By

N. Sathiya Moorthy

Clearly, someone wants to embarrass the government of the day just as they want to harass the Muslim community to a point of no-return. They had played out the game, and successfully to sub-serve their own skewed yet limited interests in the case of the Tamils.

They do not have a popular mandate and cannot hope to have one on their own. Yet, they are able to pressure any government of any day, politically and ideologically, to have their say – and way. Thus was born the Tamil militancy in the country. Thus was nurtured the JVP militancy, particularly of the second, ‘Sinhala-nationalist’ edition of the late eighties.

Uncontested media reports about the attack on the Grandpass mosque show a possible emerging pattern to the unbridled targeting of the Muslim community in the country. If the LTTE was seen as their nemesis earlier, post-war, self-styled ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists’ have become the prying predators. Whether the timing could be linked to Census-2011, before and after, is a moot question, though suggestions to the effect have been made.

With the Tamil militancy gone, and the ‘ethnic issue’ possibly getting resolved one way or the other, the ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalists’ need new targets to keep themselves relevant – and competitive. It may not have happened in other sections of the polity but ‘Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism’ has been mutating with each generation to have its newer version, leading to comparisons and contests among them. The JHU in government has to thus compete for space, political if not otherwise, to the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS), and equally militant compatriots cum competitors.

Ever since the ‘grease devil’ episodes started sending disquiet among the nation’s Muslims in particular – no reason, why exclusively thus, though the attacks did not spare other regions, too – there has been more blatant and non-mixed targeting of the Muslim community, their mosques and shops, citing one reason or the other. The reasons may not have been fabricated, but the purpose obviously was not to resolve any issue, which had not been flagged, discussed or debated at any level, at any time in the recent past.

In doing so, someone had taken the law into his hands, and the Sri Lankan State had been left to wriggle its hands, with mutual suspicion from within advising caution on what’s often reduced to turf matters, political or administrative or whatever. The government soon was found feeling relieved if the episodes had withered away, without anyone having to remind it about the otherwise forgettable past in the name of enquiry reports, prosecution, etc.

The scars and the hurt have remained, poked at from time to time through attacks on mosques as places of worship and shops (for) selling halal meat, both in terms of religious belief and personal prosperity. If the Tamils then remind their Muslim brethren of ‘Pogrom ‘83’, the blame lies elsewhere. It the attacks are aimed at provoking retaliation, so as for the prime-movers then to demand, and justifiably at that stage, for Sri Lankan State intervention, they may be incapable of evaluating the costs and consequences, just as they had gone wrong with the Tamils, too.

The government’s quick-alert mechanism to bring down the tension by imposing immediate curfew at Grandpass should be considered in the context of the unpleasant and avoidable experience at Weliweriya not very long ago. Noticeably, the government had made to do with the police and the STF in Grandpass without drafting the armed forces for policing work – which was the case in Weliweriya.

The question should thus be asked, why curfew was not thought of as a law-and-order tool in Weliweriya, where too it may have worked, quicker and better. It is not about the allegations of army high-handedness in Weliweriya. It is even more about deploying armed forces for policing duties. Is it also because disciplined as the armed forces are, they do not ask questions when tasked. Against this, the police ask questions, come up with suggestions and recommendations, and worry about the consequences – legal, political, social and societal. They are trained that way, and are expected to behave that way, too.

An independent study, commissioned by the government, could compare and contrast between the Weliweriya and Grandpass episodes, where similarities existed on the ground, and dis-similarities too remained, for learning lessons for policing duties in the post-war Sri Lanka.
It could also come up with recommendations as to how the political and administrative leaderships at all levels end up lending their names, through silence and inaction when speaking out and preventive action alone would have helped.

It can be a public document, or for the private information of the government, but it may have to be undertaken, after all.

