C. Wijeyawickrema, LL.B., Ph.D.

...the broadly held view the world over, [is] that the devolution of power to ethnic minority areas, making for a measure of autonomy, is the best vaccine against separatism.” -Dayan Jayatilleke, Advisor to Sajith Premadasa (Colombo Telegraph, April 7, 2021)

If the Tamils’ cry for separatism is given up, the two communities could solve their problems and continue to live in amity and dignity.” -M.C. Sansoni, CJ (Sessional Paper No. 7 of 1980)

Unreasonable demands

When Barak Obama became U.S. President in 2009, Neville Jayaweera, ex-CCS officer who gave up Buddhism and became a propaganda head of a world Christian organization, floated the idea of a Tamil Obama in Sri Lanka, but he could not find a deserving candidate. Now in 2021, TNA and other Tamil separatists are facing an erosion of domestic oxygen for their game. All their eggs are now in the UNHRC handbag, an agency acting as proxy to US and India, demanding 13-A plus.  It is an open secret now that 13-A plus plan is nothing but a substitute for the buried but not dead MCC Trojan horse. This is a fact that cannot be ignored by the expert committee. 

The unreasonableness of trying to use 13-A for self-rule in a mythical homeland by a handful of Tamil politicians is ignored stupidly  by a set of Sinhala black white politicians, solely due to selfish reasons and personal gain. How many of these national and local politicians cherish democracy, rule of law, human rights or the happiness of their electorate? It is amazing how those who got people killed leading them on demonstrations against 13-A in 1987, are now using the PC system as gold mines or bottomless corruption  pits.

Tamil Aspirations

An argument presented by Robert Blake, Hilary Clinton, then, and Narendra Modi or Dayan Jayatilleka, Sajith Premadasa’s international advisor now, that there has to be <meaningful> devolution  to Tamils (Sinhala people did not ask and did not get any benefit via 13-A) so that their national aspirations (separate identity) could be achieved, is proven to be a fake geopolitical trick to divide the country.  The proof comes on a weekly basis from video clips by Arun Siddharthan, a Tamil Che Guerra of <low caste> Tamils in Jaffna. What kind of aspiration one could have living in slums with  no water and toilets! Maslow with hierarchy of human needs must be turning in his grave. Empowerment of people at small community level is what Arun is doing. Then only Tamil people (not a handful of separatist politicians) can think of a Tamil culture and a Tamilness, harmless to Sinhalaness. Historically, Sinhala Buddhism did not oppose Tamilness, Christianism, Hinduthva, or Musalman way of living, prior to it becoming a sharia-wahabi agression.

Geography against 13-A

Geography provides all the evidence  needed to understand why the 13-A path is a disaster and how Tamil people could be empowered to overcome the spatial inequities they as well as the other communities are experiencing at present under a false system of capitalist representative democracy. We are now experiencing how an EVIL TRIANGLE -politician- officer- civil society (NGOs, businesses)- has created a cancer-causing democracy while preaching rule of law, freedom of speech, liberal economy etc.

The expert committee has an historic opportunity to save democracy for people from politicians by taking a path not taken by lawyers  who prepared all previous constitutions starting with Ivor Jennings in 1947. Instead of Euro-centric constitutional principles, Buddhist literature provides systems of thinking needed to foster a society full  of happiness. These rules are simple and practicable. The Euro-American new remedies for the problems they themselves created by divide and rule colonial strategy, so called non-majoritarian constitutional solutions (Horowitz-Nye formula backed by the R2P weapon), did not solve any conflict in the world. Instead, these <solutions> split countries apart fighting with each other. Border wars in Sudan, East Timor, Lebanon  are just two exapmples. 13-A is one such dead-rope given to Sri Lanka. Donald Horowitz, who was a Fulbright scholar in Sri Lanka, did not discuss Gamsabhava (or Panchayathi concept in India) in his many writings.

The socio-political-economic model based on the  Trinity of village-water reservoir- temple, is still the best solution for 70% of Sri Lanka’s sick democracy. Decentralizing governmental powers to such local entities, Gamsabha (Jana Sabha, Pradeshiya Sabha) level is the solution to the PC dilemma. Demarcating them using natural (geographical) boundaries as in New Zealand is as important as teaching Sinhala and Tamil to Tamil and Sinhala students in schools from grades 3-10.

