Inaccuracy of “Chest-beating”
Politics of Tamil Nadu

by KUSAL PERERA

This article reached us quite sometime ago but could not be used earlier due to unavailable reasons.

In Tamil Nadu, the continuing spate of recent violent, rowdy protests targeting innocent Sri Lankan civilians visiting Tamil Nadu and India on purely private and religious tours, define how empty and extremist and therefore emotional and violent they can turn out to be, when picking on the Sri Lankan Tamil issues. The recent escalation of these violent anti-people mob attacks, since they last set upon a group of Sri Lankan pilgrims in Chennai in August 2011, is generally attributed to the two lager political entities, the DMK and AIADMK, trying to outdo each other in their warped sloganising of the Sri Lankan Tamil issue. Karunanidhi went about with TESO that wasn’t noticed by the Tamil political parties in Sri Lanka, but for Jayalalithaa, it wasn’t right, if she did not outdo him by sending off a Sri Lanka schoolboy football team and punishing an employee of a stadium.

The two have their own very vested interests in parting and aligning with the Sri Lankan Tamil conflict, depending on where they are in terms of State Assembly power and elections. During the past decade or two, they have proved they can swap positions on the Sri Lankan Tamil issue. After the conclusion of the war in Sri Lanka, during which time Karunanidhi stood by Delhi and Jayalalithaa stayed mute, the Tamil lobby in Tamil Nadu fell into the hands of the smaller fry who campaigned against the war and thus took a foothold in the backyards of Tamil politics, there. Some thus turned out as colourful Tamil Nadu Tamil “heroes”, but have a very limited understanding of the Sri Lankan Tamil issue, now crying against “genocide” and demanding the Rajapaksas be hauled before the Hague, ICC for “war crimes”. They have adopted as their rallying call, a separate “Thamil Eelam” for the Sri Lankan Tamils, not in support of those who survived the war and are still struggling to have a respected, decent life in their own land, but to be in vogue with the now splintered and fighting Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora.

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HOW does this narrow, incredibly out-of-step politics kicking up protests and mob violence in TN, help the Tamil people living in a war devas-tated, post-war society? Any solidarity organised by one, for any other fraternity in any part of the world, has one cardinal rule in mobilising people for support. That solidarity should not in any way push a wholly different agenda, on contradicting demands and slogans. It has to be solidarity for the political demands campaigned for by that very people, for whom solidarity is for. In this modern, democratic world, where politics is for further democratisation of the society, its structures and institutes, all lobbying, protests and demonstrations should be intellectually disciplined from the beginning. It is this single and most vital political factor, the Tamil Nadu extremists from Nam Thamizhar Iyakkam, Marumalarchi DMK, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal, May 17 Movement and such like parties and groups keep raping, for their own petty interests and in competition between them.

Therefore, right now, it is necessary to glance through the recent Sri Lankan Tamil history. Mainstream Tamil politics in Sri Lanka, from Ananda Sangaree to all affiliates of the TNA, has very clearly left behind the separatist demand for a “Thamil Eelam”, thanks to Prabhakaran and his LTTE. This needs to be stressed openly for any future record of both Sri Lankan politics and its modern Tamil political history. The massacre of the Tamil people in Vanni and other parts of the North and East in a very ruthlessly fought war, became possible only when Prabha-karan stubbornly decided to have Rajapaksa as the Executive President of Sri Lanka in November 2005, on the most racist Sinhala platform that refused to accept a “United” country, refused any form of power devolution and was fiercely rejecting the ceasefire agreement signed by PM Wickramasinghe in February 2002. Prabhakaran was adamantly against Wickramasinghe, who stood for all what Rajapaksa opposed at the 2005 November presidential polls with all political circles and critics accepting that Tamils would almost en bloc vote Wickramasinghe. They expected some form of devolved power beyond the 13th Amendment, in finally leaving the armed conflict behind, as history.

