(a) Introduction
The Peoples Alliance (PA) coalition regime, led by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP),
came to power in August 1994 and has been in power for a little more than three years.
During this period the Sinhalese-controlled regime repeatedly promised to unveil the
political basis for negotiating a settlement for the Tamil Question, which is encapsulated
by the four cardinal principles enunciated by the Tamil participants at the
1985 Thimpu Conference. They are as follows:
- Recognition of the Tamils of Sri Lanka as a distinct
nationality;
- Recognition of an identified Tamil homeland and the
guarantee of its territorial integrity;
- Based on the above, recognition of the inalienable right of
self-determination of the Tamil nation;
- Recognition of the right to full citizenship and other
fundamental democratic rights of all Tamils, who look upon the Island as their country.1
On 3 August 1995 the President, and Deputy
Leader of the SLFP, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (a Sinhalese) announced President
Kumaratungas Devolution Proposals. But her SLFP Minister for Justice and
Constitutional Affairs Prof GL Peiris (a Sinhalese) two days later qualified the document
as the Presidents own Basic Ideas and, therefore, as neither the
SLFPs nor regimes position on the Tamil Question. After the widest possible
consultations, the Basic Ideas, he explained, would be developed into a
political basis for resolving the Tamil Question.
But when Minister Peiris released the Draft
Provisions of the Constitution Containing the Proposals of the Government of Sri Lanka
Relating to Devolution of Power on 16 January 1997, it was found that rather than
flesh out the Basic Ideas, they in fact diluted the August 1995
document. The Draft Provisions were not communicated to the SLFPs rank and
file and, in fact, they were opposed by an influential dissident faction within the party;
and the member-parties of the PA coalition were not consulted and, predictably, some of
them rejected the Draft Provisions, which indicated that the document did not
reflect the consensus position of the PA regime. Moreover, Minister Peiris again denied
that the Draft Provisions could form the basis for commencing negotiations toward a
political settlement of the Tamil Question by qualifying that they would have to be
deliberated and endorsed by the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on Constitutional
Reform before they are adopted as the regimes political position.
By that time it was evident to discerning
Tamil analysts that the two political responses, namely, the Basic Ideas
and the Draft Provisions, were released to the public to legitimise the military
response - euphemistically named by the President as the Battle for Peace -
unleashed with Operation Leap Forward on 9 July 1995 against the Tamil national movement,
led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The Sinhalese-controlled regimes
obvious aim was to crush the Tamil national movement quickly, before the
insincerity of the political responses came to light.
As the Tamil resistance held out, it
provided time for in-depth evaluations of the two political responses which exposed the
Basic Ideas and the Draft Provisions as elaborate deceptions2; and the
regimes self-declared commitment to negotiate a settlement to the Tamil Question
increasingly rang hollow.
As the regime extended the military
response well into 1997, a third incomplete document titled Draft Constitution of the
Republic of Sri Lanka was released by the SLFP Minister Peiris on 28 March 1997 to
shore up the regimes peace credentials and to buy more time for a
military victory. It was a personal initiative by Minister Peiris, backed by
the SLFP leadership, which was not communicated either to the SLFPs rank and file or
to other parties of the PA coalition; and the Minister again avoided negotiations over the
Tamil Question by ensuring that the Draft Constitution did not contain the
Chapters on Devolution, which, he assured, would be released as soon as the
PSC concluded its deliberations on the Draft Provisions.
The regime, however, continued the military
response with Operation Jayasikurui, which was unleashed on 13 May 1997.
Operation Jayasikurui was expected
to be completed within a month. But it soon ran into the ground as the Tamil resistance
forced Operation Jayasikurui into a military stalemate. The political utility of
the incomplete Draft Constitution for legitimising the military response was
virtually exhausted by late 1997. The peace credentials of the PA regime were
in shreds and a further political response became necessary.
However, it was obvious that the next
political response would have to be a more credible political fig-leaf if the peace
credentials are to be recouped and the military response is to be justified.
