Ayanda Kota
Chairperson, Unemployed People’s Movement
Grahamstown,
The centenary celebrations of the African National Congress (ANC) are being used to persuade the people that a movement that has betrayed the people is our government, a government that obeys the people, instead of a government of the elites, for the elites and by the elites. It is a hugely expensive spectacular designed to drug us against our own oppression and disempowerment.
In his Communist Manifesto Karl Marx wrote that “Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class…The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie”. Here Marx is referring to the ability of the bourgeois to translate economic power into state power, thus reducing our governments to mere managers acting in the interests of capital and not the people. This has happened to governments around the world. But here our politicians are not mere managers. They are, like in Russia or India, a predatory elite with their own class interests and they support capital and repress the people as long as they can get their own share.
Since 1994 there hasn’t been a reorganisation of the economy. The commanding heights of the economy continue to reside in the hands of a tiny elite, most of which is white. Unemployment is sky rocketing. Most young people have never worked. Anyone can see that there is an excessive amount of poverty in South Africa. There are shacks everywhere. In fact poverty reigns supreme in our country. Every year Jacob Zuma promises to create new jobs and every year unemployment grows.
If things were getting better, even if they were getting better slowly, people might be willing to be patient. But things are getting worse every year. Poverty and inequality are getting worse. The government is increasingly criminalising poverty instead of treating it as a political problem. When people try to organise they are always presented as a third force being used to undermine democracy and bring back racism. But it is the ANC that has failed to develop any plans to democratise the economy. It is the ANC that has failed to develop any plans to democratise the media. It is the ANC that disciplines the people for the bourgeoisie. – a role that they are very comfortable to play! It is the ANC that follows the line of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It is our local leaders who taking the leap from their old bosses, stealing from us, treating is with contempt, acting like the former colonial government and oppressing us.
During the struggle our leaders embodied the aspirations of the people. But once they took state power they didn’t need us any more. We were sent home. We are only called out to vote or attend rallies. But all the time our people are evicted from farms, paving way for animals as farms are turned into game reserves under the pretext of tourism. Our people are evicted from cities. Our people are denied decent education. The party has become a mixture of what Marx would call an instrument of power in the hands of bourgeoisie and what Fanon would call a means of private advancement.
Biko wrote that:
“This is one country where it would be possible to create a capitalist black society, if whites were intelligent, if the nationalists were intelligent. And that capitalist black society, black middle class, would be very effective … South Africa could succeed in putting across to the world a pretty convincing, integrated picture, with still 70 % of the population being underdogs.”
We, as the unemployed, belong to the 70% that Biko was talking about. We were happy to see the end of apartheid and we will always fight racism where ever we see it. But we are not free. There has only been freedom for the 30%. How can a person be free with no work, no house and no hope for their life?
R100 million is being spent on the celebration – spent to entertain elites, through playing golf and drinking the most expensive whiskey. Golf players are even receiving massages from young women sponsored by SAB. This is not a people’s celebration. We are absent! How some of us wish that all that money could have been used to build houses, create employment, build sport facilities or schools for kids who continue to learn under trees! Biko was right. As the world celebrates with the ANC today they put across a pretty convincing picture of freedom while everywhere people are broken by the burdens of poverty.
In his Wretched of the Earth, in the chapter called “The Pitfalls of the National Consciousness”, Frantz Fanon wrote:
“The leader pacifies the people. For years on end after independence has been won, we see him, incapable of urging on the people to a concrete task, unable really to open the future to them or of flinging them into the path of national reconstruction, that is to say, of their own reconstruction; we see him reassessing the history of independence and recalling the sacred unity of the struggle for liberation. The leader, because he refuses to break up the national bourgeoisie, asks the people to fall back into the past and to become drunk on the remembrance of the epoch which led up to independence. The leader, seen objectively, brings the people to a halt and persists in either expelling them from history or preventing them from taking root in it. During the struggle for liberation the leader awakened the people and promised them a forward march, heroic and unmitigated. Today, he uses every means to put them to sleep, and three or four times a year asks them to remember the colonial period and to look back on the long way they have come since then.”
I am not opposed to the centenary celebration of the ANC. But if the ANC was a progressive movement they would have organised a celebration in a way that includes the people and supports us to build our power. They could have, for instance, asked people to meet all over the country, discuss how far we have come and far we still have to go, and draw up demands for a new freedom charter for the new era. But this celebration is just a spectacle that we are supposed to watch on TV. It is exactly what Fanon talks about. It is designed to keep us drunk on the memory of the past struggle, so that we must stop struggling and remain in the caves.
In a recent protest in Bloemfontein, police were there in numbers to flush the demonstrators. This has happened in many other demonstrations. The message is very clear: “Go back to your caves!” It is backed up state violence. As Fanon says a party that can’t marry national consciousness with social consciousness will disintegrated; nothing will be left but the shell of a party, the name, the emblem and the motto. He says that:
“The living party, which ought to make possible the free exchange of ideas which have been elaborated according to the real needs of the mass of the people, has been transformed into a trade union of individual interests.”
This is exactly what the party has become. Institution such as parliament and local municipalities have been severely compromised because of individual interests. Corruption is rampant. The Protection of Information Bill (Secrecy Bill), is another illustration of how the selfish interests of individuals ave taken over the party.
A true liberation movement would never have killed Andries Tatane, attacked and jailed activists of social movements. It would never send people to lull – it would encourage people to continue organising and mobilising against injustices and oppression. A progressive leader would know that he or she cannot substitute themselves for the will of the people. A progressive party would never help the government in holding the people down through fascist attacks on the media by the likes of Nceba Faku, Blade Nzimande and Julius Malema to mention but a few. A democratic party would never engage in attacks on protests as we saw most recently with the ANC and ANCYL fascism against the Democratic Left Front in Durban during COP17 Conference.
In the Congo, in Nigeria and across the Arab world people are deserting celebrations of the flag and political leaders as if they really do represent the nation. Some are turning to a politics of religious or ethnic chauvinism. Others are turning to the politics of mass democratic rebellion or a democracy that is truly owned by the people. This is a free exchange of ideas backed up with popular force. We are also seeing this in Europe and North America. Latin America has been in rebellion for many years. Across South Africa more and more people are deserting the party that spends so much money to keep them drunk on the memory of the past struggle, their own struggle, the same struggle that the ruling party has privatised and betrayed. There are occupations, road blockades and protests and the message is loud and clear: Sekwanele! Genoeg! Enough!
The only way to truly honour the struggles of the past is to stand up for what is right now. The struggle continues and will continue until we are all free.
The last few weeks have seen struggles over forest rights and forest control intensifying across the country. On the one hand there are larger and larger protests taking place, and on the other, the continued use of force by Central and State governments is combined with total silence and apathy on protecting people’s rights.
Campaign member organisations have planned a series of yatras and protests in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Orissa in the coming weeks. The Jangal Jameen Jan Andolan has undertaken a yatra in Rajasthan, crossing Udaipur, Dungarpur, Banswada, Sirohi, Pali and Pratapgarh districts between December 20 and 28th. On December 29th demonstrations will be held in all block headquarters that have been covered. The demands are for respect and recognition of community forest rights, a halt to illegal rejections and modifications of titles and respect for people’s democratic resource rights over their lands, forests and minerals. Meanwhile, more than 1,000 people rallied and ten sat on hunger strike in Dahanu, Thane District, Maharashtra on December 7th and 8th against violations of people’s rights under the FRA; the hunger strike was called off after a written commitment from the SDO. A similar mass protest was held in Gadchiroli, Maharashtra on December 19th against the illegal imposition of conditions on titles for community forest rights. Yatras are also planned in western Maharashtra and Gujarat in January; on January 19th and January 26th mass demonstrations will be held in district headquarters in Chhattisgarh and Orissa respectively. These latter protests will also oppose the land acquisition bill and call for democratic control over resources.
Aside from these plans, other protests and mass struggles are underway. On December 15th, a “People’s Forest Rights Rally” was organised at Delhi by a coalition of organisations. In the POSCO area, more than 20 people were injured and one killed in an attack on December 14th by a contractor’s private goondas; unsurprisingly, on that day alone, the police were nowhere to be found. In Assam the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti is leading a mass struggle against the illegal and dangerous Lower Subansiri Dam project, in which huge numbers of people have joined; but on the night of December 25th the police arrested more than 200 people in a raid and are continuing their attacks. The KMSS has also been involved in struggles against the ongoing repression and violence around Kaziranga National Park, where forest guards regularly shoot those they accuse of being “poachers.” Brutality and violence continues to mark the situation in Chhattisgarh, where the extremely brutal torture of Soni Sori – and the indifferent response of even the Supreme Court to it – gives the lie to all the tales about respect for the “rule of law” and how it is being enforced by “security forces.” Chhattisgarh has also seen a string of recent illegal evictions from forest land. In north Bengal, an organised effort to take control of community forests is facing opposition and resistance from the Forest Department.
In addition, planning is underway for the declaration of new tiger reserves and relocation of people from them in violation of the law. Mass protests have begun in Kawal Sanctuary to resist the proposed illegal conversion of this sanctuary. In Tadoba Tiger Reserve, Sarang Dhabekar, a Steering Committee member of the National Forum of Forest Peoples and Forest Workers was arrested and slapped with false cases because he had been involved in resistance to illegal relocation efforts.
The Campaign condemns this ever-increasing repression and the brutal use of force against those who are fighting for justice. Once again, we see all talk of “rule of law” and “democracy” being brushed aside in the hideous loot of natural resources by the ruling class of this country.
We strongly condemn the brutal and cold-blooded murder of Mallojula Koteshwara Rao alias Kishanji by the security forces in the Burisole forest area of West Bengal.
Now it is very much clear from various sources that the Maoist leader Kishanji was first captured and severely tortured by security forces and then killed in a planned fake encounter under the connivance of both West Bengal and central governments. Mamata Banerjee government of WB has used almost the same weapon of ‘Peace Talk’ to eliminate the Maoist leader as by the R. S. Reddy government in AP.
It is a known fact that the central and various state governments are jointly conducting a special military operation to suppress Maoist activities. The unjustified and irrational killing of Kishanji is nothing but a part of state terror being unfettered under ‘Operation Green Hunt’, centrally controlled by the UPA government. It is a clear cut violation of not only the guidelines given by Supreme Court and National Human Rights Commission but also by different international institutions.
It is to note that the state is not only killing the Maoists and their supporters but also viciously suppressing all voices of dissent, especially of democratic and revolutionary forces. We strongly feel that Naxalism / Maoism cannot be suppressed by killing its propagators / leaders and organizing massacres of its supporters.
So, we demand that:
1. The central and state governments should immediately stop ‘Operation Green Hunt’ and physical elimination of Naxal /Maoist leaders and cadres.
2. The central government should set up a high level Judicial Enquiry Committee on the killing of Kishanji.
3. The government should register a case of culpable homicide under section 302 of IPC, so that the killers of Kishanji are forced to face the court trial, as directed by Supreme Court and National Human Rights Commission.
We call upon all the progressive, democratic and revolutionary forces to come together and oppose the killing of Kishanji and the suppression of people’s movements.
We, the undersigned have decided to organize a Protest Demonstration before the Bang Bhavan, 3, Hailey Road, New Delhi-110001 on 2nd Dec. 2011 at 12 PM to show our united anger against state oppression. We appeal to all the pro-people forces to make this Protest Demonstration successful by joining it in huge number.
Signed by:
1. Arjun Pd Singh, PDFI
2. P.K. Shahi, CPI(ML)
3. Narender, Peoples Front
4. Thomas Mathew, Bahujan Vam Manch
5. Shieo Mangal Sidhantkar, CPI(ML) New Proletariat
6. Ashish Gupta, PUDR
7. Anil Chamaria, Journalist
8. Amit, krantikari Nawjawan Sabha
9. G.N.Saibaba ,Revolutionary Democratic Front
10. Mrigank, Navajwan Bharat Sabha
11. Harish, Inquilabi Majdur Kendra
12. Alok Kumar. Krantikari Navajawan Sabha
13. Deepak Singh, NDPI
14. Mritunjay, CCON
15. Banojyotsna, Democratic Students Union
16. Kusumlata, Student For Resistance
17. Bijunayek, Lok Raj Sangathan
18. Ambrish Rai, Social Activist
Contact: 9868638682, 8800356565, 9873315447
Published as afterword in Ron Ridenour’s book “Sounds of Venezuela”, New Century Book House, Chennai, 2011
The narrative Ron Ridenour has woven here in these pages provides a glimpse of the Venezuelan reality, which exposes not only the significance of the Bolivarian revolutionary processes, but also their contradictions. Obviously, these contradictions are the source of much anxiety among the friends of the Bolivarian revolution throughout the globe. But is it not true that a revolution is as much about hope as it is about apprehensions and dangers? A revolution is always unsettling. You cannot ever pronounce the final judgement about the event called revolution. That is why what famous Marxist historian George Rudé said about the French Revolution is true for all revolutions—”the Revolution remains an ever-open field of enquiry.”(1)
I
Nothing remains settled in the revolutionary process—otherwise how can it be called a revolution? We need to understand that this process is constituted by conflicts among various ever-new possibilities that emerge at every moment therein. Ideological struggles are nothing but representations of these conflicts; expressed in political programmatic language, these possibilities constitute the various lines within the revolutionary movement. These conflicts are what determine the course of the revolution.
To be more specific, there is always an impulse internal to the revolutionary process that seeks to control or limit the pace and extent of the revolution—to make things settled. It can have a positive implication to the extent that it compels the revolutionaries to be conscious of the course of the revolution and to be vigilant enough to differentiate between the forces of reaction and revolution that are internally germinating. The ‘faces’ of these forces do not remain the same—what seems revolutionary at one moment might dawn as reactionary at another. The conservative impulse we are talking about lies somewhere in the interstices of the moments of movement and consolidation, trying to break the simultaneity of these moments. When it is able to break this simultaneity, it morphs into a Thermidorian form with the apparent task of consolidating the revolutionary achievements and protecting them from the enemies. This Thermidorian power externalises all problems of revolution—it tries to cleanse the revolution of these problems so thoroughly that what emerges out of this deadly bath is a revolution sans revolution—sanitised of all contradictions.
The formalisation or institutionalisation of the achievements cannot be avoided. However, this is what gives birth to a new status quo, which tries to guard itself against revolutionary impermanence. It is a conflict like this that could be understood as a two-line struggle—between the emerging headquarters and the forces of continuous revolution. This struggle is in fact the revolutionary truth which cannot be avoided. No moment in the revolutionary movement is devoid of the forces of conservation, which have the potentiality of turning into a full-scale centrism or even reaction depending on the balance of class forces.
With regard to the revolutionary processes in Venezuela, it has been regularly emphasized that “the ultimate contradiction of the (Bolivarian) revolution” is the struggle internal to Chavism—”between the ‘endogenous right’ and the masses who have been mobilised.” Chávez himself frequently describes the Venezuelan reality in Gramscian terms—”The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born.” However, as Gramsci said, in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear—which appear in Venezuela (alongside the continued existence of the old oligarchy, latifundistas, monopoly capitalists and US imperialism) in the form of the new ‘boli-bourgeoisie,’ the military-civil bureaucracy, and ‘the party functionaries and nomenklatura’ who seek to thwart the class and mass initiatives from below.(2) These are the material forces, which with their dispassionate mannerisms try to conserve a pragmatic and ‘realistic’ Bolivarian future against the erratic spontaneism of grass roots initiatives. These are the Bolivarian headquarters.
II
As is well-known, historically there has been a systematic erosion of productive sectors in Venezuela which are not allied to operations of the oil industry. Since 1998, there has been a consistent endeavour to rebuild these other sectors of production and infrastructure around them. In order to achieve this, many steps both backwards and forward have been taken. Many bureaucratic, intermediary and petty bourgeois interests have not just been tolerated but even encouraged and promoted to compete with old oligarchies and corporate interests. Incentives to ‘native bourgeoisie’ and petty bourgeoisie have been an interim strategy of the Bolivarian regime to fragment the corporate unity of capital, while helping in diversifying the Venezuelan economy. In fact, the imperative to create an ‘alternative social bloc’ against corporate hegemony has forced a vision under which “capitalist sectors whose business activity entered into an objective contradiction with transnational capital” are not considered unapproachable.(3)
However, the radical supporters of the Venezuelan transformation have cautioned that the pragmatic need to neutralise private capitalist interests in order to develop a broader bloc against immediate enemies, like transnational capital and imperialist interests, must not scuttle the anti-capitalist nature of the transformation. It has been shown how “‘incentives’ to private capitalists in order to increase productivity” fail generally because they tend to strengthen the historically nurtured rentierist character of Venezuela’s native bourgeoisie. For example, incentives in agriculture without having a fundamental structural transformation have cost the Chávez government heavily, both politically and economically, as “the big landowner (latifundist) recipients of the Government’s generous agricultural credits and grants are not investing in agricultural production, in raising cattle, purchasing new seeds, new machinery, and new dairy animals. They are transferring Government funding into real estate, Government bonds, banking and speculative investment funds or overseas.”(4) These latifundistas have successfully used to their own advantage the Bolivarian government’s urgency to ensure domestic food security and agricultural productivity amidst volatile international relations by bargaining protection from the upsurge of peasants and landless organisations demanding radical land reforms. However, there has been an increasing realisation within the Bolivarian circles about the futility of such compromises with the rentierist forces.
The emergence of the Bolivarians at the helm of the existing political economic institutions has, of course, intensified the internal class struggle leading to a tremendous crisis for the status quo. But there still exists a considerable space for the consolidation of powerful economic interests because these institutions were essentially built for this purpose. The most recent case of their successful manoeuvrings has been exposed by WikiLeaks, which narrates how a radical Chavista, “Eduardo Saman was replaced as commerce minister following pharmaceutical companies’ efforts to protect old patent legislation and their profits.”(5)
There is a massive danger of the containment of the revolutionary pace and agenda, if the revolutionary forces are not vigilant enough with regard to the activities of those social classes that are crowding the institutions of revolution for incentives and patronage. The new intermediate interests that have emerged close to the state structure, along with the old ones, have resisted every popular attack on private capital. They have attempted to thwart endeavours to institute workers’ control over economic activities. Even within the oil and other ‘monopolistic’ industries, these interests have not conceded any substantial move beyond nationalisation, as state monopoly allows them to use their own proximity to the state machinery for intermediary profiteering. There has been a consistent resistance to the attempts to institute co-management,(6) not just from the side of corporate interests, but also from economistic trade unionism (especially in the state-owned petroleum company, PDVSA), which cannot envisage a system of workers’ control that questions the institutional hierarchy and labour aristocracy.
As long as there is a popular movement which questions and subverts the norms and everydayness of the bourgeois state in Venezuela, with the resoluteness to build ‘a new state from below’ with the novel institutions of protagonistic democracy and communal councils, there is a hope for the Bolivarian Revolution. Or else, “it will lapse into a new variety of capitalism with populist characteristics.”(7) That is why there has been a growing need to envisage the alternative bloc and class alliances which are subservient to the exigencies of “an overall system of socialized production.”(8) The accommodation of capitalist interests in any form (state or private), even when they are in consonance with the immediate interests of the revolutionary transformation at a particular juncture, is fraught with risks of the reassertion of ‘the logic of capital,’ and “there will be a constant struggle to see who will defeat whom.”(9) It is this logic and its constitutive representatives, who try to consolidate their position through the so-called ‘endogenous right’ of the revolution.
