What happens if and when the LTTE is vanquished?

by Anton J.N. Selvadurai

(June 18, London) This is the question that is in the minds of almost every one these days — especially the thousands of displaced Tamils from their homes in the northeast, whose homes have been occupied by the Sri Lanka Army for over 10 years.

Autonomy for the Tamils has been promised, but like a thousand broken promises one wonders whether any will be granted. The reasonable use of Tamil promised decades go is still to be officially implemented.

Will the Tamils be allowed to have all they need to fulfill their aspirations like in the various states of the US and India? Will they be allowed to live quite happily in the single unitary state of Sri Lanka with a sense of belonging?

Will the national cricket team include at least three to four Tamils selected purely on merit? I ask this question because it has not been happening all these years. Even in some schools ethnicity plays a part in the selection of teams.

The idea that Sri Lanka was more or less gifted to the Sinhala Buddhists by Lord Buddha seems to die hard and makes life quite difficult for the Tamil Hindus. The only hope is that there would be a change of thinking like in Turkey where they have decided to spend large amounts of money on the development of the infrastructure in Kurdish areas to reduce poverty, which feeds violence.

The Turks have been historically a very aggressive and violent people and have also been accused of a genocidal war against Armenia where millions of Armenians have been killed. The feudal war against the Kurds could have been avoided if they had been shown some sympathy and understanding and Kurdish areas had been developed instead of making them life-long enemies.

In Sri Lanka too, the Sinhala Buddhist majority allowed themselves to be overtaken by jealousy of the better-educated Tamils instead of acknowledging that their dry zone environment forced them into education for the sake of survival.

Using the glorious Buddhist principles of metta, karuna, muditha and upekka they should have developed the Tamil areas so that the Tamils would have remained in their home areas instead of coming down south and taking up job opportunities available to the Sinhalese.

However, this rational and intelligent thinking was overcome by jealousy — a very strong emotion — thanks to the ‘frogs in the well’ sangha and the political ambitions of Bandaranaike, Jayewardene and the rest.

All that is needed now is a small group of right thinking, honest statesmen to resolve this intractable problem or continue to live like fools when peace and prosperity is just a whisker away.