Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa said in the
Sri Lankan Parliament recently that Indira Gandhi
should not play hide and seek with Sri Lanka. He added:
"If Mrs.Gandhi wants to invade Sri Lanka and conquer
this country, let her do so openly". It appears that
Prime Minister Premadasa cannot endure
subterfuge.
But Sri Lanka's National Security Minister and ex
Oxford Union President, Lalith Athulathmudali, who is
engaged in his own hide and seek game with the Indian
Government was quick to respond. He said that Sri
Lankans should refrain from making any statement or
taking any action that could provoke India. And
presumably, by Sri Lankans, he meant the Prime Minister
of Sri Lanka as well.
The quickness of ex Oxford Union President Lalith
Athulathmudali's response had something to do with the
increasingly important role that he has been assigned
in the affairs of Sri Lanka in recent times - a role
which links him with the Sri Lankan armed forces and
with the national aspirations of the Sinhala people.
This is a potent mix for any ambitious young Minister
and Prime Minister Ranasinghe Premadasa must have been
concerned about its effect on the future devolution of
power.
The seemingly different stands taken by Prime
Minister Premadasa and National Security Minister
Athulathmudali are related to the factional struggle
for succession in a country where the life of the
present Parliament has been extended from 6 years to 12
years and where the Tamil opposition has been
disenfranchised and the Sinhala opposition leader has
been deprived of her civic rights. Both Prime Minister
Premadasa and National Security Minister Athulathmudali
know that the successor to 78 year old President
Jayawardene will achieve and retain power, not so much
through the vote, but by the measure of his control of
the armed forces and his appeal to Sinhala
chauvinism.
But Tamils would be unwise, if they explained away
the seemingly conflicting statements of Prime Minister
Premadasa and National Security Minister Athulathmudali
merely as a reflection of an internal power struggle.
The matter is not as simplistic as all that. After all
both the Prime Minister and the National Security
Minister speak on behalf of the Government of Sri
Lanka.
This was underlined by Information Minister Ananda
Tissa De Alwis in a press briefing on the 30th of May
1984. The Information Minister said that Prime Minister
Premadasa's speech was a reiteration of Sri Lanka's
earlier position. He said that even President
Jayawardene discussed the same matter when he
participated in the Commonwealth Heads of States
Conference. Minister de Alwis added that Prime Minister
Premadasa's view represented 'one shade of opinion' of
the Sri Lankan Government. Commenting on National
Security Minister Athulathmudali's statement, the
Information Minister said that was 'another view of the
same problem'. He went on in his inimitable style:
"It was not possible for Government Ministers to
speak with one voice on this problem. It is not
strictly possible. The Government however speaks in
one voice but expressed views in different
shades."
And so we have the truth from the Information
Minister of the Sri Lankan Government. Government
Ministers speak with different voices, but the
Government speaks with one voice. The Government speaks
with one voice but expresses views in different shades.
The seemingly different stands of Prime Minister
Premadasa and National Security Minister Athulathmudali
reflected but different shades of the one voice of the
Sri Lankan Government.
President Jayawardene in Hongkong was equally frank.
The Government controlled Sri Lanka News reported on
the 7th of June that a number of Western and Indian
correspondents were present at a news conference that
President Jayawardene held in Hongkong and when he was
questioned about the recent speeches made by Prime
Minister Premadasa and national Security Minister
Athulathmudali he cheerfully replied:
"They both represent government policy...They are
both members of the government and the speeches they
make reflect government policy...No Minister speaks
outside government policy".
As Tamils have noted before, the government of Sri
Lanka is sometimes frank and on such occasions, it is
important that it should be taken at its word. What
then, was the policy of the Sri Lankan government on
the question of its relations with India? What was the
message that the Sri Lankan Government sought to convey
through the voices of two of its important
Ministers?
Information Minister de Alwis was right when he said
that Prime Minister Premadasa had reiterated something
which President Jayawardene had said some time back. In
April 1983, President Jayawardene gave a delightful and
revealing interview to the Madras Hindu. It was
delightful because of the way in which it was done. It
was revealing because of that which he said. It was an
interview that was given long before the holocaust of
July and August 1983.
