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(a) Introduction

The Peoples Alliance (PA) coalition regime, led by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), came to power in August 1994 and has been in power for a little more than three years. During this period the Sinhalese-controlled regime repeatedly promised to unveil the political basis for negotiating a settlement for the Tamil Question, which is encapsulated by the ‘four cardinal principles’ enunciated by the Tamil participants at the 1985 Thimpu Conference. They are as follows:

Recognition of the Tamils of Sri Lanka as a distinct nationality;
Recognition of an identified Tamil homeland and the guarantee of its territorial integrity;
Based on the above, recognition of the inalienable right of self-determination of the Tamil nation;
Recognition of the right to full citizenship and other fundamental democratic rights of all Tamils, who look upon the Island as their country.¹

On 3 August 1995 the President, and Deputy Leader of the SLFP, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga (a Sinhalese) announced President Kumaratunga’s Devolution Proposals. But her SLFP Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs Prof GL Peiris (a Sinhalese) two days later qualified the document as the President’s own ‘Basic Ideas’ and, therefore, as neither the SLFP’s nor regime’s position on the Tamil Question. After the widest possible consultations, the ‘Basic Ideas’, he explained, would be developed into a political basis for resolving the Tamil Question.

But when Minister Peiris released the Draft Provisions of the Constitution Containing the Proposals of the Government of Sri Lanka Relating to Devolution of Power on 16 January 1997, it was found that rather than flesh out the ‘Basic Ideas’, they in fact diluted the August 1995 document.

The Draft Provisions were not communicated to the SLFP’s rank and file and, in fact, they were opposed by an influential dissident faction within the party; and the member-parties of the PA coalition were not consulted and, predictably, some of them rejected the Draft Provisions, which indicated that the document did not reflect the consensus position of the PA regime. Moreover, Minister Peiris again denied that the Draft Provisions could form the basis for commencing negotiations toward a political settlement of the Tamil Question by qualifying that they would have to be deliberated and endorsed by the Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) on Constitutional Reform before they are adopted as the regime’s political position.

By that time it was evident to discerning Tamil analysts that the two political responses, namely, the ‘Basic Ideas’ and the Draft Provisions, were released to the public to legitimise the military response - euphemistically named by the President as the ‘Battle for Peace’ - unleashed with Operation Leap Forward on 9 July 1995 against the Tamil national movement, led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The Sinhalese-controlled regime’s obvious aim was to ‘crush’ the Tamil national movement quickly, before the insincerity of the political responses came to light.

As the Tamil resistance held out, it provided time for in-depth evaluations of the two political responses which exposed the ‘Basic Ideas’ and the Draft Provisions as elaborate deceptions ²; and the regime’s self-declared commitment to negotiate a settlement to the Tamil Question increasingly rang hollow.

As the regime extended the military response well into 1997, a third incomplete document titled Draft Constitution of the Republic of Sri Lanka was released by the SLFP Minister Peiris on 28 March 1997 to shore up the regime’s ‘peace credentials’ and to buy more time for a military ‘victory’. It was a personal initiative by Minister Peiris, backed by the SLFP leadership, which was not communicated either to the SLFP’s rank and file or to other parties of the PA coalition; and the Minister again avoided negotiations over the Tamil Question by ensuring that the Draft Constitution did not contain the ‘Chapters on Devolution’, which, he assured, would be released as soon as the PSC concluded its deliberations on the Draft Provisions.

The regime, however, continued the military response with Operation Jayasikurui, which was unleashed on 13 May 1997.

Operation Jayasikurui was expected to be completed within a month. But it soon ran into the ground as the Tamil resistance forced Operation Jayasikurui into a military stalemate. The political utility of the incomplete Draft Constitution for legitimising the military response was virtually exhausted by late 1997. The ‘peace credentials’ of the PA regime were in shreds and a further political response became necessary.

