Blooming of “Thamil Eelam” ; the “Lotus Bud” and Rajapaksa’s Sinhala Buddhist Image in Sri Lanka
It was this history that Sampanthan summed up in one simple sentence. Continuous efforts by Tamil leaders to find a political solution within an “undivided, indivisible, single country” was thwarted by Sinhala leaders in their quest to consolidate themselves as Sinhala Buddhist leaders wooing Sinhala Buddhist votes.
( February 21, 2018, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) This caption sounds insane on the face of it. But it cannot be ruled out, the way veteran Tamil politician and leader of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) R. Sampanthan said it in parliament on Monday 19 February during the debate on LG elections and its aftermath. This emotion packed, very strong statement by Sampanthan unfortunately was not given its due importance in Sri Lankan mainstream media. Sinhala media of course cannot be expected to have it as important, unless with a spin.
Sampanthan said he wants to have it on record that Rajapaksa’s brand of Sinhala politics not only deceived the “innocent Sinhala people”, but also Rajapaksa himself. And if he persists with this Sinhala agenda, Sampanthan said, “Eelam will bloom, not on account of us, but on account of your Lotus Bud.” Sampanthan had a very valid point in that with historical validation.
Since independence, for over 03 long decades till 1976, no Tamil nationalist political campaign ever demanded a “Separate Tamil State”. It was extremely frustrated C.Suntheralingam MP who said a “Thamil Eelam” would be the only answer, the way Sinhala leaders treat Tamil people when in 1956, the newly elected Bandaranayake government legislated Sinhala as the only official language. Dissociating with Suntheralingam, the ITAK leadership in 1957 sat with PM Bandaranayake to discuss “regional administrative powers”. Having agreed to a compromised solution on regional councils for North and East, PM Bandaranayake reneged on the B-C Pact giving into a small protest in front of his residence led by some Buddhist monks. This B-C Pact was possible only because ITAK rejected the “Thamil Eelam” proposal by Suntheralingam. As TULF leader Appapillai Amirthalingam told the APC chaired by President Jayawardne and attended by leading Buddhist monks as well on 19 January 1984, “But we who were members of the Federal Party (ITAK) and the All Ceylon Tamil Congress resisted the demand for a separate State. We wanted to preserve the unity and the integrity of the island.”
Tracing the history of Tamil politics that sought a decent and a dignified solution to their problems, Amirthalingam in that same statement to the APC said, “That is the sordid history of pacts and solemn undertakings given by successive governments to the Tamil people. No honourable person can be happy about this record. The introduction of the 1972 Constitution removing the safeguards against discriminatory legislation ‘contained in the Soulbury Constitution’ resulted in all the Tamil Parties getting together and forming the Tamil United Front. We submitted six (06) demands, very modest ones, for inclusion in the Constitution. They were not even acknowledged.” [unedited full text of this statement is appended in my book ‘Rajapaksa the Sinhala Selfie’]
That history is about the first 30 years in independent Ceylon. History of Sinhala political leaders breaking all promises and all agreements and pacts the Tamil leaders compromised in settling with a permanent solution to their issues. That period of finding answers came to an end, with TULF for the first time on 14 May 1976 resolving to restore as Amirthalingam said, “the sovereign State that they (Tamil people) had before the European arrival and conquest of the country” (ibid). The youth by then had decided, there can be no serious political negotiations and answers found with the Sinhala political leadership. That resolution for a separate Thamil State was put to the Tamil people for a mandate at the 1977 parliamentary election when the TULF won 18 seats out of the 19 Tamil seats in the North and the East. The TULF leadership was thus given a resounding “YES” vote to proceed to establish a separate Thamil Eelam State.
It was this history that Sampanthan summed up in one simple sentence. Continuous efforts by Tamil leaders to find a political solution within an “undivided, indivisible, single country” was thwarted by Sinhala leaders in their quest to consolidate themselves as Sinhala Buddhist leaders wooing Sinhala Buddhist votes. That Sinhala racist politics which continuously denied a justifiable solution to Tamil people after 20 years pushed even the TULF in 1976 to adopt a resolution for a “separate Thamil State” a stand they kept rejecting from 1956.
