In the second part of his speech, Rao dealt with the news story that Sri Lanka had appealed for arms aid from US, UK, Pakistan, China and Bangladesh. He said this new development had taken place after his return. He said that he was "not in a position to give details, but the House and the nation should know that there is substance in the report."

Rao said that some reports had stated that this arms assistance was sought because of the meddling of "a foreign power," in Sri Lankan affairs and the Colombo press had projected India as that "foreign power."

Rao told the Lok Sabah the government was "looking into all aspects of these reports and is also in touch with several governments, including those specified in the press reports, to emphasize the nature of India's concern at the existing situation in Sri Lanka and at the possible future course of developments, including foreign involvement in the region."

Rao then cautioned all powers to keep out of the turmoil in Sri Lanka. He told the international community that it should not take the view that India is interfering in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka. He said Indian concern in Sri Lankan affairs is the inevitable consequence of being a neighbour of India. He added that India had to evince interest in Sri Lankan affairs as they impacted on India’s ‘national life and security.’

Rao informed the House, "The response of those to whom we have spoken is favorable" and added that if Sri Lanka needed India's assistance that was a matter over which "the two governments will remain in touch."

The Indian External Affairs Ministry acted fast and found that the story about Colombo asking for arms was true. Then it took steps to prevent Colombo from getting that assistance. Its widespread diplomatic network was activated. The envoys called on the foreign ministry officials of the countries to which they were accredited and delivered a letter from Rao asking them to adopt a ‘hands off’ policy to the Sri Lankan problem.

Rao’s letter also explained the nature of India’s concern in Sri Lanka's disturbance. It gave four reasons for India’s concern. Firstly, attacks on Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese wounded the feelings of the Tamils in India. They were demonstrating, demanding Indian intervention, Secondly, instability in Sri Lanka would affect India’s national security. Thirdly, instability in Sri Lanka would provide opportunity for extraneous involvement. Fourthly, instability in Sri Lanka would provide opportunity for foreign forces of destabilization to weaken India.

All governments approached by India responded positively. Thy accepted India as a regional power and refused to help Sri Lanka.

The statements of Indira Gandhi and Rao in the Lok Sabah and Rao’s letter laid the basis for India’s Sri Lanka policy and the Indira Doctrine. The developments in the next two weeks, which will be traced in the next chapter, helped their formulation.

Sri Lanka denied that it had asked for arms aid on Monday, August 1, the day before Indira Gandhi and Rao made their statements in the Lok Sabah. The Sri Lankan High Commissioner in New Delhi, Bernard Tilakaratna, issued a statement denying that the Sri Lankan government had called for assistance from foreign powers against India. A similar statement was also issued in Colombo.

Jayewardene instructed Hameed to return to Colombo, cutting short his stay in Delhi. Hameed left Delhi on the night of August 1. Reporters mobbed him at the Delhi Airport and asked for his comment on Colombo’s denial. Hameed dodged the question with this reply:

The Indian magazine The Week, in an exclusive interview published in its issue of 1 October 1983, asked Jayewardene about the rumour. Its reporter Patrick Michael asked:

Would you like to clarify the rumour that your country asked for help from countries other than India?

Jayewardene answered:

I have clearly answered this question several times stating that this was nothing but a canard.

None believed the denial, India in particular. And Jayewardene himself later admitted in interviews and speeches that he had, in fact, asked for help. One such instance was his interview to the Sunday Observer of 25 October 1987. In that interview, he said that he made that desperate call for assistance in those trying days.

I will in the next chapter deal with the evolution of the Indira Doctrine and India’s formula for the solution to the ethnic conflict; direct outcomes of the riot and Jayewardene’s call for arms assistance. That was one of results of the riots. Equally important is the impact the riots made on the Tamil people; the Tamils of India and the Tamils of Sri Lanka.

I have already stated the immediate reaction of the Tamils in India to the riots. In Tamil Nadu, Tamil people poured onto the roads, throughout Tamil Nadu's length and breadth, demanding New Delhi take steps to safeguard their brethren. The outpouring of the feeling of empathy continued the whole of that week.

