Tamil Representatives may be blamed for irreversible Tamil tragedy
by Dr.Dayan Jayatilleka
My first book had an awful title (Sri Lanka: The Travails Of A Democracy) conferred by the publisher in Delhi, but the subtitle was mine, and it was Unfinished War, Protracted Crisis. Today, that war is finished but the crisis protracts.
In a critical review of that first book, Prof A.J. Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of New Brunswick and son-in law of S.J.V. Chelvanayagam, kindly ventured the opinion that “Dayan… is perhaps the last liberal thinker among the Sinhalese” (Sunday Island, March 23, 1997, p14, 16).
Significantly, the same book was met with a blistering full page critique by leading Tiger ideologue and spokesman Anton Balasingham in his Brahmagnani column, in which he said: “Sri Lankan political discourse, in recent times, has produced an amazing variety of political theorists and analysts whose main vocation seems to be to produce denunciatory criticisms of the politico-military strategy of the LTTE and offer ideas or solutions as to how to end the so-called terrorist menace. Among these political theorists Dayan Jayatilleka stands out as a unique character in his irrational and ruthless criticism of the LTTE.” (Inside Report – Tamil Eelam News Review, June 30, 1995).
Indian reviewers were divided, with Partha Ghosh, then Chairman of the Indian Council of Social Sciences Research producing a very positive assessment while Prof S.D. Muni who succeeded the more liberal Prof Urmila Phadnis as the JNU’s leading Sri Lankanologist, ripped into the book, hawkishly.
While the divergent Tamil intellectual reactions, those of Prof Wilson and Anton Balasingham, demonstrate that it is perfectly possible, as a political theorist, to adopt a stance that is anti-Tiger and is yet sensitive to Tamil nationalist sensibility; that it is precisely such a stance that Tiger i.e. hard-core violent separatist ideology and strategy finds most dangerous and takes greatest exception to; and that such a stance provides basis for combating the hard-core secessionist enemy while engaging in debate and dialogue with liberal-democratic parliamentary Tamil nationalism.
There would be many who would deride both noun and adjective contained in the late Emeritus Professor Wilson’s definition of me, and they may well be right. Still, it serves as a good entry point into my subject.
If I am a ‘liberal thinker’ then I am a liberal Realist who supports the establishment of a sufficient and permanent Sri Lankan military presence on state land in the North and East. However, I am also wary of the establishment of permanent housing for military families and the acquisition of privately owned land for that purpose.
The reason for my support and opposition is security of the state and society. Sri Lanka is one country and the state has every right to establish armed encampments and deploy its armed forces wherever it sees fit. I have no problem with the exercise of that right. Yet, just as every other right it must be exercised prudently, because the unity of Sri Lanka as a single country is not the only aspect of Sri Lanka’s reality that must be taken into account.
Ours is also a multi ethnic country with a historically evolved and stable ethno-demography. The Tamils consider the Northern Province as their ancestral land, the land of their grandfathers and great grandfathers. I have met seventh generation Malaysian Tamils who are emotionally attached to Kokuvil as their native place, where their roots run back to.
The establishment of a strong military presence is necessary because the state and the citizenry can no longer be suckered. The Sri Lankan state must internalise the military lessons of all the wars it has had to fight in the North East and deploy troops in a manner that the area is strategically as impregnable as is possible to render it. The Sri Lankan military deployments in the North and East must never be vulnerable again, militarily or logistically. They must be capable of safeguarding our outer borders as well as preventing/preempting terrorism and low intensity insurgency.
The Sri Lankan military configuration in the North and East must be capable of deterring or fighting and winning future wars. But it must not be the cause or catalyst for future conflict. That would be self-defeating because it would not enhance national security; it would undermine it.
Had Sri Lanka either been bereft of an internal ethno-national question (the Tamil question) or had the Sri Lankan military been multi ethnic in composition, the acquisition of private land for high security zones and permanent housing for military families would not have been so serious a problem. We are dealing with the reality of a mono-ethnic, monolingual, mono-religious military establishing permanent housing for their families in a differently mono-ethnic area with a high degree of sub-nationalist consciousness.
There would be those who argue that a mono-ethnic army was able, against all expectation, to win a war against terrorism and separatism on the home turf of the insurgents. This is not strictly true. The achievement of the Sri Lankan armed forces was both greater than that and different from it. The Sri Lankan army defeated a rival secessionist army, a powerful militia, not a guerrilla insurgency or terrorist network. The Tigers had long outgrown those stages and hypertrophied to the socio-politically unsustainable level of a parallel armed force, fighting a quasi-conventional war.
