by Rajkumar Sivapatham; published April 23, 2004
For the past couple of years, the most commonly used word in the Sri Lankan affair is “peace.” Even before the MOU between the GOSL and the LTTE was signed, Chandrika and her military had been waging a war for “peace.” This war is even now justifiable to some Sinhalese people and some others outside Sri Lanka. But for Tamils this war for peace means destruction and death. So what does this word “peace” mean to different people?
For Tamils (and for other normal human beings), it means the freedom to live their own lives without constant interference and threat. Having said this, there is bound to be a question of what does “living your own life” involve. Various communities have various priorities. The Tamils happened to value their family, language, land, religion (doesn’t matter whether Hindu, Christian or Muslim) and culture more. Their life is based on the betterment of these priorities. This cannot be regarded as a crime by any international standard. In fact, most of the western societies regard them as basic human rights and not even the governments can interfere with these rights. Tamils (and Sinhalese) lost these rights during the colonial days mainly because they were ruled by the western powers with different priorities. Once independence had been given to Sri Lanka, one would expect that the people in Sri Lanka would have the “freedom to live their own lives without any interference and threat.” This did not happen for the Tamils as the power was transferred to the majority Sinhalese in a country where two distinct communities live. This wouldn’t have caused much problem if all the people were allowed to live in peace. Instead of ensuring that freedom, the rulers of the majority Sinhalese stated to tamper with the freedom of Tamils. From that point onwards, Tamils have lost their peace. As far as Tamils are concerned, restoring peace means restoring that freedom which was lost during the colonial days. This is an important point as this restoration will undoubtedly challenge the current “unitary” state of Sri Lanka as the world knows it. The LTTE’s ISGA proposal is based on this restoration to some extent, without upsetting the state of Sri Lanka.
As far as Sinhalese are concerned, there are two groups. One is the ordinary Sinhalese and the other is the Sinhalese ruling class. The ordinary Sinhalese people have the same priority as the Tamils. Therefore, their idea of peace is the same as Tamils’. The ruling class, who had started the upsetting of peace, regards the peace as smooth running of the country the way they want without any interference from anybody. Their peace would be disturbed if anyone, including ordinary Sinhalese, India, USA (west) or Tamils question the way they rule the country. The 1971 insurgency by Sinhalese, Indian intervention in 1987, western influence in various times including the current opposition to Norway and the quest of the Tamils to restore their freedom have been faced with severe opposition from this ruling class. They use various ingenious ways to keep their power and their definition of “peace.” The usual victims of their effort to keep their “peace” are the Tamils and ordinary Sinhalese. They set Tamils and the ordinary Sinhalese against each other (effectively breaking their peace) to make sure the interests of the ruling class are fulfilled. Basically, they have hyped up the friction between the Tamils and Sinhalese and will make every effort to keep it that way. The emergence of the LTTE is to their advantage in that respect. Therefore, any effort to find peace by the LTTE is a serious threat to their survival. This is one of the reasons for encouraging Karuna’s revolt by the ruling class. It served two purposes. One, it could weaken the LTTE and the other, Karuna could be used to create tension between Tamils and Sinhalese again. With the commitment to peace by the LTTE on various occasions, the next war seems very unlikely, particularly whenever the ruling class wants a war.
Having said all these, why are there different ruling class in Sri Lanka that some like autonomy for the Tamils and the others don’t? One can write a thesis on the Sri Lankan ruling class, but that is not our purpose. If one looks at these different ruling classes, several things can be noticed. One is that the ruling classes who accept (or are forced to accept), at least on the surface, some degree of autonomy for the Tamils are the ones who can form a government in Sri Lanka (UNP and SLFP). The ones which oppose any autonomy are the ones can’t survive politically without stirring up communal/religious hatred. For the latter, sharing of power means no survival. None of the Sinhalese parties/ruling class have any influence on the Tamils. To certain extent, they don’t have any control either (GOSL does not have administrative control over LTTE-held areas). None of the Bikkus or JVP members can go and tell the Tamils what to do now. So they lose nothing if there is autonomy and power sharing. Therefore, the reason for their opposition to autonomy is their inability to earn a living from the chaos of the current communal unrest.
So what is “peace” for these marginal parties? They are currently in a dilemma. Having created the communal tension, the situation has gotten out of hand on the Tamil side. Tamils have a force that could not be defeated for the past couple of decades. It has made the ruling class into a laughingstock inside and outside of Sri Lanka. Among the various other pressures, there is no money coming from the economy or the donors. Peace has become essential. But what sort of peace? The ideal peace for the ruling class is the liquidation of Tamil resistance to submission. It is like pressing the “reset” button on the personal computer. Once it is done, the whole thing can be re-started all over again, from 1948. This is peace for them. The ordinary Sinhalese people and the international community would not any problem, if they can achieve this. And the Tamils won’t be there to complain.
The other stakeholder in the Sri Lankan “peace” is the international community. This is a strange group which was so quiet for a long period of time and started to make loud noise recently. This group is certainly not the “rest of the world” as it implies. It should really be named as an “interested group” rather than the “international community.” So who are these people? Who is interested in Sri Lanka and why? Every Tamil or Sinhalese who live outside Sri Lanka will accept that their non-Sri Lankan neighbour is not interested in the Sri Lankan events unless he/she wants to go there on holiday. Therefore, the international community is not the ordinary people but the governments and institutions. Other question is: would Honduras, Sudan and Mozambique governments worry about what is happening in Sri Lanka? No. To cut all this short, everybody will accept that only a handful of governments and institutions are really interested in Sri Lankan peace. The level of interest and opinions on how to achieve the peace depend on what these governments are and their needs in Sri Lanka. Only India and the USA have the overwhelming interest, at the moment. They are also powerful enough to influence the peace. But it appears that they have their own agenda and the freedom of Tamils is not first on that agenda. Therefore, for them, the Sri Lankan peace whether it is achieved by autonomy and power-sharing or destruction of Tamils is acceptable. The peace in Sri Lanka is Sri Lanka being quiet while they go about doing their own things. It is okay if Tamils get their freedom in the process. If they didn’t get it, they better keep quiet. This is the position of the international community given the fact that some governments would like to see LTTE destroyed due to their own reasons.
So what do we have here? The powerful governments are pressing the Sinhalese ruling class and the LTTE to reach a long lasting peace, soon. That means keep Sri Lanka quiet. The Sinhalese ruling class prefers the peace by destroying the Tamil resistance which is also acceptable to this “international community.” The ruling class is trying to find ways to get this “international community” to do this job for them as the Sri Lankan military is not capable of destroying the LTTE. The only way it can be done now is to provoke a war with the LTTE, which is adamant on peace, into which the international community can be drawn. All the actions by the ruling class prove this.
The LTTE, on the other hand, is resisting the provocations and holding firm. It realises the danger of being in limbo (neither peace nor war). Therefore, it has made clear that if there is no peaceful solution within a united Sri Lanka, Tamils have the right to secede. For some reason, this right of self-determination is going unnoticed and unremarked by the so-called “international community.”
Harrow.
UK