History is past geography and two generations deprived of history and geography as school subjects, including lawyers in the Island, (in western countries one cannot go to law school without a four-year first degree) cannot be blamed if they do not understand the geography behind the statecraft. Discussed below are some food for thought, starting with geography and politics and concluded with geography of water and population.

Geopolitics

K. M. Panikkar (1895-1963), the Malayali (Kerala) statesman and strategist wished Ceylon to be under the Indian suzerainty.  Chelvanayagam’s willingness to hand over Trincomalee to India in 1949, it was honey in  Nehru’s ears. A committee of five ex-British prime ministers reported the military importance of the Trico harbour, a century ago. At that time they did not know that Trinco harbour has geologic troughs deep enough to hide nuclear submarines from enemy detection. For air power, Sri Lanka has the lowest gravity on earth (Did king Ravana know this?). Now a US Navy admiral says the significance of Sri Lanka is its location, location and location. This is absolute location as well as the relative location. For example, Sri Lanka’s only next door neighbor is South India. However, it is separated from a narrow and shallow sea, which prevented it becoming part of South India, just like Japan saved from China or England escaped from Napoleon and Hitler. The expert committee ought to understand that 13-A is directly linked with the geopolitical plan of USA-India-Japan-Australia-New Zealand, to encircle China. Sri Lanka could be used in this plan if the central government is weekend or the country is divided on ethnic lines.

Russian need for a warm water port

When Colonel Olcott came to Ceylon in 1880 with the Russian  Helena Blavatsky, colonial government suspected him as a Russian agent.  Anglo-Afghan wars (1839, 1878, 1919) were British attempts  to block the Russian bear coming to Indian Ocean. Colonially- created Pakistan was a result of British suspicion of an independent India becoming a strategic friend of Russia. Lord Soulbury, therefore, did not want to propose any  federal-type arrangement in Ceylon, which would have given India room for directly interfering with Jaffna’s federal politics, once freedom is bestowed. Thus, his <hindsight> apology to math professor cum separatist C. Sundaralingam, regretting his constitutional <error> was not sincerely made. Defense agreements, Clause 29, Senate, electorate concessions and appointed MPs were all examples of what Soulbury could give on the face of a future Russian-Indian axis. Japan bombing Colombo was a warning in this regard. It was geopolitics in the 1940s.

Gondwanaland and Ranil’s tunnel and bridge to Tamilnad

When the Gondwanaland split, and India drifted away from Africa, the island of Sri Lanka tried to maintain a separate geological boundary. This was the reason for a regular boat service from Dhanushkodi to Talaimannar to bring cheap Indian labor to tea plantations in Ceylon, but the plan by Ranil W after 2000 to link India to Sri Lanka by a railway bridge or a tunnel was only black white attempt to sabotage the Sinhala Buddhist heritage. With his love for India, he said Lord Buddha was an Indian. The same mouth uttered that Poson was the first Indian invasion!

The Theravada Buddhism was planted in this island for a reason. It had the protection of the Continental Drift. Buddhism got wiped out in India with the end of King Ashoka’s Just Rule. India interfered boldly in Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh politics. In fact it created B’desh. If a land connection was there the Indian army would have occupied Jaffna under any pretext it wants. Both Indira and Rajiv lied to the world denying that they were arming or training Tamil terrorists. As the new Jaffna phenomenon of a Tamil Che Guerra, Arun Siddharthan pointed out recently, the Indian embassy branch in Jaffna is but a RAW field office.

The relevance of these geology-based factors of absolute and relative location of the Island is that they do not support the 13-A plan,  aggressively promoted by local black white agents and their foreign masters led by Indian, EU and American politicians. Which Sinhala politician or party showed any interest in understanding such basic issues. This dilemma becomes clearer when we direct our attention from the geological base to surface of the earth (landscape).

Physical geography and human geography

Sri Lanka’s physical geography shaped its cultural geography. A simple example is to overlay on the relief and drainage (topography)  map, an irrigation (canals and reservoirs) map of the island. To this one can add the climatic, soil, forest, groundwater and ecological zones. A map of agro-ecology regions reflects applied aspects of this nature and human interface. What we have is a tropical island with  such diversity, that within 50 miles from a coastal city like Colombo, one could reach cool weather and climate in the hill country such as Nuwara Eliya.

Sri Lanka’s history is shaped by this diversity in its natural environment, unique for a small island. This fostered the evolution of a diverse cultural environment. While the elements of physical diversity acted in unison to create one physical entity, prior to European invasions it exhibited a cultural unity in diversity of a  land called SINHALE. Sinhala Buddhist heritage had been the foundation of this unity in diversity. From the Gamsabhava upwards  there was a system of administration in sync with the natural environment.

With a central mountain mass, known as the Heartland of the tiny island, 103 rivers radiate to the ocean. The mountains affect  the Monsoon seasons creating a southwest wet zone, small in area, and a vast area of dry and arid zones of east, southeast, north and northwest. Ancient irrigation civilization was an example of how Sinhala kings solved this spatial deficit of water availability. A river for Jaffna is the only new issue in this regard, and Vigneswaran as CM-NP had already raised the question of how much water North will get from the Moragahakanda dam, the last project under Mahaveli irrigation system.

Water wars

When the proposed Eelam bounday is marked on a river basins map of the island, the suicidal nature of a 13-A plus solution to the Sinhala Buddists becomes obvious (see essay water wars attached). Water wars are a regular feature among south Indian states at the village level. Imagine the magnitude of this when an NP or a merged  NP and EP complains to UNO or UNHRC that it is not provided with adequate amounts of water when drought dry out rivers. From the words and actions of the 13-A plus lobby, the expert committee cannot have any doubts that 13-A is only a way station on the march to Eelam.

Population geography

Sri Lanka’s population distribution map is like a scrambled egg. It cannot be unscrambled. If ethnicity/language based PC units or any other units of lower level are created, there is no way to think that the <Tamil genocide> myth by the Tamil separatist lobby would vanish. So many Tamils are living happily in the South, practically in any town or village, but the design by Tamil separatists is to have a mono-ethnic N-E Region. This was the plan Mrs. Chandrika and Neelan Thiruchelvam prepared during 1995-2000, which just missed fruition by a shortage of 7 votes in the parliament. The Marxist who worked with them on this deal, later prepared the Orumitthanadu plan with Sumanthiran in 2019, was Jayampathy Wickramaratne, who is now marking time in  Geneva.

Perhaps, the situation in Sri Lanka is unique in the world in this regard. Not just for the past 40 years, but even today if a Tamil from Jaffna could not move to  a European or other white destination, he or she would move to Colombo or any other location in the South. But, when Sinhalese move to North it is branded as government-aided Sinhalization of a mythical Tamil homeland! There is no Sinhala Thesawalamai in the south to block Tamils buying land. Even the excavations of archaeological sites are resisted as encroaching Tamil private property, while a monk cannot build even a toilet in such land without official permission.

The danger of any language-based units is that the heartland of the island, the Hill Country, will become an unstable, Eelam play ground. If as Mrs. Chandrika’s plan of using the majority of an electorate as the criteria for demarcating ethnic units, then a separate Malayanadu will become a reality, which could opt to join with NP+EP union.

Any ethnicity/religion-based creation of units has a new problem with the recent discovery of Sharia/wahabi project. The establishment of Muslim pockets all over the South with systematic buying of land and supporting baby-producing factories with the Arab oil money is a threat that the expert committee ought to pay attention in dealing with 13-A  related matters.

The solution to this 13-A dilemma, lies within the triangle of the Buddhist Middle Path, Reasonableness doctrine in law and the Regional geography, which identifies spatial units as organic space.

The increasing trend of lawlessness, foreign-funded NGO and opposition politician attempts to derail the 2019 election victory, compels one to ask are we living with the Sixteen Dreams of the king Pasenadi Kosol. One solution is to create a Jana Sabha (or pradeshiya Sabha) system representing people, military and the temple, a Buddhist form of checks and balances at the local level. The officer will become real servants accountable for their actions and omissions.

Dayan Jayatilleka, who has become the self-appointed UNHRC and Modi’s agent in Sri Lanka, to promote MCC via 13-A,  must answer if what CJ Sansoni said in 1980 is  still a valid opinion. I wonder if Marxist, Christian, Euro-centric Dayan could meet Arun Siddharthan, who is a Tamil Che Guerra in the making, an anathema to Jaffna Eelam establishment.

Concluded.