However, it was obvious that the next political response would have to be a more credible political fig-leaf if the ‘peace credentials’ are to be recouped and the military response is to be justified. Moreover, as the PA regime has entered the second half of its six-year term of office, attention began shifting towards the next parliamentary and presidential elections due in or before the year 2000. To win the elections, it was necessary to formulate the political response in such a manner so as to re-build the ‘peace platform’ crafted by the SLFP, which had ensured the PA’s victory at the 1994 parliamentary and presidential elections. In addition, the international community’s support for the regime’s military campaign was wearing thin as it became increasingly sceptical of the regime’s stated commitment to a negotiated settlement to the Tamil Question; and so the regime was compelled to come up with a convincing political response.

Consequently, Minister Peiris released the new political response, which was routed through the PSC as the Parliamentary Select Committee Report on Constitutional Reform on 24 October 1997. Again it was neither endorsed by the rank and file of the SLFP nor supported by the other parties of the PA coalition. But, the October 1997 PSC Report comprehensively revealed the approach of the SLFP’s leadership to the Tamil Question.

Driven primarily by the need to build a competing ‘peace image’ in preparation for the forthcoming elections, the leadership of the United National Party (UNP), which is in the parliamentary Opposition, released its Observations on the PA’s October 1997 PSC Report. The document outlined the UNP’s position on the Tamil Question. The first instalment of the Observations was made public on 1 February 1998; the second instalment was released on 8 March 1997; and the third and, presumably, final part is scheduled to be released later.

The PSC Report and the Observations are of course responses to concrete imperatives of political survival faced by the SLFP and UNP; and, as will be demonstrated below, neither response even remotely constituted a framework for beginning negotiations to resolve the Tamil Question. However, they do provide valuable insights into the approaches of the SLFP and UNP factions of the Sinhalese political leadership to the Tamil Question.

(b) Scope of decentralisation

Sinhalese nationalists introduced two provisions in the Constitution to foreclose devolution of power. Article 2 declared that ‘The Republic of Sri Lanka is a Unitary State’; and Article 76 provided as follows:

76-1 Parliament shall not abdicate or in any manner alienate its legislative power and shall not set up any authority with legislative power.

It shall not be a contravention of the provisions of paragraph (1) of this Article for Parliament to make, in any law relating to public security, provision empowering the President to make emergency regulations in accordance with such law.

It shall not be a contravention of the provisions of paragraph (1) of this Article for Parliament to make any law containing any provision empowering any person or body to make subordinate legislation for prescribed purposes, including the power -

to appoint a date on which any law or any part thereof shall come into effect or cease to have effect;
to make by order any law or any part thereof applicable to any locality or to any class of persons; and
to create a legal person, by an order or an act.
In sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) of this paragraph, "law" includes existing law.

Any existing law containing any such provision as aforesaid shall be valid and operative.’

The Articles were designed pre-empt devolution of power - to ‘close the door on federalism’ sneered President JR Jayawardene (a Sinhalese) when his UNP regime (1978-1988) promulgated the Constitution in 1978. They precluded a confederal or federal alternative, which is the only basis for a viable and lasting political settlement to the Tamil Question through the sharing of State power between Sinhalese and Tamils3, within a united Sri Lanka.

The UNP regime, however, introduced the 1987 13th Amendment to the Constitution, established the Provincial Councils (PCs) and claimed to have ‘devolved’ power to PCs; and it alleged that ‘power-sharing’ through the PCs amounted to federalism in everything but name. All of the above constituted an elaborate political hoax since the PC system was implemented without repealing Articles 2 and 76. The subsequent UNP regimes of (Sinhalese) Presidents R Premadasa (1989-1993) and DB Wijetunga (1993-1994) continued this deliberate deception.

The Colombo-based ‘human rights’ and ‘conflict resolution’ organisations, such as the Movement for Inter-Racial Justice and Equality (MIRJE), Civil Rights Movement (CRM), etc, composed largely of Sinhalese persons colluded in the UNP’s hoax. Not once, between 1987 and 1994, did they demand the repeal of Articles 2 and 76; nor did they challenge the patently untrue claim that ‘devolution of power’ was effected through the PCs. Instead, the organisations welcomed the 13th Amendment and PC system as a viable basis for resolving the ‘ethnic conflict’ and called upon the LTTE to participate in the PCs; and, thereby, they covered up the hoax.

