Why ‘identity-attacks’ are not helping the Tamils any more
By N Sathiya Moorthy
While the recent exit of Mullaitivu district judge T Saravanarajah from the country, alleging threat to his life, is still making news in capital Colombo and also elsewhere, in northern Jaffna, his Tamil political parties’ call for a human-chain flopped, like many such protests before it. In turn, this is going to embolden the self-styled Sinhala nationalist hard-liners on the one hand and weaken the morale, if not the equally self-proclaimed moral standing of the international community (read: West) on the ethnic front.
In matters of organisation, the failed human-chain is different from multiple protests since the conclusive end of the ethnic war in 2009. In the past, one or the other of the Tamil nationalist parties, mostly the ACTC-led TNPF leader Gajendra Kumar Ponnambalam, used to stay alone. Or, the ITAK leader of the erstwhile TNA would be ploughing a lone furrow. This time for the human-chain, they all joined together, and gave a common call for the human-chain. But it was a failure from the start to the finish.
While the southern Sinhala-Buddhist majoritarians would be silently or openly celebrating the Tamils’ embarrassment in glee, they Tamil political establishment should be going back to the drawing-board, at least now to take a re-look at their plans, programmes and posturing. No one, to be fair to all stake-holders, contest the sincerity or seriousness of the ageing Tamil political and also the social leadership(s) that refuse to let fresh blood down the line, which alone could take it always to and through the future generation(s), if that is what is required.
Accidental President
There is no issue about Tamil perceptions of the ‘identity-attacks’ that have taken a new dimension since the otherwise forgettable days of the erstwhile Gotabaya Rajapaksa regime. The saddest part is the attacks on Tamil (Hindu) kovils in the North and the East, forced occupation of the kovil lands and violent destruction of their deities in some cases have gone unabated under the incumbent government of ‘accidental’ President Ranil Wickremesinghe. ‘Accidental President’ was not a title that was not conferred on the incumbent when he stepped into the shoes of Gota after he had hurriedly exited the country first and the office next at the Aragalaya protests last year, over the unprecedented economic crisis engulfing the nation.
Instead, the title seems to be fitting Ranil now with retrospective effect. At one point as President, he did instill some hope about the future of parliamentary democracy by becoming President even if by the ‘back-door’ that the Constitution had provided for such exigencies that the founding fathers did not expect would have a need after all, much of the early halo has already lost its brightness.
Today, the rest of the country is worried more about the continuance of high prices and low incomes, even higher tariffs and taxes, a year after Ranil came to power. There is also the new-found love for human rights in the present-day Opposition, which they had not exhibited when in power, with and under the very same Wickremesinghe on five different occasions in the past.
In the process, the political Opposition and capital Colombo’s ever-busy NGO sector has found an alternative to the ethnic issue to keep them busier through the past year. First, it was the economy, then the Aragayala, then again the economy, and now back to human rights. Yes, they are all talking about the new draft anti-terrorism law, and also the one on cyber crimes, or On-line Safety Bill.
They seem to have concluded that this time round, the former is aimed not at the revival of Tamil terrorism, as used to be the unmentioned argument in the past. Instead it is against the possible outbreak of another Aragalaya-like protest in the South, whether or not it is more violent than the first one. The cyber crime bill is also linked to this, not to the unproven anticipated fears about the imminent revival of the LTTE in one form or the other, in one name or the other.
This has meant that there are no voices to talk about the identity or cultural attacks on the Tamils in the North and the East over the current year especially, even granting that the previous year was devoted to the economic crisis and Aragalaya protests. In this background, for the Tamils to lose their own battle, that too owing to their internal leadership issues, stands out internally – and weakens them otherwise more than already in the post-war era.
Credibility at stake
What has gone with the Tamil leadership or leaderships as the case may be? Plain and simple, in every political party and organisation, there is this entrenched leadership that dates back at times to the pre-war past, or at least to the war years. They have not acknowledged that there is a whole new generation of Tamil youth born to the war and brought up after the war.
There is disconnect between the two generations — or, is it three already? – in real terms as it happens within families and societies. Two, and more importantly, those that were left behind in the war-torn regions at the time have little or no respect for the leaders that survived (not only the war but also the LTTE assassins) as they were living in the safety of distant lands, starting with neighbouring India, say, southern Tamil Nadu.
Yet, when the war ended, all these worthies returned home to claim their place in the political hierarchy as if nothing had happened. Their Rip van Winkle approach to society and politics has not helped. Only that in their overwhelming antagonism to the war-time Rajapaksa rulers, the Tamil voters, old and young, have been voting whoever their leaderships asked them to vote. So what if it was the war-time army commander Sarath Fonseka in 2010 or the war-end defence minister Maithripala Sirisena in 2015?
This inherent impossibility or weakness of the Tamil voters, the leaderships have continued to exploit, separately though – but together in their goal of retaining their status as the ‘shepherds’. It is this that keeps getting exposed whenever and wherever there are internal issues where external, say, the Sinhala majoritarianism is not directly involved.
Thus in successive elections (whenever held) after the post-war 2010 presidential polls, the Tamils have equitably distributed their preferences among multiple parties, alliances and candidates. In Jaffna, the centre of Tamil ethnic politics and the self-imposed ‘cultural capital’, an SLFP candidate, Angajan Ramanathan, polled the most preferential votes in the parliamentary polls of 2020. In the Eastern Trincomalee district, the grand old sire of Tamil politics, R Sampanthan polled the least of preferential votes among those elected.
Likewise in the North again, one-time favourite and all-time Tamil minister, Douglas Devananda of EPDP and the up and coming Tamil star, M A Sumanthiran – rather, he arrived long ago – merely scraped through in the parliamentary elections. Maavai Senathiraja, the forgotten warrior who hugged the moderate road very long ago, who is continuing as the iconic
ITAK’s president for years without internal elections, actually lost his parliamentary seat.
Difficult, not dangerous
If all this is a yard-stick to measure the changing mood of the new-generation Tamil voter, the old and tired leaderships have also lost out on another of their traditional talent & skill. They have simply forgotten their one-time organisational capacities, for protests and political programmes. Maybe, it owes to the war years, when they could justify the low turn-outs for street-corner protests, mostly outside the Jaffna bus-station, to the fear of the armed forces, or the LTTE, or both.
Today, the old-timers have lost touch, but they have not roped in the younger generation, for grassroots-level work upwards, either out of age and tiredness, or out of lethargy or out of fear of losing their present positions to ‘usurpers’. With life being as difficult as it was during the war years, though definitely not dangerous, the Tamil youth seem to have ‘better things to do’. Maybe, for them, watching their politicians at work on evening TV news had become the cheapest entertainment, only to go to bed to wake up for another day of toil and difficulties.
This is naturally a problem that the Tamils and Tamils alone can address. Maybe, the lack of enthusiasm of their youth has forced the older leadership to pass on the mantle to credible and creditable men and women from the next generation(s). If it is a social problem, then again, they need to address it. Else, they would be handing it all over a platter to the Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists, who ‘fixed’ the Upcountry Tamils very long ago – though the parallel should end there.
(The writer is a policy analyst & political commentator, based in Chennai, India. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)