III
The emergence of headquarters in a revolution is linked with the question of state, state power and hegemony. During a revolutionary period the state returns to its elements—it emerges as a naked instrument of suppression—of holding down adversaries. The proletarian dictatorship too will not allow its enemies to have a free play. Revolution is a period when class struggles begin to explode the barriers of the existing state order and point beyond them. On the one hand, there are “struggles for state power; on the other, the state itself is simultaneously forced to participate openly in them. There is not only a struggle against the state; the state itself is exposed as a weapon of class struggle, as one of the most important instruments for the maintenance of class rule.”(10)
The global division of labour and the US hegemony reduced the Venezuelan economy to mere accumulation of oil rents, thus making proximity to the state the only viable route to economic success. In such an economy, the statist tendencies are bound to be very strong and entrenched in every layer of society. To complicate the matter, revolutionaries in Venezuela found themselves at the helm of the bourgeois state by following its rules, not by any insurrection. In such a situation, reformist tendencies will definitely be stronger among the ranks of the Bolivarians, who find revolutionary measures futile and even adventurist. These tendencies did suffer a temporary setback during the attempted coup of 2002, but as time elapses the cautious self-critical forces begin to find safe-play, gradualism and tactical compromises essential to consolidate power and achievements and to pre-empt any such drastic attack by counter-revolutionaries in future.
The left Chavistas, on the other hand, stress on the task of smashing the bourgeois state from within while positing a new state from below based on co-management of social and economic life. Like the ‘endogenous right’ they understand the need to consolidate, but for them consolidation is not separate from the destruction of the existing state form. Like Russian revolutionaries, they emphasize the development and independence of the working classes and their organs of self-activity, because only in this way can the workers protect their state, while protecting themselves from it! The defeat of the 2002 coup also demonstrates the impact of the unleashing of popular energy and self-activity and what that could achieve. Moreover, unlike in Russia, the state in Venezuela remains a bourgeois parliamentary state, which is alienated from the everyday life of the revolutionary masses.
IV
Among several valuable insights that Ron Ridenour’s text provides regarding the nature of contradictions that pervade the revolutionary transition in Venezuela, there is an important point on the Venezuelan state’s approach to the struggles of the Colombian guerrillas, the FARC. Ridenour hints at the vacillation in this approach. However, such anomalies are numerous, especially when it comes to international relations. Throughout the globe, post-1998 developments in Latin America have been watched very intently, with a lot of hope and expectation. The consistent defiance of US hegemony by the Chávez regime has been a source of inspiration for various progressive movements everywhere. At least with regard to its position on the American manoeuvrings globally, nobody can fault the Venezuelan state—it never wasted any time to decry the imperialist interventions anywhere in the world.
But this has led to a genuine rise of expectations for support from progressive Latin American regimes (if not materially, at least through statements) for local movements against their particular oppressive states, even when there is no direct western backing to these states. In recent years, with many states lining up to define their own ‘war against terrorism’ in order to crush local critical voices and movements against them, the stance of the Venezuelan and Cuban states has not been supportive of the oppressed. In fact, any official voice from the West critical of the local states has many a time provoked statements from the progressive Latin American regimes that are supportive of the southern states like Iran, Libya, Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka even when these are highly oppressive. This has greatly frustrated the solidarity movements—some even going to the extent of calling the Latin American revolutionary processes ephemeral.
However, one must understand that the revolutionary process is not linear and smooth. It is not something homogeneous, and its targets are not just external. The intensification of revolution is the heightening of contradictions that constitute it. In fact, these constitutive contradictions internalise the so-called external elements—’alien’ class interests, the vestiges of old regimes, etc. Any attempt to avoid contradictions is a conservative attempt from the ‘endogenous right’ to homogenise the revolutionary voices behind the new institutions, alienating them from their organic roots in class struggle, thus giving birth to new bureaucracies—the agencies of the new order. It is the ‘endogeneity’ of this tendency that forces the revolutionary leadership to reassess the coordinates of the contradictions time and again. A fine discrimination of these coordinates in the revolutionary process gives an insight into the apparent anomalies. It was not for nothing that the 20th century revolutionaries time and again stressed the need to differentiate between the state (which even well into the first phase of communist society safeguards the bourgeois law) and the revolutionary masses. An understanding of this aspect is crucial in order to comprehend the problems and prospects of policy designs under a revolutionary regime, including its foreign policy and international relations.
It must be noted that revolutionary internationalism of the working class is an important weapon with which a revolution generalizes itself and resists its degeneration into nationalist statism by not allowing ‘revolutionary passion’ to die out. But it is not simply a subjective aspiration to generalize that gives birth to internationalism. Rather, it “is a necessity arising out of the fact that the capitalist class, which rules over the workers, does not limit its rule to one country.”(11) Thus, internationalism is a result of the class struggle going global—it is an endeavour to thwart the capitalist strategy of intensifying capitalist accumulation by segmenting the working class and its consciousness. It is in this regard that a revolution can be termed as international both at the levels of its causes and impact. It represents a crisis for the capitalist system.
Solidarity efforts in support of revolution beyond the immediate location of its occurrence, along with ‘indigenous’ revolutionaries’ support for movements beyond their location are crucial even for the survival of the revolution as a revolution. It can survive as such only by constantly asserting its international character, its inseparability from international class struggle. Otherwise, it will implode or be reduced to a mere regime change.
It is interesting to see how revolutionaries have time and again talked about the foreign policy of a revolution, not just that of the state. And this has been assessed by the revolution’s galvanising effect on the struggles of the working class and the oppressed in other locations. While criticizing the foreign policy of the Provisional Government (that emerged after the February Revolution of 1917) for conducting it with the capitalists, Lenin remarked:
Yet 1905 showed what the Russian revolution’s foreign policy should be like. It is an indisputable fact that October 17, 1905, was followed by mass unrest and barricade-building in the streets of Vienna and Prague. After 1905 came 1908 in Turkey, 1909 in Persia and 1910 in China. If, instead of compromising with the capitalists, you call on the truly revolutionary democrats, the working class, the oppressed, you will have as allies the oppressed classes instead of the oppressors, and the nationalities which are now being rent to pieces instead of the nationalities in which the oppressing classes now temporarily predominate.(12)
It is in this regard that many struggling peoples across the globe find the foreign policies of the progressive regimes in Latin America wanting. Especially, Cuba and Venezuela, the countries which are in the leadership of the anti-imperialist realignment in the post-Cold War era, have been criticized for not standing against the oppressive regimes of the Global South. They have been chastised for their frequent open support to these regimes, whenever they are attacked by the so-called international community.
The genuineness of these criticisms can hardly be questioned; however, they must go further and explain these stances in terms of their material foundation, rather than locating them in some sort of ideological and personality-oriented tendencies as many have done, who reduce the Chávez phenomenon to populist demagoguery and the Cuban regime to Stalinism. The existential anxiety of these regimes in the face of a strong imperialist unity against them is definitely one reason that must be considered. This makes them wary of any interventionist strategy on the part of the ‘international community’ against any regime. Further, the existentialist need to have an oppositional bloc in the international forums puts them in the company of strange allies.
However, we will have to make a fine distinction between the revolutionary process itself and the institutions, states and individuals that come up during this process. We cannot reduce the revolutions to their particular passing moments. We will have to recognize and accept that these revolutions are marked by intense internal contradictions, whose astute descriptions we find in Ridenour’s travelogue. The states in themselves have a conservative agenda, even when they are deeply embedded in the revolutionary process. They have the task to defend what has been achieved, and in mounting this defence they frequently fail to differentiate between the actual enemies of the revolution and the revolutionaries who are aware of the dilemma, of which Rosa Luxemburg talked about:
“Either the revolution must advance at a rapid, stormy, resolute tempo, break down all barriers with an iron hand and place its goals ever farther ahead, or it is quite soon thrown backward behind its feeble point of departure and suppressed by counter-revolution. To stand still, to mark time on one spot, to be contented with the first goal it happens to reach, is never possible in revolution.”(13)
Notes
1. George Rudé: Revolutionary Europe 1783-1815. Fontana/Collins, 1964.
2. Michael Lebowitz: The Spectre of Socialism for the 21st Century (2008). Available online at: http://links.org.au/node/503/1594%20.
3. Marta Harnecker: Rebuilding the Left. Monthly Review Press & Daanish, 2007, p. 35.
4. James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer: What’s Left in Latin America? Regime Change in New Times. Ashgate: 2009, pp. 192-3.
5. Tamara Pearson: “Venezuelans to Debate Patenting Laws after Revelation that Companies Conspired in Firing of Radical Minister,” http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6490 (September 15, 2011).
6. The system of co-management envisages social control against any competitive congealment of sectionalist interests over economic activities. Under this system the economic sectors are co-managed by workers with the community at large.
7. Michael Lebowitz: Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century. Monthly Review Press & Daanish, 2006, p. 116.
8. Petras and Veltmeyer, op cit, p. 234
9. Marta Harnecker, op cit, p. 36.
10. Georg Lukacs: Lenin: A Study on the Unity of His Thought. Verso, 1970.
11. V.I. Lenin: Draft and Explanation of a Programme for the Social-Democratic Party (1895-96). Collected Works, Vol. 2, p. 109.
12. V.I. Lenin: Speeches at First All Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies (June-July 1917). Collected Works, Vol. 25.
13. Rosa Luxemburg: The Russian Revolution (1918). Available at www.marxists.org.
Following is the text of Ron Ridenour’s talk in Chennai (November 12, 2011). Ron is in India for the launching of the Indian edition of his books “Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka”, “Sounds of Venezuela”, and “Cuba: Revolution in Action”.
Greetings and appreciation to the Latin American Friendship Association of Chennai, India for inspiring me to become aware of the oppression of the Tamil people by the Sinhalese government of Sri Lanka, and for encouraging me to remind our comrade governments of Cuba and other ALBA country governments of their strong commitment to international solidarity to oppressed people everywhere.
Also I extend my appreciation to New Century Book House for publishing “Tamil Nation in Sri Lanka”, “Sounds of Venezuela”, and “Cuba: Revolution in Action”. Thank you Amarantha for your translation of the Venezuela book; Dhanapal Kumar for your translation of the Cuba book; and Thiagu for your translation-in-progress of the Tamil Nation book.
I start from the premise that Martin Luther King expressed: “Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere”. In the country of my birth, The Devil’s Own Country, I experienced similar injustice committed against the native peoples and the black people as Tamils suffer, especially in Sri Lanka where they are subjugated to Shinalese chauvinism. I joined with millions of brothers and sisters of all colours to fight racism, to struggle for equal rights, for education and health care for all, even the basic right to vote.
Europeans invaded the Americans and stole the lands and wealth held by native peoples for thousands of years. They enslaved black Africans who they held as slaves and even after slavery ended they kept them as second-class citizens.
Black people developed various forms of struggle including civil disobedience, sit-ins, pickets, mass rallies, propaganda, and voting for equality where possible. Another form of struggle was the Black Panther Party’s armed self-defence when attacked by Ku Klux Klan and the ruling class’ police. Another form was the Gravey Movement that called for separation from the United States, demanding territory in the south. Very much like the Tamils after the 1976 Vattukottai resolution.
In the United States millions of blacks and whites fought this racist discrimination for over a century and eventually won most basic rights but not before millions were arrested, imprisoned for long times, and many murdered. Many thousands of black people were lynched, burned alive, mutilated, tortured to death until the 1980s.
Fidel Castro: “Those who are exploited are our compatriots all over the world; and the exploiters all over the world are out enemies…Our country is really the whole world, and all the revolutionaries of the world are our brothers.” “To be internationalist is to settle our debt with humanity.”
Che Guevara from “Socialism and Man”: “The revolutionary is the ideological motor force of the revolution. If he forgets his proletarian internationalism, the revolution, which he heads will cease to be an inspiring force and he will sink into a comfortable lethargy, which imperialism, our irreconcilable enemy, will utilize well. Proletarian internationalism is a duty, but it is also a revolutionary necessity. So we educate our people.”
I believe that these principles apply to the Tamils of Sri Lanka. I believe Che would agree with your struggle for equality and when not possible to achieve within the Sri Lankan chauvinist context, he would understand your fight for your own nationhood.
I think this is also what Lenin meant in his 1916 thesis, “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination”:
“Victorious socialism must necessarily establish a full democracy and, consequently, not only introduce full equality of nations but also realize the right of the oppressed nations to self-determination, that is, the right to free political separation.”
I am hurt and deeply disappointed that the government of Cuba—where I have lived and worked side by side with the people and government for eight years—as well as the socialist-progressive governments of Venezuela, Bolivia and other Latin American governments have not understood that those principles must apply to the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. I got involved in solidarity with your people’s struggle because you have been so brutally treated, and because of these righteous principles expressed by Lenin, Fidel and Che. I have written critically about these governments siding with the Sinhalese governments of Sri Lanka while it denies the Tamil people those basic principles and rights, and commits genocide.
Perhaps Cuba+ have not understood the history of struggle that Tamils have undergone to win full equal rights before taking up arms. For 30 years you fought peacefully but you were met with brutal force, with pogroms/massacres of hundreds and thousands of people—even worse than that used against blacks in the US, and against Palestinians by Israelis. And, unfortunately, it was not only the governments that have done this against Tamils but also misguided Buddhist monks who betray the peaceful, coexistence values of Buddhism.
Your people’s organizations must meet and discuss these realities with the communist and socialist parties and with people’s grass roots and indigenous organizations in Latin America and elsewhere. You must explain to them your history, why you had to take up arms and fight for separation, for an independent nation. They have to hear of your suffering, of your struggles, why Tamil Eelam is a NECESSITY. You must remind them what they say about international solidarity, about what Lenin meant about political separation when the ruling powers will not grant a people their basic democratic and equal rights.
The progressive governments have won majority votes for new constitutions in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Venezuela that grant equal rights to their indigenous peoples. In Bolivia, for instance, under the new constitution there are four official national languages, three of them are indigenous ones as well as Spanish. The same equalitarian development is happening in several progressive-pro socialist governments in Latin America. If these people could know you simply want these same rights, they would listen to you and stop backing Sri Lanka. But they have been misguided because when they hear the worst terrorist in the world—The United States of America government—raise a little finger of possible criticism that maybe the Sri Lanka government should investigate itself to find some official scapegoat for violating human rights, Cuba+ react against this hypocrisy. But they must know that in this case the Sri Lanka government is a terrible violator of human rights, and not just against the Tamils, but also against Muslims, the indigenous tribes, and it also exploits Sinhalese workers and the poor, and castes.
We must understand that Cuba, and so many governments and peoples, has been victimized by the United States false accusation that it commits “human rights abuse”. Cuba has been blockaded by the US since its victory in 1959. The US tried to overthrow the new revolution in April 1961. It brought the entire world to the brink of a nuclear war in October 1962. The US has sabotaged Cuba, murdered and handicapped thousands of its citizens; it even infiltrated bacteriological diseases in its livestock, its grains and sugar cane.
What has Cuba done to “deserve” this murderous aggression? It has done what Big Capital does not do, what imperialists will not do. It has introduced full and free education and health care. It has assured every citizen food and shelter. No one starves. 80% of its people own their own homes after paying the state simply what it actually costs to build them.
It has organized an excellent system of disaster management in which people and their animals are evacuated before hurricanes hit the island nation. And more often than not no one is killed, and their livestock is saved. That is not what happens in the United States especially in the areas where blacks and poor people live and are struck by natural disasters.
Cuba came to the aid of Angola when attacked by apartheid South Africa. Cuba, alongside with the new Venezuela, comes to the aid of tens of millions of people in scores of land around the world with their medical care, curing even blindness, and educating people to read and write, offering sports and technical assistance. Cuba has more doctors serving the international arena than is offered by all the governments in the United Nations. Cuba does not export war and torture, disease and starvation. It exports “human capital”.
Tamils in Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka Tamil refugees here and in the Diaspora should not rely on the greatest terrorist in the world to help them. The Yankees offer no help without humiliating costs. We must be aware that since World War 11, the US has invaded/intervened militarily 160 times in 66 countries. We must understand that now with a black-faced puppet president of Big Capital, the imperialists are at war in seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia and now Uganda. They kill tens of millions; they torture hundreds of thousands; they starve hundreds of millions.
US’s staunch ally, Zionist Israel commits genocide against the Palestinian people. It offered Mossad intelligence, great amounts of weaponry, killer aircraft and even pilots to Sri Lanka, in order to murder the Tamils. After the end of the war, May 2009, Sri Lanka sent its military chief-of-staff, Donald Perera, to Israel as its ambassador, a reward for Zionist assistance. He told the largest Zionist daily, Yedioth Abornoth,: “I consider your country a partner in the war against terror,” thus coupling terrorism with the Palestinians’ struggle for their homeland and the Tamils’ simple right to exist in peace and equality.
Perera spoke proudly of having “a great relationship with your military industries and with Israel Aerospace industries.”
Perera spoke about the murder, on May 31, 2010, of nine Turkish solidarity activists bound for Gaza with survival supplies: “I can understand that Israel had to protect itself.”
Perhaps because of the complexity of geo-politics, the history of standing for sovereignty of the member nations of the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM), the leaders of Cuba and ALBA lands (Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Latin America) cannot support the goal of a separate nation within Sri Lanka. But they could be convinced to chastise the Sri Lankan government for its atrocities against the Tamil people, and the other oppressed people under the chauvinist Sinhalese leadership. They could see within the context of their moral ideology that it is only right that Tamils must have equality and the basic right to exist without fear of murder and takeovers of their homes and lands. Your peoples’ organizations should remind these pro-Palestinian governments that it is only Israel that supports the US blockade against Cuba; that it is the US and Israel that lead the tiny opposition to Palestine’s right to be a member of the United Nations.
Regardless of whether Cuba has achieved socialism—it is a long process after all and there is so much destruction and subversion coming from the Yankee imperialists—the Cuban people and the government are still worthy of our love and support. They have conducted no wars or torture against any people and they have helped many millions. It is now time that they are approached by all your organizations and become convinced to come to the aid of their natural brothers and sisters in Sri Lanka—the oppressed Tamil people.
We have wandered over the deserts and the seas. We have been hungry and thirsty. We have been murdered and tortured. We are of the working class, of the castes; we are many races and nationalities. We share a common vision: freedom and equality; bread and water on the table; a shelter over our heads. We must fight together to live in peace and harmony.
We must unite around the world and struggle for an independent international investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity against Sri Lanka government leaders.
We must call for a worldwide BOYCOTT of Sri Lanka.
CHE GUEVARA would be on our side today!
We write this at a time when our movement is under attack from all quarters, and three of our leaders, namely, Sonu Kumar (the President of MSEU), Shiv Kumar (the General Secretary of MSEU) and Ravinder, have been arrested by the police in a completely unjustified and unlawful manner.
All concerned probably know the way in which processes unfolded over the past few weeks. Our leaders went to the negotiation table with the management of Maruti Suzuki and the Labour Department on the 16th of September. Talks were still going on today, when they broke down because the management stubbornly refused to take back those workers that had been thrown out.
We believe that the management, prepared for this eventuality, had already made suitable arrangements with the police and the administration. That the government and its police have been bought over by the company management is absolutely clear. When talks broke down at about 10:15 pm today, the police spared no time in arresting our leaders. The attempt, clearly, is to cripple our movement when we have refused to back down in the face of all threats and enticements.
It is known to us that Ravinder already has an FIR filed against his name; but Sonu Kumar and Shiv Kumar have never been charged before. However, looking at the foul play that the police are already indulging in, we are sure that our leaders will be charged of crimes they never committed.
This way or that, we will continue our struggle. We appeal to all to condemn such acts by this unholy alliance of the police, the government and the company management. We ask you to stand in our support, in the support of our movement, of our arrested leaders and against injustice.
Rishipal
Executive Member
Maruti Suzuki Employees Union (MSEU)
“Words are never “only words”; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.” – Slavoj Zizek
In the discussions that have taken place on the Tamil national question in Sri Lanka, the concerned subjects have been referred to, even by well meaning comrades, as ‘Sri Lankan Tamils’. Whereas the subjects, if one should go by the term used by various Tamil activists, intellectuals and just common people who stand for the struggle for a Tamil homeland, refer to themselves as ‘Eelam Tamils’. What is in a name, as the bard asked ages ago? While the word ‘Eelam’ has been part of Tamil vocabulary for ages to denote the geographical entity which is called Sri Lanka today, the latter name became popular only a few decades back. All the same, today’s ‘Eelam’ has a completely different meaning and connotation from the ‘Eelam’ of the ancient period. Followers of national liberation movements across the world be it Palestine, Kurdistan or Chechnya, would know that the terms used to describe the people and the geographies they contest were not the same in the past as they are now. Of more value than the etymology of self-defining terms of oppressed nationalities is the deployment of such terms in their present resistance and thus, the contemporary usage of such terms is more political than anything else. Keeping this argument in mind, the article seeks to explain the politics of the term ‘Eelam Tamil’ and what it means to the Tamil resistance and its participants.
The sociologist Manuel Castells defines idenity as a people’s sense of meaning and experience. He argues that though identities may originate from dominant institutions, “they become identities only when and if social actors internalize them, and construct their meaning around this internalization.” From the day Sri Lanka achieved its independence, the recognized powers defining Tamil identity were primarily Colombo-centred Tamil elites, who were mostly bureaucrats in service of the Sri Lankan state. The institution they served and the Sinhala elites whom it primarily benefited championed a Sri Lankan nationalism that was essentially based on suspicion and/or hatred of the Tamil people. At its racist worst, Sri Lankan nationalism aimed at annihilation of the Tamil identity. At its liberal best, it aimed at assimilation. The post-independence Tamil elites found it easier to negotiate with the latter aspect, and like all elites disconnected from masses, had only their sectarian economic interests in mind. Despite the rather obvious structural racism that was being installed against the Tamil people, the Colombo Tamil believed that a liberal balancing act between two loyalties was possible. Accordingly, they sold out on popular classes. The best example of such betrayal was their unquestioning support to the Sirimavo-Sastri past of 1964 – the first major act of ethnic cleansing – by which over half a million upcountry Tamils, almost entirely belonging to the labouring classes, were stripped off their citizenship rights and shipped to India. Likewise, the process of colonization of Tamil territories and the phenomena of Sinhalization, where certain Tamil sections either owing to apprehension or seeking benefits ‘converted’ as Sinhalese, were also not challenged by these gentlemen.
For the Tamil popular classes the contradiction inherent in this identity project was becoming apparent even in the 50’s. Almost as if giving voice to this, V. Navaratnam, a theorist of Tamil nationalism and a doyen of the Federal party, wrote in 1957 in a short tract called ‘Ceylon in Crisis’ of the irreconcilable antagonism between the Tamil people and the unitary state. He was also highly contemptuous of the ‘Colombo Tamil intelligentsia’, a constant throughout his life – he would brand them as traitors later. While the Tamil people were unable to relate to the identity project of the pro-state Tamil elites, being unable to internalize it or relate it to their experiences, facing discrimination and violence at a day to day level from the very state they were called to be loyal to, they were still unable to come to terms with the terms of the radical nationalists. To use Sartrean terminology, the critical transition from seriality to a group-in-fusion was still incomplete. But not for long.
The Black activist Stokely Carmichael said that “We have to fight for the right to invent the terms which will allow us to define ourselves and to define our relations to society, and we have to fight that these terms will be accepted.” The 60’s and 70’s in Sri Lanka, periods that witnessed anti-Tamil violence, repressive laws, an escalation of colonization and institutional discrimination, were also periods where the Tamil political actors contesting the powers-that-be were fervently searching for the terms with which they would address themselves vis-à-vis the oppressor. Even as in 1972 Sri Lankan nationalists got a shot in their arm with the ethnocratic ‘republican’ constitution that effectively made Tamils third grade citizens, the political vocabulary of the Tamils was rife with an old word that got a new lease of life and meaning – Eelam. In 1973, S.J.V. Chelvanayagam, hailed later on as the father of the Eelam Tamil polity, pleaded for the recognition of a Eelam Tamil nationality as a distinct political entity with its right to self-determination. Three years later, the historical Vaddukkodai resolution that declared the necessity of the struggle for a “Free, Sovereign, Secular, Socialist State of Tamil Eelam” was passed under his aegis. After decades of attempted negotiations, reconciliations and compromises with the oppressors, the oppressed now had a paradigm, a terminology of self-definition of their identity. The Eelam Tamil discourse was set – and after 1976, one either recognized it or opposed it. It was then no coincidence that the birth of the most resolute defenders of the Eelam Tamil struggle, the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), happened in the same year.
Identity formation was one thing – to wage an uncompromising political struggle to secure rights by/for the people who assert that identity is another. The assertion and struggle are interlinked and inseparable. Of the various organizations that emerged in the late 70’s, it was only the Tamil Tigers who were able to keep track of both. Rapidly winning support among the Tamil masses, they promoted an Eelam Tamil politico-cultural identity that was modern, secular while at the same time politically ‘intolerant’. An example of this ‘intolerance’ is a statement of theirs from the early 90’s that defines a traitor as “whoever accepts or supports the Sri Lanka unitary constitution, the Sinhala national anthem, the Sinhala national flag.” (The French Resistance was no less ‘intolerant’ of the Vichy regime collaborators who served Nazi Germany, sang the Deutschlandlied, saluted the Swastika.) Zizek argues that it is not enough that one finds new terms with which to define oneself outside of the oppressor’s tradition, one should go a step further and deprive the oppressor of the monopoly of defining tradition the way he wants it. The Tigers’ much criticized ‘intolerance’ towards renegades was then but a progressive negation of the discourses framed by the oppressors – not only was the Tamil subject required to denounce the oppressor’s polity, he was also required to denounce the oppressor’s political language and political symbols. In short, assimilation was to be made impossible.
Taking on from Chelvanayagam, V. Prabhakaran, the leader of the LTTE, argued for the rights of the Eelam Tamil nation to self determination by virtue of their possessing “a distinct language, culture and history with a clearly defined homeland and a consciousness of their ethnic identity.” Amilcar Cabral argues in ‘The Role of Culture in the Struggle for Independence’ that this type of a resistance against a militarily superior power is possible only because “the popular masses, who have preserved their culture and identity, maintain their sense of individual and collective dignity despite the torments, humiliations and depredations they must often suffer.” Such struggle, he says, “the organized political expression of culture”, is necessarily a test of identity and dignity. The struggle is not just aided by the progressive aspects of the culture of the subject people, it also injects newer progressive elements into cultural life, preventing asphyxiation at a time of crisis.
For the LTTE, this was imperative. For the first time in the modern history of the Eelam Tamils, there was organization with a leadership that emerged almost entirely from the popular classes with an exceptionally high percentage of women at decision making levels – in 2002, 5 out of the 12 member central committee were women (If one subscribes to Marx’s belief that the progressiveness of a movement can be gauged by the position that it gives women, then this fact alone should vindicate the Tigers). The philistinism of the comprador Tamil elites of Colombo, long considered the face of Tamil culture, would have to be challenged and so would decadent cultural relics among the natives. The very historical fact of the massive support among popular classes, peasantry, women and backward sections for the Tigers, and owing to their cadre base and leadership being derived from such sections, they had to look at Eelam Tamil identity and culture not just as agents of political change, but also to radically remould them to fit a project of a progressive Eelam Tamil nationalism. It was pointless to talk Tamil culture or identity in abstract – it had to be rooted in the concrete, in the socio-political context that the Eelam Tamils found themselves in. Thus, Capt. Vanathi, a LTTE leader and poet martyred in 1991, did not find the subject of her poetry in a hoary Tamil antiquity – she found her revolutionary Tamil woman in the battlefield confronting the enemy, a political agent heralding a new culture and identity.
Another phenomena, probably the core aspect of the Tigers’ Eelam Tamil project was the ‘Cult of the Hero’, a close equivalent of Robespierre’s ‘Cult of the Supreme Being’. But while the latter demanded a faith in a common secular god and the immortality of the human soul, the former required a faith in the martyrdom of fallen comrades and the immortality of the meaning of their sacrifices. The result was the creation of a secular festival – ‘Heroes Day’, held every year on the 27th of November, the day the first LTTE cadre fell in battle. Under the Tigers, the occasion drew more crowds than any religious festival of the Eelam Tamils – it still does among the diaspora – and the event not just fostered a sense of solidarity but also provided the Eelam Tamils a shared memory of opposition to persecution. Besides, the festival produced a horizondalizing effect on what was once a vertical society. The Tamils paid common homage to martyrs of different castes, subcastes, religions alike and their graves were rallying points of the Eelam Tamil culture that the Tigers hoped to create, transcending sectarian affiliations. The grave of the martyr was also symbolic of an uncompromising rejection of assimilation by the oppressor’s tradition. Thus, the annihilation strategy of the Sri Lankan state that found its highest expression in the Vanni massacre of May 2009 was accompanied by a systematic destruction of the martyrs’ graves. The message Sri Lanka wanted to give to the Eelam Tamils was this. Resistance to assimilation would meet this fate alone.
Despite the different ways that supporters looked at the project of the Eelam Tamil identity and its protagonists, there was an agreement on certain fundamental points – recognition of Eelam Tamils as a unique national formation with inalienable rights to exercise their political and economic sovereignty, which includes their rights to oppose colonization of their lands and the concomitant mutilation of their cultural consciousness by means of assimilation. With the military crushing of the LTTE, the Sri Lankan state proclaimed the end of Eelam Tamil identity as such. Let alone recognition of nationality, Mahinda Rajapaksa declared that there are no minorities in the island and that all are Sri Lankans. This, of course, implies that the Eelam Tamil is beyond the frameworks of his definition. In this, he is complemented by both Sinhala and Tamil liberal intelligentsia.
While a Tamil using the word ‘us’ to refer to the Tamils as a community perturbs the liberal Sinhala, he nevertheless tolerates it. One can be anything as long as one is Sri Lankan. The Sri Lankan liberal views the Tamil as a minority whose rights must be protected, under his patronage of course. ‘They may be Tamils, but they are Sri Lankan citizens’, he argues while protesting against the abuses of the state. The elite liberal intellectuals of Colombo recognize a plethora of rights for the Tamils – citizen rights, human rights, women rights, children rights. All rights except that one right that the Eelam Tamil people fought for – right of a nation to self-determination.
It was pointed out before how the Colombo based Tamil elites pursued an identity project that was antithetical to the interests of the popular classes of Tamil Eelam. After the tragedy of Vanni, the farce of such intelligentsia became all too apparent. Take for instance, the Colombo based Centre for Policy Alternatives, an institute extensively funded by foreign capital, a hub of Tamil intellectuals following the collaborator Neelan Tiruchelvam’s line, opposes human rights violations while at the same time justifying the war on the LTTE. According to them, the Eelam Tamils deserve human rights accorded to a minority. The national question is blasphemy to them. Their demands for “non-violent conflict resolution and democratic governance” are nothing but cover language for their attempts to defend the economic interests of those privileged sections who defend the ‘Sri Lankan Tamil’ identity against the interests of the Eelam Tamil masses who would be stripped of their powers to resist assimilation at politico-ideological levels and are also left helpless to defend their national economy pillaged by colonization. The struggle of the Sri Lankan liberals, Sinhala or Tamil, is then at odds with the struggle of the Eelam Tamil people. Their struggle is for good governance. Our struggle is for self governance. This is the crux of Eelam Tamil identity politics – not a defence of abstract cultural rights or human rights, but a concrete assertion of political sovereignty.
But the limits of Sri Lankan liberal tolerance is tested when a Tamil questions the foundations of Sri Lankan nationalism, challenges the political economy of Sinhala colonization and refuses assimilation, that is, when a Tamil subscribes to Tamil Eelam – at this point, the lines are blurred between the Tamil liberal Saravanamuttu, Sinhala liberal Sanjana Hattatuwa and the racist Gothabaya whom they claim to oppose. All three are united in denouncing and denying the status and rights of the Eelam Tamils. No wonder that liberal and racist alike find the Tamil diaspora that adamantly refuses to be defined by them an eyesore (the ideological offensive that is being waged on diaspora requires a separate analysis in its own right). After all, only an Eelam Tamil nationalism has the power to negate the reactionary negation of Sinhala colonization, thereby ending privileges of local compradors as well. It would be naïve to expect the ruling class or their liberal apologists to recognize the same. The liberal Sinhala is only the human mask of a monstrous Sri Lankan nationalism and the Sri Lankan Tamil liberal is its make-up paint. The need to recognize and expose this is imperative for those who stand by the Tamils’ rights as a nationality and it is also imperative to deny the terms and definitions of those with the Sri Lankan establishment. For starters, the Eelam Tamils should be referred to as such, and not as ‘Sri Lankan Tamil.’ The political differences between the two terms are too much for them to mean one and the same.
To sum up, the Zizekian matrix of the Event can be used to explain the state of the Eelam Tamil politics while also drawing equations for the future.
(1) Fidelity – Vaddukkodai resolution of 1976, LTTE & secular-modernist Eelam Tamil nationalism
(2) Reactive re-integration – politics of ‘Sri Lankan Tamil’ identity, minority rights
(3) Outright denial of eventual status – Sri Lankan liberalism, assimilation
(4) Catastrophic total counter-attack – Sri Lankan fascism, annihilation Vanni style
(5) Total enforcing of the Event leading to an ‘obscure disaster’ – emergence of a Hamas-styled Tamil nationalism
(6) Renewal of secular-modernist Eelam Tamil nationalism
(2) (3) and (4) all contributed at different levels to weakening of (1). (2) and (3) also require a weakening of (4) as it weakens the moral legitimacy of their advocacy of ‘co-existence’, especially in the wake of various gross abuses coming to light in the international arena. All the same, (2) and (3) will not hesitate to rally behind (4) in case of an emergence of (5) or (6). In case (6) does not emerge, considering the continuing betrayal of the interests of the Tamil popular classes by protagonists of (2), the probability of (5) cannot be ruled out – as an example, we have seen the Hamas fill the vacuum in Palestine in the face of a weakening of a progressive movement and sell out by elites. In the long run, (5) may deliver freedom, but its ability to be egalitarian is a question. Hence our case for progressives to lend their support to (6) and for the subscribers of (6) to pick-up the thread of the uncompromising emancipatory political tradition of (1) and take it forward.
So, the question “What is in a name?” is not appropriate with regards to the Eelam Tamils. After all, a people do not wage a struggle for decades and sacrifice over 200000 lives for a rose to be named differently. Considering the Eelam Tamils’ political struggle now, the more apt Shakespearean question to be posed is “To be or not to be”!
Fifty-eight years ago, on July 26, 1953, 160 Cuban rebels attacked Moncada Barracks near Santiago de Cuba. Had the rebels been able to take the fort with 1,000 troops—a good possibility—it would have started a revolution that might well have defeated the dictatorial regime of Fulgencio Batista within a short time.
Fidel, the leader
The main cause for failure was a missing vehicle with their heavy weaponry. Nevertheless they were able to cause three times the numbers of casualties that they suffered. Nearly one-half of the rebels were killed but most of them died under or following torture.
After being held for 76 days in isolation without access to reading material, Fidel Castro, the 26-year old leader, came into a courtroom filled with 100 soldiers. He gave a rousing defense of the need for revolution to topple the dictator and change the corrupt and brutal socio-economic system so that all could be fed, obtain education and health care, so that farmers could own land and all have a voice.
Fidel leads the revolutionaries
In his five-hour speech, Fidel said,
“The right of rebellion against tyranny, Honorable Judges, has been recognized from the most ancient times to the present day by men of all creeds, ideas and doctrines.”
Instead of asking for acquittal, he demanded to be with his brother and sister rebels in prison. “Condemn me, it does not matter, history will absolve me!”
Fidel Castro considers ethics and morality to be essential for revolutions. In My Life: Fidel Castro, the 2006 interview book with Ignacio Ramonet, Fidel speaks of these highest principles on numerous occasions. He asserts that “especially ethics” is what he learned most from the national liberation hero, José Martí.
After following liberated Cuba for half-a-century, having lived and worked there for eight years, I find that during its guerrilla struggle, from December 2, 1956 to January 1, 1959 the revolutionaries acted in a moral manner. Cuba’s revolutionary armed struggle was exceptional in this way. As Fidel told Ramonet, “We did not kill any prisoners”, “not even one blow” was dealt. That is “our principle”; “All revolutionary thought begins with a bit of ethics.”
Che Guevara in Congo
I think that is also the key reason why so many millions of people the world over love and respect Che Guevara: his moral stance, his example as a just revolutionary leader. This from “Socialism and Man:”
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love…Our vanguard revolutionaries must idealize this love of the people, the most sacred cause, and make it one and indivisible…one must have a great deal of humanity and a strong sense of justice and truth in order not to fall into extreme dogmatism and cold scholasticism, into an isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.”
I agree with Fidel and Che. Revolutionaries must be ethical in vision and use morality in practice, both at home and in solidarity with the oppressed everywhere. As Fidel told Lee Lockwood in Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel:
“Those who are exploited are our compatriots all over the world; and the exploiters all over the world are our enemies…Our country is really the whole world, and all the revolutionaries of the world are our brothers.”
I define ethics in this way: Life shall not be abused or destroyed by our conscious hand—without being attacked or oppressed beyond limits of toleration. A moral person, organization, political party or government acts in daily life and in the struggle for justice with that ethic in mind. These are my thoughts on morality:
1. We act so that no one person, race or ethnic group is either over or under another.
2. In combat against oppressors and invaders, we do not kill non-combatant civilians nor forcefully recruit them, or use them as hostages.
3. We struggle to create equality for all.
4. We abolish all profit-making based upon the exploitation of labor or the oppression of any person, group of people, class or caste. Instead, we build an economy based upon principles of justice and equality, one in which no one goes hungry, sharing equitably our resources and production.
5. We struggle to create a political system based upon participation where all have a voice in decision-making about vital matters with relation to local, national and international policies.
6. We struggle to eliminate alienation in each of us.
Ethics and Sri Lanka Tamils
True, solidarity activists have no choice. We must support a people under attack by aggressors wherever in the world. That is what I see as our task as anti-war activists concerning Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine…just as we did in the wars against Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia and the South Africans…
For us solidarity activists, and governments viewing themselves as progressive-socialist-communist-revolutionary, I believe our task must be to press for the very lives and rights of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka where governments have systematically oppressed and repressed them for half-a-century.
As a solidarity activist—who advocates the right to resist and the necessity to conduct armed struggle once peaceful means fail to change oppressive governments from terrorizing us—I denounce all perpetrators of terrorism, no matter the party or cause, and demand they change tactics to ones that are morally in accordance with our ideology embracing fellowship with justice and equality.
Tamil Tigers
I find that most armed movements commit acts of atrocities, even acts of terror in the long course of warfare. This has sometimes been the case with the Colombian FARC and Palestinian PFLP, for instance. But I support them in their righteous struggle. They are up against much greater military and economic forces that practice state terror endemically. The ANC in South Africa’s war for liberation also committed horrendous acts of ‘terrorism’.
Most of the dozens of Tamil groups that took up arms, at one time or another, considered themselves Marxists, and many looked up to Che Guevara and Cuba’s revolution as an ideal. But they nearly all became terrorists in much of their actions. Hear what Che Guevara meant about the use of violence.
“There are always laggards who remain behind but our function is not to liquidate them, to crush them and force them to bow to an armed vanguard, but to educate them by leading them forward and getting them to follow us because of our example, or as Fidel called it ‘moral compulsion.’” (Speech “From somewhere in the world”)
This Sri Lanka Tamil ‘story’ is a tragedy especially for the Tamils; also for the world of humanity. Most people not directly involved, however, do not react because they don’t know what they can do. There are so many tragedies going on at the same time. Cynical brutality is constantly unleashed by major capitalist enterprises and their governments in the ‘first’ world, much of the former ‘second’ world as well as by national capitalists in the ‘third’ world. We live in what I call the Permanent War Age. Brutality—surveillance—suffering is the norm.
In those countries where there is little brutality, in comparison, and no aggressive war-making (I speak here of the governments of Cuba and other ALBA—Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America—countries) the leaders see the necessity of having political ties with some war criminal governments, such as Sri Lanka. I gather that this leads them to ignore their moral solidarity principles and abandon the oppressed Tamils.
On this July 26 day of celebration, I call upon the Cuban government, as well as all members of the ALBA alliance, to return to the moral principles expressed by Fidel and Che and do the right thing by the Tamil people. Call for an independent international investigation into the war crimes committed by the Sri Lankan government, and use your moral clout, your revolutionary record to demand an end to the genocide against this people.
If morality does not become integral to our struggles, I’m afraid we are headed for a worldwide moral collapse, which is already underway due to the intrinsic immorality of capitalism and its imperialism; the foundering of contemporary socialism; and the rise of fascism throughout much of the world.
Amarantha for Latin American Friendship Association (Erode, Tamil Nadu)
Dear Comrades,
“Humanity is Homeland” said Jose Marti, poet, philosopher and Father of the Cuban Revolutionary war.
“The exploited, all over the world, are our compatriots; and exploiters all over the world our enemies… our country is really the whole world and all Revolutionaries of the world are our brothers” said Fidel Castro, Hero of the Cuban revolution who realized Marti’s dreams.
Cuban doctors are at work among less fortunate people in many parts of the world. Cuban medical teams are engaged in relief and rehabilitation work in various countries devastated by natural disasters. More than 26,000 students from across the world study medicine free of cost at the Latin American School of Medicine in Havana promising to serve the poor and needy back home.
But why did the present leaders of Cuba hail Sri Lanka for killing Eelam Tamils? Why did they tow behind India in praising the Sri Lankan state at the UN Human Rights Council when tens of thousands of Eelam Tamils were killed in the gruesome war? Are Eelam Tamils excluded from the Internationalism unique to Cuba?
We at the Latin American Friendship Association consisting of Tamils of Tamil Nadu, India, were shocked and disheartened when the ALBA countries, at the insistence of Cuba, voted in favor of the Sri Lankan State at the UNHRC on 27 May, 2009. It is now time for Cuba and other Latin American countries to correct their stand about Eelam Tamils in the light of the UN Advisory Panel Report on Sri Lanka, released on 25 April, 2011.
Members of the U.N. Advisory Panel on Sri Lanka constituted by the Secretary General of U.N. Mr. Ban-ki-Moon, have confirmed the allegations of Tamils living across the world. The report confirms that more than 40,000 civilians were killed by heavy artillery and widespread shelling by Sri Lankan govt. forces; that there was systematic shelling on “No fire zones” including hospitals, schools, etc…. It strongly denies the Govt. of Sri Lanka’s claims of “Humanitarian…. Operation” with a policy of “zero civilian causalities” and indicates that a wide range of serious violations of International Humanitarian Laws and International Human Rights Laws were committed by the Govt. of Sri Lanka. Though it has been alleged that the LTTE had used civilians as human shields, recruited children in its cadre and stored weapons in civilian areas, the panel report accuses the Govt. of Sri Lanka of trampling on all International Humanitarian Laws. Therefore, the panel has called upon the UN Security council to “reconsider the resolution passed by the UNHRC on 27 May 2009 in light of the Panel Report”.
One may recall that the permanent People’s Tribunal, an international body independent of any state authority, after examining evidences and hearing eye-witnesses in Dublin in January 2010, concluded that the Sri Lankan government is guilty of War crimes and Crimes against Humanity and that the International community, particularly the U.K. and U.S.A., share responsibility for the breakdown of the peace process during 2002-2006. The tribunal comprised of renowned jurists, Nobel laureates including Rajinder Sachar, former chief justice of New Delhi High Court, Sulak Sivaraksa- a Buddhist Peace campaigner, writer, etc… This People’s Tribunal was set up by the continuous efforts of the Tamil Diaspora, Tamils in Tamil Nadu and some Sinhala democrats.
The Tribunal termed the civil war a “war without witnesses” because, the GoSL prevented entry of both National and International media into the war zone. In fact, some of the early victims were journalists who were murdered by unknown assassins. The atrocities carried out by the military relate particularly to civilians and there are evidences of cluster bombs being dropped by warplanes. Sexual abuse and rape of women by government troops was yet another atrocity repeated throughout the civil war by govt. military in destroyed villages and in the “welfare villages”. This led to tragedies such as abortions and suicide by victims unable to live with family shame and mental trauma. This policy of targeting also applied to Tamils living outside the conflict zone. Apart from mass deportations, selective terror campaigns were carried out by means of abductions, assassinations, arbitrary arrests, detention, sexual assault and torture.
The tribunal insists that the charges of genocide require further investigation, whereas the U.N. Panel on Sri Lanka restricts itself to allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The U.N. fails to view the conflict in Sri Lanka as an ethnic issue as it does not recognize the Tamils’ struggle for statehood or the Tamils as a nationality with a genuine need to protect itself from extermination. Sri Lanka’s war crimes are only a part of ethnic cleansing of Tamils over the last 60 years.
The Sinhala rulers on assuming power from the British in 1948 began the systematic oppression of Tamils in all aspects of life.
(1) One million Tamils were excluded from citizenship and rendered stateless by the citizenship Act 18 of 1948. Act 48 of 1949 denied the right to vote enjoyed by the Tamils until then.
(2) Tamil homelands in the North and East were deliberately colonized by Sinhalese with state funds, but were excluded from all development projects.
(3) The Sinhala Only Act of 1958 and Standardization Act of the same year deprived Tamils of higher education, employment opportunities, professional opportunities and all public office thereby consolidating the racial discrimination.
(4) Thousands of Tamils were killed in racial violence let loose by the Sinhala rulers in 1956, 1958, 1974, 1976, and 1977 against innocent Tamils. There was widespread looting, arson, rape, torture, burning people alive, destroying property and centers of cultural importance – all planned and executed by racist Sinhala Governments.
(5) The state sponsored violence against Tamils in August 1977 forced more than 50,000 Tamils to migrate to northern part of Eelam and to several other countries including India.
(6) Burning of Jaffna Library in 1981 and the massacre of Tamils detained in Welikkede Prison determined armed struggle as the only course available for the Tamils for their liberation.
Is Sri Lanka an anti-imperialist state? :
Sri Lanka, which calls itself as a ‘Socialist Democratic Republic’, was the first country in South Asia to open itself for globalization in 1976, and amended its economic policy accordingly. Recently, the Sri Lanka Govt. has evacuated poor people from neighborhoods around Colombo to offer lands for multi-national companies.
Active military collobaration between the ‘anti-imperialist’ Sri Lanka and United States has been going on for more than two decades. The United States of America has been arming and financing Sri Lanka for most of the civil war period. [http://cdi.org/PDFs/CSBillCharts.pdf] From at least the 1990s, the US has provided military training, financing, logistic supplies and weapons sales worth millions annually. A Voice of America installation was set up in the northwestern part of the country.
The Acquisition and Cross Servicing Agreement (ACSA ) was signed soon after Rajapaksa assumed power. It was U.S. citizen Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, Defense Minister, and brother to President Rajapaksa, who signed the agreement, March 5, 2007. Their younger brother, also a minister, is a US citizen too.) . ACSA will enable the United States to utilize Sri Lanka’s ports, airports and air space. As a prelude to the signing of the agreement scheduled for July, this year, United States Naval ships have been calling at the Colombo Port for bunkering as well as to enable sailors to go on shore leave.
In return for the facilities offered, Sri Lanka is to receive military assistance from the United States including increased training facilities and equipment. The training, which will encompass joint exercises with United States Armed Forces, will focus on counter terrorism and related activity. The agreement will be worked out on the basis of the use of Sri Lanka’s ports, airports, and air space to be considered hire-charges that will be converted for military hardware.
(http://colombopage.com/archive_07/March5132506JV.html)
Today, lands in the war-torn North and Eastern parts of the Island are shared among Indian and Chinese corporate companies.
Sri Lanka is not a secular state as the constitution itself states that Buddhism is the foremost religion in the Island though there are people belonging to various other religions.
“War on Terror” is a slogan borrowed by Sri Lanka from the U.S. to justify the genocidal war on Tamils, using sophisticated weapons of mass destruction supplied by the U.S., Israel, Japan, Italy, China and India.
Truth and the UNHRC Resolution dated 27 May 2009; The Current Situation:
The U.N. Panel Report of 25 April 2011 is more than enough evidence to conclude that the UNHRC Resolution of 27 May 2009 is far removed from truth. The magnitude of physical torture, psychological torture, disease, starvation and abuse of the Tamils survivors has few precedents in history. It will be several generations before the Tamils recover from the horror of this war. As with any war, women have borne the brunt – there are about 89,000 war widows in Eelam. Tamil women have been molested, sexually harassed and raped as part of the genocidal program so that they never return to normal life. The Sri Lankan army has taken upon itself the duty of not letting any humanitarian aid reach the Tamil survivors. Deprived of food, water, medicine, medical services and other basic necessities, Tamils have been subject to several epidemics in the camps, leading to steady rise in death toll. There were an estimated three hundred thousand Tamils in these modern day “concentration camps” immediately after the war. The number has been dwindling by the day and two years after the war, though the govt. of Sri Lanka claims to have “let free” and “rehabilitated” Tamils, there is no evidence of resettlement; there is no information as to where these people were “resettled”. A state of emergency is still in vogue and the fear-gripped, psychologically tortured people in camps are still under the wrath of the Sri Lankan Army.
We would like to call upon the ALBA countries and other radical governments of Latin America to reflect upon the situation prevailing in south Asia. Countries that became independent after the Second World War including India (1947), Pakistan (1947) and Sri Lanka (1948) were under British rule for centuries. The British ruled these countries inhabited by several Nationalities speaking different languages under a single administrative unit for their own convenience. When these colonies became independent, people of different Nationalities were forced to remain under one state without recognition as separate Nationalities having separate homelands. This improper decolonization led to fighting by different Nationalities for the retrieval of their right to self-rule.
Just as the Tamils in Sri Lanka fighting for Eelam, their traditional homeland, there are other genuine Nationality struggles going on in Kashmir and the North Eastern states in India. Tamils and Punjabis are the potential Nationalities likely to rise in struggle sooner or later. With these realities in its backyard, the Indian government chose to assist the Sri Lanka Govt. in its war against the Liberation of Tamil Eelam. India let Sri Lanka use its satellites for surveillance, supplied sophisticated equipment including radars, technical assistance and billions of rupees in aid for the war against Eelam Tamils. India is well aware that a liberated Eelam state would not tolerate the dominance of the Indian state and its sway over Trincomalee, the strategically located natural port in Eelam territory. Liberation of Eelam could prove to be more than just precedence for Tamils in Tamil Nadu and other Nationalities in the Indian State. India has conveyed its message that it is capable of “nipping trouble in the bud” by deliberately taking part in the ethnic cleansing of Tamils in Sri Lanka.
In the light of the above, we urge the radical governments of Latin America to demand that:
a) The UNHRC Resolution dated 27 May 2009 be removed from the UN records.
b) The struggle of Eelam Tamils is accepted as a liberation struggle for the retrieval of their Homelands.
c) The Sri Lankan govt. under Mahinda Rajapakse is investigated for genocidal crimes in the international court of justice.
d) The planned Sinhala colonization and the land-grab by multinational corporations in Eelam be stopped immediately
e) International media and International Human Rights activists are allowed entry into Sri Lankan territory to gain access to the truth which has not happened even two years after the end of the war
f) Rehabilitation and resettlement happen under the supervision of the UN Peacekeeping Force
g) These countries join hands with Eelam Tamil support groups across the world in demanding that the Eelam Tamils languishing in camps under horrific conditions be let free to return to their homes and all humanitarian assistance rendered to restore normalcy in their lives.
We believe that the blossoming of Socialism in the Twenty First Century and its endurance will not be complete without the liberation of oppressed Nationalities of South Asia. The Eelam Tamils have paid their dues for such liberation dearly and this would no doubt go down in history as the impotence of the left and radical forces.
Imperialism has been successful in spreading the myth that ‘Communism is dead’ and ‘There Is No Alternative’(TINA) to capitalism. If we, as committed anti-imperialists fail to extend our solidarity for the democratic aspirations of the peoples, it will only become a historic blunder of joining hands with imperialism to bury the ideology of communism. And we would like to remind here the saying of the great Internationalist Che Guevera:
“The revolutionary [is] the ideological motor force of the revolution…if he forgets his proletarian internationalism, the revolution which he leads will cease to be an inspiring force and he will sink into a comfortable lethargy, which imperialism, our irreconcilable enemy, will utilize well. Proletarian internationalism is a duty, but it is also a revolutionary necessity. So we educate our people.”
The U.N. Panel Report on Sri Lanka released on April 25, 2011 gives us an opportunity to recognize the just struggle of Eelam Tamils for their self determination and to restore the dignity of International Humanitarian Laws. Cuba and the other Latin American countries should now voice their support for Eelam Tamils and demonstrate their true International spirit handed down to them by Comrade Ernesto Che Guevera.
We look forward to your cooperation in making this effort a success. A line in reply would go a long way in forging our belief in Freedom.
Two years back, on 18 May 2009 the Sri Lankan army claimed to have killed Vellupillai Prabhakaran, the leader of LTTE, along with hundreds of his comrades. The next day in the Sri Lankan parliament a jubilant Rajapakse declared victory in the Eelam War IV. This was the day, two years back, when the Eelam Tamils lost their hard-fought freedom at the hands of the fascist and expansionist Sri Lanka. This week the Tamils in Eelam and outside remember the heroic sacrifice of the sons and daughters of Eelam who laid down their lives fighting the armed forces of the chauvinist Sri Lankan ruling classes. Braving threats, intimidation and harassment from the Sri Lankan armed forces and intelligence, the people of Eelam paid homage to those who have fallen in the decades-long struggle for national liberation. They reiterated that it is the people of Tamil Eelam alone who have the mandate to chose their destiny, denouncing and warning against any ‘negotiated settlement’ of the issue which compromises with the historical realities. The people have stated that any secret deal or confidential talk with the Sri Lankan state by those who claim to represent the Eelam Tamils will not be acceptable. The ‘solution’ only lies in the recognition of the historical reality of Tamil Eelam, i.e., its right to exist as a free and independent national state.
The injustice, oppression and discrimination of the Eelam Tamils by the Sinhala chauvinist ruling classes of Sri Lanka has a long history that goes back many centuries. The genocidal murder of Tamils in the first five months of 2009 in the last phase of the war was one of the most extensive and brutal phases of this national oppression. In the last days of the war alone, more than 40,000 Tamils – including combatants and non-combatants – were slaughtered by the marauding Sri Lankan army and air force. As the ‘international community’ watched in silence, cluster bombs and chemical weapons were unleashed on the entire population. Houses, schools, hospitals, ambulances, civilian shelters, and even No Fire Zones were bombed with impunity. By the time the war was declared over, almost the entire Tamil population of the north and east was uprooted, their lives and property was destroyed, and were forcefully confined in concentration camps which the Sri Lankan state calls ‘refugee camps’. Even conservative estimates put the number of displaced people to be above 3.5 lakhs. A large part of them are still not allowed to return to their villages, most of which have been ravaged and ruined beyond recognition. Eelam has been transformed into a mammoth prison-house by the occupation army of the Sri Lankan state. Here any form of dissent and articulation of political demand is strictly prohibited. The aim is to enslave the entire nation, and to kill the very hope of a free homeland. By forcing them into utter misery, the Sri Lankan state expects the Eelam Tamils to give up their aspiration for liberation, to abandon their dream of Eelam as a mere illusion, and to accept the present condition as their immutable fate.
Living under the shadow of fascist repression, experiencing the terror unleashed by the Sri Lankan state, and deeply aware of the historic oppression of their nation, it is the Eelam Tamils more than anyone else who seek the punishment of the perpetrators – the Sri Lankan ruling classes and its mercenary army. They deserve the severest of reprisal and punishment for their crimes. The question however is, what should they be punished for? For ‘crimes against humanity’, ‘war crimes’, ‘international crimes’, ‘violation of human rights’, flouting the rules of ‘Geneva Convention’, etc.? Or, for trying to wipe out a whole nation fighting for their inalienable right to self determination and national liberation? Here lies the difference between the perspective of the peoples’ movements and that of the International Human Rights industry/NGOs promoted by the imperialist camp. It is in the name of humanism, humanitarian intervention, and the so-called crimes against humanity that imperialism and its faithful lackeys such as the comprador ruling classes of Sri Lanka commit national oppression. Not for nothing that the Sri Lankan state called its war on Eelam a ‘humanitarian war to liberate the people of the Northern Province’. This is how the warmongers sell their wars, and the international weapons industry, its wares. This is the language in which the ‘internationally recognised bodies’ like the United Nations (UN), NATO and the European Union wages war on peoples’ movements and organisations. No wonder the imperialist countries and their ‘recognised legal bodies’ like UN spends millions of dollars every year to promote the discourse of ‘human rights’ or ‘crimes against humanity’ by funding thousands of human rights organisations and Non-Governmental Organisations. In the ‘conflict zones’ they protect the interest of the forces of oppression by accusing and persecuting the oppressed people, their leaders and their organisations, who dare to rise up against imperialism and its lackeys, while silently or vocally approving the acts of the oppressors. In the name of ‘conflict resolution’, they seek to take away the oppressed peoples’ right to fight back.
