Mr. V. K. Wickramasinghe my former Economics Lecturer whom I esteem, besides being the son of the G.O.M. of Sinhala letters, savant and outstanding humanist the late Mr. Martin Wickremasinghe, has taken up cudgels on behalf of Mrs. Kamalika Pieris over my reference to a Tamil Homeland. But really there would be no compelling reason for anyone to espouse the cause of Mrs. Pieris vis-a-vis me as she is a ‘known party’ literally and metaphorically, as her mother-in-law the late Mrs. Daisy Pieris, wife of the late Dr. Percy Pieris, and sister, no less, of the late Mr. H. V. Perera, Q.C., and Mr. T. D. Perera, C.C.S., was our neighbour at Pedris Road, Colombo 3 and a regular visitor with the late Lady Vaithianathan at the home of my late aunt, Mrs. Rasapoopathy Gnana Prakasam at Charles Circus, Colombo 3 where they would halt for a breather in the course of their regular brisk evening constitutional. And, of course, her late husband Prof. Dr. Ralph Pieris, was on the teaching staff at Peradeniya Campus during my time, and much appreciated, although I myself did not have the privilege of following lectures under him. May I confess that I regularly read her page in the “Island” newspaper with interest, as it is well argued and documented, and both correct in its academic approach as well as lady-like in its objective tone with no personal references. I would not, therefore, lightly dissent from her findings if I did not sincerely disagree with her line of reasoning and conclusions sometimes. I would encourage her to incorporate the series in a book as it fills a need.

Tamil Identity
As a Sri Lankan Tamil aged 13 years in 1948 when independence was first achieved, and having lived through the subsequent 50 years of the island’s history in close proximity to Tamil political centres due, perhaps, to relative circumstances and been exposed for that same reason to personal malignities as a student on the part of some teachers at St. Joseph’s, Colombo 10, who considered the “Senanayake Settlement” as the last word in constitution making and to whom 50, 50 was anathema (how strange that the extreme Right and Left wings of Sinhala political opinion should converge on common ground only in opposition to Tamil demands for an effective share in political power, whether in the centre or at the peripheries), I have encountered at an early age the necessity as a political animal for defining my political status and as a human being for discerning my place in society, as a Tamil. In that sense I may be said to share with other Tamils in this country the problem of being regarded and of perceiving myself, as a Tamil. In that process it has become increasingly evident that, by and large, we Sri Lankan Tamils are deemed by the Sinhala people to be innately disqualified from a participatory role in the exercise of political power in any real or meaningful way by virtue of the belief that, firstly, we are only a “minority” and, secondly, are immigrants - outsiders, not sons of the soil. The President has recently made some remarks in evidence of the latter in voicing the view that the Tamils cannot justify claiming autonomy or self determination as they are not indigenous or native to the country.

Permanent Minority
Being classified as a minority in post- Independence Sri Lanka has had certain implications denoting a lesser, if not lower, status than the No. 1 position effortlessly assumed by the majority. There can be no mistake that, in the last resort, the concept of the Sri Lankan Tamil as a “minority” has definite political, social and culture pejorative connotations. There is, of course, that patronizing term “minority rights” which trips, opportunistically, off the tongues of all Government and Opposition leaders. But these are really to be treated as “concessions” to be “granted” and received in an appropriately supplicant spirit, not “rights” to be yielded or won. Dr. Naganathan held the ingenious theory that the caste system was the prototype for the permanent parliamentary majoritorianism through which Sinhala domination has been constitutionally and legally exercised for the past 72 years or so, to the satisfaction of even liberal world opinion, and, of course, the obfuscation of certain Tamils, themselves. He cautioned that if the Tamils did not look sharp they would find themselves in a permanent, minority, political syndrome in the position of a political lower caste, for all time.

But the good news, and the palm goes to the F.P. for first rationalizing and articulating it, is that the Tamils are not necessarily a minority always and everywhere, but in fact, a majority in their own areas and had been so within historical memory and had exercised sovereignty in those areas and been duly recognized as such by neighbouring states both in Sri Lanka and India, as well as the colonial powers when they arrived on the scene in the 16th c. AD. This simply then is the rationale of the Tamil homeland concept that Mr. Wickramasinghe and Mrs. Pieris find unacceptable.

Homeland
But, seriously, if, as liberal-minded Sinhala people, among whom we may count both Mr. Wickramasinghe and Mrs. Pieris, keep graciously conceding, the Sri Lankan Tamils can be accorded the status of a “people” with a specific and distinct language, culture, identity and tradition, then it logically follows that such could not have evolved in the past nor be maintained, if not developed, in the present and future, if there were no homeland available for its nurture and growth. Culture, like plants and other species, requires its own individual soil or element for it to thrive. Treading a dance on platforms in Bharatha Natyam style, playing musical instruments and beating drums at “kachcheris”, intoning songs and hymns in Karnataka vein, and receiving gold shawls and Ministry of Culture awards and titles, do not constitute Tamil culture. It is a way of life, and, as such, has to be lived in its own home. But, as we have seen above, there has been and is such a Tamil homeland to provide the congenial environment for cultivating the special Sri Lankan Tamil ethos, and, as in the case of Pakistan, its borders could always be verified by the practical and internationally recognized process of a plebiscite under U.N. auspices. This is the crucial area where the previous Tamil leadership failed, when across the Straits there was the contemporaneous example of Mr. Jinnah to be followed. But, as I have said elsewhere, they were far too gone in their pointless predisposition in favour of the Gandhi - Nehru - Congress line (for the wrong reasons) to take notice of the Muslim League and its logic.

Immigrants
The other feature of the standard Senanayake - Goonetilleke - Wijewardene - Lake House standpoint on the proper or permissible position to be accorded the Tamils, is that they are, in one sense or the other, intruders or immigrants, the debris of the S. Indian invasions so tendenciously recorded in the Mahavamsa, or worse, simply “Kallathonis” a colonial legacy begotten of base, commercial motives. Indeed, this question of “Who came first” is a feature common to all ethnic disputes in island states, eg. Cyprus. But, as I have had occasion to repeatedly keep stressing, we Sri Lankan Tamils are as much autochthones of this island as the Sinhala people, being mutual descendants of the Hela (Eela) peoples that inhabited the island indigenously, where one group adopted a Prakrit of Sanskrit as its language, and Buddhism as its religion; the other, Tamil and Saivism. It may be useful to note, in this connection, that the Mahavamsa itself records three visits by the Lord Buddha to the Naga states in Yalpanam, Kelaniya and Mahiyangana, each of which had its own ruler. The geographical proximity of S. India to Sri Lanka with Cape Comorin being in the same latitude as Puttalam, and the displacement of people in the course of wars in S. India and Sri Lanka, would seem to have made but a marginal difference to the above bifurcation of the patrial population into two streams, as the case of the Karawe, Salagama and Durawe, in the one, and the Nallavars and Koviyars, in the other, demonstrate. Besides physiognomically, there is no observable difference. Mr. Thondaman, and the late Dr. Naganathan and Sir Cyril de Zoysa might have passed off for brothers. In other words, it is a case not of two races, but of two identities. On the question of such differing identities we may do well to draw on the immense experience, wisdom and finesse of the British, where, as witnessed at the recent 16th Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur, Wales and Scotland fielded their own teams, besides England. This has of course, been the tradition in that country where most sports are concerned, eg. football, rugger, etc. The British could teach us a thing or two as to how regional or national susceptibilities may be catered to other than at the political level. This is quite apart from the epochal grant of self-government with separate parliaments to Wales and Scotland on 12/9/97 and 19/9/97 respectively, with the proviso, in addition for Scotland to opt for full independence in 2007 AD. Besides there is the finely poised consensualism that is the keystone of the N. Ireland Agreement of 10/4/98 that effectively blunts the cutting edge of Unionist (Protestant) majoritarianism, which was the cause of the mistrust and alienation of the Nationalist (Catholic) minority.

