The question as to what Gandhi may have done in Pirabaharan's timespace is
an interesting and important one. I can only
conjecture.
Given Gandhi's deep
commitment to non violence, I would imagine that he
would have sought to mobilise the Tamil people to
disobey the unjust
laws that discriminated against them and he would
have launched a civil disobedience movement to secure
freedom from alien Sinhala
rule.
Initially, he would have been attacked in the same way
as the Tamil
satyagrahis in Colombo were attacked in 1956 when
they protested against the Sinhala Only Act:
"What happened on 6 June 1956 when
the Sinhala Only Bill was being debated in
Parliament? The members of the Federal Party,
exercising their undoubted constitutional right,
wanted to protest against the imposition of (the
Sinhala Only) Bill. The Members of the Federal Party
said that they would sit in silence on the Galle Face
Green... It was a silent protest which they were
entitled to make. What happened? Hooligans, in the
very presence of Parliament House, under the very
nose of the Prime Minister of this country, set upon
those innocent men seated there, bit their ears and
beat them up mercilessly. ...
"Thereafter on that day, 6 June, every Tamil man was
set upon and robbed. He was beaten up. His fountain
pen and wristlet were snatched away. He was thrashed
mercilessly, humiliated and sent home. The police
were looking on while all this was happening before
their very eyes. Shops were looted... but the police
did nothing... These (hooligans) were instigated by
some members of Parliament... they were heading the
gang of hooligans. The Prime Minister made a
remarkably wonderful speech on that occasion. He
came, he smiled and he told the crowd, 'Don't do
that. Rain is coming down. They will be cooled in no
time.' That was the type of appeal he made. If
Sinhalese men were being thrashed by Tamils and their
ears bitten, I wonder whether the Prime Minister
would have adopted the same attitude." (Senator
S.Nadesan Q.C., Sri Lanka Senate Hansard 4 June
1958)
Again, Gandhi may have led a salt march
from Jaffna to the shores of Batticaloa to establish
the sovereignty of the Tamil homeland and he may have
been attacked by Sinhala mobs in the same way as those
travelling to the Tamil Federal Party convention in
Trincomalee were attacked in 1958:
"The (Tamil) Federal Party's annual
public meeting was called for late May (1958). The
conclave was to decide whether or not to undertake a
Satyagraha campaign now that the (Sinhala) Prime
Minister had withdrawn his support from the agreement
he had endorsed a year before (the
Bandaranaike Chelvanayagam Pact).
"The outbreak of violence began when a train,
presumed to be carrying Tamil delegates to the
meetings, was derailed and its passengers beaten up
by ruffians. The next day Sinhalese labourers set
fire to Tamil shops and homes in nearby villages
where they lived intermingled with Sinhalese...
"Arson and beatings spread rapidly to Colombo. Gangs
roamed the districts where Tamils lived, ransacking
and setting fire to homes and cars, and looting
shops. Individual Tamils were attacked, humiliated
and beaten. Many were subjected to torture and some
killed outright... "
"Some ten thousand Tamils were reported to have fled
their homes to seek safety in improvised refugee
camps... Many fled to the North by
sea.."(Professor Howard Wriggins: Ceylon -
Dilemmas of a New Nation, Princeton University
Press)
And as Gandhi persisted in his
struggle, he may have been imprisoned. But, the one
thing that Gandhi would not
have done would have been to contest a Parliamentary
seat. One can hardly see Mahatma Gandhi taking office
as the Leader of the
Opposition in Sri Lanka's Parliament.
But, as Gandhi's non violent campaign secured more and
more adherents, the Sinhala dominated Sri Lanka
government may have unleashed a 1983 type
genocidal attack on the Tamil people:
"...Clearly (1983) was not a
spontaneous upsurge of communal hatred among the
Sinhala people.. It was a series of deliberate acts,
executed in accordance with a concerted plan,
conceived and organised well in advance.... Communal
riots in which Tamils are killed, maimed, robbed and
rendered homeless are no longer isolated episodes;
they are beginning to become a pernicious habit."
(Paul
Sieghart: Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka on behalf
of the International Commission of Jurists, March
1984)
Gandhi himself may have been charged
for sedition under Sri Lanka's 6th
Constitutional Amendment for advocating a separate
state, even though such advocacy was by peaceful non
violent means:
"...The key to its (the 6th
Amendment's) effect is paragraph (1) which runs as
follows:- 'No person shall directly or indirectly, in
or outside Sri Lanka, support, espouse, promote,
finance, encourage or advocate the establishment of a
separate State within the territory of Sri Lanka'.
Anyone who contravenes that provision becomes liable
to the imposition of civic disability for upto 7
years, the forfeiture of his movable and immovable
property... the loss of his passport... the right to
engage in any trade or profession. In addition if he
is a Member of Parliament, he loses his seat."
"The freedom to express political opinions, to seek
to persuade others of their merits, to seek to have
them represented in Parliament, and thereafter seek
Parliament to give effect to them, are all
fundamental to democracy itself. These are precisely
the freedoms which Article 25 (of the International
Covenant of Civil and Political Rights) recognises
and guarantees - and in respect of advocacy for the
establishment of an independent Tamil State in Sri
Lanka, those which the 6th Amendment is designed to
outlaw.
"It therefore appears to me plain that this enactment
constitutes a clear violation by Sri Lanka of its
obligations in international law under the Covenant
..." (Paul
Sieghart: Report of a Mission to Sri Lanka in January
1984 on behalf of the International Commission of
Jurists, March 1984)
Gandhi may have been sentenced to
prison for sedition and may have been killed in a
convenient 'prison riot' in the same way as Thangathurai and
Kuttimuni were killed inside Welikade jail in
1983:
"Selvarajah Yogachandran, popularly
known as Kuttimuni, a nominated member of the Sri
Lankan Parliament... one of the 52 prisoners killed
in the maximum security Welikade prison in Colombo
two weeks ago, (on July 25) was forced to kneel in
his cell, where he was under solitary confinement, by
his assailants and ordered to pray to them. When he
refused, he was taunted by his tormentors about his
last wish, when he was sentenced to death. He had
willed that his eyes be donated to some one so that
at least that person would see an independent Tamil
Eelam. The assailants then gouged his eyes...He was
then stabbed to death and his testicles were wrenched
from his body. This was confirmed by one of the
doctors who had conducted the postmortem of the first
group of 35 prisoners." (Madras Hindu, 10 August
1983)
And, ofcourse, if Gandhi had fasted,
the fate that befell Thileepan and
Annai
Poopathy may have fallen on him - and Gandhi would
have been allowed to die, and labelled as an
unreasonable trouble maker, who had not accepted
the
compromise of Provincial Councils instead of
insisting on freedom, and who by his actions was
fomenting unrest which would spiral out of his
control.
And Sri Lanka Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar (to
use the temperate language that he has recently used in
respect of Pirabaharan) may have called
Gandhi a "suicidal, maniacal kind of a man who would
ultimately prefer to bring his whole house down rather
than give in."
But in his death, Gandhi would not have failed - just
as much as Thileepan and Annai Poopathy have not failed
in their deaths. As Aurobindo wrote many years
ago on ideas such as freedom:
"The idea creates its martyrs. And in
martyrdom there is an incalculable spiritual
magnetism which works miracles. A whole nation, a
whole world catches the fire which burned in a few
hearts; the soil which has drunk the blood of the
martyr imbibes with it a sort of divine madness which
it breathes into the heart of all its children, until
there is but one overmastering idea, one imperishable
resolution in the minds of all besides which all
other hopes and interests fade into significance and
until it is fulfilled, there can be no peace or rest
for the land or its rulers.
It is at this moment that the idea creates its heroes
and fighters, whose numbers and courage defeat only
multiplies and confirms until the idea militant has
become the idea triumphant. Such is the history of
the idea, so invariable in its broad outlines that it
is evidently the working of a natural law...
But the despot will not recognise
this superiority, the teachings of history have
no meaning for him. ..He is deceived also by the
temporary triumph of his repressive measures..
and thinks, "Oh, the circumstances in my case are
quite different, I am a different thing from any yet
recorded in history, stronger, more virtuous and
moral, better organised. I am God's favourite and can
never come to harm." And so the old drama is staged
again and acted till it reaches the old
catastrophe..."
And Gandhi, perhaps, would have said of
Pirabaharan, as he
had said of Baghat
Singh:
"His way is not my way, but I bow my
head before one who is prepared to give his life for
the freedom of his people."
And, here I may be wrong, (and as I
have said, I can only conjecture) I believe that Gandhi
would have also recognised that the cyanide capsule in
the hands of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was
evidence not of a simple minded willingness of a
suicide to die but of a fierce determination that cried
out: ''I will not lose my freedom except with my life''
and that it was this determination and this willingness
to suffer, this thyagam,
which had found an answering response in the hearts and
minds of hundreds of thousands of Tamils living in many lands and across
distant seas.