Any talk of ‘humanity’ and ‘humanism’ in a world divided into oppressor and oppressed classes, or oppressor and oppressed nations, is nothing but a sham. It is not in the name of ‘humanism’ that oppressed nations demand the right to self-determination. It is not in the name of ‘human rights’ that oppressed people seek liberation. The right of every oppressed nation to self determination including secession from the oppressor nation is a political right. It is a genuine collective right of a nation or a people, which even the UN was forced to recognise under pressure from the tidal wave of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist liberation struggles in the twentieth century. It is this inalienable political and collective right that the Eelam Tamils and their organisation Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fought for almost four decades without compromise. In the path of liberation they unflinchingly suffered, but have not surrendered. Even today, after undergoing such extreme forms of repression and near extinction, they have not given up the aspiration for liberation. Therefore, when some sections who claim to represent the Eelam Tamils or to be in solidarity with them talk of ‘war crimes’, ‘crimes against humanity’ or ‘human rights violations’ in Sri Lanka without even acknowledging the right of a separate, sovereign and independent Tamil Eelam, stands accused of not only betraying this heroic struggle, but also of colluding with imperialism and its trusted executioners, the Sri Lankan and Indian ruling classes. They would do well to pay heed to the students of Jaffna University, who while remembering the martyrs of Eelam War this week, warned that it is the Eelam people alone that have the right to decide upon their destiny, and not those who compromise with the peoples’ aspirations in the name of tactics.
The Sri Lankan ruling classes responsible for centuries of oppression of the Tamil national minority must be punished so that the people of Eelam can win their freedom. But this punishment can only be in the form of overthrowing the repressive rule of the Sri Lankan state and through the liberation of Eelam, not by ‘demanding punishment’ for this or that member of the ruling classes. Let us not forget that the Rajapaksas –Mahinda, Basil, Gotabaya, or Sarath Fonseka etc. are mere instruments of class rule and national oppression – they are the puppets of imperialism. To howl for the punishment of such puppets without opposing Eelam’s continued occupation by the Sri Lankan state and its plunder by the imperialists is nothing but to legitimize this oppression and to backstab the Eelam liberation movement. Only the wolves in sheep’s skin are capable of such opportunism. The struggling people everywhere – including the Eelam Tamils – have seen too many of these chameleons to be fooled by their pretensions.
Who then will punish the ruling classes of Sri Lanka and bring them to justice, after all? Will it be United Nations, International Criminal Court, United States of America, India, the Sri Lankan state itself? Or the oppressed people of Tamil Eelam and Sri Lanka? Anyone who trusts the collective strength of oppressed people and believes in their unwavering determination to struggle against injustice knows the answer. However, those who are in the payroll of imperialism or benefits from oppression and status-quo, call upon the people to repose faith in their masters to ‘deliver justice’. This is the characteristic role of the imperialist-funded human rights industry and the NGO racket. What is the track record of imperialist agencies like the United Nations or the International Criminal Court (ICC) in ‘punishing’ despotic and authoritarian rulers complicit in mass murders? The worldwide operations of ICC, for example, are run by a consortium of international NGOs called ‘Coalition for the International Criminal Court’ which has over 2,500 NGO members in 150 different countries, most of which are directly funded by the imperialists. No surprise that ICC has prosecuted ruling-class members of six countries for ‘crimes against humanity’, all of which are from African countries. The latest target against whom ICC prosecution has begun is Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, his gravest crime being the opposition to imperialist intervention and the US-led war. As per the official rhetoric, however, he is to be tried for ‘war crimes’ and ‘crimes against humanity’! On the other hand, the biggest criminals in the world – George Bush Junior and Senior, Barack Obama, Tony Blair etc. are roaming free, some even managing to get Nobel ‘Peace Prizes’! Therefore, at a meeting of 30 African ICC member states in June 2009, several African countries called on African ICC members to withdraw from the Court in protest against the Court’s targeting of only Africa. The Commissioner of African Union, Ramtane Lamamra, said that the Prosecutor of the ICC was applying “a double standard in pursuing cases against some leaders while ignoring others”. Knowing all this, can anyone be so naïve to be ignorant of the politics of ‘war crimes’, ‘crimes against humanity’, and the ‘justice’ system of “internationally recognised legal bodies”?
Is the real character and purpose of the UN any different? History proves that this ‘recognised legal body’ too has been a ‘powerful tool’ and a ‘strategic weapon’ in the hands of the imperialist powers and their surrogate regimes the world over. Just five years after its establishment, the UN –brainchild of US president Roosevelt – fought in favour of South Korea against Peoples’ Republic of Korea and revolutionary China under Mao in the Korean War (1950-53). From its inception till now the UN and its legal wing, the so-called International Court of Justice, has worked untiringly for establishing the New World Order under US imperialism. Its role during the ‘Cold War’ and thereafter needs no elaboration. In light of this dark history, to welcome the UN to be the arbiter of ‘international crime’ and ‘world peace’ is to invite imperialist intervention, to strengthen the forces of oppression and to deny any possibility of justice. Has the Libyan ‘rebels’ who invited UN bombardment in the name of ‘ousting Gaddafi’ and ‘liberating’ Libya opened doors for peace, justice and democracy? The people of Libya know that they are the lackeys of imperialism, no matter how much they try to convince the world about the ‘strategic’ need of using the UN-led war in Libya. For the Libyan people, the so-called rebels are nothing but imperialist collaborators and traitors.
The recent UN Expert Panel’s report on Sri Lanka exposes its real character to those who care to see. The so-called ‘major limitations’ of the UN report are nothing but the very basis of the report. Like any other imperialist agent, it does not recognise the right of Eelam Tamils for a separate and free homeland, instead offering a humiliating ‘common homeland’. It falsely accuses LTTE and its leadership, the force spearheading the decades-old liberation struggle, of using Eelam Tamils as ‘human shields’ and of even ‘point blank shooting of civilians’! In fact, while the UN Expert Panel finds five allegations of ‘potential serious violations’ against the Sri Lankan state ‘credible’, it held the LTTE guilty of six such ‘potential serious violations’, including the killing of its own people for whose defense and liberation it heroically fought for three decades! By accepting, welcoming and propagating the UN and its report, one tacitly accepts that the leaders and cadres of LTTE were also criminals, an opinion which is alien to the people of Tamil Eelam. The oppressed people of Tamil Eelam will never accept such a conclusion against the very organisation which they built and sustained with their blood and sweat. Nor would the LTTE or its leadership would accept such a verdict, no matter how much the report is ‘critical’ of the Sri Lankan genocidal state.
Sri Lanka’s ruling classes too have rejected the report, but for entirely different reasons. They know very well that the report and the threat of ‘prosecution’ in international courts will be used as a tool by the Western imperialist countries to wrest economic benefits, and hence is this rejection. Apart from outright imperialists, only those turncoats who see opportunities in the decimation of LTTE and the plight of the Tamils in Eelam can talk of ‘using the report as a strategic weapon’ in favour of Eelam Tamil and their political aspiration, after slyly declaring that “considering that the Lankan government claims that all the leaders of the Eelam movement have been eliminated, it can be presumed that the report shall apply only to those in state machinery who were responsible for war crimes”! We must thank them for exonerating the martyred sons and daughters of Eelam from being prosecuted for ‘war crimes’! But we have no right to anticipate whether the oppressed people of Tamil Eelam will be so merciful and benevolent as to exonerate the renegades for their crime of betraying the ongoing Eelam liberation struggle at one of its most critical junctures. Long live the struggle for free and independent Tamil Eelam!
A team of students from DU, JNU and IGNOU belonging to the Democratic Students’ Union (DSU) visited Narayanpatna Block in the Koraput district of Odisha from 11 April to 16 April 2011. The objective of the visit was to study the ground situation at present in the region where a militant mass struggle is going on for the last few years, and according to the media reports, has faced extreme forms of state repression. The aim was also to study the socio-economic aspects of the social life of Narayanpatna region, and to look into the factors that have contributed to the emergence of this important peasant struggle in contemporary South Asia.
Narayanpatna is inhabited by sixteen tribal communities including Kui, Parija, Jorka, Matia, Doria and others, of whom the Kuis are numerically predominant. The adivasis, who constitute more than 90 percent of around 45,000 people of Narayanpatna block, are interspersed with Dalit communities such as Mali, Dombo, Forga, Paiko, Rilli, etc. Dominant castes such as the Sundis and Brahmins are numerically small but are powerful and influential. Though the incursion of non-adivasis has a long history going back to the establishment of the Narayanpatna Raj centuries back, the Sundis have entered the district after they were driven away from Coastal Andhra during the Srikakulam armed struggle in the 1960s. The Sundis as well as a small section of Dalits from the Dombo and Rilli castes too have made money by exploiting the adivasis and selling them liquor. The non-adivasis are around 5000 in number, and the ruling elite of Narayanpatna belong to this group. It was also clear to us that the identities such as that of landlord, liquor trader, money-lender and politician are not separate or mutually exclusive, but usually coexist in the members of the dominant classes of the region.
Over the last few years, the poor and landless peasants of Narayanpatna, Bandhugaon, Simliguda, etc. have organised themselves under the banner of Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangha (CMAS), and fought back their tormentors the Sundi-Sahukar-Sarkar nexus. Even though CMAS was working in the region for more than fifteen years, it was only in the last three to four years that its anti-liquor movement took a decisive turn. It reached a flashpoint in January 2009 when the rural masses of Narayanpatna not only drove away the liquor traders from their villages, but mobilized themselves in thousands to pursue them to their stronghold, the towns. Four thousand people went to Narayanpatna town and destroyed liquor factories and wine shops, including shops selling foreign liquor. By late 2010, only two liquor shops were running in the entire region, and that too in the block headquarters of Narayanpatna and Bandhugaon where state’s armed forces are stationed. In January 2011 more than 3000 CMAS members destroyed the shop in Bandhugaon town as well. In villages like Baliaput, Mahua trees from which cheap liquor was produced were destroyed under a political programme of CMAS and BAMS (Biplabi Adivasi Mahila Sangha), and today not a single Mahua tree is to be seen in Narayanpatna’s villages. The prohibition in the sale and consumption of liquor was almost total by 2009. The mass upsurge led to the fleeing of landlords and liquor traders from the region, leading to the collapse of this parasitic trade. The villagers narrated how Jairam Pangi, the incumbent BJD MP from Koraput, tried to dissuade the people from the anti-liquor agitation by claiming that it was a part of adivasi culture, custom and worship, to which the people retorted that the very instrument which destroyed their lives cannot be a part of their devotion and sacrifice that is conducted for their common wellbeing.
The success in the anti-liquor movement encouraged the masses to intensify the land struggle. The CMAS led the reclamation of agricultural land from the landlords and sahukars which were tricked out of the adivasis. Within months, we are told, more than 3000 acres of such land were recaptured and distributed among the villages. As a reaction to the growing tide of mass struggle, ‘Shanti Committee’ was formed by the landlords and liquor traders with the active support of the state administration on 4 May 2009. After the successful culmination of the anti-liquor struggle and the intensification of the land struggle by 2009, and particularly after the NALCO raid by the Maoists in April that year, the state repression on the people and their movement was also scaled up. One such incident of state repression was the murder of Wadeka Singana and Nachika Andru at Narayanpatna police station on 20 November 2009, followed by wanton attacks, raids and combing operation in the region, establishing a reign of state terror. Entire village populations are often forced to take shelter in the forests and hills as fugitives. The government has now virtually imposed a seize of Narayanpatna by deploying more than 5000 paramilitary troops including BSF, IRB, CRPF, and hundreds of Special Operations Group commandos, Odisha police personnel and Shanti Committee vigilante forces and closing off all the important entry and exit points to and from Narayanpatna. Rather than addressing the demands of the people, it is mobilising more and more troops to crush the movement.
In the six days of our visit from 11 to 16 April 2011, we interacted with the residents of above twenty villages spread out in the adjacent blocks of Narayanpatna, Bandhugaon, Simliguda, Lakhmipur and Potangi, and visited about twelve of them. Our first stop was Dimtiguda village in the Alamanda panchayat of Bandhugaon block. We passed through the village Jangri Walsa in Kabribari panchayat, where we met the family of Kondahara Kasi who was arrested in 2010 for allegedly being a Maoist. The plea of his wife to meet him in prison has been repeatedly turned down. 14 persons associated with CMAS are presently in jail from this village alone. The next village we visited was Silpalmanda where we were told that Ratnal Madhava was arrested in March 2011 by the Bandhugaon police and a false kidnap case was slapped on him. Village Karaka Itiki under Borgi panchayat was the first village we visited in Narayanpatna, where we heard stories of atrocities committed in the region by landlords, liquor traders, the police and now the Shanti Committee. There we came to know from the villagers that eight out of the thirty houses in Masarimunda village were burnt down by the CRPF in January 2011 after an encounter with the Maoists in the vicinity of the locality. Just a month before this, CRPF personnel destroyed houses in Goloknima village as well after another battle with the Maoists, and looted Rs.8000 from the villagers.
The team could also talk to villagers from Jangri Walsa village. Madan Merika, Poala Malati, Polla Bhima and Seena Mandangi described the attacks from ‘Shanti Committee’ and Bandhugaon CMAS under the leadership of Kedruka Arjun of CPI ML (Kanu Sanyal) party in 2009. They attacked their village in thousands wearing police uniforms and with firearms on the suspicion that the villagers have started to align themselves with the CMAS Narayanpatna Area Committee under its president Nachika Linga. Nariga Poala, Aashu Pirika, Bhima Kedraka, Kasi Kondagari, Muga Poala, Penta Kondagari, Acchanna Poala and Enkanna Poala of this village, many of whom are teenagers, were arrested by the police later that year for allegedly being Maoists, and kept in prison for almost 1½ years, and only recently were they released on bail. K. Suhabsh and K Raman of Keshbhadra village of Bandhugaon block testified to the atrocities committed by the police, the Shanti Committee as well as by the CPIML (Kanu Sanyal) led by Arjun.
In Upar Itiki village we were told that the people have collectively undertaken developmental works under the leadership of CMAS, and rejected the government schemes. Though the pace of the land struggle has been reduced of late due to the intense state repression, the villagers have continued to undertake developmental works with their own initiative. They have completed 7 big irrigation projects in the last two years, and three are under construction as one we witnessed at Boriput village. The Block Development Officer (BDO) tried to distribute money to the villagers for these works, but was refused by the people. In February and March this year the CMAS gave a call to stop all governmental projects in Narayanpatna in protest against the continued atrocities by the state’s forces including arrests, torture, forcible detention, etc. and demanding a halt to Operation Green Hunt and withdrawal of armed forces. As a result of the call, all projects such as NREGA, PDS, Indira Avash Yojana came to a halt in the entire region for two months. The influence of NGOs, which was rampant till the CMAS movement became popular, has also considerably waned, with very little presence now in Narayanpatna block.
The land reclaimed by the CMAS in Manjariguda village under Borgi panchayat was shown to us, where the villagers have collectively cultivated 14 acres of irrigated land. We are told that in this village individual plots have not been distributed to the landless peasants so far, but will be done in the near future. Subbarao Somu, Sitala and Kanta from Langalbera village who belong to the Dombo Dalit caste, testified that poor people from both adivasi and dalit communities have benefitted from the peoples’ struggle against liquor and for land. He said that dalits inhabit two of the nine panchayats of Narayanpatna – Borgi and Langalbera panchayats. They said that there was no truth in the misinformation campaign that the struggle has harmed the dalits, and that there has been an exodus of dalits from villages in the wake of the movement. Somu said that around 50 families from only two villages of Gumandi and Podaradar have fled after the land struggle started. He said that most of them were involved in the liquor trade and were working against the interests of the adivasis. Dinabandhu and Simadri from Borgi village informed that the six landless Dalit families in their village have received 3 acres of land in March 2011 from CMAS, and have irrigated the land by putting community labour. Simadri said, “Those among Dalits who have garnered wealth and become politicians tried to instigate a contradiction between adivasis and dalits, but the poor have no contradiction. The poor dalits of entire Narayanpatna supports CMAS are in the struggle.” Gumpa Vidika, a dalit worker who is presently the spokesperson of CMAS and is hiding from the state in fear of arrest, also talked of the class unity between the adivasis and dalits forged by this struggle in spite of the repeated attempts to pit one against the other.
We were informed that 171 villagers connected to the CMAS have been arrested so far, out of the 637 adivasi political prisoners jailed in entire Orissa. We heard narrations of recent attacks by the paramilitary and police forces deployed in the region on the villages. The police entered Dakapara village on the night of 4 April 2011and beat up villagers including Sirka Sika and Sirka Rupaya whom we spoke to. They looted Rs.5000 and Rs.2500 respectively from the two villagers. On a previous occasion, the government’s forces attacked Sirka Bina’s house on 1 January 2011, detained him and forcibly took him to the police camp, tortured for many hours and released him the next day. His wife’s gold ornaments were also taken away by them. The team members interviewed Sonai Hikoka of Dumsili village whose husband Sitanna Hakoka was taken away by policemen from Lakhimpur police station in November 2010 along with two others. While Kaila Taring and Sodanna Himbreka, the other two villagers have been released by police, there is no trace of Sitanna as yet. The police denied that they arrested him. She filed a Habeas Corpus application in the Odisha High Court, but her plea has been rejected recently by the court reposing full trust on the police’s affidavit. Sonai says that her crops, grain, and cattle were looted by the goons of Shanti Committee when she went out to attend the court hearings. We visited Baliaput village where we saw the dilapidated houses of Nachika Linga and Nachika Andru which were burnt and destroyed by Shanti Committee goons. We met Nachika Taman who spent more than a year in jail for allegedly being a Maoist, and were released in bail just a week ago, while Nachika Sanjeeva of his village is still languishing in Koraput jail. In addition, two of the undertrials were killed by the police through third-degree torture, and later it claimed that they have committed suicide! Other prisoners are being subjected to regular beating and harassment, and many have sustained grievous injuries at the hands of the police and paramilitary forces. And these are only a few instances which were brought to us by the villagers of the region during our six days’ of interaction.