Moreover, as the PA regime has entered the second half of its six-year term of office,
attention began shifting towards the next parliamentary and presidential elections due in
or before the year 2000. To win the elections, it was necessary to formulate the political
response in such a manner so as to re-build the peace platform crafted by the
SLFP, which had ensured the PAs victory at the 1994 parliamentary and presidential
elections. In addition, the international communitys support for the regimes
military campaign was wearing thin as it became increasingly sceptical of the
regimes stated commitment to a negotiated settlement to the Tamil Question; and so
the regime was compelled to come up with a convincing political response.
Consequently, Minister Peiris released the
new political response, which was routed through the PSC as the Parliamentary Select
Committee Report on Constitutional Reform on 24 October 1997. Again it was neither
endorsed by the rank and file of the SLFP nor supported by the other parties of the PA
coalition. But, the October 1997 PSC Report comprehensively revealed the approach
of the SLFPs leadership to the Tamil Question.
Driven primarily by the need to build a
competing peace image in preparation for the forthcoming elections, the
leadership of the United National Party (UNP), which is in the parliamentary Opposition,
released its Observations on the PAs October 1997 PSC Report. The
document outlined the UNPs position on the Tamil Question. The first instalment of
the Observations was made public on 1 February 1998; the second instalment was
released on 8 March 1997; and the third and, presumably, final part is scheduled to be
released later.
The PSC Report and the Observations
are of course responses to concrete imperatives of political survival faced by the SLFP
and UNP; and, as will be demonstrated below, neither response even remotely constituted a
framework for beginning negotiations to resolve the Tamil Question. However, they do
provide valuable insights into the approaches of the SLFP and UNP factions of the
Sinhalese political leadership to the Tamil Question.
(b) Scope of decentralisation
Sinhalese nationalists introduced two provisions in the Constitution to foreclose
devolution of power. Article 2 declared that The Republic of Sri Lanka is a Unitary
State; and Article 76 provided as follows:
76-1 Parliament shall not abdicate or in
any manner alienate its legislative power and shall not set up any authority with
legislative power.
- It shall not be a contravention of the provisions of
paragraph (1) of this Article for Parliament to make, in any law relating to public
security, provision empowering the President to make emergency regulations in accordance
with such law.
- It shall not be a contravention of the provisions of
paragraph (1) of this Article for Parliament to make any law containing any provision
empowering any person or body to make subordinate legislation for prescribed purposes,
including the power -
- to appoint a date on which any law or any part thereof shall
come into effect or cease to have effect;
- to make by order any law or any part thereof applicable to
any locality or to any class of persons; and
- to create a legal person, by an order or an act.
In sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) of this
paragraph, "law" includes existing law.
- Any existing law containing any such provision as aforesaid
shall be valid and operative.
The Articles were designed pre-empt
devolution of power - to close the door on federalism sneered President JR
Jayawardene (a Sinhalese) when his UNP regime (1978-1988) promulgated the Constitution in
1978. They precluded a confederal or federal alternative, which is the only basis for a
viable and lasting political settlement to the Tamil Question through the sharing of State
power between Sinhalese and Tamils3, within a united Sri Lanka.
The UNP regime, however, introduced the
1987 13th Amendment to the Constitution, established the Provincial Councils
(PCs) and claimed to have devolved power to PCs; and it alleged that
power-sharing through the PCs amounted to federalism in everything but name.
All of the above constituted an elaborate political hoax since the PC system was
implemented without repealing Articles 2 and 76. The subsequent UNP regimes of (Sinhalese)
Presidents R Premadasa (1989-1993) and DB Wijetunga (1993-1994) continued this deliberate
deception.
