation is not their thing. Ask them to do so and they twiddle their thumbs. Talk history and they dodge. Talk about demography and they pretend people and land don’t go together. Talk solutions and they start shifting goalposts. Talk economics and the logic or otherwise of devolution (the Western Province has close to 75% of the country’s GDP and if we played devolution-logic to the letter we would see the continued relative impoverishment of certain districts and provinces) and they will talk about human rights violations. Talk about human rights violations and they act as though it all happened in 2009 and that the LTTE was a band of angels.  Insist and they mutter 'Darusman Report.' Ask a few pointed questions about veracity of claim and they rant and rave about something else in the manner of artful dodgers.  

Thus, when they demand devolution under a federal framework they are talking absolute rubbish.  Not too long ago, i.e. in November 2019, the people of this country voted at a presidential election. The winner and the candidate who came second together polled 94% of the vote.  Both pledged to uphold the unitary character of the state. The Tamil National Alliance supported one of these candidates, Sajith Premadasa. So what talk of federalism? If they were so principled, shouldn’t those in the TNA and other ‘Tamil’ parties have disassociated themselves from any individual or party that did not espouse their cause or at least claim that they will consider a ‘federal’ constitution?

The Tamil National Question. That’s what they like to call it. Question. That’s the key word here. Tamil chauvinists do have a problem, a question. They really don’t care about ground realities. They don’t care about history. They don’t care about demography. Yes, we need to say these things again and again, simply because the biggest question about Tamil Nationalism is this: ‘why is the word ‘substantiation’ not in their vocabulary?’ Why cannot they come out with the true dimensions of grievances and explain how ‘devolution’ and/or ‘federalism’ resolves these? Why do they talk of ‘unity’ when that word is not ‘constitutionable’ and why do they fail to acknowledge that close to 100% of the voting population was not interested in federalism?  All these are questions. All questions that Tamil nationalists must answer but will respond with the kind of navel-gazing that they’ve indulged in for decades which of course did nothing in improving the well being of anyone, including Tamil people in this country.

That’s the ‘Tamil Question’ then — simply a misnomer, a proposition of a racist and a land-grabber.  So when Wickremesinghe wants all parties to come together to resolve the ethnic-conflict, he should first get them to agree on the truth about this ‘ethnic conflict,’ which includes the lie that has been the political foundation of racist, chauvinistic, land-grabbing Tamil politicians and parties for decades.  As for the demands of ‘Tamil’ parties, the time has come to politely tell them, ‘how about an audit of history or histories claimed, how about talking demography and geography, how about discussing voter behaviour and how about dumping the 13th Amendment because it was forced on Sri Lanka by the neighbourhood thug?  

Yes, more than one question. Easily answered. All of them. And, in answering, something could happen to the so-called Tamil Question — a problem of chauvinistic Tamils which can be easily resolved if the chauvinistic Tamils closed shop.  Shouldn't have taken decades. Need not take the five weeks left until the 75th Independence Day celebrations. Five seconds should do.

malindadocs@gmail.com

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The ‘National Question’ in a lumpenized nation

Ideological battles are often marked by a deliberate misnaming of things. One could argue that perspective prompts different kinds of definitions, labels and elaboration, of course, but these choices are not always innocent. Some are used so often that they become entities which allow anyone to read them any which way they like. Sometimes, over-use and even the affirmation through word and deed of the polar opposite, not only robs meaning from words, names, terms and such but turn them into grotesque, humorous and ridiculous descriptives. Yahapalanaya, for instance.  

We are talking here about an older term which has been dormant for a while for reasons we shall come to presently: the national question.  

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe used it a couple of days ago while addressing the 125th anniversary celebrations of the Kandarodai Vidyalaya in Chunnakam, Jaffna. He pledged that he would do his utmost to find a political solution to the national question within the next two years.  Where he will be, politically, come July 2021, is of course a question in and of itself, but then again, attempt at anything, political solution or otherwise, to any question national, international or non-national, is not necessarily dependent on location. What’s interesting is the use of the term and the term itself. 

