{"id":49667,"date":"2012-07-28T18:21:32","date_gmt":"2012-07-28T18:21:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=49667"},"modified":"2012-07-30T20:03:16","modified_gmt":"2012-07-30T20:03:16","slug":"the-25th-anniversary-of-the-indo-lanka-accordit-is-time-to-abrogate-the-13th-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/the-25th-anniversary-of-the-indo-lanka-accordit-is-time-to-abrogate-the-13th-amendment\/","title":{"rendered":"The 25th Anniversary Of The Indo-Lanka Accord:It Is Time To Abrogate The 13th Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By<\/strong>\u00a0<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Malinda+Seneviratne&amp;x=16&amp;y=4\">Malinda Seneviratne<\/a>\u00a0&#8211;<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_44732\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/expatriate-tamils-and-the-dimensions-of-culpability\/malinda\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-44732\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-44732\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-44732\" title=\"Malinda\" src=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Malinda-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Malinda-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Malinda-50x50.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-44732\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Malinda Seneviratne<\/p><\/div>\n<p>What are the landmark political moments of post-Independence Sri Lanka?\u00a0 We could mention Independence Day, the 22<sup>nd<\/sup> of May 1972 when we became a republic, the shift to the \u2018open economy\u2019 in 1977, the scripting of the 1978 Constitution, July 1983, the 1988-89 <em>bheeshanay<\/em>, the passing of the ill-fated 17<sup>th<\/sup> Amendment in 2001 and the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009.\u00a0 And yes, the 29<sup>th<\/sup> day of July, 1987.\u00a0 The last is the least mentioned by those who are asked to respond to the question posed.\u00a0 And yet, just like the 1977 Constitution, the 13<sup>th<\/sup> Amendment and the Indo-Lanka Accord that birthed it have had lasting and devastating impacts on Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans.<\/p>\n<p>It is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-tale-of-two-interventions\/\">25 years after the fact.\u00a0 Col. R. Hariharan<\/a>, a retired Indian military intelligence who served with the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka as Head of Intelligence and who is a regular commentator on military and political affairs in South Asia has offered a recap of sorts.\u00a0 <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/a-tale-of-two-interventions\/\">He has compared two Indian interventions, in East Pakistan and Sri Lanka<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>India-lovers have bent over backwards to tell Sri Lankans that India is a friend and was here to help us.\u00a0 They have and they will.\u00a0 Hariharan puts it bluntly.\u00a0 He admits that it was not a love-affair, but one informed by strategic goals.\u00a0 Nothing wrong in that.\u00a0 Countries must do what\u2019s best for countries.\u00a0 That \u2018doing\u2019 should be read just like that and not sugar-coated with silly terms like \u2018friendship\u2019 and \u2018concern\u2019.\u00a0 In short, India was not doing Sri Lanka any favours.\u00a0 We have it now from the mouth of the top intelligence officer.<\/p>\n<p>Hariharan laments that the Accord failed in Sri Lanka: \u2018The devolution of powers to the Tamil minority promised in the Accord remains unfulfilled despite the 13th Amendment. But the Accord retains the potential as an instrument of Indian influence in the region.\u2019<\/p>\n<p>The second part of this lament should be flagged.\u00a0 So let us flag: \u2018Potential as an instrument of Indian influence in the region\u2019.\u00a0 So, for all the shop-talk about \u2018redressing Tamil grievances\u2019 the Accord (and also the 13<sup>th<\/sup> Amendment) was about \u2018Indian influence in the region\u2019, Messers R. Sampanthan and M. Sumanthiran please note.<\/p>\n<p>Hariharan has to defend frill of course and we are sympathetic to this need.\u00a0 He says, \u2018The most significant achievement of the Accord was the introduction of the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution which provided a degree of autonomy to the newly created provinces and it still exists as the only constitutional tool available to redress Tamil grievances\u2019.<\/p>\n<p>He does not outline \u2018Tamil Grievances\u2019 (note, not \u2018aspirations\u2019) and therefore does not have to link the territory-based \u2018solution\u2019 to a problem that can be articulated in territorial terms.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t have to deal with the fact that there is no history that Tamil nationalists can come up with to give beef to the whine about \u2018traditional homelands\u2019.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t have to deal with the demographic reality of the majority of Tamils living outside the Northern and Eastern provinces.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t have to talk about ethnic cleansing by the LTTE and can be silent about identity-related population densities in the Eastern Province.<\/p>\n<p>Hariharan confesses that Indian had no clue about ground realities.\u00a0 He passes the buck to \u2018civil intelligence\u2019 of course, but the bottom line is ignorance.\u00a0 It is clear that realization is yet to dawn.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing wrong in Indians being patriotic, after all Arundathi Roy (activist) and Harsha Bhogle (cricket columnist) have become very defensive when India seems at risk of break-up or India is critiqued, respectively.\u00a0 Hariharan, moreover, is a military man and not an academic.<\/p>\n<p>What has the Accord done, though, quite apart from trying to satisfy Indian strategic interests?\u00a0 Here, in Sri Lanka, that day in late July twenty five years ago was marked by the burning of buses.\u00a0 It gave an impetus to the JVP which quickly donned a nationalist garb and fed on general public dismay.\u00a0 Close to 60,000 people died in two bloody years.\u00a0 The 13<sup>th<\/sup> Amendment helped legitimize Eelam mythmaking, turning randomly drawn provincial boundaries into borders of a fictional homeland.\u00a0 That boundary line has kept feeding narrow Tamil communalist politicians and politics.<\/p>\n<p>The debate should not be about 13 Plus or 13 Minus, but when (and not if) the 13<sup>th<\/sup> will be abrogated.\u00a0 India is welcome to its strategic interests.\u00a0 Sri Lanka must be about Sri Lankans and their collective present and future.\u00a0 Fiction doesn\u2019t help.\u00a0 Applauding and legitimating fiction leads to tragedy.\u00a0 The 13<sup>th<\/sup> Amendment caused blood to flow.\u00a0 Our children need not bleed too to keep alive that discredited document and certainly not to satisfy India\u2019s strategic interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":44732,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - 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