[TamilNet, Monday, 28 April 2014, 03:40 GMT]“The self determination and the nationhood of Eelam Tamils, is
neither to be debated by Colombo centric individuals nor to be decided
in Colombo. It is a right, which resides upon the collective will of the
Eelam Tamil people to the North-East,” writes Norway-based Eezham Tamil
anthropology academic, Athithan Jayapalan, responding to Colombo’s
diplomat Dr. Dayan Jayatilake writing in a Colombo media that “There is
no Tamil nation in Sri Lanka, but there is a Tamil minority in Sri
Lanka. There is however a Sinhala nation in Sri Lanka. That is the only
ethnic community on the island, which can claim the status of a nation
as such.”
Dayan Jayatilake was one of those planted in the failed North-East
Provincial Council by the New Delhi Establishment, to implement the 13th
Amendment enacted through the Rajiv-Jayawardane Agreement to save
unitary Sri Lanka.
Excerpts from Athithan’s article:
In
Sri Lanka, there is a long political tradition of denying the national
existence of Tamils and to delegitimize or criminalize their national
mobilization.
The framing of Tamils as being a minority contains
their political rights and national consciousness within the unitary
state of Sri Lanka.
The Sri Lankan state and its ideologues are relentless in their denial of and efforts to deconstruct the Tamil nation.
The
Sri Lankan state had since its formation during colonial times, been
designed to enact a genocidal violence to eradicate the national
characteristics of Tamils by primarily denying them national existence
and self-determination.
An articulation or attempt at the
deconstruction of the Eelam Tamil nation without incorporating the
agency of the nation state, would easily fail to grasp the omnipresent
national oppression, which the state presides over.
It is in the
face of aggressive national oppression that the Eelam Tamils
consolidated their national mobilization and struggle for nationhood.
The
denial of the Tamil people’s right to self-determination or the
deconstruction of their nationhood within a context of a structural
genocide serves only to legitimize the unfettered national oppression
perpetuated by the state.
Only a referendum conducted under the
supervision of the UN could enable the Tamil people to reaffirm their
national aspirations, argues Athithan Jayapalan, citing Lenin on the
right to secession and the political will expressed by Eezham Tamils in
1977 and n 2013.
* * *
Full text of the article by Athithan Jayapalan:National Existence and National OppressionThe NationA
nation as a concept is grounded on the basis of denoting people who
foremost share a common language, a common and contiguous territory,
historical processes, an overarching ethnic identity and distinct
collective socio-cultural traits. This is not to deny the forms of
differentiation within a nation based on caste, class, locality and
gender which can generate internal oppression and intersection in
experience and identities. Despite the internal differentiation the
nation is, in Benedict Anderson’s words, a commune of people who imagine
as being part of a collective nation. Although it is in essence
imagined or rather a cognitive condition, it manifests itself as lived
experience and material reality for those concerned. The collective
existence of a people is constituted upon the consciousness of being a
nation, belonging to a collective.
The nation being a
historically constituted and sustained community of people on the basis
of national characteristics as mentioned above is still dependent on
socio-political processes to engender national consciousness and action.
Such is often materialized through the political mobilization of a
people under the banner of a nation. Beside its historical
preconditions, the nation is dependent on conscious and sustained
efforts to exercise national mobilization.
Throughout the world,
national mobilization has become integral in the struggle for
self-determination and political rights for oppressed people as well as
in regard to state projects of nationalism. Without such political
activity the nation as a platform for collective social action will be
ephemeral and insignificant. It is the dynamics between the two forms
which are of concern in this article.
The Nation-state and National oppressionThroughout
the South Asian region, the established nation-state often represents a
particular ethnic group and nation: the Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, the
Punjabis in Pakistan, the Bamars in Burma and the Hindi speaking people
in India. This character of the post-independent states ensured the
consolidation of an ethno chauvinist nation state through national
mobilization which rested upon the national oppression of others within
the designated state boundaries. The consolidation of the Sri Lankan
state caused the national oppression of Eelam Tamils, while that of the
Pakistani state ensured the national oppression of the Baloch and
Sindhis. The perpetuation of the Burmese state by the Bamars and other
related Buddhist peoples engender the national oppression of Kachin,
Karen and Rohingyas. Furthermore in India a Hindi centric chauvinist
nationalism fostered a state which presided upon the national oppression
of the Kashmiris, Manipuris, Mizoris, Nagas, the Assamese, alongside
other North Eastern and indigenous nations. It becomes evident that the
relation between national oppression and the structures of contemporary
nation states is not coincidental. The particular national mobilization
promoted by these nation states was in fact instigated through the
workings of chauvinist nationalism which sanctioned national oppression.
In such contexts, the oppressed nation is compelled into
political mobilization to safeguard the foundation of its national
existence. The continued consolidation of Sri Lanka into an oppressive
Sinhala Buddhist nation state ensured a protracted national oppression
in the form of structural genocide. The Sri Lankan state had since its
formation during colonial times, been designed to enact a genocidal
violence to eradicate the national characteristics of Tamils by
primarily denying them national existence and self determination. Such
intent was evident as the state coordinated processes of colonization,
nationalist education, anti Tamil pogroms, discriminatory laws and
brutal counter insurgency from the 1970s onwards. With the commencement
of coordinated counter insurgency efforts a clear genocidal character
becomes discernible in the state violence which targeted the Tamils.
The denial of nationhood and self-determinationIn
Sri Lanka, there is a long political tradition of denying the national
existence of Tamils and to delegitimize or criminalize their national
mobilization. On the forefront of such an epistemological and political
process of silencing oppressed peoples’ self-determination are the state
centric discourses which blatantly deny their national existence and
the genocidal violence perpetuated against them. In these discourses
there is a convenient omission of the fact that it is the nation state’s
bolster of ethnic chauvinism and national oppression which enhances as
well as necessitates the national mobilization of the oppressed.
Moreover the quintessence of self-determination is obscured by these
discourses as they tend to dictate to the oppressed nation how to
exercise their political rights and collective existence. Here is when
the usage of minority enters the rhetoric propagated. In conceptualizing
the oppressed nation as a minority the discourse effectively silences
the demographic composition of the oppressed within their traditional
homeland. In the island of Sri Lanka, the Eelam Tamils constitute a
clear majority with contiguity within the Tamil homeland to the
north-east. The framing of Tamils as being a minority contains their
political rights and national consciousness within the unitary state of
Sri Lanka.
Thus it is an absurd practice, when the state and the
oppressor nation attempt to determine on behalf of the oppressed nation
how to formulate even the experiences of national oppression and
strategies for national resistance.
The Sri Lankan state and
its ideologues are relentless in their denial of and efforts to
deconstruct the Tamil nation. Recently on Colombotelegraph, a chief
architect of state centric discourse, Daya Jayatileke elucidated that
the Tamils are not sufficient in numbers to constitute a nation through
the citation of false statistics obtained in the CIA World fact book.
He writes “There would be chaos if every country were to accord the
status of nationhood to every ethnic group which is 4% and above, not
least because the status of nationhood brings with it the claim of the
inalienable right of self determination up to and including political
independence” (1).
Clearly not concerned about his mandate, Jayatileke propagates a logic
based on math and Sinhala chauvinism to deny the Eelam Tamils
nationhood:
“There is no Tamil nation in Sri Lanka, but there is a
Tamil minority in Sri Lanka. There is however a Sinhala nation in Sri
Lanka. That is the only ethnic community on the island which can claim
the status of a nation as such. Though they do have a just claim to
autonomy and devolution, the Tamils of Sri Lanka do not have the right
of national self-determination, be it external or internal.” (2).
Countering
such philistine state propaganda, others involved themselves in the
discourse on Colombotelegraph. Even liberals who critiqued Jayatileka in
sum debated whether the Tamils were a nation or not by citing internal
differentiation or the inability to incorporate other Tamil speaking
peoples to the south. The liberal critique although nominally critical
of the Sri Lankan state discourse, deems the Eelam Tamil nationhood as
unwarranted and thus in effect reiterates the established unitary state
structure, which is the source of the concerned national oppression.