Not surprisingly, Ceylon Tamils have demanded the repeal of the two Articles as the indispensable pre-condition for negotiating a political settlement based on power-sharing. This demand was reinforced by the disastrous experience of the PCs.

Article 2 ensured that the PCs do not enjoy shared sovereignty with the Centre. Moreover, Article 76 pre-empted devolution of power and so the PCs are institutions of political decentralisation; they are glorified Municipal Councils (MCs) and the so-called ‘statutes’ or subordinate legislation of PCs are nothing more than the Ordinances of MCs. They are inherently incapable of providing the institutional framework for power-sharing between Sinhalese and Tamils.

President Kumaratunga in effect concurred with Tamil opinion when she included in her 1995 ‘Basic Ideas’ the provision for the repeal of Article 76 (para IX), which had enhanced the credibility of that political response. The ‘human rights’ and ‘conflict resolution’ organisations lauded the President’s intention to delete Article 76 and supported the ‘Basic Ideas’ as a ‘far-reaching devolution proposal’

But the 1997 PSC Report performed a volte-face. It reproduced Article 76 as Article 92:

92-1 Parliament shall not abdicate or in any manner alienate its legislative power and shall not set up any authority with any such legislative power.

It shall not be a contravention of the provisions of paragraph (1) of this Article for Parliament to make, in any law relating to public security, provision empowering the President to make emergency regulations in accordance with such law.
It shall not be a contravention of the provisions of paragraph (1) of this Article for Parliament to make any law containing any provision empowering any person or body to make subordinate legislation for prescribed purposes, including the power -
to appoint a day on which any law or any part thereof shall come into effect or cease to have effect;
to make by order any law or any part thereof applicable to any locality or to any class of persons; and
to create a legal person, by order or an act and for the purposes of sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) of this paragraph, "law" includes existing law.
Subject to the provisions of the Constitution, any existing law containing any such provision as aforesaid shall be valid and operative.’

So the Regional Councils (RCs) proposed in the PSC Report would, like the present PCs, be also nothing more than MCs. The PSC Report retained the Unitary State.

It follows that the absence of Article 2, the reference to the country as a ‘Union of Regions’ (Article 1(1)), provisions for ‘The Devolution of Power to Regions’ (Chapter XV) and other related provisions in the PSC Report are little more than political window dressing, to mask the implications of Article 92, which emptied the devolution terminology of political relevance or constitutional meaning. The proposed RCs, therefore, are institutions of political decentralisation and, therefore, incapable of facilitating power-sharing and utterly irrelevant to the resolution of the Tamil Question.

But the ‘human rights’ and ‘conflict resolution’ organisations have maintained a deafening silence regarding the inclusion of Article 92. Rather than expose the PSC Report as an unconscionable deception, they have instead disingenuously urged the LTTE to respond positively to the PSC Report and thereby detracted attention from the SLFP’s patent dishonesty.

The Observations (second instalment) did not pledge to repeal Article 2 and 76. They underlined the need to maintain the Unitary State: they emphasised ‘the indivisibility and unity of Sri Lanka as a nation’ (para 1.1) and envisaged the ‘devolution of power within the framework of an indivisible Sri Lanka’ (para 2.1). In the Sri Lankan political context, these phrases clearly indicated the UNP’s resolve to retain Article 2. The discussion on the elimination of the Concurrent List of subjects, to avoid conflicts between the Centre and the PCs (paras 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5), created the illusion that the legislative power of the Centre and PCs are to be mutually exclusive; it was in reality an elaborate red-herring to mask the fact that the UNP intends to keep Article 76.

Therefore, the SLFP and UNP factions of the Sinhalese political leadership continued the duplicity of glibly speaking of a non-existent ‘devolution of power’ while retaining the Unitary State and Article 76.

