Seeing In The Dark: Buddhism returns to its birthplace as urban Indians find in it an emotional anchor for their troubled lives

By Sheela Reddy with Smruti Koppikar, Dola Mitra, Pushpa Iyengar and Harsh Kabra

OutlookIndia.com
February 23, 2009

Why Buddhism Is Catching On In The Land Of Its Birth

    * Appeals to the rational urban Indian fed up of organised religion and its rituals
    * Provides a moral and ethical framework suitable to modern times
    * It’s highly individualistic, not requiring you to bow down to any god
    * Makes you responsible for your own happiness
    * It provides a community and support system to fill a vacuum in city life

Not perhaps since Buddhism's heyday, some 2,200 years ago, did such a power crowd gather to pay their tribute to Gautama Buddha in the land of his birth. Among the 6,000 of India's well-heeled and well-connected who assembled at the opening of the country's grandest monument in recent times to the Buddha—the Rs 100-crore Global Vipassana Pagoda, "the largest dome in the world"—in Mumbai's Gorai island last Sunday were the President, a governor, several central and state ministers, an industrialist, a media baron and the Buddha's star new-age disciple, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

Like Priyanka, there's a new wave of Indians—affluent, rational, metropolitan, English-educated individuals impatient of organised religion and willing to experiment with alternate spiritual forms—who are increasingly turning to the Buddha's teachings for anwers to their dilemmas. A far cry from Ambedkar and his Dalit followers who converted to Buddhism 50 years ago as a way of getting back at Hinduism and its hierarchy, these small bands of new-age spiritualists shy away from the very word 'Buddhist' with all its political baggage. Their Buddhism instead is more therapy than religion, a self-help practice that enables them to cope with the daily pressures of city life—nuclear families, generation gap, divorces, collapse of family support systems, relationships, pressures of jobs and joblessness, lifestyle diseases, teenage angst and loneliness—even as it unlocks their hitherto hidden potential.

For business executive Archana Sehgal, 32, who migrated to Delhi with her first job some eight years ago, her spiritual journey began when a friend invited her to chant nyam myo ho renge kyo, the title of the Lotus Sutra in Japanese. Desperately unhappy with her feuding family, Archana decided to give it a try, chanting for two-three hours a day for a week. It worked for her, she says, giving her the inner space to resolve her anger and start believing in her power to change "anything in my life". Today, Archana is the leader of the young women's division in her locality of the Bharat Soka Gakkai (Value Creation Society, BSG) inspired by the teachings of 13th century Japanese Buddhist monk Nichiren, adapted to contemporary times by its mentor, Daisaku Ikeda, and now flourishing in 192 countries with a membership running into tens of millions.

Archana is expected to make at least two "home visits" a week in a system that is unique to BSG: each leader being charged with responsibility for the happiness and well-being of every individual in her "block". Such a block is limited to 10 or less members to ensure that each member gets individual attention. It's a practice, Archana says, that gives her deep fulfilment by mentoring other young women like her facing job insecurity and social turmoil of other kinds. "If one person has a problem, everyone rallies around. It's a philosophy which is easy to apply to daily life. You begin to understand how your inner life works and learn to take responsibility for your own happiness."

The combination of community chanting, individual counselling and a support system that works like an extended family without its handicaps has turned the BSG into an impressive organisation of over 38,000 members in 300 cities in India in a little over two decades.

To sceptical outsiders, especially educated middle-class professionals with their horror of anything that smells of organised religion, the extreme organisation and zeal to induct newcomers into the practice, along with the strict rules of confidentiality, seem almost masonic sometimes. But within the BSG, it's hard not to be moved by members' sincerity and genuine concern for others. And it's impossible to spot an unhappy face. It's not as if they don't have their problems, some of them huge, like cancer. But as BSG head Naveena Reddi explains, the chanting works as a way of transforming negative thought into positive. More important, members are taught to chant for the happiness of those they don't like. What also keeps them upbeat is sharing their experiences—under strict confidentiality—of how the practice has changed their lives. Countless stories emerge of daily miracles wrought by individual and community chanting—improved relations within the family and at work, promotions that come without pulling strings, jobs that land suddenly in one's lap, cancers that recede, eyesight restored.

But it's not just spiritual therapy, as Reddi stresses. What the practice hopes to bring about is a change in the world through a "human revolution", leading members to fight for a world in which Buddha's core values of peace and non-violence are propagated in contemporary times, whether it is in dealing with issues like global warming, the anti-nuke campaign or greening the earth.

Other new-age forms of Buddhism arrive at the same idea of the interconnected universe through different paths, but inspired equally by the Buddha's teachings. Vipassana, which means "to see things as they really are", is a meditation practice popularised by the Buddha, and returned to the land of his birth by an Indian businessman domiciled in Burma, Satyanarayan Goenka. Having become an ardent practitioner in Rangoon, Goenka came back to India in 1969 to revive it here. Vipassana, as he points out in his talks and books, "involves no dogma, rites, rituals, conversion. The only conversion is from misery to happiness, from bondage to liberation."

When he brought Vipassana to India 40 years ago, there were about a dozen people, including Goenka's parents, willing to sign up for the meditation course. Now there are more than 55 centres in India, from Sonepat in Haryana to Chengannur in Kerala, from Jaipur and Ajmer to Dehradun and Durg. Over a million have joined up for the 10-day retreat, where beginners are taught "mental purification through self-observation". Students lead a frugal life—no talking, sex, meat, drinks, newspapers, TV, music—while they learn to focus their mind in near-total silence. Just refraining from these familiar distractions is the first step for the mind to calm down, followed by three-and-a-half days of anapana meditation focusing on your breath, followed by six-and-a-half days of a guided meditation where the student learns to observe changes in his body and its sensations as a way to gain equanimity. So popular have the courses become that the waiting lists are growing by the day.

This mushrooming of new-age forms of Buddhism is a recent trend in our cities, points out Pankaj Mishra, whose book—An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World—is a voyage to rediscover Buddhism in the land of its birth centuries after it was wiped out. "Several members of my own family, even my landlady in Defence Colony, all with an upper-caste Hindu upbringing, have signed up with some Buddhist organisation or the other," he says. For Mishra, this second coming of the Buddha is in the fitness of things because it has found an audience similar to the one the Buddha originally aimed his message at: a modernising society and its rising commercial classes. "Buddha was conveying his message at a time of huge social upheaval when close-knit societies were falling apart, and with people migrating to cities, traditional bonds were being weakened, whether in community or family networks. For people newly arrived in cities, alone and anonymous, traditional religions were of little help."

It's only natural, as Mishra points out, that a post-liberalised India, with its "spiritual and emotional exhaustion", is increasingly attracted to a form of Buddhism that provides spiritual sustenance at such times. "The more society changes, the greater Buddhism's appeal," he says. Besides, "the idea of an individual not affiliated to any caste or community being a new one in India", the Buddha's revolutionary concept of shifting the onus of spiritual health on the individual is bound to resonate.

This hunger for a new moral and spiritual framework for how to live your life meaningfully without God as an intermediary is what is driving thousands of Indians to the Dalai Lama's teachings. Until a few years ago, the pontiff's engagement diary was almost completely booked with his tours abroad or his teachings in Dharamshala, attended predominantly by his followers from abroad. No longer, says his representative in Delhi, Tempa Tsering. There's a distinct shift, with nearly 60 per cent of his engagements reserved for his talks across India. In the last month-and-a-half, for instance, the Tibetan leader was invited to address meetings in Rajasthan, Delhi, Hyderabad, Gulbarga, Chennai, Pondicherry, Delhi again, before returning to his home in Dharamshala for 10 days, then going for a brief tour to Germany and Italy before leaving again for Bangalore and Mysore. Everywhere he goes, whether university campuses or hospitals—he was in Meerut recently to open a charitable hospital—thousands gather to hear his simple, down-to-earth teachings, shorn of all dogma.

The same thing happened when the Vietnamese Zen teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, came to India last October. Unlike his two previous visits—once in 1988 on a private pilgrimage, and again in 1997, when he spoke before a small audience in Delhi and Chennai—the response to his last visit was overwhelming, says Shantum Seth, who runs the Ahimsa Trust for propagating his Zen teacher's Buddhist practice. "His teachings are clear, useful and timely, and appeal to a generation that was schooled in scientific rationalism." Unlike other religions, Seth points out, Buddhism encourages a spirit of true inquiry—if it works for you, adopt it without getting caught up in any ism. "Its emphasis is on personal practice and self-development, which is hugely attractive to the intelligentsia."

