Sarath Fonseka, India etc.

By Izeth Hussain

(December 22, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) I am more than a little perplexed by the fact that General Sarath Fonseka’s recent visit to India caused no more than a mild innocuous reaction, whereas I had expected that it would provoke a storm. He made the disclaimer that it was not for the purpose of holding discussions with Indian Government representatives, claimed that it had a purely private character, and cracked a joke that although he had not visited Sai Baba he may have to do so in the future. There was not even a request reported that he be a little more specific about the nature of the private visit, because it seems so odd during this time when he should be totally preoccupied with electioneering. It is the kind of irresponsible thing that might have been done by the notoriously irresponsible Chandrika Kumaratunga, not by our war hero who whacked the LTTE.


As far as I am aware only one columnist, Ranga Jayasuriya in the Lakbima News of December 13, has given the visit its due importance. He writes that General Fonseka had visited Delhi to meet foreign affairs and defense officials. The Rajapakse clan charged angrily that the visit was at the behest of India, but thereafter proceeded to send its own top-level delegation consisting of Gotabaya and Basil Rajapakse, and Lalith Weeratunge to Delhi where they met Indian External Affairs Minister S.M.Krishna. According to the Jayasuriya article Ranil Wickremasinghe was also to go to Delhi to canvass support for General Fonseka.

Everyone knows of course what all this squirrel-like scurrying to and fro is about. It is about the 13th amendment on which India is known to be adamant. It appears that it can decide which side the TNA will support, and it could also influence the positions of the Ceylon Workers Congress and the Upcountry People’s Front. Clearly the Indian role in the forthcoming Presidential election could turn out to be very important. We all know that the LTTE determined the outcome of the last Presidential election. India could well determine the outcome of the forthcoming one. To me it seems an improvement because, after all, it is less degrading to have our fate be determined by India, a nascent superpower, rather than by the LTTE, seen as a mere terrorist gang.

I am not for a moment blaming India for its concern over the 13th amendment. It arose out of Indian concern for the SL Tamils, and it is the result of a bilateral Indo-SL agreement. The Indian Government may feel that in the aftermath of the LTTE defeat the Tamils here will get absolutely nothing by way of fair and equal treatment, and that could well have unwelcome repercussions in Tamil Nadu. For such reasons India could feel that elementary prudence requires insistence on the full implementation of the 13th amendment. So Indian concern may arguably be legitimate, but the question is whether that justifies our leading figures both from the Government and the Opposition scurrying to Delhi, virtually putting themselves in the position of supplicants at this juncture when Presidential elections are due. Strangely there have been no expressions of public outrage over these degrading goings-on. What are the implications of these facts?

We must see these facts in the perspective of a new world order, which in its negative aspect will almost certainly turn out to be a new world imperialism. It became apparent in the course of the Gulf War that it was illusory to expect a unipolar world order to be built around the sole existing superpower, the US. It lacks the requisite manpower, the economic power, the military power, and it has no ideological power worth speaking about because it is increasingly seen as the practitioner of a greedy, brutal, racist imperialism. The American Evil Empire is clearly on the way out. The alternative to a unipolar world order would be a multipolar one built around regional powers, namely the US, Europe, Russia, China, and India. There seems to be no other country which can have realistic aspirations at present to play a regional polar role. Obviously India can hope to have a predominant, hegemonic, or dominant role in South Asia. Other powers may want to challenge that role – hoping perhaps even to bring about the disintegration of India – but unless that happens none will have the manpower or any other form of power to be able to impose its will in South Asia against India.