(c) The Centre

The TULF Proposals Presented to Mr Rajiv Gandhi, Prime Minister of India in December 1985 recommended that Sri Lanka be re-constituted as a ‘Union of States’ and that State power should be shared in the Centre between the Sinhalese, Ceylon Tamils, Up-Country Tamils and Muslims4. To facilitate power-sharing, the TULF Proposals employed the term ‘nationality’ to describe the four cultural groups, specified that ‘membership in Parliament shall reflect the ethnic proportions of the Union’ and provided for a double majority system: ‘no Bill or Resolution or part thereof affecting any nationality shall be passed, unless a majority of Members of Parliament belonging to that nationality agree to such a Bill or Resolution or part thereof’ (Part I, paras 4 and 5). In other words, the TULF Proposals envisaged that the Ceylon Tamil nation and Up-Country Tamil and Muslim peoples would have veto power in Parliament.

The 1994 Proposals submitted by the Up-Country Peoples Front to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Constitutional Reform - generally known as the UPF Proposals - reiterated the need to introduce ‘the "double majority" system which was proposed in Canada or the "floating vote system"’ in which ‘legislation affecting the up-country Tamils can be enacted by the parliament only if the majority of the up-country Tamil representatives [are] in favour of it’ (para 2)

However, the PSC Report ignored the crucial issue of power-sharing in the Centre.

The Observations (first instalment) envisaged ‘the sharing of power amongst all communities at the Centre’; and they proposed ‘a Second Chamber where the minorities would be adequately represented’, ‘adequate representation of minorities in the Cabinet of Ministers’ and ‘a President and two Vice-Presidents to represent the three major communities [Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims]’(page 7). In other words, the UNP shifted attention to the sharing of representation. It did not provide for the sharing of power - for instance, no provision was made for a double majority system or for diluting the near-absolute executive power of the (Sinhalese) President. The verbiage about ‘minority representation’ disguised the fact that the Sinhalese will constitute the overwhelming majority in both houses of Parliament; it condoned the ‘tyranny of the majority’ by denying the Tamils and Muslims veto power in Parliament and ensured the maintenance of status quo. In short, the UNP cynically paid lip service to power-sharing in the Centre.

The PSC Report as well as the Observations retained the Sinhalese monopoly power in the Centre and envisaged the marginalisation of Ceylon Tamils and Muslims to their respective ‘Bantustans’, their respective majority-areas in the North-Eastern Province (NEP)5.

(d) The Province/Region

Under the 13th Amendment, the PC in each Province is an institution elected directly by the people of that Province and each PC is vested with identical powers (Art 154A(2)). This apparently egalitarian approach denied recognition of the unique political context thrown up by the Tamil national movement in the Tamil-majority NEP; therefore it rejected the need for qualitatively different powers and higher level of autonomy for the North-Eastern Provincial Council (NEPC).

The PSC Report renamed the PCs as RCs but retained them as bodies elected directly by the people with the proviso that ‘one half of [the RC members] shall be elected on a territorial basis and the other half on the basis of proportional representation’ (Art 132).

The Observations (second instalment) envisaged that the PCs would be composed of a ‘special number of members elected by PR [proportional representation]’ and ‘the Heads of all Local Authorities in the Province’ (para 2.12). This is a throw-back to the UNP’s stance during the 1984 All Party Conference and is a dilution of the provisions of the 13th Amendment.

Neither the PSC Report nor the Observations accommodated the demand for an autonomous region made by the Up-Country Tamils. However the 1985 TULF Proposals had recommended the creation of an autonomous region for the Up-Country Tamils (Part IV), whilst the Up-Country Tamils themselves suggested, in the 1994 UPF Proposals, the ‘setting up of a Regional Council for the up-country Tamils in order to translate into practice the ideas of power sharing’ and that the RC be set up ‘along the "Pondichery Model" where non-contiguous territorial units may come under one council’ (para 5).

(e) National flag

The national flag contains the Lion Flag of the Sinhalese, with the addition of two stripes, Saffron and Green, to signify respectively the Ceylon Tamils and Muslims. The stripes are placed outside the Lion Flag proper and at the less important pole-end of the flag. When the design of the flag was adopted in Parliament by the UNP regime in 1951, its derogatory implications led a progressive Sinhalese Member of Parliament (MP), Dr NM Perera, to condemn the flag as a ‘fraud…perpetrated on the minorities. They [Sinhalese] are going to have the Lion Flag and these stripes are for the outcasts’6. Most Tamil MPs opposed the adoption of the flag and Ceylon Tamils launched widespread protests against the flag.

