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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Death by Obfuscation : The prerogatives of the federalist lobby

A few years back during a ‘BBC Session’ at the Galle Literary Festival clearly designed to rant and rave about rights abuse by the Sri Lankan security forces, the late Sunila Abeysekera, one of the panelists, spoke about the conflation of ‘Tamils’ and ‘the LTTE’.  The charge was that the Government had essentially marked all Tamils as either LTTErs or sympathizers of that terrorist organization.

A question was put to her: “Who is indulging in conflation here?  Who wanted the LTTE to be treated as the ‘sole representatives of the Tamil people’?  

Who wanted parity of status for the LTTE vis-a-vis the Government in negotiations to resolve what the parity-seekers called an ‘ethnic conflict’, i.e. one between the Sinhalese and Tamils?  Aren’t you, Sunila, guilt of conflation here?”  

It’s just one illustration of how language works to mis-represent, deceive, promote a particular ideology and drive processes towards a preferred outcome.  

Let’s start with the more familiar nomenclature associated with the ‘ethnic’ conflict.  First, the naming of entities as North and South (and at one point ‘Kilinochchi’ and ‘Colombo’).  To those unfamiliar with the relevant history, geography and demography the immediate image is of an island cut across the middle, from East to West, where given the identities of the principal protagonists, the ‘North’ is ‘Tamil Homeland’ and the South the domain of the Sinhalese.  Numbers are suppressed in this characterization.  Legitimacy to struggle is scripted as a ‘goes without saying’ (never mind the ‘came without saying’ and who moved what and for what reason!  

‘Border villages’ is another term liberally used at the time.  On the face of it, the term would apply to those areas on the periphery of the principal zone of conflict (never mind the fact that terrorism in its application was oblivious to boundaries, be they provincial or imaginary as per the notion of a ‘traditional/historical homeland’).  On the other hand, ‘border’ has a meaning, it is a demarcation that separates one geographical entity from another.  The entire conflict, in the ethnicization of it at least, was about real estate.  ‘Border village’, then, surreptitiously infuses legitimacy of land-claims  to the discourse ab initio.  Another ‘came without saying’ thing calculated to acquire ‘goes without saying’ value.     

This is how grievances get inflated and aspirations are made to appear ‘reasonable’.  It must be kept in mind that such sleight of hand in and of itself will not necessarily win the day for the mischief-makers.   

Obfuscation is a long-term project.  It involves selective reading of history, painstaking myth-modeling, creative historiography and relentless vilification of perceived enemy with deliberate ignoring of context, careful sifting of evidence to find and use only that which buttresses proposition and so on.  

That deeper ideologically motivated ‘academic putsch’ if you will is clearly evident in the work of academics who, at best, were or are motivated by a need to end ‘inter-ethnic tensions’ or at worst have some kind of deep-seated antipathy to the historical and real connexion between ‘Sinhala’ and ‘Buddhist’.  Thus we have tall stories about the Nestorian cross found in Anuradhapura as evidence of early Christian communities in the island, and equally tall tales about Prince Mugalan being a Christian or at least having among his men Christians when he took on King Kashyapa.  For the record, such claims have been comprehensively rebutted by academics and the rebuttals have been responded to with a deafening silence by the claimants.  

The intellectual sloth of well-meaning academics (or dishonesty in the case of the pernicious variants) as well as the political dishonesty of their approvers (‘likers’ and ‘sharers’ if you want to use the social media terminology for the relevant mis-education) has been excellently shown in a recent book.  Ishanka Malsiri, a young academic, an archaeologist by training, has completely debunked the claims made by Gananath Obeysekere in his much celebrated and oft-quoted essay ‘Duttagamini and the Buddhist Conscience’.  Malsiri’s review, titled ‘Dutugemunuge Hrda Saakshiyata Pilithurak’ (A reply to Dutugemunu’s conscience’) takes issue with each and everyone of Obeysekere’s contentions, points out the errors of omission and commission, his as well as the sources he has used to support his thesis, and inter alia points out how outcome-preference has driven the writer and robbed the essay of intellectual worth.     

Included in this response to Obeysekera is a critical assessment of the vilification of Anagarika Dharmapala and a refutation of many associated claims, including Obeysekere’s claim that Dharmapala considered Buddhism the preserve of the Sinhalese and sanctioned violence against Tamil people.  

We state all these factors because they have directly and indirectly fed the current drive for a federal solution (sic).  Here again, we see the politics of language and deliberate obfuscation.  The examples that are most frequently cited are those of the USA and India.  If history matters (and it should if we are talking about traditional/historical homelands), then the historical record rebels against ethnic-based breaking up of the nation and certainly against devolution to areas demarcated by current provincial boundaries.  

If we are to draw from the USA and India, then indeed ‘federalism’ has to be taken as a coming together of distinct political entities contained in distinct geographies.   Scripted into that definition is this: whoso voluntarily joins can by the very fact choose to live arbitrarily.   The centralizing processes in both countries, one notes, are conveniently ignored by those who cite the relevant cases.  

Even a cursory glance at the election manifesto of the TNA clearly indicates the double speak.   They talk of a ‘federal solution within a united Sri Lanka;.  They avoid defining ‘united’ or ‘unity’, which are clearly not depended on the structure of the state and cannot be obtained by constitutional article.  The details of the manifesto, moreover, show that whereas ‘federal’ is the label, the wine is a separate state.  

It is in this context that one has to assess the reservations expressed by some ardent federalists about pushing devolution (read ‘federalism’) at this point.  Some have argued that at the present time there is a danger of holding a referendum because ‘wounds are still too fresh and a negative vote by the electoral majority is a possibility’.  

Interesting.  What is implied is that the purpose of a democratic exercise such as an election/referendum is not about ascertaining the will and its direction but pushing through a particular position. 

It gets worse.  Consider this thought from an ardent federalist who was also a one time cheerleader for the ‘parity of status’ call: “No government that is elected, and whose mandate has democratic legitimacy, can make political decisions that do not have majority electoral backing. The majority of the electorate is waiting to be educated and convinced about the need for change, and for the change proposed by the government, as this is what is desired by the Tamil people.”

The majority of the electorate is "waiting to be educated and convinced about the need for change", did he say?  So they are as yet dumb and unconvinced?  How condescending!  

Interesingly though, the project has been revealed.  It’s not about reconciliation.  It’s about pandering to the desires of the Tamil people which (are we to assume?) are expressed by the political coalition that represents them, the TNA.  It’s about subjugating all other interests and ‘desires’ to those of a chauvinistic minority!

Language is not innocent, let us repeat.  It is pregnant with outcome preferences and ideological privileging.  It inflates real grievance and seeks to legitimate aspirations.  Crudely put, in the discussion and promotion of devolution, federalism and even reconciliation, language seeks to legitimate the process of constitutional and political tinkering that is expressly motivated to deliver what Prabhakaran and his bunch of terrorists fought, destroyed and killed to obtain.

All of this we can say is ‘politics and usual’ and dismiss the anti-intellectualism, deliberate misleading and so on as ‘part of the game’.  The problem is that a square peg will not be forced into a round hole.  The misfit at best will yield something shaky.  Constitutions should be more robust.  When they are not and when they are (as envisaged) forced down people’s throats, the body rejects it, one way or another.  

Tragically, what this ends up doing is to flush not only aspiration but even grievance down the tube.    Federalists, then and now, I offer are doing great disservice to the Tamil people, ironically in the very name of addressing grievances, delivering aspirations etc., not to mention that they seek also to dull the Sinhalese and hoodwink them into believing that it’s for their own good!  This is why, one might add, it is so necessary to vilify the Sinhalese and craft a ‘conscience’ that buys the nonsense about historical wrongs done to Tamils.  All language-stuff.  Obfuscating.  And potent.  

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

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India’s 'LTTE'-worries

There are certain things that just won’t stay under.  Like rubber balls.  In water.  They pop up.  It has to do with the properties of matter.  Laws of physics.  Like nationalist sentiments, i.e. sentiments associated with identity, let’s say. 

No, it’s not about the LTTE.  Certain things die and are not reborn.  Like the JVP.  The name can survive and can be used as flag, but the politics can never be the same, except as farce (as Karl Marx famously put it in ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’).  The JVP of 1971 was not recognizable in 88-89 and that JVP is not what we have now.  It’s the same with the LTTE.  ‘That’ LTTE ended its adventure in the Nandikadaal Lagoon three years ago.  If any LTTE lover entertains illusions about a resurrection, then he/she could envisage the second death of that second coming; Nandikadaal is the name to remember.

Delhi has raised concerns about an ‘LTTE-Regrouping’ in Tamil Nadu.  That’s mis-naming.  Tamil Nadu is the logical and most visible residence or, let’s say, headquarters of Tamil Nationalism.  Delhi deftly off-shored a problem that had the potential to hasten what many feel is the inevitable, i.e. the eventual breakup of the Indian union.  To that end, Delhi funded, trained and armed what developed into one of the most ruthless terrorist outfits the world has known in recent times.  Then Delhi feigned to sort out the problem (that’s the Indo-Lanka Accord) and sent a peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka.  Someone’s behind got bitten really badly and it was not that of a Tiger or a Lion. 

Now Delhi finds, we are told, a re-grouping of old friends.  Delhi, by raising concerns, is not sending a warning to a friendly neighbor about a possible threat somewhere down the line.  Delhi is inadvertently articulating an old fear, that of losing Tamil Nadu and then, following the Domino Principle the rest of the country.  It happens.  Just look at what happened to the Soviet Union.  Fictional aggregates are not sustainable and Delhi probably knows this and wants to postpone D-Day. 

Well, Delhi got a breather, if one can call it that, of close to three decades.  Sri Lanka in 2012 is not the Sri Lanka of the early 1980s.  Off-shoring would not be easy, because 30 years of that kind of operation leaves communities exhausted.  Tamils have problems (as do Sinhalese and Muslims, Buddhists and Christians, working class people and unemployed graduates) but gun and bullet is not the way to go.  That every Sri Lanka knows.  Delhi cannot convince otherwise.   

What this ‘re-grouping’ is about then is mis-residenced Tamil Nationalism (should be called ‘chauvinism’, but let’s be generous) re-discovering traditional homeland.  The likes of Vaiko, Jayalalithaa, Karunanidhi and others who rant and rave about Tamil brethren across the Palk Straits while ignoring the real, tangible and terrible grievances of Tamils at home (abject poverty, ill-education, lack of proper healthcare and so on), will need a new ‘Other’ to divert away ‘regime-fatigue’. 

Tamil Nadu is a fertile soil for Tamil Nationalism for reasons of geography, demography, chronic ill-treatment and history (compared to which the ‘suffering’ of Tamils in Sri Lanka are not worth mentioning).  

One could say something about birds coming home to roost, but it’s probably deeper than that.  Delhi’s backyard is dry.  That’s tinder.  Ready to crackle. 

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