IGNORING THE SINHALA OPINION
Is there anybody who wants peace in this country or in the whole world for that matter? There may be a few people who have no interests other than peace but apart from those the others are only talking peace. The various peace organisations are motivated by ideology, hegemonic aspirations and also money and other privileges, among many others. Would those people who want peace per se fight for peace? They could not because they are for peace and there is nothing much that they could do to achieve peace. Even Jesus Christ knew that the peaceful way was not always possible and Mahatma Gandhi himself had not been hundred percent non violent. Ask Karuna, and he would say that he was fighting for peace. Is Prabhakaran for peace? Who other than the Sinhala Buddhist Chauvinists, Karuna and Douglas Devananda would say that Prabhakaran does not want peace. Ananda Sangaree who despite a parliamentary seat offered (pooja?) by the monks in the Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) may or may not say that Prabhakaran is not for peace though he admits that the latter is a naughty boy. In any event Ananda Sangaree has not given up his Tamil racist politics and I wonder how the monks would have reacted if the alliance had offered him a seat on the national list. The politicians such as Bush who advocate peace are willing to declare war in the name of peace but Sri Lankan government is strongly advised by all the "peace loving" people in the world not only to be peace loving but be peace practicing as well. It may be due to Sri Lankan being a Buddhist country and also to the fact that Buddha had never resorted to any kind of violence. It is ironical that only when the peace loving people in the world want Sri Lanka to practice peace that they think of the country as Buddhist. Otherwise Sri Lanka is considered to be multi religious and multi ethnic and peace is being "waged" in order to establish that Sri Lanka is multi religious. The fact that non Buddhist countries are not asked why they are not practicing peace speaks volumes for the cultures associated with those countries.
With the formation of the new government the peace mongers are at war again for peace. There are many peace mongers who claim that the LTTE proposals for interim government cannot be ignored and that any future peace talks should be based on the so-called interim self governing authority. They have assumed that the LTTE is the sole representatives of the Tamils and that the Northern and the Eastern provinces are the Tamil homeland. It is these assumptions that have to be questioned and though the peace mongers would like to ignore all these myths that they have been assuming have been exploded.
It is clear that India is waiting to play a bigger role in the period to come in the affairs of the country. The Prime Minister Mr. Mahinda Rajapakse is scheduled to visit that country soon after the Indian general elections and the regional power would come into the peace scene in a bigger way. However, though there may be many Sinhalas who would welcome Indian "mediation" or whatever, India has its own peace scenario and its own agenda as far as the region is concerned. India looks at the problem from its viewpoint not only with respect to the present but to the past as well. It appears that India is not prepared to see the differences between the Tamil problem in Sri Lanka and that in India. India may have found a solution in a pseudo federal state but whether that is relevant in the Sri Lankan situation is a different matter altogether.
The Tamil racism means a federal state or a confederal state or a separate state by peace. Achieving peace means establishment of one of those states. If the Sinhalas are not in favour of any such state and if the Tamil racists insist that the minimum they could consider is a federal state how are we going to achieve peace. Peace means different things to different people and to different communities and when the mediators themselves are having their own agendas peace becomes an antagonistic affair. When most of the peace organisations are backed by western Christian countries and when most of the influential persons in these organisations are Christians and when Christian culture has not been the most peaceful culture that the world has seen, peace cannot be a peaceful process. The peace mongers have so far acted as if there was no Sinhala Buddhist opinion in this country. All the western media and the so-called intellectuals who came for field studies, most of them were mere doctoral candidates who had not shined as original thinkers after getting their Ph.D.s even in a Christian culture, interviewed mainly the peace mongers. (One wonders how many of them completed their theses - sometimes these mere Ph. D. candidates were invited by our learned societies to deliver lectures while in their own countries they would have taken part in at most a graduate seminar in a department of study and would not have been heard by most of the others even in the university where they work. In fact the others in the university would not have heard of the existence of an intellectual of that calibre. The publicity given to these mere doctoral candidates in the national press and the way these talks were treated as national events only give an indication of the hegemony of the western Christian culture and the poverty and the dependance of the so-called intellectuals who (wo)man these learned societies.) Whenever they had to go to somebody who represented the Sinhala Buddhist point of view they went with such prejudice that they never tried to understand what the other person had to say. They "knew" what the other person would tell them and it was as a mere formality to "balance the book", in more than one way, that they met those who represented the Sinhala point of view.
