India’s move to name the Jaffna Cultural Centre after the Tamil poet-philosopher, Thiruvalluvar, is a symbolic gesture by New Delhi to reinforce the unbreakable bond with Sri Lanka. When sections of Sri Lankan Tamils were agitated originally over the omission of ‘Jaffna’ in the Centre’s nomenclature, the Indian authorities were swift in their course correction. It is now called the “Jaffna Thiruvalluvar Cultural Centre”, a recent landmark, built by the Indian government. No one needs to emphasise the significance of bilateral ties between the two south Asian neighbours, which have a shared history and culture.
In the last 40-odd years, the nature of political relations has undergone significant changes ever since the 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom in Sri Lanka drew India in to play the role of a mediator, initially, and that of an active player, later, in the attempt to resolve the vexatious ethnic problem. It was such a complex relationship that led to the signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord of 1987 and the consequent 13th Amendment (13A) to Sri Lanka’s Constitution, creating a new layer of government — Provincial Councils — and granting it limited autonomy. At that time, the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) — the party to which Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake belongs — was among those which opposed the Accord and the Amendment. According to critics, the two were considered to be impositions of India on Sri Lanka.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was another critic and then the most important Tamil force, was not happy with the settlement formula. The LTTE was for the division of Sri Lanka and the creation of a Tamil Eelam (encompassing the Tamil-majority Northern and Eastern provinces), an idea that India can never agree with.
India’s nudges on 13A
Despite the passage of over 35 years, the crucial Amendment has not yet been given a fair trial, especially in the Tamil-speaking areas of Sri Lanka, even though the Provincial Councils, there in most parts of the country, functioned between 1988 and 2019.
Successive Indian leaders have been urging their Sri Lankan counterparts for the “early, full or effective implementation” of 13A. In fact, when India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar met Mr. Dissanayake in Colombo in early October 2024 to invite him formally to visit India, he too referred to this much-used phrase.
But, the absence of any explicit reference to the Amendment in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s public remarks during Mr. Dissanayake’s state visit to New Delhi in December 2024 has raised the question whether India has begun distancing itself from the issue of the implementation of 13A. Even though it is too early to arrive at any conclusion, as Mr. Modi did call for “fully implementing the Constitution of Sri Lanka and conducting the Provincial Council elections”, one is tempted to recall the suggestion made by Mr. Jaishankar, in his capacity as Foreign Secretary, in February 2017, to the now-defunct Tamil National Alliance to move beyond the merger issue. The Northern and Eastern provinces had remained together nearly for 20 years till the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka annulled such an arrangement in October 2006.
Mr. Modi’s silence is to be viewed against the backdrop of the JVP’s traditional position on the Amendment. It is not yet clear whether Sri Lanka’s ruling coalition of the JVP-led National People’s Power (NPP) still favours the repeal of the Amendment.
While Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya told The Island in February 2023 that “we [NPP] believe that it [13A] should be implemented but we have a debate whether it could be a tenable solution for the national problem”, Mr. Dissanayake, in his campaign in Jaffna a few months ago for the parliamentary polls, did not touch upon the issues of greater power devolution and a political settlement to the ethnic question. The only reference to devolution was found in the NPP manifesto during the September 2024 presidential poll, wherein the coalition had assured people that there would be a new constitution “that strengthens democracy and ensures equality of all citizens”.
Local bodies are no substitute
While pointing out that the incomplete constitutional reform process, which began in 2015, would be built upon, the manifesto talked of a “devolution of political and administrative power to every local government, district and province” and holding elections “within a year” to provincial councils and local bodies “which are currently postponed indefinitely”. If the political discourse in Sri Lanka is any indication, elections to the local authorities may take place sooner rather than later.
There is nothing wrong in holding the elections to the local bodies, which have a much longer history in Sri Lanka than the provincial councils. However, the rulers should be under no illusion that however efficient they may be, local bodies are no substitutes for the provincial councils. As in many other countries, the local self governments in Sri Lanka too are hardly equipped to solve all the problems being thrown up by growing urbanisation on the one hand and other issues such as limited sources of own revenue and high dependence on fiscal transfers on the other. This is why the layer of provincial councils becomes essential to address many of the issues.
It was not without reason that the interim report of the Steering Committee of the Constitutional Assembly, in September 2017, pointed to the wide consensus among Chief Ministers, Provincial Councils, and various panels of the Assembly, that provinces be recognised as the primary unit of devolution.
The people and a deal
It is time that the JVP’s leaders stop viewing the Provincial Councils as a creation of India, as, after all, any constitutional concept, in the contemporary period, is an outcome of palimpsest. This holds good for the Accord and 13A too, which were produced through an evolutionary process that involved the scrutiny of a number of proposals at different levels in the two countries during 1983-87. Also, Sri Lanka’s three Constitutions — the Soulbury Constitution of 1948 and two Republican Constitutions of 1972 and 1978 — were drafted, based on the British, American and French systems of government. The ruling coalition would do well to keep in mind that the people of Sri Lanka, known for their democratic spirit and effecting the transition of power mostly through the ballot box, deserve a deal that is in tune with their character.
The NPP, which commands a two-thirds majority in Parliament with an extremely popular President, has the golden opportunity now to find a durable solution to the ethnic problem, which is an offshoot of a combination of economic and political factors.
ramakrishnan.t@thehindu.co.in
Published – January 31, 2025 12:16 am IST