So will it last, or will Buddhism vanish once more as it did in the past, wiped out by a disastrous mix of circumstances, including co-option into Hinduism and ritualism, and a decline of the commercial classes? Undoubtedly it will last, according to Mishra, who hails the Buddha as "the greatest thinker India has ever produced by a huge margin". At a time when so many of our shiny modern ideologies have been discredited, says Mishra, the Buddha's teachings grow increasingly relevant as the guide to an ethical life.

There's no way out for us except the Buddha's way.

Lanka, only democracy that defeated terror - US Congressman

SundayObserver.lk
July 17, 2011

US congressman Heath Shuler in an open letter to his fellow colleagues in the House of Representatives has emphasized that the US future policy towards Sri Lanka should be focused on supporting the country’s reconciliation efforts and engagement with the US.

The member for North Carolina and a member of the Steering and Policy Committee, Shuler, who visited Sri Lanka in May 2009, just days after the operations against the LTTE concluded, begins his letter:

Today, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International-USA are screening a controversial documentary about Sri Lanka.

There is a great deal of misinformation and debate about what occurred during the final days of Sri Lanka’s war.

Recounting his experience, in the backdrop of the screening of the controversial documentary, he has said "Sri Lanka is the only democracy to have defeated a terrorist organization in recent memory".

When I arrived in Sri Lanka, after the end of the war, the optimism and hope of the Sri Lankan people was palpable.

With the defeat of the Tigers for the first time in decades Sri Lankans felt safe from terror.

Even the Tamils I met in the recently constructed camps felt optimistic about the future of their country, knowing that security would bring much needed progress to everyone in the country.’’

I saw the toll that the 26-year-long terror campaign waged by the Tigers had on the nation.

Our own government designated the Tigers as one of the world’s worst terror groups.

Over the past quarter of a century, the Tigers reigned terror on the nation, including suicide bombings, summary executions, ethnic cleansing, recruitment of child soldiers, drug smuggling, piracy and international money laundering.

Reminding that Sri Lanka is a long time ally of the US, the member for North Carolina has pointed out that "US cannot discount the long standing and strategic relationship" with Sri Lanka which is an "enduring democracy".

Since my visit, I have been following the progress Sri Lanka has made. Since the end of the war, there has not been a single terrorist attack in Sri Lanka.

Based on news accounts and UN documents, almost all of the 300,000 displaced persons in Sri Lanka have returned to their homes, over 11,000 former LTTE fighters and child soldiers have been rehabilitated and re-integrated into society, and nearly 60% of the two million landmines have been cleared.

Shuler has also recognized that a ‘commission to investigate wrongdoings conducted by both sides during the conflict and to foster national healing and reconciliation’ is making progress.

In conclusion he has written "As we work together to develop our policy on Sri Lanka, I am happy to tell you about my experience there", adding that he was willing to discuss with any of his colleagues about the true situation in Sri Lanka as he had been closely watching the unfolding developments at the ground level - which was very much different to the picture portrayed in the public domain.

Next move: go forward or back to 1976 Vadukoddai?

By H. L. D. Mahindapala
LankaWeb.com
July 10, 2011

Wars are evil exercises that must be avoided at any cost. But history tells us that wars are also unavoidable. From time to time, wars occur to win over-ambitious goals going beyond established political and territorial borders or to eliminate or neutralize enemies that threaten national interests. This is the short term goal of wars. The long-term objective of wars is to define and reinforce national identities, boundaries and values. The Sri Lankan government launched a counter-terrorist war to reinforce the national identity, territorial boundaries and the democratic political values.

The Jaffna Tamil leadership which launched the Vadukoddai War gambled, throwing all their financial, international, local and military might to achieve their separatist goals, based on fictitious geography and concocted history as outlined in the Vadukoddai Resolution of 1976, and lost. They lost ignominiously partly because the Tamil people lost faith in their leaders and ran way from them even when their leaders were shooting at them for running away from a lost cause.

A great responsibility now lies on the shoulders of the Tamil leadership in taking the next step. The question they have to answer is simple: is there a future in going back to the failed past? After the debacle in Nandikadal in May 2009 is there any sense in dragging the Jaffna Tamil people once again to Vadukoddai of May 1976? President Mahinda Rajapakse too is under great pressure from the defeated remnants of the Vadukoddai ideology to go back to 1976 – the year in which the Jaffna Tamils declared war against the rest of the nation in the Vadukoddai Resolution. The violence unleashed by the Jaffna Tamil leadership in the Vadukoddai Resolution killed more Jaffna Tamils than any other forces put together, according to declared statements of Jaffna Tamil leaders. So what can the Jaffna Tamils gain by going back to Vadukoddai of 1976?

The Jaffna Tamil war-mongers were hoisted by their own petard when they resorted to a military solution and they have no one to blame except “the stupid Tamil leaders of Jaffna” (Prof. Kumar David) who misled the Jaffna Tamils and dragged them all the way to Nandikadal Lagoon. Mahinda Rajapakse’s forces defeated not only the Vadukoddians but also the pompous intellectuals, the theoretical devolutionists, the Marxist fossils, and “Pacha” Pereras and Silly Silvas, allied to NGOs. The tragedy is that despite the grim realities of their futile past this mob of political troglodytes are making a desperate bid to reverse the trends of the post-Nandikadal period and take the nation back to square one, as if nothing has happened between May 1976 (the start) and May 2009 (the end). The same old mob has ganged up again to deny the bloody past and, consequently, force the people to relive the horrors that the war-weary nation is determined to leave behind.

As opposed to this the post-Nandikadal period has opened up ideal conditions to re-define and reinforce the threatened identity of the nation, its geographical and constitutional boundaries, historical legacies and political values. Eliminating the political monsters that came out of the womb of the Vadukoddai Resolution was a sine qua non for peace, reconciliation and progress. President Mahinda Rajapakse removed the 33-year-old Vadukoddai violence in a swift surgical operation that lasted just three years. The vast majority of the people backed him all the way to Nandikadal and in each subsequent election of the post-Nandikadal period he was rewarded for rescuing the nation from the plague of a futile war. Now the eyes of the nation are focused on how President Rajapakse would define the identity of the nation, its geographical, constitutional and political boundaries and values.

The military solution chosen deliberately by the Vadukoddians in May 1976 was to force the will of a mono-ethnic minority of the north down the throats of the majority. The formulas proposed and enacted between 1976 and 2002 were all designed to appease only one community – the Jaffna Tamils. All formulas – from the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement to the Ceasefire of 2002 – failed because they were tailored only to address the “aspirations” of the Jaffna Tamils, dismissing the “aspirations” of the other communities. After the failure of several formulas and particularly after Nandikadal there is a growing awareness that any viable solution must address the “aspirations” of all communities. There is also a growing awareness that the destiny of one community is linked inextricably with all the others. The separatist ideology has had its day and is now lying at the bottom of Nandikadal Lagoon.

The fundamental flaw in all the formulas introduced in the past was primarily in ignoring the “aspirations” of the majority community. It is now an inescapable political fact that no lasting peace can ever work without the consent of the majority. This necessity was underlined emphatically by the International Crisis Group report written by its Colombo-based representative, Allan Keenan. He wrote in a press release to the report titled Sri Lanka: Sinhala Nationalism and the Elusive Southern Consensus (November 7, 2007) : “Lasting peace will not be found in Sri Lanka until Sinhala nationalism and the grievances that give it power are understood and addressed.”

He added:: “Recent history shows the Sinhalese are not unalterably opposed to a fair deal for the minority Tamils but competition between their major parties, the United National Party (UNP) and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), together with the violence and intransigence of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), has led President Rajapaksa to adopt a hardline nationalist approach. Until the sources of Sinhalese nationalism are taken more seriously, it will continue to challenge attempts to produce a political settlement.”
He also quotes Asia Program Director Robert Templer, who says: “Domestic and international actors should begin to fashion long-term strategies that take into account the power of Sinhala nationalist ideology, while aiming to minimize the sources of its appeal and its ability to set the political agenda”.

Both statements are absolutely relevant to find a way out of the prevailing tensions in the current political climate created essentially by the failed pundits who still act and talk as if the Jaffna Tamils have the ability to set the political agenda. They did have the power once upon a time when Vadukoddai violence was at its peak under the brutal power of the Tamil Pol Pot, Velupillai Prabhakaran. But the rag-tag army of Vadukoddians agitating in Western bases lacks the military clout to dictate terms to the Sinhala majority as they did in the six rounds of talks which culminated in Ranil Wickremesinghe caving in, on bended knees, to install Tamil Pol Pot as the “sole representative of the Tamils” in the north and the east. Wickremesinghe’s surrender to the Tamil Pol Pot marks the peak of Vadukoddian power. Mahinda Rajapakse’s greatness is in reversing that trend and regaining and restoring the power given on a platter to the Tamil Tiger terrorists by Ranil Wickremesinghe, the spineless political freak ever produced by the UNP.