The Colombo-based human rights
and conflict resolution organisations, such as the Movement for Inter-Racial
Justice and Equality (MIRJE), Civil Rights Movement (CRM), etc, composed largely of
Sinhalese persons colluded in the UNPs hoax. Not once, between 1987 and 1994, did
they demand the repeal of Articles 2 and 76; nor did they challenge the patently untrue
claim that devolution of power was effected through the PCs. Instead, the
organisations welcomed the 13th Amendment and PC system as a viable basis for
resolving the ethnic conflict and called upon the LTTE to participate in the
PCs; and, thereby, they covered up the hoax.
Not surprisingly, Ceylon Tamils have
demanded the repeal of the two Articles as the indispensable pre-condition for negotiating
a political settlement based on power-sharing. This demand was reinforced by the
disastrous experience of the PCs.
Article 2 ensured that the PCs do not enjoy
shared sovereignty with the Centre. Moreover, Article 76 pre-empted devolution of power
and so the PCs are institutions of political decentralisation; they are glorified
Municipal Councils (MCs) and the so-called statutes or subordinate legislation
of PCs are nothing more than the Ordinances of MCs. They are inherently incapable of
providing the institutional framework for power-sharing between Sinhalese and Tamils.
President Kumaratunga in effect concurred
with Tamil opinion when she included in her 1995 Basic Ideas the
provision for the repeal of Article 76 (para IX), which had enhanced the credibility of
that political response. The human rights and conflict resolution
organisations lauded the Presidents intention to delete Article 76 and supported the
Basic Ideas as a far-reaching devolution proposal
But the 1997 PSC Report performed a volte-face.
It reproduced Article 76 as Article 92:
92-1 Parliament shall not abdicate or in
any manner alienate its legislative power and shall not set up any authority with any such
legislative power.
- It shall not be a contravention of the provisions of
paragraph (1) of this Article for Parliament to make, in any law relating to public
security, provision empowering the President to make emergency regulations in accordance
with such law.
- It shall not be a contravention of the provisions of
paragraph (1) of this Article for Parliament to make any law containing any provision
empowering any person or body to make subordinate legislation for prescribed purposes,
including the power -
- to appoint a day on which any law or any part thereof shall
come into effect or cease to have effect;
- to make by order any law or any part thereof applicable to
any locality or to any class of persons; and
- to create a legal person, by order or an act and for the
purposes of sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) of this paragraph, "law" includes
existing law.
- Subject to the provisions of the Constitution, any existing
law containing any such provision as aforesaid shall be valid and operative.
So the Regional Councils (RCs) proposed in
the PSC Report would, like the present PCs, be also nothing more than MCs. The PSC
Report retained the Unitary State.
It follows that the absence of Article 2,
the reference to the country as a Union of Regions (Article 1(1)), provisions
for The Devolution of Power to Regions (Chapter XV) and other related
provisions in the PSC Report are little more than political window dressing, to
mask the implications of Article 92, which emptied the devolution terminology of political
relevance or constitutional meaning. The proposed RCs, therefore, are institutions of
political decentralisation and, therefore, incapable of facilitating power-sharing and
utterly irrelevant to the resolution of the Tamil Question.
But the human rights and
conflict resolution organisations have maintained a deafening silence
regarding the inclusion of Article 92. Rather than expose the PSC Report as an
unconscionable deception, they have instead disingenuously urged the LTTE to respond
positively to the PSC Report and thereby detracted attention from the SLFPs
patent dishonesty.
The Observations (second instalment)
did not pledge to repeal Article 2 and 76. They underlined the need to maintain the
Unitary State: they emphasised the indivisibility and unity of Sri Lanka as a
nation (para 1.1) and envisaged the devolution of power within the framework
of an indivisible Sri Lanka (para 2.1). In the Sri Lankan political context, these
phrases clearly indicated the UNPs resolve to retain Article 2. The discussion on
the elimination of the Concurrent List of subjects, to avoid conflicts between the Centre
and the PCs (paras 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5), created the illusion that the legislative power of
the Centre and PCs are to be mutually exclusive; it was in reality an elaborate
red-herring to mask the fact that the UNP intends to keep Article 76.