‘The National Question’ has been a proxy for the so-called ‘Ethnic Conflict’ (also definable as ‘The Separatist Problem’ or ‘The Eelam Project’). In ideological battles, such term-choices are a given, one observes. ‘The National Question’ could also be something that speaks to issues of identity and belonging, especially after Independence. 

Wickremesinghe, for example, observing in the same speech that the English cricket team included players of different national origins, opined that ‘the time has come for everyone to think of Sri Lankans as [citizens of] a single nation.’  One assumes he’s implying that people should stop thinking of themselves as Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, Burghers etc., or as belonging to different religious communities or, even as they do so they ought to see ‘Sri Lanka’ and ‘Sri Lankan.’ One need not be one (e.g. Tamil or Sinhala) or the other (Sri Lankan), this too needs to be said. Also, the entire ‘question’ should not be (as it is) reduced to something that derives from a simple and simplistic description on lines such as ‘one ethnicity one vote’ or ‘one religion one vote’. That’s essentially deploying the principle of equality to erase percentages, history and heritage. One observes that many such ‘One Sri Lanka’ advocates are conspicuously silent on such important matters. 

That said, we do have a problem of ‘belonging’. Wickremesinghe implies that the likes of Eoin Morgan and Jofra Archer feel they are truly ‘English’. He may be correct. The question for us is, do Tamils and Muslims, Christians and Burghers feel similarly ‘belonged’? For that matter, do Sinhalese feel ‘belonged’? Do the majority feel they are ‘belonged’ in some form or the other that matters to them, individually and/or collectively? Do we feel properly represented? Who really owns this country? 

If ‘national’ relates to or is characteristic of ‘nation’ or something common to a whole nation, what then is ‘nation’ for people living on this island? You could get many responses here, many of them valid in terms of substantive-weight and indeed, for reasons of political efficacy, appearing even more valid by selectivity, i.e. the play of exaggeration and understatement. 

This is not an exercise is defining to any degree of ‘finality’. However, Wickremesinghe has opened the doors to debate. In the very least, we can use the common sense definitions of ‘nation’ and ‘national’ to raise some questions. Here goes. 

How ‘national’ was Resolution 30/1 of the UNHRC co-sponsored by the Yahapalana Government, considering that it essentially crippled the security apparatus (long, longed for by the movers and shakers of the regime and in particular the then Minister of Foreign Affairs)? How ‘national’ indeed when it includes clauses that make for non-nationals to decide how things are done or not done in Sri Lanka? What’s ‘national’ about policies that clearly compromise sovereignty, wrecks food security and causes ecological destruction? What’s ‘national’ about processes that impoverish vast sections of the citizenry? What kind of ‘nation’ do we have when in the name of religious freedom, certain religious communities teach, affirm and execute tenets that are not only intolerant but make for terrorism? 

What is this ‘nation’ where politics is reduced to a consideration of which party/coalition or candidate gets to sell bits and pieces or entire swathes on account of idiocy, lack of faith in the people, kickbacks or any combination of these plus a lot of other things that make ‘belonging’ and ‘ownership’ meaningless? For the record, let’s mention the following: the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, the Ceasefire Agreement, various deals related to ports and airports, the SOFA and ACSA, Millennium Corporation deal. 

What’s this nation where corrupt, incompetent and clearly traitorous ministers, with the tacit support of their respective bosses, sign agreements that are detrimental to the national interest, whichever way one wants to defined ‘national’ here? What kind of nation is this where we have agreements with other countries that the cabinet, parliament and the general public don’t get to see?  Does ‘nation’ make sense when the state subsidizes capital interests while insulting, humiliating and dispossessing the majority of the people? What kind of ‘nation’ is this where poisoning the soil and the people are cornerstones of agricultural policy? What is this nation which has paid representatives who keep their mouth shut in other countries and in multilateral forums where resolutions are proposed to vilify the nation and her people and/or seek to legitimate narratives that are patently false? Where’s the ‘national’ in that kind of sloth, incompetence and idiocy? 

