What next?

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President J.R. Jayewardene sign the historic India-Sri Lanka Accord in Colombo on July 29, 1987.-N. RAM

WHAT next? That seems to be the question Sri Lanka watchers are asking as the defences of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) collapse like ninepins in the face of the aggressive military assault in the Wanni.

It would be a mistake, however, to presume that the ethnic conflict will cease once the LTTE is reduced to an entity without a defined territory for the first time since the departure of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in March 1990. The LTTE is expected to retain its capabilities as a guerilla outfit, though how effective it will be remains to be seen. The ethnic conflict goes back deeper into the past than the LTTE. Indeed, the LTTE led by Velupillai Prabakaran came into being two decades after the Official Language Act, No. 33 of 1956 deepened the Tamil-Sinhala divide with its mandate that Sinhala was the one official language of what was then Ceylon.

The LTTE, now notorious for its brutalities against anyone it perceives to be an adversary, is a by-product of the real and perceived grievances of Tamils and other minorities in the overwhelmingly Sinhala island nation. That a legitimate demand of Sri Lankan Tamils for the recognition of their language on a par with Sinhala was allowed to take the form of a movement for a separate state speaks volumes of the insensitive approach of the parties representing the majority community in handling the problems of a multilingual, multi-religious and multi-ethnic society.

Sixty-one years after the country was granted independence by the British, the ruling elite seems to have learnt nothing from the pre- or post-colonial experiences of the island nation. Indeed, long before the British left Sri Lanka in 1948, there were already enough indications of the apprehensions and anxieties of the minorities in general, and Tamils in particular, on their fate in a free country in which 75 per cent of the population belonged to one community.

Ketheshwaran Loganathan, the Deputy Secretary-General of the Sri Lanka Peace Secretariat who was murdered in late 2006 by suspected LTTE cadre, wrote in his memorable book Sri Lanka: Lost Opportunities: The demand by the principal Tamil political party at the dawn of independence, the All Ceylon Tamil Congress [ACTC], for balanced representation or the 50-50 formula [50 per cent of the seats to the Sinhalese majority and 50 per cent to the ethnic minorities, including a mandatory representation of the minorities in the Cabinet] was a clear manifestation of the preference for power-sharing at the Centre, as a means of safeguarding minority rights.

The Soulbury Commission constituted by the British to draw up the post-independent Constitution took the view that a 50-50 formula would be fatal to the emergence of that unquestioning sense of nationhood necessary for the exercise of full self-government. However, the commission inserted a safeguard clause that prohibited the passage of any piece of legislation rendering persons of any community or religion liable to disabilities. The ACTC demand could be construed as the maximalist demand by the minorities in the hope of securing the best deal.

Incidentally, one of the first acts of the parliament of the newly independent Ceylon was to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of Tamils of Indian origin, or up-country Tamils. These were the people brought by the British as indentured labour to work on the coffee/tea plantations in the hill districts. It is one of the ironies of history that Sri Lankan Tamils voted with the majority community to deny citizenship rights to Tamils of Indian origin.

The moment of truth arrived for Sri Lankan Tamils when the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) government led by S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike got parliament to adopt a law making Sinhala the only official language. What S.V.J. Chelvanayagam, founder of the ACTC, said when the second reading of the Citizenship Rights of Indian Origin people came for up discussion in 1948, turned out to be prophetic: He [Prime Minister Senanayake] is not hitting us now directly but when the language question comes up, we will know where we stand. Perhaps that will not be the end of it.

The Official Language Act, No. 33 proved to be a turning point in the ethnic conflict. It got worse with every passing year. Successive governments entered into agreements with the Tamils parties the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayagam agreement and the Senanayake-Chelvanayagam agreement, for instance to undo the impact of the Sinhala only legislation but only to retreat under pressure from majority lobbies.

Recorded history shows that Tamil parties resorted to every conceivable method of agitation in the democratic way from 1956 to 1976. What the Tamil minority saw as the colonisation of the Tamil-majority north and east by the Sinhala-dominated state emerged as another bone of contention, apart from the language issue. The Tamil parties alleged that successive governments in Colombo were systematically settling Sinhalese people in the north and the east in order to alter the demography in favour of the majority community.

The parties in government reasoned that 12.5 per cent of the population inhabited the two regions which together accounted for 30 per cent of the islands landmass and 60 per cent of its coastline and it was unfair for this small percentage of the population to lay exclusive claim to the resources of the two regions. The Tamil parties argument that local residents should be given preference in allotment of lands brought under new irrigation facilities amounted to the son of the soil theory, according to them.

Indeed, the Tamil parties argument on the alleged colonisation does not hold water because of two factors. Though there are no precise figures, most political observers agree that over 50 per cent of Tamils in Sri Lanka live outside the Northern and Eastern provinces. Besides, even according to the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance (TNA), despite the massive colonisation schemes of successive governments, the total percentage of Sinhalese people in the North and the East is below 3 per cent. Actually there are no Sinhalese people living in the North barring a dozen who married Tamils and settled in the Jaffna peninsula.

The procrastination on the part of successive governments over granting equal status to the Tamil language, and over other grievances, including that on the question of devolution of powers, led to two important developments in 1976. The Tamil parties, under the banner of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF), articulated the demand for a separate state of Tamil Eelam. Around the same time, Tamil militancy was taking root. The LTTE was among the dozen-odd militant outfits that emerged.

The Vadukodai Resolution, adopted at the first National Convention of the TULF on May 14, 1976, said:

Whereas, throughout the centuries from the dawn of history, the Sinhalese and Tamil nations have divided between themselves the possession of Ceylon, the Sinhalese inhabiting the interior of the country in its Southern and Western parts from the river Walawe to that of Chilaw and the Tamils possessing the Northern and Eastern districts;

That the State of Tamil Eelam shall consist of the people of the Northern and Eastern provinces and shall also ensure full and equal rights of citizenship of the State of Tamil Eelam to all Tamil-speaking people living in any part of Ceylon and to Tamils of Eelam origin living in any part of the world who may opt for citizenship of Tamil Eelam.