The team interviewed Nachika Linga, the president of CMAS Narayanpatna Area Committee, and the ‘most wanted’ person for the police at present. He informed us that the movement has moved beyond the narrow limits of fighting for economic demands, and have held the present political system to be responsible for the marginalization of adivasis and the poor peasantry. We were told that the election boycott call given by the Sangha during the assembly elections in 2009 was highly successful in Narayanpatna, with very few votes being cast. He also informed us that CMAS has been able to form its organisation in every village of Narayanpatna block, and is spreading its base to the adjoining blocks as well. Linga told that in spite of severe repression, the people have been able to defend the gains of the movement by resolutely depending on their collective strength, by fortifying self-defence mechanism through the formation of Ghenua Bahini, the mass militia of CMAS, and by educating the people in political struggle. We also talked to the president and secretary of BAMS, who told us about the overwhelming response of the women of the region to the anti-liquor struggle waged by CMAS, which enthused them to form a separate women’s organisation. BAMS have fought against the patriarchal relations and customs within the adivasis such as the two-wives system, and have achieved considerable success in their endeavor.
The presence and role of the Maoists in Narayanpatna have also come under discussion in the media in the past, and this was one of the aspects we wished to investigate. From our interaction with the political activists of the region, we learnt that the Maoist movement started in Koraput from 2003, and soon garnered support from the poor peasantry of the district. We are told that the movement has grown to the extent of giving shape to embryonic forms of peoples’ power to take place of the exploitative state power by forming Revolutionary Peoples’ Committees (RPCs) covering two panchayat areas of Narayanpatna block. The RPCs are presently concentrating their energies in three heads: self-defence, agricultural development, and health & education. The Maoist party seemed to have roots among the working masses, and have so far been successful in withstanding the armed assault of the state. The state, alarmed by the spread of the movement, has sought to use brute force, and thereby further isolating itself from the people.
The Narayanpatna struggle, we came to realise, is one of the most important but least known movements of our times, and the corporate media as well as the statist academia has played their roles in presenting it in a distorted form. We appeal to the media, academics and the people at large to visit Narayanpatna and expose the crimes committed by the Indian state on its people, fighting for their inalienable right to land, livelihood and dignity. The fact-finding team wishes to bring out its experiences in Narayanpatna in a detailed report in the coming days, so as to act as a corrective to such media misinformation, to give voice to the peoples’ concerns and bring out the reality which the Indian state so desparately wishes to hide.
The DSU Fact-finding team reiterates its solidarity with the peoples’ movement of Narayanpatna, and makes the following demands to the Indian government:
1. All the 171 prisoners associated with the Narayanpatna struggle must be released unconditionally and immediately. The state must ensure that the illegal arrests, torture and killings of people in custody must be stopped in Narayanpatna.
2. Cases against the office-bearers, activists, members and sympathizers of CMAS, BAMS and other mass organisations must be withdrawn, and these organisations must be allowed to work freely without fear of attack or persecution. The ‘Most Wanted’ warrant on Nachika Linga by the police must be withdrawn, and he be allowed to perform his duties as the president of CMAS freely, without any fear of intimidation and arrest.
3. The personnel of the state’s armed forces who are responsible for the loss of lives and property of the people of Narayanpatna must be punished, and the people who suffered their atrocities must be compensated by the government.
4. The paramilitary and police camps in Narayanpatna must be withdrawn immediately.
5. The vigilante organisation called Shanti Committee must be disbanded, and their members be punished for their crimes.
6. The land reclaimed by the adivasi people of Narayanpatna under the leadership of CMAS must be recognized by the government.
7. The rights of the adivasis over their land, water, and forests and minerals must be ensured, and they must be provided with the basic necessities such as healthcare, education, drinking water, etc.
8. Journalists, intellectuals, academics, activists and all those who are interested to visit Narayanpatna and interact with the people must not be prevented from doing so by the government, and it must ensure their free movement to and from any part of Narayanpatna and Koraput.
Members of the DSU Fact-finding Team:
Kuldeep, DU,
Kundan, IGNOU,
Manabhanjan, JNU
Ritupan, JNU
Sourabh, DU
Sanhati organized a panel in the Left Forum 2011 on “Left Movements in Contemporary India” (Pace University, New York City, March 18-20). Prominent Marxist activist from India Gautam Navlakha spoke on the Maoist movement. Along with him was Siddhartha Mitra, who spoke on the internally displaced in Khammam. The event was moderated by Deepankar Basu, who teaches economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Deepankar analyzed the contemporary political economy of India which gives a background for understanding the left movements in India.
The Supreme Court’s verdict of February 03 in Arup Bhuyan vs State of Assam is significant at the time when the Indian state seems to be on the prowl looking for victims to assert its exceptional sovereignty. On the one hand, it rekindles the ‘liberal’ hope which wanes every time Sen-s are put behind the bars. In fact, by raising this hope, such judicial correctives help, in an inverted manner, in consensual containment of protests that might add up to form a threat to the state’s sovereignty. But on the other hand, they give an opportunity to consolidate critical voices within, strengthening the struggle for showing the limits of the present system and providing a relief to the struggling masses.
In this particular case in review, the appellant disputes the allegation of his association with ULFA, which was made on the basis of his confession before the police, in which he identified the house of a deceased. Such non-judicial confessions are generally not valid because of the involvement of tortures etc, but in TADA cases they are considered admissible. Going with the convention of rejecting such confessional statements before the police, the court has questioned their admissibility even in these ‘exceptional’ cases. It says, “in the absence of corroborative material, the courts must be hesitant before they accept such extra-judicial confessional statements.”
However, the major portion of the verdict is directed against the TADA Court’s conviction of the appellant under Section 3(5) of the TADA which makes mere membership of a banned organisation criminal.
Here, Justices Katju and Misra have simply extended their own arguments presented in another recent case – State of Kerala Vs Raneef, 2011 (1) SCALE 8. The accused was asking for bail in this case where he was booked for giving medical treatment to one of the assailants. The accused person’s association with an Islamic organisation was taken as incriminating evidence. The judges opined that as that particular organisation was not a terrorist organisation, the accused could not be penalised for his membership. However, what makes this verdict consequential for the Feb 3 judgement is its clear opinion against the doctrine of “guilty by association”, which has become the cornerstone of recent criminal legislations and anti-terrorist measures. The judges in the previous verdict concurred with three famous American judgements:
1) Scales vs. United States 367 U.S. 203 where Mr. Justice Harlan of the U.S. Supreme Court observed:
“The clause does not make criminal all association with an organization which has been shown to engage in illegal activity. A person may be foolish, deluded, or perhaps mere optimistic, but he is not by this statute made a criminal. There must be clear proof that the defendant specifically intends to accomplish the aims of the organization by resort to violence.”
2) In Elfbrandt vs. Russell 384 US 17-19 (1966) Justice Douglas of the U.S. Supreme Court observed:
“Those who join an organization but do not share its unlawful purpose and who do not participate in its unlawful activities surely pose no threat, either as citizens or as public employees. A law which applies to membership without the `specific intent’ to further the illegal aims of the organization infringes unnecessarily on protected freedoms. It rests on the doctrine of `guilt by association’ which has no place here.”
3) In Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee vs. McGrath 341 US 123 at 174 (1951) Mr. Justice Douglas of the U.S. Supreme Court observed :
“In days of great tension when feelings run high, it is a temptation to take shortcuts by borrowing from the totalitarian techniques of our opponents. But when we do, we set in motion a subversive influence of our own design that destroys us from within.”
The judges thus summarises their views on the doctrine of ‘guilty by association’ that they presented in State of Kerala Vs. Raneef:
“Mere membership of a banned organisation will not incriminate a person unless he resorts to violence or incites people to violence or does an act intended to create disorder or disturbance of public peace by resort to violence (See : also the Constitution Bench judgment of this Court in Kedar Nath Vs. State of Bihar, AIR 1962 SCC 955 para 26).
In the present Arup Bhuyan judgement, the judges have continued exploring the international cases. The following para is crucial in this regard:
In Clarence Brandenburg Vs. State of Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969) the U.S. Supreme Court went further and held that mere “advocacy or teaching the duty, necessity, or propriety” of violence as a means of accomplishing political or industrial reform, or publishing or circulating or displaying any book or paper containing such advocacy, or justifying the commission of violent acts with intent to exemplify, spread or advocate the propriety of the doctrines of criminal syndicalism, or to voluntarily assemble with a group formed “to teach or advocate the doctrines of criminal syndicalism” is not per se illegal. It will become illegal only if it incites to imminent lawless action. (emphasis mine)
The judges conclude:
“We respectfully agree with the above decisions, and are of the opinion that they apply to India too, as our fundamental rights are similar to the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution. In our opinion, Section 3(5) cannot be read literally otherwise it will violate Articles 19 and 21 of the Constitution. It has to be read in the light of our observations made above. Hence, mere membership of a banned organisation will not make a person a criminal unless he resorts to violence or incites people to violence or creates public disorder by violence or incitement to violence.”
The importance of these two judgements lies in the fact that through them the Supreme Court has initiated a significant departure from the tenor set by the two earlier landmark cases which were fully in consonance with the policing needs of the neoliberal policy makers – Kartar Singh’s case, 1994(3) SCC569 (which upheld the TADA Act) and PUCL Vs Union of India, 2005 SCC(Crl)1905 (which upheld the POTA provisions).
In his book published in 2008, one of the doyens of the Indian judicial system, Justice Chinnappa Reddy wrote:
“The Fundamental Rights guaranteed by the Constitution under Articles 14, 21, and 22 are undoubtedly negated by some of the provisions of the new POTA as well as the provisions of TADA which are capable of much mischief. It is to be hoped that very soon the Supreme Court will take a second view at any new enactment containing similar provisions.”
Considering their views in these two recent cases, Justices Katju and Misra have definitely taken a second view at the old enactments and case laws.
There have been moments when an event catches the public eye, and suddenly illuminates a process of decay and disintegration that has been proceeding in the background, slowly, step-by-step. The outrage and national attention focused on the conviction of, and imposition of life sentence on, Dr. Binayak Sen for “Sedition” is such a case. The process in question is the utter collapse of the majority of the Indian Judiciary into an agency of the political police.
Our reality is that the supposed “rule of law” has decayed into a sinister farce over vast areas: most notably Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, and much of the northeast. A police state regime that arose on the frontiers is slowly, step-by-step, extending itself into the core. The rot of corruption and injustice has now reached the heart. The immense significance of the judgment against Binayak Sen is that it strikes directly at whatever hope remains for a peaceful means of arresting, or even reversing, this deadly process.
Our responsibility is to insist on the right of political dissent, though without illusions. So long as the regime maintains the forms of the electoral exercise, of democratic rights, and of argued “judgments” in its courts, we must, as best we are able, strive to expose the substantive reality.
From this perspective we sought an informed legal opinion on the written judgment issued against Binayak Sen by second additional sessions’ judge, Raipur, B P Verma. P A Sebastian, a Mumbai-based lawyer and democratic rights activist, and a leading figure of the International Association of People’s Lawyers, its Indian constituent, the Indian Association of People’s Lawyers, and the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai, has provided for us the following analysis.
The charge against the accused in the case of Piyush Guha, Binayak Sen and Narayan Sanyal is that they have aided and abetted the Communist Party of India (Maoist), which has been banned under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.
The case starts with the arrest of Piyush Guha, a tendu leaf trader. The prosecution says that on 6 May 2007 the police superintendent, Raipur sent a wireless message to all the police stations under him that the police should closely search suspicious persons, suspicious vehicles, hotels, lodges, rest houses and dhabas. They were also directed to search thoroughly the street vendors, detain all suspicious characters and legally proceed against them. In the course of carrying out such a search, B S Jagrit, the inspector of Raipur police station, was told by an informer to keep an eye on all those walking towards the railway station. Then he says that he suddenly spotted Piyush Guha. The police stopped and questioned him on the basis of suspicion, but not receiving satisfactory answers, the police called one Anil Kumar Singh, a passer-by, and took both to the police station and opened the bag of Piyush Guha and found in his bag three magazines, a newspaper and three letters among some other things. Anil Kumar Singh, the passer-by, deposed before the court that he heard Guha say to the police that Binayak Sen used to meet Narayan Sanyal, one of the three accused, in jail and collect letters from him. Binayak Sen passed on the three letters concerned to Guha, who, in turn, passed on them to the CPI(Maoist).
The whole case revolves around this story which has many loopholes. Piyush Guha was produced before a magistrate on 7 May 2007 under Section 167 of the CrPC [Criminal Procedure Code]. He stated before the magistrate that he was actually detained on 1 May 2007, not on 6 May as claimed by the police. He was kept in illegal custody, blindfolded and incommunicado for 6 days in violation of CrPC, which stipulates that an accused should be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours of his arrest. He further said that he was picked up by the police not from the road leading to Raipur railway station as stated by the police but from Mahindra Hotel. The statement of Guha that he was picked up by the police from Mahindra Hotel is supported by the affidavit of the government filed in the Supreme Court while opposing the bail application of Binayak Sen.
However, the judge accepted the police claim that the statement in the Supreme Court (SC) was a “typographical error”. Here are two statements which are different from each other. Both of them were made on oath. A word, a figure or a few letters can be treated as typographical error. It goes against common sense and rationality to say that an important statement made in the SC on oath is typographical error. The second additional sessions’ judge, Raipur, B P Verma, has done a disservice by this statement to the Indian judicial system, which is already sinking under the burden of corruption and other misdemeanours.
The prosecution states that the police recovered three letters written by Narayan Sanyal and addressed to his party comrades from the bag of Piyush Guha. The only evidence produced by the prosecution in this respect is the deposition by one Anil Kumar Singh, the “passer-by” mentioned above. He said that the police called him by gesture and introduced to him a person called Piyush Guha. The police told him that Guha was a suspected person. Then they opened his bag and recovered some CPI(Maoist) literature and three letters, which later on the police claimed were written by Narayan Sanyal. Anil Kumar Singh further said that he overheard Guha say to the police that those three letters were given to him by Binayak Sen. The narration of the event shows that he did not know when the police took Guha into custody. When he saw Guha, he was already in police custody. He did not know whether the police had picked up Guha on 1 May and planted the letters and other articles on him. Yet the whole case rests on this Anil Kumar Singh assertion that he heard Guha say to the police that Binayak Sen had given him the letters. This hearsay has no evidentiary value. The statement made in police custody is not admissible against the accused. Once the police fail to prove that they caught Guha from station road, the whole edifice of the case falls.
Besides, Binayak Sen visited Narayan Sanyal with the permission of the senior superintendent of police. The prisoners are permitted to write letters. The restriction is that the prison authorities will read the letters and censor them, if necessary, before they are sent out. So the presumption is that the letters did not contain anything objectionable unless one concludes that the jail authorities collaborated with Sanyal to carry on illegal activities, in which case the judge should have asked the government to take legal action against the jail authorities. The judgment does not say whether the content of the letters was objectionable or not. No action could have been taken against the accused unless the content was unlawful. A discussion about the central point is missing in the judgment. Carrying letters from prisoners is not unlawful in itself.
Some of the things which the judge says are strange, and they do not go well with a supposed judicial mind. The judge refers to several people as Naxalites and treats them as criminals. There is no law in India or anywhere else in the world which defines the term “Naxalite” and treats them as criminals. However, the burden of the judgment is the term “Naxalite” and the inherent criminality of the term “Naxalite”. The judgment keeps on saying that Binayak Sen and Piyush Guha knew Naxalites and met them. The judgment uses interchangeably the terms “Naxalite” and CPI(Maoist) and concludes that Sen and Guha aided and abetted the CPI(Maoist), which is a banned organisation.
The judgment repeats that some letter or letters recovered from Sen’s house address him as “comrade”. The learned judge takes it for granted that “comrade” meant that Binayak Sen was a member or supporter of the CPI(Maoist). The English dictionaries state that “comrade” means an intimate friend or associate or companion. Does the judge know that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose and Jayaprakash Narayan were addressed as “comrades”? Clement Attlee, the former prime minister of England, was addressed as “comrade”. One can rest assured that he does not know. Can India afford to have such judges to decide the fate of human life? The judgment is arbitrary to the extreme. It does not define the terms; it does not set up a nexus.
Just one instance will demonstrate the whimsicality and ideological bias of the judge: “Amita Shrivastav was a teacher in Daga Higher Secondary School two years ago. She came to the school through Ilina Sen who is acknowledged by Binayak Sen as his wife. She worked in the school for seven months and then stopped coming to the school. Amita had a CD related to the Second World War Nazi camps. This was shown to the students in the school. Later it was found that Amita was connected to Naxalites and had absconded”. It is really shocking that the judge interprets anti-Nazism as Communism. How did the judge know that she was connected to Naxalites and she had absconded? How did he know that she had not been abducted and killed by some criminals like Salwa Judum?
The judgment is full of such absurdities. Two examples will further illustrate the point. One case is the way he deals with a telephone conversation between Bula Sanyal and Binayak Sen. Bula Sanyal is the sister-in-law of Narayan Sanyal. The judge concluded from this that there was contact between Binayak Sen, the family of Narayan Sanyal and CPI(Maoist) supporters. Narayan Sanyal being a Naxalite the judge inferred that his whole family consisted of supporters of CPI(Maoist). Sen’s conversation with one of the family was sufficient proof that he was also a CPI(Maoist) activist. The contentions of this sort are really asinine.
The judge accepts the police version of Salwa Judum and says that it is not a state organised vigilante squad and is a spontaneous reaction of the tribals against Naxalites. The judgment indicates that “terrorism and oppression of the Naxalites increased so much that it became a question of life and death for the tribals of the area. Such reasons led to the launching of anti-Naxalite Salwa Judum campaign”. The judgment tries to explain what the ‘Salwa Judum’ means. “‘Salwa’ means peace and ‘Judum’ means meeting at one place for some specific purpose”. The judge makes reference to some articles seized from Piyush Guha and states that “they have demonstrated opposition to Salwa Judum and praised People’s Liberation Army and paid homage to the killed Maoist comrades”.
On the basis of such facts and logic, the judgment pronounces that Piyush Guha, Binayak Sen and Narayan Sanyal have committed sedition.
The accused have been punished under Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code, which deals with sedition. It says that “whoever by words, either spoken or written . . . brings or attempts to bring into hatred, contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards, the government established by law in India, shall be punished with imprisonment for life. . . .” A literal adherence to the Section makes every opposition to the government an offence punishable with life imprisonment. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s report states that the Indian state has lost 1.76 lakh crore because of the fraudulent dealings in the allotment of 2-G spectrum. A writ petition pending in the Supreme Court alleges that Rs 70 lakh crore has been deposited abroad to evade tax. These are enormous sums which could have made a difference to the quality of life which the Indian masses lead. Free education and free medical treatment are constitutional mandates. However, they have not been implemented on the plea that there was no money. If one articulates such matters, it naturally brings the government established by law into contempt and hatred and causes disaffection towards the government. It means that the vast majority of people can be prosecuted and jailed under this section. But where do we keep them? The whole country will have to be converted into the prison camp. Is this not an irredeemably absurd idea?
The constitutional validity of the Section 124-A the IPC has been challenged in the Supreme Court and the Court has repeatedly said that the sedition as defined under Section 124-A can be constitutionally tolerated only if the prosecution proves that the statement of the accused has led to violence. The judgment in this case does not even discuss the content of the letters allegedly recovered from Piyush Guha and whether he delivered them to the CPI(Maoist). If he delivered them to the party, the prosecution had to further prove that the letters led to such and such specific incidents of violence. The judgment is absolutely silent on such points. The judgment manifests the misuse and abuse of Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code. A law which is so susceptible to misuse and abuse in raw hands or biased minds should be deleted from the statute book of India, which claims to be the largest democracy in the world.
