NDP (Sri Lanka) – May Day Declaration

April 28, 2009 by Leave a Comment

The following is the text of the May Day declaration issued by the Central Committee of the New-Democratic Party.

The on-going cruel war in the North has plunged the Tamil people into an unprecedented human tragedy. With attacks continuing incessantly, tears and blood flow like rivers. The people who emerged from the besiegement of war have been herded into camps without even the basic facilities, in Vavuniya and the Jaffna peninsula. The scenes in the Vanni are much like those obtaining in countries such as Somalia and Sudan. At the same time, the financial and economic crisis that has developed in the South has severely affected the workers, peasants and other toiling masses and severely burdened their lives. India on the one hand and the US and the West on the other are seeking to use the war conditions and the economic crisis to strengthen their respective hegemonic holds on the country. Neither the ruling Mahinda Chinthanaya government nor the UNP, which is striving to come to power, have the ability to rescue the country and the people from this dangerous situation and solve the problems faced by them. Military victory and electoral success based on it will only help to strengthen state power but not serve to provide solutions for the political and economic problems heading towards an abyss. The reality is that there will be no change for the better until the entire workers, peasants and other toiling masses are ready for alternative political thinking and action.

The forthcoming May Day, the day of revolutionary struggle of the workers of the world, is to be celebrated in a new environment in which the workers and oppressed people of the world are launching fresh uprisings. Hence the New-Democratic Party calls upon the people to resolve to mobilise along the path of mass political struggle to urge a just political solution to the national question, which is identified as the main problem facing the country, and to win the rights of all workers including the plantation workers.

The Mahinda Chinthanaya government, since came to power, has not proposed a solution to the national question which has been transformed into war. At the same time, with Indian backing, it is intent on its pursuit of war. Even to this day the government has shown no interest in putting forward a political solution. Likewise, it is preserving indifferent silence on the question of wage increase for plantation workers and other matters affecting the livelihood of the people. Besides, a cabinet sub-committee has proposed a scheme just as disastrous as the Upper Kotmale Scheme, namely that of redistributing large plantations to private smallholders. Through this scheme, the Hill Country Tamils will face severe problems as a class and a nationality, and be forced into a dangerous situation in which they could lose their entire livelihood. Therefore, it is essential to introduce an alternative program and make the plantation workers part of the program.

Also, the climate persists in which democratic, trade union and human rights are being violated and the freedom of the media is being threatened under the State of Emergency. Besides the rejection of demands for wage increases by workers and other employees, security of employment too is being denied.

Although much is spoken about a national economy, liberalisation and privatisation are being carried out in the name of development under the agenda of Globalisation. The country will not see real development or prosperity through them. The war will not be brought to an end. Until a just political solution is put forward for the national question, it will be deception to talk of peace and development for the country.

Hence, on this May Day the New-Democratic Party emphasises that the oppressed working people of the country and the repressed nationalities should mobilise along the path of mass political struggle for the people.

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Halt the mass murder of Sri Lankan Tamils in the Vanni Area

April 10, 2009 by Leave a Comment

PRESS STATEMENT (10th April, 2009)

Contents of Appeal from concerned citizens of South Asia to halt the mass murder of Sri Lankan Tamils in the Vanni Area of North Sri Lanka.

Appeal is addressed to: Respected Mr. Ban Ki Moon, UN Secretary General; Respected Ms Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Dr. Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India and Heads of Government of South Asian Countries
________________________________________________________________________________

We are appalled at reports of mass deaths of Sri Lankan Tamils trapped in a small area of the Vanni region in northern Sri Lanka. Both electronic and print media have reported the death of over 700 Tamils in the last couple of days, with only a section of them being identified as LTTE cadres, meaning thereby that a vast number of those killed are civilians trapped in the area. There are serious apprehensions that thermobaric bomb – a bomb that uses a fuel-air explosive capable of creating overpressures equal to an atomic bomb – has been used in this mass killing.

For the last several weeks, we have expressed our concerns about this imminent massacre. In fact we pointed out that the possibilities of almost close to 150,000 Tamilians getting affected was not just most probable but real. We also pointed out that the Sri Lankan Government had been dangling this as the fruit of its declared `war on terror’ as the `final victory’ – and that the Government was pushing for the ‘final solution’ before the soon-to-ensue Sinhala New year day falling on 14th April, 2009.

Our worst fears are turning true. The sheer scale of artillery and explosive attacks and the massive deaths of Tamils points out to the grave situation of the Vanni region becoming the graveyard for thousands of Tamil civilians. Now the perceived usage of thermobaric bomb by the mindless Sri Lankan Army and Government has taken the situation beyond limits. Sri Lanka President Rajapakse himself has threatened ‘complete rout and annihilation’ of Tamils.

Sri Lanka has turned a terror state though they keep blaming LTTE as a terrorist outfit. The brazen and insulting manner by which Sri Lankan authorities have attacked any person or agency seeking accountability of the Sri Lankan Government to human rights standards can be gauged by the fact that several British Parliamentarians were forced to take up the issue of being branded terrorists by the Sri Lankan officials in a debate in the UK House of Commons! Even Louise Arbor, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN Special Rapporteur on Extra Judicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Philip Alston were not spared.