Go Home
Hence, there is really no point and certainly no historical rationale in the gratuitous advise, gratingly proferred: “If you want a homeland, go to Tamil Nadu”. There are overtones of this worn-out cliche deceptively dressed up as a statistic, in Mr. Wickramasinghe’s letter, and it is in fact, the sum and substance of the Sinhala Commission Report and of the fulminations of several Sinhala leaders, both lay and clerical. It is a record that has been played, on and off since 1926, but evidently still enthrals certain audiences. In my recent article on Sankili 11 (CDN of 7/9/98) I have posed the hypothetical question of what would have happened to the Sinhala ethos if Dona Catherina had succumbed at an early age, in an era of high infant mortality, to an epidemic, and the claim to the Kandyan throne had passed to her one remaining cousin, Yamasinghe, who converted to Catholicism as Don Philip and settled down in Goa in 1589, or to his son, baptized Don Juan, who renounced his rights to the throne to the Portuguese Crown, and after his initial education at the Franciscan Colleges in Mannar and of St. Anthony’s in Colombo, continued his studies in Latin and Divinity in Goa at the Franciscan College of the Magi and later emigrated to Portugal, where he founded the Telheiras monastery in a Lisbon suburb, and built the Church of Our Lady, the Gate of Heaven, there before his death in 1642. He enjoyed the privilege of a “chair” at the viceregal court in Lisbon and the royal court in Madrid, by virtue of his high birth.

Sinhala Homeland
I have expatiated on this episode in some detail to highlight the success within a relatively short time of the colonial penetration and acculturation that followed the Portuguese “conquista’ such as to reach the level even of that closed circle of wheat- complexioned, fine-featured, slender, long-limbed and wavy-haired inter-related and inbred race of Kshatriya rulers of the Kalinga “vamsa” that had been governing Sri Lanka between themselves for the past 4-5 centuries from Nallur, Kotte, Sitavake and Kandy. What would have been left of the Sinhala ethos if there had been no homeland preserved in the Kanda Uda Pas Rata under the aegis of Dona Catherina and her husbands, Vimala Dharma Suriya and Senarat, and the line of intensely nationalist and patriotic rulers they initiated, immaterial of racial origin! To which sanctuary would Hiripitiya Rala, Diyawadana Nilame of the Dalada Ge have conveyed the Dalada, the palladium of the Sinhala people in 1604 from Delgamuwa temple, smuggled in his top knot and travelling by night on foot and alone, fording the streams and scaling the crags, to escape the attentions of the Portuguese authorities who were searching everywhere to capture and probably destroy the sacred relic? He had acted in compliance with the directives of a giant, ghostly, midnight visitor expressed, typical of Kotte of that era, bi-lingually in Sinhala and Tamil (similar to the royal seal of Bhuveneka Bahu Vl, as depicted in Father S.G. Perera’s standard text book on that period) as follows, “Kotte Kelale Kisillai Data Medagama Rale Po”. Would it have been possible, as today witnessed in the case of Cuba, Libya and Iraq, for the Udarata Sinhala population, by and large, to voluntarily and cheerfully forego in times of war even such necessities as salt, dried fish and textiles, when the ports were closed to all trade, and the country’s GNP consequently plummetted to the depths. Evidently economic sanctions did not deter the national pride and spirit of independence of the Sinhala people, inviolate behind their borders.

Tamil Homeland
By the same token, exposed as we Sri Lankan Tamils have been - to mention only two cases of grievance, to the persistent policy of state colonization of the ethnic frontiers by all Governments from the time of D.S. Senanayake (Gal Oya is a prime example resulting in the drastic alteration of the ethnic ratios in the Amparai (Alahiya Parai or Beautiful Hill) District, and the virtual foisting of illiteracy on our people by a stroke on the pen under the Official Language Act 1956 which has not been mitigated, in reality, by subsequent legislation for the “Reasonable use of Tamil” where would be placed, say, in 2048 A.D. if we do not resolutely move to secure our borders? Incidentally, as E.C.T. Candappa sagely comments in his recent novel “The palm of his hand” as English had never previously been enacted as the official language by the British Colonial Government, there was no need for amending legislation to instal Sinhala (and/or Tamil) in its place, and this could have been better done administratively, in a tactful and discreet way, so as not to hurt the susceptibilities of the Tamil people. “Face” is as important in dealings between peoples as it is between persons who value their self respect. But sad to say this has never been evident to the Sinhala rulers of that day or this, to judge from their crude reactions and generally insensitive behaviour. The government keeps blaming a particular Tamil party of bad faith little remembering the records of all Sri Lankan government parties in their dealings with representative Tamil parties, like the F.P., which can be likened to a path strewn with broken promises.