The post-Nandikadal undercurrent struggling to enter the mainstream through the back door – a favourite port of entry for the likes of Mangala Samaraweera, Ranil Wickremesinghe and Malik Samaraweera who are forever ready, willing and gay to sell the nation — is pushing the President to go down the path of Wickremesinghe. If, by any chance, Mahinda Rajapakse decides to descend into the abyss of Wickremesinghe (from which the latter has never come out, praise be to the people of Sri Lanka!) then the Commander-in-Chief of the Forces cannot claim to have won the war. Then he becomes a loser like Wickremesinghe.

The people backed him all the way to Nandikadal and in subsequent elections not to go back to 1976 but to consolidate and reinforce the gains won with the sweat, blood and tears of the self-sacrificing soldiers. The forces and the people fought for their Commander-in-Chief because they trusted him to be the only leader who would stand by them. He was the only alternative to the combined forces of the UNP-TNA-NGOs whose agenda was to take the nation back to 1976 and hand it over to Tamil fascism. But the people stood with the President militarily and politically, undergoing economic hardships and serious threats to their daily lives, to fulfill the aspirations of the forces that backed him to the hilt, unequivocally.

Whether we like it or not let’s face the reality: the Vadukoddai War was launched by a minority to impose their will on the majority. It is not only in Sri Lanka but the global theatre is currently haunted by aggressive minorities trying to dictate terms to the majorities. (More of this majority vs. minority issue later). After dithering with various formulas to end violent minoritarianism the majority decided to say “enough is enough” and marched all the way to Nandikdal. The military and electoral victories confirm that “lasting peace will not be found in Sri Lanka until Sinhala nationalism and the grievances that give it power are understood and addressed” by President Rajapakse.

The NGO and academic pundits failed because they assumed that only the Jaffna Tamils had grievances and aspirations. Their strategy has been to denigrate the Sinhala-Buddhists and blame them as the mono-causal force that led to the north-south crisis. They refused to acknowledge that the majority – as in all ex-colonies – had a right to reclaim the rights they lost to colonialism. The meaning of “1956” is in the rise and enthroning of the majority that was suppressed and oppressed under colonialism. It was the historic year that opened up new vistas and institutional means to redress the historical imbalances which had, for nearly five centuries, denied them their cultural, linguistic, political, territorial and historical heritage. President Rajapakse is the crowned legatee of “1956” – a political awakening led by S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, the greatest Sinhala-Buddhist liberal. Now it is the task of President Mahinda Rajapakse to take the heritage of “1956” forward to give meaning and honour to the historic achievements of the founding fathers of the SLFP which includes his father. 

But the anti-national gang in the UNP-NGO combo and their allies in the media and academia are still bent on promoting “minoritarianism” knowing that it was a total disaster for the minority, let alone the rest of the nation. The unmistakable lesson revealed in the bloody past is that the appeasing of the dwindling minority of Jaffna Tamils alone is not the solution to go forward. Any future formula must necessarily take into account the aspirations of the majority too.

This takes me back to the realities emphasized in the statement of ICG cited above. There are two parts to it: 1. to take into account the power of the Sinhala nationalist ideology and 2. to minimize their ability and power to set the political agenda. All the theoretical punditry propounded by various factions of anti-Sinhala-Buddhist lobby is to diminish the power of the majority. Devolution and power-sharing are two calculated strategies to reduce the power of the majority and increase the power of the Jaffna Tamil minority.

At the bottom all mono-ethnic extremism that ruled peninsular politics was the twin goals of (1) grabbing power (“little now and more later”, as stated by S. J. V. Chelvanyakam) and also (2) territory on the self-serving accusation that they were discriminated by the Sinhala majority — a myth swallowed not only by the loony left and their fellow-travellers in academia and hired NGO apparatchiks but also by the quirky and rather muddle-headed liberals in the right. Even if you concede the fiction of discrimination for the sake argument there is no cause now to blame the Sinhala majority because there has been a “paradigm shift from 1956” to accommodate the “grievances” of the minority, as stated by Radhika Coomaraswamy and Malini Parathasarathy, the Brahmin power-brokers of The Hindu in Chennai.

Besides, history of the Jaffna Vellahla elite, starting from colonial times, has confirmed that their appetite for power is insatiable. The peninsular political culture is based on the Oliver Twistian cry of never ending demands. The more you give them the more they demand – a political trait never pursued by them in foreign countries they settle down. Though they have far less rights and political status in other countries they meekly accept their second class citizenship as long as they are allowed to enjoy first class economic conditions. Nevertheless, they continue to wallow in their myths. Their ability to concoct political fairy tales can be only matched by Baron Manchausen, Hans Anderson or Enid Blyton. Take the recent myth which claimed that only Prabhakaran gave them dignity and security. Now that Prabhakaran is no more what is the plight of the Tamils? Have they lost or gained their dignity and security?

The capacity of the Jaffna Tamils to be victims of their political illusions is inexhaustible. They thrived on fictitious theories of victimology aided and abetted by half-baked theoreticians in NGOs and academia. However, they have now in their memory banks sufficient existential experience to consider seriously how the political monsters that came out of their delusional beliefs exploited them and their children to protect their bodies and families till the last day they collapsed on the banks of Nandikadal.. It is sad to see Sambandan and Sumanthiram of the TNA going down the suicidal path taken by Chelvanyakam. They know they can’t deliver their promises to the people of Jaffna. So should the Jaffna Tamils believe in their leaders now when they have nothing to offer except the same old recipe that took them to Nandikadal Lagoon?

Can the demands of this Vadukoddian rump save the Tamils by demanding (1) police powers (2) land and (3) the merged territory of the north and the east? Ranil Wickremesinghe gave them all this and more. Did it save the Tamils? Or did it lead to the most abusive oppression of the Tamils? Didn’t Prabhakaran kill more Tamils than all other forces put together? The Tamils demand more powers in the name of gaining dignity and equality. But the known historical experiments have proved that giving more powers to the Jaffna Tamils have only led to Tamil fascism, denial of human and political rights and total loss of dignity. The abuse of power by the Tamil leaders – even under Pillayan – raises a critical question: are the Tamils fit to rule themselves? They have yet to prove that they can run a better democratic society than the Sinhala majority.

Besides, international reaction to assertive minorities in Christian/Caucasian nations leads to the ineluctable conclusion that the Jaffna Tamils and other minorities enjoy a status far superior to that of the European nations. The majority/minority issue has now reached to top of their political agenda and the new trend is for the majority to impose their values on the minority. In leading Western democracies, driven by Islamaphobia, the trend is for the Christian/Caucasian majority to reclaim their power to set the agenda against the rising demographic power of the Muslim minorities. Not only are the anti-minority parties gaining ground but the heads of states also are proclaiming that they will not compromise on the established values of their majority culture. David Cameron (UK), Angela Merkel (Germany) Nicolas Sarkozy (France) are insisting that the minority should conform to the majority values.

They are even decrying the minority cultures and saying that multiculturalism has failed. “We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him,” said Nicolas Sarkozy in a television interview in which he declared the concept of multiculturalism as a “failure”. Prime Minister David Cameron last month pronounced his country’s long-standing policy of multiculturalism has failed. He is now calling for better integration of young Muslims to combat home-grown extremism. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Australia’s former Prime Minister John Howard and former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar have also in recent months said multicultural policies have not successfully integrated immigrants.

Sri Lanka has never imposed “majoritarianism” as practiced by the Western democracies. While France is legislating against the hijab Sri Lanka is distributing free head gear to the Muslims. While the Western democracies are insisting on the minorities speaking the language of the majority and assimilating into the dominant culture Sri Lanka allows all minorities to maintain their identity and welcome their contributions to the multi-cultural society. The Tamils have a status far superior to that of any Western country where they have chosen to settle down. As in other countries they will never get their separate state in Sri Lanka. And they don’t need it because the Jaffna Tamils always had a better deal living with the Sinhalese in the south (54% know it) than living in the casteist feudalism or modern Prabhakaranist north.

Finding the balance between the majority and the minority has never been an easy task in any democracy. There is no one-size fit for all conditions. In Sri Lanka, however, the pet formula touted around is devolution of power – a cry raised by only the Jaffna Tamils who have been aspiring to set the political agenda from colonial times. In fact, as stated by Sri Lanka’s foremost historian, Prof. K. M. de Silva, in his perceptive and penetrating analysis of the Ceylon National Congress in Disarray (The Ceylon Journal of Historical Studies, July-December, 1972, Vol 2), the Jaffna Tamils assumed the role of the majority and was treated as such by Governor William Manning, the master manipulator of the divide and rule policy. But the next census is bound to tell a story that would demolish, once again, the myth of their “majority complex”.

Of course, if the misguided Jaffna Tamil leaders want more they always have the option of getting a visa from their Prime Minister, V. Rudrakumaran and migrate to no-man’s land and live in it happily ever afterwards, instead of making life difficult for the war-weary Tamils whose main aspiration after Nandikadal is to live in peace. But the Vadukoddians in the TNA show no compassion for their fellow Tamils. They are bent on making life difficult for the Jaffna Tamils with promises they can never achieve. Besides, after Nandikadal they do not know whether they coming or going. They want to have one foot in Rudrakumaran’s “transitional state”, they want to have the other foot live in the Western states which are a part of Rudrakumara’s airy-fairy state, and they also want to have their head in a separate state in Sri Lanka. How many states will satisfy the needs of these Tamil Olive Twists? Isn’t it time that they got real and came down to earth and live peacefully with the rest of Sri Lankans?

Sinhalization of the North and the Tamilzation of the South.

By Sebastian Rasalingam, Toronto, Canada

What has all this to do with Sinhalization of the North, and Tamilization of the South?

 

(June 29, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) Two recent articles highlight various aspects of a debate fundamental to the "National Question" of Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, it is hardly discussed in the national press in Sri Lanka, although much discussed in gatherings of expatriates. I hear of sinhalese "intrusion" into the north being discussed by my children (people in their fiftees) and their friends.

D. B. S. Jeyaraj, the well-known columnist has high-lighted the settling of some 150 "Sinhalese" in the "Tamil Village" of Kokkacchankulam, near Vavniya (click here to read). This is presented as an example of the "sinhalization" of the North.

A comment on Jeyraj's article, written by a Sinhalese academic appeared in the Sri Lanka Guardian (click here to read). According to him, the place-name Kokkacchankulam is said to be Sinhala, arising from Kok-Aththana, a type of Datura with fruits having hooks ("koku") for seed dispersal. 

Also the area is claimed to have a Buddhist past as recorded by the archeology department. All this utterly unsurprising to me. The majority of the Sinhalese (and any Tamils of that era) lived in the North of the Mahaveli river untill about the 10th century. Populations have moved north, and south, depending on the pressures of war, pestillance or peace.

The anger against Colombo doing things in the North reminds me of the anger of the Tamil parliamentarians in the 1940s. It was against the Colombo authorities building causeways connecting villages in the North. The real anger was that such "intrusions" disturb the power- and caste- structure enjoyed by the Lords who ran the affairs of the Tamils.

Reading through the blogs to Jeyraj's article, we find that some bloggers express the sentiment that this is a "land grab" of the territory that belongs to "Eelam". To others this is "state sponsored colonization" of "Tamil territory". Still others feel that any-one should be able to live anywhere in the Country, but settling these "Sinhalese families" have been done without notifying the right administrative officials etc., etc. Others, mainly Sinhala bloggers, have pointed out a massive "Tamil colonization" of the South.

The big North-South migration started in 1905, when the British opened the Jaffna-Colombo railway. Anyone who made it good moved to the south. Today moving to the South is a first step to moving abroad, preferably to Canada. I too moved from Jaffna to Mannar, and from there to Hatton, and finally to Colombo in the 1950s. Coming from a "low-caste", and having married an Indian Tamil woman in Hatton, I was truly an out-caste paraiah among the Tamils. Although most Tamils could readily get a housing loan from the "Bank of Ceylon" run by Mr. Loganathan, especially at the Wellawatta branch, I found that I could not even open an account even with a government pay cheque.

However, although I was an outcaste among the Tamils, I found that my Sinhalese mates invited me to have tea with them - a strange experience for a man who was always spoken to by Tamils in the curt "inga va" Tamil. The politics of the Tamils in the Ramanathan era was Caste Politics. Ramanathan wanted the caste system written into the Ceylon constitution. The Tamil politics put into place by G. G. Ponnambalam and S. J. V. Chelvanayagam was Race Politics vis a vis the Sinhalese. Caste politics continued within Tamil society itself. It was only the Leftists who went beyond these shackles -- but then they were considered a lunatic-fringe. Even in the 2010 presidential elections, they garnered less than a fraction of a percent of the votes.

What has all this to do with Sinhalization of the North, and Tamilization of the South?

The best thing that could happen to Sri Lanka, and the only thing that would guarantee the stifling of future ethnic discord is the disruption of in-grained ethnic enclaves which are not only racially segregated, but also caste segregated. Mr. Jeyaraj had mentioned villages including Kokachchankulam around Nedunkerny, but failed to note that even up to the 1980s, these had Caste Enclaves that even the war lords did not disrupt. The war did not destroy the segregation of Caste and Women in Tamil society, but mobilized them and hijacked them for political ends, as they were the easiest to subjugate and control.

I strongly believe that the State should have a clear program of settling Sinhalese in the villages of the North, and at least some Tamil IDPS in the villages of the south. The Sinhalese, with 75% of the population, would be demographically highly pressurized and hence the move to the sparse regions of the North and the East would be no different than the move of the White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestants (WASPS) of the US East coast to the "homelands" of the Hispanics West in the USA. Such redistribution of population, and NOT devolution of power into the hands of corrupt regional lords, is the best investment for long-term peace in Sri Lanka. Such a redistribution of population will also strongly undermine the Caste and gender discrimination endemic in traditional Tamil society with its Manu Dharma. Sinhalese society is far far less caste conscious, and accords greater power to its womenfolk.

The Sinhalese, lving in the prosperous and modern Southern Sri Lanka would need state incentives to settle in the sparsely populated North which needs labour as well as investors for its deveopment. The pro-LTTE expats have done little to help the North, and instead push their "boycott Sri Lanka" campaigne which hurts the poor Tamils more than any other ethnic group.

Instead of emphasizing divisions and differences, we need to emphasize the close similarities and common basics of the citizens of Sri Lanka.

Modern Hinduism and Buddhism have much in common. Instead of objecting that "Sinhalization" inevitably leads to the Buddhist temple and the Bo tree "invading Tamil land", we must welcome the Buddhist monks to the Hindu Temples, asking them to build the Buddha Statue and plant the Bo tree just next to the Temple itself. The Kururals and the Buddhist Sangha should be colleagues. After all, Buddhist temples in the South HAVE already integrated Hindu Gods like Vishnu, Skanda and Ganesh. Some Buddhist temples have Kururals, known as "Kapuralas", as officials. The Sinhalese and the Tamils have an enormous amount of common cultural and genetic baggage, as well as linguistic commonality. A Tamil sentence, translated word for word, without changing the structure, already becomes Sinhalese. The alphabets and grammar are very similar. Both Vivekananda and Radhakrishnan said that Buddhism is the most refined rendering of the Vedic-Hindu-Jain tradition of Indian belief.

So, Jayraj should rejoice in the implantation of Sinhala Villages in the North, and the Sinhalese nationalists should welcome the Tamilization of the Greater Colombo region, with its flourishing Hindu temples. Population redistribution is a must. As an old Tamil who has seen Tamil politics opposing the Donoughmore reforms, and finally morphing into Eelam militarism, I believe that these are the best investments for a future of peace and prosperity in Sri Lanka.

If there had been population restructing in Sri Lanka, together with the further development of the railway and road ways left by the British, we would never had three decades of civil war. So, let us plan for the future intellegently and avoid ethnic, caste or religious enclaves of any kind.

LESSONS FROM SERENDIB - A model of social achievement, Sri Lanka still lacks pluralism

By Ananda-USA

June 29, 2011

While the author of this article describes some aspects of the achievements made since Sri Lanka regained her sovereignty, he neither recognizes, nor credits, the policies of governance that led to those achievements in Sri Lanka in contrast to policies implemented in India.

First of all, he takes exception to our honoring Lanka with the prefix 'Sri' to indicate its resplendence. We children of mother Lanka recognize and value the special beauty and astonishing bounty of our resplendent island home, more than any others. We honor our country, for it is anointed by the Lord Buddha himself as the permanent refuge of his compassionate teaching. We are also the protectors of the ancient heritage our forefathers created in Sri Lanka, and are committed to make this land shine again. Is it then a surprise that to our minds, Sri Lanka is an altogether proper and fitting name for this Resplendent Land?
  
He then suffers a major  relapse and joins the chorus of ignorant critics of "Sinhala majoritarianism" as if it were alien Martians who, in his own words, "made this country what India might have been if we had got things right." 

