By finally eliminating the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eeelam (LTTE) in what was known as “Phase 4” of the quarter-century struggle for the rights of minority Tamils, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa may have won a major battle. But if he chooses to follow up this military triumph with the victor’s revenge, he may find himself losing a larger war. Although there is—rightly—little sympathy for the late LTTE chief Vellupillai Prabhakaran and his terrorist methods, even among the Tamils, the underlying causes that sparked the movement remain as valid as ever. Indeed, long before Mr Prabhakaran unleashed his brand of resistance, the Tamils of Sri Lanka were at the receiving end of systematic, state-sponsored discrimination. The Tamils’ demands for equal status are not a 25-year demand but over six decades old. When the country became independent in 1948, it denied citizenship to minority communities under a Citizenship Act, which meant the government of Sri Lanka (or Ceylon as it was then called) represented only the Sinhala community. Efforts to overturn this by legal means and peaceful demonstrations proved unsuccessful. Through the sixties and seventies, anti-Tamil policy gained momentum. State-sponsored colonisation schemes in the eastern part of the island altered the demographic balance in the region. A decade later, the government banned importing Tamil books, journals and films from India and local group affiliations. By the seventies, policies to ostensibly standardise education and employment for all segments of the population effectively discriminated against ethnic Tamilians. Atrocities against the Tamilian population also grew.
With Tamilian youth increasingly excluded from education and employment opportunities, demands for a separate Eelam or homeland were inevitable, as was the emerging stridency of the opposition to majoritarian rule. Prabhakaran’s LTTE, well-organised and -financed, rose from the morass of centrist and extremist parties. Like his idol Subhash Chandra Bose, Prabhakaran provided an attractive focal point for a people with a strong sense of grievance. Disenchantment only set in when it became clear that this long-drawn minority rebellion with a cause was bringing no dividends. On the contrary, Prabhakaran’s Pol Pot-ist style of functioning actually harmed Sri Lanka’s Tamils as much as Sinhala discrimination. Nothing demonstrated this better than the tragedy of the last few days of the war, when the LTTE openly used civilian compatriots as human shields against the Sri Lankan military.
Today, the Tamils, who account for 18 per of Sri Lanka’s population, remain the oppressed minority that they were in 1948 and are possibly worse off because of the LTTE’s reign of terror. Former President Chandrika Kumaratunga, one of the first to make peace overtures to the LTTE, only to backtrack after an assassination attempt cost her an eye, was among the first Sinhala politicians to point out that terrorism is usually built on a foundation of legitimate grievance and argued for a pluralistic Constitution. From the manner in which he has suppressed the media, subverted human rights and enlarged the interests of his family, Mr Rajapaksa’s instincts do not appear to be overtly inclined towards a policy of conciliation. But if he truly wants to enter his name in the history books, he needs to rise to the humanitarian challenge in the east and north of his country. More state-sponsored exclusion of a ravaged minority will only produce an LTTE successor, sooner or later.
