President Jayewardene continues to baffle. Once again he has repeated the charge that Tamil Tigers seek and receive assistance, including arms and training, in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The charge is, of course, false in substance. But right now that is not the central issue. The issue is: What does President Jayewardene hope to achieve by such utterances? The superficial view would be that he is trying to appease the Sinhalese extremists who abound in his own government and security forces in order that he may strengthen his position sufficiently to be able to open discussions with the Tamil United Liberation Front. But if that is in fact his calculation, it is a mistaken one. For, in the process he is tending legitimacy to the Sinhalese chauvinists and queering the pitch for the proposed talks with the TULF. When President Jayewardene himself accuses an Indian state and thereby New Delhi, even if by implication and not by direct statement, of training and arming Tamil terrorists, he is strengthening the case of the Sinhalese extremists that they have no choice but to crush the Tamil resistance and that India has no title to act as a mediator between the Sri Lanka government and the TULF. It would have been a different matter if he was trying to convince the chauvinists around him that the consequences of their continued anti-Tamil hostility could be disastrous. But, as far as we know, President Jayewardene is doing nothing of the kind. Instead of conveying to them the bitter truth that the recent anti-Tamil pogroms have lost Sri Lanka the goodwill of civilized men and women all over the world, he is telling them that no country is supporting the Tamil demand for a separate state as if this is the issue.
President Jayewardene must know as well as anyone else that this is not the issue. Tamil separatism is not sui generis. It is the product of the deliberate discrimination, harassment and worse that they have been exposed to for a long time. He must also know that the preplanned anti-Tamil pogroms in July, however terrible, were only the culmination of what his security forces had been doing to them, especially in the Jaffna area, since he first proclaimed a state of emergency there. The surprise, if any, therefore is not that the Tamils in Sri Lanka have come to demand a separate state or that they receive sympathy among fellow Tamils in Tamil Nadu, but that they are still willing to explore the possibility of finding a solution which preserves Sri Lanka’s unity. It is about time he faces up to the reality and persuades his Sinhalese compatriots to do so. Mrs. Gandhi has bought him and herself some time in which to resolve the problem. But she cannot stretch it beyond an extent.