The reality is that the Sri Lankan Government has utilised the so called `war on terror’ as a cover to systematically destroy all democratic processes and institutions in Sri Lanka. Government and its minions have turned the state into a terror apparatus, crushing not just the Tamils, but also others challenging its actions. As a result, numerous non-Tamil, Sinhalese citizens have also fallen prey to the Sri Lankan terror state. Journalists have been the major targets with 19 journalists, both Tamil and Sinhala being killed in the last 2 years, over 35 exiled, driven away from the country or silenced, and numerous publications closed down. The assassination of Lasantha Wickramathunge, Editor of Sunday Leader, a widely respected Sri Lankan weekly in January highlights the fate of anyone challenging the ruling dispensation.

Respected and expert UN bodies have investigated and brought out reports about different aspects of the breakdown of democratic and judicial systems. Recently, on 9th February, 2009, 10 top UN Experts issued a statement sharing the deep concern of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights over the rapidly deteriorating conditions facing civilians in the Vanni region and the significant number of civilian casualties. They also deplored the restrictions on humanitarian access to conflict areas which heightens the ongoing serious violations of the most basic economic and social rights.

We are extremely concerned that in this racist genocide war Sri Lankan government is using banned and illegal weapons and ammunitions, including thermobaric bombs which kills vast numbers of people across a wide territory. Sri Lanka security forces have a long record of using cluster bombs and engaging in aerial targeted bombings of civilian areas which are banned under the Geneva Conventions. Sri Lankan Government has never denied the use of cluster bombs. Across the world there is a tremendous outpouring of anguish and agony at the prospects that surviving Tamil civilians will be mass annihilated through the use of weapons of mass destruction. It is therefore very critical that the UN urgently intervene and restrain the Sri Lankan Government from using banned bombs, explosives and weaponry.

It is very important that the truth about the actual use of these ‘weapons of mass destruction’ including thermobaric bombs be independently verified and its source of supply identified. If indeed these horrific weapons have been used, the international community should immediately initiate prosecution of the highest functionaries of the Sri Lankan state and the Government of the country that supplied these bombs for commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

We would also like to point out that the humanitarian crisis has been made worse because the Sri Lankan Government has banned independent observers of UN agencies, the ICRC and other independent institutions from operating in the war zone. It is of utmost importance that independent observers are sent both to monitor the situation as also to ensure humanitarian aid reaches the area.

The innocent Tamil civilians have been living a precarious life without food, water and health supplies for the last several weeks. Emaciated, starved, severely malnourished and seriously injured, the women, children, aged persons and remaining men are already dying. They deserve the protection that can be offered by concerned world citizens who by demanding an end to the war will also be asserting a chance for these innocent men, women and children to live.

As citizens of South Asia, we therefore demand that the UN and the International Community, effectively intervene to ensure immediate cessation of the brutal and savage war in Sri Lanka and ensure immediate humanitarian relief to the suffering thousands caught in the middle of the war. We also call upon the as also the Governments in the South Asian region, viz., the Government of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives to intervene forcefully to stop the genocidal war that threatens peace not just in Sri Lanka, but in all of South Asia.
________________________________________________________________________________
Appeal is jointly issued by:
K.G.. Kannabiran, National President, PUCL, Hyderabad; Justice Rajinder Sachar, former chief Justice, Delhi High Court, Arundhati Roy, New Delhi, Pushkar Raj, General Secretary, PUCL; Pamela Philipose, Women’s Feature Service; Swami Agnivesh, New Delhi, Prof. Amit Bhaduri, Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, Rt Rev. P J Lawrence, Bishop of Church of South India, Diocese of Nandyal, Praful Bidwai, Columnist, New Delhi, Sumit Chakravorty, Editor, Mainstream Weekly, New Delhi; Tapan Bose, New Delhi; Rita Manchanda, South Asia Forum for Human Rights, Nepal; Prof Kamal Mitra Chenoy, School of International Studies and President, JNU Teachers Association, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Ernest Deenadayalan, Bangalore; Pradip Prabhu, Kashtakari Sanghatana, Dahanu/Mumbai; Prashant Bhushan, Advocate, Supreme Court, New Delhi, M.G. Devasahayam IAS (Retd), Chennai, Sukumar Murlidharan, Journalist, New Delhi, Rev. Dhyanchand Carr, Madurai, Henri Tiphagne, People’s Watch, Madurai, MSS Pandian, Chennai, Sushil Pyakurel, Former Commissioner, Human Rights Commission of Nepal, Kathmandu, Mubashir Hasan, Lahore, Pakistan and others
——————–
The Statement of Concerned South Asian Citizens is being released to the press in Chennai by
Dr. V. Suresh, President, People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) – Tamil Nadu/Puducherry,
Chennai Contact Details: +91-94442-31497; rightstn@yahoo.com
Delhi: Sahana Basavapatna (+91 9968296202); Bipin Kumar (+91 9868280198), The Other Media.

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MP Suresh Premachandran – Impunity in Sri Lanka

March 4, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Suresh Premachandran, Parliament member from Sri Lanka talks about impunity and violation of inalienable rights of Tamil people in Sri Lanka. Suresh is from the northern district of Jaffna in Sri Lanka, currently this area is the most adversely affected by the war. Facing threats to his life for speaking out against government aggression he has moved his family several times in recent years from Sri Lanka, to India, Canada and finally back to India. Suresh talks about the welfare camps, ceasefire agreement, the Sri Lankan government’s want for continuing the war in the name of creating a single ethno country and the need for the global community to speak up. Suresh can be reached at kandiah57@hotmail.com.

