Publisher:
Penguin Books Rs 299
The story
of Prabhakaran’s rise from the backwoods of Jaffna to build the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), one of the most dreaded terrorist organizations,
and his fall in the battlefield can be told in many ways. Sri Lanka historian
Prof. K.M. de Silva in his latest book looks at the rise and fall of the LTTE, in
the larger context of South Asia and the India-Sri Lanka relationship as well.
The
first narrative - the travails of Sri Lanka as a south Asian democracy provides
insights on failure of political negotiations in Sri Lanka that led to militarization
of the environment. An interesting case study comparing the conflicts in the J
and K and Sri Lanka brings out the role of external powers in influencing
internal situations. The auhtor’s point on the failure of Jaffna Tamils to
forge a pan-Tamil political front with Plantation Tamils due to caste and class
differences is a valid one. In fact Jaffna Tamils ‘superiority’ mindset was
reflected within the LTTE leadership also. This led to the Batticaloa LTTE
leader Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna Amman to break away from
Prabhakaran with detrimental effect on LTTE’s performance in the Eelam
War.
This
part also analyses the failure of Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF)
leadership to understand the true nature of LTTE and Prabhakaran’s ambitions to
be the sole leader of Tamils. In fact, when I broached the subject with the
late TULF leader Amirthalingam, he rued the day he helped Prabhakaran in the
early days. Later the TULF leader paid the price for his grievous error when
LTTE cadres who ostensibly came to ‘meet’ him gunned him down.
The
second narrative analysing the militarization of Sri Lanka provides insights on
political changes that impacted security services during Mrs Sirimavo
Bandaranayak’s regime. According to the author this affected the national
character of the security forces making it a largely Sinhala Buddhist force. Security
forces became a victim of political meddling for a long time; this affected
their operations against the LTTE in the later years.
In
examining the seeds of separatism in this part, Prof de Silva builds a well
argued case against Tamil’s three basic grievances – university admissions
policy, language policy and state sector employment – to conclude they are
based on false premises. But the analysis of ‘false premises' misses the
history’s glaring footnote - the kernel of truth in the Tamil argument - that
enabled Tamil insurgency to hold out against Sri Lanka’s might for over 25
years. The growth of LTTE was the logical consequence of Sinhala polity’s
failure to convince the Tamils of the rationale of its actions. Though in his
analysis is from a Sinhala rather than Sri Lankan perspective, it gives the majority
Sinhala’s reasoning that influenced the country’s political responses to the
ethnic question.
The demoralising defeats of Sri
Lankan army and the rise of the LTTE between 1990 and 2000 are dealt with in
the third part. This was a period of political drift with the United National
Party (UNP) and Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) rivalry neutralising each other’s
efforts to achieve ethnic reconciliation. The failure of the draft constitution
painstakingly formulated in 2000 is a case in point. In this period LTTE had
also hobbled the Tamil polity from undertaking creative initiatives. The
failure of the peace process in 2002 was a consequence of the disastrous
UNP-SLFP cohabitation and Prabhakaran’s faith in the power of the gun than in
peace talks. Prabhakaran failed to factor a powerful President in Mahinda
Rajapaksa and a skilful army commander in General Sarath Fonseka emerging at
the same time determined to wipe out LTTE. One cannot but agree with the author’s comment
on the dubious way in which President Rajapaksa deprived General Fonseka of the
credit for the victory against the LTTE.
The most valuable chapter in this
part is the one dealing with the challenges of militarization from 1986 to
2011. The author emphasizes the need to recruit Tamils and other minorities in
armed forces as part of the national integration process. His concern on
retaining the oversized army even after the war and sidelining of the
parliament in national security affairs reflects mood of civil society. In
tandem with the control armed forces in the hands of the President and his
brother and Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa, militarisation appears to
have come to stay.
The last part on reconstruction
and rehabilitation in war torn north is rather sketchy probably because it is a
developing story. It has been written with a lot of sympathy for the people of
the war torn region. His stress on the need to return the lands occupied by
security forces to the rightful owners reflects this concern.
Overall, this is a well
researched and thought provoking book of value to Sri Lanka scholars and
researchers. Its style with chronology of events and topics moving forward and
backward does not make for easy reading. The maps are useful to understand the
military operations. And production values are of a high order we have come to
expect from Penguin.
1 comment:
The Sinhalese do not understant the Tamil's point of view and they think that federalism is but another name for splitting the country.
I don't see any rays of hope on the reconciliation front and now the time has to come to think out of box.
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