What the debate evidently lacked was the contextualization of the
national mobilization of the Eelam Tamils. To fruitfully grasp the
nationhood of Eelam Tamils, one has to assess the dynamics between it
and the state enforced national oppression. An articulation or attempt
at the deconstruction of the Eelam Tamil nation without incorporating
the agency of the nation state, would easily fail to grasp the
omnipresent national oppression which the state presides over. It is in
the face of aggressive national oppression that the Eelam Tamils
consolidated their national mobilization and struggle for nationhood. To
leave the state out of the equation in an attempt to investigate the
Eelam Tamil nation often tends to result in delegitimizing such a
collective existence. This is ensured through the pursuit of only
illuminating internal contradictions and differentiation within the
oppressed nation without contextualizing it to the unifying effect upon
the oppressed people of state enacted national oppression.
The Right to Self DeterminationDespite
the internal differences the Tamils were targeted as a collective by
the state on the basis of their nationality. The state discrimination
and violence against Tamils did not differentiate based on the internal
differences existing within the Tamils; they were targeted on the basis
of sharing an ethnic identity, belonging to certain localities and
speaking a particular language.
Thereby the denial of the Tamil
people’s right to self determination or the deconstruction of their
nationhood within a context of a structural genocide serves only to
legitimize the unfettered national oppression perpetuated by the state,
as it neither adequately nor critically assesses the state.
Jayatilekes
polemics in denying Tamil nationhood is amusing as it does not concern
facts nor does it comprehend the very essence of self-determination. A
century back, in 1914 V.I. Lenin brilliantly illuminated the spirit of
self-determination when he wrote on the national question of Poland and
Norway in his classical work The Right of Nations to Self-determination
(3). He rightfully elaborated that the future of the Polish nation is
not to be decided in Moscow but in Warsaw. Refuting critic from
Semkovsky and Rosa Luxenborg who attempted to deny Polish self
determination citing it as a bourgeoisie project, Lenin replied that the
right to self determination is not to be decided at the seat of power
of the oppressor nation ‘..but in the Parliament, the national assembly
of the minority which secede or by a referendum among this minority’.
Lenin
continues “If, in our political agitation, we fail to advance and
advocate the slogan of the right to secession, we shall play into the
hands, not only of the bourgeoisie, but also of the feudal landlords and
the absolutism of the oppressor nation. …When, in her anxiety not to
“assist” the nationalist bourgeoisie of Poland, Rosa Luxemburg rejects
the right to secession in the programme of the Marxists in Russia, she
is in fact assisting the Great-Russian Black Hundreds. She is in fact
assisting opportunist tolerance of the privileges (and worse than
privileges) of the Great Russians.”
In a similar vein Lenin
articulates how for an oppressed nation a bourgeoisie revolution is
necessitated due to its democratic potentials before a social revolution
is achievable. In this spirit the Swedish proletariat correctly grasped
the national question of the Norwegians in 1905. When the Swedish
bourgeois and clergy decided to enforce their union on Norway and annex
it by force, Lenin illuminates that the Swedish proletariat denounced
such an intention and struggled to assist the Norwegian demand for self
determination by pushing for a referendum to be held among the Norwegian
people.
Likewise, in the spirit of Lenin’s words, the self
determination and the nationhood of Eelam Tamils, is neither to be
debated by Colombo centric individuals nor to be decided in Colombo. It
is a right which resides upon the collective will of the Eelam Tamil
people to the North-East. To ascertain such a collective will, there is
the historical need to hold a referendum among the Tamils. The 1977
landslide electoral victory of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF)
was based on the Vaddukoddai resolution of 1976 which demanded the
establishment of an independent socialist secular state of Tamil Eelam.
The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) triumphed in the 2013 Northern
Provincial election through an election manifesto grounded on the demand
for the recognition of Tamil nationhood, self-determination and an
arrest of the genocidal processes. Both historical events are
indicative of the continuity in the national will of the Eelam Tamils in
rejecting Colombo’s sovereignty and in embracing their inalienable
right to self determination. Only a referendum conducted under the
supervision of the UN could enable the Tamil people to reaffirm their
national aspirations.
Reference:
