The Spectre of Dravidastan
By R.Venugopal
Dayan Jayatilleka's review of Tamil Nadu and the Indian model is a sensible, measured, lucid articulation of the problem at hand. His article makes a compelling and convincing logical exposition of the parameters within which the possible settlement of the ethnic conflict can meaningfully take place - and partisans of all stripes should be forced to read it. Arguably there is little new here, but it nevertheless manages to untangle the present knot of possibilities with the kind of clarity and honesty that is otherwise uncharacteristic of the spokesmen of the present government (which is often accused of many things - but rarely of clarity or honesty).
The only thing that is surprising, coming from someone as intelligent and well-read as DJ is the relapse into the kind of Dravidastan-phobia that certain Sinhalese politicians built a career on in the 1940s-80s. The idea that Tamil Nadu poses a civilizational-historic threat to Sri Lanka and is a repository of deeply imbued anti-Sri Lankan, anti-Sinhala atavism (presumably going back to their distant Cholan ancestors) is a recurrent theme in contemporary Sinhala nationalist writings. But it is a sentiment that most of India's 60 million Tamils would be a little surprised to learn of.
[Children at the Buddha Smiles Garden of Peace School near Vellore in Tamil Nadu-pic: David Reid]
The vast majority of people in Tamil Nadu are not imbued with a deep historically devolved antipathy towards the island or people of Lanka. School-children in Tamil Nadu are not filled with hatred for their southern neighbours, and are not taught historical myths that single out the Sinhalese as an ancient and implacable enemy to remain suspicious of. Everyone knows the Ramayana, but young Tamil children are not taught that they bear the burden of some sacred unfulfilled historical mission to over-run the island or to support a secessionist movement for their cousins there.
Far from it. Closer to the truth is the ego-shattering reality that they couldn't care less. The people of Tamil Nadu including its politicians and intelligentsia, are not obsessed with the small island to their south and do not spend very much of their time thinking of it, except to the extent that the persistent tragedy of the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict keeps injecting it into their consciousness through the news media. Outside of this, and before this endless war came to fill their TV screens and newspapers, Sri Lanka simply did not feature in the formation of popular historical-political consciousness of Tamil Nadu. The fact that it is imagined to do so is more telling about the state of Sinhala nationalism than Tamil Nadu, and perhaps reflects a measure of narcissism rather than paranoia.
Neither does the island of Lanka feature even in the wildest cartographical hallucinations of the most extreme Dravidian nationalists of the past. The so-called maps of Dravidastan that the fellow-travellers of the DK movement produced in the 1950s did not include any part of the island of Lanka within it. It was a (short-lived, hastily abandoned) agenda for the secession of the southern part of the Indian peninsula, but which had no reference outside this region. Furthermore, it was largely the product of the fertile minds of a small nationalist intelligentsia dominated by imaginative cinematic and literary personalities, and had no relevance among the largely illiterate and extremely impoverished masses of Tamil Nadu. If Tamil Nadu exists as an 'existential threat of long historical duration', then it does so only within the imagination of contemporary Sinhalese nationalism in the course of projecting its own image, world view, and historical imagination onto an enemy that that long refused to reciprocate in kind.
Before 1983, Sri Lanka had relevance in the consciousness of Tamil Nadu only in the sense that it was a destination for migrant labourers until the 1940s, and, for a brief period of time from 1977-83, was a favoured destination for Tamil Nadu's smugglers to source electronics and other white goods then unavailable in India. Much has been made of the links between India's Dravida movement and Sri Lanka's Eelamists, but despite the conspiracy theories that emerged from New Delhi and Colombo, these links did not actually exist in concrete form until after July 1983. In other words, whatever support exists in Tamil Nadu for the Tamil Eelam movement is of the delayed, reactive sort. By no stretch of the imagination was it a pre-emptive irredentism, much less one that went back to antiquity.
[Garlanded portrait of M.G. Ramachandran, at a March 2008 rally in Chepauk, Chennai]
Sri Lankan Tamil nationalists may well have drawn inspiration from Dravida nationalism, and militants might even have sought safe haven across the straits. But from the Indian side, such support at an active level simply did not exist until the news of the riots hit the newspapers, with tens of thousands of survivors with heart-rending stories washing onto the shores of Tamil Nadu. From that point onwards, the Eelam issue became briefly injected into Tamil Nadu's electoral politics, with rival politicians competing with one another to be seen to provide relief for the refugees, and to patronise the different militant groups. As is widely known now, the ruling chief minister M.G. Ramachandran was close to the LTTE, while the opposition leader M.Karunanidhi supported the TELO.
For a short while, the Tamil nationalism of India was indeed in active fraternal collaboration to assist the Tamil nationalists of Sri Lanka to carve out a separate state for themselves. This agenda enjoyed the support of a large part of the Tamil Nadu population during that time. But this brief twilight of inter-Tamil affection was transformed in the whirlwind of national, regional and global events of 1987–1991. The period following Rajiv Gandhi's assassination brought about a sea-change in the sentiments of the Tamil Nadu electorate towards the LTTE, and towards militant separatism in general, that remain true to this day. The Ananda Vikatan survey aside, there are two major internal dynamics underway that militate against continued Tamil Nadu support for militancy and separatism in Sri Lanka – and these are factors that the votaries of the Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism would also do well to consider.
Firstly, Indian politics has been turned on its head in the last 25 years, so that it is no longer a Congress dominated central government that rides roughshod over the states any more, as in the days of Indira Gandhi. Since December 1984, no single Indian party has won a clear stand-alone majority in parliament. By the mid-1990s, the equation had changed totally so that it was the provincial satraps that came to dictate the terms of occupancy in New Delhi. What this means in reality is that India's current policy towards Sri Lanka is as much the creation of DMK patriarch M.Karunanidhi as anyone else. Karunanidhi himself is no longer a Tamil Nadu politician as such, but is among the most powerful men ruling India as a whole, playing in a much bigger game, for much higher stakes than the parochial little politics of Tamil Nadu will allow. If India today agrees to limited military cooperation with Sri Lanka, and continues to shun the LTTE, this is as much Karunanidhi's doing as anyone else.
[Political poster in Tamil Nadu, proclaims "Leader Karunanidhi, capable of governing the world"-pic by: Carol Mitchell]
Secondly, the experience of militant separatism, religious violence and terrorist bomb blasts in India since the early 1980s has rendered the population, and particularly the middle-classes and influential opinion-makers hostile to the idea of secessionism as goal and violence as method. It remains the case that a large portion of the actual violent deaths in India over the past 20 years have been committed at the hands of the Indian security forces themselves in places like Punjab, Assam and Kashmir, or by blood-thirsty mobs of the Hindu majority against a largely helpless Muslim minority. But nevertheless, the present mood in Tamil Nadu as much as the rest of India is such that it is highly unlikely that there will be active support for militant separatism. Even without taking into account the lingering anger at Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, the popular sentiment in Tamil Nadu as the rest of India is very ill-disposed to the LTTE's agenda, as is evident from the fact that it is championed only by maverick and fairly marginal personalities.
All this brings us back to the question of what explains the support for separatism in the Ananda Vikatan survey. Leaving aside the question of the bona fides of the survey, and its methodology, what it implies in reality is not support for secessionism as much as hostility and revulsion for the present government, and deep sympathy for the humanitarian plight of Sri Lanka's Tamils, who are once again found washed ashore and huddling miserably on the beaches of Rameswaram.
To some extent, it reflects the fact that the news media in Tamil Nadu, especially the Tamil-language media is indeed biased and one-sided, and disproportionately features the views, concerns and interpretations of Sri Lankan Tamils, and pro-LTTE spokesmen over the Sinhalese. This much is to be expected of it. The Tamils of India are by and large ignorant of the political aspirations and historical consciousness of their Sinhalese neighbours across the straits – just as the fanciful portrait of Dravidastan reflects the same in reverse. What is different now, though is that this is the first time in 20 years that such purportedly pro-Eelam noises have come out of Tamil Nadu, and there is nothing to explain it other than the exceptionally poor international image that the Rajapakse government has willfully cultivated for itself.
DJ is entirely correct that the opinion of Tamil Nadu has no bearing on the solution of the conflict, and that it is Sri Lanka that must do its soul searching and find its own solution. To put it mildly, violence and communal strife are no strangers to the mainland of the subcontinent, and the good people of Tamil Nadu would do well to keep their own house in order before preaching secession elsewhere. The failed experience of the recent internationally sponsored peace process certainly reiterates the necessity for an internally generated solution that is designed and led by men and women of stature who command respect, and who can win over the naysayers, pessimists and hysterical chauvinists who will doubtless want to swing public opinion against it. But the concern is that such statesman-like behaviour is unlikely to arise in an environment where one side emerges swaggering and triumphant from the battlefield, vindicated only by blunt military force. It is also unlikely to rise from a nationalist milieu which fills the world around it with imaginary enemies, and projects itself and its own prejudices onto these (reluctant) foes.
4 Comments
In Sinhala folklore there is reference to a "hinganage
vanaya" - roughly translated it will be"beggar's wound"
Lankan politicians whom you describe as having "made a career" of anti-Tamilnadu sentiments here went to town on this.
For their own survival the anti-Tamilnadu/Indian factor must be kept on the boil. Over ten million idiots are willing to believe anything said in this regard to The half-wit JVPs only platform today is a pronounced anti-Indian stand. When I read/hear that ignorant windbag Wimal Weerawansa I am reminded of what Disraeli said of Gladstone "The man is inebriated in the exuberence of his own verbosity."
These jerks have no following outside the Island though they are kings to an army of ill-educated Sinhala youth numbering in the region of about 300,000 spread throughout the island - mostly in the deep South (Galle-Matara-Hambantota Districts) where the caste factor is strong. Many of them are unemployable Arts Graduates schooled in Sinhala. I have been a visitor to Tamilnadu from 1963 almost several times annually - and totally endorse what you say.
The Lankan factor is hardly in the thinking of the average Tamilnadu man/woman - while the twist given here is totally different.I hope those who fashion opinion in Sri Lanka - notably the Sinhala-reading academics - have a look at your timely piece.
Those with a Western orientation like DJ, Rajiv Wijesinghe, Ajith Cabral (the brains trinity) know this all too well but then one has to sing for one's supper, eh?
My fear is by the time belated enlightenment hits our "leaders" - in bits and pieces - it may be too late
and we will have a further candidate for the next useless charade of SAARC which is more NATO than Nato itself. You know what I mean.
Congrats on a fine piece.
Sinhala politicians have overplayed the South Indian (Tamilnadu) card here for their political ascendancy and sometimes survival since the 1950s creating an illusory "Tamil" bogey, which the gullible Southern electorate predictably swallows with ease. Today, the fractured JVP has no other platform but to raise the "Indian conspiracy"
as oxygen for their fastly arriving demise. The only common factor between the Amarasinghe and Weerawansa factions is an engineered hatred against India. But the tragedy for the Lankan Tamils is although they have had cause for Tamilnadu's and India's serious
concern since the 50s - despite help to some of the militant groups both by the Karunanidhi and MGR factions in the early 80s and their successors since then - the Tamilnadu political entity for decades now has failed to project the problems of the Lankan Tamils engaging the engineered discrimination that has been set in motion increasingly against them over the years - often State-inspired - in almost all fronts in civil life. There has been hardly an endeavour to project in India the sufferings of their Lankan cousins for over 50 years. There has not been a carefully structured or organised program to help Lankan Tamils other than cosmetic efforts. It is only during times of Elections the Lankan Tamil issue is projected to the attention of the people of Tamilnadu and thereafter this dies down. The Press in Tamilnadu too has not taken
a serious and sustained view to focus on this issue to attract neither Madras (Chennai) nor New Delhi's attention save the occasional article, editorial etc. Therefore, the sufferings of the Lankan Tamils is not sufficiently known by the vast majority of Tamils other than a cursory reference or concern at times of high profile events in Sri Lanka involving mass deaths or disaster to Tamils.
This is one of the reasons there is an indifference of sorts in Tamilnadu that the writer describes. Perhaps if there is a more vigorous effort to focus on the continued sufferings of Lankan Tamils in the Tamil Press and Media in Tamilnadu it is possible there will be greater pressure both in the legislature in Chennai and the political establishment in New Delhi for a more pronounced and considered programme - that in no way impinges on Sri Lanka's sovereignty and yet proceeds on a path to peace to the relief of Tamilnadu, New Delhi, GoSL and hopefully lasting good to Lankan Tamils. Now that the past is gone it is perhaps useful to make amends in this regard in the Indian side - particularly when the academic community in Colombo - some of whom able to help GoSL shape policy - are wearily conceding some form of self-government for Lankan Tamils. Batticoloa in the EP already has this. A careful analysis of LTTE's demands and the public statements of GoSL the area between them is steadily narrowing. For instance, there is greater focus on the serious implementation of the 13th Amendment - the centrepiece of Prof Vitharana's Committee, there is acceptance to devolve Land and Police functions to the PC's etc It is upto GoSL to manage and overcome the obstinacy of the Sinhala extremist fringe - notably that coming from the JHU, JVP, PNM and of individuals like Champika Ramanayake and Dinesh Gunawardena - all of whom combined do not count over 2% of the popular ballot and yet men who owe their Cabinet positions to a sustained, shrill and uncompromising anti-Tamil line
Lord Mansfield once said “true liberty can exists only when justice is equally administered to all”. The problem we have in Sri Lanka(SL) is the oppression arising from political injustices, in various forms, to the Tamils citizens in general and to the people of North East (NE) in particular. The first major injustice arose from the adamant refusal to grant self rule through Federalism.
