the leaders of SL have failed their people…
the tamils knew this from the beginning…
peaceful protest in the 50′s & gos turned to a national liberation struggle because the tamils don’t have confidence that the state, as it exists and has existed, can not redress their grievenaces…

please let us separate and then you can sort out your country and we can sort out ours and then we can come back as a “union” like the EU…

before WWI & WWII europe consisted of empires with multi-lingual and multi ethnic populations… but they weren’t stable… and now almost each country is a mono ethnic grouping – except a few like belgium (for now) and switzerland… why is it that in the post colonial era, the world can not recognize that the trauma that Europe underwent in the 20th century is what the ex-colonies MUST go through – after which they can come together ON THEIR OWN TERMS as the EU has…

think about it people…
or just kill all the tamils and convert those that remain to Buddhism like the Sinhala MEP Nirj Deva suggested.

So far, the only offer your government (and others before yours) have placed on the table is the hegemonic ideology of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism. Inherent is the notion that those dispossessed of this identity are somehow inelligible to participate fully in the practices of state-production.

My argument (as stated earlier) was that EVEN the Sinhala Buddhist people whom the State has claimed to represent have been failed through ongoing processes of structural violence. You appear to acknowledge this fact when you say that postcolonial state-formation was flawed, and hence the rise of Tamil militancy. But the argument that war is a necessary step before you can address these underlying issues is fundamentally flawed. There is nothing that prevents the State from endorsing a politics of inclusion by first recognising that its institutions are rotten to the core, and then ensuring that they are meaningfully reformed to ensure the rights of ALL its citizens are equally protected. To ensure equity in education, full participation of dissenting voices in the political process, addressing structural impediments that stand in the way of upward mobility amongst the rural masses. That murderers are brought to justice, and corrupt officials and politicians brought to book.

Some politicians such as SWRD (whom James Manor calls an expedient utopian) engaged in vituperative and ethnocentric party politics in the full knowledge that it would lead the country to ruination. Contrast that with your political masters who emerged as part of the next generation of politicians. They have fully embodied this discourse of hatred and ethnocentrism, and are perhaps even not aware of the possibilities of adopting secular ideals in their practices.

If the State you represent is unwilling to recognise the very humanity of its citizens by engaging in some form of corrective action (implementing the 17th amendment would be a good start) then please spare me your polemics of how the war is a necessary step toward establishing a lasting peace. You know it is not. You recognize that the State has failed EVEN the very (Sinhala Buddhist) people it claims to represent.

And you have no right to exhort these very people your State has failed ever since independence to rise up to its defence by sacrificing their lives for it.

No, I will not support your war.

Dayan’s article was sent to Groundviews for publication and I am committed to featuring voices I do not agree with at all, or find it hard to, precisely for that fact. It helps me think through my own bias.

That he has gone to give the article to the Island after sending it to me is entirely his prerogative. If you wish to be published, please send something in. It is after all the nature of the web to find the good juxtaposed with the banal.

Corruption includes extravagance, waste,negelect and every form of malpractice, dishonesty, abuse, misuse, unreasonable exercise of power,failure or refusal to exercise power, anything and everything left undone which results in the right of the people being denied or impaired.

Accordingly if corruption is eradicated a large slice of the basic grievances of the Tamils would be automatically met and the balance can be easily settled without going for a division of the country.

In my humble opinion federalism is not a solution for the Tamil problem. Federalism is somewhat similar to the present Provincial Council system. Everyone knows the fate of the North-East Provincial Council. All provincial Councils and for that matter Council elected by popular vote can be dissolved at any time by the President and subsequent election held at the will and pleasur of the President.

And so the present system of governance must be changed if we are to have sustainable peace, prosperity and a pleasant living for all the people in this bountiful country of ours.

So let us move towards a solution rather than continue to express or analyze the problems.

That is why I put forward a set of suggestions as a means to SOLVE ALL THE PROBLEMS and called upon everyone to comment on it.

the war is being fought for the same reason that abraham lincoln fought a civil war which consumed 650,000 americans: to keep the country as one, undivided and indivisible.

if anyone takes up arms for a separate state, any state suppresses them violently. if anyone maintains a separate army, the state suppresses it because a state enjoys a sole monopoly of legitimate force or else it is not state worthy of the name.

if anyone agitates for a separate state peacefully, then , in states ranging from india to spain, they are suppressed nonviolently by law.

recent demonstrations for a separate state in the kashmir were fired upon and at least two separatist leaders were killed. this was by a quasi-federal secular democratic state, india.

the sri lankan state cannot be held to different standards.

as for the silly obfuscation of the qualitative difference between the democratic South and Tigercontrolled North, this sort of website cannot and does not exist in the latter but does so in the former.

[Editors note - Dear Eckol, copying and pasting lengthy press releases not directly connected to the post or the discussion is discouraged on Groundviews. One can easily provide a link to the source and capture the gist of the argument here.]

Is it to keep a plot of land intact? If it is, it is not a cause I am willing to lay down my life for. Perhaps you might invoke the language of your political masters to make the case for the territorial integrity of the post-colonial Sri Lankan state.

That, perhaps, is a more reasonable argument. But it is still merely an argument, and I remain to be convinced that the State I am asked to fight for is, indeed, worth laying my life down for.

