Sri Lanka: 'Ethnicity' cannot be the sole policy-marker for India

N Sathiya Moorthy 

It has been heartening to see the eternally divided Indian polity standing as one in both Houses of Parliament on any issue -thrice in the past year. Yet, their election-driven agendas could not be hidden when the 'UNHRC vote issue' spilled over to the streets of the national Capital this time. Existing alliances and election calculations dictated their participation, if at all, presence (in terms of minutes spent) and position on the 'TESO seminar'. What mattered was not necessary the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils as the nation was made to believe inside Parliament. Instead, the role and prestige of Tamil Nadu's DMK partner in the Congress-led UPA Government at the Centre, as the fulcrum of the revived TESO from the Eighties made the difference. 

The fine-line was/is not about 'ethnicity', as 'competitive, pan-Tamil Dravidian politics' in Tamil Nadu has made the State's IT era youth to believe and protest on the streets. In frequency since the ending months of 'Eelam War-IV', with a revival over the US resolutions in UNHRC, Geneva, the 'accountability issue' in Sri Lanka is assuming proportions of the 'anti-Hindi' agitation in the India of the Sixties. The virulence and violence are thankfully missing. 

There are humanitarian and human rights issues in Sri Lanka. Yet, it is basically a political cause, still, which no one in Tamil Nadu seems to be talking about, any more. It is not that there are no political equations and electoral elements for the larger 'Tamil cause' in that country itself. The divisions are not with or within the majority Sinhala community, as is being made out. In ratios and proportions, they are much more within the 'minority' community of 'Sri Lankan Tamils' (SLT), not to mention the divisions and denominational distinctions within the larger Tamil-speaking population. 

Comprising 25 per cent of the nation's population, they have as many parties, possibly, divided among the SLT, Muslims and the 'Upcountry Tamils' of recent Indian origin. This has meant that an average of 45-50 Tamil-speaking MPs in a 225-member Parliament do not have any bargaining-chip against the deeply-divided 'Sinhala majors' in the Sri Lankan polity, for obtaining shared benefits for their community as a whole. They instead want the international community now to do their job for them. 

There is no guarantee that even the single-largest of the SLT political groups, namely, the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), an amalgam of four registered parties and an array of 'like-minded' Independents with no base to call their own, would stay together. Political agendas and personal egos, not the plight of the community, come on the top. It is for the world to fight their cause, but will they keep it, if obtained is the question that should be rightfully asked. The experience of India and Norway should not be ignored. 

No parallels 

Pan-Tamil parties in India seem to draw parallels with none that exists. The reference to the sentiments of the eight-crore Tamil people in the country can cut either way. They have to weigh their sentiments against those of the rest of India, including other south Indian States. If based on numbers, their charge about New Delhi interceding in the then East Pakistan in the Seventies, and later in the Fiji Islands owing to 'demographic considerations', finds internal justification in their arguments. 

'Ethnicity' and 'language' did not matter in India's interventions in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka or the Fiji Islands. Anyway, the SLT as a community took pride as 'natives' as Sri Lanka. Their fight was thus for equal rights, not 'minority' rights, leave alone over rights of an immigrant population. They could not have it either way. Their 'blood brothers' in India should not have it for them, both ways, either. 

Be it Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, it was instead about human values and human rights considerations, instead. When it all began in the Eighties India stood, as one, with the Tamils of Sri Lanka as it had done in East Pakistan, earlier. Ethnicity did not matter to the denominationally divided communities in the North-East, who are otherwise suspicious of 'Bengali domination' in everyday life in that part of India. The latter-day 'foreigners issue' in Assam flowed from a revival of pre-war suspicions and mis-trust. Yet, when it came to the plight of the people, be it in the then East Pakistan or Sri Lanka, denominational distinctions did not crop up anywhere in India. Those distinctions should not be made now. The problem lies elsewhere. The people of Bangladesh had chosen Sheikh Mujibur Rehman as their leader in popular elections. In Sri Lanka, Velupillai Prabhakaran usurped the Tamil cause and leadership, literally at gun-point -and was allowed to keep it. That alone made the difference. 

If 'ethnicity' is the yardstick, then India has it coming, if one were to explore the Buddhist linkages of the majority Sinhalas in Sri Lanka with the place of the religion's birth in India, which they revere still. It is evident from the on-again-off-again reports of attacks on poor Sinhala-Buddhist pilgrims in Tamil Nadu over the past couple of years. Since they have not stopped coming to India, and through Tamil Nadu -the shortest and cheapest route for them to take, for attaining 'salvation'. 

Likewise, Sinhalese has borrowed extensively from Pali, Sanskrit and almost every other language and dialect in India. The Sinhalas have not shied away from acknowledging the linkage. They celebrate the cultural connections with India as much as the Tamils do -or, even more, if one took a closer look. They never have had an air of 'cultural superiority' in everyday life, or 'linguistic purity' over their Indian brethren, unlike the Tamils of Sri Lanka. 

