By Vishwamithra –

“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” ~James Baldwin, Stranger in the Village

Sri Lanka’s Tamil Question is not an insoluble political puzzle. It is a national tragedy prolonged by generations of politicians who discovered that ethnic suspicion could be converted into electoral victory, communal fear marketed as patriotism, and the denial of another community’s dignity celebrated as the defense of one’s own.

For nearly eight decades since Independence, thousands have perished, generations have suffered, and opportunities for national advancement have been sacrificed upon the altar of ethnic majoritarianism.

The most damning indictment is not that our leaders failed to discover a solution. It is that whenever the outlines of one became visible, they lacked the courage to pursue it.

The Tamil Question has survived governments of every political complexion: conservative, socialist, nationalist, liberal and revolutionary. Each inherited the problem. Almost every administration promised a solution. None delivered a durable and sustainable settlement.

And now it confronts Anura Kumara Dissanayake and his National People’s Power government.

Will history record another retreat?

The Poison That Preceded the War

The conflict’s origins lie partly in prejudices that preceded the first gunshot.

Among sections of the Sinhala-Buddhist majority, resentment towards Tamils was nourished by historical grievances, cultural insecurity and competition for educational and professional opportunities.

The disproportionate representation of Jaffna Tamils in certain professions and government employment during colonial rule was frequently portrayed as unfair privilege. Educational achievement, supported by missionary schooling and unequal colonial opportunities, became a source of communal jealousy rather than an incentive to extend educational facilities throughout the island.

Politicians found greater electoral advantage in exploiting resentment than correcting structural inequalities.

Not every Sinhalese embraced these prejudices, just as not every Tamil supported separatism. Yet majoritarian politics repeatedly elevated communal suspicion into public policy.

The citizenship legislation of 1948 and 1949, which disenfranchised large numbers of Indian-origin Tamils, demonstrated how readily the newly independent State could subordinate minority rights to political expediency.

The seeds of alienation were planted before Independence had properly taken root.

1956: When Language Became a Weapon

S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike’s electoral triumph in 1956 was proclaimed an awakening of the Sinhala-speaking masses. Genuine grievances existed: colonial privilege, linguistic exclusion and rural marginalization.

But the remedy was poisoned by communal exclusivity.

The Sinhala Only Act transformed language from an instrument of communication into a symbol of political ownership. Tamil-speaking citizens were effectively informed that their linguistic inheritance and rightful participation in government could be subordinated to majoritarian demands.

Bandaranaike was hardly alone.

The UNP competed for the same nationalist constituency. Political rivalry became a contest over who could appear less accommodating towards Tamil aspirations.

The Bandaranaike–Chelvanayakam Pact of 1957 offered a modest opening towards regional autonomy and linguistic accommodation. Opposition agitation, including J. R. Jayewardene’s march to Kandy, contributed to the pressures under which Bandaranaike abandoned the agreement.

Thus emerged Sri Lanka’s enduring political ritual: negotiate a compromise, denounce it as betrayal, retreat before nationalist agitation.

The nation inherited the consequences.

Chelvanayakam: The Peaceful Voice We Refused to Hear

SJV Chelvanayakam represented constitutional negotiation and nonviolent resistance.

His Federal Party’s satyagraha campaigns, particularly in 1961, demonstrated that Tamil grievances were articulated through peaceful civil disobedience long before armed separatism acquired its terrible momentum.

Men and women sat before government offices demanding linguistic equality and political accommodation. The State responded with emergency measures, military deployment and arrests.

What an extraordinary failure of political imagination! Citizens seeking constitutional recognition were treated as threats to national security.

The Dudley Senanayake–Chelvanayakam agreement of 1965 presented another opportunity. It, too, failed to deliver its promised settlement.

Successive governments were teaching Tamil citizens a devastating lesson: peaceful negotiation could produce signatures, but not results.

That lesson would eventually acquire consequences beyond the imagination of those responsible.

From Broken Promises to the LTTE

The 1970s deepened the alienation.

University admissions standardization under Sirimavo Bandaranaike disadvantaged many academically successful Tamil students. The 1972 Constitution reinforced Sinhala linguistic primacy and Buddhism’s foremost constitutional position. Increasing numbers of Tamil youth concluded that constitutional politics offered diminishing prospects.

The emergence of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 1976 must be understood against this background. Understanding, however, is not justification.

Velupillai Prabhakaran and the LTTE transformed legitimate grievances into a ruthless separatist insurgency. They murdered political opponents, assassinated leaders, recruited children, attacked civilians and suppressed dissent within Tamil society. Their expulsion of Muslims from the Northern Province in 1990 remains an especially shameful chapter.

The LTTE claimed to champion Tamil liberation while denying Tamils the liberty to disagree.

Yet the Sinhala political establishment cannot escape scrutiny for the conditions in which militancy flourished.

When peaceful protest is humiliated, agreements discarded and equal citizenship repeatedly denied, extremism finds fertile ground.

That does not excuse terrorism. It exposes the disastrous consequences of political shortsightedness.

Black July: The Republic’s Moral Collapse

July 1983 remains among Sri Lanka’s darkest chapters. Following the LTTE’s killing of thirteen soldiers, anti-Tamil violence engulfed parts of the country. Civilians were murdered, homes and businesses destroyed, and thousands displaced. J. R. Jayewardene’s administration bears grave responsibility for its failure to protect citizens amid evidence of political involvement in the violence.

The subsequent war consumed twenty-six years.

Ranasinghe Premadasa pursued controversial dealings with the LTTE while seeking the withdrawal of Indian forces. Chandrika Kumaratunga promised peace without achieving a durable settlement. Ranil Wickremesinghe’s 2002 ceasefire created possibilities that neither his government nor the LTTE converted into lasting reconciliation. Mahinda Rajapaksa presided over the LTTE’s military defeat in 2009. That victory ended its conventional military power, not the grievances preceding its emergence. Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s administration offered little convincing movement towards political reconciliation. Successive governments continued confusing the absence of war with the presence of peace.

A battlefield victory is not a constitutional settlement. A defeated insurgency is not a reconciled nation.

The Political Class: An Unbroken Record of Retreat

The UNP cannot claim innocence. The SLFP cannot plead ignorance. The Rajapaksas cannot invoke military victory as absolution from the obligations of reconciliation. Nor can the JVP escape examination. Its violent opposition to the Indo-Lanka Accord and Indian intervention during the late 1980s forms part of the political inheritance that today’s NPP must confront.

The Thirteenth Amendment, notwithstanding its shortcomings, established a framework for provincial devolution. Its contested implementation illustrates the distance between constitutional promise and political reality.

Tamil political leadership, too, deserves scrutiny. Maximalist rhetoric sometimes displaced practical negotiation, while the LTTE’s destruction of moderate alternatives devastated democratic pluralism.

These failures, however, are not interchangeable. The State carries an overriding constitutional obligation to protect every citizen.

Sri Lanka’s tragedy is that political actors repeatedly found greater advantage in preserving grievances than resolving them.

Aragalaya: The Possibility of Another Sri Lanka

The Aragalaya-22 offered a glimpse of something different.

For a brief historical moment, shared anger against corruption, economic collapse and entrenched privilege challenged the familiar vocabulary of communal division. Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims and others participated in a broader demand for accountability. The movement neither erased ethnic prejudice nor resolved the Tamil Question. Its participation and priorities were uneven.

Nevertheless, it suggested that political solidarity need not remain imprisoned within ethnic boundaries. A different civic imagination appeared possible. And that possibility now confronts AKD.

The Journey from Which There Is No Return

In an earlier column, I appealed to President Dissanayake to take that first step into an unfamiliar landscape, embarking upon a journey from which there could be no return. I wrote of an ancient promise lying dormant in Mother Lanka’s womb for twenty-five centuries, awaiting a generation courageous enough to awaken it.

That appeal was neither an invitation to political adventurism nor a plea for another national savior. It was a summons to abandon inherited prejudices, political calculations and suspicions that have imprisoned our collective conscience.

Nowhere is that summons more urgent than in the Tamil Question.

What meaning can national regeneration possess while the nation’s deepest division remains unresolved? What substance can promises of system change carry if equal citizenship remains hostage to political convenience?

The unfamiliar companions of that journey may be found among Tamil families in Jaffna, grieving mothers in Mullaitivu, Muslim communities in the Eastern Province and Sinhala villagers exhausted by poverty and broken promises. They may speak different languages, remember different histories and approach the NPP with different expectations. Yet they must belong equally to the Republic.

The first step of the unreturning journey is not another policy announcement. It is the recognition that Sri Lanka cannot become a new nation while preserving the old hierarchy of belonging.

Mother Lanka’s ancient promise cannot blossom in one province while remaining imprisoned in another.

AKD: History Will Not Accept Another Excuse

The NPP’s promise of a different political culture now faces a demanding examination. Meaningful devolution, enforceable language rights, the return of legitimately owned lands, accountability for disappearances, investigation of wartime abuses and reform of oppressive security legislation cannot remain indefinitely postponed.

These are not concessions wrested from a reluctant majority. They are obligations of democratic citizenship. Reconciliation cannot be achieved through speeches in Jaffna followed by silence in Colombo. Nor can a settlement disregard the legitimate concerns of Muslims, particularly in the Eastern Province.

The government must engage affected communities rather than prescribe reconciliation from the center. AKD must also confront his own movement’s historical positions and the temptation, familiar to every predecessor, to postpone difficult decisions for fear of alienating Sinhala voters.

That calculation has already consumed seventy-eight years.

The Final Test

AKD, take that first step.

Not because it guarantees political survival, but because political survival cannot be the highest purpose of leadership. Sri Lanka needs neither another commission whose report gathers dust nor another president who discovers courage only after leaving office. For generations, Tamil citizens have been asked to wait. Wait for peace. Wait for justice. Wait for equality. Wait for reconciliation.

Enough.

The Tamil Question is not merely a Tamil problem. It is an unresolved moral question confronting the Sri Lankan State.

The war ended in 2009. The journey towards reconciliation did not.

AKD, the first step I urged you to take now stands before you in its most demanding form: crossing the ancient divide between the communities of our island.

For a journey from which there is no return must lead away from inherited prejudice, away from political cowardice and towards a Republic belonging, without qualification, to all its people.

A nation cannot claim to have conquered terrorism while remaining captive to the prejudices that helped nourish it.

And Mother Lanka has waited long enough.

*The writer can be reached at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com