Sri Lanka: An island of beauty… and terror

Of all the South Asian countries, Sri Lanka is the one that is nearest to us in Auroville: Tamil Nadu and Ceylon, as it was formerly called, are only separated – at their closest – by a few kilometres of water. Near, too, as 2 million Tamils live there (and 55 million in Tamil Nadu!) and as, politically, India and Sri Lanka’s destinies have been interwoven for centuries. 4000 years ago, we find Ceylon mentioned in the Ramayana. Rama goes there with an army of monkeys, to rescue Sita from the clutches of the asura Ravana. In fact, some geographers believe that one, probably more than 6000 years ago, India and Sri Lanka were linked by a narrow strip of land, which gradually was washed away by the sea; if you visit the town of Rameshwaram today, you will see the remnants of a land-bridge that juts out towards the northern Sri Lankan port of Mannar. And this is probably how the first Tamils walked to the ancient land of Ceylon, thereby sowing the seeds of future conflict.

The Sinhalese race, which constitutes the majority (78%) of the Sri Lankan population, claims to be descended from the Bengali king Vijaya and to have landed in Ceylon 2500 years ago. Right from the beginning, they not only had to fight Tamil kings, established in the North-East of the island, but also to fend off Indian invaders from the mainland. Out of this two pronged struggle was born, in their minds, a suspicion and a fear of India that has lingered up to this day.

This “island of beauty”, as it has often been called, so strategically placed be tween Africa and East Asia, was tempting for invaders. And so they came and went: the Arabs, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and finally the English, who came for good in 1796 and made Sri Lanka famous for its spices and its tea. They tended, during their rule, to favour the Tamil race, which they thought was more hard working, and by granting them better education and higher posts fuelled Sinhalese resentment against the island’s minority. They also imported, at the beginning of this century, one million Tamil workers from the mainland to man their tea estates in the central hills; the racial imbalance that was created by this massive immigration was to have terrible repercussions eighty years later. 

In 1947, after a long struggle, the British granted India its independence; but in Sri Lanka, where there never was any national movement to speak of, they just handed over the keys of the kingdom and left ... From then onwards, the Sinhalese, who, thanks to their being the majority, had the power of the ballot, elected their own politicians; and these politicians, in turn, catered to Sinhalese nationalism and their animosity towards the Tamil minority: in 1956, Mrs Bandaranaike made Sinhalese the only official language of Sri Lanka; in another move, she deprived hundreds of thousands of Tamils of citizenship; and, in 1972, Buddhism was declared the only state religion. Worse, pogroms broke out against the Tamils, and hundreds were literally massacred. 

In 1981, the Tamils of Sri Lanka tried to organize themselves politically under the banner of the TULF (Tamil United Liberation Front), but as this party was later banned by President Jayawardene, the youth wing of the TULF seceded and, assuming the name of LTTE (Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam), took up terrorism and violence to assert the rights of the Tamil minority.

Mr Rajiv Gandhi gave priority to the Sri Lankan problem when he came to power and, in July ’87, signed the Indo-Sri Lankan Treaty. Under this pact, the Sinhalese government recognizes the Tamil minority’s cultural, linguistic and religious identity and accords a measure of autonomy to the North-Eastern provinces (where the majority of the Sri Lankan Tamils are situated). In exchange, India promised to send to Sri Lanka a contingent of soldiers (the IPKF – Indian Peace Keeping Force) to pacify the LTTE and ensure the return of the democratic process. And so, 4000 years after Rama and his troops of monkeys, an Indian army stepped again onto the shore of Sri Lanka. 

Unfortunately, the situation has again collapsed. The LTTE went back on its word to lay down their arms and has again taken to terrorism, this time against the IPKF. The Sinhalese resent more and more the presence of foreign troops on their soil. The JWP, a Sinhalese extremist group, has unleashed a campaign of unprecedented violence, aimed at destabilizing the present government and establishing a “Sinhalese only” rule. And, in India itself, there is growing criticism against Indian soldiers being killed in another country, and one hears talks about “India’s Vietnam”.

Last month, Mr Premadasa, Prime Minister in the previous government, became the new President of Sri Lanka. He inherits a country that, even though it retains a semblance of normality, is on the verge of civil war and economic collapse. The decisions he is going to take in this coming year will be of utmost importance for this tiny island, which the Mother had included in her map, and which is only a crow’s flight away from us...