Courtesy: Sam Mayfield

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Indian Central Government and Sri Lankan Tamils

February 28, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Vehujanan

Indian central government policy on the national question of Sri Lanka has always given priority to India’s regional interests. Policy making has been aimed at not just exercising hegemony over the whole of South Asia but beyond it to cover the whole of Asia. In particular, it has been compelling every South Asian country to accept its role as ‘big brother’. Refusal has been met with threats or attacks under some pretext. Sri Lanka, for example, has experienced this in the past.

Sri Lanka has strategic importance due to its geographic location in the Indian Ocean. The US, the West and India need the island of Sri Lanka in their respective bids for global or regional dominance. It was when JR Jayawardane, out of loyalty to the US, sought to surrender the country to the US, that Indira Gandhi and India took a keen interest in Sri Lanka. The opportunity came when ethnic violence was unleashed on the Tamils in 1983. India used it as pretext to get involved in Sri Lanka and used the issue as a device to serve its own purposes.

The conservative Tamil nationalist leadership, which was incapable of analysing why India showed an interest or assess it from a long term perspective, trusted India in full faith, from its standpoint of narrow nationalism. It was believed that Tamil Eelam will be carved out for the Tamils like Bangladesh was carved out of Pakistan in 1971 by the Indian armed forces under the leadership of Indira Gandhi. Sadly, a vast majority of the Tamil people were convinced to that effect by the Tamil United Liberation Front. The Tamil nationalists also ridiculed the logical arguments put forward by Marxist Leninists who placed before the people the facts and the objective reality to firmly declare that Tamil Eelam was not feasible in this fashion. They even denounced Marxist and socialist positions and expressed to the hilt their loyalty to India. Another group was immersed in its faith in the US and the West which were instrumental in the creation of Israel.

It was amid such developments that India began to strengthen its position to tighten its grip on the whole of Sri Lanka. The present Mahinda Chinthana government suits that purpose very well. Indian economic infiltration has gushed with speed into Sri Lanka, and has developed to the extent that Sri Lanka could soon be considered a strong colonial possession of India. India will not tolerate anything that stands in the way of this development. The chauvinistic government of Sri Lanka and the hegemonic state of India concur on this. The manifestation of this is evident from the activities of the Mahinda Chinthana government during the past three years.

India has resented the influence and interference of the US, the West and Japan in the Sri Lankan national question. There lies the essence of the inherent rivalry for regional hegemony. Having realised that the international allies of the LTTE had a foothold in the US and the West and knowing the implications of Norwegian facilitation and the role of Ranil Wickramasinghe in it, India began to make its moves; and the Mahinda Chinthanaya government made way for it. Indian hegemonic diplomacy started to act on the economic, political and military fronts. Norway was eased out of its role as facilitator. That was followed by closer ties on the military and political fronts with Sri Lanka, through which there were attacks on the LTTE in the Vanni, military success and a ban on the LTTE.

The US and the West, caught in a dilemma in the context of their strengthening ties with India, found themselves unable to do anything in Sri Lanka and maintain an embarrassed silence. The US and the West are on a low key in the face of the bellowing by the Sri Lankan government about its war against terrorism, since they had already banned the LTTE and Sri Lanka followed suit. Under the conditions, it is only the support from Tamilnadu that is a voice of consolation to the Tamils. But anyone who knows anything of the acrobatics of Tamilnadu politics will also know that it is not a sincere and unanimous voice. The political parties of Tamilnadu can only plead with the central government of India but cannot compel it to do anything. It has not happened in the past and it will not happen in the future either.

The central government of India will not come forward to bring an end to the war in Sri Lanka, since the war in Vanni was commenced on its signal. It has provided military assistance in many ways including the supply of arms. After all this, for the Tamil side to plead with the central government and the Tamilnadu state government is a show of weakness arising from the lack of a policy of self-reliance in struggle.

The Tamil parties conduct themselves in a manner where they seem to plead that, irrespectively of whether they are struck, kicked or spat on by India, India remains their master. Is this not an insult to “the self respecting Tamil race”? It is, however, not possible to change this attitude of expectations on the part of the Tamil leadership. Their reactionary politics is marinated with it.

Members of the Tamil National Alliance made several trips to meet the Indian premier Manmohan Singh, but failed to have even five minutes of hearing. It was said that Sonia Gandhi had pledged to Karunanidhi that Pranab Mukherjee will be sent to Sri Lanka. But the one who turned up was Shivashankar Menon who discussed matters of mutual interest. The unending pleas of the TNA which fail to appreciate the implications of these developments only further humiliate the Tamil people. Rival Tamil leaders will not free themselves of this. One after the other they will seek to define themselves as devotees of India. Indian hegemony thus seems to have penetrated at various levels.

In contrast to this, there is a need for the emergence of honest and far-sighted political forces from among the Tamils. Past experiences need to be studied; and decisions should be based on a long-term view of how the right to self-determination within a united Sri Lanka can be won, and about the policies and principles appropriate to the decisions. There should be clear decisions about who their friends and who the enemies are. The ordinary Sinhalese in the South should be persuaded that it will be possible to build a united, strong and prosperous Sri Lanka by the establishment of autonomies and autonomous units for the nationalities as a political solution to the national question.

