Author Archive
June 30, 2009 at 3:58 am · Categories: English, Politics, Post-War | by Dayan Jayatilleka
We have a once –in-generations chance to re-found Sri Lanka, to build Sri Lanka anew. To do so, we must be both hard and soft; and vigilant as hawks and as conciliatory as doves. We must be hard enough to obliterate what is left of the LTTE as an organization and surgically pre-empt any attempts at re-emergence, be they local or Diaspora-based and originated. We must be soft and malleable enough to arrive at a consensus with the non-Tiger Tamils as to the shape of the Sri Lanka we wish to build and live in.
Where do we start? With renovation, I suggest. The only available starting point is modest and realistic reform, namely the implementation of the 13th amendment to …
June 27, 2009 at 2:22 am · Categories: English, Peace and Conflict, Politics, Post-War | by Dayan Jayatilleka
As Paul Berman once wrote, “somewhere in the world it is always 1941”. There comes a time in the life of every society when it is faced with an existential threat or challenge. It is the social forces or elements that rise up to this challenge and successfully overcome this threat that then have the power as well as the legitimacy to place their stamp on what comes after. Those who stood on the wrong side of history, or never rose to the occasion, or who abandoned the struggle partway, or simply failed; the defeated enemy, the collaborators, the appeasers and the fence-sitters — and these are not one and the same — all forfeit the chance to place …
June 13, 2009 at 6:24 am · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics, Post-War | by Dayan Jayatilleka
The warning about the risk of triumphalism came days before the 65th anniversary celebration of D Day, by the leaders of the US, UK and France. In the USA there are annual re-enactments of the battles of the American Revolution – the War of Independence against Britain —and of the Civil War against the Secessionist Confederacy. While the risk of triumphalism does indeed exist and must be cautioned against, I think there is yet another risk, an opposite one, which we must avoid. The USSR which triumphed over the bulk of the Nazi fascist army, collapsed without a shot being fired, and that collapse was preceded by an ideological surrender in which everything positive in its history was turned …
June 1, 2009 at 4:21 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Foreign Relations, Peace and Conflict, Politics, Post-War | by Dayan Jayatilleka
“Sri Lanka forces West to retreat over ‘war crimes’ with victory at UN”
- The TIMES (London), May 28, 2009
“Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
…Mmm, I’m gonna try with a little help from my friends”
- The Beatles
Was Geneva the last battle of the Thirty Years (hot) war, the first battle of the next war – a long Cold War against Sri Lanka — or was it a combination? Only future history will tell.
When we aren’t involved, our arithmetic goes awry. We speak of four Eelam wars when there were five, because we omit the important one fought between the LTTE and the IPKF. There were five Eelam wars fought on the soil of our island: 1978-1987, …
May 25, 2009 at 6:18 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
The degree of denial of Prabhakaran’s death within the expatriate Tamil consciousness is the best evidence of the pathology of Tamil ultra-nationalism. Rohana Wijeweera’s followers were fanatics, but when their leader was gone, they did not go into mass denial. The hardcore elements of the Tamil Diaspora really have to get their heads around it: Elvis has left the building. The Sun God has set, and his son won’t be rising either.
The Tigers were among the best known brands in the terrorist universe and by defeating them so completely and utterly Sri Lanka and its armed forces have made a contribution to regional and global security and stability. They have made an example of the Tigers …
May 11, 2009 at 6:37 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
These closing climactic weeks of the conventional war have been accompanied by tremendous external pressure on the Sri Lankan state. This has its upside because it illuminates. It reveals to us the world as it is and how it might be. It tells us who our friends are. It tells us also who our enemy’s friends are. It educates us as to what we must and must not do, including in the coming weeks and days.