It is to be expected that the new world order will be imperialist only to some extent, not wholly so. Some countries will become satellites while others will be fully independent, "sovereign" in more than just a technical sense. It all depends, in my view, on the extent to which a country can affirm itself as a nation-state in this time when we can see that the nation-state system is clearly on the way to its demise within a few decades. The steady erosion of the sovereignty of the nation-state that has been taking place since the Second World War is a clear pointer to that expectation. The broad process of "globalization" that is going on relentlessly is clearly a major factor in the ongoing erosion of nation-state sovereignty. It is a process in which India will emerge as an economic colossus, and it is difficult to see how Sri Lanka can avoid getting drawn into the Indian economic orbit. Furthermore the stunning advances being made in information technology can be expected to lead to a high degree of cultural symbiosis between Sri Lanka and India. Add to all that a semi-federal political system in Sri Lanka, based on the Indian one, and Sri Lanka can easily come to be seen as no more than an extension of the Indian polity. Apart from "globalization", the human rights movement backed by the UN and the international community as a whole also spells the erosion of state sovereignty.

There is nothing particularly unusual about my theorizing in the preceding paragraph, except that many will hotly contest the view that the nation-state is on the way to its demise within a few decades. They will hold that the two World Wars of the last century showed the triumph of nationalism over internationalism, and that the successful nationalist rebellions that resulted in the decolonization of the third world showed the abiding strength of nationalism. I have come to hold the heretical view – which I can do no more than merely advance here - that what triumphed in the last century, particularly after the Second World War, was tribalism and not nationalism, the two of them being antithetical. In nationalism the basic drive is towards unity which is brought about either through the assimilation of different ethnic groups, or through the integration of ethnic groups which retain their identities. In either case, a far higher degree of unity has been possible through the nation-state than under any other state formation, which is why it has proved to be so dynamic a phenomenon over the last two centuries, and also why it proved to be so redoubtable a fighting machine. In tribalism the basic drive is towards disunity, not unity. My case is that the countries which have successfully forged a nation-state – and therefore enjoy a high degree of unity - will have a much better chance of withstanding a possible new imperialism than the ones in which the tribalism principle has held sway.

It is time to shed the illusion that the decolonization of the Afro-Asian countries took place because of the strength of their nationalist movements. That is true only of a few of them, most having been given their independence without any noteworthy independence struggle. In the aftermath it became clear, particularly in the African countries, that the dominant drive in them was tribalism, not nationalism. The colonial powers had bequeathed to them the framework of the nation-state, but in many cases there were no nations in them. I am reminded of the Italian statesman who after having participated in the successful struggle for Italian unification proclaimed, "We have made Italy. We must now make Italians." Perhaps the best test on whether or not a nation – an entity transcending racial, ethnic, sub-ethnic, religious, linguistic, provincial, and other divisions – exists is the response to an external threat. Over the Sino-Indian border conflict in the early ‘sixties India came together breathtakingly, and so spectacularly that the Tamil separatist movement which had seemed very dangerous collapsed instantly, never to be revived thereafter. In 1987, with the imposition of the Peace Accords and the coming of the IPKF troops, the external threat to Sri Lanka was of a much more serious order, but the divisions shown were spectacular as it was not just between the Sinhalese and the Tamils but among the Sinhalese themselves. The JVP, which was supposed to be making the authentic nationalist response, did not harm one hair on the head of an IPKF soldier, instead of which they butchered their fellow-Sinhalese. In Sri Lanka the nation-state existed, but there was no nation.

In Sri Lanka just as everywhere else politics involves the pursuit of power. In the absence of a nation, it is understandable that power should be pursued without regard for a supposed national interest. So, General Sarath Fonseka makes a volte-face on the 13th amendment and goes to Delhi as a supplicant, and so do the Government big-wigs. The people are not outraged because they have long been inured to the idea that politics mean not much more than the unprincipled pursuit of power, after which there is the unprincipled enjoyment of power. In terms of my theory, it has to be expected that should the JVP or the JHU, or any other party for that matter, come within striking distance of getting power, their leaders too – if it seems necessary – will go to Delhi as supplicants. I cannot see that there is much chance of Sri Lanka withstanding a new imperialism in South Asia. For that we have to make Sri Lankans. We must come together.