No struggle could be won merely with brave fighters and modern weapons alone. The struggle should be a people’s struggle where the people decide their own fate and become the heroes of the struggle. On the other hand, a handful of fighters, however brave they may be, cannot fight on their behalf and win. This is the lesson that history has taught us. That “people and the people alone are the motive force of history” should be an unforgettable lesson of history. In a true struggle of the people, the people have never been defeated. The final victory is always theirs. That requires taking a clear and correct line of struggle. To seek the bases for it is what is essential today for the Tamil people.

Translation of article in Tamil, Puthiyapoomi, Jan-Feb 2009
Courtesy: New Democracy – Theoretical Organ of the New Democratic Party (Sri Lanka), February 2009

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Sri Lanka: Genocide and Other Majoritarian Falsehoods

February 9, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Pothik Ghosh

Majoritarian chauvinism is almost always seen as a natural, if not a fitting, response to fascistic tendencies within a minority community. Sri Lanka has been no exception. The manner in which the triumphal advance of the island-nation’s armed forces into the northern bastion of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have been welcomed the world over, and particularly in India, indicates this has indeed become established wisdom. Buoyed by the current discourse on terrorism, the global opinion seems to have internalised the idea that violence cannot be immoral or unjust as long as it emanates from the state. And yet there could not be a crueler joke at this moment than to offer the imminent victory of the Sri Lanka Army (SLA) over the LTTE as hope of redemption to Tamils of the island-nation. Not only would such a victory weigh heavily against them by reinforcing the oppressive status quo and its configurations of majoritarianised socio-political power; it would completely obscure the origins of authoritarian and bonapartist tendencies among Tamils in the institutionalised Sinhala majoritarianism and the larger fascist conjuncture of Sri Lankan society.

New Delhi is probably being naïve when it continually expresses its concern for the civilian Tamil population of northern Sri Lanka even as it extends complete ‘moral’ support to the SLA’s operations against the Tigers’ apparatus of “terror”. The two simply do not sit together. Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s assertion that the SLA has been extremely careful in preventing collateral damage while mounting and carrying out successful military assaults on the political-military bases of the LTTE is, in that context, entirely disingenuous. And the only claim that exceeds such cant is Colombo’s declaration that it would implement the country’s 13th constitutional amendment for devolution of more powers to the northern province, once the LTTE has been wiped out, to enable the majority Tamil population of that province to realise its aspiration for greater autonomy. For, it is precisely the repeated denial of such autonomy to the Tamils by the majoritarian Sinhala polity and state that jump-started the Tamil separatist insurgency and civil war in Sri Lanka. It is kind of hard to believe that the island Tamils, who failed to wrest such autonomy from the Sinhala state during the heyday of their politics, would be bestowed with such autonomy at a time when they have no real and effective political agency left.

If Colombo does, indeed, effect such devolution, it would be no more than a top-down political manoeuvre, which instrumentalises Tamil autonomy and renders it purely formal. In other words, such institutionalised autonomy would barely be a chimera of the political autonomy the Sri Lankan Tamil struggle, both in its federalist-constitutionalist phase and its more radical separatist-nationalist moment, had sought to accomplish. This struggle for autonomy, albeit articulated by the bourgeois logic of competitive national sovereignty, had potentially posed the question of transforming the unequal configurations of social power and entitlements and their institutionalisation in a Sinhala majoritarian state into a more cooperative, dialogic and egalitarian socio-economic formation and, therefore, a more democratic and participatory state formation. The autonomy the Rajapaksa regime would deliver to the northern Tamils – whose vigorous political struggle for self-determination has almost entirely been exterminated – after it militarily vanquishes the LTTE, would leave the institutionalised structures of majoritarian power, and the unequal social order it is constitutive of, intact. Such autonomy would, therefore, at best create a new strata of Tamil political elite, which would be accommodated by its Sinhala counterparts in a spirit of class collaboration within the existing structures of socio-economic privilege and socio-political power. Meanwhile, the condition of the pauperised Tamil working class – which is already quite handicapped by the disappearance of the vigorous Tamil nationalist struggle and the non-emergence of a real proletarian movement – would only get worse.

That, after all, is exactly what Colombo has achieved in the name of devolution in the other Tamil majority province in the east, which was once also a hotbed of LTTE activity. The Tamils who comprise the supposedly more autonomous provincial government are essentially renegade LTTE elite, including Colonel Karuna, who was Vellupillai Prabhakaran’s eastern satrap till he fell out with the Tiger supremo in what was no more than a power struggle between two sections of the LTTE elite. That this government has delivered neither democracy nor equity to the eastern province is amply indicated by reports of a new power struggle having taken root within the breakaway LTTE faction and its government with the resulting violence spilling over into its wider Tamil-dominated society.