Precedents
Mr. Wickremasinghe must not fault us for taking the cue from the historical precedents of the Sinhala people when placed in as dire circumstances as we, Sri Lankan Tamil face today, whereas in the words of the EPRLF at the recent UNP, APC, there is no civil administration, no law and order mechanisms as are in place elsewhere in the Sinhala areas, no democratic or representative institutions functioning in Yalpanam, no let up in the exodus of all Sri Lankan Tamils who can somehow or other make it,and a cynical suspension of fundamental freedoms and natural rights in the case of our displaced brethren in the Vanni.

Pre-conceptions
If Mr. Wickremasinghe and Mrs. Pieris will pluck out from their minds the stale and arid preconceptions of the Sri Lankan Tamil as an “immigrant minority” the scales will drop from their eyes and they will be the better able to appreciate the policies and programmes of the TULF and the newer Tamil parties with the name “Eelam”. Such a paradigm shift of attitude is necessary if they and the Sinhala people in general are to understand why to the average Sri Lankan Tamil, there seems in the long run to be no alternative to a homeland.

I end with the following quotes:

“A nation is a historically evolved stable community of language, territory, economic life and psychological make up, manifested in a community of culture”- Stalin.

“We regard a nation as a historical as opposed to an ethnographical concept. It is a historically evolved stable community of people, living in a contiguous territory as their traditional homeland speaking a common language, having a common economic life, and a common psychological makeup manifested in a community of culture” - C. P. (1944)

Are not these memorable words aptly descriptive of the Sri Lankan Tamils today ?

In last Sunday’s newspapers, speculation was hotting up about a possible snap Presidential election before February next year. This move has been anticipated for a long time and as I pointed out last week, the PA will have to move fast if they are to face an election in conditions which are still even marginally favourable to them. The international climate is changing in favour of the conservatives and if the PA waits for two more years to hold a Presidential election, they will be contesting in unfavourable waters. The dilemma of the PA today is whether to hold an election or not. If they go in for a snap election, they may still stand a chance of winning as the social democratic wave is still ascendent. But if they loose, they would have lopped off two whole years off their legal term in office for no reason... A snap election makes sense only if the chances of winning are absolutely certain. A shift in allegiance of one minority leader may tip the balance between victory and defeat. A new development on the economic front or the war front may just as easily determine the end result. One factor which is almost certain to take place at any future election will be a significant reduction in the number of people going to the polls. Upto now, it has been customary for about 80% of all registered voters to go to the polls. But given the fact that the differences between the two major parties have disappeared, voting will cease to be a meaningful exercise for many. My feeling is that at future elections, there will be around a five to ten percent reduction in the number of people turning up to vote. Which side will be benefited by this reduction in the number of people turning up to vote? Its hard to say. Many of those who have no desire to vote will be disgruntled former supporters of the government.

On the other hand, supporters of the opposition will be motivated to go to the polling booth to try and recover what they have lost. In that sense, a reduction in the number of voters will favour the opposition. But in a situation where the government is tempted to rig the elections, the less the number of voters, the happier the government. Will be. The shortfall between the usual voter turnout and the actual number of votes cast will be the PA’s “stuffing margin”. If what happened at the local government elections in April 1997 is any indication, the probability is that the PA will not simply leave things to chance, but will make an all out effort win by hook or by crook. Whatever effort the PA makes, here is one factor which will be against it and in favour of the UNP. This is the post-victor-fallout which virtually all governments face after they have taken power. In the case of the PA, this fallout has been especially severe. When the PA won the Parliamentary elections in 1994, they did so only on a slim overall margin of approximately 350,000 votes, getting 3.8 million votes against the UNP’s 3.5 million votes. This was at the height of the PA’s popularity, when the youth thought that the PA was going to give them an enemployment relief payment of Rs. 1,500, when the unemployed though the PA was going to create 300,000 jobs in one year and when the urban population thought the PA was going to provide them with bread for just Rs. 3.50, when the minorities thought they were each going to get little quasi-Eelams from the PA, when the urban working class was led to believe that their rights would be enshrined in a “workers charter”, when everybody thought that the UNP has been in power for too long anyway, and when there was nobody on the streets who wanted to vote for the UNP,...