The TULF participated in the 1977 general elections on the basis of that resolution. The LTTE has consistently stuck to the demand for Tamil Eelam, and the only occasion on which it indicated a willingness to explore the possibility of a solution within a united Sri Lanka was in December 2002, nearly 10 months after it signed a Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) with the Ranil Wickremasinghe government. The Oslo Declaration, as it is known, read: Responding to a proposal by the leadership of the LTTE, the parties agreed to explore a solution founded on the principle of internal self-determination in areas of historical habitation of the Tamil-speaking peoples, based on a federal structure within a united Sri Lanka. The parties acknowledged that the solution has to be acceptable to all communities. But the LTTE distanced itself from the Oslo Declaration within a few months.

The early 1980s saw indirect Indian intervention in the conflict as several training camps were set up for the Sri Lanka Tamil militant groups. The perceived pro-Western tilt in the J.R. Jayewardene governments foreign policy was cited as justification for Indian help to the militant groups by the Indira Gandhi government. The 1983 pogrom, in which 2,000 Tamils were killed in Colombo alone, not only left a deep scar on the psyche of Sri Lankan Tamils but also triggered unprecedented waves of emotional outbursts among the diaspora in general and in Tamil Nadu in particular in support of the Tamil cause. (The brutal murder of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 by an LTTE suicide bomber in Sriperumbudur marked the end of the enormous goodwill that the Sri Lankan Tamil cause enjoyed in Tamil Nadu.)

Indias policy towards Sri Lanka changed dramatically under Rajiv Gandhis prime ministership. Indias efforts were now directed towards helping Sri Lanka to find a political solution to the ethnic problem, and the result was the 1985 Thimphu talks. A joint statement issued at the conference on July 13, 1985, by the Joint Front of the Tamil Liberation Organisations, a platform under which for the first time all the political and militant outfits came together, laying down what was termed as four cardinal principals for the basis of any meaningful solution, brought to the fore the growing determination of Tamils to attain a separate state.

The four cardinal principles were Recognition of the Tamils of Sri Lanka as a distinct nationality, recognition of an identified Tamil homeland and the guarantee of the territorial integrity, based on the above, recognition of inalienable right of self-determination of the Tamil nation and recognition of the right to full citizenship and other fundamental democratic rights of all Tamils, who look upon the island as their country.

The Jayewardene government saw them as the first step towards formation of a separate Tamil Eelam and rejected them outright. India concurred with the Sri Lankan governments view but continued its efforts to bring about a political settlement acceptable to all sections.

After two years of tortuous and intense negotiations came the 1987 India-Sri Lanka Accord, signed by Rajiv Gandhi and Jayewardene in Colombo on July 29, 1987. The accord, for the first time, laid down a comprehensive framework to redress the grievances of Tamils and other minorities. The LTTE, which is believed to have given its tacit approval when the accord was being crafted, did a U-turn at the last minute and became the only militant outfit to reject it.

The accord acknowledges the unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka and the multi-ethnic and multilingual character of the island nation, recognising that each ethnic group has a distinct cultural and linguistic identity which must be carefully nurtured.

The accord bound the Sri Lankan government to the position that the Northern and the Eastern provinces had been areas of historical habitation of Sri Lankan Tamil-speaking peoples and paved the way for a temporary merger of the North and the East into a single province, subject to a referendum within a year.

The agreement on the merger and the referendum was based on the assumption that all militant groups would lay down arms and create the right atmosphere for peace and the rule of law. India, which guaranteed the provisions of the accord, sent the IPKF to the island, only to end up as the villain of the piece. The IPKF left the island two and a half years later after losing some 1,300 soldiers and officers in the fight against the LTTE.

Ironically, Ranasinghe Premadasas government joined hands with the LTTE to secure the withdrawal of the IPKF. India chose to adopt a hands-off policy with regard to Sri Lanka after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. The 1987 accord and the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lanka Constitution flowing out of it remain unimplemented to this day. There have been all kinds of experiments and formulas since that accord, but none helped to end the conflict.

Now, with the Tigers on the verge of a humiliating defeat, the Mahinda Rajapaksa government is faced with the challenge of winning the hearts and minds of the minorities. In the immediate and medium term, the challenge is to rehabilitate the hundreds of thousands of displaced people. These people belong to several categories. There are, for instance, some 80,000 Muslims who were exiled by the LTTE from the Jaffna peninsula in the late 1990s at less than 24 hours notice. They have been languishing in makeshift camps for 18 years.

In the long run, Rajapaksa must work on a political solution that is acceptable to all parties. Given the politics of opportunism and blind opposition practised for decades by various parties representing the majority community, it is not an easy task. The vacuum created in the north with the imminent decline of the LTTE will probably be filled by a number of Tamil militantturned-political outfits that were hounded by the Tigers after the latter took control of the north in 1990. As Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi observed at his partys Executive Committee in Chennai on February 3, disunity and fratricidal politics have been the hallmark of Tamil militant groups and parties.

For the record, President Rajapaksa is talking of his intention to move as quickly as possible to implement the 13th Amendment. He told External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who was on an unscheduled visit to the island on the evening of January 27, that he would explore the possibility of going further and improving upon those devolution proposals.

The deep wounds of the conflict will not be healed easily. The process will require a serious and sincere effort to reach out to the minorities, including the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, and reassure them that their dignity and honour, language(s), culture and ways of life will be protected and nurtured. Triumphalism will be disastrous.