Post-Tiger Tamil politics today

by Dayan Jayatilleka 

The history of Tamil politics is the history of a struggle between two tendencies. This was so well before Prabhakaran and continued during the Tamil Eelam wars in the form of the Tigers. The first elections after the defeat and military destruction of the LTTE reveals that Tamil politics remain dominated by the struggle between these two tendencies, but that the balance of strengths between these tendencies has changed, especially in the crucial town of Jaffna, the head and heart of Tamil politics.

by Dayan Jayatilleka

A former Israeli Minister of Justice Yossi Beilin

"The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." - Marx, 1852 

Malinda Seneviratne has history on his mind, perfectly illustrating Marx’s point in the 18th Brumaire that "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." I on the other hand am animated by concern about "the present situation and our tasks", "the concrete analysis of the concrete situation" (Lenin), "turning one’s face violently to the present (Gramsci) and "the fierce urgency of now" (Martin Luther King, Barack Obama). Justice CG Weeramantry, animated by a nobler, more refined version of the same concern, has given us a warning in his two part essay published a few days ago in the Daily Mirror.

by Dayan Jayatilleka 

The postwar moment is a hinge point in history. If we go one way Sri Lanka can make up for "lost opportunities" (as Kethesh Loganathan, martyred by the Tigers, entitled his book), and catch up with the Asian miracle. If we go another way we can enter a new cycle of conflict which will keep us stagnant and debilitated, jeopardizing even the achievements of our recent military victory. Depending on the choices we make now, the direction we take, we can have it all or not.

THE DEVOLUTION DEBATE & HISTORICISM

By Dayan Jayatilleka

“It is this sort of polarisation and distrust which, running through the whole tragic history of the Tamil issue, now permits the past to hold the future hostage…Each fresh confrontation and every violent eruption becomes an instant invitation to an overpowering onrush of self-righteous recidivism, against which reason can only erect the feeblest defences.…”

By Dayan Jayatilleka 

There is nothing that our enemy, the Tiger international network and the pro-Tiger, pro-Tamil Eelam Tamil Diaspora would like better, than to see a gap open up in the partnership between Sri Lanka and India; a gap that they will seek to manipulate in consonance with their Western patrons and friends. The non-implementation of the 13th amendment will open up such a gap. The implementation of the 13th amendment is not a give away or dilution of our military gains. It is the necessary political accompaniment of them and the guarantee of the consolidation of our military victory. It is in our national interests and a guarantee of our national security.

By Dayan Jayatilleka

As Paul Berman once wrote, “somewhere in the world it is always 1941”. There comes a time in the life of every society when it is faced with an existential threat or challenge. It is the social forces or elements that rise up to this challenge and successfully overcome this threat that then have the power as well as the legitimacy to place their stamp on what comes after. Those who stood on the wrong side of history, or never rose to the occasion, or who abandoned the struggle partway, or simply failed; the defeated enemy, the collaborators, the appeasers and the fence-sitters — and these are not one and the same — all forfeit the chance to place their values, ideas and programs as the leading ones of the social order that follows the great test.

by Dayan Jayatilleka

Prof. Senaka Bandaranaike discerns a pattern in Sri Lankan history of being ahead of the rest of the subcontinent but never being able to achieve a decisive breakthrough and sustain it. This happened at least three times, he once said in a lecture I attended. We now have a second chance. It is as if we have obtained a second Independence, when we were ahead of the game in the rest of Asia but we then blew it. Let’s not blow it yet again.

By Dayan Jayatilleka

As Paul Berman once wrote, "somewhere in the world it is always 1941". There comes a time in the life of every society when it is faced with an existential threat or challenge. It is the social forces or elements that rise up to this challenge and successfully overcome this threat that then have the power as well as the legitimacy to place their stamp on what comes after. Those who stood on the wrong side of history, or never rose to the occasion, or who abandoned the struggle partway, or simply failed; the defeated enemy, the collaborators, the appeasers and the fence-sitters — and these are not one and the same — all forfeit the chance to place their values, ideas and programs as the leading ones of the social order that follows the great test.

by Dayan Jayatilleka 

The warning about the risk of triumphalism came days before the 65th anniversary celebration of D Day, by the leaders of the US, UK and France. In the USA there are annual re-enactments of the battles of the American Revolution – the War of Independence against Britain—and of the Civil War against the Secessionist Confederacy. While the risk of triumphalism does indeed exist and must be cautioned against, I think there is yet another risk, an opposite one, which we must avoid. The USSR which triumphed over the bulk of the Nazi fascist army, collapsed without a shot being fired, and that collapse was preceded by an ideological surrender in which everything positive in its history was turned upside down and held up for derision. In the recovery of its self-respect under President Putin, one of the first steps was to restore pride in the wartime achievements of the Red Army.

by Dayan Jayatilleka 

In this handout photo taken Tuesday, May 19, 2009, and released by the Sri Lankan Army, the army claims to show the body of Tamil Tiger rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran in Mullaittivu. 

The degree of denial of Prabhakaran’s death within the expatriate Tamil consciousness is the best evidence of the pathology of Tamil ultra-nationalism. Rohana Wijeweera’s followers were fanatics, but when their leader was gone, they did not go into mass denial. The hardcore elements of the Tamil Diaspora really have to get their heads around it: Elvis has left the building. The Sun God has set, and his son won’t be rising either.