{"id":108858,"date":"2020-11-20T16:18:30","date_gmt":"2020-11-20T23:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=108858"},"modified":"2020-11-20T16:18:30","modified_gmt":"2020-11-20T23:18:30","slug":"national-integration-and-13th-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/11\/20\/national-integration-and-13th-a\/","title":{"rendered":"National integration and 13th A"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>N.A.de S. Amaratunga<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>National integration\nwould mean that in a country which is inhabited by several ethnic communities\neveryone would harbour similar feelings and thinking about matters of national\ninterest like independence, territorial integrity, sovereignty etc. Development\nof such sentiments cannot be forced on a people. In this regard what the Indian\nphilosopher S. Radhakrishna said may be of relevance.&nbsp; He has said national integration cannot be\nmade by brick and mortar but should be allowed to develop through education.\nWithout a mutual feeling of respect for one another&#8217;s language, religion and\nculture among people national integration of the type defined above is\nimpossible to achieve. Such feelings would come only with education. It is\nperhaps this truism that made Radhakrishna utter those words of wisdom. Laws\nand Constitutions cannot impose something that only education could instill by\na gradual process.&nbsp; There may not be any\nother method, or substitute, capable of bringing about such a change.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Constitution of\na country should not be an obstacle to the development of such feelings in\npeople of different faiths, languages and cultures. It must ensure that all are\nequally treated by government institutions, have equal opportunity in\neducation, employment, and space for economic and cultural development.\nHowever, the Constitution, whatever form it may take, cannot force national\nintegration on people whether they are a majority or a minority. A Constitution\ncan only provide for laws that would prevent obstacles being put in the way to\nnational integration. For instance discrimination of a particular communal\ngroup would be an obstacle to national integration. The Constitution must&nbsp; provide for the enactment of laws that act\nagainst discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is in this\ncontext that the 13<sup>th<\/sup> Amendment should be viewed. It is often said\nthat the implementation of the 13<sup>th<\/sup> Amendment to the Constitution\nwhich came into being as a result of the Indo-Lanka Accord entered into in July\n1987, would result in national integration. The 13<sup>th<\/sup> A provides for\nProvincial Councils which attempts power-sharing at provincial level. As\nmentioned above the Constitution if it is to facilitate national integration it\nmust treat all the ethnic communities equally and must not try to satisfy one\ngroup at the expense of another. If it does it would be an obstacle rather than\na facilitator for national integration. This may happen if political\npower-sharing is attempted with the provinces as the unit of devolution. Most\nof the Provinces in Sri Lanka have multi-ethnic populations where one ethnic\ncommunity is in the majority while there are enclaves of other communities who\nwould be minorities in a particular province. Creation of autonomous\nterritorial units out of these provinces would result in these minority groups\nlosing their umbilical connection with the central government&nbsp; to a significant degree and being brought\nunder a provincial power. In other words a law which attempts to solve the\nproblems of minority communities would create new&nbsp; minorities with attendant issues in each of\nthese Provinces. For instance in the Eastern Province Sinhalese would be a\nminority with regard to political power and they may be concerned of being\ndiscriminated. Such an eventuality may not facilitate national integration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Further, several\nauthoritative world wide surveys have shown that power-sharing measures as a\nsolution to ethnic conflict have not been successful. There had been 78\ncountries in Asia, Africa,&nbsp; Middle East,\nEastern Europe, former USSR and the Caribbean which were in intense ethnic\nconflict during 1980 to 2010. Of these only 20 managed to conclude inter-ethnic\npower sharing arrangements, many failed, some experienced genocide eh. Rwanda\nin 1993 and others ended with secession eg. Sudan in 2005. Only 4 to 6 achieved\nstable arrangements but even these have serious political instability (Horowitz\nD, 2014).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following are few\nextracts from these research works;  The core reason why power-sharing cannot\nresolve ethnic conflict is that it is voluntaristic; it requires conscious\ndecisions by elites to cooperate to avoid ethnic strife. Under conditions of\nhypernationalist mobilisation and real security threats, group leaders are\nunlikely to be receptive to compromise and even if they are they cannot act\nwithout being discredited and replaced by harder-line rivals\u201d (Kaufmann, 1997).\nProposals for devolution abound, but more often than not devolution agreements\nare difficult to reach and once reached soon abort\u201d (Horowitz, 1985).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That Sri Lanka\nprovides ample evidence in support of the above research findings could easily\nbe seen in its experience with its own Provincial Councils. Of the nine PCs the\nworst failure was seen in relation to the Northern PC where it was supposed to\nbe essential for the solution of the ethnic conflict. Its Chief Minister after\nwillingly contesting for the post, made use of the opportunity to loudly engage\nin secessionist rhetoric and propaganda. Some Tamil leaders who engage in such\ntreacherous activity are believed to be funded by pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora. How\ncould anybody believe that the full implementation of the 13<sup>th<\/sup> A\nwould not provide&nbsp; greater opportunity\nfor such secessionist activity with greater collusion between internal and\nexternal separatist elements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In consideration of\nthe above what would be more suitable for Sri Lanka is a power-sharing\nmechanism at the centre which would suit its geography of ethnicity where in\nmost areas there is a mixture of ethnic groups and 50% of minorities live\noutside the North and the East. If all possibility of discrimination of\nmajority or minority communities is avoided and people are allowed to learn to\nrespect each other&#8217;s different cultures there would develop common feelings and\nthinking about national issues which would be the national integration that has\neluded us all these years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>N.A.de S. Amaratunga<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>N.A.de S. Amaratunga National integration would mean that in a country which is inhabited by several ethnic communities everyone would harbour similar feelings and thinking about matters of national interest like independence, territorial integrity, sovereignty etc. Development of such sentiments cannot be forced on a people. In this regard what the Indian philosopher S. Radhakrishna [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-n-a-de-s-amaratunga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}