It is nobody’s case, though, that the LTTE is a paragon of national-liberationist and revolutionary virtues. The organisation has become, for its Tamil constituency, a fount of institutionalised military oppression. It has, as a consequence, undermined the very concept of Tamil political autonomy it claims to be fighting for. The question, in such circumstances, is who will decimate and displace the LTTE and how will it be done? To assume, as many including even some liberal sympathisers of Sri Lankan Tamils have, that it does not matter at this juncture if this task of eliminating the authoritarian organisation is accomplished by the security forces of the majoritarian Sinhala state is not only politically misplaced, but ethically troublesome too. The modality of politics constitutive of the ongoing anti-LTTE operation of the SLA sees not only the competitive struggle posed by the LTTE-led Tamil political elite against the Sinhala elite as a threat to the latter’s superior position within the socio-political hierarchy in the region, it even sees whatever is left of the non-LTTE Tamil nationalist impulse rooted in the Tamil working class as a challenge to its position and the hegemony of competitive and stratified capitalist socialisation it embodies. The overrunning of Killinochi, the LTTE’s administrative capital, by the SLA and the current fight to the finish it is waging against Tiger guerrillas in the jungles of Mullaithivu are, therefore, part of a deliberate military-political strategy to destroy not only the LTTE but also, in the bargain, crush all genuine aspirations for Tamil autonomy and empowerment and the concomitant potential desire to shift the paradigm of socialisation from competition and domination to cooperative socio-economic association and socio-political dialogue.

To not recognise this modality of anti-LTTE Sinhala politics, even as the LTTE is castigated for its reactionary and authoritarian strain of Tamil nationalism renders ‘fascism’ into an abstract, one-dimensional moral category and fails to locate it within the larger conjunctural dynamic of capitalism and its institutionalised structures of power. The LTTE’s ossification into a parallel state indicates the transformation of a section of the leadership of the Tamil nationalist resistance into a bureaucratised political elite. This transition, which occurs in all movements for political autonomy, has in this case underscored the failure of a section of the Tamil resistance movement to articulate, not merely subjectively but also objectively, the dialectical interplay between the social and the political. All struggles for political autonomy, whether proletarian or national-liberationist, aim to capture state power. Such seizure of state power is, however, not an end in itself. It is the first step towards reconfiguring institutionalised political power in a fashion that renders the state formation more participatory so that the qualitative and quantitative distribution and circulation of resources, which are constitutive of the differential of socio-political power, are also radically altered to yield a more egalitarian and less exploitative socio-economic order. An anti-LTTE critique and political struggle, which ought to have emerged from within the wider Sri Lankan Tamil society, would have sought to redress the failure of the Tamil nationalist movement on that count. The struggle, which would have sought to displace the LTTE, would not have implied a criticism of the Tigers’ will to capture state power as it would have attempted to do pretty much the same. Rather, it ought to have spelt rejection of the LTTE on behalf of the dispossessed and disenfranchised majority of the Sri Lankan Tamils for its unwillingness to reconfigure hierarchised structures of social power into a maximally democratic, cooperative and dialogic socio-political domain. This struggle, needless to say, would have had to be against the LTTE and the new Tamil political elite it embodies without giving up the larger Tamil resistance against Sinhala chauvinism.

In fact, the continuous forging of alliances among various Tamil nationalist outfits, their frequent disintegration into mutually warring factions, and splits within organisations – ever since the days of the formation of the Tamil United Front in 1972, the Tamil United Liberation Front in 1976 and right up until the mid-’80s – was precisely the churn that resulted from such struggles within the movement among the champions of a Tamil elite constantly in the making and the proponents of Tamil underclasses. That this churn eventually came to an end with the LTTE managing to successfully eradicate all opposition to its Thermidorian ascendancy within the Tamil national movement in Sri Lanka is largely responsible for the current predicament of the Sri Lankan Tamils where they are condemned to choose between two forms of ethno-nationalist authoritarianism.

That the Tamil movement for political autonomy has been a nationalist movement makes this predicament doubly difficult to beat, especially for the Tamil working class. Isaac Deutscher had, in an interview on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the New Left Review in 1967, said: “…even in the revolutionary phase each nationalism has its streak of irrationality, an inclination to exclusiveness, national egoism and racism.” He could well have been speaking about Tamil nationalism.

There is absolutely no doubt that both the initial federalist movement for Tamil autonomy, under the leadership of S J V Chelvanayagam’s Tamil Federal Party, and the violent Tamil nationalist separatism into which it was subsequently transformed, through two decades of the recalcitrant rise and spread of Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinism, were largely centred on a revanchist conception of the indigenous Tamil community’s royalist and feudal past in the northern and eastern parts of the island. And yet it would be equally difficult to deny that the emergence of such politics was entirely on account of the Tamils’ political disenfranchisement, socio-economic dispossession and cultural marginalisation – various moments of a singular political-economic manoeuvre – effected by an extremely repressive and supremacist Sinhala polity. Merely because native Tamil elites of Sri Lanka’s north and east experienced the institutionalised socio-economic marginalisation and political disempowerment of their community as an erosion of their traditional privileges, and have articulated it thus, does not mean that the Sinhala ruling classes have not systematically repressed and pauperised them. Legislation such as the Official Language Act, 1956, which proclaimed Sinhalese as the sole official language, the enactment of a Sinhala-supremacist Constitution in 1972 that made Buddhism into a de-facto state religion, not to speak of various legal and extra-legal measures (riots and pogroms) to socio-economically hold down the Tamils, are examples of how Sinhala majoritarianism has been the local ideological manifestation of the capitalist political economy of economic exploitation, social oppression and political domination. In such circumstances, Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism, which is objectively located in a social group that aspires to liberate itself from socio-political domination and economic marginalisation, cannot be rejected just because its ideological provenance and political tenor have been revanchist and elitist respectively. To quote Deutscher again: “The nationalism of the people in semi-colonial or colonial countries, fighting for their independence must not be put on the same moral-political level as the nationalism of conquerors and oppressors. The former has its historic justification and progressive aspect which the latter has not.”