He fails to realize that the things he praises in Sri Lanka were created by successive Sinhala-dominated governments. Does he not realize that caste, sex and race discrimination were eliminated by them? Does he not realize that enlightened policies enacted by Sinhala-dominated governments created the highly literate citizenry of Sri Lanka, and opened up jobs in government and industry to all irrespective of community? Enlightened policies made universal healthcare, public transport, and electricity, available to every citizen in equal measure. It is also not by accident that the International Labor Organization (ILO) identified Sri Lanka as a model of fair and just labor relations for developing nations.

He should walk the streets of Sri Lanka, and experience the religious freedoms and cultural diversity enjoyed by Sri Lankans, and test their hearts and minds by speaking with them at depth, before implying wrongly that somehow "Sinhala majoritarianism" denied legitimate freedoms to any segment of Sri Lankan society. He should not confuse racist discriminatory demands by some groups  for special privileges unavailable to other citizens with lack of equity. Sri Lanka does not govern by devolving power on communal bases, as India often does; that is why Sri Lankans enjoy greater social equity than Indians.

Granting political, police and land rights to various groups based on communal considerations of race, religion, language, sex, caste or wealth, as India often does to its ultimate detriment, are not the policies that led to the high level of social equity in Sri Lanka that this author praises. On the contrary, it is the refusal to grant them on communal bases that underpins Sri Lanka's success. Policies geared to creating only ONE COMMUNITY of Sri Lankan citizens irrespective of communal attributes should be preserved, and extended, as the principal means of ensuring peace, harmony, social and economic progress in Sri Lanka.

National Integration through equal citizenship blind to communal considerations should be the path forward, not National Disintegration by allocating different privileges to different people, slicing and dicing the nation into communal fiefdoms.

The National Goal should be the creation of ONE Nation, of ONE People, sharing ONE Destiny. All Government Policies should be geared to achieving that goal.

...................................

By Mukul Kesavan

TelegraphIndia.com
June 29, 2011

 I’ve spent my holiday in Sri Lanka trying to resist the conclusion that this country is what India might have been if we had got things right.

I know this is a lazy comparison, not least because India is so large and Sri Lanka so small. Delhi and its suburban satellite towns add up to 22 million people which is two million more than the entire population of Sri Lanka. On the other hand, if you were to compare India’s national capital region to Sri Lanka, the island nation would come out of that comparison very well indeed. I suppose the better comparison would be with Kerala, which is adjacent to Sri Lanka, roughly the same size, similarly literate and generally more evolved than the rest of India. But even here the Sri Lankans come out ahead: they have (or had) a world-conquering cricket team; Kerala has Sreesanth.

I’ve always known in a distant way Sri Lankans live longer than Indians do, are vastly better educated and that their country ranks nearly 30 places higher than India does on the United Nations Development Programme’s human development index. But this abstract superiority hadn’t prepared me for a) the general absence of squalor and wretchedness in Sri Lanka b) the all-round loveliness of the place and c) the civility and courtesy that marked my transactions as a tourist.

To start with, the immigration official at the airport gave me a visa and waved me through in less than a minute. The squinting plain-clothes policemen in Delhi who pretend to be immigration officers take a lot longer letting me back into my own country. Inside 15 minutes of landing, I was in Ceylon.

Yes, Ceylon. I was a teenager when this country changed its name and early socialization makes it hard for me to think of it as Sri Lanka. Radio Ceylon played Hindi film music non-stop at a time when All India Radio, in a hissy fit of high culture, banned its broadcast, so my memories of the discarded name are good. Besides, Sri Lanka doesn’t sound right. As the name of a slightly self-important person, yes. As the name of a nation, no. Why not just Lanka? Think of the Indian republic amending its Constitution to rename itself Mr India. Or Sriman Bharat. An honorific built into a country’s name? What were they thinking?

We travelled north from Colombo to Habarana to visit Anuradhapura and Sigiriya, two of the oldest sites of Sri Lankan Buddhism. In the course of a five-hour road journey, a few things stood out. First, the landscape was continuously lovely in a lush way that North Indians like me are unused to. Paddy-fields, palm trees, pineapple stalls, lagoons and little houses with tiled roofs and pillared porches, unspooled mile after mile, hour after hour. It was a little like Goa on a grand scale. The villages and little towns we passed through seemed to take the highway for granted, so they weren’t rimmed by dhabas and truck repair shops and rickety hoardings and assorted ugliness.

The non-stop prettiness of the journey became a kind of provocation. I began to look for the brokenness and poverty that I see as South Asia’s signature qualities. We stopped for lunch at Kurunegala, a little market town. The open-air restaurant overlooked Kurunegala Lake, one of the dozens of lakes that made the Sri Lankan landscape ridiculously beautiful. I walked around its edge, actually looking for plastic bags and the other detritus of tourism, but it was all perfectly clean. It was then that I realized that I didn’t have to selectively process the world around me to edit out squalor. The tourist route, at any rate, didn’t seem to do squalor.

The other remarkable thing about the world we drove through was the systematic and visible presence of the State… in a good way. In every other substantial village that we passed we saw solidly built, tended structures with clearly painted signs that indicated they were early learning centres or training institutions or small government hospitals and everywhere we saw boys and girls in the white uniforms common to all government schools in Sri Lanka. Tiny towns had substantial local assembly buildings. The welfare State in Sri Lanka, even to a casual tourist’s eye, isn’t an aspiration, it actually exists.

This Sri Lankan talent for not allowing the built world to crumble has some paradoxical results. Anuradhapura, the country’s ancient capital and home to its oldest and most venerable Buddhist sites, is at least 2,000 years old. Many of its stupas or dagobas, are so old that they make Banaras’s built heritage look recent. The Abhayagiri Dagoba, for example, was first built in the 2nd century BC. While it’s understandable that the toll of time, the vandalism of Indian invaders and the need for renovation have led to modifications of the original structures, the zealousness of the restoration is sometimes excessive.

For example, the Ruvanvelisaya Dagoba, like Abhayagiri, was built in the 2nd century BC. Except that it has been whitewashed with such municipal zeal that it looks as if it had been built yesterday.

To the tourist, Buddhism seems everywhere. There are splendid seated and standing statues of the Buddha on streetcorners, on lakesides, on hill-tops, generally painted a serene white. We passed through villages decked out with ribbons and banners for a Buddhist festival, our car crept behind Buddhist processions, the lifts in one magnificent seaside hotel, Mount Lavinia, announced special vegetarian meals for Poya, the full-moon day which is sacred to Buddhists and is marked every month as a public holiday.

It isn’t hard to empathize with Ceylon’s post-colonial impulse to invoke a Buddhist past as the foundation of the new nation. To the political leaders of a small island nation with an ancient and unbroken Theravada Buddhist tradition, off the southern tip of a sub-continent marked by the massive presence of both Hinduism and Islam, it must have seemed reasonable to consolidate a Sinhala Buddhist republic. Travelling through Sri Lanka I can see how attractive the idea of a culturally homogeneous nation can be, and how homogeneity can begin to seem to mean not uniformity, but a kind of harmony.

It doesn’t, though. The promise of the idyllic, organic homeland is always a lie, even in Serendib. I didn’t travel to the north of Sri Lanka so I can’t comment on the state of the Tamil country, but history has taught us that everywhere in South Asia, even in this island Eden, majoritarianism has always led to violence and pogrom and civil war.

If, after the end of the civil war, there has been any attempt to replace Sinhala majoritarianism with a more inclusive pluralism, it isn’t evident in the country’s newspapers. All the commentary about Channel 4’s documentary, Sri Lanka’s Killing Fields, denounced it as biased, fraudulent and intent on discrediting President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s government. It’s possibly too early for the Sinhalese majority to rethink the nature of their State; the end of the civil war and their army’s victory over the monstrous Prabhakaran are too close to them. But it must happen and those of us who see in Sri Lanka’s social achievement a model for the rest of South Asia must hope it happens soon

Provoking, persecuting and pushing Sri Lanka: Enough!

By Dayan Jayatilleka

GroundViews.org

June 21, 2011 

 

Special Forces Combat soldiers ride in a parade during a war victory ceremony in Colombo May 27, 2011. Sri Lanka holds a military parade and memorial for fallen soldiers on Friday to mark the second anniversary of the defeat of the Tamil Tigers, which ended a quarter-century civil war in the Indian Ocean nation.

