lf Political Vacuum Continues T.N.A Will Overtake EPDP and PLOTE - Dayan Jayatilleka
-an interview with Thava Sajitharan
When asked 2 1/2 months ago about Sri Lankan government’s efforts to implement a political solution, you said: Which government could be accused of non-implementation a mere 10 days after the end of a 30-year-war? What is your position now?
Dayan Jayatilleka
At the very outset let me say that the views I express here are strictly my personal opinion. The results of the recently concluded municipal election in Jaffna and urban council election in Vavuniya clearly show that now is the time for a political solution. If there continues to be a political vacuum, the Tamil progressive moderates such as the EPDP and PLOTE will be weakened and overtaken by the TNA by the time of the parliamentary election next year. If the TNA sweeps the parliamentary election while continuing to uphold its stance of rejecting the 13th amendment as insufficient and calling for “internal self determination”, the island will present a picture of clear ethnic division, polarization and deadlock. Colombo will not have a truly constructive Tamil negotiating partner that the Sinhala public and the armed forces can trust. It will be difficult to have Northern Provincial Council election and devolve power to an NPC dominated by a TNA which rejects the 13th amendment as too little.
Conversely, it will be difficult to postpone such an election indefinitely, problematic to dissolve the Council after election is held, and unwise to abolish the NPC by scrapping the 13th amendment with no alternative acceptable to the Tamils. An ethnic zero-sum game will be the result. Negotiations will be sporadic and unsuccessful. There may be a political process but that will be open-ended, while the existential situation of the Tamil people deteriorates on the ground. This means that the Sri Lankan crisis needlessly becomes intractable once again. The only way to avoid such an impasse with its tragic consequences of a renewed cycle of conflict, this time non-military but worse, civic, is to reduce the alienation of the Tamil people of the North. This can be done by giving the people some degree of local autonomy and representation, while Colombo’s Tamil partners such as the EPDP still remain a viable political option. Now the time is running out and as the election results show, Tamil disaffection is growing rapidly.
Going by the views you expressed in the media, you expected people in Jaffna to endorse the present administration’s stance in the MC election...how do you read the outcomes of polls in Jaffna and Vavuniya?
I certainly did not expect the Jaffna people to endorse the present administration’s stance, and I have never written anything which could even remotely be interpreted to mean that. I did expect that Jaffna people would opt for Douglas Devananda, and this they did, which is quite significant, though they did not do so quite as clearly as I thought. That was not Douglas’ fault. If he had been allowed to contest under the Veena sign as he was when he was a minister of an earlier cabinet, he would have secured more votes. If he had caved into pressure and joined the SLFP, he may have lost.
Do you feel that the government has let you down by asking you to return before your term ended?
My first term of two years ended on May 31, 2009 and a MFA letter in January informed me that I will have to return. However, that term was extended to May 31, 2010, in a faxed document signed by the Secretary Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which stated that H.E. the President had decided upon such an extension. This in turn was reversed by a ministry fax dated July 17th. I do feel the Government could have handled this better especially after the success at the UNHRC Special session. If I were transgressing official policy, I could have been directly informed through the usual channels which were utilized throughout my term. If I had persisted in such transgression I could have been asked for an explanation. I could have been brought down to Colombo for a consultation or briefing. None of these options were exercised.
In retrospect, how do you see the young Dayan of the 80s’ in contrast to the Dayan Jayatilleka, the ex-ambassador of the Sri Lankan state? During the 80s, you vociferously advocated the Leninist views on the State - Lenin held that the function of the State was to moderate class antagonisms, enforcing the rule of the oppressor. Having criticized Sri Lanka’s “bourgeois state” in the early 80s, you later on came to serve the very State whose “bourgeois” character doesn’t seem to have changed over all these years. Isn’t this self-contradictory?
More accurately it is the young Dayan of the 1970s and 80s, because I was first picked up for questioning by the Intelligence Services Division during the administration of Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike, when I had just sat for my A levels as a student at Aquinas University College Colombo, over my involvement with a revolutionary group called Miti Pahara (Hammer Blow). No, I do not think it is self-contradictory, except in a dialectical sense. In the first place, in both incarnations, “the state” and “state power” were central: I opposed the state in the first phase and defended and represented it in the second. There was logic to it. When socialism collapsed the world over, I shifted from the perspective of overthrowing the capitalist state for the purpose of ushering in an alternative and radically more advanced society, to the perspective of reforming the capitalist state and using it as instrument to reform society.
Thus, I changed from a revolutionary to a reformist; a communist to a social democrat. My support for president Premadasa and his reform policies reflected and were rooted in this change. There was another factor also: the nature of the barbaric violence that was unleashed by totalitarian movements such as the LTTE and the JVP. I quickly grasped that these movements represented what political philosopher Hannah Arendt called “political evil”, and that the state, however authoritarian and repressive, could be reformed while such Pol Potist or fascist movements had to be crushed. I grasped very rapidly, that when it was choice between the state and such totalitarian movements, it is the state - even the capitalist state — one must support. This was the choice, known as the “Popular Front”, correctly made in the 1930s and 40s by Marxists and leftwing intellectuals the world over, when faced with fascism. That was my choice too.
Now that the war is over and Prabhakaran destroyed, today I may be on the verge of a third shift; of taking my distance from the state and placing more emphasis on society and the public space. However, the underlying consistency of my life is that I have been a rebel with a sense of right and wrong as indicated by my consciousness and conscience, my intellect and spirit. I have also been an internationalist throughout.