If just 350,000 was all the majority the PA could muster at the height of its popularity and at the nadir of the UNP’s standing, the PA is in deep trouble. Today, nobody except the wielders of power within the government itself speak well of the government. All the inflated expectations given out during the heady days of the election campaign are all but dissipated. Nobody has got what they were promised. The youth have not got jobs, the urban worker has not got cheap bread, the working class has not had their rights enshrined in a worker’s charter, the minorities have not got their little quasi-Eelams... Nobody is smiling except the complacent leaders of the government. All this works to the advantage of the UNP. Going on the basis of the arithmetic of the 1994 Parliamentary election, the UNP needs only a marginal swing in the voting pattern to win. And at present there is more than marginal disaffection with the government.

This has placed the government in a predicament, resulting in ongoing uncertainty about which election will beheld first, will it be a Provincial council election as scheduled or a snap Presidential election? The PA is on the horns of a dilemma. Can they go in for a Presidential election when one of their main promises to the public was that the Presidential system would be scrapped? What are they going to tell the public? That they are asking for a second mandate to scrap the Presidential system? To weep before the people and express remorse for not being able to fulfil this promise because had they done so, they would have lost their hold on power,...? In any event, the victory or otherwise of their campaign relies entirely on how many lies the PA can utter. If they can lie convincingly enough, they might be able to have a second term in power. If the people don’t swallow it, then they are done for.

Even today, all the leaders of the PA utter lies and fabrications during the course of their public appearances. “Boruwa” has become the stock in trade of the PA. Unlike any previous government since independence, this present regime is totally dependent on boruwa and falsehoods and the gullibility of the public to stay in power. As I pointed out in previous articles, their considerable powers of propaganda and opinion manipulation are the two factors which made possible their existence to date. But when it comes to a decisive election, it is questionable whether even their exceptional powers of deception and propaganda will serve the purpose in view of the electoral arithmetic of 1994. The gap between the governing party and the opposition is too low to be offset only by lying their way through.

Rigging as at the local government elections of 1997 is another possibility. But at a decisive election, rigging to change the outcome will be a serious matter never hiterto experienced in this country. “Hora chanda” is alwas cast at any election, but these are usually the votes of deceased persons, persons who are aboard, or of persons who do not cast their votes. Hora chanda usually does not affect the outcome of an election as both sides commit this misdemeanour and the votes thus cast tend to cancel each other out in the final outcome. (Even in 1988/89, with the JVP terror in full swing, there was “hora chanda” on both sides with the SLFP having a slight edge because they had greater freedom of movement,... but there was no large scale stuffing. If there had been large scale stuffing UNP victory would have been most obvious in the very places where the JVP ban was most effective... but there were no such tell tale signs of stuffing. The voter turnout was lowest and the UNP’s margin lowest where the JVP ban was most effective.) In contrast to this, “Rigging” implies a wholesale stuffing or changing of ballot boxes as what happened at the local government elections in 1997. This kind of rigging at a local government election was bad enough, but if it is done at a decisive election like a Presidential or Parliamentary election, it will be the first time such a thing has happened. And there is always a first time for anything...

Contrary to what the government propaganda machinery is trying to tell the people it cannot be denied that the LTTE commemorated the death of Dileepan by gaining control of the Kilinochchi defence area. However the armed forces have entered Mankulam and the tactics of the LTTE are not very clear. Are they preparing for a major assault on Jaffna or on one or more of the camps at Paranthan, Elephant Pass and Mankulam which surround Kilinochchi? In any case the armed forces will have to do some thinking in the next few days.

The UNP, which tried to gain a political mileage out of the Kilinochchi debacle, did not succeed. However the entire Jayasikuru operation has had major problems and the government will have to do something to keep the morale of the armed forces, and the public in general, high. It cannot be achieved by not presenting the correct picture to the public or by getting army personnel to give wrong information.

The censorship imposed by the government is not effective as information is filtered in through the foreign news agencies and the internet. On the other hand the armed forces which are aware of what is happening will lose confidence when they come to know what is being told in the government media. The best policy would be to tell the people the truth and nothing but the truth on the outcome of operations. It is not the strategy or the tactics that people want to know but the actual results of the operations.

The government is reluctant to do so, as it has no confidence in the people. There are many reasons for that state of affairs. Neither the PA government nor the UNP governments have told the people, what they wanted to achieve through the military operations. In fact it would be correct to say that they have not even told the army what they are expected to do.

The government is supposed to give the political leadership to the operations and not the military leadership. The present day rulers differ from the ancient kings in this respect. When king Dutugemunu led the army to fight the invaders (he did not fight Elara as some Tamil racists, NGO’s and some university historians try to make out, it was not a war between two kings but a war between the Chola or some other invader and the Sinhala people who wanted to liberate their country) he gave the political leadership as well as the military leadership. He was at the war front in person at all times. He told the people and the soldiers in very clear terms what he had in mind.

The aim was very clear. Defeat the invader completely and protect the Buddha Sasana. No so-called political solutions, no peace talks with or without conditions; with or without facilitators and mediators. Fight the war to a finish.

Troops in Mankulum

The present day politicians do not have to take part in military operations. They have only to give the correct political leadership. But what is happening in Sri Lanka today is that no political leadership is given by the politicians and instead they are trying to decide on the strategies and tactics. It is not a case of defeating the enemy to protect Buddha Sasana or the Unitary state or some grand ideal but a matter of devising a strategy for the next presidential election. There is no political leadership but only a political agenda.

The army is always in two states of mind. A journalist has called this a war and the NGO bandwagon goes on repeating the inhuman nature of the war thus demoralising the armed forces. There is the never-ending talk of negotiations with the LTTE. These peace talks are the preoccupation of the NGO funded peace merchants. They sell peace for Dollars, Pounds. The army, especially the top brass, continues to get two contradictory signals.

The army and the public are told that the Tamils have grievances when they do not have any and when their leaders themselves admit that there are no grievances. A so-called political solution is presented to solve these grievances. Then the public is also told that it is a war for peace and the Tamils have to be weaned away from the LTTE. One of the implications is that the LTTE has to be weakened but not annihilated.

It is the LTTE, which thrives on this situation. They are not in two minds. They have a goal to achieve. An illusion has been created in the minds of Prabhakaran and his generation by his political uncles and granduncles that the Tamils are under the Sinhala imperialists, that the British in 1948 gave independence only to the Sinhala people and that the Tamil kingdom was given over to the Sinhala people and that they have to liberate the Tamil Eelam from the Sinhala imperialists. The TULF has propagated this myth, which has become the opium of the Tamil youth. The LTTE finds no problem in recruiting the youth using this mythical “patriotic cause”.

The Sri Lankan army and the Sinhala people have been continuously told that the ‘war’ is unjust. If at all the propaganda by the NGO’s and the government media will make the army to throw their arms and desert. The Sinhala people, especially the Buddhists are blamed for the so-called grievances of the Tamils and as a result they have been made to feel guilty for the situation in the country. Anybody who tries to say anything against the NGO, Tamil racist and non-national ideological hegemony is immediately branded as a Chauvinist.

Few months ago the army was engaged in a recruitment programme. During the same time the non-national lobby was going from school to school discouraging students from joining the armed forces! They campaigned against the so-called war. As a result the Sinhala people as a nation are suffering from some kind of schizophrenia. But these non-national forces will never campaign amongst the Tamils opposing the ‘war’. If they are so concerned about the hardships caused to the Tamils by the fighting all they have to do is to request Prabhakaran to lay down arms.