This judgment is one more symptom of the ideological degeneration of the Indian judicial system. The judgment in the Babri Masjid case resorted to rule of faith in place of rule of law. In this case, the judge says that Piyush Guha has to prove that he was arrested from Mahindra Hotel on 1 May, not on 6 May and the letters were planted on him new through the prima facie evidence was in favour of Guha. The judge shifted the burden of proof to the accused, which violated the basics of the criminal justice system. The judgment indicates that the Indian judiciary is moving backward.
This article was first published in the January 2011 issue of Analytical Monthly Review
Peasants, agricultural workers and women of Mansa district, Punjab observed New Year’s day this year with a protest gathering at the police headquarters in Mansa. Braving a severe cold wave, thousands of people gathered to protest a shocking situation where the rapists of a dalit minor girl roam free, while the woman activist who prevented the cover up of the rape case is in jail on false charges of ‘attempt to murder.’
In mid-December, a 17½ year old girl from a poor Dalit family was lured by a havildar in Mansa to his house on the promise of employment, and subjected to gang rape by him along with three others including a local advocate, a trader, and a financier. When neighbours heard her cries and called the police, however, the police deliberately suppressed the rape case and instead booked both the victim and her rapists on charges of ‘loitering.’ Cases of rape and SC/ST atrocity were registered only two days later, after intervention by CPI(ML) and AIPWA activists. However, three weeks after the incident, the accused (apart from the havildar) were yet to be arrested, and, being influential locally, were bringing to bear all sorts of pressures and threats on the victim. Two other of the rape accused were arrested only on 4 January, following the protest rally at Mansa and the intervention of the central team of AIKM and AIPWA leaders, while the financier accused of rape is still at large. Worse still, the very same activists including AIPWA National Council member Jasbir Kaur Nat and National President of the All India Kisan Mahasabha Ruldu Singh, who helped book the rape case are now behind bars along with several other peasant leaders, on a patently false charge of ‘attempt to murder.’ The pretext for this was the fact that they raised slogans in Court against the main accused in the murder of a popular peasant leader, leading to a minor skirmish when police assaulted them.
In the same area of Punjab some years ago, the dalit activist and singer Bant Singh had his limbs chopped off for supporting his daughter to pursue a rape case. The recent instance of rape of a dalit girl and victimisation of activists who pursued justice highlights the continuing strength of feudal survivals in Punjab. It also underlines the increasingly repressive response of the Akali Government in Punjab where every mass movement – of agricultural workers for homestead land, of peasants against debt – is me with mass arrests of leaders, activists and masses. What is happening in Punjab is also not very different from what is being seen in the rest of India – where scamsters, rioters and rapists roam free while activists like Binayak Sen are jailed.
Punjab is no exception. Just recently, in BSP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, a 17-year-old OBC girl who accused the BSP MLA Purushottam Narain Dwivedi of rape is in jail on charges of ‘theft.’ The incident exposes the reality behind Chief Minister Mayawati’s claims of social justice.
Meanwhile in Bihar, the BJP MLA from Purnea was stabbed to death by a woman who had filed charges alleging rape by the MLA and his associates some months ago. Police had taken no action on her complaint, and she had been pressured into withdrawing charges later. It is apparent that the woman was driven to take the desperate step because the chances of securing justice against a ruling party legislator were bleak. It is shocking that the BJP MLA’s supporters lynched the woman, critically injuring her, and that BJP leaders including the Deputy CM of the state have aggressively slandered the woman’s character while defending their MLA as a man of impeccable morals!
The recent instances in Punjab, UP and Bihar are a reminder of the sorry state of affairs in India when it comes to justice in cases of violence against women in general and women from oppressed communities in particular. According to NCRB (National Crime Records Bureau) figures, the conviction rate in rape and molestation cases in India is a mere 27 per cent – about one in four cases. Likewise, the conviction rate for cases of atrocities against SCs and STs is abysmally low – less than 30 per cent against the average of 42 per cent for all cognisable offences under IPC.
The national capital itself is witness to horrifying cases of rape, gang rape and other forms of violence on women. According to official figures, a rape takes place every day in Delhi, and 400 rape cases were registered in Delhi in 2010. The prevalent police attitude to such crimes can be gauged by the comment of celebrated police officer K P S Gill after the Dhaula Kuan rape case some years ago: Gill blamed women’s ‘provocative’ clothes for the rise in rape crimes in Delhi! The low conviction rates, trials that drag on for years, and insensitive police investigators who blame women themselves for such crimes, all empower rapists and molesters with a sense of impunity, the more so if the woman are from marginalised and oppressed communities, such as dalit and tribal women, or women from the North Eastern states.
The CBI’s closure report in the case of murder of a teenage girl Arushi Talwar is yet another reminder of the apathy that marks investigations in cases of violence against women. The CBI had been called in after the Noida police botched up the investigation, but the CBI pursuit of the case also relied more on ‘confessions’ obtained from domestic servants through third-degree methods like narco tests than any professional investigative practices, and now the CBI has attempted to close the case file itself. If justice is so elusive for urban girls from reasonable well-off families like Arushi and Ruchika, whose cases got great media attention, one can only imagine what happens to cases of women from socially and economically weaker backgrounds. And if this is the state of affairs in rape cases where politically powerful people are not implicated, what of the cases where police and army forces are implicated in rape and violence against women? The young Manipuri woman Thangjam Manorama, raped and murdered by Indian army personnel in 2004 is yet to get justice. The rape and murder of two Kashmiri women — Asiya and Nilofar — in Shopian, Kashmir, last year had been subjected to a spectacular cover-up by the CBI, with the latter claiming that the two women ‘drowned’ in a stream six inches deep. In Chhattisgarh where Binayak Sen has been sentenced to life on no evidence, adivasi women who filed charges of gang rape against top Salwa Judum personnel live in terror, because their rapists are free while the women themselves along with their kith and kin are threatened that they will be branded as ‘Maoists’ and arrested or killed in fake encounters.
Justice in violent crimes against women is non-negotiable. We must demand speedy passing of the Sexual Assault Bill, as well as fast-track courts to ensure speedy justice in such cases. Above all, we must build more and wider struggles to challenge the impunity and apathy that has become the hallmark of cases of rape and violence against women.
Following is the video of a seminar organised by Correspondence and Kudos, the Literary Society of Hindu College (University of Delhi) on 4th March, 2010 with the aim of initiating a discussion on radical student and university politics.
We are deeply anguished by the convictions and sentences of Dr. Binayak Sen, Piyush Guha, and Narayan Sanyal by the additional district and sessions judge of Raipur for sedition. We also note that in a separate case, Asit Sengupta was convicted and sentenced to eight years imprisonment for his work as magazine editor and publisher. Sanhati strongly condemns their convictions and sentences.
Convicting Dr. Sen of sedition and treason against the country, when he has devoted his life to service for the poorest citizens of India, yet again illustrates the disdain of the state towards its citizens and democracy. The real crime of Dr. Sen in the eyes of the government has been his protest against the state-sponsored vigilante force of Salwa Judum, and his efforts to bring to light the atrocities committed by this vigilante army on the indigeneous population of Chattisgarh. The state has attempted to make an example of Dr. Sen to all dissenting against its policies or protesting repression. Nevertheless, the state will fail in its attempt to create a fear psychosis among political and social activists; its efforts will only lead to the strengthening of resistance against state repression.
The charge made out by the prosecution against Dr. Sen was that he was responsible for passing letters from Narayan Sanyal lodged to Piyush Guha. Examination of witnesses and evidence presented by the defence demonstrated that the meetings in prison between Dr. Sen and Narayan Sanyal, the jailed Maoist leader, followed all legal norms and were based on the capacity of Dr. Sen as a physician and a human rights activist. When the accusations against Dr. Sen could not be supported by evidence in court, the government brought up other trumped-up charges and falsified evidence, much of which was glaring in its absurdity. That the court chose to overlook all this, has exposed the nature of our judicial system to the entire world.
It is necessary at this juncture to also mention that numerous undertrial political and social activists are today incarcerated in various prisons in India or languishing in jail for prolonged periods without trial, charged under various draconian state or central laws. These laws, and various draconian provisions of the criminal penal code, are being used to clamp down upon resistance movements against various anti-people policies pursued by the Indian state. The charges against Dr. Binayak Sen, and the travesty of justice in the name of his trial, have brought this hard truth to the fore.
We strongly condemn the convictions and sentences against Binayak Sen, Piyush Guha, Narayan Sanyal, and Asit Sengupta. We demand that the injustice meted out to them in the name of dispensing justice be rectified immediately. We also demand that the state immediately stops the systematic usage of various draconian laws and charges of sedition against activists to silence all voices of dissent.
The conviction of Dr. Binayak Sen and his co-accused, Narayan Sanyal and Piyush Guha, is yet another sign of how little democratic freedoms appear to matter to the government. On the basis of what appears to be non-existent evidence, a trial court has convicted all three of (among other charges) sedition, the “crime” that Gandhi once referred to as the “prince of all political sections designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen.”
Meanwhile, literally tens of thousands of other people languish in prison, and many tens of thousands more face ongoing criminal charges, for equally ridiculous and flimsy reasons. Hundreds of adivasis are in prison in Dantewada and other areas of Operation Green Hunt without even being charged. Protesters who do nothing but demand respect for the law find themselves in jail; at this moment, around 2,000 members of the Satyashodhak Grameen Kashtakari Sabha (a member organisation of the Jangal Adhikar Sangharsh Samiti, affiliated to the Campaign) are in jail in Nandurbar District, Maharashtra, for demanding basic amenities like ration cards and respect for forest rights. Avinash Kulkarni, Bharat Powar and a number of other forest movement activists spent almost six months in jail in Gujarat, and still face charges of, inevitably, sedition and waging war against the state (see earlier press statement).
Even as democratic rights are thrown to the winds, we find the laws being violated and land and resources being grabbed on a massive scale across the country. The state machinery has turned itself into a mercenary cabal, sold to the highest bidder; on POSCO, fully two and a half months after the Enquiry Committee found gross violations of law, nothing has been done. Huge sums of money are being funneled into land-grabbing schemes across the country.
It is not seditious, apparently, to have brazen contempt for justice and people, or to engage in daylight robbery of the country’s money; but it is seditious to talk of rights and law. This is the farce enacted by a government that never tires of talking of the “rule of law.”
“Mullivaikkal May 19 was a deluge in the history of Eelam Tamils. It has drowned everything. It has overturned all our old beliefs and ideals. We have no other option than to develop new viewpoints in accordance with the new situation.”
I heard an Eelam Tamil elder speak in these terms during my recent visit to North America. He did not even call himself an Eelam Tamil, but identified himself only as a Lankan Tamil.
Ideological Split
Not only this elder, but several others have come to the conclusion that such ideals as Tamil homeland, retrieval of sovereignty and Tamil Eelam liberation may altogether be forgotten and that it is enough we do our best to help the suffering people there. A section of the Tamil diaspora has discernibly changed to this new viewpoint. Though we cannot say whether they constitute a majority or not, sure they are not few.
There are still many who believe in the liberation of Tamil Eelam, and are doing their best for the cause. But even with them there is a lot to discuss.
The ideological split among the Eelam Tamil diaspora can also be seen to be reflected to some extent with the overseas Tamilnadu Tamils. No doubt Tamils living in Eelam would also be split along these lines. The extensive and intensive degree of disillusionment is, I fear, likely to be higher particularly among the Eelam Tamils languishing in prisons, barbed-wire concentration camps, and out there in open- air- prison-like circumstances under military watch. My fear was vindicated when I spoke with some who had recently been there.
Talk of setback as self-consolation
It must be accepted that the Sinhalese supremacists have not only succeeded in recklessly exterminating thousands of Tamils and crushing the Tamil Eelam liberation force, but rudely shaken the faith and conviction of the Eelam Tamils in particular and the world Tamils in general in the objective of Tamil Eelam liberation. If without grasping fully this significance of the Mullivaikkal holocaust we just seek self-consolation by describing it as “a small setback”, “a temporary setback”, etc., we shall not be able to take a single step towards emancipation.
If you can feel the distress of the Eelam Tamil people and the suffering they are still undergoing, you will understand that all those who say “no liberation, suffice it to be alive peacefully” cannot be brushed aside as cowards and traitors. Though there are of course a few cowards who fall at the feet of the enemy and traitors who betray the cause exploiting the difficult situation we are in, to dismiss everyone as such will not help. It must be seen that even some who in the past worked with dedication for the liberation of Tamil Eelam have now suffered a loss of faith.
While accepting the justification for the mental depression that all is over with May 19, is what is put forward as the new viewpoint correct? When I posed this question and provoked a discussion it turned out that none of these say they did not want Tamil Eelam, but have only concluded that it was no longer possible.
Cruelties continue
If all is over, what is it all that is over? Is Sinhalese supremacist chauvinism over? Are its national oppression and repression over? No. Not only have the high security zones established in Tamil areas not been dismantled, but new military camps are coming up. While more than one lakh Tamils are still held in concentration camps, most of those released from these camps are yet to be rehabilitated. Attempts are on to settle Sinhalese in Tamil homeland areas.
Many leading members of the liberation movement have been tortured to death after their surrender. Even those belonging to the art-and-literature wings have not been spared. The world knows what happened to Natesan and Pulithevan. The Sinhalese government is yet to respond to the question mark around the fate of Balakumaran, Pudhuvai Rathinadurai, Yogi and others. Apart from those killed, more than ten thousand young men and women are detained without any judicial trial. UN experts have confirmed the authenticity of the video pictures of Tamil youth, naked, blindfolded, hands tied, kicked down and shot dead. A TV channel of London has broadcast scenes of Tamil youth being brutally tortured to death.
The Permanent People’s Tribunal sitting at Dublin has ruled the Rajapkshe gang to be guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity on the basis of incontrovertible evidence. Though the UNO failed to stop the 2009 May holocaust, its General Secretary has belatedly appointed a three-member committee to report to him on the war crimes in Sri Lanka. The indecent ways the Sinhalese Government resorted to against this committee showed that it will go to any extent to cover up its crimes. While justice has not yet been done for what happened, nor have the cruelties stopped, what is the meaning of telling Tamils that all is over? It can only be: “Quit the aspiration to live as rightful humans. Get used to live as slaves.”
Some have taken the stand that they would help the people of Tamil Eelam as far as possible without bothering about political rights, liberation and other such things. They have also established some organisations for this purpose. It can never be denied that everything should be done to help the suffering people. Only, it is incorrect to give up political efforts for this purpose. To provide help in a political vacuum is to seek to cook in a vessel with a hole in its bottom.
Man-made deluge
If it was a deluge it should have drowned everyone and everything. But the May 19 deluge was a disaster only for the Tamils! For the chauvinistic minded Sinhalese it was cause for joyful celebration! How then can it be compared with a natural deluge? If at all, it can be called a man-made deluge. It was a deluge created by the Sinhalese government with the collusion of the Government of India and the help of the governments of China and Pakistan in order to destroy the Tamils.
What are the lessons learnt by Tamils at the cost of losing the lives of many thousands of Tamils? In the first place, it is now too evident that in the island of Lanka under Sinhalese rule Tamils cannot exist, leave alone enjoy their rights. It is obvious enough that united Sri Lanka was the system that massacred Tamils.
The need for a separate state of Tamil Eelam has not lessened a wee bit, it has only increased. Secondly, the illusion of the people of Tamil Eelam in general about India is gone with a bang. The belief that the Government of India would protect Tamils has been belied. The Tamil race has been made painfully to realise that India would kill, not save.
Contradiction to be solved
The question that begs our answer is: how to solve the contradiction between the objective need of the Tamils for a separate state of Tamil Eelam and the subjective condition that many of them are disillusioned and dejected? Whether the dream of Tamil Eelam is going to be realised or not depends on solving this contradiction.
Some propose a simple solution. They say: The National Leader of Tamil Eelam is not dead, he is alive somewhere. He is devising some plan to resurrect the Eelam war. Very soon, after three months or three years, armed struggle will be resumed. Such slogans as “The leader will come and secure Tamil Eelam” and “Eelam War V coming soon” appear to be born of subjective wishes and emotions and not based on an objective assessment of real conditions.
Is the Leader alive? If yes, what is he doing? We are not in a position to answer these questions. To wish, to believe, to think it well and good that he be alive is quite different from asserting that he is alive. Likewise we are not in agreement with those who combine their inner desire with the ‘evidence’ released by the Sinhalese government to indulge in propaganda about the death and also the manner of death of Prabhakaran. We have already put forward our standpoint in this regard.
As far as we are concerned, whether Prabhakaran is alive or dead is not a question of opinion or faith. It is a question of fact, as to what happened or did not happen. This fact like so many other facts drowned in Mullivaikkal will one day come out fully. Let us until then put off this question and do our duties. Without playing the game of speculation on the basis of uncertain data, let us act with clarity on confirmed facts. Let us not fall a prey to the enemy’s scheme of engaging our and the world’s concentrated attention to the question of Prabhakaran’s fate with a view to obscuring a full view of the Mullivaikkal massacre.
It is interesting to note that Comrade Rudhrakumaran, the Prime Minister of the Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, in response to a question whether the Leader was alive, said, “Time alone shall answer certain questions.”
Will Eelam War V break out?
But whether Eelam War V soon breaks out or not does not solely depend on the question whether the Leader is alive or not. If there be a historical necessity that the next stage of the Tamil Eelam national struggle should be in that form, it must happen so, must be made to happen so, irrespective of whether the Leader is there or not. If that cannot be the form of struggle, it will not happen that way even if the Leader is there. He himself would not try to make it happen so.
The central question is: are the main factors that prevailed in the first four phases of the Tamil Eelam liberation war – the preparedness of the people of Tamil Eelam with regard to their being and consciousness, the strength and cohesiveness of the liberation movement, the relative positions of friendly and hostile forces – still there without a basic change? In the present situation of the Tamil Eelam people a conventional or a guerrilla war relying upon them is unthinkable. As of now even peaceful and moralistic struggles are hardly possible.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam which functioned cohesively for nearly thirty years, earned great and rare victories to make an indelible mark in history and rose high in glory to the admiration of the world thanks to the active support of the masses, the supreme sacrifice of thousands of martyrs, and the staunch and able guidance of the leadership – that LTTE, it cannot be denied, seems to have suddenly vanished.
The character of the LTTE
Why so? What were the subjective factors behind this? We do not have sufficient data clearly and categorically to answer these questions. But the objective factors – the world situation, the role of India and other foreign powers – are well-known. Whatever the cause the effect is obvious.
The LTTE is a military organisation with a political objective. Instead of a political party establishing a military wing for itself, here a military organisation established a political wing for itself. Why so? The brutal military repression by the Sinhalese supremacists is the answer.
Whether a military force builds a political movement, or a political movement builds a military force depends on the historical circumstances of the particular nation, not on the likes and dislikes of the leadership. In the Russian revolution the party came first. The Red Army was formed only after the triumph of the political revolution. In China a section of the Kuomintang army broke away and founded the Communist Party. In Ireland it was Irish Republican Army that established the political wing Sin Fein.
