Rajiv Gandhi and Narendra Modi, united in hegemonic intent
‘This is the beginning of the Bhutanization of Sri Lanka’ — Rajiv Gandhi
President
Ranil Wickremesinghe has called on all political parties to submit
their views on the 13th Amendment. He, more than anyone else, should
understand that right now the legitimacy of all political parties
(including his) and all politicians (including himself) is suspect (and I
am being kind here). Nothing illegal about his ascension to the post of
president, nothing illegal about 225 persons representing various
political parties remaining in Parliament, but legality and legitimacy
are two different things.
Of course one may interject, ‘that’s
subjective.’ Correct. If subjectivity is key then there was no case
against Gotabaya Rajapaksa and those who bring that argument will have
to say that the entire aragalaya and all the aragalists were out of
order.
We can talk legality though, if that’s what you want. We
can point out that the 13th Amendment was illegally ‘enacted.’ It was
the product of an agreement signed by J.R. Jayewardene under duress.
Rajiv Gandhi’s India (like his mother Indira Gandhi’s India before that)
funded, trained and armed Tamil insurgents. This allowed those who had
no qualms about frilling grievances in order to pad aspirations
willy-nilly to marry fiction and thuggery. India helped up the ante to a
point where it could orchestrate pernicious intervention ‘as a friend,’
and ‘to help resolve a problem (which of course India helped create in
the first place!).’
The narrative of territory embedded in
and which signatures the 13th was clearly based on a piece of fiction
propagated by Tamil chauvinists enlarging on S J V Chelvanayakam’s pithy
formula, ‘a little now, more later.’ It sought to legitimize a
fictional homeland theory replete with well-defined boundaries that were
randomly drawn by an invader (the British) with no basis whatsoever in
history (or even legend!).
History and heritage don’t support
the claims. We can go back to 18th century demographic data through the
first official censuses or we could go back to the 10th Century AD and
the time of Raja Raja Chola I. India’s Ministry of Culture will testify
that the Archaeological Survey of India refers to various temples built
by Raja Raja 1 using wealth plundered from various lands along with the
names of the conquered territories. This island on which Rajiv Gandhi
foisted the 13th Amendment at gunpoint was referred to as ‘The land of
the warlike Singalas.’
If all that is ‘in the past,’ and it
certainly is, we could go to today’s numbers. Those lines referred to
above rebel against demographic reality; almost half the Tamil
population live outside the so-called ‘exclusive traditional Tamil
homelands.
Those who advocate devolution and have championed the
13th Amendment, even demanding ’13 Plus’ are fond of referring to the
Sri Lankan population as being ‘multi ethnic’ and ‘multi religious.’
Correct. Only, they don’t talk about percentages. If they did, they
would have to come up with some kind of justification for the fact that
as per the current demarcation two thirds of the coastline and a third
of the landmass would be controlled in the name of a community that
barely makes 15% of the total population of the country. Except that
this community, as pointed above, while concentrated in the Northern
Province and parts of the Eastern Province (even as of now, more than
half this province is made of what in separatist parlance could be
called ‘Tradition Homelands of the Sinhalese’). In other words, mixed
cultures or cultures amenable to mixing is what has always been the
case. That’s not the same thing as assimilation, which of course can
happen. In any direction.
Those who talk of the 13th and even
13th Plus, don’t dare talk about 13 Minus. The 13th precipitated an
uprising that led to the death of around 60,000 people in just two
years. The 13th prolonged a conflict for a further 22 years. The costs
are incalculable. Those who want to hang the ridiculous charge of
genocide (the Canadian Prime Minister and the Canadian High Commissioner
both need to take Canadian History 101 and Canada Today for the
Indegene 101 at some point, the sooner the better) on Sri Lanka talk
about hundreds of thousands being massacred. Well, India paved the way
for that. If you want to argue it that way.
The almost 40 years
that have passed clearly indicate that provincial councils are white
elephants (during C V Wigneswaran’s watch the Northern Provincial
Council couldn’t even spend the budgetary allocation) headed by
political thugs. Today, in the year 2023 the provincial councils are
dead. No elections. No talk of elections. No ‘aney apoi’ from democracy
advocates who can’t stop talking about power-devolution. Not a single
protest from any party or community or region over this.
Ranil
Wickremesinghe is smart. He’s asking political parties to offer their
views. He probably knows none of these parties can come up with anything
coherent. Perhaps he has calculated that incoherence would pave the way
for him to shrug shoulders and ‘do as India says.’
If political parties are serious (and they are probably not, let us not have illusions here), they can give a response in point form: 1) List all grievances, 2) Evaluate the logic of devolution as 'the only and therefore necessary mechanism to alleviate grievances,' 3) Call for a historical audit to assess the validity of 'exclusive traditional homelands, 4) Assess progress made on resolving grievances enumerated at the time the Indo-Lanka Accord was signed, 5) Revisit the 13th Amendment thereafter and decide whether it should remain, be amended or repealed altogether.
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First get the lines straightened out Jayampathy!
RW too has not deviated from his uncles stance of signing under duress the 13A, where his MP too were given to sign letters of redignation in advsnce and kept in s hotel untill the signing was complete.
ReplyDeleteModi badly needs the south indian vote next election and Sl will be the carrot.
Total seperation along the lines of the MCC requirements to bisect the nation will help both India and US.
Seperation of South India may follow as they are economically a strong state.
SL will need Chinese and Russians help to keep the balance
Thanks Malinda it was a good read