“Revolution is not a dinner party, not an essay, nor a painting, nor a piece of embroidery; it cannot be advanced softly, gradually, carefully, considerately, respectfully, politely, plainly and modestly”. – Mao Ze Dong

The matter is rather simple really. What do you do, or more correctly, what does a state do, and what does a leader at the helm of state affairs do, when faced with a situation of a heavily armed movement dedicated to dismembering the country through secession; a movement which has repeatedly resorted to terrorism; has repeatedly returned to war after episodes of ceasefires and negotiations with successive governments of two countries, has finally been outmanoeuvred and is cornered, trapped? What does a state do when such a movement, its cadres back in civilian clothes, has surrounded itself with and embedded itself in a population of civilians, many of whom had chosen to follow the secessionist army when it retreated from its citadel over a decade before and has been touted as a weapons trained militia? What does a state do when such an armed force has placed heavy guns and command centres amidst that populace and is firing those guns and mortars at the surrounding army? What does a state do when the strategy of the cornered terrorist army is to catalyse an externally induced ceasefire and live to fight another day? What does a state, especially a democratic republican state, do when the vast majority of its citizenry are urging a decisive finish to a decades-long plague of terrorism and when its armed forces are straining at the leash to defeat and destroy the beast which has been tormenting the state and generations of its citizenry?

Agree to yet another ceasefire and yet another round of talks, not based upon unconditional surrender – the only realistic option in the situation – but contingent on or resulting in the evacuation of the secessionist terrorist leadership? Or go in, as the Allies crashed into Berlin or Paul Kagame’s troops went into the civilian camps across the border?

When you go in, do you do so flailing about blindly, or while making the risky effort to breach the enemy defences and facilitate the exit of as many of the civilians as possible?

And once you’ve done so to the fullest extent possible, what do you do?  How do you deal with the efforts to breakout by the enemy; efforts which include the tactic of embedded suicide bombers in civilian clothes?

And when the final battles take place in the dark pre-dawn hours; a battle which does not entail a surgical strike by commandos against a lone enemy leader but with the elite praetorian guard of the cruellest of enemies; a battle which is fought not with pilotless Predator drones and Hellfire missiles but by foot soldiers who probably come from villages where night raids have left bodies and memories of huddled infants and breastfeeding mothers, against the backcloth of a long struggle which has reawakened historical anxieties of an existential sort, do you expect the final scene to be pretty? Revolution, said Mao, is not a dinner party. Still less is a secessionist war a dinner party. The Russian Bolsheviks led by those epitomes of Reason and modernity Lenin and Trotsky, sanctioned the physical elimination of the Tzar and his family (a ghastly act which Trotsky, the epitome of Western reason and modernity, justified and Bolshevism’s original sin, according to Reggie Siriwardena in the Lanka Guardian), the Italian partisans hanged Mussolini and his woman friend upon capture, elements of the Sri Lankan armed forces fed their co-ethnic and generational peer Rohana Wijeweera into the fire.  Not my idea of the ethics of violence, but who practised those ethics anyway, apart from Fidel, Che, the Cubans, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and perhaps some Lusophone African liberation movements? These were exceptions and veritable saints by comparison with the normal practices and practitioners of war in History– History described by Hegel as a “slaughter bench”.

So what now?

Does anybody seriously expect a state, especially one that is sufficiently democratic at base to be responsive to public opinion, to open up the war and its closing stages, which are felt to be a liberating triumph by the overwhelmingly greater number of its citizens, to international scrutiny? Which state has done so, where and when, two years after a victorious war? Why should Sri Lanka be the first in line of a questionable doctrine, when it should be at the back of the queue if there is one?

This is not a matter of a nasty regime defending itself. Liberal democratic Spain, a member of the EU and NATO, filed a case against its most celebrated judge, Balthazar Garzon, who started universal jurisdiction rolling with his admirable decision of Augusto Pinochet, because Garzon sought to open up for possible accountability the crimes committed during the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.

Each state and society decides on how, when and who by, the issues of accountability and impunity are settled. How can the UK, which let Augusto Pinochet go, and which took 38 years to issue its report into Bloody Sunday with no prosecutions having yet taken place, wag its finger at Sri Lanka on impunity?

Are those who argue that accountability is a pre-requisite for reconciliation and that an international or independent national inquiry is a prerequisite for accountability, seriously hold that an inquisition into the Sri Lankan armed forces will assist rather than wreck reconciliation? Who then will reconcile the rather large armed forces (with the stress on the adjective) with those who seek to or permit them to be placed in the dock for having risked life and limb to  liberate the country from one of the most violent militias the contemporary world has seen?

Who will reconcile the vast Sinhala peasantry with that element of urban society and its expatriate cousins, which wishes to put their sons in the dock at the behest of some foreigners or liberal legal doctrines? Who will reconcile an ancient nation which constitutes the vast mass of the island, with the former colonial powers that issue deadlines and ultimatums and a neighbouring landmass from which incursions took place throughout history, and now passes resolutions calling for economic blockades?

Did the pressure from the anti-Castro Cubans in Florida and the economic embargo by the USA lead to a softening within Cuba? Where in the world does a combination of such external pressures and outrageous demands, from historic invaders and occupiers, not lead to an internal hardening?

By which logic does anyone call for a risky lacerating inquiry in the name of reconciliation with a minority, when it the idea of penalising, persecuting and prosecuting a loved and socially rooted, army will incense the vast majority?  Who or which is more organic to the country: the armed forces or those who are calling for accountability hearings, so loudly, so aggressively and so soon after the war? Will Sri Lanka’s citizens heed the threatening calls of an ex-colonizer and occupier or the resolutions of the assembly of a neighbouring site of ancient incursions, or protect its elected government, a leadership of its democratic choice and a military consisting of its children?

What makes any intelligent person think that the people of this country will not defend from those deemed intervening outsiders and their local lackeys, those who defended the country—and do so ‘by any means necessary’? What could make an intelligent person think that the majority of Sri Lanka’s citizens do not see the Tiger flags and Tamil Eelam graphics (the map of the island with the North East differently coloured) in the photographs of the demonstrations and events taking place among the re-mobilised and revengeful elements of the Tamil Diaspora in the West? A literate people know that the Tiger is not a self-serving embellishment of the incumbent administration, but the old enemy propelling its front organisations and fellow travellers; its ‘useful idiots’, while straining to leverage the ex-colonial states against Sri Lanka and waiting to leap from beyond the oceans.

How can anyone seriously believe that inter-ethnic reconciliation will be possible, still less accelerated, by or in the aftermath of anything that smacks of victimising the popular armed forces? Accountability hearings AND devolution? Devolution AFTER accountability hearings? Is not the choice one of devolution OR accountability, under this or any other administration? Can any administration that accedes to a full-on accountability hearings, this present one or a successor, follow it up with liberal measures of ethnic compromise and reconciliation and hope to avoid a ferocious backlash? How long would a Wickramasinghe- Karunanayake-Samaraweera administration that moves on ‘accountability’ AND devolution (not to mention neoliberal economic reform) last? Is not an ‘accountability hearing into the closing stages of the war’ – as distinct from domestic inquiry into concrete instances of crimes involving aberrant armed forces personnel—precisely the single measure that will render radioactive any liberal interethnic compromise whatsoever?

How can any serious analyst draw parallels with South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation process, when that was in the context of a negotiated transition from minority rule to majority rule and entailed for the most part, a re-telling of coercive transgressions by the minority against the majority? What would have been the mechanism and practice had the South African outcome been one of outright military victory by the majority forces?

How could a serious commentator draw parallels with the Serbian government handing over Milosevic and Mladic to The Hague? Serbia lost the war as conspicuously as Sri Lanka won it. Yugoslavia broke up or was broken up. Serbia was attracted by the EU option. Sri Lanka is in Asia, and in Asia, as the President of Slovenia (and political science scholar) Danilo Turk put it at a UNESCO Roundtable in Paris a few weeks ago, Westphalian sovereignty prevails. Henry Kissinger emphasised the same point in his new book ‘On China’.

An ancient nation, possibly one of the oldest on earth, with a long chronicled history, a unique language, specific religious denominational adherence and strong identity and consciousness, demographically well-positioned on an island in Asia; a nation which has beaten back a thirty year old ferocious suicide–terrorism and survived an external intervention, a nation with a fairly sizeable population and tough armed forces: does this look like a pushover, or a collective that’s going to bend over for six of the best from a former colonial schoolmaster?

Those doing the pushing see only the target, the incumbent regime, and perhaps the endgame, regime termination, but are poor students of history and politics and therefore do not have foresight or sense of direction. They are oblivious to pattern, process and trajectory, which is one of polarisation and radicalisation: of hardening. Instead of polarisation they may get regime shift or displacement, which ranges from intra regime displacement of the regime’s ‘centre of gravity’, to radical regime transformation.