Since independence, the State has failed the vast majority of its citizens in all respects. The rural people of the country, irrespective of ethnicity or religion, have, in every sense, been denied their very humanity. When we seek the assistance of State institutions such as the police in our day to day lives, we are greeted with suspicion, contempt and outright cussedness. At the drop of a hat, we are assaulted, tortured and false charges framed against us. Our rural schools are ill-equipped and the staff ill-trained. We are stuck in this rut of postcolonial agrarian modernity with no hope for upward mobility.

State agents mercilessly use their power to deny our rights, and indeed our humanity, at every turn. Politicians, corrupt by definition, act with impunity to safeguard their own interests. And dissent is a dangerous thing for which a person may have to pay with their life at worst, or be denied the right to participate in a political process, at best. (That is, what you are arguing for, isn’t it? )

Free education is a farce – as it it not equivalent to a quality education. To date, no one has advocated that the state divide its budget equally for every child – rather than propping up a few elite urban schools. After all, all children are (supposed to be) equal in the postocilian Sri Lankan State, and should not be denied the resources for a quality education simply because of having been born into poverty.

The list is endless – and perhaps urban privilege leads many of us to ignore the structural impediments that stand in the way of the vast majority of our people.

But the State, which you represent, has offered us the ideology of nationalism – of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism, to be precise – as the primal vision of the postcolonial nation-state. You know, that agrarian model of development, and the wewa, dagaba, gama, pansala business. And what a powerful ideology it has been – in ensuring that we ignore corruption, forego our very humanity, tolerate brutality by the police, put up with sub-par education and healthcare.

We are exhorted to view Tamils (and indeed Muslims and Christians) as the cultural Other and as terrorists. Ethnocentrism eeks out of every crevice of the bureaucracy, and pore of every politician.

These are issues that the State can address even now. To educate our children that ethnic differences are essentially cultural. And that no person should have any more, or any less, rights in our State based on cultural categories such as religion, caste, class, ethnicity and so forth.

But these are issues that you are unwilling to address. Legitimate criticism is ignored, and the capacity to respond to criticism stunted. Any criticism is not responded to on the basis of its substance, but through the deployment of a refrain such as: “This is an attempt by mischiveous elements to tarnish the good image of (fill in the blank with the name of your favourite politician)”

Things get only worse if you are unfortunate enough to be a Tamil in this postcoloinial State.

Secularism is, indeed, dead.

Now, what was it, pray, that you wanted me to lay down my life for?

Wasn’t it once “Eelam by 1994″ and then “Eelam by 2004″? So now it’s “2014″? Why not say when Hell freezes over? That’ll be a more easily foreseeable date.

The debate has become rhetoric benefiting nobody except the ego of the Sinhalese oppressors and their cohorts.

I would suggest those who talk too much, to right in their diaries that Tamil Eelam will be carved out by the year 2014.

Any number of soldiers or power from the Sri Lankan state will not be able to prevent the dawn of Tamil Eelam. By the year 2014, all the soldiers from Sri Lanka will leave the independent state of Tamil Eelam.

Think as to how you can live with it than unwisely acting as to how best you could prevent it.

Dayan, the election victory was a resounding mandate for the war effort (the President said so too, and that’s the campaign the UPFA ran). Take the guns away and the UPFA is naked. That’s a dangerous political vacuum to have (the UNP cannot fill it–i don’t think any politician has the credibility to do it). Hence, my worry that someone outside the usual political sphere might put a toe (or rifle barrel) in the water.

Next, let’s look at the military itself, and in particular the Army. While I acknowledge that the Army commander enjoys near cultlike status (far surpassing even what Kobekkaduwa had in his lifetime), and that arguably the war and the military is at its most popular (though I think it was just as popular in ’90-’92), it has little to do with how the military lives and breathes. The Army in particular is heavily tribalized in the British tradition, with true loyalty being given not to the Army itself but to the individual regiments. Therefore, it is anathema for a Gajaba battalion to revolt in favour of a Sinha officer, or for CLI mutineers to depend on the support of Gemunu Watch troops. It becomes even more fractious when you add in the equations of the Air Force and Navy. While it’s true that Munasinghe (a Sinha officer) commands widespread support in the Army, he commands it only as long as his battalion and brigade commanders (who in turn command the loyalty of their own troops) remain loyal to him, and that latter is never guaranteed, particularly as you move further up the command structure.

Most civilians look at the Army as this vast green machine, but its actually more like a collection of warring tribes.

A small anecdote — at Elephant Pass in ’91, the 6th Sinha Rifles was holding the base and a Tiger infiltration team was caught in the wire at night. As the flares went up, the Tigers shouted “Gemunu, Gemunu!” and were wiped out. A corporal manning a .50 that did most of the killing was asked by a senior officer why he didn’t hesitate in opening fire, and he replied “We thought they were Gemunu Watch.”

Remember when in ’87, the Army had its boots firmly on the separatists’ testicles, but had to stand and watch while foreign troops were allowed in by the administration, had to return to barracks in humiliation after having fought so hard across the Jaffna Peninsula? Was there any revolt against the administration?

The Army and the rest of the military will follow the administration’s orders as it always has. This isn’t Pakistan, or Uganda.