Author Archive
January 31, 2010 at 7:00 am · Categories: Colombo, Elections, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance | by Dayan Jayatilleka
“Prabhakaran, a textbook fascist…” - The Economist (‘Victory for the Tiger Slayer’ Jan 28th, 2010)
“Resistance to imperialism does not of course involve only armed force or bands of guerrillas. It is mainly allied with nationalism and with an aroused sense of aggrieved religious, cultural or existential identity.”- Edward Said (‘The Voyage In: Third World Intellectuals and Metropolitan Cultures’)
It is easy to be wise after the event, so I usually try to be wise before it. In a piece originally entitled ‘Crisis 2010: The post election scenario’ published over a month ago, from Dec 20th 2009 through to the 23rd, in the Sunday Lakbima, Transcurrents, Sri Lanka Guardian and Ada Derana, this is how I saw the Presidential election panning …
January 24, 2010 at 6:30 am · Categories: Colombo, Elections, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance | by Dayan Jayatilleka
“And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.”
“Daddy” by Sylvia Plath
If you can’t take my word for it, take that of Eric Hobsbawm, regarded not only as Britain’s greatest living historian but as ‘one of the outstanding historians of our age’ (Independent on Sunday). The Guardian says “Hobsbawm is one of the leading authors of the concepts and language in which all of us now discuss our situation”. It is indeed his language and concepts that help us understand why Mahinda Rajapakse is certainly my choice for president this time, given the choices available. …
January 20, 2010 at 7:00 am · Categories: Elections, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Dayan Jayatilleka
Harim Pieris, a former advisor to President Kumaratunga in the days that she had really lost touch with what was what in the country, has written the best piece so far on the strategy of the joint opposition at this Presidential election, with a clear if implicit indication that he thinks the strategy is likely to succeed (“Ranil’s Formula for the General’s success”, Daily Mirror Monday Jan 11th 2010). It’s a good article, a correct piecing together, but to my mind a bad analysis and latent prognosis. I may well be proven wrong and I shan’t go into the why of my demurral until after it is all over, in these crucial closing ten days of a most portentous election.
Speaking …
December 31, 2009 at 11:43 am · Categories: Colombo, Diplomacy, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance | by Dayan Jayatilleka
[Editors note: This is a response by Dayan Jayatilleke to a recently published article by Prof. Peter Schalk of Uppsala University, Sweden, who identified four western educated individuals hired by the Government of Sri Lanka to defend Colombo's decisions and criticisms from the West, labelling them "mercenary intellectuals". In the spirit of engagement, Groundviews invited two of the four mentioned in the article, no strangers to regular readers of this site, to respond. One politely declined. Prof. Schalk's article on Tamilnet is here. If you are in Sri Lanka, where Tamilnet continues to be blocked by all ISPs, click on the proxy here to read the article.]
Prof Schalk should spend his time analysing how the armed movement and the leadership …
December 28, 2009 at 9:04 am · Categories: Colombo, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Dayan Jayatilleka
In hard science when an experiment repeatedly fails and finally blows up the lab with it, the very assumptions which form the basis of the experiment are reassessed and often abandoned. The empirically evident track record of Tamil nationalist politics in Sri Lanka is that of repeated failure capped by defeat. However the dominant tendency in Sri Lankan Tamil nationalist politics, including in this postwar moment, has been quite other than one of critical self scrutiny.
As I explained in several articles during the CFA and at Georgetown’s CSIS in November 2005, when placed in a comparative historical context, even the dramatic military victories of the Tigers disguised a great strategic failure. First rate guerrilla movements of national liberation (Mao’s PLA, …
December 22, 2009 at 7:00 am · Categories: Colombo, Elections, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Dayan Jayatilleka
With “Sinhala hegemony” in its most dramatic form, the advancing Sri Lankan armed forces, closing in, Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism could not convince the Tamil Nadu voter of its cause and case, then surely it is imperative that that cause and case be identified as fatally flawed?
If India with its 70 million Tamils could not be budged from its stance of low key but decisive support for the Sri Lankan state, surely there is no chance of leveraging any strategically significant Western support for Tamil nationalism, given that the main Asian partner of the USA is India?
Given that MG Ramachandran was alive and one of the causative factors of the Indo-Lanka accord with its resultant the 13th amendment, it is …
December 15, 2009 at 6:30 am · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, Elections, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Dayan Jayatilleka
“For their part, Tamil leaders have not yet made anticipated conciliatory gestures that might ease government concerns and foster a genuine dialogue”- Sri Lanka: Re-charting US Strategy after the War, US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Dec 7, 2009
It was Prof Robert Pape who put it on the record: the Tamil Tigers fielded many more suicide bombers than any Middle Eastern or “jihadist” group. Suicide within the Tamil nationalist struggle was not limited to bombers, but included a death fast (Jaffna 1987) and several self immolations (Geneva & Tamil Nadu, 2009). It remains to be seen whether this suicidal tendency extends to the realm of politics.
