Our neighbours

Sri Lanka
Tamils: the bone of contention

If India intends to become a permanent member of UN Security Council it must show its skills in solving the problem of its smaller neighbours. Solving the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka involving LTTE could be one such example. By Prof. Avinash Kolhe

The events in Mumbai created the most unintended effect in far away Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. The 60-hour long show of violence in India’s financial capital and its political aftermath was extensively covered by the Sri Lankan media. The discussion in cafes, cinema houses had only one theme: the events in Mumbai. So much so that the 54th birthday of Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the chief of the dreaded Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), went unreported. Not only this, since the Mumbai events took place during the martyr’s week, the Heroes Day speech delivered by V. Prabhakaran also went unnoticed. This was the 19th Heroes Day speech delivered by the LTTE supremo. The LTTE has been observing November 27 as Heroes Day to observe the death anniversary of Shankar who was the first LTTE combatant to die in the war. Though Prabhakaran’s speech, as usual, referred to India as ‘super power’, it did not mention even once what was happening in Mumbai.
If Mumbai event were not to take place, Prabhakaran’s speech would have been studied by Indian policy-makers quite carefully. The issue of Tamils in Sri Lanka has come back to surface in Indian politics. Despite the Mumbai events, the MPs from Tamil Nadu met Dr. Manmohan Singh on December 2, 2008 and requested him that India should work towards getting a ceasefire between Sri Lanka and the LTTE. The military of Sri Lanka is making life difficult for the cadres of the LTTE. The delegation of 34 MPs representing Congress, DMK and PMK submitted a memorandum suggesting that India should ensure that relief materials like medicine, food reached the Tamils there who were displaced due to the ethnic war. The prime minister promised them about the relief materials but did not commit himself about the ceasefire. And there hangs a tale.
India and Sri Lanka share a peculiar relationship. Sri Lanka is an island country, which was also a colony of British Empire. It gained independence in 1948. Its total population was 19.42 million on the eve of independence and its population complexion as shown in the table.
Right since Independence the issue of Tamils in Sri Lanka has created problems for India and Sri Lanka. For many years lakhs of Indians have been working in the tea estates of Sri Lanka. The question of the citizenship of the Indian tea estate labourers proved a watershed in the history of Independent Sri Lanka (which was known as Ceylon then). This issue created majority-minority problem for Sri Lanka. That is when the ethnic discrimination and class war began. Two acts of parliament passed in 1948 and 1949 deprived the vast majority of the Tamil labourers of their citizenship rights which they hitherto enjoyed like everyone else as British India. As a result more than a million Tamilians were disenfranchised. Pandit Nehru and D. S. Senanayake, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka (1947-52) met many times during the 1940s to solve this issue but in vain.
It is clear from the population complexion that the Tamils are a significant minority in the polity of Sri Lanka. Now this minority has been waging a struggle, violent and non-violent to press for their demands, which are ethnic, linguistic and educational in nature.

