{"id":48632,"date":"2015-10-10T12:47:57","date_gmt":"2015-10-10T18:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=48632"},"modified":"2015-10-10T05:42:24","modified_gmt":"2015-10-10T12:42:24","slug":"a-lesson-for-cowardly-lankan-leaders-from-nepal-in-constitution-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/10\/10\/a-lesson-for-cowardly-lankan-leaders-from-nepal-in-constitution-making\/","title":{"rendered":"A Lesson for Cowardly Lankan Leaders from Nepal in Constitution Making"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dilrook Kannangara<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

After eight (8) years of deliberations, the Nepali parliament has finally approved its Constitution. Going by modern democratic standards, it is a fairly progressive constitution. Indian ethnic groups that are minorities in Nepal protested against it. India also protested against it claiming it doesn\u2019t represent the interests of minorities. These minority groups live in larger numbers in India.<\/p>\n

Failing to make an impact, India made a strong protest with a dictate of seven (7) amendments. However, Nepal didn\u2019t collapse under pressure as it stood its ground.<\/strong><\/p>\n

All must hail Nepali leaders\u2019 courage, commitment to democracy and exercising Nepal\u2019s right of self-determination. After all, they are elected to serve Nepali national interests, not Indian interests.<\/p>\n

There is a crucially important lesson for cowardly Sri Lankan leaders who are unwilling to touch the Indian imposed 13A (13th amendment) to the Constitution. India imposed it under similar conditions claiming it is a \u2018political solution\u2019 to the problems facing the island nation\u2019s Tamil minority numbering close to 3 million today. India is home to Tamils with over 72 million centralised in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu.<\/p>\n

13A is a recipe for disintegration, Indianisation and ethnic polarisation of the Sri Lankan society. It imposes the Indian governance model, which is based on ethnic enclaves. In India, people of a particular ethnic group is concentrated in a state (a territory). It is not the case in Sri Lanka where most Tamils living outside the north and east. 13A has created friction and conflicting interests in governance. It also imposed the Tamil language as an official language of Sri Lanka. It is absurd to recognise Tamil as an official language of Sri Lanka with a Tamil population of just 3 million when India doesn\u2019t recognise it as an official language despite its Tamil population of 72 million.<\/p>\n

13A was imposed in 1987 and all executive presidents have lived through it. Yet none had the courage to repeal it. Jayawardana, Premadasa, Wijetunga, Kumaratunga, Rajapaksa and Sirisena ruled the country since then but crumbled under Indian threats. Time to time India dictates the Lankan government to fully implement 13A. Sri Lankan leaders comply. As a result, Sri Lanka continues facing the separatism threat and Indianisation threat constantly despite winning the war against Tamil terrorists. Most hilarious is some Lankan leaders calling themselves heroes!<\/p>\n

Sri Lanka must learn a lesson from Nepal and change its constitution to meet national interests of Sri Lanka and its people as a whole. There should not be constitutional provisions to appease minorities.<\/p>\n

If concerned of Indian ethnic communities in neighbouring countries, India should take them into India. Interfering in other nations ridicules India\u2019s often-challenged claim to be the \u2018world largest democracy\u2019. In fact, it has conducted as the world\u2019s largest dictatorship. Germany invaded neighbouring countries during WW2 ostensibly to protect their German minorities. The world has not taken kindly to such invasions.<\/p>\n

Sri Lankans must act more decisively against India-appeasing leaders. None of them deserves to be called heroes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dilrook Kannangara After eight (8) years of deliberations, the Nepali parliament has finally approved its Constitution. Going by modern democratic standards, it is a fairly progressive constitution. Indian ethnic groups that are minorities in Nepal protested against it. India also protested against it claiming it doesn\u2019t represent the interests of minorities. These minority groups live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dilrook-kannangara"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48632","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=48632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}