Whither ends the Sri Lankan crisis?
Even with an IMF package the hardest part is still ahead. Victor Ivan returns to the JVP’s second insurrection for what it shows about how a power struggle turns into a bloodbath.
වර්ගවාදය හා නායකත්වයේ අර්බුදය
Lee Kuan Yew was right, this piece argues, that Sri Lanka failed because its leaders could not manage racial passions. Bandaranaike knew Sinhala Only without provision for Tamil was unjust, yet tore up his pact with Chelvanayakam under pressure from militant monks; Dudley Senanayake lacked the courage to see his own pact through; J.R. Jayewardene legislated District Development Councils but could not bear to see the TULF win Jaffna. Mahinda Rajapaksa had the golden chance after the war and let it pass. The Northern Provincial Council election is a silver lining, if leaders on all sides stop inciting their people.
රජිව් ගාන්ධි ලංකාවේ වීරයෙක්ද? ද්රෝහියෙක්ද?
After a brief tribute to the Elections Commissioner for requiring asset declarations with nominations, Ivan marks the Accord’s 26th anniversary by defending Rajiv Gandhi against the Sinhala view of him as a scheming invader. Drawing on J.N. Dixit, he recounts Rajiv’s insistence on signing amid riots, his calm after a sailor’s rifle-butt blow, his concessions to Prabhakaran and the IPKF operations that led to his assassination. The IPKF, he argues, saved the state from two simultaneous insurgencies until Premadasa armed the LTTE; Sri Lanka should honour Rajiv with a statue.
ඉන්දු-ලංකා ගිවිසුම ආපසු හැරී බැලීමක්
As the government retreats from diluting the Thirteenth Amendment before the Northern Provincial Council election, Ivan argues that the Indo-Lanka Accord is an international treaty that cannot be changed unilaterally — and that after the war India, as Shivshankar Menon told him, would have backed a better devolution scheme. Drawing on K.M. de Silva and J.N. Dixit, he corrects the popular belief that the Accord was forced on Sri Lanka by the 1987 airdrop: it grew from the 1985 Delhi Accord, and without the IPKF the state might not have survived two insurgencies.
අරාජිකත්වයේ අභියෝගය
Ivan reads the weeks since Vesak as signs of a country drifting into anarchy: rotten institutions are collapsing with nothing to replace them. A monk’s staged self-immolation, sold to television by a journalist as an exclusive; a Deputy Inspector General, Vass Gunawardena, exposed as a kidnapper and contract killer; the fusion of politicians and the criminals who guarded them during the insurgencies; and a push to scrap the Thirteenth Amendment unilaterally. He traces Indo-Lankan hostility to the UNP’s 1977 insults to Indira Gandhi and warns that breaking the Accord would complete the slide.
නව ව්යවස්ථාව ගැන
Continuing his response to the draft Nineteenth Amendment, Ivan sets out how a new constitution should be made: first agree the principles with the public, as South Africa and India did, then draft. He argues it must define a Sri Lankan nation of equal peoples and outlaw caste discrimination; return to a reformed parliamentary system with a mixed electoral system, a Senate and an Indian-style election commission; devolve power to village and district councils; bind governments to national policy frameworks, above all a foreign policy that respects India; and make the state secular.
රාජපක්ෂ ආණ්ඩුවට වැරදුණේ කොතැනද?
Ivan warns that Sri Lanka is again drifting into conflict with India, repeating J.R. Jayewardene’s mistake of the 1980s, when the Vadamarachchi operation led to Indian intervention. The Rajapaksa government, he argues, rightly won the war but had no vision for peace: it failed to account for the losses of war and allegations of atrocities, forgot that it had defeated a domestic group rather than a foreign army, and did not keep its promise to India of a political solution. Much has been done for resettlement and rehabilitation, but not what was essential — reform of the whole system of government.
ආචාර්ය නිර්මාල්ගේ දයලෙක්තික අච්චාරුවාදය
Ivan replies to Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri’s critique (17 June) of his column ‘Is the Thirteenth Amendment the Best Solution?’. Listing his earlier Ravaya pieces on the national question from 2006 onwards and his debate with Kumar David, he rejects the charge that he has turned against devolution, and cites the Asia Foundation survey and the ICES study ‘Seeking Space for State Reform’, in which about 80% of Sinhalese backed reform, to argue that a solution must be built with, not against, public opinion.
දෙමළ ප්රශ්නය හා වියළි කලාපීය ගොවි ජනපද ව්යාපාර
Following his column on the homeland concept, Ivan examines the Tamil leaders’ charge that dry-zone colonisation schemes were designed to change the ethnic make-up of the North-East. He traces the real causes: malaria’s depopulation of the ancient heartland; the Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance of 1840, which let the state sell 1.8 million acres to planters; the import of South Indian labour, which changed the composition of the hill country; and the resulting land hunger among wet-zone Sinhala peasants — 44% landless in the districts Das Gupta surveyed — as well as in Jaffna. The 1927 Land Commission and the 1935 Land Development Ordinance made the state a trustee of land for the landless, and DDT opened the dry zone after 1946. Colonisation, he concludes, served a national purpose and gave priority to local landless people.
විදේශ ප්රතිපත්තිය නිවැරදි කරගැනීම
The government appears to be retreating from its strongly anti-Western foreign policy, built on the belief that world power is passing to China. That shift, Ivan argues, is neither imminent nor China’s alone, since India is also rising, and the US works to weaken states aligned with rival powers. A small country on a strategic sea lane should stay out of rival camps, stay friendly with all, and above all keep India’s trust. He recalls how J.R. Jayewardene’s hostility to India, including an insult to Indira Gandhi, led India to back Tamil militants, halt the Vadamarachchi operation and air-drop supplies, and how India’s support was decisive in the final war. Having promised 13-plus, Sri Lanka must either deliver or offer a credible alternative, and build friendship with Tamil Nadu as well as New Delhi.