The JVP: Towards A Second Comeback

By Rajan Hoole -December 10, 2013 |

Rajan Hoole

The Indo-Lanka Accord and Sri Lanka’s Fault Lines: July 1987 – Part – 3

Several of the original leaders of the JVP, including its leader Rohana Wijeweera, were earlier in N. Shanmugathasan’s Communist Party (Peking Wing) and formed the JVP in the late 1960s. Their 1971 rebellion against the newly elected Left-leaning government of Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike was brutally crushed and the leaders were imprisoned. They were released by the Jayewardene Government in 1977 and a section of them was for a time used to harass and discredit those in the SLFP close to Mrs. Bandaranaike. The JVP leadership quickly stopped this. In this their electoral phase, Wijeweera contested the presidential election in 1982 with hopes of emerging a major force but barely received two and half lakhs of votes. Wijeweera was thoroughly demoralised. The JVP faced a major crisis with many members leaving.

The character of the JVP is tied up with that of its erstwhile leader Rohana Wijeweera and the reputations of both remain, to a large extent, nebulous. Even some of those who knew Wijeweera very well in his early days are unable to make up their mind about him. In 1989 when his agents were hunting them, they saw him as a coward and a contemptible man whose fear of physical pain was matched by the ease with which he would inflict it on others. Several accounts of him suggest that with the slightest threat of pain under interrogation, as in 1971, he would divulge everything he knew.

Yet many years later, some of his early mates spoke of him as having been the greatest political strategist of their generation. This may be attributed to their removal to foreign lands and a humdrum existence. These circumstances do heighten nostalgia for the lost dreams of youth. The anger against Wijeweera they harboured,had mellowed with time to guilt – guilt over the revolution from which one was excluded, while the companions of one’s youth were consumed by it, along with their idealism, their cruelty, their courage and all. So Wijeweera himself remains something of a riddle. His supposed servility under interrogation itself may have been a clever stratagem. Perhaps it enabled him to give out something relatively trivial and hide what is crucial. We sketch what is known about him from testimonies of persons in Left politics.Read More

To be continued..

*From Rajan Hoole‘s “Sri Lanka: Arrogance of Power  - Myth, Decadence and Murder”. Thanks to Rajan for giving us permission to republish. To read earlier parts click here