These numbers therefore become not only interesting but very vital too. The Jaffna district in 2005 had a registered voter strength of 701,938 that was almost all Tamil, while Vanni had 250,386 with about 25 per cent Muslim and 08 per cent Sinhalese. The whole of the Eastern province squared off with around one-third for each of the three ethnicities. Postal voting for the 2005 November 17th presidential polls was fixed for November 6 and 7. The first attempt at testing the effectiveness of a Tamil boycott of the presidential polls was on November 6, when the LTTE used a fake Tamil Trade Union Federation as proxy, calling for a boycott. The message was nevertheless pretty clear with local LTTE political cadres giving it the official brand needed. Voting at all postal voting centres in Jaffna district was much less than 10 per cent. Thereafter, during the next nine days before the elections, the LTTE had their official call for a total boycott of the presidential elections, using the argument, the Tamil people will not be a participant in electing a President for the “Sinhala” country.

What followed was disastrous not only for the Tamil people, but for Sinhala and Muslim people too. Rajapaksa managed a very meagre majority of 180,786 votes over the UNP’s Wickramasinghe and had only 28,632 votes more than the required 50 per cent. Rajapaksa’s victory thus needs to be seen in the backdrop of Prabhakaran’s boycott call that had only 7868 votes polled in Jaffna district, out of over seven lakhs. If the usual percentage of over 70 per cent polling at presidential elections is a benchmark, then around five lakhs of voters should have voted in Jaffna district alone. Even after discounting the sizeable percentages of non-polling in other Tamil constituencies, if Prabhakaran did not take that suicidal and politically dumb decision to boycott elections, Rajapaksa would have lost by at least four lakhs votes and there would never have been this brutal war, for the Tamil Nadu extremists to shout “genocide”.

Therefore Prabhakaran and his LTTE cannot be left out as innocent of all the tragedies the Tamil people now have to live with in post-war Sri Lanka and have in such tragedy changed Tamil politics, all round. There is no more space for any separatist slogans and the TNA, on whom the responsibility of shaping Tamil politics in Sri Lanka now lies, is treading on a very pragmatic platform that keeps devolution of power beyond the 13th Amendment as the only possible solution for the Tamil people living in the North-East provinces. They have also brought in other immediate issues that are tied to democratisation of the North-East in particular, but would in effect democratise the whole Sri Lankan society. These issues range from heavy militarisation to illegal Tamil armed groups working with State forces, Tamil political detainee issues, land disputes and resettlement and demographic tinkering in Tamil areas. All issues the LLRC too had to concede as important and urgent.

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HERE lies the basic political contradiction between democratic Sri Lankan Tamil politics and the narrow, wholly alienated slogans of Tamil Nadu extremists who wish to show they are in solidarity with Sri Lankan Tamil aspirations. Tamil Nadu extremists are calling for a separate “Thamil Eelam” for the Sri Lankan Tamils, a call no more in Tamil politics, in Sri Lanka. Worst is, they don’t ask for a Thamil Eelam for themselves in Tamil Nadu. “Separate State” politics was dropped by C.N. Annadurai himself in 1963. He was a pioneer campaigner next to Periyar Ramasamy. The question that thus arises now is: if the Tamils in Tamil Nadu can enjoy their political identity and democratic rule within a power-sharing system of governance in India, having dropped the demand for a separate State 50 years ago, then why demand one from Tamil Nadu, for the Sri Lankan Tamils?

There is good reason for such contradictions in the politics of these petty groups in Tamil Nadu. They lack a broad political outlook in their own national politics. Any political party or group that lacks a political overview of their own national politics, cannot position any other struggle in its right perspective. These vociferous Tamil groups in Tamil Nadu have never been seen taking any position on the Jammu and Kashmir autonomy, while they demand an “Eelam” for the Sri Lankan Tamils. They have not been heard demanding the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), in support of their own ruthlessly suppressed and agitating people in J&K and the North-East States. They have not been seen agitating against “fake encounters” and custodial killings taking place across India.

In short, they have not been defining their own democratic political programme in Tamil Nadu, before they ventured into solidarity campaigning for the Sri Lankan Tamils. Obviously, they don’t have any clear political understanding of the Sri Lankan Tamil political perspective as it had evolved after Velupillai Prabhakaran committed “hara-kiri” by helping Rajapaksa ascend the presidency. Obviously too, they cannot serve Sri Lankan Tamil politics when they cannot with intellect, understand their own reason(s) for political existence and agitations, other than their wild and roused emotions.

Writer Kusal Perera is a political columnist and journalist residing in Sri Lanka, contributing to both Sinhala and English media, while also playing an activist role in human rights and democratic movements.