Today, the state must deploy the armed forces in the North and East in a manner that deters and prevents future conflict and rather than sows the seeds for it, either in the forms of terrorism, guerrilla cells or unarmed civic resistance. The establishment of permanent military bases strictly within state (‘Crown’) land is doubtless imperative to guarantee the first objective, but the acquisition of private land and the settlement of military families could trigger the latter.
The permanent settlement of military families means places of religious worship, schools, shops, cinemas, services, etc, and the first sign of protest would also mean widening the zone, narrowing access to the civilians of the area, perhaps new access roads and the proliferation of checkpoints.
This may seem an excellent method of population mixing, but that works as a method of conflict transformation only if population movement is as a result of natural economic factors, not unilateral state policy. The Tamils in Wellawatte were not brought there as part of state policy.
These ideas for the North and East are not new — and nor is the critique. A read through the Lanka Guardian and The Island’s ‘Kautilya’ column of the 1980s would show the repeated warnings by Mervyn de Silva, who was, among other things, widely acknowledged as the country’s leading expert on Israel/Palestine and the Middle East, about the ideas of a wing of the J.R. Jayewardene government of the time.
These ideas, identified with then Minister of National Security but also shared by the President’s son and security advisor Ravi Jayewardene, located in and derived from an irrelevant external matrix, were dangerously inapplicable to Sri Lanka, would worsen the ethnic problem and generate a backlash from the regional power, warned my father.
‘In an age of identity, ethnicity walks on water’ he said, pointing to inflamed sentiment in proximate Tamil Nadu and the increasingly influential Diaspora, of which the Sinhalese had no equivalent or counterweight to. As it turned out, it was not the Tamil Tiger insurgency which put a halt to Minister Athulathmudali’s and Ravi Jayewardene’s importation of ‘the West Bank model’ as the Lanka Guardian called it, but precisely the ‘geo-political realities’ – the absence or furling of a superpower umbrella in the event of an abrupt assertion by the regional power — that Mervyn de Silva had tried to drum home into the ruling elite, to no avail, until the external ‘seismic shock’ of mid-1987.
Sri Lanka is today at a crossroads. One road leads to reconciliation and a fresh start which enables us to integrate with Asia’s march to modernity. The other leads to a new and prolonged cycle of conflict.
The right kind of security policy for the North and East, a policy which derives from the best practises globally, a policy which is scientific and professional rather than driven by wrong interpretations of history and ethno-religious motivations, will enhance and ensure security. The wrong kind of security policy for the post-war North and East in which Sri Lankan armed forces cantonments become interlinked oases embedded a hostile local population, may turn the entire area into a high insecurity zone.
Realism tells us that the North and East have to be secure over the long term. It tells us that the Sri Lankan security forces will remain overwhelmingly mono-ethnic at least in the short term. Realism, which is drawn in large part from world history, further tells us that in such a situation, a policy of permanent encampments and fortifications must be accompanied by alliances with the local elites and a degree of local autonomy. That autonomy must not be so large as to be dysfunctional to security and strategy but must be sufficiently broad to preempt local disaffection. This has been the policy of successful empires from Rome to Britain.
Sadly, it would seem as though Sri Lankan policy projections do not involve this latter aspect of sufficient local autonomy, and that the security aspect is designed to overlook, override, bypass or undermine that local autonomy should it be implemented under external pressure or internal political compulsion.
The great Asian strategic thinker-practitioner Mao Ze Dong advocated a policy of ‘walking on two legs’. We seem intent on marching forward on one. The increased alienation of the Tamil people of the North and a widening gulf between the collective psyches of our main communities cannot be a pathway to stable security and permanent peace. The so-called demographic solution is no solution, as has been proved even in its conceptual birthplace — and notwithstanding a superpower blank cheque that Sri Lanka will never have.
While ‘facts are being created on the ground’, if the elected representatives of the Tamil people remain divided, with some dreaming of self-determination and others of federalism, and still others refuse to talk to their erstwhile comrades who are in government, instead of collectively pressing for the reasonable demand of the ‘turnkey’ re-activation of the existing constitutional provisions as reiterated in bilateral statements and international undertakings, then these Tamil representatives will have only themselves to blame for the continuing and perhaps irreversible Tamil tragedy. Thus, the war is won, the conflict is recessed and latent, but the crisis looks set to continue.