Therefore, the SLFP and UNP factions of the
Sinhalese political leadership continued the duplicity of glibly speaking of a
non-existent devolution of power while retaining the Unitary State and Article
76.
(c) The Centre
The TULF Proposals Presented to Mr Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India in
December 1985 recommended that Sri Lanka be re-constituted as a Union of
States and that State power should be shared in the Centre between the Sinhalese,
Ceylon Tamils, Up-Country Tamils and Muslims4. To facilitate power-sharing, the TULF Proposals employed
the term nationality to describe the four cultural groups, specified that
membership in Parliament shall reflect the ethnic proportions of the Union and
provided for a double majority system: no Bill or Resolution or part thereof
affecting any nationality shall be passed, unless a majority of Members of Parliament
belonging to that nationality agree to such a Bill or Resolution or part thereof
(Part I, paras 4 and 5). In other words, the TULF Proposals envisaged that the
Ceylon Tamil nation and Up-Country Tamil and Muslim peoples would have veto power in
Parliament.
The 1994 Proposals submitted by the
Up-Country Peoples Front to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional Reform
- generally known as the UPF Proposals - reiterated the need to introduce the
"double majority" system which was proposed in Canada or the "floating vote
system" in which legislation affecting the up-country Tamils can be
enacted by the parliament only if the majority of the up-country Tamil representatives
[are] in favour of it (para 2).
However, the PSC Report ignored the
crucial issue of power-sharing in the Centre.
The Observations (first instalment)
envisaged the sharing of power amongst all communities at the Centre; and they
proposed a Second Chamber where the minorities would be adequately
represented, adequate representation of minorities in the Cabinet of
Ministers and a President and two Vice-Presidents to represent the three major
communities [Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims](page 7). In other words, the UNP shifted
attention to the sharing of representation. It did not provide for the sharing of
power - for instance, no provision was made for a double majority system or for diluting
the near-absolute executive power of the (Sinhalese) President. The verbiage about
minority representation disguised the fact that the Sinhalese will constitute
the overwhelming majority in both houses of Parliament; it condoned the tyranny of
the majority by denying the Tamils and Muslims veto power in Parliament and ensured
the maintenance of status quo. In short, the UNP cynically paid lip service to
power-sharing in the Centre.
The PSC Report as well as the Observations
retained the Sinhalese monopoly power in the Centre and envisaged the marginalisation of
Ceylon Tamils and Muslims to their respective Bantustans, their respective
majority-areas in the North-Eastern Province (NEP)5.
(d) The
Province/Region
Under the 13th Amendment, the PC in each Province is an institution elected
directly by the people of that Province and each PC is vested with identical powers (Art
154A(2)). This apparently egalitarian approach denied recognition of the unique political
context thrown up by the Tamil national movement in the Tamil-majority NEP; therefore it
rejected the need for qualitatively different powers and higher level of autonomy for the
North-Eastern Provincial Council (NEPC).
The PSC Report renamed the PCs as
RCs but retained them as bodies elected directly by the people with the proviso that
one half of [the RC members] shall be elected on a territorial basis and the other
half on the basis of proportional representation (Art 132).
The Observations (second instalment)
envisaged that the PCs would be composed of a special number of members elected by
PR [proportional representation] and the Heads of all Local Authorities in the
Province (para 2.12). This is a throw-back to the UNPs stance during the 1984
All Party Conference and is a dilution of the provisions of the 13th Amendment.
Neither the PSC Report nor the Observations
accommodated the demand for an autonomous region made by the Up-Country Tamils. However
the 1985 TULF Proposals had recommended the creation of an autonomous region for
the Up-Country Tamils (Part IV), whilst the Up-Country Tamils themselves suggested, in the
1994 UPF Proposals, the setting up of a Regional Council for the up-country
Tamils in order to translate into practice the ideas of power sharing and that the
RC be set up along the "Pondichery Model" where non-contiguous territorial
units may come under one council (para 5).
