The inevitable implosion in the Tamil Nationalist Alliance (TNA) the current run up to the parliamentary elections has caused more splinters than an LTTE bomb. If one went by the limited unity within the Alliance at the time of the presidential polls that is only weeks’ old, an ironical interpretation is that it required a strong and popular Sinhala leader with a perceived image of a chauvinist to keep the Tamils and their parties together.
It was President Rajapaksa this time round, but there have been others before him. It is another and more important matter that there have been Tamil groups and parties that have been with the Sinhala Government, from time to time, as if those across the fence need not always be the ‘sole representatives’ as the LTTE earlier and the TNA now, wanted the world to acknowledge. It may have been an unnatural alliance to begin with, yes, but there would have been nothing unnatural if the TNA partners had decided to travel together in the parliamentary elections on their own steam, without an external arm like the LTTE having to direct them from behind. If anything, with the LTTE now behind them, the TNA could have – and should have – made an earnest attempt to bring back all those anti-LTTE Tamil parties under a common umbrella.
Instead, in its earnest attempts to keep its existing flock together and hoping for a larger integration on a later date – and hence, not yielding to external overtures of the kind -- the TNA leadership has lost the post-LTTE initiative without being able to retain the nay-sayers from within. As irony would have it, the TNA is split into five, yet all five identifiable groups that formed the Alliance are also represented on board. Today, an attempt is being made to show as if the ‘initiative’ in this regard rests with the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora, instead. There is no harm in the Diaspora taking an interest in the affairs of their hapless brethren back home. There is also no harm in their taking the much-needed initiative, either. If anything, at a certain point in time, the Tamil parties, suffering from personality differences, as ever, may require an external stimulant of the kind, for them to come and work together for the common good of the people whom they claim to represent.
There are two postulates that the Diaspora may have to address in the process. One, their politics, if not personalities, should be acceptable to all groups of Tamils from as many denominations as possible. That should include the Tamil parties from the East, whose cultural and constitutional differences would have to be acknowledged, if some kind of a political unity has to be attempted. The second postulate refers to the need for the political initiative of any kind having to address the immediate concerns and needs of the ‘residual population’ that is left behind in Sri Lanka – than any ethereal issues that has lost them their lives and livelihood.
Issues such as ‘Statehood’ are ethereal at the moment. Leave alone the differences from the past that were discernible all through, many of the Sri Lankan Tamils today are as worse of as their Malayaha Tamil brethren in terms of livelihood concerns. Sustenance, not substantial rights, has become their main concern – particularly outside Colombo and Jaffna town. If to the locals subsistence and sustenance over-ride their immediate concerns than political rights, the Diaspora should acknowledge it and act accordingly.
Despite a series of LTTE bomb-blasts, the ethnic war did not affect Colombo, or the Tamil population in the city, after the unforgivable incidents attaching to ‘Pogorm-83’.Of course, this is beside the daily harassment that they had faced at the hands of the security forces, who incidentally ended up being seen as the popular face of the ‘Sinhala majority State’. The post-war behaviour of the security forces, where Tamil complaints of the kind are not as serious and not as widespread as they used to be in the Seventies and Eighties, should carry a message of its own. This need not mean that all is well with the Tamils but all is also not as worse as it used to be when Tamil militancy and the LTTE were around.
It is another matter that for reasons that are still not clearly discernible, the LTTE did not make any attempt to take back Jaffna, after the Sri Lankan armed forces ensured their exit. After a point, they did they stop the Jaffinaites from returning home, without they having to suffer the fate of the Vanni population that theLTTE held hostage a decade and more later. To the extent, there is near-normalcy at least in Jaffna though vast improvements may still be required on all fronts.
Today on the question of political solution, the Sri Lankan Tamil polity first, and the larger denominations otherwise are as divided as ever on their moves and methods. The truncated TNA has greater credibility from among the Sri Lankan Tamil political groups but it does not have any vision as to what the Tamils want and can achieve – or a mission to take them there. The less said about the other groups, the better.
Inspired by the controversial Global Tamil Forum (GTF) or otherwise, peripheral sections of the Sri Lankan Tamil polity in the country are still talking in terms of a ‘separate Eelam State’ as their goal or ‘two-nations, one State’ as what should be achieved at the very least. The TNA does not seem to subscribe to such views but their hopes and demands centred on re-merger are also stymied by ground realities. The rest of the Sri Lankan Tamil polity, most of whom have been identified with the Government of the day, may have their own contributions to make but do not carry credibility, owing to such identification. Yet, each one of them, starting with the TNA, is only telling the world as to what the Sri Lankan Government should do for their people but not what they are willing to do for their people. None of these pronouncements sans commitment addresses the concerns of the other two denominations – namely, the Muslims and the Malayaha Tamils.
Minus these two denominations, any political solution for the Tamil-speaking people will be a failure from the start. The Muslims have their acknowledged presence in the East, where they may now be in a numerical majority. From the North, they were driven out by the LTTE. Unacknowledged by everyone else, the Malayaha Tamils alredy have their substantial, if not decisive presence as much in the North as in the East.
Having whipped up anti-India sentiments among the Tamil community in Sri Lanka through the last stages of ‘Eelam War IV’, and more so after the conclusion of the war when their electoral calculations for India went wrong, the Diaspora in particular may want to throw out the Thirteenth Amendment even more than ever before. Given a fair chance, the Thirteenth-Amen dment is structured in a way that it could have helped meet most of the legitimate aspirations of the Tamil people through a process of politico-constitutional evolution through the years.a
It is thus that when the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka ordered de-merger of the North-East, the TNA, obviously with the concurrence of the LTTE, if not under its direction, referred to the India-Sri Lanka Accord, which made the Thirteenth Amendment possible. On Police and Land powers again, reference to the India-Sri Lanka Accord, and the Thirteenth Amendment, are inevitable, if one has to proceed on the path of a negotiated settlement, now or ever.
It is thus that when the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka ordered de-merger of the North-East, the TNA, obviously with the concurrence of the LTTE, if not under its direction, referred to the India-Sri Lanka Accord, which made the Thirteenth Amendment possible. On Police and Land powers again, reference to the India-Sri Lanka Accord, and the Thirteenth Amendment, are inevitable, if one has to proceed on the path of a negotiated settlement, now or ever.
The alternative, as the Global Tamil Forum (GTF) of Diaspora groups from across the world, outlined at London last fortnight, is for the Tamils in Sri Lanka to return to the ‘Vaddukottai Resolution’ and demand ‘right to self-determination for a separate Tmail Eelam State’. It is one thing for them to aspire for, if at all, and another thing for them to accept the ground reality. With the presidential polls, whose processes the international community is not ready to contest, returning President Rajapaksa to power, and the parliamentary polls too due in April, the Diaspora needs to acknowledge the need for them to negotiate whatever solution that is possible with the Sri Lankan State – if it has to work on the ground.
Seminars and conferences, trans-national elections and propaganda cannot be substitutes for hard-nosed negotiations. The LTTE’s exit proved that even long drawn-out ethnic war, violence and terrorism too could not deliver on the hopes and promises. Neither the Diaspora, nor the international community could expect the Sri Lankan State to negotiate with extra-territorial entities, starting with the GTF. Nor should the Diaspora groups say or do anything, as the LTTE did during the closing months of the war, that could embarrass those sections of the local polity in Sri Lanka whose shred sympathies could do more for them than in real terms than what a passing observation or a pre-meditated statement from any section of the international community could ever achieve.
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