Shenali D Waduge

Sri Lanka’s political history cannot be understood without confronting the forces that repeatedly reshape public anger, class conflict, and ideological rebellion. Among these forces, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) stands out as a movement that began as a radical Marxist uprising of the oppressed, yet today operates within a political alliance aligned with ultra-capitalist, liberal global frameworks under the banner of the National People’s Power (NPP). This dramatic transformation raises a fundamental question: Did the JVP evolve naturally, or was it strategically redirected by internal wanna-be elites and external geopolitical forces?

To answer this, we must examine the JVP’s origins, ideological shifts, geopolitical entanglements, the post-2015 political re-engineering of Sri Lanka, and the resulting transformation of both leadership and support base.

The JVP emerged at a time when Sri Lanka faced socio-economic changes, ideological infiltration, Cold War geopolitics and youth became a tool of manipulation.

Youth are prone to manipulation when they are vulnerable:

• Educated but unemployed youth. Universities became hotbeds of frustration.
• Rural poverty & inequality – national policies failed to deliver rural development, structural inequalities were not dealt by the traditional parties (UNP / SLFP)
• Collapse of faith in political elites
• Language marginalisation
• Educational bottlenecks
• Blocked social mobility

These factors converged, could easily sway sentiments of the educated but unemployed youth and fuel anger sufficient enough to rebel.

The Cold War years turned nations like Sri Lanka into an ideological battleground (1960s-1970s)

• USSR & China aggressively exported Marxist ideology
• India hosted multiple Marxist revolutionary movements
• Cuba exported insurgency models worldwide
• Vietnam War era radicalised global youth culture

These ideals were imported or plugged into the minds of Sri Lanka’s youth via

• Foreign scholarships
• Political training camps
• Literature networks
• University student exchanges
• Underground printing & propaganda supply

Thus, revolutionary doctrines became part and parcel of Sri Lankan student politics.

While this change was taking place in the minds of Sri Lanka’s youth, India viewed Sri Lanka through a security-dominance lens. This dominance was to prevent Sri Lanka

• Aligning with Western or Chinese military blocs
• Maintain regional dominance
• Ensure Colombo remains politically unstable enough to be manageable

When objectives are clear the next is to execute how to politically make Sri Lanka unstable.

Youth was key.

• Internal rebellion weakens central authority
• Keeps security forces inward-focused
• Prevents external military alliances

Internal destabilization indirectly served Indian strategic leverage — even without direct operational control.

India did not require formal sponsorship – simply soft facilitation and political shielding.

Tamil youth taken and trained in various camps across India created the Eelam separatist movement.

Was JVP handled in the same manner? If so by whom & for what reasons?

The transformation of the JVP came post-2015 – a period that saw

• Intelligence services weakened
• Military politically constrained
• Strategic paralysis induced
• Foreign security integration expanded

It was after security neutralization that political engineering of minds took shape and place.

Interlinked with this has been the diaspora-transnational” advocacies in the form of

1. Pro-LTTE groups living overseas
2. JVP runaways and JVP ideological sharing support-base living overseas.

There is an uncanny alliance in the manner both integrate against the State:

• Tamil diaspora lobbying
• Western NGO legal attacks
• UNHRC pressure
• Sanctions threat

This external pressure is a mechanism to maintain constant political vulnerability and keep every government on toes.

How many of Sri Lanka’s post-independence leaders have actually understood Sri Lanka’s geopolitical importance and its impact on internal and external affairs and the dynamics at play and protecting what external elements are out to grab?

Why Sri Lanka mattered then and now:

• Shipping lanes
• Naval access
• Intelligence positioning
• Cold War containment strategies

Every nation that had some form of geopolitical importance experienced proxy insurgencies to

• Pressure governments
• Influence alignments
• Force economic dependency
• Prevent nationalist consolidation

Every revolutionary movement use psychological engineering to win support:

Techniques used to convert personal frustration into ideological rage:

• Victimhood narrative building
• Elite demonization
• State oppression framing
• Heroic martyr creation
• Romanticising armed struggle

The JVP mastered this psychological conversion process.

Weaponization Youth Idealism

The JVP leadership channeled legitimate grievances into violent revolutionary ideology that permanently laid to rest thousands of youth both in the 1970s and 1980s, while the LTTE also stands guilty of.

What could these youth have become had they not fallen prey to romanticized revolutionary mind-control.

This is a classic youth weaponization strategy and a cut and paste from other movements.

Youth Emotion	Ideological Reframing
Unemployment	Systemic oppression
Poverty	Class warfare
Injustice	Armed liberation
Frustration	Revolutionary duty
Identity loss	Marxist nationalism

We have unanswered questions:

• Why the JVP rose
• Why it gained rapid growth
• Why it was intensely violent
• Why external silence surrounded its growth

The converted Youth became ideological foot soldiers of a geopolitical struggle which the youth themselves were oblivious of.

Sri Lankan youth died for geopolitical games they never understood.

JVP youth

LTTE youth all fell prey.

They believed they were fighting:

• Injustice
• Oppression
• Exploitation

They were merely:

• Instruments of destabilization
• Disposable revolutionary assets

Let us compare the JVP with other revolutionary movements

1. Nepal Maoists (CPN-M)

Feature	JVP (Sri Lanka)	Nepal Maoists
Youth Base	Rural educated unemployed	Rural educated unemployed
Ideology	Marxist–Leninist–Maoist	Marxist–Leninist–Maoist
Recruitment	Student cells + villages	Student cells + villages
Structure	Hybrid political–militant	Hybrid political–militant
Tactics	Sudden mass uprising	Prolonged people’s war
India Factor	Strategic tolerance	Strategic facilitation
Outcome	Military defeat → political reintegration	Military stalemate → political takeover

2. Naxalite Movement (India)

Component	JVP	Naxalites
Target	Rural youth	Tribal & rural youth
Method	Underground cells	Guerrilla zones
Narrative	State oppression	State exploitation
Ideology	Maoism	Maoism
Recruitment	Universities + villages	Universities + villages

3. Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) — Peru

Feature	JVP	Shining Path
Leadership	Educated ideologues	University professor
Base	Rural youth	Rural peasants
Ideology	Maoist	Maoist
Violence	High	Extreme
Indoctrination	Heavy	Total

4. FARC (Colombia)

FARC shows how hybrid insurgent-political movements sustain themselves for decades once embedded in social grievances.

The Insurgency Template

All these movements followed the same five-stage evolutionary template:

Stage 1 — Social Grievance Accumulation

Stage 2 — Ideological Injection

Stage 3 — Hybrid Party Formation

Stage 4 — Clandestine Militarization

Stage 5 — Revolutionary Escalation

Now that we have understood the pattern in youth-centred revolutionary movements let us proceed to understand the dynamics that merged JVP with neo-liberal NPP, an ideology that the JVP sustained its wrath against.

To understand this status quo we must return to 2015 regime change after which the 3 main political parties were split. SLFP split to create SLPP, UNP split to create SJB and JVP split to create NPP.

Other than Tilwin the General Secretary of the JVP, all top brass of the JVP are members of the NPP.

After 2015:

• 19A dismantled executive concentration
• Judicial activism expanded
• Independent commissions multiplied
• Governance NGO architecture embedded

This created: Permanent institutional leverage over elected authority – political capture without institutional control is temporary.

Who actually wanted to weaken the institutions & why is a clue to the minds behind these changes.

Historically, JVP ideology was rooted in:

• Anti-imperialism
• Anti-capitalism
• Anti-elite politics
• Anti-Western influence
• State-centered economic thinking
• Revolutionary populism

Yet today, the NPP platform exhibits:

• Neoliberal economic accommodation
• Western diplomatic alignment
• IMF-friendly macroeconomic positioning
• Global governance language
• NGO-compatible human rights framing
• Technocratic economic discourse

This represents a sharp ideological pivot, not gradual evolution and questions how many in the traditional JVP camp are agreeable with this pivot/shift.

More importantly, we must ask Can such a transformation emerge purely from internal strategic recalibration — or does it usually require external facilitation?”

Let us assume that the pivot came from an internal strategic evolution: yet for such to happen the leadership has to take stock of:

1. Electoral Realism

• Armed struggle failed.
• Revolutionary politics failed.
• Only electoral legitimacy could deliver power.

2. Middle-Class Capture

• Leadership increasingly drawn from:
  • Urban professionals
  • NGO circles
  • Academia
• International exposure groups
• Class orientation gradually shifted.

3. Generational Ideological Dilution

• New cadres lack revolutionary conditioning.
• Ideology replaced by technocratic pragmatism.

4. Survival Strategy

• To gain legitimacy:
  • Moderate language
  • Accept global economic frameworks
  • Rebrand as governance-capable
  • Fed-up with the failed format followed since inception!

However, this does not fully explain:

• Speed of transformation
• Diplomatic acceptance
• Media normalization
• International policy alignment
• Rapid external legitimacy

All of the above elements usually accompany external reinforcement.

The second scenario is the merger/shift as an outcome of external strategic facilitation.

This appears highly plausible.

Foreign sponsorship is not required, only externally influenced validation, narrative alignment and boosting them via social media channels. This is exactly what took place.

Such scenarios are externally operated using:

1. NGO & Civil Society Ecosystem
   • Training
   • Policy workshops
   • Governance programs
   • Leadership fellowships
   • Exposure visits

2. Diplomatic Grooming

• Selective diplomatic engagement
• Western embassy interactions
• Think-tank exposure
• Strategic dialogue forums

3. International Economic Institutions invitations
   • IMF / World Bank ideological normalization
   • Market reform framing
   • Technocratic capacity-building

4. Media Narrative Engineering

• Rebranding of revolutionary past – new hero/heart-throb
• Legitimization of new political identity
• Image normalization in international press

5. Elite Political Legitimization

• Academic endorsement
• Policy advisory incorporation
• Western-aligned intellectual support

Revolutions change rulers — not ruling classes. This understanding is important to understand how easy it is for so-called revolutionary leaders living unluxurious  lifestyles to be swayed into a life of ultra-luxuries and to compromise the support base to enjoy those luxuries in their final years of holding power, fully aware that their control is approaching full circle.

The leaders who used psychological engineering to capture youth, themselves have been psychologically programmed to embrace a life of luxuries compromising those youth & the ideals their party originally stood for.

This change became with the emergence of the NPP and the marriage of convenience with the JVP.

Post-2015 and post-NPP:

• Same elite families
• Same corporate networks
• Same NGO circuits
• Same international policy handlers

It is important to understand that class structure never changed with regime change. The same class circles rebranded.

That rebranding did not change

• Why frustration persists
• Why inequality deepens
• Why disillusionment accelerates

Let’s now ask – Did external actors support such a transformation & why”

From a geopolitical standpoint: When a radical nationalist-left movement becomes a liberal, IMF-aligned, globally compliant political force it becomes an extraordinary strategic victory.

This change has converted:

• A system challenger (JVP) into a system changer aligned with liberal policies.
• A nationalist disruptor (JVP) now silencing opposition and aligning as global order participant
• A revolutionary force (JVP) using clout to peddle western/indian economic compliance

For the minds that control – This:

• Ensures political stability as per foreign dictates
• Protects external economic interests not necessarily national
• Guarantees debt discipline as per external dictates without internal opposition
• Neutralizes nationalist resistance making government authority superior

JVP-NPP is not the only party that has been subverted into compliance.

1. Nepal Maoists → IMF-compliant government
2. ANC (South Africa) → Neoliberal economic custodian
3. Sandinistas (Nicaragua) → Electoral-liberal hybrid
4. FMLN (El Salvador) → Market accommodation
5. Former Eastern Bloc Communists → EU liberal integration

Ironically, every revolutionary movement eventually became neoliberal administrators — following external institutional integration.

So much for Lenin, Stalin and Marx.

These are mere cosmetic ornaments in party offices now.

If we are to understand the marriage of convenience between the JVP and NPP the hybrid set up appears the merging of internal brains + external strategic facilitation to bring about a rapid political transformation that is not in the interest of the Nation or rather to dismantle every pillar that keeps the nation together.

This shift came as a result of

• Internal leadership converted into power opportunity (when people saw no alternative)
• External systems offered pathway legitimacy (international PR props)
• Both converged into a mutually beneficial alignment (not for the JVP traditional support base or even the disgruntled supporters that left the traditional parties thinking NPP would provide political relief)

This alliance resulted in electoral victory with supporters falsely thinking they created a memorable change.

Memorable no doubt, when with guilt they witness every pillar being dismantled before their very eyes.

