Rajpal Abeynayake's Vines and Creepers Time

By Athula Silva

(March 09, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Abeynayake said it perfectly leaving nearly no room for protest by those who are more inclined to believe that everything is going to be alright.His thinking comes from a place unaffected by the afflictions of most writers that feel compelled to take sides, especially that of the winning side.

However, it is naive to believe that things are as simple as he puts.

Abeynayake said, "Today, whether one likes it or not, he has subordinated Tamil militant politics and Tamil politics per se to the diktat of the majority Sinhala community, and its cohorts".

I'd love to know what these diktats are. Only diktat or victor's right that should be asserted is the abolition of the Provincial Councils. No foreign country or humanitarian organization could say restoration of local representation at national level and abolishing governments in Provinces is wrong. The boundary lines of provinces were not marked to group culturally different people but to demarcate areas overseen by government servants of the colonial government. It was the time of the horse, and division helped efficient administration.

I am curious again. Abeynayake: "This after all is the position of the Muslim minority in India for instance, which is why India perhaps has not been overtly critical of the planned Rajapaksa project for the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka."

What is Abeynayake trying to say? What is the Rajapaksa project for the Tamils? May we know? What are the not so overly criticisms by the Indians?

When Abeynayake says, 'A J Wilson said that the Sinhalese are a minority with a majority complex but he should have articulated the corollary of that which is that the Tamils are a ‘majority with a superiority complex’, it reminds me what Sansoni said: Sinhalese are a majority with a minority complex. Tamils still say standardizing of test papers was discrimination!

One side of me wants to believe that Rajapaksa is the genius that would ultimately make this country overcome Tamil chauvinism and the push by Tamil Diaspora for an independent state set up in Lanka.

The other side is uneasy and wishes to have clear indications on how things are going to be done by Rajapaksa to bring about that place of harmony. The presidency in Lanka is indeed imperial. A king does not have to give reasons for what he is going to do nor answer questions by the humble subjects. That's the way the Lankan presidents behave, and that is scary. A benevolent president has to be immensely wise and compassionate. President Rajapaksa has to be exactly that if the country is to get out of the situation that it was in for the major part of the period since independence.

The period since SWRD became increasingly a time of wrangling between politicians to come to prominence, but the voting population could not be trusted to follow the desires of the politician. So they tried various ways to stifle the power of the voter. Looking at voting statistics, JRJ thought the best way to ensure continuous power for UNP was to count direct votes for parties. His list system favors political parties over local representation. That effectively disenfranchised the back country. Now common people are not represented in the national assembly, but only party loyalists.

A new powerful political class was created and the Provincial Councils help to school the new comers to the politician class. The government became the government of the party loyalists. Everything became easy as the ones who needed to be kept satisfied were the politically active group. The result is a parasite class.

People's participation in national politics is only in electing the president. They were lucky to have found Rajapaksa who had the backbone to put and end to terrorist stranglehold. Now the Sinhalese are getting to go to Jaffna that was for decades made to be thought of as a foreign city. Sovereignty of a people over a territory depends on their freedom to live and move in it. If that is taken away, their hold wanes. This is one of the things the Tamil terror tried to achieve -- the depriving of the Sinhalese the freedom to live and move about in the North and East.

Abeynayake does not say but presupposes that the country is one single indivisible state. It was so before 1972, but no more. When we say North, or East we mean Provinces, not general directions. In my younger days, we did not think of the country in terms of provinces. We talked of places by their names. So, we'd say, "going on pilgrimage to Naga Deepa for Poson".

Now we have Provincial Councils where officials were already heard using the word 'outsider' to describe officials from Colombo. Whether constitutional or not, any PC could declare independence by one resolution and ask for foreign intervention. We have two outside forces that would quickly come to their help -- India and the Western politicians, whom the Tamil Diaspora has shown could be bought by them. Recall that India issued Lankan terrorists Indian passports to go for military training. And Hilary Clinton, McCain and Obama had Tamil 'bundlers' that brought them $ millions for their election campaigns. Plus, Norwegian peace brokers gave military advice and sold equipment to them.

