About our debts to India

by K.Locana Gunaratna, PhD

There indeed are obligations that we Sri Lankans have to India. Most of us originated from India and also there clearly are cultural debts. However, this article is not about those obligations. In our recent and ongoing political and economic crisis, the Indian government has been and continues to be generous and helpful to us. These latter are obligations that we collectively have and should be acknowledged.

There was and still is a strident claim made by some ethnic-based political groups in Sri Lanka that the areas of the Northern and Eastern regions of Sri Lanka are together an integral part of a historic “Tamil Homeland”. The resulting demands include that these two regions be merged, have devolved governing powers and also have the right to maintain their own Police Force.

Our war against the brutal terror of the LTTE was a time of extreme anxiety among our people and our governments. There was a short time when troops from the Indian Army – the ‘Indian Peacekeeping Force’ (IPKF) – was deployed and militarily active in the North and East of our island. The IPKF was stationed there with intent to curb the LTTE. It is well-known that at that time, the Indian Government brought much pressure on our then President (JRJ) to take immediate steps to devolve some centralized political power to our Tamil brethren in the North and East.

Under this Indian pressure an ‘accord’ was signed between our two governments. It resulted in a hurriedly drafted 13th Amendment to our Constitution being enacted quickly in mid-1987. Thus eight Provincial Governments including a temporarily merged North and East, all with substantial devolved powers were established. The N&E merger was to be subjected to a referendum in the East to decide whether the arrangement should continue. This referendum never happened but a demerger took place based on a Supreme Court decision. Also, the Policing rights were not granted. These continue to be demands by those same ethnic groups and are still being strongly supported by the Indian government.

Northern and Eastern Regions

The spatial definition of our nine provinces was originally effected during the British colonial period for purely their administrative purposes. It never had relevance in terms of ethnic or geographic realities. It may be noted that many rivers flow across these delineated Provincial boundaries. In the current context of relatively independent Provincial Governments serious riparian conflicts can and will result. There is a carefully researched and developed study by a respected Sri Lankan Emeritus Professor where the said geographic concerns have been very successfully addressed. The delineation therein allows also for far fewer Provinces than is current and has strong support from many knowledgeable persons. Unfortunately, sound opinion has only rarely been consulted by most of our past political authorities. The time may indeed be appropriate now for such a consultation.

It has to be recognized that the entire land extent of Sri Lanka is less than that of many individual States within the federated union of India. There are thoughtful and experienced persons in this country who feel strongly that Provincial Governments with their unavoidable trappings in this small island are an unconscionable and annually recurring waste of scarce resources.

Indian Concern

It is relevant and will be useful to understand the real reasons why the Indian government has been and is still so insistent on Sri Lanka’s devolution of powers to our North and East. Many Sri Lankans are not aware that there was and still is a very strong, secessionist movement in Tamil Nadu. It has at its base the predominant view in South India, especially in Tamil Nadu, that as Dravidians they are racially and culturally quite distinct from the Northern Indo-Aryan peoples; and, that South Indian languages have different roots from those of Hindi which latter is mainly a Sanskrit derivative. Some South Indians, especially many Tamils, have strongly resisted and some even continue to resist the imposition of Hindi as the official language of India.

There was even a militant group, the ‘Tamil Nadu Liberation Army’ (TNLA) which was committed to militarily support the secession of Tamil Nadu from the federal union of India. This ‘Tamil Nationalism’ has been a permanent and ongoing feature there, gaining more ground especially since 1968 and the election victory of C.N. Annadurai and his DMK party in Tamil Nadu. All this has been and still is very seriously regarded by the central Government of India. It banned the TNLA as being a terrorist organization. There also came into existence in the late 1980s another militant group in Tamil Nadu – the TNRT. It too was banned by the Government of India.

Conclusions

The ethno-centric demands in South India have been and still are an unending reality especially in Tamil Nadu. These are of great concern to the Central Government of India. These demands have only been barely and very temporarily controlled. The realization of an independent Tamil Nadu seems clearly to be ingrained there and unlikely to end soon. Also, there clearly was strong support for the LTTE in Tamil Nadu. The LTTE was tolerated by the Indian Government for a long time. The LTTE was banned in India only after it went to the extreme extent of assassinating India’s former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.

It should also be evident by now as to why the Indian Government was and still is so concerned about the Tamil demands here in Sri Lanka. These demands, if we are not circumspect, could easily lead to a separate and independent state of ‘Eelam’ in a merged North and East of Sri Lanka to include the economically and strategically important harbor of Trincomalee. In such an event, India would have very successfully exported the serious problems in their South to Sri Lanka!

As observed at the outset of this article, we as Sri Lankans do have many collective obligations to India. The very recent and current ongoing help they are providing us must indeed be acknowledged. However, this acknowledgment should absolutely not result in any sacrifice whatsoever of our island’s spatial integrity and sovereignty. This is the prime concern upon which this article has been focused.

(The writer is a Fellow and Past President, National Academy of Sciences Sri Lanka, Past General President, Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow and Past President, Institute of Town Planners Sri Lanka and Fellow and Past President, Sri Lanka Institute of Architects.)