(e) National flag
The national flag contains the Lion Flag of the Sinhalese, with the addition of two
stripes, Saffron and Green, to signify respectively the Ceylon Tamils and Muslims. The
stripes are placed outside the Lion Flag proper and at the less important pole-end of the
flag. When the design of the flag was adopted in Parliament by the UNP regime in 1951, its
derogatory implications led a progressive Sinhalese Member of Parliament (MP), Dr NM Perera, to condemn the flag as a fraud
perpetrated on the minorities. They
[Sinhalese] are going to have the Lion Flag and these stripes are for the outcasts6. Most Tamil MPs opposed
the adoption of the flag and Ceylon Tamils launched widespread protests against the flag.
Consequently, the flag has been an issue of
contention between Sinhalese and Tamils for more than four decades. But the PSC Report
effectively rejected any change in the national flag: it categorically stated that
the National Flag of the Republic shall be the Lion Flag (Art 4). The Observations
made no reference to the national flag and, therefore, envisaged no change.
(f) Secularism
Article 9 of the Constitution specified as follows: The Republic shall give to
Buddhism the foremost place. The provision privileged the Buddhists (who are
Sinhalese) to the detriment of Hindus and Muslims (who are Tamils) and Christians (who are
found among Sinhalese and Tamils). Tamils criticised the provision as a departure from the
secular tradition; and they underlined the return to a secular political framework as an
essential condition for resolving the Tamil Question.
However, the Observations (second instalment) confirmed that Article 9 of the Constitution will be retained (para 1.2). The PSC
Report entrenched the trend away from secularism: it reiterated that Buddhism shall
enjoy the foremost place and went further to provide for the constitution of a
Supreme Council of Buddhist Clergy (Art 7).
(g) The Language
Question
Sinhala was legislated as the sole official language of the country by the SLFP-led
coalition regime in 1956; and Article 18 of the Constitution accordingly provided that
The Official Language of Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala. Since 1956, Tamils have
demanded that Tamil must be made an official language at par with Sinhala, as an integral
part of the resolution of the Tamil Question.
The UNP faction of the Sinhalese leadership
appeared to accommodate the Tamil demand when it enacted the 1987 13th
Amendment to the Constitution to amend Article 18 to read as follows:
The official language of Sri Lanka shall
be Sinhala.
Tamil shall also be an official language.
English shall be a link language.
On closer reading, however, it was evident
that Tamil was not at par with Sinhala as an official language of Sri Lanka for the
provision was worded in such manner as to retain the primacy of the Sinhala language.
Sinhala is The official language of Sri Lanka. In
contrast, the Tamil language is accorded the subordinate position by the use of the word
also and by not stating whether it is the official language of the
whole country, province or district. In short, Sinhala remains the sole official language
of the whole country.
The human rights and
conflict resolution organisations have in effect condoned the violation of
language rights of Tamils under Article 18: from 1987 up to now, they have not once
demanded the amendment of the Article to make Tamil an official language of the whole
country at par with the Sinhala language. Indeed they have turned apologists for the
regimes blatantly discriminatory language policy.
The arguments advanced by the President of MIRJE, Mr Charles Abeysekera (a Sinhalese), illustrate the degree to which the human
rights and conflict resolution organisations have misrepresented facts.
He is also the Chairman of the regimes Official Languages Commission and in that
capacity Mr Abeysekera published a statement titled Official languages - the
reality7. In it, he repeated the half-truth that the Constitution declared that
Tamil too shall be an official language along with Sinhala and, therefore,
propagated the insidious Goebbelsian lie that Tamil is at par with Sinhala as the official
language of the whole country.
