There is a wide choice of themes, ideas and values that can be taken up when we commemorate this brilliant political leader, intellectual, and statesman, this multifaceted personality, my friend Gamini. This lecture provides me the opportunity to explore a relationship - representing a problematic as well as a historic opportunity - that was close to his heart, to which he gave a great deal of thought, to the shaping of which he made a profound and, at the end, shining difference. Since there is clearly a connection between the India-Sri Lanka relationship and certain key aspects of Sri Lanka's principal national question, the 'ethnic' or Tamil question, I shall attempt to provide some kind of reality check on what is, or is not, unfolding before our eyes as part of my analysis of the emerging future.
If the India-Sri Lanka Agreement of July 1987, highly controversial and divisive in its time, has substantive content, values and lessons to communicate to us today; if that conceptual framework for the resolution of Sri Lanka's principal national question is more or less the working model for those who are seeking to resolve it within the island state's unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity; if the pre-eminent dispute of the present is over the nature and content of interim administration in the North and East that the peace process is struggling to put in place at this critical stage, then the breakthrough but unsuccessful project of the 1980s and, underpinning it and urging it forward against formidable odds, Gamini's vision and new thinking are very much alive.
If this sounds like a rhetorical flourish, please re-read his conceptually inspiring, very concrete "Vision for the 21st Century" presented during the 1994 presidential election campaign. Please re-read carefully his approach to both constitutional reform and "Devolution and the Resolution of the North-East Conflict," his re-considered response to the challenge of settling the content and unit of devolution for the North-East within the framework of a united but clearly not unitary Sri Lanka. And please revisit what he had to say on why he gave his "fullest support to the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord" and also why Sri Lanka's first devolution experiment for the North-East did not take off the ground. The great thing about Gamini was his loyalty to the principles and the basic framework of a just political solution brought on to the agenda by the accord. Through thick and thin, in season and out of season, he spoke up for the essentials of the attempt while being prepared to heed the lessons of its failure - and to move forward.
Gamini's vision and practice are also of much guidance when we seek to second-guess the emerging future of the India-Sri Lanka relationship. Let me offer this simple proposition, which may appear paradoxical on the face of it. The connection between the ethnic or Tamil question and the Indo-Sri Lanka bilateral relationship, which was direct and perfectly obvious between 1983 and 1991, has become less direct and more difficult to assess in the post-1991 period. But with a vital lesson learned, an important course let me add, by way of disclosure, that I was in Sri Lanka as a journalist seeking to interview President Jayewardene but with an interest and, as it turned out, a role going beyond journalism. My interaction and friendship with Gamini had begun with a message I received from him through a common friend, quite appropriately during a cricket Test in Madras (we shared a passion for cricket), asking me to come to Colombo for an important discussion. President Jayewardene asked me frankly to discuss the situation, as I understood it, with both Gamini and Lalith Athulathrnudali. At that time, they had quite different perspectives on how to respond to the crisis in India-Sri Lanka relations.
What impressed me during that first meeting, in February 1987, was the depth and profundity of Gamini' s concern over the deteriorating situation and the fact that he seemed so level-headed about it. He quickly acquainted me with the new thinking at the top in Colombo as well as with the political problems within the establishment. What followed, between February 1987 and March 24, 1990, when the IPKF completed its de-induction from Sri Lanka under unhappy circumstances, was akin to a historical adventure, some would say, misadventure.
This is not the occasion to go into the detail of the experience. Suffice it to say that the project proved costly, in terms of lives lost and resources expended, and failed to achieve its two key objectives - the institution of genuine devolution of power for the Tamil people and the other ethnic groups in a merged North-East, and an end to the armed secessionist struggle waged by the LTTE. But the direction set and the ideas and instrumentalities brought to the national agenda by the audacious project can be said to have had a seminal importance and influence.
A considerable literature, of rather uneven quality and reliability, has developed on Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict and, specifically, on India's post-1983 role. The academic contributions aside, a key actor, J.N. Dixit - India's High Commissioner in Colombo between 1985 and 1989, subsequently Foreign Secretary, and now National Security Adviser to Prime Manmohan Singh - has given us an interesting account as well as a critical analysis in Assignment Colombo (Konarak Publishers, New Delhi, 1998). More recently, he returned to the theme of India's Sri Lanka policy, past and present, in a 50-page essay published in External Affairs: Cross-Border Relations (Roli Books, New Delhi, 2003).
Dixit has some specific criticisms of the activist, interventionist phase of India's Sri Lanka policy. He offers useful insights into the post-1983 as well as the post-199l policy shifts. About Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's approach, he says, I believe, justly: "it was not her intention to support the demand for Eelam. If India were to endorse. . . [ that] demand...it would find it difficult to maintain its own unity and integrity, facing as it did the challenges of separatism in Punjab and Kashmir." (p. 60, ibid.) He notes that Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi introduced significant changes in the policy: "India should firmly oppose the Sri Lankan government's military operations against Tamils.. .More direct political pressure had to be generated against Jayewardene to implement the devolution package that had been finalised in negotiations between 1985 and 1986... If India succeeded in the above two objectives, it should persuade Tamils to come back to the negotiating table.. .If these negotiations succeeded. ..India should directly guarantee the implementation of the solution in one form or the other through appropriate agreements.. .[and] India, apart from being a mediator should become the guarantor of compromises..." (p 64 ibid)
But what Dixit offers essentially is a realpolitik analysis: "India's involvement in Sri Lanka, in my assessment, was unavoidable not only due to the ramifications of Colombo's oppressive and discriminatory policies against its Tamil citizens but also in terms of India's national security concerns due to the Sri Lankan government's security connections with the U.S., Pakistan and Israel" (p. 58, ibid.)
My assessment of the whole experience is rather different. It is much more critical of the fundamental tenets of India's post-1983 policy, and of the effects on the ground of the practice. As one who believed in this policy, and advocated it, until it collapsed around 1990- 91, I have no problem in recognising now that it was schizoid and deeply flawed.
On the one hand, the basic political objective of India's activist policy was honourable and moderate. It was to help win security, justice and a decent measure of selfadministering opportunities for the Tamils living in the North-East within the confines of Sri Lanka's unity and territorial integrity. Crucially, it ruled out any truck with the Eelam demand. Imagine what would have happened in Sri Lanka had political India, and not just a chauvinist fringe or a small political section in Tamil Nadu, espoused the secessionist demand. Imagine what might have happened had support for Eelam rather than a substantial measure of devolution within the unity and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka been the basis of official Indian policy in the 1980s.
On the other hand, the policy worked on the constant assumption that in order to put pressure on the Sri Lankan government,' it was necessary to build up the armed militant groups, above all the LTTE, in various ways. This was realpolitik. This was democratic India's way of putting pressure on the political negotiations, Among other things, it involved the old-fashioned dilemma of ends versus means, It was also akratic,
Today the political consensus in India is that this schizoid policy, which was partly of India's making and partly a consequence of the spill-over of the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict into Tamil Nadu and therefore of Sri Lankan manufacture, proved disastrously counter-productive. This despite India's honourable, moderate intentions and its willingness to go the distance through the sacrifice of the lives and limbs of a few thousands of Indian soldiers. It is another matter that the limited but very significant military successes scored by the IPKF against the LTTE were undone- through own goals scored by the Sri Lankan state after the IPKF was brought home.
(To be continued)
