transcurrents

Tamil Politics II-The roots of LTTE’s Militarism and Political Culture

November 24th, 2007

The roots of LTTE’s militarism and political culture

by Rajan Philips

As I argued last week J.R. Jayewardene helped put the Tiger in the saddle and let it ride the Tamils, but there were other factors that were crucial for the rise of the LTTE. My point though is that things could have turned out differently and for the better if Mr. Jayewardene had had the foresight to include the provisions of the 13th Amendment of 1988 in the 1978 Constitution itself. It was so easy for him at that time to offer the TULF and the Tamils the viable constitutional alternative to Eelam that the TULF was looking for. He had a five-sixths majority in parliament and even Rohana Wijeweera was calling for a settlement of the Tamil question soon after JR let him out of the jail.

That is all now water under the bridge, and the Sri Lankan State is still stuck with the problem of the LTTE. To my mind, the present government’s persistence with the military approach only confirms President Rajapakse’s personal refusal, except in his speeches in New York or New Delhi, to understand and address the political grievances of the Tamils. He does not even recognize that these issues were there before the arrival of the LTTE and that they are the main reason for its continued being. The military approach also betrays a lack of understanding among his advisers and among most of the Southern political class, of the symbiotic ties that bind the LTTE to Tamil society.

[First female martyr Malathi's statue, Kilinochchi junction: Picture By Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai]

The LTTE is often described as a politico-military phenomenon. But it has always been more militaristic than political and this uneven duality is personified in the posthumous elevation of Thamilchelvan, the Political Wing Leader, to the rank of Brigadier. The LTTE’s militarism is partly the result of Tamil political desperation, given the failure of the Tamil parliamentary leadership to obtain anything worthwhile from successive Sri Lankan governments. Equally the LTTE militarism is seen by most Tamils-including the late, lamented Lakshman Kadirgamar-as a response to the violence and humiliation that unarmed Tamils were periodically subjected to by politically organized Sinhalese gangs, and the steady intrusion of the mostly Sinhalese Sri Lankan army into Tamil areas.

The communal violence against minorities in Sri Lanka has been more political and much less social. The difference is crucial and it should be one of the positive premises for a politically reconciled future Sri Lanka. Unlike conflict situations in other parts of the world, Sri Lanka’s ethnic groups are not perpetually at each other’s throat at every street corner. The Sinhalese, the Tamils and the Muslims in compatible economic circumstances and living interspersed do socialize with one another, and they even enter into happy marital, and, god knows, extramarital relationships. The tsunami experience showed that Sri Lankans are capable of rising above their ethno-political differences and of being united by their mutual humanity in the face of a common adversity. The social sinews have remarkably held firm despite the language-based segregation in education, the marginalization of the minorities in state institutions, and sustained war mongering that is now going on. But the same amiable social nature also left the Tamil middle classes in the South and the East easy preys for politically organized gangs and thugs from 1958 onward. The LTTE’s militarism therefore came to be seen by the Tamils as a long overdue payback for past humiliations and an effective deterrent against their recurrence.

1961 Satyagraha: High-water mark in Tamil politics

The military violence against the Tamils began with the deployment of the Sri Lankan army in the Northern and Eastern Provinces to quell the unexpectedly successful mass Satyagraha campaign launched by the Tamil Federal Party in 1961. The campaign was the response to the insensitive and pig-headed decision of the newly elected (in July 1960) Sirimavo Bandaranaike government to ram through the implementation of Sinhala Only in the Northern and Eastern Provinces disregarding the understanding her late husband had reached with Chelvanayakam and the Federal Party, and the commitment given to the Federal Party by the more senior SLFP leaders before the July 1960 elections. The Satyagraha campaign avalanched into a genuine mass movement of heightened and restive consciousness the like of which has not since been seen in Tamil society. Colvin R. de Silva, writing in 1975, fully recovered after his short constitutional amnesia and reminiscing on the 40th anniversary of the LSSP, compared the mass mood of the Tamil Satyagraha to what he had seen during the independence struggle in India and poured scorn on the parody of a Satyagraha that J.R. Jayewardene tried to stage in Attanagalla in 1975. More pertinently, the violent campaigns of the LTTE and its erstwhile competitors and the Tamil people’s deliberate distancing from them are in even starker contrast to the 1961 Satyagraha campaign and the people’s spontaneous involvement in it.

The government of Mrs. Bandaranaike was given every opportunity by the leaders of the Federal Party and worthy intermediaries like S.D. Bandaranaike and leaders of the two Left Parties to reach a settlement based on four requests put forward by the Federal leaders. The requests were to recognize Tamil as the language of administration and the Courts in the North and East, address the language requirements of Tamil public servants, and address the language situation of Tamils living outside the Northern and Eastern Provinces. The government refused to concede even these measly requests and decided to send in the army to terminate the Satyagraha.

A now forgotten footnote to the history of this period was the political countermanding of the military decision to send Colonel Abraham, a Tamil Catholic, and his unit to deal with the Satyagraha campaign in Jaffna. Instead of Abraham, the political leaders directed Lt. Colonel Richard Udugama, a Sinhalese Buddhist from Matale, to lead the Jaffna operation. Abraham and his men were at the Anuradhapura Railway Station to take the special military train to Jaffna when they received the new order from Colombo. The soldiers, mostly Sinhalese, got aggravated and sat down in protest, in a mini Satyagraha, on the Station platform. Colonel Abraham had to plead with his men to give up their protest and obey orders. This blatant political interference in military affairs, according to Donald Horowitz’s study, was the immediate trigger for the unsuccessful coup in 1962 against the Sirimavo Bandaranaike government by high ranking military and police officers. Colonel Abraham was one of the accused coup leaders and he died in jail, in 1964. All the other accused men, all Christian Sinhalese, were acquitted on appeal two years later.

I am not suggesting that it would have made a whole lot of difference if Abraham had gone to Jaffna, in 1961, instead of Udugama. Perhaps, Colonel Abraham was unwittingly spared the ignominy of being remembered as a traitor in the Satyagraha saga that is part of Tamil political memory. But the Abraham affair and the coup de’tat were precursors to changes in the structure and culture of the armed services and police which had crucial implications for the transformation of Tamil politics from the non-violence of the Federal Party to the militarism of the LTTE. Recruitment practices that restricted the intake of minorities transformed the armed forces from being ethnically neutral and representative into being almost totally Sinhalese in composition. The erosion of ethnic neutrality was accompanied by the emergence of a markedly coercive culture among the armed forces.

New political culture

In his wartime memoir, the late Regi Siriwardena makes insightful observations about the change in police culture from colonial times to the present-from being considerate, forbearing and accommodating, the police culture and attitudes towards the public became inconsiderate, unforgiving and coercive. Regi attributes this degeneration and the culture of torture against political prisoners to the erosion of the liberal ideological tradition that was shared by the state and the (LSSP) rebels of the colonial era and the emergence of a new political culture. The children of this culture, the JVP of 1971 and 1988, and the LTTE, have been sharing an illiberal ethos with the state. I would add that the erosion of liberal ethos went hand in hand with the erosion of ethnic neutrality and the emergence of an anti-Tamil ethos in the police and the armed forces. The Tamils in the North and East were the first guinea pigs to suffer the new brutality of the Sri Lankan state before it came of age to put down the 1971 JVP insurrection.

The forbearing culture and ethnic neutrality were evident during the 1958 riots when the behaviour of the police and the armed forces was impeccable. By 1977, they were part of the problem. Between 1971 and 1977, Tamil politics became the willing victim of two ‘demonstration effects’: the liberation of Bangladesh provided the validating inspiration to the Eelam demand, while the JVP experience in the South was the cue for political violence in the North and East. Remarkably, the JVP, just like the state it rebelled against, organized itself exclusively among the Sinhalese and left out the Tamils. The Tamil youth were left to organize on their own the Tamil protest and political violence. Early Tamil political violence targeted mostly Tamil politicians who supported the governing parties in the South. All hell broke loose in 1979 when President Jayewardene placed Jaffna under Emergency rule and ordered Brigadier Weeratunga and his army to “to eliminate the menace of terrorism in all its form from the island and more specially from the Jaffna District.” Nothing has been the same since, either in Jaffna or in the rest of the island.

It is one thing to explain the roots of LTTE militarism, but quite another to enquire what it has achieved for the Tamils and to where it has led them. Although the goal of Eelam is more unattainable than ever, there is no denying that the LTTE militarism is the main reason why major reversals have occurred in previously contested areas, namely, the citizenship of the Plantation Tamils, equality in language rights and the recognition of territorial rights. It is inconceivable that the Thirteenth Amendment would ever have been contemplated if the LTTE had not become a military and political force to contend with. Ironically, the LTTE’s rejection of the Thirteenth Amendment in collusion with Sinhalese leaders who were opposed to it prevented its implementation in the Northern and Eastern Provinces which the Amendment was primarily meant for,

The LTTE’s intransigence is also a product of its militarism, but there are other negative effects as well. We could call them the ‘externalities’ of the liberation project-meaning, the negative impacts on Tamil society caused not by the Sri Lankan State from whom liberation is being attempted but by the process of liberation itself. Thus the Tamils have become double victims of the oppression of the State, on the one hand, and the externalities of liberation on the other. It is this helpless state of being double victims that has given rise to the competing claims by the LTTE and the government that each is trying to liberate the Tamils from the other. While the LTTE justifies its being as a liberator and the defender of the Tamil nation against the Sri Lankan State, its detractors, including a good number of Tamils, condemn the LTTE as fascist and brutally undemocratic.

The LTTE phenomenon does carry aspects of nationalism and some of the fangs of fascism, but they are not the main reasons for its resilience and its support among large sections of Tamil society. To my mind, the LTTE’s resilience and support are better explained by the processes of adaptation of the traditional social structures, namely, caste, extended family and the village community, to suit the new circumstances in Sri Lanka and in the Diaspora. [to be continued]

Related:

Part I: Thamilchelvan and Tamil Politics-I

Part III: Kinship, caste and the Diaspora in Tamil nationalism

Entry Filed under: transCurrents