Sri Lanka’s Indo-Tamil problem
By Izeth Hussain –May 14, 2016
Izeth Hussain
There is now an air of cautious optimism on the ethnic front because it seems that the Government and the TNA are at last moving towards a political solution. I will take this seriously only if the envisaged solution has the backing of India. My reason for saying this is that I have held for some time that Sri Lanka does not have a purely indigenous Tamil ethnic problem. There will be no such problem if not for the India factor, by which I mean this: no Government in Delhi can be expected to ignore the possible fall-out in Tamil Nadu of what is done to the Tamils in Sri Lanka. That is why the international community broadly sees Indian intervention over the Tamil ethnic problem as legitimate, not as amounting to interference.
Why do I say that if not for the India factor there would be no Tamil ethnic problem in Sri Lanka today? The LTTE was defeated militarily and no one in his right mind believes that Eelam can be established through further military struggle. We must bear in mind that the international community consists of nation states in which, with very rare exceptions, ethnic majorities are dominant over ethnic minorities. As a general rule, they cannot be expected to view minority separatist rebellions with too kindly an eye. In this case, the separatist rebellion has been defeated and the Government is offering 13 A without police and land powers, together with a fully functioning democracy which in the West meets the legitimate interests of the Tamil and other minorities. That would seem fair enough to the international community. But the problem is that the Tamils want more devolution and hopes that India will secure that for them. Consequently, what we have on our hands is not a purely indigenous Tamil ethnic problem but an Indo-Tamil problem.
There is no point in inveighing against India’s supposed hegemonic or imperialist drive. The point that we have to face up to is that India can harm us to a very terrible extent, even to the extent of breaking up this country – a very remote contingency certainly, but something that we will do well to always bear in mind. Those are stark facts, stark and unalterable geopolitical facts that won’t go away. But it is also a stark fact that India can help us to a great extent, including over the Indo-Tamil ethnic problem, and I believe that it has excellent reasons why it should want to do so.
One reason is that India covets the position of a permanent member of the Security Council, and will probably be prepared to do a great deal towards securing that end. A pre-requisite for that would be for India to have credibility as a peaceful nation and also as one that has the capacity to contribute meaningfully towards the establishment of an equitable new world order. But India has a rather horrible record of poor relations with practically all its neighbors, except that its relations with Sri Lanka have been for the most part excellent. It has had the image of an overbearing bully towards its neighbors, which may be unfair but such has been its image. Being really helpful in sorting out the Indo-Tamil ethnic problem could be very useful in correcting that image.