The ideological shift you are referring to, doesn’t it evince what the Communists - your former comrades by your own admission - call ‘political opportunism’? Dialectical transformation, it is said, concerns the replacement of the old and reactionary by the rise and strengthening of the new. Instead of striving for the more progressive, you have, in your second incarnation, as you call it, sought to defend the existing system which, a Marxist dialectical scrutiny would identify as being democratic in appearance yet dictatorial in essence. How revolutionary or rebellious is that in a dialectical sense?
When accused of changing his position held from 1905, Lenin in 1917, quoted Goethe saying that, “theory is grey my friend, while the tree of life grows green forever.” He was drawing attention to the fact that theory must reflect and adjust to the changing reality in order to change it still further, while reality does not adjust to theory! The old is not necessarily always more reactionary than the new.
Nazi fascism and Pol Potism were new phenomena but these were far more dangerously reactionary than the old systems, which is why Marxists defended bourgeois democracy and its restoration, against fascism. The JVP’s Second Uprising and the LTTE were far more reactionary than what existed and exists, in that these would have led to a totalitarian, slave society. You would not have been able to write and publish as you do, even with the dangers that journalists face these days. Therefore, it was quite progressive to rebel for the preservation of existing limited democratic freedoms and space, against these neo-barbarians.
What is the difference between Wilsonian and Leninist right to self-determination, and how much relevance do these concepts have to the different nationalities of Sri Lanka?
The Leninist concept preceded by a few years the Wilsonian, but there are strong similarities. Both had an aspect that was strategic, even instrumental, in that they wanted to undermine the old empires by stimulating the revolt of captive nations and nationalities in the rear areas of these empires. I think, the Marxist contribution to the understanding of the National question is a rich one, and here, I mean, the debates within Marxism. No other school of thought has been so conceptually complex and highly evolved. However, the discussion on Sri Lanka has to take into account the differences in time and space. How does the national or nationalities question play out in a context that is not that of imperialism, but an independent state in the global South, that is struggling to protect its own sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity?
The Leninist formulation on national self determination is valid today only in the context of foreign, i.e. external occupation. This is not the case with Sri Lanka. Fidel Castro has clearly said that after the Cold War and the fall of the socialist camp, what is most important today is the national sovereignty, state sovereignty. Translated this means that any solution to the Sri Lankan national question must be within a single, united country. What has been validated, in my mind, is that stand of the old generation of Ceylonese Marxists who advocated regional autonomy.
You have been positive about India’s role in Sri Lanka and pushing for the implementation of the Indian-engineered 13th amendment. Given the fact that India itself is still grappling with too many issues, (having to deal with a fascist RSS, Kashmir, Gujarat, borders, etc.) what gives you the hope that the immediate neighbour could help Lanka a great deal? Don’t you think they should be told to mind their own business?
India could have played the role of a spoiler during this war too as in 1987, but did not. This was not only because it wanted to see the end of the Tigers, which it rightly did, but also because it was given to understand on the record and at the highest levels, that a fair political accommodation for the Tamils would ensue, based on the implementation of the 13th amendment. If we regard the 13th amendment as unacceptable in whole or part because it was Indian-engineered, then we should not have promised to implement it, and if we have made international commitments not only to India but also the UN, then we should not fight shy of implementing them.
We need to keep India on side because any small state such as ours, needs the support and solidarity of its neighbours to ward off pressures from far away; pressures stemming from the Tamil diaspora. True, we can tell India to mind its own business but then it may tell us to look after ourselves if we are in trouble, now that the Tigers are wiped out. Given the fact of 70 million Tamils next door in Tamil Nadu and the new trends of Indo-US convergence, US-China rapprochement, Indo-China cooperation and Indo-South African closeness, I am not sure this would serve Sri Lanka’s national and security interests.
The Chinese and the Indian economic miracles also give us potential engines of growth and prosperity. India is indeed grappling with conflicts at its far periphery, but has proved itself and been globally applauded as a model of the handling of diversity and the transforming of diversity into a source of celebration and strength for sustained takeoff. The Indian model is one of a secular state, despite the overwhelming preponderance of Hindus in its populace; a multiethnic military; and quasi-federal accommodation of its ethnic, regional and linguistic mosaic.
You have been accused of being a RAW agent. “Dayan’s record as a spokesperson for RAW, the lunatic end of Indian foreign policy-makers who have managed to alienate all her neighbours, is well known” says Gamini Seneviratne in a recent newspaper article. What is your response to this allegation?
If anyone had an allergy to and a nose for RAW agents, it was president Premadasa. I must be the only alleged RAW agent to have been a close and prominent supporter and defender of Premadasa who restored Sri Lanka’s sovereignty to the full, by sending off the IPKF even at the cost of an open polemic with Rajiv Gandhi! I was also the only minister of a provincial council to have resigned. I quit the North East PC in less than six months, having collected a salary for only a single month, and I did so having written a critical open letter to the chief minister, Vardarajaperumal, which appeared in every local newspaper.
This was a full year before the NEPC declared a UDI! As for Gamini Seneviratne, I had thought that distraught daddies enter the fray only to protect the fair name of their teenage daughters, not their adult sons who have been evaluated by independent outside observer-commentators as having lost a debate! I was writing in public and getting involved in polemics with those who were much older to me since my teens, and my father Mervyn de Silva would have disdained the thought of intervening, just as I would have been horrified if he had waded in to defend me and sing my praises!
What are your future plans?
Initially to return to my substantive post as senior lecturer at the University of Colombo. What I would really like to do is to write an analytical book, a length study on Sri Lanka’s Thirty Year War from a comparative international perspective, and tease out its lessons for governance policy and conflict theory.
COURTESY: LAKBIMA NEWS
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