Sunday Times 2
Minority complex of the majority Vs. 13A
View(s):There is a concept debated over the years by those involved in race relations in Sri Lanka that although the Sinhalese constitute the majority community and Tamils a minority community, the Sinhalese consider themselves the minority in the region when the tens of millions of Tamils living just across the Palk Strait are considered.
A visiting American woman professor in the mid-eighties, we recall, termed this phenomenon: the ‘minority complex of the majority Sinhalese’.
Critics have called this view: insular, hypocritical, racist, and chauvinist but the hard fact is that this ‘minority complex’ exists among most Sinhalese whose history tells them since the Chola invasion (993 CE), the Sinhalese have been fighting off invasions from South India to be an independent nation until the arrival of Western colonial powers who conquered the Indian sub-continent and captured Lanka later.
This fear of dominant forces–the minority complex of the Sinhalese–emerging from the Indian sub-continent against Lanka in the past is very much relevant to the proposal of President Ranil Wickremesinghe for the ‘full implementation of the 13th Amendment’ to the constitution.
This amendment, it is conceded on both sides of the Palk Strait, is a product of New Delhi’s Southern Bloc—the Foreign Ministry. Many books written by Indian writers tell the story between the lines, of how India destabilised the northern and eastern regions of Lanka by financing and weaponising Tamil rebels to influence Lanka’s domestic and foreign policies in India’s interests.
Much before the creation of the 13th Amendment, it was the minority complex of the majority that acted as a bulwark to halt all attempts by Tamil leaders to foster a federal system of governance.
In this context, the proposal of restoring Tamil rights through this amendment is a repetition of many follies with a guaranteed failure but launched with optimistic hopes for success.
Velupillai Prabakaran whom today’s Tamil leaders went along with in his heyday, rejected the Indo-Lanka Agreement and its 13th Amendment and went to war with the Indian Peace Keeping Force.
There is no question that the rights of Tamil citizens and the Tamil community have to be restored. It is not an issue–as is often said–of ‘their rights being granted by a government’. As citizens of this country, they are entitled to their rights as any other citizen. What has to be done is that laws and regulations have to be formulated and implemented with this objective. But the 13th Amendment is not the way.
Some Tamil leaders have shown a preference for their demands to be restored through the 13th Amendment because it will bind the Sri Lanka government to an international commitment. But any Lanka government has to be backed by the majority of the people in this endeavour. And that is unlikely through the 13th Amendment which brings back horrific memories to both Sinhalese and Tamils.
Tamils also have a great affinity for Indian Tamilians being genetically linked, and having common linguistic, religious and cultural links. But the 13th Amendment is likely to make them look to India as their Big Brother in governance, too, forgetting they are citizens of a united Sri Lanka.
The country is today at a historic juncture after decades of ultra-nationalistic policies with no clear economic or political objectives other than to engage in reckless foreign borrowings and keep going to win elections. All this has resulted in bankruptcy, and starvation with a president and government elected by a stupid electorate having been thrown out by the very electorate that elected them.
It now appears to have dawned on the hardline Sinhalese that the Sinhala Only policies have resulted in reducing them to third-class citizens of the world from a top-ranking position in Asia after World War II. Right now, Sinhala-Tamil antagonisms are markedly on the wane. And the mood is ideal for Tamil rights to be restored permanently through a stable new constitution.
Although the bankrupt country is now in turmoil about having or not having an election to local government bodies, an election of far greater importance would be a general election after which a Constitutional Assembly comprising not only elected members but other stakeholders such as past political leaders, the judiciary, public service representatives, diplomats, religious leaders, leading academics and media representatives could be brought together and a constitution formulated in the open.
The role of leaders of political parties in this endeavour would be vital in the election of members for the next parliament for the quality of MPs elected could decide whether Sri Lanka will rise or fall again.
BBC versus BJP
Those Sri Lankans kowtowing with devotion on all fours before Indian leaders and bureaucrats, we hope would take note of the sudden raids by the Indian Inland Revenue Department on offices of the British Broadcasting Corporation in Mumbai and New Delhi.
The Inland Revenue Department searches took place weeks after the BBC telecast a documentary in the United Kingdom that projected the image of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi not in a favourable light. It made the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesman Gaurav Bhatia call the BBC, ‘the most corrupt organisation in the world… India is a country that gives an opportunity to every corrupt organisation as long as you don’t spill venom’.
In Kochi, Kerala, people watch the BBC documentary “India: The Modi Question”, on a screen installed by the Congress Party district committee. Indian tax inspectors spent three days searching the BBC's offices in the country this week, not long after the broadcaster aired a documentary examining Prime Minister Narendra Modi's role during deadly 2002 sectarian riots. AFP
This columnist regularly watches the BBC World Service which is the same channel that broadcast over India. This BBC channel, we even considered to be more Indian than British given the deep understanding shown by the BBC to India, its people and culture in its programmes and even advertisements. Perhaps the potentialities of a market of a billion people, India being the country with the largest number of English speakers, the claim of being the ‘Biggest democracy in the world’ and now the British Prime Minister being of Indian origin, were factors determining BBC preference in focusing on India over all other former colonies of the British Empire.
But democratic India is changing. The language used by BJP spokesman Gaurav Bhatia is not that of Mahatma Gandhi and was devoid of the intellectual flourishes of Jawaharlal Nehru.
Are new Indian Maharajas with supreme powers that brook no criticism within the ‘Biggest Democracy’ emerging?
The BBC and the BJP are likely to settle their dispute amicably.
But for neighbouring small countries like Sri Lanka such arrogant rhetorical flourishes are frightening.