True, the failure of Sri Lanka’s native Tamils to take up the cause of the Indian origin Tamil plantation workers of the central highlands, when they were repatriated to India in 1964 after the major anti-Tamil pogrom of 1958 in the Sinhala-dominated areas, was precisely on account of this elitist and revivalist orientation of the Tamil autonomy movement. And yet that would only be a partial telling of the story. Most of the blame for the brutal marginalisation, and repatriation (read expulsion) of this indentured community of Tamil workers should be laid on the doors of the Communist Party of Ceylon and the Ceylon Workers’ Party: working class organisations that had been the principal political agency of those central highland Tamils till they gradually began allowing their politics, together with that of other Sinhala liberals, to be by and large subsumed by the right-wing nationalism of the Sinhala elite. That, needless to say, virtually extinguished the fundamentally secular and social transformative politics of the Tamil indentured labourer community. A politics that could have emerged as a more progressive and ecumenical alternative to both the LTTE’s brand of authoritarian nationalism and the majoritarian chauvinism of the Sinhala ruling classes.

Besides, it would be grossly inaccurate to trace the genealogy of LTTE’s autocratic vision of Tamil nationalism to the elitist ideological moorings of the original movement for Tamil autonomy. The emergence of revolutionary guerrilla groups through the mid-’70s to the early ’80s, which either avowed a left-wing nationalist or a Maoist position, shows that nationalism of Sri Lankan Tamils had progressed beyond its elitist beginnings in the quest for federal autonomy towards a politics that sought to envisage national self-determination in terms of a larger project of militant social transformation. That groups such as the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation, Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students, People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam and Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front were eventually wiped out by the LTTE, which had in the meantime degenerated into a bureaucratised and institutionalised cabal of a new Tamil political elite, was as much on account of the tactical, political-military failure of those revolutionary nationalist groups vis-à-vis the LTTE, as the effective support the LTTE elite received from the Indian ruling classes (state) in their collaborative competition against the Sinhala ruling elite on one hand, and the revolutionary nationalist Tamil impulse on the other. All that, however, changed with the arrival of the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka in 1987. The war the IPKF waged against the LTTE signaled a shift in the axis of competitive struggle among various configurations of the regional elite within the larger stratified capitalist hegemony in the region. Clearly, the Indian state was now collaborating with the Sinhala elite in a bid to not only prevent the LTTE’s new political elite from emerging as a force to reckon with within the stratified capitalist order of the region, but to also exterminate all revolutionary Tamil nationalist impulses that could pose a challenge to the hegemony that underpinned this order. The support the current Indian government has been extending to the Sri Lankan Army’s relentless advance into Tiger country, even as it joins Colombo to pay lip-service to the well-being of Tamil civilians “trapped by the LTTE fighters” in the jungles of Mullaithivu, is of a piece with this decades-old Indian imperialistic enterprise of preserving the existing structure of socio-political stratification in the region and the capitalist hegemony that engenders it. It is probably not naïveté after all.

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Sri Lanka: The Way Forward

March 28, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Liberation of the Entire People of Sri Lanka is Possible only by Mass Uprisings

New Democracy 24, March 2007
Theoretical Organ of the New Democratic Party, Sri Lanka

[What follows is a summary paper of a recent discussion among Sinhala and Tamil Marxist Leninist activists. The discussion was aimed at carrying forward the struggle against social oppression, for the liberation of the country from imperialism and hegemony, and the resolution of the national question through solidarity among the nationalities, based on the principle of the right to self-determination. Readers are invited to make their critical observations on this paper so that the ideas contained therein could be dealt with more thoroughly and expanded upon.]

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and the Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) made in 2002 between the then Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe and the LTTE have been in effect until 2006. Armed conflicts, Claymore anti-personnel mine attacks, explosions, murders, kidnappings, disappearances, and arrests that occurred over the past year have rendered them ineffective

The national question and alien forces

In the pretext of supporting the war against terrorism and helping with the peace efforts, forces of imperialism and hegemony are determining the day-to-day conduct of the affairs of this country. Through that the US, the countries of the European Union, Japan and India are exercising hegemony. The economy of this country has been enslaved by India through the one-sided Free Trade Agreement between India and Sri Lanka which only benefits India and through Indian investments in Sri Lanka. Besides, Sri Lanka receives military support from the US, Pakistan and Israel. The CIA, FBI, RAW, Mossad and other such foreign intelligence services are carrying out their espionage activities unhindered.

It is as a result of the stand taken by Sinhala chauvinism and the errors of the Tamil nationalists that there is increased domination by foreign forces; and today the national question has become the main problem and has been left in the hands of foreign forces. As a result of Sinhala domination and its oppressive approach, the Tamil, Muslim and Hill Country Tamil nationalities and national minorities like the Burghers, Malays and the Attho (earlier known as the Veddha) have been subject to untold suffering, cruelty and oppression. The struggles of the oppressed Tamil people have become centred around the LTTE, whose armed activities have been on the rise.

