Mindless emotionalism and absence of thinking in Tamil politics

With “Sinhala hegemony” in its most dramatic form, the advancing Sri Lankan armed forces, closing in, Sri Lankan Tamil nationalism could not convince the Tamil Nadu voter of its cause and case, then surely it is imperative that that cause and case be identified as fatally flawed?
If India with its 70 million Tamils could not be budged from its stance of low key but decisive support for the Sri Lankan state, surely there is no chance of leveraging any strategically significant Western support for Tamil nationalism, given that the main Asian partner of the USA is India?
Given that MG Ramachandran was alive and one of the causative factors of the Indo-Lanka accord with its resultant the 13th amendment, it is safe to conclude that with him gone, Sri Lanka’s Tamils cannot extract anything better from Colombo?
These are but three, fairly obvious yet vitally important issues –constituting samples–in the fundamental re-consideration that should have been underway in Tamil politics at least since May 19th 2009. Yet that reconsideration has not happened, which brings me to observe, intentionally provocatively, that there is no thinking in Tamil politics and there is instead, a mindless emotionalism.
Of course I do not mean that there is no thinking among Tamils as a community, still less that Tamils cannot think! Nor am I complaining that there is an absence of systematic ideas and ideologies in Tamil politics. That’s hardly a priority and could be a blessing. What I do mean is that there is no thinking through, in the sense of serious exercise of the faculties of intelligence and analysis, in Tamil politics. It may be said that the same is true if not truer of Sinhala politics, but then again, the Sinhalese need it less, thanks to demographic advantages and factor endowments, with the proof of the pudding being in the eating: the Tamil community is in far worse shape than the Sinhalese.
The absence of thinking is best evidenced in the refusal to accept reality and in the unreality of the attitudes and aims that manifest themselves in Tamil politics. This is true of the past as it is today. Examine the call for “balanced representation” or what is commonly referred to as fifty: fifty. How could anyone, including the British colonial power, accept a demand for reverse discrimination, wherein the combined minorities would have more representation than their numbers warranted, when it could not be demonstrated that the said minorities had suffered from a history of deprivation which is the sole justification for affirmative action?
Then let us take the refusal to accept anything less than the permanent merger of the Northern and eastern provinces as they are currently constituted, thereby ruling out either re-demarcation or referendum. This obduracy stymied a settlement in 1986 with Indian mediation. It made for an Accord with an Achilles heel, the merger subject to a referendum – while the opposition to a referendum opened up the giant loophole which the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Sarath N Silva, currently a supporter of the joint Opposition’s Presidential candidate, drove a cart and horses through, effecting a de-merger. The ridiculousness of the Tamil stand is best evidenced by the fact that the Good Friday agreement, which does NOT grant the Northern Irish Catholics the merger with the South they always wanted, is subject to interlocking referenda, including in the UK as a whole. Will any Tamil politician risk referenda in the Eastern province and all-island on the issue of the Northeast merger?
The LTTE and the TNA’s refusal to accept any version of President Kumaratunga’s quasi-federal political package and the Tigers boycott of the April 2003 Tokyo conference, just to mention two instances, betrayed a total absence of lucidity. The Diaspora’s decision to demonstrate under the Tiger flag in 2009, achieving visibility and nothing else, or rather, only a negative visibility which helped the GOSL case, contrasted with the diversity in the anti-Gaza War demonstrations world-wide, which achieved the severance of DPL ties between several Latin American nations and Israel. Most ludicrous was the strong sense among Tamils that India should intervene to stop Sri Lanka’s military operations and save the self-same Prabhakaran who had not even sought forgiveness for the murder of a former Prime minister of India who was the son of an illustrious Prime Minister and the grandson of an iconic world figure. As the kids say: “HELL-LO?!” Obviously the Tamil polity, especially in the Diaspora, just wasn’t thinking. That’s not because of a lack of brains but because fanaticism scrambles or aborts rational thought processes. It must be observed though, that we know since Wilhelm Reich, that it takes a certain kind of collective mind, of collective psyche, to be so susceptible to fanaticism for so long and in the face of such overwhelming evidence. Collective Tamil delusion is so strong that it has not been definitively punctured by the conclusive defeat at Nandikadal, which decorated war veteran John Kerry’s Report rightly observes, was “one of the few instances in modern history in which a terrorist group had been defeated militarily.
Most pertinent to the future of Sri Lanka’s Tamils and that of the island as a whole is the prism of delusion through which most – but not all – Tamils seem to regard the 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution. The TULF rejected the 13th amendment. The EPRLF took office in the Northeast provincial council in late 1988, having stated that it didn’t suffice and pledging to re-open negotiations. What was not understood was the plain truth that was being written in blood on Southern streets, namely that there was a huge upsurge of social opinion against the amendment which also barely squeaked past the Supreme Court. Nothing more was possible, not only because of the confines of the Jayewardene Constitution but because of public opposition. The 13th amendment was as good as it could get and the South was in a state of civil war over it, with the finest of Sinhala progressives, Vijaya Kumaratunga having lost his life in its defense. With almost no exceptions, the Tamils didn’t get it. What they should have done was to support the Indian state in the effort to implement the 13th amendment, in a sustained triangular partnership with the Sri Lankan state and whichever the elected government in Colombo; not embarrass and delegitimize by attempting to force the pace, calling itself a “provincial government” instead of a “provincial council” or “provincial administration”. The upshot of this adventurism was the dissolution of the Provincial council. In later years the de-merger took place, while the North has no functioning provincial administration to this day.