In a way, the Grandpass attack is also about beefing up policing intelligence of the kind that is required, as against military intelligence that the uniformed services had mastered through ‘Eelam War IV’. The administration should ask itself if provided with an early tip-off, it would have authorised preventive detention, including action under anti-terrorism laws still in vogue, if that alone would help – and that alone would have sent out a message that the government meant business.

It is inconceivable that the Government leadership stood to gain from the Greenpass attack, when the whole world is watching the run-up to the Commonwealth Summit of November with interest and concern. There is a method to motivated rumours of the kind just as there is a method to the madness of selective attacks of the kind.

If nothing else, the ‘Muslim wound’ is being deliberately opened up, at quick if not predictable intervals, to keep it raw on both sides of a ‘new ethnic divide’ that is being fostered by some. These are the same forces that had alienated the Tamil minorities to the point of fighting the Sri Lankan State and terrorising the Sinhala population, LTTE style!

The problems belong here, not elsewhere. So do solutions. The history of ‘communal politics’ in the country owes to the unabashed power-hunger of political leaders from the two major Sinhala parties , namely, the UNP and the SLFP – the latter since late inception in the Fifties. It resides even more in their mistaken belief that the easy way out for them to win elections is to keep the peripheral Sinhala-nationalist groups on their side.

Over time, such an approach has only incapacitated them in what is seen as essentially their job – of ruling the nation, taking turns, long but near-mandatory.

History teaches lessons, every now and again. Seldom people learn from their mistakes, least of all from those of other people. If nothing else, it was left to Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, daughter of SLFP founder S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, as President, to try and clear the ethnic mess created by her late father, when he founded a party of his own and went on to become Prime Minister. UNP’s J. R. Jayewardene had protested Bandaranaike government’s ‘ethnic sops’, if they could be called so, led the ‘Kandy march’ against it in the Fifties. As President three decades later, he authored the ‘Indo-Sri Lankan Accord’ and the Thirteenth Amendment, instead.

Ranasinghe Premadasa as Prime Minister propped up ‘Sinhala nationalism’ against JRJ leadership of their UNP. Months, not years and decades later, as President he would find out that the resurgent JVP had hijacked the agenda through unabashed militancy against the Sri Lankan State and Sinhala leaders. His Government would come down heavily on JVP as no other government had done before. Policies and ideologies apart, the present-day JVP is a chastened outfit. The blame for revived ‘ethnic provocation’ of the Sinhala kind lies elsewhere, as yet.

The LTTE made Sinhala majority feel uncomfortable and unsafe. The JVP, in its militant avtar, too targeted the Sinhalas, and not the Tamils. Both episodes are behind the nation, now. In the post-war era, the Sinhalas, as much as the Tamils and the rest, are hoping for peace and prosperity, which had eluded them, too, during the past decades.

It may be possible that at the height of a conflagration, they may have taken political and electoral positions, but for the ‘Big Two’ to believe that is how the Sinhala mind-set is, is to belittle the ‘ahimsa’ or non-violence that Lord Buddha had preached, even more.

It is thus time that the ruling SLFP and the Opposition UNP resolved it between them. They need to understand that the peripheral polity of the communal kind from among the Sinhala-Buddhist need them more than the other way round.

They need to act against militant views and actions, the way they should have done, both in the case of the LTTE and the JVP – at the budding stage, and not wait on and on to claim credit by putting them down at their worse. They failed the nation then, they seem wanting to fail the nation now.

They can still do it, they only have to marshal their forces, and put long-term national concerns way ahead of short-term personal and political interests. If they fail the nation, they will also be failing themselves.

The ‘new generation’ voters with their priorities set clearly would begin looking elsewhere for their political masters – and the ‘Big Two’ then may be incapable of comprehending what had hit them, and why their downslide onto a bottomless pit! In political and electoral terms, it is already happening, but they seem incapable of reading the writing on the wall and interpret it correctly – incapable however as they are, given the inherent habit of thinking for the nation, themselves, and thinking about the nation, otherwise.

(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation)