Is Eelam Inevitable?

A decade has passed since the IPKF was expelled from Sri Lanka by the island’s maverick nationalist president, Ranasinghe Premadasa. From India’s original intervention in Sri Lanka in 1987, Premadasa had been opposed not only to the IPKF but Indian involvement in Sri Lanka’s affairs. Like most Sinhalese, he saw the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 as an instrument of imperialist oppression and considered the IPKF an occupying army. As prime minister under J.R. Jayawardene in 1987, he even went so far as to boycott Rajiv Gandhi’s Sri Lanka visit. When he became president in 1989, such was his haste to expel the Indians that he helped arm the Tigers to defeat the Indian army. When this didn’t work, he announced publicly that the IPKF was no longer welcome in Sri Lanka, without first informing New Delhi-a slight several changes of government in India have not been quick to forget.

The rupture led to an enduring rift, which began to heal only with the ascendancy of Chandrika Kumaratunga to the presidency. Harking back to her mother Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s ties to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, Kumaratunga was quick to assure India that she would like to see a healing of the rift and made all the right noises. Egged on by Delhi, she even backed, albeit reluctantly, a new package of constitutional reforms. However, by maintaining a constant barrage of invective against the opposition UNP, she effectively ensured that the package would fail to muster opposition support and therefore founder.

Like her predecessors, Kumaratunga first turned to peace talks with the LTTE. Sadly, the negotiators she sent were all inexperienced and, worst of all, entirely composed of Sinhalese. When the Tigers reverted to war in 1995, Kumaratunga made it her stated intention to weaken them militarily until they had no choice but to negotiate with her, on her terms. Ironically, the tables seem now to have been turned.

With a general election due in just five months, this situation could not have been worse timed for Kumaratunga. With characteristic impetuosity, under the guise of putting the country on a war footing, she imposed stringent media censorship and draconian regulations to prevent political activity and criticism of her or her government. There is little doubt in the public mind, however, that the regulations are focused entirely at propping up her failing popularity and hiding the bitter truth from the Sri Lankan people. Sadly, the opposition UNP has found itself unequal to the job of standing up to Kumaratunga and opted to grumble mutely rather than confront the beleaguered president.

Meanwhile, India, in this past decade, has held silent. Although at independence in 1948 Sri Lanka was immeasurably more prosperous and better managed than India, five decades of attrition by successively incompetent and self-serving governments have reduced the island to beggary. During these five decades, it was fashionable for Sinhalese to claim that Tamil Nadu was interested in increasing its reach into Sri Lanka’s Tamil-dominated Northern Province, the grass being greener here. What is more, while India was in the ‘70s and ‘80s still associated with the decaying communist bloc and archaic Third World politics like non-alignment, Sri Lanka was westward-looking and consumerist, on the verge of transforming an agricultural economy into an industrial one. So inward-looking have the Sri Lankans been that they failed to notice the transformation that is taking place in India following the economic reforms. The New India, looking to be the regional leader not just in terms of population and size but also in terms of economic strength and prosperity, is something still largely not recognised in Sri Lanka.

With these happy distractions added to the bitter experience of the past, it’s clear Delhi is no longer anxious to involve itself in Sri Lankan affairs. Now, given the readiness with which Pakistan and Norway have chosen to do so, India is left with no real choice. Just as important, after a decade of suspicion, UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe appears to have mended his party’s fences with New Delhi and welcomed Indian mediation in resolving the conflict. But with the LTTE’s recent military successes, a ceasefire imposed by India is unlikely to be popular with the Tigers and also their supporters in India and elsewhere.

Even otherwise, there is little hope for a mediated settlement given the LTTE’s intransigence. After almost a quarter century of war and enormous sacrifices, they are unlikely now to settle for a regional council or even a federal state, which they could have had for the asking all along. The battle is for Eelam and from the Tigers’ point of view, the only relevant negotiations are to decide where the boundaries should be drawn. The principle of Eelam, it seems, is not negotiable. The question the Sinhalese have to face is, are they tired enough of war now to concede a state? More and more people answer this with a "Yes, but..." rather than a straight "No" these days. While many Sinhalese would now be ready to concede Jaffna and perhaps even the Northern Province, they are concerned about the LTTE’s likely expansionist tendencies.

Given the weak and unprincipled political leadership to which the Sinhalese have been heir, bolstered by the Buddhist clergy’s antipathy to a secular polity, it is unlikely that a workable solution short of cessation will be workable. But the likely outcome in the foreseeable future is that the Sinhalese will continue to fight not so much through principle but hoping that they can endure longer than the Tigers can. Besides, no government ceding sovereign real estate to the Tamils is likely to survive, for which reason Prabhakaran can’t expect to gain his goal without a lot more bloodshed on both sides. For India, there are no easy options. For Sri Lanka, things are worse: there are no options, period.

(The author is the editor of The Sunday Leader, Colombo)