Mr Abeysekera alleged in the statement that
the Constitution
decrees that Sinhala shall be the language of record and
administration in the seven southern provinces and Tamil in the northern and eastern
provinces. But the Constitution provided differently: The Official Language
shall be the language of administration throughout Sri Lanka; and that
the Tamil Language shall also be used as the language of administration for
the maintenance of public records and the transaction of all business by public
institutions in the Northern and Eastern Provinces (Art 22(1))8. As argued above, the
phrase The Official Language in Article 18 refers precisely to Sinhala. So
Article 22(1) made Sinhala the language of administration of all the provinces in the
country but restricted the use of Tamil as an additional, subordinate language of
administration in the Tamil-majority NEP. For instance, all laws are required to be
published in Sinhala and Tamil with a translation in English; but, in the event of
any inconsistency between any two texts, the text of the Official Language [Sinhala] shall
prevail (Art 23(1)).
Another example of the subordinate position
assigned to the Tamil language is to be found in the provision relating to the Language of
Courts. The Official language shall be the language of the courts throughout Sri
Lanka and accordingly their records and proceedings shall be in the official language:
Provided that the language of the courts exercising original jurisdiction in the Northern
and Eastern Provinces shall also be Tamil and their records and proceedings shall be in
the Tamil language (Art 24(1)). The provision excluded courts of appellate
jurisdiction: in the case of an appeal from a court of original jurisdiction in the two
provinces, records in Sinhala and Tamil shall be prepared for the court hearing such
appeal provided that the Minister in charge of the subject of Justice may with
the concurrence of the Cabinet of Ministers, direct that the record of any such court
shall also be maintained and proceedings conducted in the Official Language (Art
23(1)(a)). A Sinhalese Minister of Justice was empowered by Article 23(1)(a) to deny the
language rights of Tamils and Muslims through executive action; and the provision was
crafted to ensure that in the rare event of there being a Tamil Minister of Justice, he
would have to seek the concurrence (very unlikely to be forthcoming) of the
Sinhalese-majority Cabinet if he is to direct the court to maintain its records and
conduct its proceedings in the Tamil language.
In other words, Sinhala is the sole
language of administration in the seven Sinhala-majority southern provinces while Sinhala
and Tamil are the primary and secondary languages of administration in the NEP.
But Mr Abeysekera narrowly defined the
official language as the language in which administrative tasks are performed and
official records are kept in order to misleadingly interpret Article 18: he alleged
that the Constitution really decrees that there shall be one official language -
Sinhala - in the south and another official language - Tamil in the North-East.
Thereafter, he made the following patently untrue assertion: The correct present
constitutional position then is that there are theoretically two official languages in Sri
Lanka but that their use as languages of record and administration is confined to
separately demarcated territories, which are both geographic as well as linguistic.
He supplemented this legal fiction with a
further departure from the truth. He asserted unconvincingly that a Sinhalese person in
the NEP is subject to the same language restrictions as a Tamil person outside the NEP.
After noting that a statement given by a Tamil to a police officer in any one of the
southern provinces [cannot be] recorded in his own language because records
must be kept in Sinhala, Mr Abeysekera alleged that the same difficulties will
be faced by a Sinhalese in the North-East where records have to be kept in Tamil.
This is self-serving nonsense. A Sinhalese person has the right to have his statement,
made to a police officer in any province of the country, including the NEP, recorded in
Sinhala precisely because Sinhala is the official language and language of courts
throughout the country. A Tamil person cannot have his statement recorded in Tamil outside
the NEP.
He proceeded to obfuscate the reality of
blatant language discrimination against Tamils by drawing numerous red-herrings: the
issues of linguistic rights of citizens, acute shortage of Tamil officers in the
Administrative Service, the linguistically mutually exclusive educational system and
sensitivity to language use. But the fact remains that Article 18 violated the language
rights of Tamils, that the official language and the language of administration and of
courts throughout the country is Sinhala. Mr Abeysekeras arguments deliberately
obscured these facts and, therefore, are a pathetic apology for Sinhalese chauvinism.
The insincerity of Mr Abeysekeras
assertions were amply demonstrated by the provision in the PSC Report to remedy the
violation of language rights of Tamils; it read: The official languages of the
Republic shall be Sinhala and Tamil (Art 32). The formulation exposed the injustice
perpetrated against Tamils by the provisions of Article 18; and Article 32 proposed
national bilingualism, which Mr Abeysekera avoided recommending.