We are on our own and have to be doubly sure of what we do. So far, everything Rajapaksa did in relation to foreign relations except accusing US of bribing Fonseka is positive. That latter is very unwise. If there is anyone that actively pursues Tamil terrorists, it is the US FBI. They catch and jail them. We can suspect unfortunate General Fonseka's behavior to be results of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but have none such to attribute to Rajapaksa.

The other mistake Abeynayake makes is that he compares Lanka to the Western countries. Their minorities are recent immigrants who were asked to agree to abide by the rules of the majority for the privilege to stay. In Britain, they use Devolution (reversing political evolution) to give some autonomy to Wales and Scotland on the strength that they were independent states in the past. The smaller nations stay in the union because it is advantageous for them to stay connected.

An Eelam setup in the North and East of Lanka would not have any advantage to stay connected with the South. They'd have the price of Trincomalee, which is the reason the British came to Lanka in the first place and why the US Senate's Foreign Relations Committee suddenly said that US had to be kindly toward Lanka because of its strategic importance.

The indigenous Tamils in the North of Lanka have been there for centuries and probably absorbed Sinhalese that lived in North into their numbers too. The Sinhalese coexisted with them and at times of invasion; the elite among them moved South leaving invaders to take control of territory. Tamils never had a demarcated state but ruled different areas at different times as results of invasions, and were repulsed. Recall that Elara's rule from Anuradhapura was the result of a Chola invasion. Prabhakaran considered the war as a reassertion of militaristic pride of the Cholas and styled his flag after the Chola flag and named ships after the Chola names. It was more an act of a megalomaniac than a fight for independence by an oppressed minority. The You Tube videos illustrated this amply.

Tamils and communists inside the government want to use the British style Devolution as a first step toward independence. For that, they need boundary lines, which the Provincial Councils conveniently provide. They know that the UN concept of self-determination makes provision to use them when partition happens.

We have to take into consideration the reality that we are an interdependent part of the world in which we exist. Tamils, more pointedly, the Tamil Diaspora of the world, have what are termed 'aspirations'. If we think of this, it means they aspire to have their own separate state established in Lanka because it is too hard to do it in India. That throws Indian on their side as a twisted way of good riddance.

Tamil Diaspora is very calculating in this regard. Apart from helping terrorism, they feed cleverly manufactured news feeds to lazy Western journalists having won 'reliable source' status. Western political activists have been their friends since 1960s. Western political activists are members of an industry that relies on sensational stories from unheard of far away places to collect their dough from arms dealers and unsuspecting charity givers. They (both activists and Tamil Diaspora) understandably have ties with the weapons industry and global organized crime.

UN and International laws are carefully manipulated by Tamil Diaspora. Genocide and Self Determination are legal terms of International law that could invoke UN intervention on their behalf for Eelam. A member of Tamil Diaspora, the highly respected Navaneetham (Navi) Pillay, UN Commissioner for Human Rights has reminded us that blood is thicker than water.

A tree should stand strong to be able to provide canopy to the creepers and vines. However, the Sinhala tree looks more like a collection of bushes due to Provincial Councils. The rapacious minority creepers and vines could smother each bush to obscurity.

In my mind, the tree has to be one strong piece. The canopy the Sinhala tree could provide is the compassion for the minorities, whether powerful as Tamil or weak and small as Malay or Burgher. They could provide the minorities the privilege to use their languages in their dealings with the government. (The reality is that Sinhala is not the real official language). In other words, remove all references to Official / National languages that make the minorities feel second class. Official Language was a command by the colonial ruler to its subjects to use English when dealing with the government. Today, the government servants have become public servants. Rajapaksa emphasized this fact in his Kandy speech. Therefore, public servant should be equipped to understand the citizen. Sinhalese, Tamils, Malays, Burghers and members of any other language identity group are co-equal citizens of Lanka as their birth right.

The Sinhala-Buddhist culture should allow for freedom of worship but be wise to prevent psychological and material coercion to convert members of one group into another. In the past, the Sinhalese were wise enough to locate Hindu Kovil and Catholic Church in the compound of the Buddhist temple. That's a proven example of the tree providing canopy to the creepers and vines.

Would the modern king act wisely? Only results of his actions would tell. But then it might be too late for the Sinhalese.