The Sinhala electorate has sent them a message that they could still ignore the Sinhalas but at a high cost. Knowing the so-called objectivity of the studies undertaken by these westerners they could still present to their own departments that have already come to conclusions, that the Sinhala hard liners are only a minority that could be ignored. However with thirty nine JVP MPs, nine JHU MPs and two MEP MPs who are against a federal state "officially" it would be difficult for at least the Indians to ignore the Sinhala opinion hereafter. In addition to these fifty MPs there are several others who had been in the Sinhala Manthree Sandhanaya and the Desha Hithaishee Jathika Vyaparaya who are against a federal state. My estimate is that in the present parliament there are more than hundred MPs who are against a federal state. When one thinks that they represent a substantial portion of the public, especially as most of them had got more preferential votes than the others, it is quite clear that the Sinhala people would not approve a constitution to establish a federal state at a referendum. If the NGO "intellectuals" who have already got around the President and the Prime Minister advice them to incorporate the abolition of the executive presidency with the establishment of a federal state then, then such advice would go against the SLFP-JVP- MEP alliance. (It should not be called a PA-JVP alliance as the LSSP could not even get Rev. Baddegama Samitha elected, when the JHU managed to win nine seats for the monks.)
The westerners would not listen to this type of argument against a federal state but the Indians would have to as the Indian general public is more aware of what is happening in Sri Lanka. They cannot afford to ignore this fact and they would be reminded of the protests by the Sinhala Buddhists against the Indo-Lanka Act and the thirteenth amendment that paved the way for the provincial councils. Some pundits would point out that the parties such as the JVP and the MEP that opposed the provincial councils now have representatives in those councils. However, that is a different mater altogether as the parties could oppose certain institutions while having their members in those institutions. When a Senate was established in 1947 the first LSSP member of the Senate in his first speech proposed that the Senate should be abolished. Incidentally that first LSSP member of the Senate was the late Mr. D. W. J. Perera who was a well respected Mathematics teacher at the Buddhist School Sri Sumangala College, Panadura. That was in the hey day of LSSP politics before the SLFP was established. Today, of course, the LSSP cannot get a single MP elected but they get their ministerial posts having been appointed on the national list of the alliance. When one considers the fact that the number of national list MPs appointed by a party depends on the total number of votes polled by that party and that the alliance voters were mainly Sinhala Buddhists it is clear that the LSSP minister in the cabinet has no moral right to be a member of parliament let alone a minister. One has also to recall that the LSSP was initially against the alliance between the SLFP and the JVP. Incidentally the JVP that won thirty nine seats have been given only four ministerial positions while the LSSP that could not win a single seat has been given one portfolio. Moreover some of the so-called advisors of the President, especially in connection with the amendment of the constitution, are from that party. These advisors and others who enjoy positions due to the people who voted for the alliance would try to work against the wish of those who elected the government and bring out a peace that finally does not consider the views of the Sinhala people.
The peace mongers should realise that the Sinhala electorate will not lie dormant if the former attempt to deliver a peace in the interests of the Tamil racists. The Sinhala opinion cannot be ignored hereafter and both the JVP and the JHU will make sure that the government would not be in a position to continue if they listen only to the Tamil racists and the so-called advisors who are out of step with the thinking of the Sinhalas, and of course the NGO intellectuals. There is no peace as such. The Tamil racists and the "international community" mean a separate country or a confederation that leads to an Eelam, the Indians a pseudo federal state and the Sinhalas a unitary state by peace. There are different peaces and the question is whether the government is attempting to ignore the Sinhala opinion again.
Professor Nalin de Silva
>
>
>