What are the landmark political moments of post-Independence Sri
Lanka? We could mention Independence
Day, the 22nd of May 1972 when we became a republic, the shift to
the ‘open economy’ in 1977, the scripting of the 1978 Constitution, July 1983,
the 1988-89 bheeshanay, the passing of the ill-fated 17th
Amendment in 2001 and the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009. And yes, the 29th day of July,
1987. The last is the least mentioned by
those who are asked to respond to the question posed. And yet, just like the 1977 Constitution, the
13th Amendment and the Indo-Lanka Accord that birthed it have had
lasting and devastating impacts on Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans.
It is 25 years after the fact.
Col. R. Hariharan, a retired Indian military intelligence who served
with the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka as Head of Intelligence
and who is a regular commentator on military and political affairs in South
Asia has offered a recap of sorts. He
has compared two Indian interventions, in East Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
India-lovers have bent over backwards to tell
Sri Lankans that India is a friend and was here to help us. They have and they will. Hariharan puts it bluntly. He admits that it was not a love-affair, but
one informed by strategic goals. Nothing
wrong in that. Countries must do what’s
best for countries. That ‘doing’ should
be read just like that and not sugar-coated with silly terms like ‘friendship’
and ‘concern’. In short, India was not
doing Sri Lanka any favours. We have it
now from the mouth of the top intelligence officer.
Hariharan laments that the Accord failed in Sri Lanka: ‘The devolution of powers to the Tamil
minority promised in the Accord remains unfulfilled despite the 13th Amendment.
But the Accord retains the potential as an instrument of Indian influence in
the region.’
The second
part of this lament should be flagged.
So let us flag: ‘Potential as an instrument of Indian influence in the
region’. So, for all the shop-talk about
‘redressing Tamil grievances’ the Accord (and also the 13th
Amendment) was about ‘Indian influence in the region’, Messers R. Sampanthan
and M. Sumanthiran please note.
Hariharan
has to defend frill of course and we are sympathetic to this need. He says, ‘The most significant achievement of
the Accord was the introduction of the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan
Constitution which provided a degree of autonomy to the newly created provinces
and it still exists as the only constitutional tool available to redress Tamil
grievances’.
He does not
outline ‘Tamil Grievances’ (note, not ‘aspirations’) and therefore does not
have to link the territory-based ‘solution’ to a problem that can be
articulated in territorial terms. He
doesn’t have to deal with the fact that there is no history that Tamil
nationalists can come up with to give beef to the whine about ‘traditional
homelands’. He doesn’t have to deal with
the demographic reality of the majority of Tamils living outside the Northern
and Eastern provinces. He doesn’t have
to talk about ethnic cleansing by the LTTE and can be silent about
identity-related population densities in the Eastern Province.
Hariharan
confesses that Indian had no clue about ground realities. He passes the buck to ‘civil intelligence’ of
course, but the bottom line is ignorance.
It is clear that realization is yet to dawn. There’s nothing wrong in Indians being
patriotic, after all Arundathi Roy (activist) and Harsha Bhogle (cricket
columnist) have become very defensive when India seems at risk of break-up or
India is critiqued, respectively.
Hariharan, moreover, is a military man and not an academic.
What has the
Accord done, though, quite apart from trying to satisfy Indian strategic
interests? Here, in Sri Lanka, that day
in late July twenty five years ago was marked by the burning of buses. It gave an impetus to the JVP which quickly
donned a nationalist garb and fed on general public dismay. Close to 60,000 people died in two bloody
years. The 13th Amendment
helped legitimize Eelam mythmaking, turning randomly drawn provincial
boundaries into borders of a fictional homeland. That boundary line has kept feeding narrow
Tamil communalist politicians and politics.
And we are not even going into the fact that two-thirds of the money
allocated for PCs go to just maintain them or that the 13th has
spawned hundreds of regional thugs and ‘takers’.
The debate
should not be about 13 Plus or 13 Minus, but when (and not if) the 13th
will be abrogated. India is welcome to
its strategic interests. Sri Lanka must
be about Sri Lankans and their collective present and future. Fiction doesn’t help. Applauding and legitimating fiction leads to
tragedy. The 13th Amendment
caused blood to flow. Our children need
not bleed too to keep alive that discredited document and certainly not to
satisfy India’s strategic interests.
2 comments:
Thanks Malinda! We furnished clearly quantitatively and qualitatively the out come of the 13th Ammendment(PCs). This regime listen our voice and our next step is take drastic actions to topple this wasteful regime in near future.Really both the UNP and this regime help to satisfy long term Strategic plans of India.We will not allow anyone to play games with the future generation of Srilanka.
The rifle butt that missed the head of an empty headded Indian bloke gave him enough to think. He paid the price. So did a couple of thousand Jawans. 13A is for Ranil, Chandrika and now MR not forgetting Dayan J to to ransack the poor man's begging bowl at will. 13A will remain until we get together and remove it along with its movers and shakers.
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