It cannot be only about the sentiments of the eight-crore Tamils in India. Denominational differences apart, there are Buddhists living across the sensitive north-eastern border-States of India -and in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. 'Theravada Buddhism' of Sri Lanka has followers in many South-East Asian countries. Geo-politics of the region has ensured that extra-territorial powers have continued to muddy these shared waters, 'Cold War' or not. After a point, the 'Tibetan issue' too boils down to a Buddhist cause. Future possibilities are many, thus. 

Independent of religious linkages, for those who want counter-arguments against the SLT Diaspora campaigns -whose bottom-line of ethnic inequity in Sri Lanka is not contestable -they are beginning to pour out through academic research of a kind opposite to the existing INGO efforts. If one is accepted as fact, the other cannot be dismissed wholly as fiction. The truth may come to lay somewhere in between, even if only for the sake of argument. Credibility, it seems, is built not just over time. It is built instead over campaigning over time. 

Asian presence, global reach 

In Sri Lankan stratification, 'Muslims' form another ethnicity, after the Sinhala-Buddhists and the 'Sri Lankan Tamils' (SLT). Tamil-speaking mostly, their divided polity does not identify with their SLT counterparts. They were victims of LTTE violence. Post-war, they are being targeted by 'Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists'. There are rumblings from within about their continuance in the present-day Government. It is not new, but it is possibly the first time, religion, not politics issues and personality cause, is at the centre. 

Muslims are the second largest community in India, and India has the second largest Muslim population in the world. Their Asian presence and global reach, politically and otherwise, are proven, too. They are mostly Tamil-speaking, and have continued to maintain ties with their extended families in Tamil Nadu, unlike the Sri Lankan Tamils, or the 'Upcountry Tamils'. It is another matter that the Tamil Nadu polity and society looked the other way as the LTTE, as the self-styled 'sole representative' of the SLT community and polity, targeted the Tamil-speaking Muslims of Sri Lanka in a big way in the Nineties, worse than the Sinhalas may have done in 1915 or since. 

In Sri Lanka, 'Tamils of Indian origin' form the fourth major 'ethnic group'. They are there also in South-East Asia, South Africa and elsewhere, where the common British colonial rulers took them as indentured labour. They continue to be upset that 'Mother India' did not care for them, post-colonialism. Many have identified with the LTTE and the 'Sri Lankan Tamil cause' for a variety of reasons. Some also have causes of their own. Channeled imaginatively, it could spell trouble for India, particularly Tamil Nadu. 

'Faceless' groups, 'nameless' nations 

The fringe LTTE groups still active in the West, and their international backers, each for his reason, do not lack in imagination, either. The ethnic issue, accountability concerns, political solution and the UNHRC resolution all relate to Sri Lanka. Yet, the current campaign started a year ago, is centered on India -and is being played out in India. International NGOs with deep-pockets form the vanguard of the campaign, along with the SLT Diaspora groups and their friends in the media, Indian and overseas. 

Unlike 'corruption', environment and other 'governance issues' (?)their more favourite whipping boy in India in election-time -India's population and poverty are no more issues for them -- 'ethnicity', language and culture can cause deeper and more permanent fractures to India's 'unity in diversity', evolved through sentiments and fashioned since through political and constitutional processes. This does not mean that ethno-linguistic issues do not exist, or do not need to be addressed. In the Indian context, they are tractable constitutional issues, capable of resolution through national will, commitment and discourse. Not so in Sri Lanka. 

The present ratcheting up of pan-Tamil politics, with Indian elections also in mind, has its consequences for the country. Despite the Centre's unwillingness to commit itself on the US resolution at the UNHRC as yet, New Delhi's position became clear at the vote last year. The blame-game now in Tamil Nadu has started seeing an enemy of the Sri Lankan Tamil people even in the form of the US, where they saw only a friend and saviour until now. 

These sections, peripheral though at present, instead want India to move a resolution -and work towards sanctions against Sri Lanka, referendum in the Tamils areas of the country, all leading up to a 'separate nation', which the residual Tamils in Sri Lanka and their otherwise divided polity do not want, however. Is it not the mainline pan-Tamil polity wants is the question that they should be beginning to ask themselves. By extension, the rest of the Indian polity -starting with the self-styled 'nationalist' sections, but with different perceptions -- should be asking themselves, the same question. 

The bottom-line is not about India voting for the US resolution, if it came to that, or Indian politics or elections, too. It is not about what the left-over Tamils in Sri Lanka want -or, do not want. It is now all about what some 'faceless' group/groups (though not leader, as yet) in a 'nameless' country -rather, 'unnamed' countries --want India to be pressured in to doing. The West and the rest -starting with the INGOs -think they hold all the cards. That is not how the LTTE played the game. Nor that is how its rump groups have been trained to think and act, either. 

It applies to the divided polity in Tamil Nadu. In the past, they knew whose interests they were seeking to protect, and whose directions who were acting upon. Today, the interests they perceive as those of the Sri Lankan Tamil community is not wholly and whole-heartedly endorsed by their polity in that country. Neither do they seem to know who is firing from their shoulders, at whom, why and to what end -and also for how long! 

(The writer is a Senior Fellow at Observer Research Foundation)