Ten years of discord

After some initial hesitation by the government, Wijemuni was jailed but how popular his action had been became clear when he was flooded with packets of biryani from well-wishers on his first night in prison. Ten years on, Wijemuni who was court-martialled, discharged from the navy and served three years in jail, is convinced he did the right thing.

“I was really angry at how India was interfering in our country and I wanted to convey my anger in some way. Lots of other people also felt the way I did,” Wijemuni, who now runs a film videos library in a suburb of Colombo, told The Indian Express on Monday. Stating that the accord was meant to divide Sri Lanka, the former sailor said he had no regrets in hitting Rajiv that July 29.

“I was proved right, weren’t I? The accord only created more discord amongst our people. If Rajiv had not messed with Sri Lanka, he would have been alive today, maybe he would have still been the Prime Minister. Instead he got done in by the same people whom he tried to help,” said the 31-year-old Wijemuni.

Going by the facts, Wijemuni is dead right. Perceived by the Sinhalese majority as an imposition of Indian might on their country and rejected by the LTTE as inadequate, the accord ran into rough weather from the very start.

Although the ruling UNP had little problems pushing it through Parliament, thereby bringing about the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, there were protests all over the Sinhalese south. And the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), the main constituent of today’s ruling People’s Alliance coalition, spearheaded demonstrations as, in keeping with the terms of the accord, the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) arrived to monitor its implementation.

In the north, the LTTE went back on its agreement to surrender arms, and later, inflicted numbing losses on the Indian army. Later, Rajiv and some other key players in the accord were killed.

It was a costly exercise for India, played havoc with Indo-Sri Lanka relations and achieved nothing by way of devolution of power for Sri Lankan Tamils. The ethnic war continues to this day and a solution to Tamil aspirations seems as elusive as it was at the time of the accord.

Recently, the 13th Amendment was described by Constitutional Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris, the architect of the new devolution proposals that are in the pipeline, as a “shame” and an “exercise in insincerity”.

Describing it as “incurably flawed”, Peiris said it was a “response to external pressures that could not be resisted at that time”.

Other sections of the Sri Lankan establishment have been equally vociferous, at times demanding a dissolution of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord and its replacement with an Indo-Lanka Friendship Treaty in the context of vastly improved relations between the two nations.

However, the fact also remains that while all other settlements remained empty promises, the 13th Amendment is the only piece of legislation ever in Sri Lankan history that gave regional autonomy, however limited, to the Tamil people.

It was with the accord that Tamil became an official language in Sri Lanka. Most importantly, it may go down in history as the only time the Sri Lankan government agreed to grant Tamils political power over a merged north-east, which the minority regards as its traditional homeland.

In a strange twist to Sinhalese opposition to the accord, in 1993, ex-sailor Wijemuni contested provincial government elections. The entire system of provincial councils came into being under the 13th Amendment and now operates in all parts of the country except the north-east. Wijemuni polled 14 votes.

Even though India has now fully distanced itself from Sri Lanka’s ethnic imbroglio, in some sections, the continued existence of the accord is seen as a violation of the Gujral Doctrine and of India’s continuing interest in the ethnic politics of the island.

On the flip side, for the Tamil community and some of its leaders, it constitutes a hope, however futile, that in case no settlement can be worked out in the near future, New Delhi may still come to the rescue.

If and when Chandrika Kumaratunga’s devolution package becomes a legal and political reality, the 13th Amendment will stand automatically superseded.

But till such time, it remains for some Tamil politicians a fall-back solution to the vexed issue of devolution of power.

To the chagrin of the present government, others have gone further. Douglas Devananda, leader of the Eelam People’s Democratic Front (EPDP), the largest Tamil political party in Parliament, has described it as a “rice packet in hand worth two biryanis” being promised by Kumaratunga. His demands that the 13th Amendment be implemented as an interim solution have also led to the suspicion in government circles here that he may be acting at the behest of interested parties in India.

With the Indian government fully backing Kumaratunga’s fresh proposals, that is hardly likely to be the case. In fact, 10 years after the accord, India seems to have washed its hands of the Tamil problem so completely that there is a general feeling of betrayal in the community.

“In 1987, we laid down arms and agreed to join mainstream politics only because India guaranteed that our legitimate aspirations would be fulfilled. But since that day, we have been able to achieve only a big zero for our community. Where are those guarantees now?” asked K. Suthakaran, general secretary of EROS, charging India with a “moral responsibility” towards Sri Lanka’s minority community.

There is another reason why Tamil leaders believe that India must play an active diplomatic role now in order to bring about a quick political solution. There is widespread belief in the Tamil community that any solution that is arrived at without the concurrence or involvement of New Delhi may be short-lived. Analysts argue that for this alone, both India and Sri Lanka must make their positions clear on the 1987 accord.