Yet, they did not embark on a separate State. Instead the TULF leadership used that mandate as bargaining power for a solution within a united system of power sharing. That was how the TULF in 1981 came to accept the District Development Councils (DDC) as devolved power for Tamil people, 04 years after they were mandated by their own people to establish a separate Thamil State. Sinhala political leaders were never grateful for such accommodative Tamil politics. Running amok in Jaffna town, attacking the TULF head office and MP Yogeswarana’s house, looting Tamil shops and committing the most dastardly act of burning one of Asia’s most privileged libraries, the DDC’s were marked for a quick death, once again leaving democratic Tamil politics utterly helpless. Probably President Jayawardne and his henchmen like ministers Cyril Mathew and Gamini Dissanayake were naïve in believing, such would end the call for “Devolved power” by Tamil people and make them “Sinhala heroes”.
What they did not understand or did not want to understand is, where democratic politics is suppressed, it is the hard line anti democratic politics that gain space. Thus came the armed Tamil youth groups to the fore. Jayawardne fumbling in his foreign policy ignoring geo politics of ‘Bay of Bengal’, these armed Tamil groups got the privilege of enjoying New Delhi patronage. Rest is history written in its saddest and tragic language.
Over 25 years of a prolonged, protracted war in its bloodiest form, left an ethno-religiously polarised country, many thousand innocent women, men and children unnecessarily killed, yet another few thousands without limbs and over a hundred thousand war widows on both sides of the barricades in a war devastated country still talking of resettlement and reconciliation. Still watching war affected families continuously protesting for over one year, demanding answers from the Colombo government about their “missing” family members.
This is no background for any serious politician bargaining for political power to raise racist slogans that would drag this country deeper into the mire it is already in. This country in the South is no happier with its own sorry fate too. As I have written before, Rajapaksa’s Sinhala image was not without other conditions applied to it. Other conditions paved the way for his loss at the Uva PC elections in 2014 September before his defeat at the 2015 January presidential elections that gathered the usually pro SLFP Southern Muslim vote from the time of late Badiudin Mahmud, also against Rajapaksa.
Uva PC election setback for Rajapaksa thus had other factors at play. Cost of living was on the increase while the rural economy had no answers for livelihood of the people. “Whole of the rural society thus lived with the large pay packet the young soldiers brought home once in 03 months till the war was concluded and for now with remittances from Mid East the toiling young women send home and the meagre savings the female workers send from sweat shop factories,” I wrote. And then added, “This had two evil side effects that changed the old value system not for the better, but for worse. One, it made youth search for quick money for a fast consumer life, never mind how. This increased domestic migration with youth trekking to Colombo and suburbs in search of whatever livelihood possible. Two, it allowed for politicising of local life leading to a lawless, corrupt rural society. In a corrupt rural society tied to political control of life, two things grow quite fast. One is illegal trade and business sidestepping law enforcement and two, increase in sexual abuse of children, rape of women and underage marriages. All that taken together breeds dependency, frustration and an “anti State” feeling.”
That “frustration and an “anti State” feeling brokered the rural Sinhala shift away from Rajapaksa in the presidential elections too. That same Sinhala shift was seen against this Sirisena-Wickramasinghe government over their failures during the past 03 years. Bottom line is, the Sinhala Buddhist patriarchal image alone does not decide electoral politics. Rajapaksa image though tailor made for the Sinhala Buddhist psyche does not have a monopoly over Sinhala Buddhist votes. What he gained this time too isn’t the majority Sinhala Buddhist vote that can decide a parliamentary election for him.
Playing for Sinhala Buddhist votes will not provide answers for the economically and socially ailing Sinhala village. Sinhala Buddhist vote will not provide the Sinhala Buddhist rural society any improvement in their living. Will not bring them better schools, better hospitals, better public transport. Will not make their villages economically better and prosperous. Moreover, Sinhala Buddhist politics will not even rid their villages of increasing sexual abuse of children, rape of women, underage marriages and drug peddling.
Added is the debt trap this country has been dragged into with ethno-religious politics. Year 2018 will come to end piling a debt service requirement of 03 trillion rupees. Therefore it is prudent and beneficial for the Sinhala South to accept the fact, this country needs a national political leadership instead of a Sinhala political leadership that has no clue what “national socio economic and cultural development” is. Accept that Sinhala leaderships have exploited the Sinhala voter for the benefit of political power that has not made the life of the Sinhala majority any better.
It would have therefore been a complete statement if Sampanthan said, “Eelam will bloom, not on account of us, but on account of your Lotus Bud, that will not be of any benefit to the Sinhala Buddhist people either, who had been deceived by Sinhala leaders ever since independence”.