The government goes on telling the public that a large amount of money is spent on the “war”. They claim that 25 percent of the budget is spent on the ministry of defence. In Sri Lanka the police and even the department of customs come under the ministry of defence and there are many questions raised as to the validity of the above figure. However even if one were to assume that figure for the sake of argument one has to point out that it is not only the money that matters in this connection. In the absence of a correct political leadership, a political awareness given to the soldiers, a will to crush the LTTE, a campaign using the media to instil a patriotic consciousness among the people, making the people to become identified with the soldiers in one way or the other, these military operations will drag on.

1It is essential that the government gives the correct political leadership and then leave the army high command to work out the military strategy. However in order to do that one has to first identify the problem. As long as the problem is seen as an ethnic one no correct political leadership cannot be given. The problem is due to Tamil racism created by the British. After more than a century a section of the Tamil racists have taken up arms against the state to create an Eelam.

There is no doubt that we have a political problem, which is in need of a political solution. However, it does not mean that the political solution has to be a ‘political package’ or a draft constitution. Political solutions of this nature are good only if there are grievances that have to be solved. The political solutions, from the Bandaranaike- Chelvanayakam pact to the provincial councils have not solved any such problem. If there were any grievances then by now all these pacts and amendments to the constitution would have solved them. But all that we can see is the pageant of the Tamil racists demanding more and more according to their policy of ‘little now and more later’ and gradually getting closer to their aspiration of a Tamil Eelam, supported by the western Christian countries.

A misconception has been created among the people by the non-national forces that a political solution has to be in the form a package or a draft constitution. It need not be so. Even military solutions are political solutions. Packages, Constitutions, military operations are all different forms of political solutions. In certain cases the political solution takes the form of military operations. In Sri Lanka at present we have a political problem where a section of the Tamil racists have taken up arms against the state. The political solution to this particular political problem is the annihilation of the LTTE using the armed forces. After all, war is continuation of politics by other means. If war is such, then military operations against a terrorist organisation that has taken up arms to create a separate state cannot be anything other than a political solution.

While we bow our heads in respect of the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the country we should realise that the only political solution to the Tamil racist problem is the anihilation of the LTTE. If the Sinhala people, leaving aside the NGO’s, can at least agree on this in the wake of the Kilinochchi debacle then we would have achieved much.

What do the people think is a frequently asked question. Articulate spokespersons for various causes claim that what they say represent the “people’s thinking.” In countries such as the United States, public opinion polls are carried out at the drop of a hat, on any number of topics including the President’s sex life. But Sri Lanka has not developed a reliable system of guaging public opinion. This has provided articulate opinion makers, especially those with access to the media, to wield a disproportionate power in society. They have to only adopt the simple strategy of claiming to be voicing the aspirations of the people, and their opinions are treated with deference.

A public opinion poll on people’s attitudes towards the ethnic conflict and its solution carried out in Sri Lanka recently offers a measure of hope. The results were announced amidst the gloom of the massive bloodletting in the battles for the towns of Mankulam and Kilinochchi last week, in which close to two thousand combatants are believed to have died. The survey was carried out by the Centre for Anthropological and Sociological Studies based in the University of Colombo. The well reputed German political foundation, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), provided technical and financial assistance.

Teams of University of Colombo research students fanned out to 98 locations in all provinces of the country, except for the north. They conducted a sample survey of 2000 heads of households, or if they were unavailable, another adult in the household. The main focus of the study was to ascertain the views that the majority Sinhalese population held on the ethnic conflict and its solution. Out of the 2000 persons who were interviewed, 1915 were Sinhalese. The study was supervised by Prof. Siri Hettige, Head of the Department of Sociology of the University of Colombo.

This was the first time that a comprehensive public opinion survey on the ethnic conflict has been conducted in Sri Lanka on a scientific and transparent basis. In the past there have been public opinion surveys on certain specific issues relating to the ethnic conflict, but their results and the methodology have been shrouded in secrecy. Some appeared to have been commissioned by political parties, and so they seemed to have a partisan purpose, which vitiated their trustworthiness.

Credibility
For the results of opinion polls to have credibilty, it is important that the organisation conducting the survey should have credibility. The methods used to do the survey should also be open to the public. The survey conducted by the University of Colombo team met with both these criteria. Prof. Hettige faced the media and members of leading think tanks and presented his team’s findings and defended the methodology that had been employed.

