Reaping The Whirlwind , livre ebook

K.M. de Silva

REAPING THE WHIRLWIND
Ethnic Conflict, Ethnic Politics in Sri Lanka
Contents
About the Author
List of Maps
Preface
I: Sri Lanka: An Anatomy of Ethnic Conflict
Chapter 1: An Anatomy of Ethnic Conflict
II: Sowing The Wind: Language, Religion and Ethnicity
Chapter 2: The Language Problem: The Politics of Linguistic Nationalism
Chapter 3: Religion and Politics in Modern Sri Lanka
Chapter 4: Ethnic Politics, Political Violence and Tamil Separatism, 1951-1977
III: Reaping The Whirlwind: The Internationalization of Sri Lanka s Ethnic Conflict
Chapter 5: Policies of Reconciliation: Success and Failure 1977-1983
Chapter 6: India and The Internationalization of Sri Lanka s Ethnic Conflict, 1983-1990
IV: Caught in The Crossfire: Sri Lanka s Smaller Minorities
Chapter 7: The Islamic Factor
Chapter 8: The Indian Tamil Community
Chapter 9: Conclusion
Appendices
Maps
Notes
Bibliography
Follow Penguin
Copyright
About the Author
K.M. de Silva, held the chair of Sri Lanka History at the University of Ceylon, later the University of Peradeniya, from 1969 to 1995. He has been Executive Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Colombo/Kandy, from its establishment in 1982. Notable among his several books are A History of Sri Lanka (1981); Managing Ethnic Tensions in Multi-Ethnic Societies: Sri Lanka, 1880-1985 (1986) and Regional Powers and Small State Security: India and Sri Lanka, 1977-90 (1995). He edited Internationalization of Ethnic Conflict with R.J. May (co-editor), (1991), Peace Accords and Ethnic Conflict with S.W.R. de A. Samarasinghe (co-editor), (1993). His most recent publication is his edition of the documents in the Sri Lanka volume (2 parts) in the British Documents on the End of Empire series.
List of Maps
Map I: Sri Lanka: Political
Map II: The distribution of ethnic communities in Sri Lanka
Map III: Tamil population as a proportion of the total population of the divisions
Map IV: Sinhalese and Muslim population as a proportion of the total population of the divisions
Preface
This book is, in every sense, a sequel to the many articles, books and monographs I have written over the last 10 years on the affairs of Sri Lanka, and on various aspects of the current ethnic conflict of which I have been a concerned witness. I have lived in Sri Lanka throughout, except for a few years spent in Britain and the US, when I was a graduate student, and on sabbatical leave from my University. I have been a participant in some of the efforts at managing the conflict in Sri Lanka, whether as a member of the Presidential Commission on Development Councils whose report of 1980 was an important stage in the establishment of a second tier of government in Sri Lanka (nearly 50 years after it was first mooted), or as a member of the University Grants Commission (1979-89), grappling with the problems of changing University admissions policy to make it more equitable than it was before 1978-79. In both these instances I have had firsthand experience in the making of public policy, and an awareness of the complexities of problems that I would certainly not have had as a mere academic commenting on issues and personalities alike. That practical experience has been, at once, sobering and educative.
My approach to the problems analysed in this book is historical. I make no apology for that. I am by training a historian specializing in the problems of modern and contemporary South Asia. Moreover, as the conflicts in the Balkans and the Caucasus regions remind us, ethnic and religious conflicts have a complex history, and one can neither understand them nor devise strategies and tactics to resolve or manage them without a grasp of the historical background. This book has been written in that spirit.
While concentrating here, of necessity, on the problems of Sri Lanka, I have endeavoured to compare them with similar issues and problems in other societies coping with ethnic conflict. My long association with the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) has helped to give a comparative perspective to much that I have written on ethnic conflict even when I focus on South Asia or Sri Lanka for that matter.
Four books and monographs, which I published over the last two years are particularly relevant to the themes reviewed here. These are:
Sri Lanka: Problems of Governance, a volume I edited and to which I contributed a substantial portion; the second of a two-volumed biography of J.R. Jayewardene, Sri Lanka s first Executive President, co-authored with Howard Wriggins, (Quartet Books, London Vol I, 1988, and Leo Cooper, Vol II, 1994, London); a study of the Indian intervention in Sri Lanka and internationalization of the ethnic conflict entitled Regional Powers and Small State Security, India and Sri Lanka, 1977-90, (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington D.C., 1995 and Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore, Md, 1995). In addition to these there is a monograph, entitled, The Traditional Homelands of the Tamils, Separatist Ideology in Sri Lanka: A Historical Appraisal. Published in Kandy, Sri Lanka, in 1994-95, it is a revised version of a monograph I published originally in 1987. Inevitably, the present work has drawn upon some of the material in these books, but there is a great deal here that has not been published before.
I am deeply grateful to my colleagues at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy, with whom I have discussed many of these issues. Their critical comments have helped me to clarify my own thoughts and arguments. Among them are Gerald Peiris, S.W.R. de A. Sam Samarasinghe and Vidyamali Samarasinghe, K.N.O. Dharmadasa and Sirima Kiribamune. At Penguin Books India, my editor, Mrs Raj Kamini Mahadevan s incisive comments, and probing questions have helped me greatly in preparing the final version of the book. None of these people mentioned above are responsible for the views expressed there. Those views are mine, and I take responsibility for them.
I am greatly indebted to Gerald Peiris for the care with which he prepared the maps in this book.
As with everything I have written in recent years, I have benefitted enormously from the assistance I have had from the staff of the ICES, Kandy. Dilrukshi Herath prepared the first draft of this book. Iranga Atukorale prepared two drafts of the final version of the book. She had the assistance of Roshni Siriwardene. I am very grateful to her for the good cheer and efficiency with which she set about her task. Others on the staff of the ICES have helped in numerous ways, especially Kanthi Gamage and Yvette Ferdinands whose assistance in proofreading has been invaluable; Vasantha Premaratne has helped with the statistical tables in the book. It is with great pleasure that I express my appreciation of their continued support.
I am indebted to the following persons and institutions for the photographs which appear in this book: Mr A. Ratnayake, Chairman, Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd., Mr J. de Lanerolle, Managing Director of Upali Newspapers: the Jayewardene Centre, Colombo, and Mr M. Sameem for the pictures relating to the Muslim minority. The cartoons in the book appear with the kind permission of Mr W.R. Wijesoma.
K.M. de Silva Kandy, Sri Lanka, May 1997
I

SRI LANKA: AN ANATOMY OF ETHNIC CONFLICT
Chapter 1
An Anatomy of Ethnic Conflict
FROM MODEL COLONY TO EXEMPLAR OF ETHNIC STRIFE
Sri Lanka, or Ceylon, as it was called during British rule over the island (1796-1948) and until 1972, was referred to as the model colony in the early years of independence (1948 to the mid-1950s), where an eminently sensible national leadership had preferred a negotiated transfer of power, in contrast to the Indian model. Indeed, the leadership had deliberately decided to follow the more conventional, if unglamorous constitutional evolution of the settlement colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand into independent states.
Sir Charles Jeffries, a senior member of the Colonial Office mandarinate, was an enthusiastic advocate of Sri Lanka s claims to the status of the model colony,
Ceylon provides the classic example of how with good sense and goodwill, two peoples can carry through the extremely difficult and delicate transition from a ruler-subject relationship to an equal partnership.
Ceylon has been the prototype and model for the new Commonwealth of the latter part of the twentieth century. In Ceylon the British learnt, by trial and error, the art of colonial administration, but they learnt also, the wisdom of relinquishing control when it was no longer tolerable by a people willing and able to maintain itself as an independent state. 1
Nicholas Mansergh, the historian of the Commonwealth, had seen Sri Lanka s transition to independence in much the same terms:
Ardent nationalists from other and less peaceful lands might allude in tones of condescension to Ceylon s fight for freedom but the gentlemanly pressure for independence exerted by its conservative nationalist leaders upon Whitehall made up in good sense what is lacked in political passion. As a result, Ceylon acquired the status of a Dominion of the British Commonwealth without bitterness, by orderly constitutional advance which made the matter of its attainment a source of unfailing satisfaction to British constitutional historians and its status in the academic world that of the model dominion. 2
The forthright expression of approbation of Sri Lanka s path to independence by Jeffries and Mansergh are explained in part, at least, by the fact that Sri Lanka provided the only example, up to the mid and late 1950s at least, of peaceful and orderly transfer of power in the decolonization process of the British Empire so far as the Asian, African and Caribbean colonies were concerned. The metropolitan power had presided over long negotiations (since the 1920s) on definitions of the precise nature of the balan