Marxists talk of a bourgeoisie and a proletariat that does not comprehend their respective class interests. They talk of a lumpen proletariat and could also talk of a lumpen bourgeoisie. We do have, one might add, lumpen nationalism/nationalists, lumpen ‘intellectuals’, lumpen ‘civil society,’ and lumpen ‘professionals’. Put together, a lumpen citizenry and a lumpen nation, one might conclude.

‘Lumpen,’ ladies and gentlemen, refers to that which relates to dispossession and uprooting, i..e cut off (typically) from the economic and social class with which a particular collective might normally be identified. We do not have a sense of ‘nation’ and ‘national’ or rather our ‘leaders’ and ‘representatives’ do not. There’s dispossession. There’s uprooting. If we are a nation, we are a lumpen articulation of one. If there’s dispossession, then re-possession is the order of the day. If there’s uprooting, then re-rooting or a search for rootedness is called for. Such an exercise cannot be expected from the major political parties or their allies. We cannot expect it from the mainstream contenders for the prize (yes!) of the presidency. We might as well look elsewhere.

malindasenevi@gmail.com. 

[First published in the Daily Mirror on July 18, 2019]

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Repeating the error of self-inflicted torture

Any conflagration and especially one marked by the clash of arms that lasts over several decades can be defined in multiple ways.  For some, the conflict in Sri Lanka, was a matter between the Sinhalese and Tamils.  They call it ‘Ethnic Conflict’.  Others could say that it was a battle between state entities and a terrorist outfit or one between democracy and insurgency.  

Portrayal is naturally informed by ideological bent and of course, since identity is involved, the play of communal angst often decides the issue of definition.  

Emotion typically bests reason in the process.  To the extent that the protagonists were to a large extent identifiable in terms of a particular community and since the conflict was framed emphatically (at least by one party and often by the other) in communal terms, the ‘ethnic’ label is not without logic, although the complexity of it all rebels against such convenient descriptions.  

There could be one area where there’s agreement.  It was a tragedy.  Lives were lost.  Properties were destroyed.  An economy was strangled, development arrested.  People were maimed and displaced.  There was despair and gloom, fear and foreboding. 

Only the obdurate afflicted with strong identity fetishes would claim absolute innocence on behalf of his or her community.  Even if that weren’t the case afflictions of such nature do inform exercises in ‘rational’ apportionment of blame.

One thing that has been left out of the entire ‘in retrospect’ business is the self-inflicted.  Just the other day,  Lord Justice Sales, one of Britain’s most senior judges, in what could be a landmark 22,000-word appeal ruling, has observed that a Sri Lankan had allowed himself to be tortured with iron bars to support his bid to stay in that country.  The court ruled that the man probably consented to the torture as part of a ruse called “Self-infliction by proxy” or SIBP to buttress a case for asylum.  

KV, as the claimant is identified, is not a one-off asylum-seeking Tamil from Sri Lanka and neither is Britain the only country where his ilk have applied for asylum.  Asylum seekers are required to submit solid evidence and in a world where the visual dominates testimony inscribed on body can be quite compelling.  There’s enough evidence to prove that ‘torture-marking’ is a lucrative business, run of course by ‘well-meaning’ Tamil expatriates.  There are agencies that ‘take care of things’.  For a price.  And part of that price can be self-inflicting torture.  

An investigation launched by the Sri Lankan military a few years ago unearthed a lot of information regarding the process.  One woman who was asked to follow a ‘rape-script’ to secure asylum in the UK refused because the objective was outweighed by the shame of ‘admitting’ have been raped even if it was just theatre.  Self-respect counted.  In the course of that investigation, it was found that a veritable army of operators were involved in the ‘asylum business’.  