Here is the rude reality. There is a three pronged campaign to save the Tiger. One is mounted from within the overseas Tamil community, the dominant pro-Tiger/pro-Tamil Eelam stream having developed into a global movement. The second prong is the West, with some functioning as …
April 28, 2009 at 7:24 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
It is heartening that the Tamil Tigers have retained a sense of humor under extreme pressure. It is a lesson to us all. The Tigers have declared a unilateral ceasefire and promised not to engage in any offensive military operations. The joke is in two parts. Firstly, they are in no shape to engage in any offensive military operations. In the second place these clowns have pulled this on us and the IPKF on more occasions than I can recall. The first ceasefire in 1985 saw the Tigers under Kittu ringing Sri Lankan army camps in Jaffna with landmines. The IPKF’s stop-go campaign — its rhythm and inconstancy influenced by Tamil Nadu and electoral considerations — enabled Prabhakaran to survive, …
April 18, 2009 at 5:05 pm · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, English, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
We Sri Lankans have no excuse whatsoever. We have been forewarned. A piece by PC Vinoj Kumar in the latest issue of Tehelka magazine says that “while the Sri Lankan army claims to be close to wiping out the LTTE, Prabhakaran may already have an able successor in his son”. The article goes onto say that “The techno savvy Anthony is widely tipped to succeed Prabhakaran’s mantle” (sic). And again: “It is expected that Anthony will take over the leadership from his father”. “Many LTTE cadres are said to have entered the thick Mullaitivu jungles, an area where several Indian soldiers died during battles against the LTTE in the 1980s. This is truly the lair of the Tigers…Observers now expect …
April 8, 2009 at 6:36 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Foreign Relations, Human Security, IDPs and Refugees, Peace and Conflict, Politics, Trincomalee | by Dayan Jayatilleka
Let me get this right. Two hundred and thirteen years since the first British colonial ships landed in Sri Lanka, a ship is setting sail from Britain, launched at an event with banners and posters (Vanangaman: “Mercy Mission to Wanni” ) bearing the map of Tamil Eelam, patronized by politicians and personalities of the former colonial occupier; a ship which hopes to enter the territorial waters of Sri Lanka without our permission and in violation of our sovereignty, at a time when our Navy is involved in the closing battles against a separatist terrorist army.
This is an arrogant intrusion combined with provocation and intertwined with diversionary intent.
While there is no doubt that what this Vanangamania deserves is the …
April 1, 2009 at 10:53 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Foreign Relations, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
An IANS report from Puducherry, March 25 read as follows: ‘Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi Wednesday said he was not ‘particularly fond’ of Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers because they killed his father Rajiv Gandhi. He told a press conference here: “The LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) is a terrorist group. I am not particularly fond of the LTTE myself. It killed my father.”…Gandhi, however, said that India was doing its best to protect Tamil civilians caught in the conflict between the LTTE and the military in Sri Lanka’s north. “We are trying to help the situation there”, he said.’
If only the offspring of the Sri Lankan political leaders and prominent personalities, Sinhala and Tamil, who were assassinated or …
March 25, 2009 at 6:25 am · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, English, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
The eyes of the world are upon us. This means two things: Sri Lanka must not blink on the fundamentals, whatever the pressures brought to bear, while at one at the same time Sri Lanka must be open and flexible on that which is non-fundamental, tactical and secondary. We must be resolute and tough, steel-like on the issue of the Tigers and pluralist, liberal and moderate on the politics that comes after. The closure of the conflict, the construction of the new Sri Lanka and the transition from one to the other requires that rare combination of characteristics: steel and water; yin and yang.
We must be as hard on the Tigers as we are soft on the Tamils; as open …
March 11, 2009 at 9:20 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
“The political moment is always connected with changes to borders”
- Jacques Ranciere (2006)
The Sinhalese and Tamils are in a Mexican standoff. Locally, the Sri Lankan armed forces have surrounded the Tigers who have embedded themselves among the civilians (some of whom are the Tigers’ extended families and trained “Makkal Padai” militia, as well as those who chose to follow the Tigers as they evacuated Jaffna in 1995, all constituting the LTTE’s social support base or the Tiger tribe). Meanwhile, globally, from the US Senate to the UN Security Council, from Ottawa to London, from Brussels to Pretoria, from Delhi to Dili, Sri Lanka is under pressure and scrutiny as never before. Are we being encircled globally just as we have …
February 23, 2009 at 7:00 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Foreign Relations, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
Velupillai Prabhakaran is about to be defeated but he has left a time bomb hidden in plain sight which must be defused if he is not to wreak a posthumous revenge. This is the time bomb placed under a strategic four lane intersection, that between the Sinhalese and the Tamils and Sri Lanka and the world. The time bomb can be seen in the epidemic of demonstrations by the Tamil Diaspora and the statements critical of Sri Lanka that flood the international media. Prabhakaran is hoping that the time bomb will go off in time to save him, his army and his project. It is unlikely to do so, though we must not take that for granted and must …
February 16, 2009 at 7:00 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Foreign Relations, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
How do we describe our country, Sri Lanka, and how is our country described by others? As an island in the Indian Ocean, just south of or off the Southern shores of India. All descriptions of Sri Lanka are a variant of this because no other is possible. We are defined by our placing, and that placing is in relation to and proximate to India.