Therefore, any political solution we suggest or think should remedy the injustices inflicted to the Tamils thus far, from the year 1956.
Any people cannot remedy any inflicted injustices unless they know genuinely the wrong done to someone else. Self analysis is vital for remorsefulness.
The Sinhalese politicos and the Sinhalese owned media have developed, over the past 60 years, a “culture of injustice” to Tamils and are arrogantly holding on to it. Resultantly, there is a united Sinhalese refusal to grant the legitimate right of the people of NE to rule themselves. SL is deaf to any advise from others.
SL was thrown out of the UN Human Rights Council because the government and the Sinhalese do not want to listen to anybody, even if it is pertaining to justice to grant human rights to Tamils. IIGEP experts, appointed by the Commonwealth, with a view to install a proper and equitable justice system, had to abandon their work for lack of willingness from the government.
When the Sinhalese are unable or unwilling to think justly and walk humbly, liberty cannot come at all to the people living in the areas of NE.
We all should understand clearly that what happened in 1948, when Ceylon became a dominion under Britain was the creation of the union of three earlier kingdoms. The union was a marriage brokered by Britain.
When the South unilaterally declared SL to be a republic in 1972, with constitutional contents unjust to Tamils, the Tamils realised that the marriage was not working at all and decided in 1977, by popular vote, to create Tamil Eelam. The marriage was not working because of “a dominant and stubborn husband”. From 1977 upto now there are no meanigful signs that the marriage would ever work. Because of failure to institue timely divorce, the husband is even cruely beating up the wife and children !!! There is a violent and cruel War.
There are only two possible options when nations come to a “point of no return” in unworkable marraiges of nations.
Firstly, there is the option of an “amicable divorce”. More than 100 years ago Norway and Sweden boldly took that decision. That decision was highly appreciated by Lenin. About 50 years ago Malaysia and Singapore took the same decision for an “amicable divorce”. All the “divorced” countries are doing very well now. SL has the option to decide as to whether NE should be amicably divorced.
Secondly, there is the option of “violent break up”. If amicable divorce fails, the second option becomes inevitable, if the husband nation is adamant and stubborn. This happened within 50 years in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. SL should realise that the second option is more hurting than the first one.
Courage and wisdom are required to bring about “amicable divorce” in the island instead of doing things for “a violent break up” resulting in hatred, enmity and destruction. The pertinent question is “Do we have a strong leader capable of doing just that? My answer to the question is an unequivocal “NO” .
Political problems can be resolved only with the help of political experts, neither by military warfare nor state terrorism. Any logical and pragmatic political solution to the problem in the North East(NE) can never be found because of the Buddhist clergy in Sri Lanka(SL), though wearing robes, have become neither clergy nor politicians.
Yesterday, the "Mahanayake of Asgiriya Chapter" spoke against terrorism but never mentioned of prevailing state terror. State terror, though earlier in the NE is now at his door step in the South. Also yesterday, JVP warned the government for "state terrorism" against its political supporters.
The difference between politics in the NE and the South is that in the South, contrary to civilised political and spiritual norms all over the world, the Buddhist clergy make political pronouncements. But in the NE, Hindu, Christian and Muslim priests do not rightly make political pronouncements.
The curriculum of Buddhist priests does not include political Science, let alone Social Science. Yet in SL, they are "heavy weights" in politics in the South idiotising masses, making them neither political nor spiritual. Though Buddhism requires the denial of desires, the monks desire politics too much ending up even in the legislature.
The political party leaders go on their bended knees to please the monks. Mahinda goes even on his belly. The South is in a messy political situation because of this. Even the war in the NE is because of the continuous fingering of monks in political and miltary decisions from the 1950's. They even spoilt SWRD Bandaranayake with the devil inside of them and misled him to Sinhalised politics. A monk finally gunned SWRD down showing to the whole world that they are a vicious lot.
Since then, there is a curse to politics in SL from this brand of monks. They rarely speak wisdom, thinking of the welfare of ALL the citizens in the island. Instead, their concern is about Sinhala Buddhists only.
Although, Buddhism advocates non violence and non killing, the pronouncents by the Buddhist monks from the top to bottom have a hidden intent to kill Tamils, exterminate them and take control of NE; which is genocidal and criminal.
The world community should have banned the import of this killer Buddhist cult philosophy into their countries long ago and imposed travel ban to selected "loud speakers" of genocide.
A separate independent state of Eelam would be inevitable, unless the Buddhist monks in SL are made to "shut their gap" on political matters.