Rise of ethnic conflict
The government of Sri Lanka created an exclusivist constitution and in 1956 passed ‘Official Language Act’ which specified ‘Sinhala’ as the sole official language of the state. This created resentment among the Tamils. Although the Constitution of 1978 gave the Tamil language special status in the government dealings, it maintained the supremacy of Sinhala language. The Tamil language was designated as ‘national language’ whereas Sinhala remained ‘official’ language. This did not satisfy the Tamils.
If language issue made Tamils unhappy, the problem in the field of education made them angry. By 1970s, the United Front government of Ms. Srimavo Bandarnaike became concerned with the superior performance of the Tamil students. To stop this, the government introduced quotas based on the size of each community. There were riots. The government responded by altering the quota system and introduced a new one based on both quotas and merit.
The ‘Unitary Constitution’ of 1972 further complicated the issue. It created an impression that the Tamils will further face discrimination. No wonder in 1976, the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) asked for separate state for the Tamil community.
Then came the most burning issue of employment. In any developing country a government job carries high social status. Sri Lankan society is no exception. Here too, the government introduced employment practices full of discrimination against the Tamils. The ‘Open Economy Policy’ of 1977 further widened the gap between Sinhala and Tamil society. And the last issue of dispute was the ‘internal colonisation’. The Sinhalese started colonisation of the traditional Tamil areas.
All these blatant discrimination forced the leaders of Tamil society to demand a separate state. The Tamil youth, restless like any youngster, took to violence. In the 1970s, there were occasional skirmishes against government installations and personnel. By 1980s, these youngsters, now called ‘Tigers’ developed into full-blown, well equipped army of liberation.
The 1983 riots
The restless, angry Tamil youth were waiting for an opportunity which came in July 1983. On July 23, 1983, the Tamil Tigers killed 13 Sinhalese soldiers. This led to anti-Tamil riots which further resulted into the outflow of Tamil refugees to India. The year 2008 happens to be the Silver Jubilee year of those riots. These riots shook the confidence of the Tamil community in the ability of the state to protect their life and property. India had no alternative but to take initiative to resolve the problem. An All Party Conference met throughout 1984. Then there were meetings between the then President J. R. Jayawardhane and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in June 1985 held in Bhutan. The talks held during the end of 1986 in Delhi moved towards a devolution package which was aimed at providing considerable autonomy at provincial level.
There was heavy fighting in Jaffna in April and May 1987. India, again, was left with no alternative but to intervene. On July 29, 1987, an agreement was signed between India and Sri Lanka to ensure peace and security. Indian aim was quite clear: it did not want hegemony of Sinhalese over Tamil minority nor did India support a separate state of Tamils. To ensure the implementation of Indo-Sri Lanka accord, nearly 60,000 Indian troops (Indian Peace Keeping Force – IPKF) were sent to Sri Lanka. By October 1987, IPKF was fighting a tough war against the LTTE. By March 1990, the IPKF withdrew after having lost nearly 1200 soldiers. Many scholars, including the then India’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka Mr. J. N. Dixit, admitted that this was a massive failure of Indian foreign policy. The same policy mess claimed Rajiv Gandhi’s life on May 21, 1991. Since then LTTE has been banned in India. Till today the ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka has killed over 70,000 people.
The Tamils of Sri Lanka continue to play an important role in the domestic politics of India, especially of the southern states. After India pulled out of the Sri Lanka mess, there have been many efforts to resolve the ethnic divide but with no success. Since 2002 there has been a Cease Fire Agreement (CFA) which is observed more in breach.
India has to be careful while dealing with Sri Lanka and the ethnic crisis. It was noticed in 2007 that the LTTE has developed air wing. This is indeed a matter of concern for India. The Indian Air Force has supplied radars to Sri Lanka to help sight LTTE aircrafts. These days Sri Lankan army seems to have launched massive attacks against LTTE. In its operation conducted in November 2008, the Sri Lankan army captured the entire west coast. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa urged the LTTE to lay down arms and surrender which is highly unlikely.

India’s response
It is over 25 years that the ethnic war is on with no end in sight. Some scholars believe that India should not abandon LTTE as it is the only insurance we have against the dominance of Sinhalese over Tamils in Sri Lanka. Not only this, these scholars maintain that India should give up its stated policy of protecting the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. In fact, the argument goes further pointing that a separate state for Sri Lankan Tamils would be ideal for India as it would be better disposed towards India’s strategic interest in Indian Ocean. A Sinhala dominated-state would be less sympathetic towards India.
This option is very risky. If India were to encourage creation of Tamil Eelam, the next logical step would be ‘Greater Tamil Eelam’ adding Tamil Nadu of India. Also if we facilitate formation of Tamil Eelam by breaking a sovereign state, we cannot logically and morally stop such demands in India. The best example is Jammu and Kashmir. India should use its leverage with Sri Lanka to settle the ethnic war in the island. India is a super power in South Asia. It must behave like one. If India dreams of becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council it must show that it can take initiative to solve the problem of its small neighbours. India should push for autonomy model for Tamils. In fact India has tremendous reservoir of experience in dealing with secessionist tendencies. Indian State had successfully neutralised the challenge of DMK in the late 1960s. Now DMK is a part of mainstream politics. Similar approach should be deployed in solving the ethnic war in Sri Lanka. India must take decisive steps or lest once again competitive politics will take over in Tamil Nadu and saner elements will be forced on back foot.

The writer is Sr. Lecturer in Political Science at D. G. Ruparel College, Mumbai.

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