There were torture-artists, lawyers who argued ‘torture,’ physicians who would affirm ‘torture’ and handlers who had profiled courts and judges and figured out which were ‘easy’. There still are, apparently.

   

All this could be dismissed as ‘constructed propaganda by the Sri Lankan government’.  At the time, for reasons that had nothing to do with immigration policy or upholding the dignity of judicial processes, the submissions from Sri Lanka were ignored.  Lord Justice Sales, however, is not ‘in the pay of the Rajapaksas’ (as has been the excuse for summary dismissal of such claims).  

Britain’s Home Office will have to act, sooner or later, especially in a context where terrorism (a menace selectively spawned, nurtured and apologized for) has secured a kind of residency that was unanticipated but impossible to ignore.  

The relevant question here is this: ‘Why would anyone suffer the shame of lying about being raped or submit him/herself to being torture-inscribed unless he/she believes it is a better option than living in their home country?’  One could argue that the truth or otherwise of torture-claims, submission to such pain is a superior choice to suffering the ‘hurt’ of discrimination.

The key issue is that once a certain threshold of escalation has been crossed the claim is legitimate regardless of who did what to whom and when.  People flee conflict for a reason, to put it simply.  What’s important is to understand that the true self-infliction of torture preceded cases such as the one on which Lord Justice Sales deliberated.  

Let’s ask ourselves some questions to drive home the point.  Who wanted a 50-50 split for a community that made just over one tenth of a total population? Who created and/or played on the nationless-angst of a particular community, drawing inter alia, a nation-map traced on the arbitrary exercises in cartography indulged in by the British? Who interchanged (often inflated) grievance and (ridiculous) aspirations easily and frequently enough to legitimate a demand unsupported by history, archaeology and demography?  When such sentiments as were generated found articulation in an election result in 1977, why did not the Government of the time call for a historical audit?  When extremism reared its ugly head why did successive governments respond with utmost brutality that conflated ‘Tamil’ with ‘Terrorist,’ especially in the 1980s?  

Who dropped parippu and effectively postponed by twenty years the eradication of the terrorist menace and therefore paved the way for tens of thousands of deaths and other destruction?  

Why did those who claimed to stand for a negotiated settlement give credence to that conflation (which had been un-tangled to a large extent) by legitimating terrorism and 'conceding’ that the LTTE was indeed the sole representative of the Tamils?  Why wasn’t what was essentially a hostage-rescue operation named as such (Read about 'The wretched of the Wanni Earth' by D.B.S. Jeyaraj)?  Why (let us ask again) is no one calling the Tamil nationalist bluff by commissioning a historical audit?  

There was a turning point in 2009.  History however is not rolled out in a bell curve.  There can be other twists.  Tragedy is a visitor who does not require a formal invitation.  Escalation is easily orchestrated.  In all this there’s self-inflicted torture.  ‘KV’ is, in this sense, an embarrassment to Tamil chauvinists but all things considered, nothing more than a distraction.  This country has let itself become a classic case of self-inflicted national torture.  A re-definition is needed not just for national dignity but national survival. 

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.  Blog: malindawords.blogspot.com.  Twitter: malindasene

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The management of insecurities

Dayan Jayatilleka has made some pertinent points regarding conflict resolution and the seemingly vexed issue of Tamil grievances/aspirations and relief sought in an article titled ‘Constitution-making and the North-South political cycle’.  

I have an issue withe the term ‘North-South’ so let me first get it out of the way.  It is a ‘break’ that has been used frequently enough to give it legitimate political currency.  Erroneous, however.  It has come to the point of ‘goes without saying’ which automatically assumes ‘came without saying’ and therefore pushed deliberately.  What does ‘North’ taken for and what is ‘South’?  They have acquired proxy status for Tamil and Sinhala respectively and imply, following the geographical reference, a land that is divided by a line moving from West to East where the ‘North’ is of (and a legitimate claim of) Tamils and the South of the Sinhalese.  