Meanwhile, under the imperialist globalisation programme, neo-liberal economic schemes are being implemented in the agricultural sector as well. While the people are continuing to oppose them in view of their effects, the ruling classes are continuing with them. The programme of globalisation has killed the life cells of a national economy based on self sufficiency. The oppressed peasants, workers and the middle classes are badly affected. It is doubtful under the worsening climate of liberalisation and privatisation whether any of the resources of the country will be left behind for the generations to come.

Dissatisfaction and resistance among the people

Under these circumstances, any reasonable person will protest about the way the ruling classes are governing this country. The people as a whole have reached a state where they are willing to accept that the present anti-people form of government should be replaced by a form of government that gives prominence to the interests of the people.

The constitution, the presidential system of government, and the parliamentary system have failed to protect, among other things, the welfare of the people of Sri Lanka, their honour and self respect, their wealth, and their democratic and human rights. The police, the armed forces and the judiciary seem to be concerned with serving the ruling classes and protecting their interests, and defending the Sinhala hegemony of the upper classes. Meanwhile the workers, peasants, and the employed middle classes are getting ready to take a stand against the exploiting classes and face the challenges.

The current Sri Lankan situation demands the transfer of powers in the hands of the ruling classes to the true representatives of the people. Major changes are required in state power. The people are becoming like dried leaves and a single spark to set the woods alight. They have lost faith in the ruling classes. The old system of government and administration of the ruling classes have reached their limit of incompetence. The ruling classes have forfeited their eligibility to continue to rule the people. Under these conditions, the people of Sri Lanka are affected in many ways, directly and indirectly. Even the comfortably off middle classes and people with considerable wealth are beginning to feel insecure.

A new approach to struggle

Thus, not only the ordinary masses, but also those living in some comfort are compelled to seek changes through alternative political activity. Such alternative politics has to be revolutionary politics.

The characteristic of the ruling classes of Sri Lanka is that of a client of imperialism. On the political and social planes, the policies of the state uphold violence and war as their main approach. There are differences between the methods of struggle against such ruling classes and those against earlier political establishments. There are differences between the strategy and tactics of governance by the old exploiting reactionary classes and those of the present ruling classes based on banditry and terror. One who takes note of these differences cannot be satisfied about the adequacy of the current approaches to struggle.

Hence it is necessary to transform completely the old approaches of the people, to undertake new initiatives and to carry forward new forms of struggle in new directions. Trade union activities of workers and peasants, strikes, electoral political meetings, processions and demonstrations have only provoked harsh responses accompanied by violence, and yielded counterproductive results.

Thus several struggles that are distinct from those of the past need to be carried out, outside the scope of the parliamentary electoral arena and the confines of trade unions, unlike the struggles carried out within and outside the electoral arena, and in ways different from that of traditional propaganda. It is also a historical necessity to function in ways unlike that of NGOs that are confined to a specified framework.

Through elections and the importance given to them, the ruling classes have become more and more privileged. Meantime, even the most ordinary rights of the ruled classes are denied to them.

The armed struggle of the JVP in 1971 and 1988 and the armed struggle for the right to self determination of the Tamil people have led to a feeling of disgust among the people so that they do not want such struggles to emerge. The imperialists and the reactionary ruling class forces have succeeded in this. However, the oppressed people have no choice or alternative but to impair the existing system of government and the ruling classes through the correct form of struggle and establish a meaningful democratic government. To achieve that, new forms of mass struggle with fresh meaning should be launched. It is in that way that great mass struggles and uprisings take place across the globe.

Lessons from earlier struggles

Owing to the errors of the leadership, the hatral of 12th August 1953, despite popular participation on a massive scale, could not be developed into a mass uprising. Various strikes, including the July 1980 strike, resistance campaigns by the people, and mass demonstrations have, owing to the activities of bogus left forces and mischievous NGOs, and contrary to expectations, helped the ruling classes. The exploited and ruled classes have continued to be affected. We need to advance by learning from these experiences.

It cannot be denied that people have won some rights and that some significant political changes have been achieved through mass movements and resistance campaigns. But the leadership was captive to the predominance of anti-people forces. These struggles were, in general, used to achieve the political goals of the UNP and the SLFP, and used until the leadership was granted its opportunity.

A new mass uprising becomes necessary

Today, a political climate prevails in which the people stand face to face against the ruling classes, their political enemy. That confrontation requires no less than a fundamental social change and to that end urgently demands a new popular uprising under the appropriate radical change in political leadership. The maturing of this condition and the achievement of a victorious situation depends on the entire Sri Lankan people.

At the mention of mass uprising and mass struggle, some jump to protest that they will be ruthlessly suppressed by the terrorist ruling classes, chauvinists and fascists, and will only pave the way to further reinforcement of state power to unprecedented levels. They would also claim that the people will be subject to suffering. People who argue in this fashion do not see popular uprising as a correct path of struggle to protect the people.