18 Comments
Failure to win the peace will result in a tragedy for the whole country not just the Tamil people. Therefore it is essential that the Sinhalese reach out to all the players and bring them together for the sake of our common future.
Sir,
I cant understand why you are too much interested in this problem.I see every week article or two written by you being published in this website.
When you write much the value of your ideas loose the attraction to the audiance.
Mao ZeDong is no longer considered a great Chinese strategic thinker-practitioner in China. That place goes to DengXiaoping.
Mao's memory is an inconvenient reality in capitalist China. Many chinese believe the future of a couple of generations were completely destroyed by him.
DJ, routinely, builds the arguments for his theories in 'compartments'. This presentation is not any different.
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Today, the state must deploy the armed forces in the North and East in a manner that deters and prevents future conflict and rather than sows the seeds for it....... ......
What raises to the surface is the notion, 'sowing' the seed! Would DJ care to identify the seed that was 'sown' to bring about insurgency and militancy into a docile community of Tamils.
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The establishment of a strong military presence is necessary ... ... that the area is strategically as impregnable ... ... the North and East must never be vulnerable again, militarily or logistically. ... ...
Was the North and East ever vulnerable? The pretence of vulnerability is a gimmick, that is being orchestrated by Sinhalese to marginalize Tamils. It was not that the Tamils had an army and you defeated them! Hearts and minds are won only by justice and fairness.
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DJ, There are brilliant scholars amongst both communities. A primary flaw that keeps you away from their company is your lack of forthrightness. Shedding one's bias is not easy to come by. Should you, you may end up seeing things differently and win over the hearts of Tamils.
Dr Jayathillaka's advice not to allow Military personnel to live in the North East with their families is not sensible for the following reasons.
At the height of fighting, the soldiers did not have time to think anything else other than saving their lives from the LTTE fighters.
In the current peaceful environment. soldiers will be persuing other interests to fill their time and desires.. Sexual desires will be top on the list.
Allowing the soldiers to live with their families is the best way to curb these desires.
One or two incidents of Soldiers having sex with local Tamil women is lot easier to be used to exploit Tamil emotions than a Military family living in a neighborhood.
Also if the soldier's wives and children interact with the locals through schooling and other activities it will have a positive effect rather than stirring emotions.
Also with the booming economy in these areas ,people will welcome enhanced activity resulting from permanent settlers in their neighbor hoods.
Also this will lead to local lads getting to know the good side of Military life and may want to join the forces and police as the living standards improve over time.
dear dj,
i think you have written sensibly and i dont know whether sinhalese establishment will ever accept your arguements.let me be objective though i am a tamil after reading a lot about the happenings in srilanka for the last 30 years i am increasingly convinced that sinhalese society is one of the most brutal feudalistic society where the acceptance of other culture will never take place.if you had cyril mathew,gamini dissanayake in 80s you have mervyn silva,wimala weerawansa now.tomorrow these two people will be replaced by some other persons.as a human being with a love for different cultures i would say unification of north and east provinces with sufficient powers and an intention to preserve the tamil culture in north east will pave way for permanent peace in this beautiful island.sinhalese need not fear their tamil cousins across the strait i dont think we are cultural marauders hell bent on conquering lankadweepa.prof.a.j.wilson has said that you are one of the last sinhalese liberal thinkers i would say ranil wickramasinghe is last decent politician sinhalese society has produced i wonder how ranil did not pick up the willy traits from his uncle probably his upbringing was different.as far as setting up of cantonments are concerned in north it only signals lack of confidence in the northern tamils.if tamils rights are going to be looked after there would not be any need for policeing they will be committed to srilankan integrity let us learn a few lesson from the past.still lol dj you have not replied to my if i had been a sinhalese reply lol
It is not surprising Dr. Dayan, writing the extremist Sinhala Ideas. He has not written about reconciliation. Always he fear about re-emergence of Tamil forces and therefore prefer or advise the government to have the presence of a strong military presence in North and East. The governors of the both provinces are from the forces. He has not suggested recruiting Tamil personnel for military on the contrary; he says to have at least for a shorter period Sinhala military in north and east. He writes as a Sinhalese and not like as an intellectuals. How anyone could expects Dr. Dayan to speak sustainable peace, rehabilitation, reconciliation. How could Tamils feel that Sri Lanka is their mother land, they are citizens of Sri Lanka, they have equal rights like any other community has in Sri Lanka when mono lingual military be present north and east.
During my school days I used to admire LSSP and CP comrades,like Colvin R de Silva,NM Perera, Bernard,Leslie, Vivien, Edmund ,Anil and so on from the LSSP and like Pete r Kneuman from CP when ever they visit the North for the election campaigns and atriculate their principles/ ideology etc, etc and how they were against the two major parties UNP and SLFP. I also saw the reality of how they meanderd over the years and threw away their principles except the Edmund samarkody faction.when it came to the NE problem. I also so the reality of how their comrades who were their party leaders in NE and able candidates abondoning their loyalty or moved away from the LSSP CP heirarchy after 1972. Only Wickrmabahu Kaeunaratne like Edmund still do not meander.
Here again I see how the decent of that Edmund type Mervyn de Silva is meandering for the last 10 years or so but with the hope that the ownership of the whole Island can be established with bare minimum concessions to the minorities from a position of strength.
He knows very well the right time to impose that is the post war strong position MR regime hold but feeling restless as the time is running out. He knows very well that more it drags to bring a political solution the ultimate losers will the majority Sinhalese no matter whehter China, India and Russia back them up in the UN or not.
DJ says he wary of the establishment of permanent housing for military families and the acquisition of privately owned land for that purpose. But not against it. Although he accepts that the SL army is almost mono etinic ,he praises their achievments and the regime and their jsut war regardless of the civilian casualities and defends them. But when it comes to Tamil nationalism he treats the the Tamil Diaspora as enemies along Gemunu ideology.
DJ may treat the first three comments sent by Srilankan, Justice and Fair Play and Appuwa as a trident from the enimies, I consider it as message from the Trinity to Dayan.
I still do not understand why he always conclude his analysis with heavy arm twisting of the Tamil Community and its politicians with the intention of getting a submission with the help and support of India and China both covertly and overtly.
For him both SLFP and UNP are democratic parties never made any blunders except UNP under the leadership of Ranil. For Professor like DJ, 1948 has no significance to the present day plight. It is the Tamil nationalism of Wilson's father in law SJVC for whom at least LSSP and CP had high respect in 1956.
Kalu Albert | July 18, 2010 07:39 PM ,
You have a twistwd mind !
Dayan's wrightings always have a personal bious and try to portray his own family backround and tries to boast his own views. he canot feel for others and he judges others in his own backround. hid recennt controversial out burstes is to promote his books and his personel benifits.
Dayan's wrightings always have a personal bious and try to portray his own family backround and tries to boast his own views. he canot feel for others and he judges others in his own backround. hid recennt controversial out burstes is to promote his books and his personel benifits.
Fortunately, for all of us there is no shortage of liberal thinkers in the majority – even today. One cannot be blamed if one was to come to the conclusion the essay is the product of a military die-hard insisting on the permanent continuation, increased presence and domination of life in the North-East by uniformed men. That is what it the piece almost entirely is.
I have no objection to an equitqable presence of the army in the NEP - the undisputed fight of a legitimate State -taking into consideration the fact the Tigers ran amok in the post 1990s. This should in no way cause undue distress, tension or disruption of the normal life of the civilian population. The presence of the SLA should be in such a manner the Tamil people of the area are not left with room to complain their day to day life is threatened by the SLA. If I am allowed to refer to the presence of US troops in Germany and Japan referred earlier, it will be seen all of them, largely, remain within the compounds of their designated bases. They are not seen outside in the villages and towns outnumbering the civilians and getting involved in regular controversy. Is the reality of an orderly and highly disciplined armed forces element in the Tamil areas possible in our context? Recent events suggest otherwise as political ambitions became so patent that its chief dared go against the civilian C-in-C to secure full political power while all the time mumbling “I am a good Buddhist and I am a professional soldier” How safe are the Tamils in this kind of skullduggery that goes as the national army? The man wanted his strength raised to 400,000 not to fight a non-existent enemy but to decimate the entire Tamil civil population and claim to the Sinhala people “Look I did the job that you wanted for so long that no other could do” He almost succeeded.
One of the biggest problems in recent years is the growth of the tentacles of the army well outside its traditional barracks base. We are now no different to Pakistan a country that can never shackle itself from the grips of its army. No regime will be able to free itself from its clutches for sometime because now it is satrongly interlinked with the religious heirarchy and political extremism – a lethal cocktail.
The prospects of “future wars” is dependent on the political wisdom of today bearing in mind the mistake made by Mrs B in 1962 is one of the causes of the birth of VP, the tigers and his many friends. Instead of settling our internal “war” Dayan’s favored regime is out in the world “starting new and unnecessary fights” with just about everybody around. In such a scenario “new and prolonged cylcles of conflict” may become inevitable. So please do not blame the Tamil leadership for the ills around us.
ISS
Interesting comment by Mr Kulanthai.
"He writes as a Sinhalese and not like as an intellectual(s). How anyone could expects Dr. Dayan to speak sustainable peace, rehabilitation, reconciliation."
DJ, Would you still think the same way as now,if you were ... say, a burgher?
Dear ISS,
Liberal thinkers there may be, but they have fallen silent, for reasons well known.
Besides, I am not sure whether they are in such large numbers as you may want to think.
Mr. Kulanthai's serious indictment of DJ : "He writes as a Sinhalese and not like (as) an intellectual(s)" begs the question: would DJ write in similar vein if he were a burgher?
The truest test of a professional writer they say, is when the independent reader cannot discern his race or nationality through his writings.
Does DJ meet this standard very easily?
Neutrality in a writer may not win one his next meal, but it will assuredly win him respect. Such men see wrong as wrong and right as right, never mind the perpetrators.
Alas, few are those these days, blessed with such attributes.
Dear Dayan,
Don't blame the thamil reps. the sinhala policians didn't want to work with thamils at all just formalty elections and no power to the Tamil /
Even when you are in UN you have no power ( MR control) at all this is the reason you left or they let you go. this is a family political circus it will come to the end one day with the up rise of the public.
India play dirty politics in Chin lanka
one day we all will speak chinese and will work for them too \
it is not to far from now
Kalu Albert is absolutely right, last I spoke with Maj General G.A.D Chandrasiri in Jaffna circa Dec 2007 he told me the number of Sinhala soldiers married to Tamil girls was around 5000 in number. Where did he get this number you ask....? from the Army hospital records - as Soldiers' spouses are entitled to Free Medical & Hospital benefits and thus their families are registered there.
Now Let me ask Tamil NATIONALISTS a sobering question.... if Soldiers are not allowed to live with their families in the North or East... then who do you think they are going to be fraternizing with other than the local womenfolk? I personally don't see a problem with Sinhalese Soldeirs marrying Tamil girls... but I wager you TAMIL NATIONALISTS do...
;)
Mr ISS,The blame for all the ills surrounding you must fall directly on the Tamil leaders except Douglas and Karuna.
How pathetic is your leader Sampathan? His latest statement is, now that the political solution is long way away, we need the displaced resettled in the original places?
Where can the government resettle them? Hambantota?
After Dr Manmohan Singh told him to get over it and move on, he must have got some sense into old brain.
As for your anticipation of future VPS, it will also be just a dream ,going by the National Post news item today.
To one among many who goes as "Anonymous" (20/7) Trinco Sam is not my leader nor any in the Wanni variety. But I admire his eloquence both in English-Tamil and his knowledge of the law, Parliamentary procedure and his established inclination to work within the democratic system. Similarly, Dr. GL Peiris and his eloquence in Sinhala as well and for the other features - though not his politics. As to my "leaders" many of them are outside the political firmament - Ecclesiades, Prince Siddartha Gautham, the Sophists, Lord Bertrand Russel,Plato, Hegel and those giants of the human race of the 17/18th century in Europe who changed the course of the world, HW Longfellow, Dr Martin Luther King, Jittu Krishnamurthi, Jawarhalal Nehru, Nelson Mandela, Mao-Deng, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Dr Abdul Kalam, Lee Kuan Yew,Golda Meir, Edward Said, Hanan Ashrafi, Francis Fukuyama,Samuel Huntington,Noam Chomsky et al being just a few. Of the local variety I used to admire NM, Colvin and friends until they salivated and sacrificed long-held principles to the comforts of office. Add to that the late Thondaman,whose empirical savvy and wisdom was sgriking. You might add Groucho Marx and George Burns to the list.
By the way, why not opt to another monicker than your present one because there are too many Anonymouses floating around that can even confuse that told Chinese guy Confucius.
No one in his right senses would suggest the Wanni displaced be moved to Hambantota though the place is not far from Kadirgamam - part of the EP of old as the hallowed temple itself proved until in the post-1956 period changes started out there and today even the "OM" sign is moved away from the main place of worship. "Religio-cultural genocide" on the gallop, eh?
ISS