Since independence the Tamils of Sri Lanka seem to be immersed in a bottomless well of grievances and blame-shifting. Although there are no special laws to isolate the Tamils or any group for that matter, the Tamils have been meticulously building up an anti-Sinhala case. The traditional inventory of Tamil grievances is the result of this exercise.

The list of grievances is similar to the unsupported and imagined traditional homeland claim. Time and again the traditional homeland theory has been exploded by many historians. But it persists. Similarly the list of Tamil grievances never diminishes in spite of the remedial measures. On the language issue, the provision for reasonable use of Tamil in 1957 in the predominantly Tamil areas of the north and the east. Tamil becoming a national language in 1966 and finally gaining official language status is never mentioned.

The Sri Lankan government did not commit a heinous crime when Sinhalese was made the official language and ours is not the only country to have implemented a one language policy. Tom Nairn's dictum that when the masses were invited into history 'The invitation card had to be written in a language they understood,' holds good for Sri Lanka. The language often would be the language of the majority.

Let us remind ourselves what Sir Razeek Fareed said on the Languages Bill:

'A small country like ours cannot financially afford to have two streams of official languages and in addition English whereever necessary'. {Hansard col 1627 - 13 May '56).

He further said: '...in the argument against Sinhala Only being the official language is that numerical superiority alone should be no consideration then it is most unfair to ask parity of status for Sinhala and Tamil only because there should be parity of English in respect ofthe Burghers and Englishmen, Malay in respect of the Malays and Arabic in respect of the Moors'.

The communal riots of 1958, 1977 and 1983 are aberrations. In 1958, both Tamils and Sinhalese were victims of violence. The Sansoni Commission Report deals with the 1977 violence, and the 1983 violence was a stigma on the majority. The Sinhalese were concerned and were even ashamed. People of all communities should be able to live in harmony with self-respect. The Tamils have come back to live with the Sinhalese after the horrible 1983 riots, and this is not because of the LTTE guardianship. They did so in 1958 and 1977. That is because people realise that violence under provocation dies down. It is not so under a long-termed calculated programme. This is why there is ethnic cleansing in Jaffna. Today the Sinhalese and the Muslims cannot go back to their homes in Jaffna. The 'social process' in Jaffna (which Professor Suryakumaran claims was destroyed by the politicians) is now on the reverse gear leading to ethinc cleansing. It is a fallout of the preachings of the Tamil politicians.

Another item in the list of grievances is 'standardisation'. It was not aimed at the Tamil students. If as a result of standardisation the students of Jaffna suffered, so did the students of Colombo and Kandy. If on the other hand the students of remote areas like Moneragela benefitted under this scheme, so did the students of Mannar or Mullaitivu. It was a regional provision and not at all communal.

The professor speaks of 'near zero percentages of Tamil-speaking administative personnel' and the resulting of an alleged countrywide administrative divide. To get to the root cause of this grievance I quote Andreas Wimmer (Swiss Forum for Migration Studies at the University of Neuchatel Switzerland), who says... colonial practices of divide et impera gave rise to such a disadvantaged educated elite. For example, members of early Christianised or English-speaking ethnic minorities were often given preference in colonial administration such as Ibo in Nigeria, Baganda in Uganda, Bengalis in east India. Ewe in Togo, Tamils in Sri Lanka, Sikhs in the British Indian army and Tutsi in Burundi'. All these groups owed their positions to a colonial policy rather than to any special ability or brain power.

Wimmer elaborates further how the system worked: prior to the first riots in Sri Lanka, many Sinhalese were convinced that Tamil government employees would specially earmark documents of' their own people' so that their requests would be handled with higher priority'. Obviously there was cause for lament when the state bureaucracy took on a different ethnic tint after independence. This happened in Malaysia and Nigeria as Horowitz points out. Then comes the 'demographic policies', which are usually labelled colonisation. Even at present the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka have the major portion of unutilised land. The resettlement schemes were commenced during British times as R. A. G. Festing, Government Agent of the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka (1918) mentions in his foreword to Mudaliyar S. O. Canagaretnam's 'Monograph of the Batticaloa District'. Festing laments the decay ofthe Sinhalese population that were at one time 'flourishing'. He affirms: 'Two experimental colonisation schemes are being tried out at Lahugala and Tampitya, but is too early yet to say what success they will have in regenerating the Sinhalese here.' After independence these resettlement schemes continued where there was unutilized land.

Professor Suryakumaran emphasises that for long years the Tamil demand was participation in central government and not devolution. there are other views as to the nature of Tamil demands. For instance, S. Vanniasingham in his book 'The Conflict Within' unwittingly says: 'The Tamils were estranged from the national polity with the introduction of universal franchise.' He refers to P. Arunachalam's breakaway from the Ceylon National Congress in this manner; 'Thus the idea of Eelam really took shape conceptually when Arunachalam resigned from the National League because he had come to realise that the Sinhalese and the Tamils could never live together in harmony.' According to this view, the idea of Eelam took shape during P. Arunachalam's time in the 1920's. This is a view different to that of Professor Suryakumaran's. The professor's permanent commual majority is a phenomenon in many countries. Since only 9.1% or 12 states of the 132 states have homogenous populations there are either religious or communal majorities and minorities. The only aberration of a minority rule in the 20th Century was in South Africa where 14% of the whites ruled the blacks. The white minority rule ended in 1994.

Parliamentary democracy is a system based on majority decisions and the Soulbury Commission rejected all efforts of the Tamils to reduce the majority to a minority by artificial means. The Commission stated 'Any attempt by artificial means to covert a majority into a minority isnot only inequitable, but doomed to failure.'

By positing that parliament (symbolising the centre) must be supreme, Mr. Ravi Karunanayaka is more in keeping with modern times than Professor Suryakumaran. The modern world community is awakened to the ungovernable violence against the state perpetrated by the ethno-national movements. Theorists on nationalism such as Horowitz and Etzioni list their concerns against separatism, first and foremost of which is indefinite divisibility. This is also known as the domino effect. Canada is a good example to experience the reality of this theory.

The Quebec government demand for more autonomy has triggered further demands for transfer of authority to other provinces. These developments have emboldened the aboriginal community leaders to make their demands. The federal government has already ceded cantons to Cree-Naskapt in Quebec, the Sechelt Indian band in British Columbia and the Inuit in the Eastern Arctic. In our own country the Muslim community desires a region for themselves only if the Eastern Province would be carved out on ethnic lines.

Other concerns are the non - viability of the rump states, the danger of giving birth to non - viability of the rump states, the danger of giving birth to non - viable entities which would be a burden internationally, the damage done to the will of the majority and the ability of the minority to constantly blackmail the majority. The principles of territorial integrity and inviolability of frontiers followed by the principles of sovereignty, the rights of states to self-defence, non-intervention in a states' internal affairs, no threat or use of force against the state are becoming the 'peremptory norms' of international law.

Prior to 1992, Article 27 of 'The International Covenant on Civil and Political Right (ICCPR) stipulated the global minimum standard on state conduct specially directed at national minorities. (Incidentally there is no precise definition of national minorities in any document). This dealt mainly with cultural, religious and language rights of the minorities. The United National General Assembly Declaration Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic Religious and Linguistic Minorities of 1992 further enhanced the rights of minorities. At the same time Article 8 of this Declaration dealt with the sovereign equality, territorial integrity and political independence.

The trend in the world at present is to uphold the centre, which Mr. Ravi Karunanayaka expressed by saying that parliament must be supreme.

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