President Jayawardene was asked to express his views
on Afghanistan and his reply to his Indian interviewer
was startling and seemingly irrelevant. He said: "If
India invades us, it must remember that it will have to
rule over some 15 million Sinhala people." His
interviewer was taken aback and reminded the President
that the question was about Afghanistan. But President
Jayawardene continued: "I may be an old man, but I will
fight for the liberation of my people, if India invades
us..."
And it was then that President Jayawardene went on
to speak about Afghanistan. These were not the
meanderings of a President who had reached his 78th
birthday and who had not understood his questioner.
President Jayawardene was well aware in March 1983
that the path of murder and intimidation that the
Government of Sri Lanka had set upon would clearly have
an international dimension. He was speaking to the
Madras Hindu and that was a convenient way of
communicating to the Indian Government in advance that
an Indian invasion of Sri Lanka had some attendant
problems for India.
President Jayawardene had clearly foreseen the
international dimension of the Tamil national question.
It was the same clarity of vision that led him in 1978
to bring Savyamurthy Thondaman, the leader of the
Estate Tamils into the Sri Lankan cabinet. It was the
Indian card and he played it well. The representative
of the Estate Tamils (with links to India) was in his
cabinet and he was mindful that this would help to
diffuse the response of the Indian government to his
plan to subjugate and absorb the Tamils of Sri
Lanka.
Recently his National Security Minister, spoke at
some length in Parliament to show that the Tamils of
Jaffna are a small minority and that the majority of
the Tamils of Sri Lanka lived out side Jaffna. He
stated that he had told the Indian government about
this and President Jayawardene in a recent interview
with an Indian magazine said: 'Yes, the Tamils in
Jaffna may have grievances, but what are their
grievances elsewhere'.
Ex Oxford Union President and National Security
Minister was somewhat more explicit in a speech he made
at the 87th Mahapola which was held at the Sinhala
Vidyalaya, Kahatagasdigliya to a Sinhala audience on
the 27th of May. He said:
"If victory was to be achieved, it could not be
done by uniting all opposing forces but by dividing
them and creating dissension among them... Sri Lankan
Kings never opposed the entirety of India. When there
was conflict with the Pandyans, they sought the aid
of the Cholas and acted against the Pandyans. When
the Pandyans and Cholas combined, they sought the aid
of Kalinga. Sinhala Kings had that high intelligence
and knowledge of statecraft."
And so ex Oxford Union President Athulathmudali and
the Sri Lankan government seek to follow in the
intelligent footsteps of the Sinhala Kings by creating
dissension amongst the 'opposing forces'. Who were the
'opposing forces' that the Sri Lankan government had in
mind?
President Jayawardene and the Sri Lankan
government have shown a certain clarity in their
perception of the international frame of the Tamil
national question and the Tamil people would do well
to recognise this - otherwise, we will be like the
blind men in the dark room, hitting everywhere,
connecting sometimes, but more often than not, waving
our arms with great passion, but without either
direction or result.
We must remember that we are dealing with a leader
who candidly admitted a couple of years ago that in
politics, one must aim at the head and hit at the
stomach. Be that as it may, in recent times, President
Jayawardene has visited China, South Korea and now the
United States. He also plans to visit India on his way
back from the United States. In some instances he may
be only aiming at the head whilst intending to hit at
the stomach. But the clear intention of his foreign
policy is to manage the Indian response to the Tamil
national question.
The Tamil - Sinhala problem is a problem between
two nations, the Sinhala nation and the Tamil nation.
It is manifestly an inter - national problem.
President Jayawardene seeks to create a suitable
international frame within which he can 'deal' with
the Tamils of Sri Lanka.
Geography plays a basic but silent role in the
affairs of a people. It was many years ago - sometime
in 1956 or so that the late Krishna Menon was
addressing an English undergraduate audience. The
United States Navy was patrolling the waters around
Taiwan and it was a period of some international
tension. A youthful questioner stood up and asked:
"Mr.Menon, Sir, what are your views on the position of
Taiwan?" Krishna Menon's response came in a flash: "The
position of Taiwan is that it is a few hundred miles
from China and several thousand miles away from the
United States of America." The audience dissolved in
laughter.
The visit of President Richard Nixon to China twenty
years later underlined the significance of that which
Krishna Menon had said.
The position of Sri Lanka is that it is a few
miles from Tamil Nadu and the Indian sub continent
and several thousand miles away from the United
States of America. Its influence on the outside world
and in turn the influence of the outside world on the
affairs of the people of Sri Lanka is a function, not
of its size, but of its location near the large land
mass of the Indian subcontinent and in the centre of
the vast expanse of the waters of the Indian
ocean.
We live in an increasingly small world and no nation
is an island. The end of the Second World war witnessed
the emergence of an international arena dominated by
two super powers, the United States of America and the
Soviet Union. It was a bipolar power structure, with
Washington and Moscow as the two power centres. If
history serves as a guide, the confrontation between
these two powers would have, in the ordinary course of
events, led to war and the supremacy of one or the
other as the sole world power. And in time, of course,
the hegemony of that sole world power would have
decayed and given way to a number of smaller powers and
to a multipolar power structure, leading again to a
bipolar world and so on. But, the years after the end
of World War II did not lead to direct war between the
two super powers
The nuclear deterrent prevented direct conflict.
We are reminded of the words of Arthur Koestler: "If
I were asked to name the most important date in the
history and prehis-tory of the human race, I would
answer without hesitation, 6 August 1945. The reason
is simple. From the dawn of consciousness until 6
August 1945, man had to live with the prospect of his
death as an individual; since the day when the first
atomic bomb outshone the sun over Hiroshima, mankind
as a whole has had to live with the prospect of its
extinction as a species."
But although the nuclear bomb prevented direct war
between the two super powers the confrontation between
them has continued unabated after 1945. It was a cold
war - sometimes less cold and sometimes more so. The
Prussian military theorist Clausewitz remarked in the
19th century that war is a conti-nuation of politics by
other means. Nikolai Lenin, some years later,
charac-teristically and brilliantly restated the
proposition and said that politics is a con-tinuation
of war by other means. It would seem that in 1984, we
have arrived at the Orwellian truth that war is peace
and peace is war. It is this that is sometimes called
'detente'.
The result is that in the years after the second
world war, the two super powers, whilst avoiding direct
war against each other, have fought many wars by proxy,
in the third world and elsewhere and have sought to
influence the actions of many 'independent' states,
either by exerting econo-mic pressure or by engaging in
under cover activities intended to de stabi-lise
unfriendly governments. In the bipolar world, although
we live in seeming peace, war continues by other
means.
There is another aspect of the matter. Given the
nuclear deterrent, and the consequent unlikelihood of a
nuclear war of confrontation, we may also be witnessing
an emerging multi polar power structure. New powers
will rise in Asia, Africa, South America and for that
matter in Europe as well. These new power centres will
grow from regional groupings. Both China and India have
the potential of becoming influential powers of the
world of tomorrow, although today, even they find the
need to lean toward either the Soviet Union or the
United States from time to time. These are some of the
realities of the international frame in which we
live.
What does all this mean to the Tamils in the
island of Sri Lanka?
President Jayawardene seeks to subjugate the Tamils
by armed force - sometimes overtly by actions of the
army and the police, sometimes covertly by turning a
blind eye to the actions of goondas organised by
henchmen of his Ministers. He knows that this a path
which will result in an outcry amongst 40 million
Tamils in neighbouring Tamil Nadu which is a federal
state in the Indian Union. Such an outcry will result
in pressure on New Delhi to intervene. So long as such
intervention is peaceful President Jayawardene will not
be unduly concerned.
He has always enjoyed dialogues. He talked endlessly
with the Tamil United Liberation Front from the time of
the burning of the Jaffna public library in June 1981
until shortly before the holocaust of July
and August 1983. So after the massacre of July and
August, President Jayawardene must have welcomed the
opportunity to talk again - until the Chunnakkam massacre heralded
the Biafra style military operation against the Tamils
in their traditional homeland.
Words tend to diffuse the response of a people
threatened with genocide and time is a great healer.
President Jayawardene was well aware that it was
important to set the international frame so that he may
be left in peace to 'deal' with the Tamils.