The JVP ideology of pre 2015 which could never win:

• Urban elites
• Business sector
• International acceptance
• Financial system trust
• Media legitimacy
• Diplomatic comfort

Yet, the post-2015 JVP-NPP liberal alliance supplied:

• Middle-class credibility
• Global legitimacy
• Economic governance framing
• Institutional acceptability

Without this there would have been no electoral victory.

Therefore, those that provided the props to bring that victory must realize that the artificial nature of the alliance is unlikely to be long lasting especially when the pillars that have enabled victory are now dithering towards collapse.

A controlled ideological migration — from revolutionary nationalism to managed liberal governance — enabled by both internal pivot and external strategic facilitation is never long-term.

The cracks are already appearing.

The collapse comes from the very downtrodden classes the party assured to represent but has now neglected and politically disempowered after coming to power.

Every political system contains two structurally opposed forces:

1) Those who benefit from the system

• Economic elites
• Political elites
• Bureaucratic classes
• Corporate and financial interests
• Institutional beneficiaries

They wish to preserve what they enjoy

2) Those who feel excluded or trapped by the system

• Unemployed youth
• Marginalized workers
• Rural populations
• Lower-middle classes
• Displaced or downwardly mobile groups

They demand change & redistribution.

Structural inequality is permanent which means political conflict is permanent.

What periodically changes are

• Elections
• Protests
• Trade union action
• Identity politics
• Culture wars
• Revolutions

Political systems survive by managing, not eliminating, this tension by

• Allowing limited protest
• Creating opposition parties
• Channeling anger into elections
• Offering symbolic reforms
• Periodically reshuffling elites

This keeps the dissatisfied hopeful enough not to revolt, and the elites secure enough not to repress totally.

In this set up Youth are easy to manipulate.

Every major political upheaval — French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, Arab Spring, JVP, Nepal Maoists — followed this pattern.

Youth sit between classes:

• Not yet beneficiaries
• No accumulated security
• High expectations
• High frustration
• High energy

External powers exploit this structure

Because class tension already exists, external actors do not need to create it —  they only need to:

• Amplify it
• Channel it
• Reframe it
• Redirect it

Foreign influence always works through domestic grievance, never against it.

Movements like:

• JVP → NPP
• Maoists → Liberal democrats
• Islamists → Technocratic reformers

work because they:

• Speak to the anger of the excluded
• While reassuring the interests of the elite

Politics is not a moral battle.
It is a structural class management system.

The answer is found in who controls the direction of dissatisfaction?

Sri Lanka’s instability persists because:

• The excluded classes are expanding
• The elite system remains structurally unchanged
• External economic pressure intensifies class stress
• Political movements continuously repackage grievance without resolving structure

This provides permanent political turbulence.

Political systems don’t collapse when people are poor.

They collapse when people believe the system is rigged permanently against them.

That belief — whether fully true or partially constructed — is the real fuel of political change.

JVP began as a revolutionary movement seeking system overthrow

JVP-NPP became a hybrid political actor seeking a global pat on back for compliance.

Movements born to destroy systems often end up becoming the system’s most effective managers.

The journey of the JVP from armed Marxist rebellion to parliamentary neoliberal alliance is not merely a story of political evolution. It is a textbook example of how revolutionary energy is neutralized, redirected, and absorbed into global power systems.

What began as a movement to overthrow elite domination now functions within the very structures it once sought to dismantle. This transformation reflects not only leadership ambition but also a deeper geopolitical strategy that systematically reshapes political landscapes through fragmentation, ideological realignment, and regime engineering.

Political rebranding without structural reform simply recycles discontent, it does not resolve it.

Sri Lanka’s crisis is rooted in the capture of political systems, leadership pipelines, and national narratives by external interests, aided by internal elite complicity. Recognizing this, neutralizing this, is the first step toward reclaiming national agency.

The solution does not lie in outdated ideologies or imported neoliberal frameworks, but in forging a new national political synthesis grounded in:

• Ethical leadership
• Economic sovereignty
• Productive nationalism
• Social justice through opportunity
• Strategic global engagement without surrender

This demands a new political culture, built on pride in the past historically/heritage, civic education, national narrative restoration, and leadership renewal.

Sri Lanka’s future will not be secured by those who exploit class anger or preserve privilege, but by those capable of reawakening national consciousness, rebuilding institutional integrity, and restoring sovereign self-governance.

Shenali D Waduge