A geographical '50-50’ by way of the easy fracture 'North-South' is a gross distortion of historical and demographic realities.  Language, needless to say, is not innocent.  

With that out of the way, let’s consider the implications of Dayan’s more serious and more legitimate contentions.    

“Even today, there is no Tamil progressive or moderate tendency in or outside Sri Lanka that is willing to denounce the LTTE, Prabhakaran and Tamil Eelam openly.   Tamil politics has remained self-referential and pan-Tamil in character. Tamil nationalism is psychologically separatist even when it isn’t politically separatist.”

The above claim is followed by an expression of disappointment regarding the lack of interest on the part of Tamil politicians to forge a bloc with ‘Southern’ progressives.

Theoretically, a Tamil chauvinist or even nationalist retort could take the following form: ‘Sinhala politics has remained self-referential in character. Sinhala nationalism is psychologically unitary-fixated even when it talks devolution.”  It follows that a Tamil version of Dayan’s lament regarding ‘Progressives’ is also possible, although that would still leave us without an answer to the question ‘What is progressive?’  

Even if we were to put aside the strong objections based on history, geography, demography and doability to the Tamil separatist project and all devolution proposals that do not take issue with current political boundaries for their arbitrariness, their implicit subversion of separatist claims, the very existence of positions as detailed above gives credence to Dayan’s claims about things intractable and therefore the necessity of ‘management’.  

This is why I am in agreement with the first part of Dayan’s vision expressed as follows: ‘Sri Lanka could (should?) draw up a New Social Contract in which national minorities are integrated on the basis of equal citizenship and non-discrimination while assured of a reasonable sufficiency of autonomy through the devolution of power within a Unitary State.’  The reservations about the second part (regarding devolution) is principally on the issue of boundaries and economic logic of the same.  As mentioned above and as stated by President Maithripala Sirisena the current boundaries upon which the separatist map has been crafted, with quite some stretching on the Western coast were arbitrarily drawn by the British.  Secondly, given the reality that close to half the Tamil population live outside the so-called ‘Traditional Homelands’, devolution cannot assume to resolve any ‘Tamil issue’ in and of itself.  

Power-devolution is theoretically a democratizing proposition, but in Sri Lanka’s context, given the intractabilities mentioned above, it is a non-starter or, as the 13th Amendment proved, guaranteed to trigger bloodbaths and generate further complications, primarily because the foundational logic is flawed and therefore the edifice is necessarily weak.  

A different kind of devolution might make sense, for example one where the entire provincial boundaries are re-drawn in a way that makes sense in terms of geographical realities and takes into account current resource anomalies among the existing provinces, but again that’s not even an element that anyone is willing to entertain, leave alone discuss.  

This brings us back to ‘integration on the basis of equal citizenship and non-discrimination’.  That is a tough cat-belling, so to speak, but right now it’s the only logical starting point.  It would be about guarantees.  It would have to take into account the issue of religion and the ‘special place for Buddhism’.  Not easy since histories count, historicities count and these things have eminent toy-value for extremists and real, on-the-ground relevance.  

For example, would the removal of the tokenist privileging of Buddhism in the Constitution accompany an erasure of customary laws that are relevant to Islam and those relevant to Tamils who can cite the Thesawalami Laws?  Would we discuss the pruning of customary ‘Buddhist holidays’ from four to three (the sathara poya to pun-poya) and the privileging of Christian holidays (Sundays — 52 of them)?  

It is not easy, but it is a discussion that has to take place simply because resolution is for the most part about managing and balancing insecurities, whether or not they are legitimate.  That’s where the audit must begin and not with rhetoric.  And that’s exactly what has not happened.  This is why solutions (like the 13th) fail(ed).  The true dimensions, in other words, of all the relevant issues have been ignored.  There are no mechanisms proposed to ascertain these.  Small wonder that the entire reconciliation exercise is floundering.  In the absence or rather the improbability of magnanimity by all (and not some) the players in the story. 

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer.  Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com.  Twitter: malindasene

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