Consequently, the flag has been an issue of contention between Sinhalese and Tamils for more than four decades. But the PSC Report effectively rejected any change in the national flag: it categorically stated that ‘the National Flag of the Republic shall be the Lion Flag’ (Art 4). The Observations made no reference to the national flag and, therefore, envisaged no change.

(f) Secularism

Article 9 of the Constitution specified as follows: ‘The Republic shall give to Buddhism the foremost place’. The provision privileged the Buddhists (who are Sinhalese) to the detriment of Hindus and Muslims (who are Tamils) and Christians (who are found among Sinhalese and Tamils). Tamils criticised the provision as a departure from the secular tradition; and they underlined the return to a secular political framework as an essential condition for resolving the Tamil Question.

However, the Observations (second instalment) confirmed that Article 9 of the Constitution will be retained (para 1.2). The PSC Report entrenched the trend away from secularism: it reiterated that Buddhism shall enjoy ‘the foremost place’ and went further to provide for the constitution of a ‘Supreme Council’ of Buddhist Clergy (Art 7).

(g) The Language Question

Sinhala was legislated as the sole official language of the country by the SLFP-led coalition regime in 1956; and Article 18 of the Constitution accordingly provided that ‘The Official Language of Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala’. Since 1956, Tamils have demanded that Tamil must be made an official language at par with Sinhala, as an integral part of the resolution of the Tamil Question.

The UNP faction of the Sinhalese leadership appeared to accommodate the Tamil demand when it enacted the 1987 13th Amendment to the Constitution to amend Article 18 to read as follows:

The official language of Sri Lanka shall be Sinhala.

Tamil shall also be an official language.

English shall be a link language.’

On closer reading, however, it was evident that Tamil was not at par with Sinhala as an official language of Sri Lanka for the provision was worded in such manner as to retain the primacy of the Sinhala language. Sinhala is ‘The’ official language of ‘Sri Lanka’. In contrast, the Tamil language is accorded the subordinate position by the use of the word ‘also’ and by not stating whether it is the official language of the whole country, province or district. In short, Sinhala remains the sole official language of the whole country.

The ‘human rights’ and ‘conflict resolution’ organisations have in effect condoned the violation of language rights of Tamils under Article 18: from 1987 up to now, they have not once demanded the amendment of the Article to make Tamil an official language of the whole country at par with the Sinhala language. Indeed they have turned apologists for the regime’s blatantly discriminatory language policy.

The arguments advanced by the President of MIRJE, Mr Charles Abeysekera (a Sinhalese), illustrate the degree to which the ‘human rights’ and ‘conflict resolution’ organisations have misrepresented facts. He is also the Chairman of the regime’s Official Languages Commission and in that capacity Mr Abeysekera published a statement titled ‘Official languages - the reality’7. In it, he repeated the half-truth that the Constitution declared that ‘Tamil too shall be an official language along with Sinhala’ and, therefore, propagated the insidious Goebbelsian lie that Tamil is at par with Sinhala as the official language of the whole country.

Mr Abeysekera alleged in the statement that ‘the Constitution…decrees that Sinhala shall be the language of record and administration in the seven southern provinces and Tamil in the northern and eastern provinces.’ But the Constitution provided differently: ‘The Official Language shall be the language of administration throughout Sri Lanka’; and that ‘the Tamil Language shall also be used as the language of administration for the maintenance of public records and the transaction of all business by public institutions in the Northern and Eastern Provinces’ (Art 22(1))8. As argued above, the phrase ‘The Official Language’ in Article 18 refers precisely to Sinhala. So Article 22(1) made Sinhala the language of administration of all the provinces in the country but restricted the use of Tamil as an additional, subordinate language of administration in the Tamil-majority NEP. For instance, all laws are required to be published in Sinhala and Tamil with a translation in English; but, ‘in the event of any inconsistency between any two texts, the text of the Official Language [Sinhala] shall prevail’ (Art 23(1)).

