Decoding the new constitution

And Portuguese historical records show that, even though ruled by a Tamil king, the bulk of the Jaffna population was still Sinhalese. During the Portuguese occupation, the Eastern Province was under a kandyan king. The Dutch-Sinhalese Treaty of 1766 and the English-Sinhalese Treaty of 1815 affirmed Sinhalese sovereignty of the Eastern Province. A Tamil presence of any significance in the East came only from the mid-19th century; when the British Governors Torrington in 1848 and Ward in 1856 settled Tamils in the coastal areas of the Eastern Province.

De Silva documented that the only evidence that separatists could produce was two sentences by Cleghorn, an ignorant British visitor on a short visit in 1879 who stated that two nations Tamil and Sinhala had lived in Sri Lanka in the present boundaries from ancient times. His ignorance was so great that the third sentence of his statement says that the Sinhalese arrived in the country from Siam! Current genetic research indicates that all ethnic groups are mixedsome more, some less. And such ethnic groups have been shifting around the Island all the time. And further, the boundaries of provinces drawn by the colonials for their own purposes had changed and shifted over time.

Independent foreign observers saw the Indian Accord in a very harsh light. The British Guardian noted: “the most infamous contract imposed on a small country - short of military occupation - since the German intervention of 1938 on the Sudeten”. The London Evening Standard said “India ... is the colonial power in the region”. The New York Times editorialised about India’s “big-stick diplomacy in Sri Lanka”. Another leading American newspaper, the Wall Street Journal called India “A rogue elephant trampling upon its neighbours”. In parenthesis, we should note that today with the Colombo Port City connected with the Chinese, we are no longer in that weak geopolitical position. India is in no position to challenge China.

Of the different religious groups, the vast majority of the Buddhist monks were against the accord. The major Christian groups supported the accord going to their colonial roots as did some Muslim groups. The political opposition to the accord included elements of the UNP, SLFP and the JVP. Later the JVP spearheaded most of the protests, converting it to a policy of violence in which it is estimated roughly 60,000 from all sides died.

Those who were exultant about the Indian imposed accord were foreign funded NGOs. Godfrey Gunatilleke of the NGO, Marga argued that “we have had to awaken to the geopolitical realities within which we existed ... that reality was that we are a small neighbour of a country of immense size”. He then castigated “the self-appointed custodians of our sovereignty” and warned of a “Cyprus situation” implying that Indians would carve up the country and annex the North and East.

Radhika Coomaraswamy stated that "we Sri Lankans have refused to accept the realities of our geopolitical situation” implying the need to bow to Indian pressure. She also asked us to accept the “the geo-political context”, and give up our “confrontational attitude” to India and bow realistically to Indian “power and politics”. Any other response she termed “hysteria”. This was a plea to accept the terms being offered by the very country and its State, India and Tamil Nadu that had carried on a proxy war against the country. (Radhika is now a member of the Constitutional Council, whose ultimate aim should include the sovereignty of the country).

One of the most threatening colonial statements was by Jehan Perera with connections to several foreign funded NGOs like Sarvodaya and the National Peace Council. Perera advised Sri Lankans on “some hard truths” on “the limitations of the country” and gleefully warned that the government had “been presented with a fait accompli” and that Indian troops who had come to Sri Lanka would not “leave should the accord be dishonored by Sri Lanka”. These were all triumphalist statements by individuals getting foreign money on the disgrace of Sri Lanka requesting us to accept Indian hegemony and over lordship. This was raw triumphalism by those kept and fed by foreign, western money. And as for Jehan‘s Sarvodaya, it had illegally settled in the Vanni jungles with “foreign money” Indians being deported under the Sirima-Shastri Pact to India. They were later to become foot soldiers of Prabhakaran. (And the leader of Sarvodaya, Ariyaratne is today also a member of the Constitutional Council, a defender of our sovereign interest).

In the US, the Logan Act prohibits interference in the US. Currently, there are investigations about whether the Russians interfered in American political affairs. We, in contrast have foreign funded NGOs - sometimes manned by persons unknown to the academic community or those in academia unfamiliar with what they are talking about, giving us prescriptions for a new Constitution. This of course requires a longer article. (I wrote a book for a well-known international academic publisher on how foreign funded NGOs are reintroducing a colonial imprint on Sri Lanka).

But for the time being, let us take Jayampathy Wickramaratne, considered a father of the constitutional proposals. Constitutions are expressions of desirable societies, that is of a societal ideology. I checked Wickramaratne’s political background and found that he was once a member of the left-wing LSSP and now of the right-wing UNP, hardly a person with a consistent ideology. Digging further for his “real” ideology, I did find that he was associated with the Berghof Foundation which was run by a foreigner called Roper. And this Berghof Foundation during the height of the anti-LTTE war had held workshops for our military personnel in expensive holiday resorts on the need to “downsize” the army. “Downsizing” means disarming the military at a time when our armed forces were about to defeat the LTTE. And, this background would be a much greater indicator of the ideology of Wickramaratne than his switching from the left wing LSSP to the right-wing UNP. And that probably is the hidden message in the new Constitution.