On the one hand he sought to re assure Indira
Gandhi that the Sinhala people had no problem with
India. After all relations between New Delhi and
Colombo had been reasonably cuddly during the thirty
years after independence. They both had a vested
interest in containing a rising Tamil
consciousness.
But the open economic policy of President
Jayawardene's government since 1977, led to a greater
linkage with the West and the United States of America.
With trade and aid, come political alignments and the
Sri Lankan government has increasingly taken stances,
more in line with Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew than with
Indira Gandhi's India. It was National Security
Minister, Lalith Athulathmudali's role to emphasise to
reassure India that despite this linkage with the
United States, Sri Lanka desired to continue its
'cuddly' relationship with New Delhi.
Again, President Jayawardene recognised that Indira
Gandhi may be moved by the political pressure of the
Tamil electorate in Tamil Nadu. At appropriate
intervals, suitably aggressive noises were made and the
latest instance was the statement by Prime Minister
Premadasa in the Sri Lankan Parliament. This was
coupled with ostentatious overtures towards the United
States. In this he was circumspect. He knew that if he
moved too close to the United States, this may turn out
to be counter productive and may provoke India to
intervene, not because of the Tamils of Tamil Nadu but
because of India's own interests in the region.
Further, although the political move towards the
United States was facilitated by the open economy
policy of the Sri Lankan Government which had linked it
with the Western world, President Jayawardene was
mindful that in terms of market size, India afforded
much greater opportunities to U.S. business interests
than little Sri Lanka and that it was likely that the
United States would balance the benefits of Sri Lanka's
strategic location against the size of the Indian
market. In an interview with an Indian magazine in
early April 1984, President Jayawardene said:
"...I know the whole situation. No country in the
world would like India to be annoyed with it. Because
you are 800 million people, you are a big market for
trade purposes. It is not just the British who are
shopkeepers. The Americans are shopkeepers
too..."
President Jayawardene knows that it will not be in
the interests of the United States to alienate India
unless India itself had cast its lot irrevocably with
the Soviet Union. President Jayawardene's foreign
policy was therefore based on a realistic appraisal of
the basic national interests of India and the United
States.
Governments do not have permanent friends - they
have permanent interests. President Jayawardene will
seek to reassure both the United States and India that
their national interests will be served if they stand
and watch, whilst he subjugates the Tamils in the
island of Sri Lanka.
President Jayawardene showed his principled approach
to political problems by cheerfully declaring at a news
conference in Hongkong: '...the Sri Lankan government
will accept help from the devil himself...' His
admission that he seeks to consort with the devil was
in accord with the statement that he made to the Daily
Telegraph in July 1983: "I am not worried about the
opinion of the Tamil people... now we cannot think of
them, not about their lives or their opinion. ...
The soft underbelly of President Jayawardene's
policy lies in his assumptions about the Tamil nation.
He refuses to see that in the end, the strength of a
people must come from within themselves. In the years
to come, he will be remembered as the Sinhala leader
who set his people on a path of confrontation which
inevitably led them to economic chaos and
isolation.
The year 1983 represented a watershed in the
struggle of the Tamil people for more reasons than one.
It was the year when the Tamil parliamentary struggle
was rendered illegal. In a sense, the entire freedom
struggle was compelled to go underground. It was not
only those who believed that the gun was the way to
freedom who were compelled to go underground - those
who believed that Tamils should be free, were also
compelled to go underground. Even more importantly, the
overt repression in Sri Lanka led to the locus of the
struggle being shifted to Tamil Nadu and abroad. More
than thirty thousand Tamils from Sri Lanka have sought
refuge in Tamil Nadu.
In the years to come, 1983 will be remembered as the
year when the freedom struggle of the Tamils in the
island of Sri Lanka began to merge with the rising
national consciousness of fifty million Tamil people
living on the other side of the narrow Palk Strait.
Twenty miles of shallow water cannot for ever separate
the Tamil people. Sri Lanka will find that the world
will not and cannot ignore the to-getherness of over
fifty million Tamil people who seek to live in peace
and equality with their brothers and sisters of the
Indian sub-continent.
