A fortnight after Taliban took over all of Afghanistan without any resistance worth the name, TNA Spokesman M.A.Sumanthiran wanted the Government to submits its proposals for a political solution to the ethnic issue nearer home to the US for mediation – and adjudication. He has also sought a TNA meeting with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to discuss not only a political solution as used to be traditionally understood but also the post-war UNHRC resolutions. 

If someone in Colombo thought the US had power to intervene in the internal affairs of Sri Lanka or any other Nation has evaporated postAfghanistan, they are mistaken. But if the likes of Sumanthiran think that the US is the best facilitator to solve what essentially is still a domestic issue, whose sensitivities no foreigner will ever understand, they have to only rewind to the days of past facilitations by the Indian neighbour and America’s Norwegian Team-B. 

In the midst of the COVID-19 crises, the TNA can forget President Gotabaya and his team giving them quality time required to sort out what already is a vexatious issue. Strategically too, it is a weak moment for the Government to get engaged with the TNA in any serious discourse, especially on the spate of UNHRC resolutions, when they are knocking at the IMF’s doors for urgent aid to tide over the fiscalcum-forex crisis. 

In the mind of most Third World Nations, the IMF still translates as the US and will continue to remain so, Afghanistan or not. Sri Lanka’s ruling class, whether Rajapaksas or their political rivals, will expect the US to indirectly link the IMF loans to visible improvement on the China front first and the ethnic and other minorities issue, next. 

The very fact that Sri Lanka is now knocking at IMF’s doors implies that Colombo is ready to side-step further Chinese funding for a reason. But that may not be enough, as the US and the rest of the West links it all, also to the UNHRC resolutions and other human rights issues nearer home. There are things that an elected Government in Colombo can be expected to do under the present circumstances.

 There are things that they would refuse to yield, again Rajapaksas are not. Any Sri Lankan, politician or not, will be reminded only of the ‘Second JVP insurgency’ when the JRJ leadership was seen as yielding to perceived Indian pressure and inviting the IPKF. Today’s ground realities are possibly no worse than those that prevailed in the fifties and sixties, leading to the founding of the militant left JVP, followed by the first insurgency in 1971. 

All these are dictated and directed by ever-increasing aspirations, fuelled by and funnelled through the Social Media from across the world. Governments of the fifties and sixties did not have to contend with such aspirations and information overload. Twin possibilities For those in the know and eternal anticipation in the Sri Lankan state structure, whoever is in power, even as the LTTE war was winding down a decade and more back, they were already concerned about twin possibilities. 

One was the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and radicalism, possibly leading up to terrorism. Unfortunately for the Nation and the Nation’s Muslim community, the ‘Easter serial blasts’ happened. It has pushed under the carpet, all the causes that led to a few misguided Muslim youth taking to violence of the higher order than were perpetrated on them by the BBS and allies. Unfounded fears that Muslims would outnumber the majority Sinhala-Buddhists numbering three-fourths of the Nation’s population at some distant point in time could not be justified then, nor now. 

But it took over, and no political leadership in the country, including that of the divided Muslim polity, did anything to disabuse such motivated beliefs. The other, eternally hiding in the deep recess of the Sri Lankan State structure, including competing Sinhala-Buddhist political leaderships, is the fear of a new eruption from within the community, but on the socioeconomic front. 

It was so in the case of the JVP’s founding and its militant activities. The JVP has since found peace in democratic political activity, whether or not they get the numbers, but the apprehension that another of the kind, independent of this one, is waiting to happen, is a concern that is for real. The TNA leadership too would have known these apprehensions in the mind of successive leaderships. 

Compare the current ground situation with those prevailing at the time of the JVP’s founding, the first and more so the second insurgency, when alone an elected Government in Colombo sought India for a peace-keeping force. That was possibly JRJ’s intent to signing the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord with then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi that the IPKF, when sought, will be able to square off with LTTE terrorist-fighters, if he had to what became the 13th Amendment to the rest of the Tamil polity and community. 

In the event, the JVP protested the IPKF and 13A, and the second insurgency swept through the Sinhala South as none before and none afterwards. Clearly, the JVP strategists did not provide for JRJ’s cunning. It had ensured that the IPKF, when inducted, would relieve the Nation’s forces from areas under the LTTE’s control in the North and the East, to tackle the up and coming second insurgency. The US Army did it in Iraq and Afghanistan in the Asian neighbourhood. 

The Sri Lankan Forces have done it against the JVP and the LTTE alike. Independent of the head-count of victims (which may be higher in the case of the second JVP insurgency than the last battle with the LTTE), if any army refuses to take arms to shoot at their own brethren and children, boys and girls, however misled and misunderstood, it is called mutiny. 

Any TNA provocation of the kind for the Government to hand over its ethnic responsibilities to the US or any other Nation or grouping under the prevailing circumstances could lead to political opposition to the Government leadership, not from within the ruling party or even the political Opposition, but from the Sinhala street opinion which would turn against the Government. 

The Tamils and TNA can then forget a political solution for an eon. Already the hopes that the Rajapaksas (alone) can market a Tamil-friendly political solution to the larger Sinhala constituency waned when incumbent Mahinda lost Elections-2015. In the midst of the current COVID-19 crisis, it has become even more difficult for them, as well. 

Yet, the Rajapaksas are still the best bet for the Tamils as the previous Government of National Unity (GNU) that the TNA propped up throughout, showed through the multiple promises that were meant to be kept only as promises. Sole representative According to Sumanthiran, TNA boss R.Sampanthan in talks with US envoy Alaina Teplitz wanted more than the dysfunctional Provincial Councils. 

They should first demand a functional 13-A and prove to themselves and their constituency that they can administer themselves. Sampanthan also wanted the re-merger of the North and the East. By now, the Americans too know that for re-merger, the TNA should talk not to them, but to Muslims in the East. The TNA is also not highlighting that point in the 2006 Supreme Court judgment ordering de-merger. 

The Court then attributed it to the LTTE not laying down arms, which was kind of a condition precedent for merger under 13A that became effective under the Provincial Councils Act, also of 1987. The LTTE and its international supporters, Tamils or otherwise, missed out that with this observation, the Supreme Court had willy-nilly accepted the LTTE as the sole representative of the community and its actions and inactions (alone) needed identifying with the larger Tamil population, including the moderate TNA leadership. Biting and chewing Yes, the Government is in a fix on multiple counts and fronts. 

The best bet for the TNA or anyone else in its place is to use the ‘external influence’ that they command or perceive to command, to ensure that the Government gives them a fair deal, not a wholesale deal, short of a federal or confederate solution. They should not bite more than they can chew. Administering a constitutional territory in a democracy is neither a zero-sum game, nor is it a legacy right that can befall the inefficient and ill-equipped.

 Independent observers of the Sri Lankan scene, especially from inside, would readily agree that the TNA’s political behaviour is only less tentative than their administrative acumen. Leaving aside the internal squabble that led to a vertical split in the party even when they were in elected power in the post-war Northern Province for five years, then TNA Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran and team showed how incapable they for the jobs. 

Any other imaginative and experienced administrative leadership in would have delivered on whatever was possible, and not held on to whatever they needed from the Sri Lankan Centre and also under 13A, more so the unavailable 13 plus. 

The TNA and the Tamils should deserve before they desire, if they have to make a success of ‘self-rule’ within the Constitution. The TNA should convince the Nation, and not just its pocketborough constituency, that they have able administrators, who know to administer and within an existing system. Rather, they should convince themselves, first. 

More importantly, they need to build confidence in the Sri Lankan State, as different from the Sinhala political leadership, that they won’t go back to the Vaddukoddai resolution, though not the LTTE’s ways. The Tamil input for the international community has left out an event before SWRD tore off the B-C Pact with their leader, S.J.V.Chelvanayakam, in the fifties. Three days after signing the pact, SJV told a Batticaloa rally that ‘it was only a first step’. That continues to remain ‘out-of-syllabus’ for students of Sri Lanka’s ethnic politics, since! 

Courtesy: CeylonToday