 Excerpt from Thirteenth Amendment to Sri Lanka Constitution: Devolution or Comic Opera - Nadesan Satyendra
Denies homeland to the Tamils of Eelam Nowhere is the refusal to recognize the existence of the Tamils of Eelam as a people with a homeland reflected more clearly than in the provisions of the Provincial Councils Act in respect of the merger of the Northern and Eastern Province. The Indo Sri Lanka Accord signed by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India and President J.R. Jayawardene of Sri Lanka, on the 29th of July 1987, acknowledged that the Northern and Eastern Province 'have been areas of historical habitation' of the Tamils in the island of Sri Lanka. (Preamble to Indo Sri Lanka Accord, July 1987) It was an acknowledgment which was watered down by the additional statement that the Tamils 'have at all times hitherto lived together in this territory with other ethnic groups'. Be that as it may, the Indo Sri Lanka Accord was right to recognize that the togetherness of the Tamil people had grown, hand in hand, with the growth of their homelands in the North and East of Sri Lanka, where they lived together, worked together, communicated with each other, founded their families, educated their children, and also sought refuge, from time to time, from physical attacks elsewhere in Sri Lanka. The Accord was right to recognize that without an identifiable homeland the Tamils in Sri Lanka would not have become a people with a separate culture and a separate language and that without an identified homeland they will cease to exist as a people in the future. And in the words of Malcolm Shaw in Title to Territory in Africa: "Modern nationalism in the vast majority of cases points to a deep, almost spiritual connection between land and people. This can be related to the basic psychological needs of man in terms of the need for security and a sense of group identity... the concern for the preservation of habitat exists as a passionate reflex in all human communities. territory is the physical aspect of the life of the community and therefore reflects and conditions the identity of that community."
After all, it was this which was partially recognized both by the 1972 Constitution and by the 1978 Constitution when these Constitutions made provision for the use of the Tamil language in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. It was this which was recognized by Professor Virginia Leary in her Report on the Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka in 1981 when she declared that the Tamils could be considered to a people with a distinct language, culture and to an extent, a defined territory. (Professor Virginia Leary, ICJ Report, 1981 at page 69) Therefore the signatories to the Indo Sri Lanka Accord were right in taking the view that there was no need to hold a referendum before declaring that the Northern and Eastern Provinces 'have been areas of historical habitation' of the Tamil people. And resorts to the subterfuge of a referendum But though the Accord recognized the Northern and Eastern Provinces as areas of historic habitation of the Tamil people, the 13th Amendment and the Provincial Councils Act refused to translate that recognition into constitutional reality. The constitutional comic opera was continued in the special acting style of the 13th Amendment - that which was seemingly given with one hand was taken with other. The Provincial Councils Act provided that the President may by Proclamation merge the Northern and Eastern Provinces if he is satisfied that all arms and ammunition held by the militant groups have been surrendered and there has been a cessation of acts of violence. The Act then went on to provide for a referendum to be held in the Eastern Province to determine whether the people of the Eastern Province want the Eastern Province to be continued to be linked with the Northern Province. If the people of the Eastern Province vote against a linkage, then the merger will be terminated. But if the people of the Eastern Province vote for a linkage with the Northern Province, a poll shall not be required to determine the wishes of the people in the Northern Province. The Provincial Councils Act rightly assumes that the Tamil people living in the Northern Province want a merger of the Northern and Eastern Province and that a poll would be superfluous. But it refuses to accept that the Tamils living in the Eastern Province are also a part of the same Tamil people. A Machievellian provision intended to secure that the merger is temporary The reason for this Machiavellian provision is not too far to seek. A few days before the signing of the Accord, President Jayawardene stated to the National Executive Committee of the ruling United National Party: "...Only one thing has to be considered. That is a temporary merger of the North and East. A referendum will be held before the end of next year on a date to be decided by the President to allow the people of the East to decide whether they are in favour or not of this merger. The decision will be by a simple majority vote...
In the Eastern Province with Amparai included there are 33% Muslims, 27% Sinhalese and the balance 40% Tamils. Of these Tamils there are two categories. More than half of them are Batticaloa Tamils and the rest are Jaffna Tamils. Then, if the Jaffna Tamils form 20%, then I think that 80% are opposed to such a merger. Mr. Devanayagam and Mr. Majeed (members of President Jayawardene's Cabinet, one being a Tamil and the other a 'Muslim' Tamil) have told me so. Then if the referendum is held by the Central government and the approval of those who return to the East is sought, I think a majority will oppose it. Then the merger will be over. What do we gain by this temporary merger, the President asked and said that it would see the end of the terrorist movement..." (Sri Lanka News, 29 July 1987)
The enthusiastic recognition of the Northern and Eastern Province as the areas of 'historical habitation' of the Tamils was apparently a 'temporary' enthusiasm confined to the preamble of the Accord. The merger of the Northern and Eastern Province was a temporary merger intended to serve an immediate purpose and get over a pressing immediate difficulty - namely the need to 'see the end' of that which President Jayawardene chose to describe as the 'terrorist movement' in his address to his Executive Committee, and that which he himself had acknowledged as the 'militant' movement in the Indo Sri Lanka Accord which he signed on the 29th of July 1987. At a press conference immediately after the Accord was signed, President Jayawardene confirmed that at the polls in the Eastern Province he would campaign against the merger.(Sri Lanka News 12 August 1987)
As President Jayawardene was careful to point out to the Executive Committee of the ruling Party, included in the Eastern Province was the Amparai District. That which he did not state and that which his listeners were well aware was that during the past fifty years, state sponsored colonisation had contributed to considerable increases in the Sinhala population in the Amparai District. On the one hand the Sri Lankan government sought to use the vote of recently settled Sinhala colonists to prevent the merger and this led to the concerted efforts of the Sri Lankan Government to bring in more Sinhala settlers into the Eastern Province in the immediate aftermath of the Accord. On the other hand the Sri Lankan government sought to campaign on the basis of dividing the Tamil people into Jaffna Tamils and Batticaloa Tamils, and into Muslim Tamils and non Muslim Tamils. And, finally, the Sri Lankan Government ensured that the Provincial Councils Act may itself be amended by the Central Parliament by a simple majority and in this way the result of a referendum in favour of a merger, may in any event, may be nullified at a suitable and convenient time - after the surrender of arms. The legislative provisions for the merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces constitute a subterfuge - an exercise in double speak intended to confuse not only the Tamil people but also an international audience increasingly concerned with the denial of the basic and fundamental rights of the Tamil people.
But beneath the cosmetics, the underlying political reality of the 13th Amendment was that it refused to recognize the Tamils of Eelam as a people - and it refused to recognize the existence of the Tamil homeland where the identity of the Tamil people had in fact grown. The architects of the 13th Amendment were unable and unwilling to break away from the path trodden by successive Sinhala governments which have sought to divide the Tamil people into smaller units and so eventually assimilate and 'integrate' them into a homogeneous Sinhala nation - an assimilating path which had led to confrontation and which had culminated in the armed struggle of the Tamil people against that which they rightly regarded as genocide. " more
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