If the Tamil minority, or even worse, the Tamil speaking communities were to abstain, …
December 7, 2009 at 1:43 pm · Categories: Colombo, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance | by Dayan Jayatilleka
Q: Why did you fall out with Rajapaksa?
A: Five days after we won the war, at a meeting of the (president’s) Security Council, he said he’d stop recruiting new people in the army because it’s too strong and too big, that Sri Lanka would become like Myanmar. Such statements demoralized me. I thought they were disgusting.”
- GEN SARATH FONSEKA, INTERVIEW GIVEN TO SATARUPA BHATTACHARJYA, OUTLOOK INDIA MAGAZINE, DEC 14TH, 2009 (He Said The Army’s Too Strong, Sri Lanka Will Become Like Myanmar)
There are many interpretations of what came between Rajapakse and Fonseka. Some able commentators have speculated that it was dynastic rule. While there is indeed such a dismal prospect (as during the Bandaranaike years 1970-77), I do …
November 7, 2009 at 5:20 pm · Categories: Colombo, Foreign Relations, Politics and Governance, Post-War, Religion and faith | by Dayan Jayatilleka
Vietnam was the first country to be informed by Sri Lanka of its victory over the Tigers. It was from the on the record remarks of a top Vietnamese leader that I learned that. In their separate speeches of welcome, the President, Prime Minister and Secretary General of the ruling Communist party of Vietnam all congratulated the Sri Lankan President for “the country’s historic victory over the LTTE” and promised to cooperate in “the elimination of the remnants of the LTTE”. On the issue of whether or not the Sri Lankan victory over the Tigers was one worth celebrating, the word of leaders who, as young men, actively fought the world’s mightiest superpower and won has an overriding credibility and …
October 10, 2009 at 11:31 pm · Categories: Colombo, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Dayan Jayatilleka
“Rajani… would have found the recent war completely abhorrent.”
- UTHR (J), 18th Sept, 2009
I did not expect the Rajani commemoration to be a posthumous Nuremburg Trial for Velupillai Prabhakaran, as Dayapala Thiranagama seems to suggest (Sunday Island Oct 4, 2009, p 15). I did expect a single mention– a moral indictment strong and clear — of Prabhakaran, for Rajani’s murder, but obviously I expected too much. I thought it especially necessary as an antidote to ambiguity and ambivalence because the evening’s mentions of the LTTE were scattered among a welter of references to the violence of the State, Sinhala chauvinism and (perhaps mostly) the Indian army. Crucially admitting, albeit in a gross understatement, that “there was no Tiger bashing …
September 27, 2009 at 11:28 am · Categories: Colombo, Foreign Relations, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War | by Dayan Jayatilleka
I am proud of my country, Sri Lanka, which has just been able to vanquish a formidable, ferocious and fascistic foe, despite its vast global network and in the face of considerable external pressure. I am proud that my country Sri Lanka has been able to restore its territorial unity and integrity and reasssert its independence and sovereignty. I am proud of the Sri Lankan armed forces which have achieved that which the armies of major powers have been unable to in many parts of the world. I am proud that Sri Lanka has been able to defeat not one but two armed totalitarianisms, South and North, Sinhala and Tamil — the JVP and the LTTE- while maintaining at least …
September 27, 2009 at 2:24 am · Categories: Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance | by Dayan Jayatilleka
The evening was good but perhaps Rajani deserved a bit better. She always told it like it was, named things by their name, confronted reality frontally. That quintessential spirit of Rajani, her courageous, critical, ‘concreteness’, was by and large absent in the 20th anniversary commemoration held at the BMICH on September 25th. It was only in the keynote speaker from India, our old friend Nandita Haksar, that one recognized a spiritual sister of Rajani Thiranagama.
Even if a trifle protracted, the cultural component of the evening was beautiful, strong and poignant, with the singing voices of Rajani’s sisters (especially Nirmala’s opening dirge), Liyanage Amarakeerthi’s poetry reading and Rajani’s own writings being the high points.
There was something missing though, an absent presence: …
July 12, 2009 at 6:53 am · Categories: Colombo, Constitutional Reform, Foreign Relations, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, Post-War, Reconciliation | by Dayan Jayatilleka
There have been three civil wars fought against the Sri Lankan state: 1971, 1986-89, 1979-2009. The Sri Lankan state prevailed in all three. These three wars settled three basic questions. The first uprising was about the character of the State, society and the economy and it was settled in favor of the market economy and multiparty democracy. The second civil war brought up the same questions but placed at the forefront the issue of centralization or devolution and power sharing (Wijeweera’s 300 page magnum opus was all about it), and with the victory of the state that too was settled in favor of the post Accord structural reform, the 13th amendment and provincial autonomy, with all parties including the militarily defeated …
June 30, 2009 at 3:58 am · Categories: Politics and Governance, 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: Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, 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, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, 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, Foreign Relations, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance, 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, Jaffna, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance | 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, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance | 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, Peace and Conflict, Politics and Governance | 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, …
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