Then Tamil Nadu politics crept into the show of solidarity. Dravida Munnetra Kazhalagam chief M. Karunanithi, then Leader of the Opposition in the Madras Legislative Assembly, and Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhalagam leader and chief minister M. G. Ramachandran vied with each other in orchestrating their solidarity. Karunanithi announced a general strike for Monday, 1 August. Not to be outdone M. G. Ramachandran declared Monday a Day of Solidarity and called upon the people to cease work that day. Entire Tamil Nadu ground to a halt on Monday.

An all-party delegation from Tamil Nadu met Indira Gandhi on that day, 1 August, and pressed her to take action to safeguard the Tamils in Sri Lanka. The delegation told her that Jayewardene had not taken any action to protect the Tamils from the marauding Sinhala mob. It also told Gandhi that, when the attacks subsided, Jayewardene instigated the Sinhala people again through his address to the nation. It asked her to take serious note of Jayewardene’s reported effort to secure arms from countries inimical to India. It said, if not for Rao’s visit, the plight of the Tamils would have been worse.

The threat of Indian military action against Sri Lanka was looming large on the horizon on Monday. That was the talk at Lake House when I reported for work after a week. I must record, with a sense of appreciation, the moving scene that overwhelmed me when I entered the Daily News Editorial. The entire staff, from the Editor to the peon, rose from their seats to welcome me. "We are sorry," editor Manik de Silva told me. "We apologize for all that had happened. Don’t hold this as a grudge against the Sinhala people," he added. I was moved to tears. I told him, "No, Manik. I have no grudge against the Sinhala people."

I used to tell this incident and several other similar experiences of my Tamil friends to support of my contention that the July riots was not an attack by the Sinhala people on Tamils. It was definitely not a spontaneous attack by the Sinhala people. It was engineered by government politicians and their henchmen to 'Teach the Tamils a Lesson' for daring to oppose them.

The threat of Indian military action was a major worry of the Sinhala people during the first week of August. The Indian military threat was discussed in the working committee meeting of the Lanka Jathika Estate Workers Union (LJEWU), a plantation trade union affiliated to the UNP. Gamini Dissanayake, leader of that trade union calmed their fears declaring, "If India invades this country, the Tamils will be killed and finished off in 24 hours time."

The savage riots and the continued anti- Tamil belligerency of government leaders and Sinhala chauvinists left a deep scar on the souls of the Tamil people. Violently uprooted from their homes and thrust into the hastily established refugee camps Tamils felt for the first time that they were all Tamils. The Sinhala thugs had knocked out the regional differences, religious variations, social distinctions, and economic levels among them and flung them into refugee camps as Tamils. The veteran Tamil trade unionist K. C. Nithiyananda, who served at the Saraswathi Hall Refugee Camp, commented, "The greatest contribution Jayewardene made to the Tamil freedom struggle was to make the Tamil people think and fell that they are a separate nation." He smiled after making this remark and added, "He beat us hard for not realizing that simple fact earlier."

Jayewardene’s second contribution is equally important. He got the houses and property of Tamils burnt and told the Tamils, "Why are you all here? You don’t belong here. You have your homeland in the north and east. You go back."  Tamils were sent from the refugee camps in ships and specially guarded trains to their homeland. The special trains that started from Colombo Fort ran nonstop to Vavuniya and halted at all main stations thereafter. Tamils will be ever grateful to the Commissioner General of Essential Services for arranging the ship and train transports.

Some of my friends who travelled in those special trains told me that they heaved a sigh of relief when the train halted at Vavuniya. "We felt that we have returned to our homeland," they told me. The riots raised in the Sri Lankan Tamils the feeling that the north and east are their homelands. "It is the land to which the Sinhalese sent us. It is the land where we feel secure," a Tamil academic of the Colombo University now living in Canada told me.

Historians who research the formative years of the Tamil armed struggle will have to evaluate the contribution made to it by Sirimavo Bandaranaike and Jayewardene. I consider their contribution important and immense. I was fortunate to be a reporter throughout the entirety of their regimes, Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s two terms (1960- 1965 and 1970 – 1977) and Jayewardene (1977- 1989).

I reported on most of the important decisions taken by Sirimavo Bandaranaike on the Tamil issue and the events that followed. I also had the opportunity of reporting on the reactions of the Tamil leadership to those decisions. During her first term of office, Bandaranaike decided to rigourously implement the Sinhala Only law. That led to the 1961 satiyagraha, which for the first time emotionally united the Tamil people and gave them the confidence that the state can be opposed. Her crushing of the 1961 satyagraha gave courage to a small group of 20 Tamils who developed the idea of an armed struggle, which led to the formation of the failed Puli Padai.

I also reported her decision in 1970, during her second term, to introduce media-wise standardization which led to the formation of the Tamil Manavar Peravai. I covered all events connected to the enactment of the 1972 constitution, which deepened the feeling of estrangement among the Tamil people. Standardization and the 1972 constitution were the main decisions which gave birth to Tamil armed movements.

When Jayewardene assumed power in 1977, there were four tiny armed groups. The LTTE had only about 30 cadres and about 200 active supporters. PLOTE was also of the same strength and EPRLF and EROS were much smaller. Through his state- sponsored violence, which included the burning of the Jaffna Public Library, Jayewardene helped these armed groups grow. And through the 1983 riots he pushed into their fold thousands of able and intelligent men and women, most of them cleverer than the men in the police and the army. And, as we will see in the coming chapters, Jayawardene helped the armed groups to gain strength and respectability through his clever destruction of the Tamil moderates.

I would like to give this quote before I proceed. It is from the The Week's interview with Jayawardene from which I quoted earlier:

I quoted this reply to show the type of ‘clever play’ in which Jayewardene indulged. He puts the blame on Mrs. Bandaranaike and tempts her to come out with the package of concessions she intended to give so that he could give those concessions and then blame Mrs. Bandaranaike for making him give them.

Jayewardene instructed the Sunday Observer and the Sinhala weekly, Silumina, to reproduce the The Week interview and asked their sister dailies Daily News and Dinamina to ask Mrs. Bandaranaike for her response. Mrs. Bandaranaike refused to be caught in Jayawardene's trap. Her reply was: "So he wants me to pull him out of the trap into which he had fallen."  That was the time India was pressing Jayewardene to come up with a solution to the Tamil problem. Parthasarathi was busy during this time working out a set of proposals which led up to the famous Annexure C, which will be described in a later chapter.

The riots also had a profound effect on the Tamil community living abroad. Its effect was threefold. Firstly, it brought all the Sri Lankan Tamils together. Secondly, it created a new bond between the Sri Lankan Tamil expatriate community and the Tamils from all other countries in which Tamils resided, India, Malaysia, Singapore, Fuji Islands, Mauritius, South Africa and even the West Indies. Thirdly, it brought a cleavage between expatriate Tamils and Sinhalese.

The letter my brother-in-law, a medical doctor, wrote me from London soon after the riots gives an indication of the reaction of the Sri Lankan Tamils in Britain:

"When the news of the riots reached here, the entire Tamil community living here was thrown into a state of agitated anxiety. Everyone hurried to obtain information about the disturbances. Everyone panicked and tried to get information about their families or relatives. They were all outraged and furious. They felt that their racial dignity and pride had been bruised. The youth here are talking of revenge. Some are thinking of returning to Sri Lanka and joining the militant groups. I think Jayewardene had touched the raw nerve of the Tamil people. They are definitely going to fight him."

Jayewardene was disturbed by the criticism of the attacks on Tamils by many Western countries and international human rights watchers. Indira Gandhi’s telephone call on Wednesday, 27 July evening upset him more. As mentioned in the last chapter Jayawardene asked Ranil Wickremesinghe, a then cabinet minister, to summon his confidants. Gamini, Lalith, Anandatissa and Festus were summoned. During the long midnight session, they decided on two things: ask arms from friendly countries and on a cover up. I have already dealt with the request for arms.

The cover up was to put the blame on some others; on the leftists - communists, Trotskyites and Naxalites. That would silence the Western countries that had deplored Jayawardene. He was never worried about the human rights organizations. He had dubbed them all communists and communist fellow travellers.  A similar strategy was later used by Pres. Chandrika Kumaratunge to dub the LTTE terrorists, a policy which silenced Western critics of government atrocities against Tamils.

The cover up necessitated a change in the explanation of the cause of the riots. The government had maintained that the riot was the result of a "spontaneous outburst of Sinhala wrath" at the killing of Sinhala soldiers at Thirunelveli. Now the story will have to be altered to "planned overthrow of the democratically elected government."

The first comment on the riots came from cabinet spokesman Anandatissa de Alwis after the weekly cabinet meeting on Wednesday, 27 July, afternoon. He told the press conference held after the cabinet meeting - it was called post cabinet briefing - that the violence was the reaction of the Sinhala people who had endured a series of murders committed by the Tamil terrorist groups.

Jayewardene in his address to the nation on Thursday, July 28, struck to the line that the violence was Sinhala reaction. He said, "…the Sinhala people have themselves reacted…"

Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa who addressed the nation on Friday, 29 July, attributed the violence to "wild rumours."

Till Friday evening, there was no talk about an organized plot to overthrow the government. On Saturday, 30 July, the change was brought about. Anandatissa de Alwis told the media that the riots was planned and implemented by three leftist parties. He identified them as the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), the Communist Party (CP) and the Nava Sama Samaja Party (NSSP).

Anandatissa de Alwis announced that the plot comprised three phases. They were:

First phase: To induce violence between Sinhalese and Tamils.

Second phase: To induce violence between Sinhalese and Muslims.

Third phase: To induce violence between Buddhists and Sinhala Christians.

Radio and television announced the news of the leftist plot that day itself and the newspapers did so on 31 July. They also announced the parties' proscription for the duration of the emergency and the prescription of severe penalties, including death or life imprisonment and loss of civic rights, for those entering or having contact with the proscribed parties. They also gave details about the 3-phase plot.

The ban came into effect on 30 July and leaders of the proscribed parties were arrested the same day. All office-bearers of the JVP were arrested and detained on the notorious fourth floor. JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera went underground.

On 4 August, in his address to the government parliamentary group, Jayewardene called the plot the Second Naxalite Plot. He added another phase and made it a 4-phase conspiracy. The Fourth phase was the overthrow of the Government by certain groups in the armed services.

The intrigue behind the Naxalite plot has been carefully investigated and documented by researchers. Ratnatunga in his book Politics of Terrorism: Sri Lankan Experience says that information about the plot was given to Jayewardene by Deputy Inspector General of Police Ernest Perera on Thursday night. Ernest Perera met Jayewardene in the company of Inspector General of Police Rudra Rajasingham.

According to Rajan Hoole Earnest Perera and Rajasingham left Jayewardene’s residence at 9 p.m. after watching his address to the nation. Jayewardene summoned Ernest Perera at 6 a.m. on Friday and got him to dictate a statement about the plot to his private stenographer, J. A. Paulaz. Jayewardene made photocopies of the statement and gave them to the service chiefs and to Rao, who met him over breakfast.

The handing over of a copy of the statement to Rao makes the purpose of the cover up clear. The announcement of the plot on Saturday by Anandatissa de Alwis was intended to silence Western critics. Through the Naxalite Plot story Jayewardene had told the world that he was not the offender, but the offended. His government was to be overthrown. He was not certain of the loyalty of at least a section of the troops. He delayed his address the nation for four days because he was not sure of himself.

The Naxalite Plot story had another purpose also. The JVP general secretary of that time, Lionel Bopage, told investigators that Jayewardene achieved that purpose by driving Rohana Wijeweera underground. Wijeweera had challenged the 1982 Referendum result in the District Court of Colombo alleging a number of serious abuses. He had a very strong case. The action was dismissed because Wijeweera failed to answer the interrogatories served on him. The Appeal Court upheld the order of the District Court.

Investigations proved that there were no evidence to establish the Naxalite Plot theory and the leaders of the CP and NLSSP were released within two months. The ban on their organizations were removed, but the ban on the JVP continued.

I would like to end this chapter by quoting the concluding portion from D.E.W. Gunasekera’s article which I used in the last chapter. ‘D.E.W.’ as he is affectionately called, is the current general secretary of the Communist Party and a Member of Parliament. He says,

"We were left there (Negombo Prison) for 56 days and released honourably exonerated. Next morning, after our release, J. R. Jayewardene had the guts to telephone Pieter Keuneman and K. P. Silva and invite them for talks, seeking advice on the solution to the ethnic problem. Of course, that was J.R.

His Excellency, on that day, was so generous as to step out of the Ward Place house to greet them, for his conscience would have pricked him to confess his guilt for what he had done in banning the party and imprisoning its leaders for no reason.

That was J.R’s style of governance. Of all the misdeeds of J. R., the blackest was the Black July, for which the nation suffers to date."

Index to previous chapters

Next

Chapter 8. The Cover Up