Another example of the subordinate position assigned to the Tamil language is to be found in the provision relating to the Language of Courts. ‘The Official language shall be the language of the courts throughout Sri Lanka and accordingly their records and proceedings shall be in the official language: Provided that the language of the courts exercising original jurisdiction in the Northern and Eastern Provinces shall also be Tamil and their records and proceedings shall be in the Tamil language’ (Art 24(1)). The provision excluded courts of appellate jurisdiction: in the case of an appeal from a court of original jurisdiction in the two provinces, records in Sinhala and Tamil ‘shall be prepared for the court hearing such appeal’ provided that ‘the Minister in charge of the subject of Justice may with the concurrence of the Cabinet of Ministers, direct that the record of any such court shall also be maintained and proceedings conducted in the Official Language’ (Art 23(1)(a)). A Sinhalese Minister of Justice was empowered by Article 23(1)(a) to deny the language rights of Tamils and Muslims through executive action; and the provision was crafted to ensure that in the rare event of there being a Tamil Minister of Justice, he would have to seek the concurrence (very unlikely to be forthcoming) of the Sinhalese-majority Cabinet if he is to direct the court to maintain its records and conduct its proceedings in the Tamil language.

In other words, Sinhala is the sole language of administration in the seven Sinhala-majority southern provinces while Sinhala and Tamil are the primary and secondary languages of administration in the NEP.

But Mr Abeysekera narrowly defined the official language as ‘the language in which administrative tasks are performed and official records are kept’ in order to misleadingly interpret Article 18: he alleged that ‘the Constitution really decrees that there shall be one official language - Sinhala - in the south and another official language - Tamil in the North-East.’ Thereafter, he made the following patently untrue assertion: ‘The correct present constitutional position then is that there are theoretically two official languages in Sri Lanka but that their use as languages of record and administration is confined to separately demarcated territories, which are both geographic as well as linguistic.’

He supplemented this legal fiction with a further departure from the truth. He asserted unconvincingly that a Sinhalese person in the NEP is subject to the same language restrictions as a Tamil person outside the NEP. After noting that ‘a statement given by a Tamil to a police officer in any one of the southern provinces [cannot be] recorded in his own language’ because ‘records must be kept in Sinhala’, Mr Abeysekera alleged that ‘the same difficulties will be faced by a Sinhalese in the North-East where records have to be kept in Tamil.’ This is self-serving nonsense. A Sinhalese person has the right to have his statement, made to a police officer in any province of the country, including the NEP, recorded in Sinhala precisely because Sinhala is the official language and language of courts throughout the country. A Tamil person cannot have his statement recorded in Tamil outside the NEP.

He proceeded to obfuscate the reality of blatant language discrimination against Tamils by drawing numerous red-herrings: the issues of linguistic rights of citizens, acute shortage of Tamil officers in the Administrative Service, the linguistically mutually exclusive educational system and sensitivity to language use. But the fact remains that Article 18 violated the language rights of Tamils, that the official language and the language of administration and of courts throughout the country is Sinhala. Mr Abeysekera’s arguments deliberately obscured these facts and, therefore, are a pathetic apology for Sinhalese chauvinism.

The insincerity of Mr Abeysekera’s assertions were amply demonstrated by the provision in the PSC Report to remedy the violation of language rights of Tamils; it read: ‘The official languages of the Republic shall be Sinhala and Tamil’ (Art 32). The formulation exposed the injustice perpetrated against Tamils by the provisions of Article 18; and Article 32 proposed national bilingualism, which Mr Abeysekera avoided recommending.

However, Article 32 too was an eyewash; it was designed to enhance the credibility of the PSC Report. For the primacy of Sinhala language was in fact maintained by providing that ‘Sinhala shall be the language used for the maintenance of public records by the national and regional public institutions and local authorities in the Capital Territory [Municipalities of Colombo and Sri Jayawardenapura] and all the Regions other than the [Ceylon Tamil and Muslim majority] Regions’ (Art 35(2)) in the north and east of the country. Sinhala language domination was reinforced by the provision that ‘a Regional Administration of local authority which maintains its public records in Sinhala shall be entitled to receive communications from and to communicate and transact business with any official, in his or her official capacity, in Sinhala, and a Regional Administration of local authority which maintains its public records in Tamil shall be entitled to receive communications from and to communicate and transact business with any official, in his or her official capacity, in Tamil’ (Art 37(2)). The apparent reciprocity offered to the Ceylon Tamils and Muslims masks the fact the regime is controlled by the Sinhalese and that the Ceylon Tamil and Muslim-majority regions will, in practice, be compelled by the Sinhalese-controlled regime to communicate in Sinhala with the Centre and Sinhalese-majority provinces. Thus the PSC Report in effect maintained the status quo: it retained Sinhala as the sole official language of the whole country whilst Tamil was marginalised as the regional language.

The Observations (both instalments) are silent on the subject of official language, indicating that the UNP intends to keep Article 18.

(h) Toward conflict escalation

From the foregoing it will be evident that the Sinhalese leadership, whether it is the SLFP or UNP faction, has obstinately refused to indicate compromise positions in the key areas of dispute. The Unitary State and the national flag will be retained; Buddhists will be privileged vis-a-vis other religious communities; and Sinhala will remain the sole official language of the whole country.

Consequently, the Sinhalese leadership entrenched the conflict-generating link between citizenship and ethnicity. The political concept of citizenship is linked to the individual in the British model and it is an important pillar of British Liberalism. The regime in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) under British rule adopted the concept. However, Sinhalese nationalists re-conceptualised citizenship in a manner similar to the German model before the Second World War. In the latter model, German citizenship was politically linked to German ethnicity, defined by language (German), religion (Catholicism) and race (Aryan).

In Sri Lanka, the Sinhalese nationalists linked citizenship to Sinhalese ethnicity by defining the Sinhalese as an Aryan race, legislating Sinhala the official language and decreeing Buddhism as the official religion. They privileged the Sinhalese people as the bhoomi putra (‘sons of the soil’) and laid claim to the whole of Sri Lanka as the traditional homeland of the Buddhist-Sinhalese. Tamils and Muslims are characterised as the ‘other’, as non-native ‘foreigners’: in the Sinhalese-nationalist lexicon, Up-Country Tamils are ‘Tamils of recent Indian origin’, the Ceylon Tamils are ‘Tamils of ancient Indian Origin’ and Muslims are ‘from Arabia’.

Therefore, the essence of the pre-conditions laid down by Tamils for resolving the Tamil Question is that citizenship must be de-linked from ethnicity, that the link between citizenship and the individual must be re-established.

However, neither the PSC Report nor the Observations sought to re-establish the progressive link between citizenship and the individual. On the contrary, the two political responses entrenched the reactionary link between citizenship and Sinhalese ethnicity: they inflexibly insisted on Sinhala as the sole official language of the whole country and on Buddhism as the sole official religion. Moreover, both responses retained the Unitary State and Article 76 and, therefore, rejected devolution of power.

In short, the SLFP and UNP factions of the Sinhalese leadership have provided no basis whatsoever for negotiating a political settlement to the Tamil Question within a united Sri Lanka. It follows that the LTTE-led Tamil national movement has no choice but to continue to resist the military response of the Sinhalese-controlled regime.

Notes:

1. The Statement (of 13/Jul/85) issued jointly by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), Peoples Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), Tamil Eelam Revolutionary Organisation (TELO), Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS), Eelam Peoples Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) and Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF).

2. Sathananthan, S, ‘"Peace" Proposals in Sri Lanka: a comparative assessment of the 1995 Basic Ideas and 1996 Draft Provisions’, Lanka Guardian. March/April, 1997.

3. The Sinhalese are composed of the Low-Country and Up-Country segments; together they constitute 70% of the population of about 17 million. Tamils include the Ceylon Tamils (13%), who live predominantly in the North-East Province, and Up-Country Tamils (12%), who are concentrated in the Central and Uva Provinces in the central highlands.

4. The Muslims are the third Tamil-speaking group, which constitutes 5% of the population.

5. The NEP was formed by the administrative unification of the Northern and Eastern Provinces in 1987.

6. Hansard, vol 9, col 1565-1684.

7. Sunday Observer, 1/ Sep/96, p.10.

8. Emphasis added.