There is a strongly promoted view that the Sinhalese masses are in favour of continuing with the ongoing war as the primary way to defeat the LTTE. Recently we have had highly publicised statements issued by organisations purporting to represent the views of the Sinhalese (and the Tamils, Muslims, Christians and Burghers also) denouncing any possible attempt to re-open dialogue with the LTTE. They claim that “the people” are opposed to such talks and want the war to be fought to a finish. The results of the survey might come as a surprise to those who put forward that militaristic view.

Nothing of the sort emerged from the public opinion poll carried out by the University of Colombo team, at least as far as it concerned the Sinhalese masses. When asked the question, “Do you think military action alone can solve the problem?”, as many as 77 percent of those who were polled said no. Only 21 percent said yes. In other words, the vast majority of Sinhalese rejected the view that the ongoing war is simply a terrorist problem to which there is a military solution.

Further, in response to the question, “What steps should be taken to find a lasting solution to the ethnic problem?”, only 13 percent said that it should be by militarily defeating the LTTE (7 percent) or by the government’s more sophisticated and twin-pronged military and political strategy of a “war for peace” (6 percent). In addition, the answers provided by those who were polled showed that the Sinhalese people had a strong preference for non-military means of ending the conflict. A clear majority of 65 percent preferred non-military options, such as a political solution (21 percent), policies devoted to ensuring equality (20 percent), amity and harmony (19 percent), integrative actions (4 percent) and confidence building (1 percent).

However, a different wording of the same question, that gave less emphasis to a lasting solution, and for a realistic as against an idealistic solution, gave a higher figure favouring the military option. In response to the question, “How do you think the conflict can be solved?”, 33 percent gave their assent to the military option. The “war for peace” strategy had an approval of 24 percent and defeating the LTTE had 9 percent saying yes. But even here, the much larger proportion of 59 percent gave their preference to non-military means of ending the conflict.

This was made up of policies promoting amity and harmony (31 percent), equality for Tamils (12 percent), a political solution (11 percent) and ethnic integration (2 percent).

Lack of faith
In analysing the answers given by the majority who favoured non-military means of ending the conflict, what also comes across rather strongly is the lack of much faith in a political solution. Thus, almost half of those polled (49 percent) said that the government’s devolution package would not help solve the ethnic conflict. Many (24 percent) expressed their scepticism about the LTTE’s intentions, but the larger proportion had other reasons for expressing doubts in a political solution.

A larger total of 29 percent gave reasons such as that the devolution granted was not adequate, and something more was needed, and that political gamesmanship and elitist impositions stood in the way of a solution. Perhaps the major reason for the people’s doubts regarding a political solution can be seen in their answer to the question, “Do you see more opportunities for people to solve their problems under the provincial council system, as compared to before?” As many as 61 percent said yes.

Only 34 percent said no. Prof. Hettige observed out that the survey results indicated that a majority of people, in principle, were in favour of the devolution of power.

But he also pointed out that the actual experience of politics in the provincial council system had made many people sceptical about how the system worked in practice. This is a clear indictment of the ruling politicians of different hues and the bureaucratic establishment. On the one hand, they have deliberately sabotaged the workings of the devolved system to preserve their power and perks at the centre. On the other hand, as the survey also showed, 54 percent of the people polled believed that waste of resources and corruption had undermined the effectiveness of the provincial council system.

Prof. Hettige questioned about the fact that the survey results showed that the great majority of people seemed to place more faith in non-military options to end the ethnic conflict than in a military solution.contrary to the opinions expressed in the media and by politicians.explained, “The people at the grassroots have an understanding of the complexity of the situation.

They have given honest answers, because they have no vested interests. They are more open minded than those opinion makers who have vested interests. They also have no illusions about quick fix solution.”

This is the best message of peace and reconciliation that the Sinhalese can give to Tamils who are isolated in the north-east and foreign countries. The Sinhalese masses do not want the bloody war to continue, nor do they justify its continuation. They are prepared for accommodation.