The unique importance of the Indian factor in Sri Lanka’s external relations is best evidenced in the fact that Sri Lanka is simply indescribable without reference to India.
The inevitable asymmetry inherent in the Indo-Lanka equation is similarly evidenced in the fact that India is easily describable without reference to Sri Lanka.
Our relation to India is …
February 5, 2009 at 12:22 pm · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
The armies clash in the night but what of the morning after?
The underlying ethno-national question, that of the relationships between the Sinhalese, the Tamils, the Muslims and the state, remains, but it does not remain unaltered. The war grew out of the nationalities question but it has in turn affected and altered it. Those who acknowledge the existence of the issue fail to recognize that the outcome of the war, actually wars, have impacted upon the underlying issue itself. When one gambles and fails, when one plays a zero-sum game and loses, that has consequences. On the other hand, those who stress the discontinuity, the rupture, that the outcome of the war signifies, do not concede the …
January 28, 2009 at 10:12 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
The trick is to grasp the main needs of the present while being able to see into the future, with its problems and prospects, while being aware that the choices we make today, in the here and now, will determine the shape of tomorrow.
First things first: the Tigers have been almost completely overthrown and almost totally defeated, but not yet and not quite. The task is to stay focused and finish the job, resisting all external pressures from whichever quarter however exalted or powerful.
If the foot-soldiers of an army survive but not its General staff, it is almost impossible for it to continue to fight, but as long as a leader and his General staff survive, they can raise an …
January 17, 2009 at 7:04 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Media, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
“…The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity…
…And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?”
WB Yeats, ‘The Second Coming’
I have a particular problem with the murder of journalists, especially editors of newspapers. The Editor’s Guild and Publishers Society of Sri Lanka annually host an awards ceremony at which the final presentation of the evening, the pinnacle prize (distinguished by a different hue from the others), is for Journalist of the Year. That award is named after my father, Mervyn de Silva. It was not donated by me or any member of his family. It was instituted …
January 5, 2009 at 6:17 pm · Categories: Colombo, English, Peace and Conflict | by Dayan Jayatilleka
“Hasta la Victoria Siempre!” (”Ever Onward to Victory!”) - Che Guevara
“One thing is now required-to deal the death-blow to the fascist beast…The last storming of the Hitlerite lair is on…give them no respite until they cease resistance.” - Stalin, Order of the Day, May 1, 1945
With the liberation of Paranthan and Kilinochchi, the war has pivoted decisively in favor of the Sri Lankan armed forces and against the LTTE. We are winning a ground war, not against sporadic suicide bombers or home made rockets causing single digit casualties over long years, but against a ferocious insurgent foe fielding large formations, armed with heavy artillery, fast boats and light aircraft. We are doing so not with open ended foreign …
December 27, 2008 at 7:48 am · Categories: Colombo, English, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
Sri Lanka closes out its 60th year of Independence, though in the strictest sense it lasts till the beginning of next February when we celebrate our 61st Independence Day. It is a moment to take stock. Due to all the wrong turnings we took and the right ones we did not at and since our Independence six decades ago, we have spent a quarter century commemorating our independence in conditions of a separatist civil war. This will in all probability be so next year too. However it may not be so the year after, and from then onwards, because of what we have achieved this year. And I do mean “we”: the leadership, the government, the military, the vast majority …
December 7, 2008 at 8:23 am · Categories: English, Politics | by Dayan Jayatilleka
[The following is the English translation of a review essay by Prof. Remy Herrera which has just appeared under the caption "Morale de la révolution" in the December 2008 edition of Afrique-Asie, the reputed French magazine.]
Re-defining the terms of a moral ideal of rebel resistance: How to master revolutionary violence? questions the Sri Lankan academic Dayan Jayatilleka in his latest book. It is by practicing a strict code of ethics, the way the ‘Maximum Leader’ did, proving that the limits imposed on legitimate violence help avoid terror and extreme violence and that those limits help gain popular support.
For nearly a decade, Latin America has become a place of resurgence of the peoples’ struggle …
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