Command structure smashed
For any organisation of a military nature the command structure is very essential. The command structure of a liberation force is its heart, just as its political ideology is its brain. During the earlier phases of the Eelam War, whether the LTTE won or lost, its command structure remained more or less intact; it did not suffer a collapse or even a serious damage. But, the painful fact is, this time, the end of Eelam War IV has, in addition to causing a holocaust for the masses, totally smashed the command structure of the liberation force. This, of course, is our reading.
Not only from a military point of view, but even from a political one, the Sinhalese supremacists remain a potent force not just internally but at the South Asian and the international levels as well. The condition of the forces of Tamil Eelam liberation is quite the opposite. No need to panic at this reality. It is also true that it is not everlasting. But only by recognising this to be the present situation and grasping it can we fight for change.
The responsibility of Tamilnadu
Why could not the Mullivaikkal massacre be prevented? In a situation where the people of Tamil Eelam could not protect themselves the responsibility and the capability of protecting them belongs to the people of Tamilnadu. But as one understands it, either the people of Tamilnadu failed to carry out this responsibility, or they were unable to do it in spite of their best efforts.
If the population of world Tamils is ten crores, the Eelam Tamils are only less than half a crore. The Tamilnadu Tamils number more than six crores. Tamilnadu is the first and foremost homeland of Tamils. If Tamilnadu fails to save Tamil Eelam then who else will? In this sense the loss of Tamil Eelam is the loss of Tamilnadu. And why did Tamilnadu lose? Because it is itself a slave nation – this is the correct answer historically.
Tamilnadu sans sovereignty was unable to save the Eelam Tamil nationality. Though there are several factors, such as denial of linguistic rights and denial of riparian rights, to show the subjugation of the Tamil nation under Indian imperialism, it was our miserable inability to stop the war of genocide on Eelam Tamils that was the most telling reminder to us of our slavery.
Why did we lose?
But this should not be mechanically understood to mean that Tamilnadu can help Tamil Eelam only after its own liberation. Even when a nationality is in slavery it can grow strong and powerful and consolidate itself, by realising its slavery and fighting it. A people united and fighting for a just cause can achieve what even a state cannot.
What is the real status of the Tamil nationality that waged a passionate struggle to stop the war on Eelam Tamils. The social division of castes is an old fact. It was in spite of this that the Tamil people fought for their language in 1965, for Eelam now (2008-09). But they could not overcome their division into political parties. Though the treachery, fraud and betrayal of Karunanidhi have so blatantly come out in the open, there has been no rebellion in the DMK against his leadership! Or, the DMK has not broken up into pieces! It is possible to this day for Karunanidhi to enact dramas as if he is toiling for Eelam Tamils!
Jayalalitha, in order to turn the pro-Eelam mentality of the people of Tamilnadu into votes for her harvest, declaimed in her election campaign that Tamil Eelam was the only solution and promised to secure the same; but now she is conveniently looking the other way, busy with something else! She can aspire to take the hand bloodstained from its collusion in the massacre of Tamils! If Jayalalitha, as per her wish, can tomorrow carry the Congress on her shoulders, will the AIADMK disintegrate?
The bitter truth is: the election parties which came together in the Lankan Tamils Protection Movement subjected pro-Eelam politics to power-seeking politics instead of vice versa. Our experience shows that no power-seeking political party was prepared to forego office or boycott elections for the sake of Eelam people.
How in these circumstances can anyone mobilise the people of Tamilnadu for a militant mass struggle and paralyse the Government of India? No wonder the spontaneous struggles of students and lawyers beyond this party sphere, the self-immolation by Muthukumar and others, and the token struggles put up by Tamil nationalist forces failed to bite New Delhi.
The understanding of Tamil Eelam nationalists
Had the people of Tamilnadu rallied in a strong nationalist movement with the single objective of national liberation irrespective of party affiliations – just like the Kashmiri people now – it would have pulled back India from the Eelam massacre, and also created a situation in favour of the Eelam people on the world arena. The Tamil nationality has no sovereignty, nor has it been mobilised into a national movement towards sovereignty. Which is the main reason why Tamilnadu could not prevent the massacre of the Eelam people. The Tamilnadu Tamils and the Eelam Tamils must realise this truth.
Without learning and teaching this lesson written in Eelam Tamils’ blood on the wall of history, the Eelam dream will never be realised. In this respect it is the Tamil nationalist organisations organisations of Tamilnadu that have been very clear from the outset. This cannot be said, without qualification, about the Tamil nationalist organisations of Tamil Eelam. When in 1972 Selvanayagam, the father of Tamil Eelam, came to meet Thanthai Periyar, the latter said, “You say you have been enslaved? We Tamils are already mere slaves in India. What help can a slave render another?” The Tamil Eelam nationalists should then itself have understood the real status of Tamilnadu. Did they? Even if they did, did they work out an approach on that basis? The reply has mostly to be in the negative.
Both the leaders and the public of Tamil Eelam are used to see Tamilnadu as India and Tamils as Indians. Even the intellectuals of Tamil Eelam in general do not recognise the existence of Indian oppression to Tamils just as Sinhalese oppression to Tamils of Tamil Eelam.
The Tamil nationalism of Tamilnadu
The Tamil nationalism of Tamilnadu is older than that of Tamil Eelam. In 1925 Thanthai Periyar founded the Self-Respect Movement. In 1938 he raised the slogan: Tamilnadu for Tamils! Though Bharathiyar, V.O. Chidambaram, Thiru.V. Kalyanasundaram and others of the same kind were basically Indian nationalists, there were strong aspects of Tamil nationalism in their speeches and writings. The Naam Thamizhar party of C. Pa. Aadhithanar, the Thamizharasu Kazhagam of Ma. Po. Sivagnanam and the Thamizh Thesiya Katchi of E.V.K. Sampath contributed to the development of Tamil nationalism upto some extent unto some point. Even the Dravidian movement, before its degeneration due to power-seeking politics, took forward a more or less Tamil nationalism in content though in the perverted Dravidian form.
There is no big indication that the Tamil nationalist movement of Tamil Eelam acted with an awareness of such a long history of Tamil nationalism in Tamilnadu. A few like Poet Kasi Anandhan may have understood the correlation between Tamilnadu and Tamil Eelam due to their direct role in the Tamil nationalist movements here and there. But they are only exceptions.
Tigers’ understanding
Only because the Liberation Tigers and Leader Prabhakaran correctly understood Indian imperialism and its interest in preventing the emergence of Tamil Eelam, they could maintain vigilance against its machinations, and were able to break through the vicious net thrown by the Indo-Sri Lankan Agreement.
During a press meet in Jaffna, when asked about Karunanidhi and MGR, Prabhakaran replied to the effect: “We are well aware that the Government of Tamilnadu has no sovereignty. Also that the Chief Minister does not have the power to help us on his own accord. But we believe they have a moral responsibility to reflect the sentiments of the people of Tamilnadu.”
This is the correct view.
But did this view and the conclusions derived from it reach all levels of the movement? Especially the political essayists? We do not know. The public of Tamil Eelam were also groomed with illusions about India. There prevailed a narrow understanding of Tamilnadu politics as a Karunanidhi versus MGR affair. Even though a few of the Tamil nationalist leaders of Tamilnadu were popular in Eelam they were identified more as friends of Tamil Eelam than as Tamil nationalists.
The Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement of 1987, the subsequent invasion of the Indian army in the name of the Indian Peace Keeping Force and the atrocities it committed dealt a strong blow to the Eelam people’s illusion about India. The sacrifice of Thileepan, the death by cyanide of the twelve including Pulendhiran and Kumarappa, the fast unto death of Mother Bhoopathy … all these clearly showed India’s enmity.
The hostile attitude of India did not stop with the withdrawal of the IPKF. It continued to provide the Sinhalese government with armaments and military training. But even then the policy of appeasement towards India did continue. We need not of course say that we consider India an enemy state. But we need not have hesitated to say that the Government of India treats the Tamils as an inimical race.
Israel and Eelam
It is one thing to reassure that India need not be afraid of Eelam, but another to assure that Eelam will help India’s activities. The line separating these two approaches is clear though thin.
A bizarre consequence of the approach of committing Eelam to the intentions of the Indian state is the assurance that ‘Eelam would serve India as Israel serves the United States of America’. We know how Israel served and continues to serve the US. To bully the oil-rich Arab nations, and, more importantly, to frustrate the liberation of Palestine. In short, Israel is the West Asian henchman of the US.
If Eelam is going to serve India the same way, it means it would serve as India’s South Asian henchman. If Eelam is going to help contain those opposed to India, it means it would serve to oppress Kashmir, the north-eastern nationalities and the tribal people of Dhandakaranya.
To extend this logic to the end, it means it would help stop Tamilnadu’s national liberation. If Eelam is going to work out like this, will not the people of Tamilnadu ask: Why then should we support Eelam?
The correlation of the struggles for Tamilnadu and Tamil Eelam
We do not refute the historical differences between Sinhalese oppression and Indian oppression. Similarly we do take into consideration that the liberation struggles of Tamilnadu and Tamil Eelam are in different stages of development. But there is no justification for failing to understand, ignoring or not taking into account the need for the development of Tamil nationalism in Tamilnadu and its correlation to the liberation struggle of Tamil Eelam.
When as a rejoinder to the question, “What has Tamilnadu done for Tamil Eelam?” I asked, “What has Tamil Eelam done for Tamilnadu?” many of the Tamil Eelam friends were startled. I posed this question only in order to make them sharply understand that Tamil Eelam nationalists should be interested in the Tamil national struggle of Tamilnadu.
View of Tamilnadu politics
Post-Mullivaikkal, of course, Tamil Eelam people hate India. But this is not enough. They should understand the imperialist character of the Indian state, identify the forces fighting it and find solidarity with them. In particular they should come out of the myopic understanding of Tamilnadu politics merely as a Karunanidhi-Jayalalitha contest. Should not be spending their valuable time in trying to solve the riddle: who is going to be the next Chief Minister of Tamilnadu? Should not be yearning for some favourite of theirs to occupy the CM’s chair and deliver liberation by parcel!
Under the present Constitution of India, whoever may be the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu, he can only be the Varadharajaperumal of Tamilndu – this should be understood by one and all. When we say that the Chief Minister of Tamilnadu failed to save the people of Tamil Eelam, we do not mean he could have done it by invoking the legal powers of a Chief Minister, but failed to do so. We only mean he failed to fight Delhi in reflection of the sentiments of the people of Tamilnadu. For instance, he could have thrown away his chief-ministership and come to the streets in protest against Delhi’s role in the massacre of Eelam Tamils. He could thus have pressurised Delhi, thereby stopping or curtailing its anti-Tamil attitude. What a Chief Minister can do at the most is to come forward to resign and fight. Without doing so Karunanidhi stuck to office and this was his betrayal. If the maximum utility of a post of office is just to resign, why so much anxiety about such a post?
Power-seeking politics
What is the use of the Members of Parliament resigning their posts? What is the use of Ministers in the Government of India quitting office? What is the use of pro-Eelam parties boycotting elections? All these questions were raised then itself. These steps would have aroused the masses and brought pressure to bear upon the Government of India.
Members of Parliament should have resigned as decided upon by the All-Party meeting on the 14th of October 2008. Even if some parties had backtracked other parties should have carried out the decision to resign. The Union ministers belonging to the DMK and the PMK should have resigned. It was unpardonable to stick to office till the last while at the same time claiming to oppose the war. If those political parties, which purportedly opposed the war of genocide, had boycotted the polls and declared elections to be unnecessary until the war is stopped, it would have isolated the Congress. At least the pro-Eelam parties should have taken this stance, even If the other parties were reluctant.
To shun this path and to insist that pro-eelam parties should have formed an alliance among themselves would lead us nowhere. The explanation offered by the leader of the Viduthalai Chiruthaikal Katchi, Thol. Thirumavalavan that only due the absence of such an alliance he had to join the Congress-DMK combo is unacceptable. Why did not his party reject all alliances and fight the elections independently? No convincing explanation from him. He could have simply boycotted the elections? Why not?
Why did not these political parties take such steps as mentioned supra? Because they follow power-seeking politics. The leaderships of these parties are not willing even to put off their power-seeking politics for a brief while for the sake of preventing the massacre of Eelam Tamils.
The composition itself of these political parties from top to bottom is of this kind. After carrying loads all along there cannot be a sudden metamorphosis into war-horses. A clear understanding of nationalism is needed not only for leading, but even for supporting, a national liberation movement. Tamil nationalist phrase-chanting such as homeland, sovereignty and self-rule at the same time as serving Indian nationalism in deeds would help neither Tamilnadu nor Tamil Eelam.
Two liberation struggles
Only when we grasp the dialectical correlation between the liberation struggles of Tamil Eelam and Tamilnadu, world Tamil unity becomes meaningful and useful. These two liberation struggles are distinctly separate, but closely connected; capable of objectively helping each other, but not conditional upon each other. We ought to see this correlation not as existing in a static situation, but as moving in constantly changing internal and external conditions. This understanding is essential in the first place for at least the leading fighting forces on the two fronts. Then this should sink into the collective consciousness of the world Tamils. Intellectuals on both sides should take the initiative for this.
Though both the liberation struggles of Tamil Eelam and of Tamilnadu are historical necessities, they are in different stages of development. Therefore the ways and forms of helping each other are also bound to differ.
Though the Tamil nationalist movement of Tamilnadu is older it has fallen behind. The Tamil nationalist movement of Tamil Eelam has overtaken it. In Tamilnadu we are fighting for making the masses of Tamil people realise the need for Tamil nationalism. Tamil nationalism will never be able to become a political force for liberation unless it is grasped by the masses. This does not mean that we are in the propaganda stage. Struggles for the demands of the Tamil people are the main means to make the masses realise the need for Tamil nationalism. The Tamil nationalist organisations should be built strong and solid in order to direct such struggles along the direction of the goal of Tamil national liberation. Tamil nationalist media should be strengthened to fulfil these tasks.
The Tamil Eelam national liberation struggle started as a moralistic one, developed as an armed struggle, transformed from a guerrilla war into a conventional war, and eventually met with a huge military defeat. The people of Tamil Eelam should rise again from this defeat and continue the struggle in new forms. In this the world Tamils should help them.
Isolating the Sinhalese state
How? The people of Tamil Eelam stand bereft of any space to fight by any means. If this space has to be created for them severe pressure has to be brought upon the Sinhalese state.
Arraign the criminal who committed genocide! Institute an enquiry through the UNO into the war of genocide against the Eelam people! Set free all the imprisoned militants! Release those still in the barbed-wire concentration camps! Dismantle the High Security Zones! Rehabilitate all the Tamil people! Return all their land, properties and industries! Compensate fully the losses suffered by the Tamil people due to war! Stop Sinhalese settlements in Tamil homeland areas! Secure the democratic rights of the Tamil people! For such demands should the Tamils of Tamilnadu and of the diaspora should fight for. Though this is only a moralistic and peaceful struggle, it should not be a mere token struggle.
If our struggle is to have an impact on the Sinhalese state, we should isolate Sri Lanka on a global scale. We should see to it that economic. Politico-diplomatic and cultural sanctions are imposed on Sri Lanka.
The United States Tamils Political Action Council (USTPAC) is already in the thick of the struggle for boycotting goods from Sri Lanka. Along with overseas Tamils from Tamilnadu and Eelam a Jewish woman Dr. Ellyn Sander is playing an active role in this movement. It is a welcome sign that the European Union is seeking to annul the GSP Plus trade concessions to Sri Lanka.
Hope and encouragement
The role played by the Tamil movie artists, the May 17 movement and Save Tamils in dampening the International Indian Film Festival Awards (IIFA) function in Colombo is encouraging. The campaign for boycotting the Tamil Writers’ Meet at Colombo has gained notable success. Though all these are encouraging they are not enough. We should intensively and extensively increase our efforts a hundred times. The slogan and the campaign BOYCOTT SRI LANKA should be very soon developed to a level where there is none to refute or oppose it. We can mobilise the active support of democratic forces all over India.
The Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam
The Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) democratically elected by the Eelam Tamils at the world level is functioning well, uniting and coordinating various hues of Tamils and Tamil organisations behind the objective of a separate state of Tamil Eelam. The TGTE would hopefully fulfil the task of earning the recognition and support of the international community for the demand of a separate state of Tamil Eelam. The pro-Tamil Eelam forces of Tamilnadu should take the initiative in a planned manner to mobilise support for the TGTE and its endeavours in Tamilnadu and at the Indian level. We should help the Eelam Tamils living here as refugees play their role in the formation and activation of the TGTE.
The TGTE and the LTTE
To consider the TGTE as a reproduction or re-edition of the LTTE and comparing the two with the same yardstick are wrong. In this respect we should be very cautious.
The LTTE was born, grew up and did its duty in a historical stage of the Tamil Eelam liberation struggle, a stage when armed struggle was the main form. In a new stage of struggle – a stage when political struggle, based on the transnational existence of the Tamil Eelam people and the international influence of Tamil nationalism, has emerged as the main form – the TGTE has been born to fulfil the tasks peculiar to this stage.
Separate Tamil Eelam is the objective of the LTTE; the same is the objective of the TGTE. It is in this sense that we can consider the TGTE to be a historical continuation of the LTTE. As the tasks to be fulfilled by them are basically different, they are bound to differ in all respects, namely the forms of organisation, the methods of struggle and the tactics. If we fail to understand this difference the result would be confusion confounded.
Impact on Sinhalese
The campaign to isolate and pressurise the Sinhalese supremacist state should make the Sinhalese people, the social base of Sinhalese chauvinism, think and rethink, and should seek to turn them around against their state, and help the growth of genuine democratic forces among the Sinhalese people. What is more, this would sharpen contradictions within the Sinhalese ruling class. Conflicts would break out. The ruling fascist clique would more and more be isolated. All these would combine to create and expand a democratic space for the Tamil people. The suppressed and repressed Tamil people would utilise this space to take the field.
Like the Intifada of the Palestinian people, like the present uprising of the Kashmiri people, the Eelam people would also rise up and fight. Will this struggle be sufficient to secure victory? Or will armed struggle be necessary once again? We cannot judge at once. Moreover it does not depend merely on the Eelam people or the liberation forces that lead them. One thing is certain: whatever may be the form, it would not be possible once again to brand that struggle as terrorist to isolate and crush it.
Future prospects
We think this may be the future path of the Tamil Eelam liberation struggle. Even if it is different let us approach it with an open mind to grasp it and act. But let us be very clear about what is to be done at present. Let us extensively take forward the campaign to isolate the Sinhalese state!
Let Tamil Eelam understand Tamilnadu just as Taminadu understands Tamil Eelam. If the global Tamil community realises its historical responsibility and acts systematically, on earth will rise a Tamil state; then another. On the world stage will fly two Tamil flags. The contribution of the Tamil race to the progress of mankind will go two steps up.
The author is the General Secretary of the Tamil National Liberation Movement, Tamilnadu. Your comments may be mailed to thozharthiagu@gmail.com