However, Article 32 too was an eyewash; it
was designed to enhance the credibility of the PSC Report. For the primacy of
Sinhala language was in fact maintained by providing that Sinhala shall be the
language used for the maintenance of public records by the national and regional public
institutions and local authorities in the Capital Territory [Municipalities of Colombo and
Sri Jayawardenapura] and all the Regions other than the [Ceylon Tamil and Muslim majority]
Regions (Art 35(2)) in the north and east of the country. Sinhala language
domination was reinforced by the provision that a Regional Administration of local
authority which maintains its public records in Sinhala shall be entitled to receive
communications from and to communicate and transact business with any official, in his or
her official capacity, in Sinhala, and a Regional Administration of local authority which
maintains its public records in Tamil shall be entitled to receive communications from and
to communicate and transact business with any official, in his or her official capacity,
in Tamil (Art 37(2)). The apparent reciprocity offered to the Ceylon Tamils and
Muslims masks the fact the regime is controlled by the Sinhalese and that the Ceylon Tamil
and Muslim-majority regions will, in practice, be compelled by the Sinhalese-controlled
regime to communicate in Sinhala with the Centre and Sinhalese-majority provinces. Thus
the PSC Report in effect maintained the status quo: it retained Sinhala as
the sole official language of the whole country whilst Tamil was marginalised as the
regional language.
The Observations (both instalments)
are silent on the subject of official language, indicating that the UNP intends to keep
Article 18.
(h) Toward conflict
escalation
From the foregoing it will be evident that the Sinhalese leadership, whether it is the
SLFP or UNP faction, has obstinately refused to indicate compromise positions in the key
areas of dispute. The Unitary State and the national flag will be retained; Buddhists will
be privileged vis-a-vis other religious communities; and Sinhala will remain the sole
official language of the whole country.
Consequently, the Sinhalese leadership
entrenched the conflict-generating link between citizenship and ethnicity. The political
concept of citizenship is linked to the individual in the British model and it is an
important pillar of British Liberalism. The regime in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) under
British rule adopted the concept. However, Sinhalese nationalists re-conceptualised
citizenship in a manner similar to the German model before the Second World War. In the
latter model, German citizenship was politically linked to German ethnicity, defined by
language (German), religion (Catholicism) and race (Aryan).
In Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese nationalists
linked citizenship to Sinhalese ethnicity by defining the Sinhalese as an Aryan race,
legislating Sinhala the official language and decreeing Buddhism as the official religion.
They privileged the Sinhalese people as the bhoomi putra (sons of the
soil) and laid claim to the whole of Sri Lanka as the traditional homeland of the
Buddhist-Sinhalese. Tamils and Muslims are characterised as the other, as
non-native foreigners: in the Sinhalese-nationalist lexicon, Up-Country Tamils
are Tamils of recent Indian origin, the Ceylon Tamils are Tamils of
ancient Indian Origin and Muslims are from Arabia.
Therefore, the essence of the
pre-conditions laid down by Tamils for resolving the Tamil Question is that citizenship
must be de-linked from ethnicity, that the link between citizenship and the individual
must be re-established.
However, neither the PSC Report nor
the Observations sought to re-establish the progressive link between citizenship
and the individual. On the contrary, the two political responses entrenched the
reactionary link between citizenship and Sinhalese ethnicity: they inflexibly insisted on
Sinhala as the sole official language of the whole country and on Buddhism as the sole
official religion. Moreover, both responses retained the Unitary State and Article 76 and,
therefore, rejected devolution of power.
In short, the SLFP and UNP factions of the
Sinhalese leadership have provided no basis whatsoever for negotiating a political
settlement to the Tamil Question within a united Sri Lanka. It follows that the LTTE-led
Tamil national movement has no choice but to continue to resist the military response of
the Sinhalese-controlled regime.
16 March 1998