Sri Lanka And Tamil Eelam Vis-à-vis Timor Leste Liberation
Dr. G K Nathan
Tamil Eelam (North East Sri Lanka) is the homeland of Tamils of Sri Lankafrom time immemorial with definable sovereign identity, which was acknowledged even during the colonial rule, first by the Portuguese followed by the Dutch and finally by the British. All three Colonial powers who occupied the Island in part or as a whole respected the differences of Sinhala and Tamil sovereignties and administered the areas separately for over three centuries. Only in 1833, the British for administrative convenience brought the peoples together and unified the whole Island and divided the Island into five provinces. But, recognized the differences between the two Nations; the North and the East were combined as one of the five provinces and named as “Tamil speaking” areas and the other four provinces as “Sinhala speaking” areas which were demarcated and shown in the first official survey map issued by the British. The five provinces were later divided into nine provinces, two of which Northern and Eastern formed majority Tamil speaking provinces, while the other seven became majority Sinhala speaking provinces. Ignoring the historical facts that two Nations existed, prior to and during the colonial era, a unitary constitution was promulgated at the time of Independence in 1948, which failed to meet the need of multilingual, multiethnic and multireligious country. This act sowed the seed of Sinhala-Tamil conflict and Britain has moral responsibility for the sorry saga and political uncertainties in Sri Lanka.
Successive Sinhala political leaders, instead of finding unity in diversity by sharing power with all peoples, advocated and promoted Sinhala Buddhist parochialism in Sri Lanka at the expense of rights of minority groups, using the power of a majority in a unitary constitution. Religious propitiation led to the rise of Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism and rise of extreme groups with tacit approval of politicians who exploited this development to come to power, which is occurring even today. Now Muslims have become victims of the same forces attacking Mosques and their business establishments. Deprivation of rights of minority groups started with passing of “Sinhala only bill” and giving Buddhism the foremost place at the expense of equality enjoyed by all other religions: Hinduism, Islam and Christianity in the 1948 constitution, which led to Buddhist Monks (Sangha) influencing the political process at the cost of harmony in the country and Prime MinisterSWRD Bandaranaike was murdered in 1958 by a Buddhist Monk for declaring to recognize the rights of Tamil speaking people. Eelam Tamils demand for recognition of their rights with peaceful protest evolved into military confrontation that led to the first Internationally initiated peace process and the Indo-Sri Lanka Accordof 1987, which was signed between President of Sri Lanka J R Jayawardene and Prime Minister of India Rajiv Gandhi, in which North East Sri Lanka was recognized as the homeland of Eelam Tamils. Unfortunately, predisposition of President J R Jayawardene with respect to Tamils and what he said, at the time of Island wide pogrom against Tamils in “Black July 1983”: “I am not worried about the opinion of the Jaffna people… now we cannot think of them, not about their lives or their opinion… the more you put pressure in the north, the happier the Sinhala people will be here… Really, if I starve the Tamils out, the Sinhala people will be happy” – ‘Daily Telegraph’, the July 1983; did not augur well for the implementation of the accord and it remains unfulfilled, to date. ‘The Economist’ in August 1983 in an article titled ‘Sri Lanka Puts a Torch to its Future’ said that “These two weeks of terror will cripple Sri Lanka materially for years, but the damage to the national psyche may be even longer-lasting. A separatist movement can sometimes be stamped out by determined repression. Two alienated communities cannot be welded back together by similar means.” True to the words of ‘The Economist’, for more than two and a half decades, the successive Sinhala leaders failed to implement the accord and to devolve power to Eelam Tamils. The willingness to share power was thwarted by the message spread by Sinhala Buddhist Chauvinists that Sri Lanka is a “Sinhala Buddhist country” and the seed of dissension between the Nations continued to grow, while the Sinhala Buddhist moderates remained silent.
