Beginning of new era in Sri Lanka?

The Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka (LTTE) announced the silencing of their guns last week. They had forced civilians to withdraw with them as hostages and shot down those who wanted to leave the war zone, hoping that the responsibility of the government to its own citizens would deter it from bombing them. At the time, they untruthfully stated that these civilians were fleeing in fear of the army - something true only of those few civilians who had previously worked with the Tigers.

Alas, their strategies did not work. The government used full force, not caring a bit for its Tamil citizens. Various analysts and writers have been quick to pronounce the end of war. In contemptible triumphalism, Tamils in Colombo have been asked to fly the Sri Lankan flag and dance. President Mahinda Rajapaksa has announced the construction of a huge Buddhist temple in Jaffna, reminding us that the army commander had only recently said that Tamils must not ask for rights and be satisfied with what the majority chooses to allot to them. There will be no minorities, announced ministers rather ominously. As Tamil civilians lay dead and seriously injured on the beaches, no aid workers were allowed into the war zone lest they see and report the carnage. The army announced that they had saved civilians, even as Tamil civilians (who through some divine providence had been able to flee the war zone) were locked up behind barbed wire and psychosocial workers were kept out by the government for the fear that their real stories would come out.

This is war. It is about lies and cruelty; about hatred and murder; and indeed hypocrisy.

The Tigers, though claiming to speak for Tamil rights, massacred thousands of Tamils. The Indian Peace Keeping Force that came to save Tamils, marched like a juggernaut laying Tamil homes and lands waste. Prabhakaran, who went to war against his comrade in arms Uma Maheswaran of the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) for breaking the rule against having girlfriends, kidnapped a university student, married her and even had a child with her well before the normal nine months. Karuna, the eastern Tiger leader who broke off with the Tigers because he felt that the northern Tiger leader Prabhakaran was conscripting eastern youth and putting them on the front line, today has killed several eastern Tamils and is a minister of the dreaded government.

Tamil intellectuals, who went to the UN haranguing the Sri Lankan government, excused the child recruitment by the LTTE and justified the expulsion of Tamil-speaking Muslims by the Tigers. While living in western luxuriance, they urged their poor brethren at home to fight and celebrated their battle-field deaths and suicide bombings with evenings out at functions.

Worse still is the hypocrisy of the Sri Lankan government. Saying we are one country of one people, they see any cultural diversion from the Sinhalese-Buddhist norm as a threat to Sri Lanka. They told Tamils that they are equal citizens, and then boomed them. They sign various human rights conventions and have a Peace Secretariat and a minister in charge of human rights. But the Peace Secretariat's job is to cover up massacres of Tamils by the army and justify the locking up of civilians who escaped from the LTTE. The human rights minister's job seems to be to defend Sri Lanka's abysmal record in Geneva.

The international world too seems to practicing under a veil of hypocrisy. As civilians were dying under Sri Lankan bombs, the West wanted a Security Council resolution because Sri Lanka was leaning on China and Pakistan for support. The Russians wanted to know why a similar interest had not been shown in the bombing of Palestinians by Israel. Finally Russia relented only after the US agreed to the UN examining a report on Gaza. But by then the Tiger leadership had been destroyed - in all likelihood executed after they surrendered.

Despite Holy Mother Church's Doctrine of the Just War (Stanislaw Skarbimierz, 1360-1431, De bellis justis), there can be no just war ever. War is about not doing any of Jesus Christ's commandments as can be seen from the foregoing - turning the other cheek, loving one's neighbor as oneself, possessing integrity and so on.

The late Samuel James Velupillai Chelvanayagam (1898-1977), Queen's Counsel, affectionately called "Thanthai Chelva" (Father Chelva) or SJV by Tamils of all hues, was one of the earliest Tamils to recognize the dangers that the community faced in Sri Lanka. He was from the American Mission (now in the Church of South India), and had an upbringing in Anglican schools and worshipped in the Anglican Church in Colombo where he worked till the CSI established its first parish there. A gentle Christian soul of unbending will, he declined thirnooru (ashes for the forehead) when offered by Hindu priests during election rallies and was known to kneel down and pray in the train before going to bed despite the presence of others.

When the Tamil community went along with the state and disenfranchised the Estate Tamils (who were of more recent Indian origin), SJV revolted from the leading Tamil Congress as a sign of his protest. For his views on this matter, his newly formed Federal Party (FP) was defeated in the 1952 elections. It was not until a few years later, when Sinhalese chauvinism became more powerful and started passing its horrible laws - such as making Sinhalese the only official language (1956), requiring Tamils to score more for university (1970) and Buddhism the preeminent religion - that SJV became widely accepted and the Tamil Congress was routed. He championed nonviolent struggle from 1956 onwards and in response he his party men had their heads cracked by the police and jailed. Sri Lanka was no longer the land where Tamils would be comfortable. Twenty-two percent at Independence, they are today down to about 10-12%.

By the 1970s, Prabhakaran and other Tamil youths, an outgrowth of the FP, had begun using violent means. They argued that since nonviolence had failed, violence was the only way remaining. But the reality is that nonviolence had actually never been tried. Unlike in India, when the leaders of the nonviolent movement were locked up, the second tier of leaders was not sufficiently organized to continue the process of civil disobedience. SJV, who had by now lost all confidence in a united Sri Lanka, was physically eviscerated by Parkinson's by the mid-seventies. But he never departed from his faith in nonviolence as a weapon. At his last public speech, delivered in Jaffna, he warned the youth not to depart from nonviolence and ominously stated his to date unheeded view that a minority can never win in formal warfare against a state under the majority. He slipped, fell and died shortly thereafter. Today he is proved right.

Despite news analysts' and the government's saying the war is over (the former because of their ignorance and the latter for local electoral gain), the real situation is dire. There are several bands of armed Tamil youths with no centralised command structure. Very frustrated now with their defeat, they will fire on troops, who in turn will continue their scorched earth policy that gave rise to the LTTE. The youth will also turn on each other as they vie for local influence. Those Tamil groups who were massacred by the LTTE will now find this the time for sweet revenge. It will be like 1983-87 again, when society had been so ruptured by ungovernable internal violence that India intervened to restore order.

Today it is clear that SJV was right. The open warfare of the Tamil youths has failed; indeed, failed all of us. Nonviolent protest has not even been tried. Perhaps Tamils need to pay more than lip service to Thanthai Chelva's ideas. I urge the civilian leaders who are SJV's successors - the Federal Party, the Tamil United Liberation Front, the Tamil National Alliance and indeed the former militant groups like the EPDP, EPRLF and PLOTE - to think through this and provide the necessary leadership to the moorless Tamils of Sri Lanka.