Under extreme siege, or the collective perception of such, regimes recompose and mutate into or are displaced  and succeeded, not a by a neoliberal or liberal one so beloved by the West, the émigrés and urban civil society, but precisely by one that will be widely mandated to resist more resolutely: an organic, probably elected, Praetorianism or Caesarism. Is it inevitably, axiomatically, unsustainable and therefore bound to be but an interlude, however horribly Hobbesian? I don’t know, but one may ask Myanmar or Pakistan or imagine a fusion.

Sri Lanka’s cities were hit hardest by terrorist suicide bombings but its civil society is the least grateful to those who saved it. We didn’t save ourselves; we were saved by the Sinhala peasantry which sent its boys into the armed forces and bloody battle.

The best portrait of the Sinhalese peasant as protagonist came from the pen of Leonard Woolf, in The Village in the Jungle. Silindu –unforgettably portrayed by Joe Abeywickrema in Lester’s movie — slow, superstitious, is repeatedly pushed, prodded and pilfered by the slick Fernando and Ratemahattaya, until, like the water-buffalo, he finally perceives process and enemy and turns, game-changer in his grasp: a double-barrelled shotgun. This is what happened after the years of the CFA, the PTOMS and unilateral appeasement and national humiliation, facilitated by the intermediaries, the compradors, represented by Ranil’s UNP. The Silindu streak in the collective Sinhala spirit and psyche took it to the next level, pushing back right up to ‘the Day of the Guns’ (to quote a favourite American thinker, Mickey Spillane) at Nandikadal. Today, the ‘social media’ savvy civil society sympathisers of the Darusman Report and the Channel 4 spin are the inheritors and continuators of role of the Fernandos and the Ratemahayttayas, connected to the same colonial overlords.

It makes little sense to push such a nation into a corner – to the point of crystallisation of a determination to resist and recoil in the face of an existential threat of incursion into the inviolable and irreducible sovereign space.

True, the physical fate of Silindu and his family was a tragic one, but as the thirty year old Mervyn de Silva, my father, concluded in his Introduction to Leonard Woolf’s Diaries (1961), these poor rural Sinhala folk had “a far greater moral worth than the Fernandos and Ratemahattayas of this world”.

TNA revisiting Tamil Chauvinism’s game plan of May 14, 1976?

Malinda Seneviratne 

DailyMirror.lk
June 2011 01:34

The 30-year old conflict, like all conflicts, was a monumental tragedy.  Like all tragedies it came with costs.  People died.  Property was destroyed. Hundreds of thousands were displaced. Thousands were maimed. Some scars healed, some never will.  No community in this island was spared.  No one, however, suffered as much as the Tamils, i.e. those who lived in the primary conflict zone (those who fled these areas to Colombo and preferred destinations in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand can’t claim to be too unhappy – they are not returning in droves to the ‘traditional homelands’ now that the guns have gone silent).

There’s a pathway to war.  There are contributors. There are co-conspirators. They are those who give two-cents and those who give millions. They are those who learn and those who repeat error.  There are those who are ignorant and those who are persuaded by mal-intent.  There are those who have aspirations, who take legitimate grievance, pad it up, dress it in the colours of aspiration and based on this monumental lie that has been carefully constructed declare war for non-addressing of ‘grievance’, even long after the original issue has been resolved.

It is no secret that Tamil politicians wanted a separate state. Such ‘wanting’ is not illegitimate.  The Vadukoddai Resolution of May 14, 1976, authored by S.J.V. Chelvanayakam is a classic expression of dressing up aspiration as grievance.  This piece of paper does not require fresh rubbishing.  What is important is the fact that it contributed in great part to creating ‘need’ for a separate state among Tamil people, fed ‘logic’ to this newly constructed need and shamelessly preyed on the emotions of the ill-informed.

‘And this Convention calls upon the Tamil Nation in general and the Tamil youth in particular to come forward to throw themselves fully into the sacred fight for freedom and to flinch not till the goal of a sovereign state of TAMIL EELAM is reached.’

There was ‘flourish’ in that conclusion.  There was no flourish when the script was played to its logical end.  It was a recipe for a tragic outcome.  This particular delicacy was consumed for the next thirty 33  years.  It was all done on May 18, 2009.  There is only one lesson that is relevant: that path leads to Nandikadal Lagoon.

I re-read the Vadukkoddai Resolution a short while ago after I heard that the Tamil National Alliance was calling for a re-merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces.   M.K. Sivajilingam is the TNA candidate for the Velvittithurai Urban Council.  He’s a politician and he’s playing the part to perfection. That’s the kindest interpretation I can think of at this point.  I don’t know whether he speaks for the TNA.  He has stated that the North-East merger had not been mentioned in the proposals submitted by the TNA to the Government regarding reconciliation.

The Tamil National Alliance has a history.  It was birthed, bathed, baptized, fed, breathed and lived Tamil chauvinism and separatism.  Its manifesto in 2001 was a wishy-washy re-hash of the Vadukoddai Resolution. The 2004 manifesto was an unabashed expression of servility to the LTTE.  To this date, the TNA has not engaged in any self-criticism over its past including its shameless ‘tongue-tiedness’ regarding atrocities committed by the LTTE.  To this date, the official website of the TNA carries the ‘Eelam Map’ that was on the LTTE flag. To this date, the TNA fails to acknowledge that history, demography and geography (never mind political ‘doability’ and economic sense) rebel against separatism, including devolution of power to existing provincial boundaries. To this date, the TNA has not worked out the logic of devolution (with or without re-merger) when more than half the Tamil population lives outside the North and East, large swathes of the Eastern Province remain non-Tamil etc.

The TNA has not, will not and cannot deal with the objections to the assertions of the Vadukoddai Resolution, its unadulterated chauvinism, intellectual dishonesty and political demagoguery.

All this may be ‘so-what’ as far as the TNA is concerned, I concede.  Politicians and political parties are seldom interested in truth and honesty.  They prey on insecurity and innocence.   The TNA forgets that the path that Chelvanayakam chartered for Tamil chauvinism not only saw its key articulators such as A. Amirthalingam being slaughtered by Chelvanayakam’s political heirs, but many Tamil politicians found it impossible to live, die or even be buried in the so-called ‘traditional homelands’.

A lot of Sinhalese people died over the past 30 years.  Some 27,000 combatants died.  Thousands perished in terrorist attacks carried out by the sons and daughters of the Vadukoddai Resolution.  More Tamils died.  More Tamil civilians were killed by the LTTE than by the Sri Lankan security forces.  One in every ten Muslim in this island became an IDP.   That’s the end-count of the process that the Vadukoddai Resolution precipitated.  And that’s where the TNA insists we should all travel towards, a second time!
 Sivajilingam talks about re-merging the North and East.  The 13th Amendment carved this country into 8 parts. The Supreme Court made it 9.  The security forces turned it back to ONE COUNTRY.  Considering the costs incurred by us all, I doubt anyone will want a re-playing of this terrible, terrible tragedy.  That, however, seems to be what the TNA wants.

There are some numbers the TNA must not forget.  They are asking for control of ONE-THIRD the land mass and HALF the coastline for SIX PERCENT of the population!  Even if every Tamil in this country decides to go live in the so-called ‘traditional homelands’ this still amounts to LAND THEFT.  Sivajilingam just cannot expect the peace-loving people of this country (many of whom have lost loved ones in the struggle to eliminate the terrorist threat and many who have suffered immense deprivations courtesy of their self-appointed representatives)  not to object and, if it comes to that, to fight.

 I am wondering what Mathiaparanan Abraham Sumanthiran has to say about all this.

Repeal the 13th Amendment & Deny Police and Land Powers to Provincial Councils

By Ananda-USA
June 11, 2011

I applaud the Government of Sri Lanka for refusing to grant police and land powers to the Provincial Councils of the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka, despite pressure applied by Tamil Separatists at home and abroad, and by the Indian Government pandering to its own Tamil citizens at Sri Lanka's expense.

Provincial Councils should not be accorded police and land powers in any part of Sri Lanka, for that is a prescription for the creation of communal fiefdoms in the country that will deny all citizens of the country an equal right to settle in, and enjoy all resources, in all parts of their motherland. It will also immeasurably weaken the authority of the central government to defend the integrity of the nation and the lives of her people, and utilize its resources for the common good of all of her citizens.  Without a doubt, devolution of Police and Land powers to the provinces is a perfect recipe for the eventual disintegration of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka recently emerged from a devastating ethnic conflict waged by Tamil separatists who sought to create a separate state for the exclusive use of their own community. They ethnically cleansed all other communities from the Northern and Eastern provinces which they claimed solely for themselves, even as the great majority of Tamils lived among the Sinhala majority in the rest of the country secure from the murder and mayhem inflicted upon them by their self-proclaimed saviours. The loss of power to police the Northern and Eastern provinces during LTTE control, made it impossible for the Government to protect its Tamil, Sinhala and Muslim citizens of those provinces. The first duty of a government is to ensure the safety of  its people. That duty must never be abandoned again.

Over a period spanning nearly 30 years, the LTTE separatists had de-facto control of police and land powers in the Northern and Eastern provinces. They exercised arbitrary dictatorial power over the population, most of whom either fled their grasp to live in the South in security among the demonized Sinhala majority, or were manipulated into becoming refugees and were illegally transported to other countries to form a tax base for funding their terrorism in Sri Lanka. Those illegal refugees, who now form the bulk of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, are still dominated and controlled by the global LTTE terrorist mafia network which wages a global propaganda war to undermine Sri Lanka.

If police and land powers are granted to the Northern and Eastern Provinces, the Tamil majority Provincial Governments of those provinces, controlled by the Tamil National Alliance that was the political arm of the now defunct LTTE military, will enact racist discriminatory policies to further solidify the results of the ethnic cleansing operations of the LTTE that eradicated the Sinhala and Moslem communities in those areas. They will implement policies ... both overt and covert ... to prevent the emergence of a truly multi-ethnic society as in the rest of the country. Furthermore, with police power in their hands, the extensive coastal border of the North and the East will again revert to the large scale illegal smuggling of arms, drugs, people and terrorists, as when the LTTE had controlled it, posing a grave threat to the national security of Sri Lanka. We recall that it was with great sacrifice of lives and treasure, that Sri Lanka developed the naval capability and the skills to defeat the Sea Tiger naval force of the LTTE. Sri Lanka must never lose control of its coastal border again to its enemies.

Given these undeniable facts, it would be completely unreasonable and foolish, for Sri Lanka to accede to these demands for police and land powers, by the very same separatists who yearn to win in peace the separatist goals they failed win by 30 years of unremitting terrorism, and open warfare.

India, attempting to placate its incurably racist and communal Tamil citizens at Sri Lanka's expense, continues along the same foolish path they pursued in the past, promoting Police and Land powers for the North and the East of Sri Lanka. The old objective of the LTTE to gain unfettered access to Tamil Nadu, and foreign supplies of weapons and recruits across an unguarded coast, would be attained by granting these powers. The historical separatist tendencies in Tamil Nadu coupled to the palpable animosity of Indian Tamils towards the non-Tamil Indians of North India, will guarantee the growth of a violent separatist movement in Tamil Nadu if a militant Tamil mini-state wedded to a Pan-Tamil agenda is again resurrected in Sri Lanka's North and East as a consequence of devolving police and land powers. Therefore, the Indian Government would be very shortsighted if it advocates the devolution of police and pand powers that would weaken the control of the lawful Government of Sri Lanka over its provinces: it is inimical to the integrity and national security of India itself.

The 13th Amendment in the Sri Lanka's Constitution, was ILLEGALLY forced upon Sri Lanka by India after it invaded and occupied parts of Sri Lanka. Under national and international law, agreements imposed by force upon victims are INVALID; they are declared null and void as soon as conditions permit it. For example, all international agreements imposed by Hitler's Nazi Germany upon neighboring nations under the threat of war, were repudiated upon the defeat of Nazi Germany.

The 13th Amendment imposed upon sovereign Sri Lanka by India is no different from the infamous Munich Agreement that delivered Czechoslovakia bound hand and foot to Nazi Germany on the eve of World War II; it should be repudiated and expunged in its entirety from Sri Lanka's Constitution as fundamentally inimical to the integrity and long term survival of Sri Lanka. Instead, India should offer Sri Lanka an abject apology for this criminal act against an innocent sovereign nation. This is not the way for India to win friends among neighboring countries; peaceful co-existence with neighboring nations requires non-interference in their internal affairs. India should control and discipline of India's own citizens and groups who attempt to undermine and spawn terrorism in Sri Lanka. Just as India deplores terrorism by Pakistani groups within India, Sri Lanka deplores interference by Indian groups, and the Indian Government, in Sri Lanka's internal matters.

National Integration of all people of Sri Lanka, without regard to race, religion, language, sex, caste or wealth into ONE PEOPLE of ONE NATION with ONE DESTINY should be the path foward for Sri Lanka.

National Disintegration into a collection of ethnic bantustans that separate people from each other, and wall them off in non-viable communal mini-states, will only guarantee economic stagnation, multiplication of bureaucracies, internecine competition for limited resources, and continued strife between communities.

One vote for each person to elect his/her representative to the national parliament is sufficient franchise for all citizens; no administrative units or individual rights that are based on communal attributes should be allowed in the name of ensuring a FALSE community "diversity". Diversity will thrive in the private sphere within families and community organizations where it rightfully belongs under in our democratic system of government. Communal labels should have no place in the public sphere, or for granting special privileges to some citizens that are unavailable to others.  Let us INTEGRATE our people into ONE SRI LANKAN PEOPLE without differentiating between them in law, or in governance, by community.

The Sovereign People of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka are completely capable of deciding what serves their own interests, and of formulating their own policies and laws to govern themselves. Foreign nations should not arrogate to themselves that inalienable right of our sovereign people.

REPEAL the 13th AMENDMENT that India imposed by force upon Sri Lanka, NOW!

DISSOLVE and ELIMINATE Provincial Councils as Unnecessary Bureaucracies that SEPARATES the people from their National Government, NOW!



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No police, land powers to PCs

President conveys decision to Indian officials, collision course feared

By Our Diplomatic Editor
SundayTimes.lk
June 11, 2011

President Mahinda Rajapaksa told a high-powered Indian delegation yesterday his government was not able to concede land and police powers to provincial councils in accordance with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

The move, the Sunday Times learns, follows strong opposition from constituent partners of the United People’s Freedom Alliance (UPFA). On Friday, President Rajapaksa drove to the parliamentary complex in Sri Jayawardhanapura-Kotte for a meeting with the leaders of political parties that constitute the UPFA. They are said to have expressed strong objections.

One of the primary purposes of the visit to Colombo by a three-member Indian delegation was to urge the government to fully enforce the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The fact that India urged that such a step be taken by the government was reported exclusively in the Sunday Times of May 15.

The Indian delegation comprised National Security Advisor Shiv Shanker Menon, Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao and Defence Secretary Pradeep Kumar. India’s High Commissioner Ashok Kanth was also associated with yesterday’s talks.

The government’s tough stance in not giving land and police powers to provincial councils is expected to pitch Colombo and New Delhi on a collision course diplomatically. This is particularly in the light of talks in the Indian capital between Indian External Affairs Minister S.M.Krishna and his Sri Lankan counterpart G.L. Peiris when he visited India.

Dr. Peiris had agreed that a “devolution package, building upon the 13th Amendment, would contribute towards creating the necessary conditions for such reconciliation”. The move, Indian officials argue, was the latest commitment given by a Sri Lanka Minister and was thus incorporated in an official joint statement.
However, President Rajapaksa is learnt to have told the Indian delegation that his government would concede many other subjects that are incorporated in the Concurrent List that accompanies the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. He has also told the Indian delegation that his government will withdraw Emergency Regulations with regard to terrorist activities in the North and East since there was no more war in these two regions.

The issue of both Indian and Sri Lankan fishermen poaching in each other's waters also figured extensively during yesterday's talks.

With regard to actions against fishermen who poached within Sri Lanka's territorial waters, the government side explained that they were enforcing the law without the use of any undue force on Indian fishermen.
The Indian side was to point out that poaching by Sri Lankan fishermen in Indian waters did not cover only their southern seas. They claimed there were instances where Sri Lankan fishermen were found poaching in the waters off the states of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.

Tensions in the high seas between both sides have eased in the past weeks due to the spawning season. However, this season ended last week and fishermen were due to resume fishing activity.

Meanwhile the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) is expected to issue a statement saying it is not happy with the progress made in the dialogue with the Government on how to address grievances of the Tamil people.
Mr. Menon told Colombo-based Indian journalists yesterday that India had conveyed to Sri Lanka that it was left to Sri Lanka’s government to change the 13th Amendment to bring in a suitable political resolution that would enable all communities in the country to live together.

“If they think, they want to do better than the 13th Amendment as many of them do including the government (which) also speaks of 13th Amendment-plus …they want to do different…whatever…that’s for them but they all must feel comfortable,’’ Mr. Menon said.He said the goal was a political arrangement under which all communities in Sri Lanka would be comfortable. “We naturally feel (that) the quicker they themselves come to a political arrangement within which all communities are comfortable, works for all of them, the better. We will do whatever we can to help,’’ he said.

Mr. Menon said that the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 had provided an enabling environment for the Amendment. “It was their amendment, not our amendment by the way,” he said.