A Veritable Revolution in Sri Lanka’s Tamil Areas | M.R. Narayan Swamy

During my frequent visits to Sri Lanka, I always posed one question to friends: Why can’t all of you learn both Tamil and Sinhalese languages?

Imagine, Sri Lanka has just two languages (Sinhalese and Tamil) besides of course English which is widely understood and spoken like in India and many parts of the world. I believe that Sri Lankan leaders who, on independence in 1948, did not make both languages compulsory at school level ended up planting the seeds of “us” and “them” that ultimately failed Sri Lanka.

Thus, the two languages, instead of uniting, ended up dividing the country. The now vanquished Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) exploited Tamil consciousness to wage war against “Sinhalese domination” while Sinhalese politicians tried, at least at one point, to impose their language on the minorities. Both caused disaster in the long run.

In this background, the results of the just-ended parliamentary elections in Sri Lanka have dramatically transformed the country’s political landscape. The virtual national sweep of the Left-of-Centre National People’s Power (NPP) was both unprecedented and unexpected. At the core of the NPP is the leftist and well-knit Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP or People’s Liberation Front), which earlier unleashed two violent insurrections leaving tens of thousands of dead before embracing parliamentary democracy for good in 1994. The outcome in Sri Lanka also holds invaluable lessons for the Left around the world.

The NPP win became doubly sweet not just because of its showing in the dominantly Sinhalese-populated regions but also in the places dominated by Tamils and Muslims. (Muslims in Sri Lanka are Tamil speakers but most also speak Sinhalese and are classified separately from Tamils.) In particular, the NPP bagging three of the six seats in the Jaffna electoral district stunned foes and friends alike.

The Jaffna electoral district includes both Jaffna, the Tamil heartland in the extreme north, and Kilinochchi, just to its south. Both Jaffna and Kilinochchi had been strongholds of the LTTE for long. Jaffna is where Tamil separatism was born, and produced the best known Tamil politicians as well as latter day militants. It is in Kilinochchi where LTTE founder leader Velupillai Prabhakaran set up the capital of a de facto Tamil Tiger state until the very end.

During the election campaign, JVP/NPP leader and now President, Anura Dissanayake, addressed several meetings in Tamil areas, promising, among other things, a badly needed national reconciliation. But he avoided the usual promises that used to be dished out by traditional politicians. Despite the realisation that he was not the first choice among most Tamils in the September presidential race, the NPP did not sew up an electoral pact with any Tamil party. It even disdainfully rejected the offer of support from a well-known Tamil militant-turned-politician, Douglas Devananda, who was a cabinet minister in all previous governments.

Dissanayake and the NPP never pledged to devolve power to the provinces – a long-standing Tamil demand. The JVP has always been a votary of a unitary state – in contrast to unceasing demands for a federal set-up by the Tamil side. The JVP also went to the court and got the Tamil-majority northern and multi-racial eastern provinces de-merged. And the JVP was the most vocal supporter outside of the government to the war that finally crushed the LTTE and, unfortunately, caused the deaths of thousands of innocent Tamils. Both during the presidential and parliamentary election campaign, NPP leaders made it a point to underline both serving and retired military personnel that they not only backed the war on the LTTE but would never let the military face charges of human rights violations.

Yet, vast sections of the Tamils in both the north and east of Sri Lanka as also in the central tea plantations populated by workers of Indian Tamil origin gave the thumbs up to the NPP. Why?

There are two broad reasons for this.

One, it is by now more than clear that the LTTE never truly represented the mass of Tamils it claimed to speak for. In other words, the war it waged on and on did not enjoy the sanction of the Tamil community, which bore the brunt of its terrible consequences except during the end stages when the LTTE was wiped out. It was only the LTTE diktat enforced by death threats (and killings) that prevented most Tamils in the north and east from voting for Ranil Wickremesinghe in the 2005 presidential battle, leading to a narrow win for Sinhalese hardliner Mahinda Rajapaksa, who eventually crushed the Tamil Tigers.

Former LTTE fighters as well as numerous civilians have admitted after the war that the LTTE’s campaign for an independent state caused terrible suffering which the people, if given a chance, would have wanted it to end a long time ago. Viewed in this perspective, the vote for the NPP is a rejection of the so-called Tamil nationalist politics the LTTE pursued, stifling all dissent within the Tamil community.

Two, there was mass anger in Tamil and Muslim areas (as in the rest of the country) against the kind of decadent and corrupt politics that ruled the roost in Sri Lanka for decades. A country which could have, with better leadership, been a mini if not another Singapore ended up being a failed state, personified by the shattering economic collapse of 2022. In contrast, Anura Dissanayake and the JVP/NPP came out as a decent alternative, a political class that made no false promises and readily admitted that they lacked experience unlike the “experienced” politicians who plundered the country. It impressed everyone – critics included – that Dissanayake, 55, came from a humble family and once sold toffees on trains to earn money, that he was hidden by a former teacher when government-backed death squads chased him in the 1980s, and that presidency had not gone into his head and he held no rancour against those who once hunted him. His family continues to live in a simple house in a rural setting without easily accessible roads. In other words, he was not a run of the mill politician Sri Lankans were so used to.

Now that he is in charge of both the presidency and parliament, Dissanayake’s real test has begun. The challenges are formidable. He has not only helped to guide the JVP’s transition from a violent group to one that embraced democracy but has also repaired relations with neighbouring India. (The JVP had traditionally viewed India as a devil.) The NPP will need to develop Sri Lanka’s tottering economy, uplift people’s lives, check inflation, ensure welfare measures Sri Lankans are used to without jeopardising the IMF bailout, tackle endemic corruption, go for national reconciliation and – very important – not give up on democracy or let power corrupt the new rulers too.

Time alone will say if Dissanayake will succeed. But it cannot be denied that he has, at least for now, emerged as a unifying figure in Sri Lanka like none before. To that extent, the NPP’s victory is indeed good news