*Wilson, Jeyaratnam A.
The Break-Up of
Sri Lanka : The Sinhalese-Tamil Conflict published by C.Hurst & Company, London, Orient Longman Ltd., 1988.
from the inner flap:
from the preface:
from Chapter 1 The Origins of the Unitary State of Sri
Lanka
from the inner flap:
A.
Jeyaratnam Wilson has had exceptional opportunities to observe the movement
of the `locomotive of history' in the island state of Ceylon since it
obtained independence in 1948. From 1978 to 1983 he was also intimately
involved in the island's affairs and was successful in negotiating a
compromise agreement between President Jayewardene and the leaders of the
Tamil United Liberation Front. That agreement was watered down at the stage
of legislation, due to the historic enmity between the two major
communities, Sinhalese and Tamil, who inhabit the island. Worse still, it
was not implemented in the proper spirit. That was the point when the
present civil war was triggered off. The author was personally involved in
all the phases of the `gathering storm'. He uses his personal experiences
and inside information to analyse, in the framework of contemporary history
and political science, the island's gradual downward slide since
independence. The majority ethnic grouping's alleged fears of the
geopolitical situation, its antipathy to the competitive Tamil minority and
the refusal of its elites to share power with the latter are, in his
opinion, the causes for the disintegration of the island polity: geography
made the island one country but historical processes will make it two
states.
Wilson raises relevant questions and provides answers to why and how
events took the turn they did. Contrary to the accepted view that the first
Prime Minister, Don Stephen Senanayake (1947-52), successfully welded the
island's multi-ethnic communities into a unified whole, he concludes that
Senanayake was the begetter of Ceylon Tamil nationalism, and rejects the
argument that fear of India compelled the Sinhalese to refuse to accommodate
Tamil claims. After independence, the shift in the balance of power, if not
its near-monopoly by the Sinhalese, was the reason for Sinhalese
unwillingness to make the Tamils feel they belonged to the island polity.
The author provides evidence of these trends even before independence. A
recurring theme in the book is the Sinhalese insistence on a centralised
unitary state. This has now nearly collapsed.
The author provides insights into India's stake in the island's affairs
both as the major power in South Asia and because of the Tamil minority's
ties with the sizeable neighbouring unit of Tamil Nad in the Indian
federation. Some cliches in political science have come true, with
yesterday's heresies (the demand for federalism by the Tamil Federal Party)
becoming today's orthodoxy. Quotations from letters and documents provide
evidence of the Tamil leadership's endeavours to seek an accommodation, and
the loss of perspective by the Sinhalese elites. The abandonment of
constitutional designs to end a soluble internal civil conflict has resulted
in cruelties perpetrated by the state. The author ends his analysis with the
view that even if the state secures a victory over the forces of the Tamil
freedom movement or a patchwork compromise underwritten and monitored by New
Delhi, the end-result in the foreseeable future will be two sovereign
states.
A. Jeyaratnam Wilson taught at the University of Ceylon and held the
founding Chair of Political Science at that University (now the University
of Peradeniya) before being appointed Professor of Political Science at the
University of New Brunswick in 1972. In 1978-83, he acted as an unofficial
constitutional adviser to the President of Sri Lanka, and was intermediary
between the President and the Tamil United Liberation Front and one of two
vice-chairpersons of the Presidential Commission on Development Councils
(1979-80).
He is the author of Politics in Sri Lanka, 1947-73 (1974, 2nd revised edn
1979), Electoral Politics in an Emergent State (1975), The Gaullist System
in Asia (1980), and co-editor of The States of South Asia (1982) and From
Independence to Statehood (1984).
from the Preface:
"I was reluctant to write this book, and for a long time after 1983, I could not
resolve the matter in my conscience. A major factor was that I was close to President J.R.
Jayewardene in the critical phase from 1978 to 1983. But as I kept reading with horror the
operations by security forces of the island state, I realised I could no longer be a
silent witness. The community of scholars interested in Ceylon had to be told what
happened when I was intermediary in the Sinhalese Tamil dispute in the years 1978-83. I
realised too that an analysis of the political process of which I had an inside track
since the island's independence in 1948 would place in context my role in the years
concerned.
I have used 'Ceylon' advisedly because that is how the country was called for well over
150 years before Sri Lanka was unilaterally introduced into the vocabulary of
international usage in 1972; this was done without the consent of the principal minority,
the Tamils, the community to which I belong. Sri Lanka is used in the title to convey to
readers evidence of the disintegration of the polity under its new name.
My considered view is that Ceylon has already split into two entities.
At present this is a state of mind; for it to become a territorial reality is a
question of time. Patchwork compromises, even if underwritten by New Delhi, are
passing phenomena. The fact of the matter is that under various guises the
Sinhalese elites have refused to share power with the principal ethnic minority, the
Tamils. The transfer of power by Britain to the Sinhalese ethnic majority in 1948
brought in its wake an unfortunate train of events which
can best be described as a loss of perspective on the part of the Sinhalese political
elites. Their anxiety for power led to the abandonment of principle.
My interpretative analysis is based on inside knowledge of political events, which in
turn is derived from my acquaintance with many of the political leaders of the Sinhalese
and Tamils and important members of their respective elites. Most instructive, however,
were two leading statesmen. One of these was
my
father-in-law S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, who led a revived Tamil nationalism and with whom
I was in frequent contact from 1948 till his death in 1977. He was at the centre of events
as a leading Opposition figure.
The other was President Jayewardene, whom I came to know intimately in the years
1978-83. He was in many ways on a lonely eminence. He does not have a helpful cabinet, and
came to office very late in his life. Whenever I was visiting Colombo from Canada, I spent
much time with him, sometimes every day. I travelled about Ceylon with him, and was
occasionally his only companion. We had wide-ranging discussions, but I have only referred
to selected matters relevant to this book because of confidentiality and respect for our
relationship in those years. Mrs Jayawardene, a gracious lady with considerable political
acumen, joined us at times in our discussions.
I have tried to treat my subject in consonance with my academic calling, and thus with
my conscience. I have presented the facts in a historical frame of reference. The
authenticity of many of the facts can be verified in due course through the archival
arrangements I have made with Columbia University in the City of New York. There is a
proviso that the documents be made accessible after a thirty-year time lapse. For the rest
I have depended on my own notes and on primary and secondary sources.
We live with a Third World
largely of artificial
sovereign geographical expressions. The proliferation of mini-states is inevitable.
Ethnicity transcends barriers of region, religion, class and social distinctions. Leaders
and political parties in these post colonial states, whether democratic or authoritarian,
respond to pressures from their ethnic groupings. My view of the future is reinforced by
the certainty that political problems owe their existence to circumstances that are of
more than 2,500 years' standing* especially when the political processes have been
modernised. When the geopolitical situation has also been activated, the hopes of an
island unity are dim...
*Apart from the
political activities of the Buddhist
clergy in independent Ceylon (and in the days of the Sinhalese kingdoms),
D.C. Wijewardene's The Revolt in the
Temple: Composed to Commemorate 2500 Years of the Land, the Race and the Faith
(Colombo, 1983) conveys the depth of Sinhalese Buddhist feeling on the need to safeguard
the Sinhalese people and Sinhalese Buddhism.