Those who accept popular uprising as the path for struggle need to pay attention to the new meaning, the new form and the new workings of the popular uprising for social change. It is necessary to prepare an alternative economic defence, action and reaction, and a culture that emphasises the case for the struggle so that the popular uprising is invincible. A mass struggle carried forward with maximum popular participation could contain one or several aspects concerning the welfare of the people. Lazybones and ones who refuse to endorse popular uprisings think that such an uprising will lead to the killing of unarmed people and that it is difficult for a popular uprising to take place. Such people have no faith in the power of the people.

If it is possible for the ruling classes to militarily suppress and decimate a mass uprising, it means that the uprising is not a correct mass uprising. A mass uprising comprises a continuous sequence of mass struggles. In such a correct mass uprising, there are preparatory measures for the steps leading to social change. They have features such as strategy and tactics. Mass struggles are, simultaneously, acts of training the people and struggles generating confidence among them.

Uprisings should be carried forward with care

Any mass uprising carried forward in a state of unpreparedness is suicidal. Mass uprisings cannot be created compulsively. Mass struggles cannot be transformed into a mass uprising merely through an announcement, or appeals through leaflets and posters. Mass uprisings cannot be specified a time, place and event. When the necessary objective conditions are there and contradictions sharpen, the emergence of a mass uprising is inevitable. As much as one cannot compulsively create a mass uprising, a mass uprising once started cannot be stopped either. It will run its course until it reaches its target. After which, the uprising should be sustained to retain its victory.

Thus, we need to be alert to the prospects of such a mass uprising. We should also develop the political and organisational preparedness that could withstand that environment, and the emotional and intellectual standards that correspond to it. Such preparedness will be able to mobilise accordingly the spontaneous feelings of the people and guide them.

When such preparedness does not exist, the enemies of the people can make use of mass struggles to their advantage and render the struggles ineffective and obstruct social transformation, which is the goal of the struggles. In the history of Sri Lanka, most mass struggles have been used merely to bring the UNP and the SLFP to power in turn. NGOs have incorporated mass struggles into their programmes. That too is to help the ruling classes.

The political goal of mass uprisings

It is important to ensure that mass struggles and their purposes concern the interests of the people and are in the hands of the people rather than belong to the leaders. A struggle is meaningless in the absence of the goal of social transformation,

The people of this country have been affected by the rule of both major parties, which can neither fulfil the aspirations of the people nor be reformed into parties for the people. To create other parties in their place is not an alternative either. People should be made to realise that mass activities that are confined to elections and economic demands are of no benefit. Although it may seem that they can be confined to resolving certain problems that are in the open and to winning certain demands, reality is otherwise. There should be agreement and interest in resolving the fundamental issues.

The national oppression against the Tamil people and imperialist oppression both direct and indirect are not the same. Thus they may be viewed on different planes. But the programme of imperialist hegemony against the two nationalities is fundamentally the same. While there is a situation in which imperialist hegemony is opposed separately from the respective planes, what is opposed and what is to be won are common to both. The struggles of the two nationalities need to be confederated. They should be coordinated and carried out against the common enemy, the terrorist ruling classes locally and imperialism internationally. In the same way, the mass activities to press for economic demands of the workers in the plantation and state sector should be confederated with the struggles of the fisher folk and the peasants.

Also mass activities against the Upper Kotmale hydro power scheme, the Noraicholai and Sampur thermal power schemes, and the proposals for the Weerawila Airport and the super highway could be combined against the main enemy, namely the ruling classes and imperialism.

The confederation of struggles

It will be useless to confine mass struggles to specific demands on specific planes, without basing them on social transformation. They need to be combined. Confederation does not mean reducing the importance of any struggle or altering its aim. While each struggle is carried forward on its plane with vigour and intensity, there is need for coordination between the mass struggles and between the leaderships. The basis of confederation could be independence-consensus-dedication. If there is no coordination between struggles, it will be easy for the ruling class to set one struggle against another. It is well known that the chauvinistic ruling classes of Sri Lanka have succeeded in presenting the Tamil people’s struggle for self-determination as one against the Sinhalese and Muslim people. To defeat them, it is necessary to develop cooperation among the struggles, a common line against the common enemy and a common programme. Also, like uniting all forces that could be united in a given mass struggle, there is need for need to confederate different struggles and their leaderships.

To say that there is need for unity in mass struggles does not mean unity with those involved in the activities of the parties of the ruling classes, bogus leftists, opportunists and NGOs. It means that there cannot be unity with forces that are explicitly or implicitly anti-people. It should be understood that when, in the context of the national question, we say that broad-based unity is needed in the struggle against chauvinism, we do not mean unity with those working hand-in-hand with the chauvinistic oppressors. To ensure success of a struggle, one should ensure participation by the vast majority of the masses, maximum possible friendly forces and the smallest possible number of enemies.

Unity, confederation and struggle

Likewise, winning the support of those outside a given struggle by joining in the activities of their struggle will be most effective. Matters should be handled in a way that the support of those outside is not just moral support but one with commitment. For example, when the support of the Sinhalese to the struggle of the Tamil people takes the form of mutual linking of common struggles, it becomes strong and enduring.

The strongest power against the ruling classes is the power of the people. That power can be built only through mass struggles. Besides, it is the right thing to do to affirm the support of those not associated with the struggle by linking up with their struggles.

There is need for unity within specific struggles and between struggles. That unity should be based on confederation and be democratic. Confederation cannot only be a concept; it should also concern practice and organisational structure.

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