federalidea.com

By S.Rasalingam

[EDITORS NOTE:This is a response to some news reports that the referendum on North - East de- merger should be held before elections to local authorities in the Eastern province. The writer , currently residing in Canada, provides a fresh perspective of what is essential for the ordinary people as opposed to political entities.]

An argument is being peddled that a referendum on the merger of the Northern and the Eastern Provinces should precede the proposed Local Government elections in the East.

As a Tamil now living in Canada, and at an advanced age, who has seen the evolution of the racial conflict in Sri Lanka from the days of G. G. Ponnambalam and S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike to Prabhakaran, please permit me to comment on this.

Although Colombo-Tamil leaders like GGP and S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, E. M. V. Naganathan, and the Sinhala leaders like SWRD and J. R. Jayewardene fanned flames of racism for their own short-sighted ends, the ordinary Tamil and the ordinary Sinhala had other things as priorities.

They are (i) Food (ii) Housing (iii) Health (iv) Education (v) Justice. It is these five essential pillars of life that are most important for us. Please note that GGP, SJV and E. M. V. Naganathan were Tamils only in name. The Colombo leaders knew enough Tamil for “election purposes” and not more.

They were more at home in English and some were proud to admit that their “Tamil was rather weak”. They wanted to run the North and the East like absentee landlords, maintaining the hegemony of the Vellalas over the rest of the people, and denying social justice. They kept Jaffna as a town council for donkey’s years, and refused to build causeways because these landlords did not want to pay municipal taxes.

The causeways would have developed the low-caste villages and that was “too much”. They prevented the “low-caste” children from entering schools, and such iniquities continued even as late as the 1980s, when agitations occurred in places like Mavittapuram. Their calls for “Tamil aspirations” were not based on the five pillars that I mentioned before, but on keeping their fiefdoms firmly under their control, and out of the hands of the local people.

They expected that their children who had returned from England would continue to run the East and the North, under the label “federal”. Just as Prabhakaran likes to polarise the Sinhala and Tamil people as much as possible, and would love a repeat of Black July, so did GGP, SJV, EMV and others in every way possible. They ensured that every thing was blown out of proportion and engaged in confrontational politics, right from 1948.

When GGP asked for an equal number of seats for Tamils and Sinhala (in effect, 01 Tamil vote equals 05 Sinhala votes, a proposal rejected with scorn by the Soulbury Commission), he was really thinking that there were equal numbers of “upper-class Tamils” and “upper-class Sinhalas” who mattered. The others did not matter.

Later, when there were leaders like N. M. Perera, Colvin R de Silva and Keuneman, who were sympathetic to the rights of every one, Tamil leaders always preferred to come to political pacts with the racist Sinhala leaders, and spurned the left leaders instead of helping them.

Of course, this situation could not last for ever, and they, the absentee land lords from Colombo, were booted out (and physically eliminated) by the militants who were local kids facing unemployment, just like the JVP kids of the south. Unlike the southern JVP militants, the Jaffna militants got money and training from India and thrived. T

The early militants in turn were defeated by the most ruthless of them all, Mr. Prabhakaran. We all know how the people of the North and the East have been kept under the jack-boot of Mr Prabhakaran, thanks to the covert support of Tamil Nadu, and the open support of expatriate Tamils (alas!), most of whom belonged to the affluent upper classes of the Colombo Tamils and their relatives.

These upper class Tamils don’t need to worry about the essential pillars of life that I mentioned, and “ethnic aspirations”, constitutional packages and “human rights” become their main concern.

Today, although the government claims that the East has been liberated, it has no local administration which can ensure that the five essential pillars of life are in place. Most Tamils living in the East care less about the “ethnic aspirations” of politicians (be they the extinct old guard like SJV, or the last remnant of the TULF after LTTE assassinations, like Mr Anandasangaree.).

People are today looking for the essential pillars of life as I mentioned before. It is ONLY when the people in the East, be they Tamil, Sinhala or Moor are able to be on their own, and become economically strong enough to lift their heads that they can think of the sort of “ethnic aspirations” that the fat bellies in Colombo are speaking about.

Dialectical materialism teaches us that things evolve to become the opposite of what they were. Thus, today we see that the remnants of the leftist movement, the Vasudeva’s and their likes, have evolved into the opposite of what their gurus like NM, Colvin and Keuneman strove for.

They have forgotten the economic problems of the people who are trapped in a small land with limited surface area, limited resources and a big youth population. The leftist remnants have also joined the racists in looking for constitutional solutions to economic problems which cut across ethnicity.

I pray to the President of Sri Lanka NOT to hold any elections except local government elections for at least 3-5 years, so that the local polity can settle down and some sense of proportion will be in place. However, I agree that local government should be established because they are at the grassroots, and have to do with the essential pillars of life .

Even here I would have been happy if local elections too are delayed by another year. After all, people who have left various parts of the Eastern province need time to return and re-establish themselves. This could take more than one year, especially because children’s schooling etc., have to be sorted out urgently.

The merger or de-merger of the North and East CANNOT be determined until BOTH provinces are free. Also, the taxes of all the people of Sri Lanka would have gone into the freeing of these provinces from the Jack-Boot of the LTTE. In an earlier era, the taxes and revenues of the whole island (i.e., mainly from the revenue of the hills, the west and the south) were used to free these areas of Malaria, and for restoring irrigation works which form the basis of agriculture in these areas.

So the other provinces, too, should have a say in the merger of the two provinces. That is, a referendum to be held should include the whole country if it is to be meaningful. After all, there are a lot of Tamils living in the Western and Up-country regions as well.

But,do not rush this! It can be meaningfully done ONLY WHEN THE NORTH IS FREE. How can anyone consider a merger of the east with the north when the north is in a state of turmoil?