Should the victory of the National People’s Power coalition led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in Sri Lanka be celebrated as a moment of hope for the country’s democratisation? Is the victory of its new President Anura Kumar Dissanayake from the JVP a win for the Left?
As in India, the first test of democratic character in Sri Lanka is the question of the equality and dignity of minorities and majoritarian communal politics. In Sri Lanka, this yardstick is the question of Tamil nationality and Sinhala-chauvinist and communal politics.
The 6 decade-long violence against the people of Tamil nationality by the Sri Lankan army reached its peak 15 years ago with the genocide unleashed by the regime with Mahinda Rajapaksa as President and his brother Gotabaya as Defence Secretary.
The genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka is one of the most horrific genocides in history, and even today the Tamil people there have neither got justice, nor security and equality. On the contrary, many parties in Sri Lankan politics compete in Sinhala-chauvinist stakes.
In such a situation, the first condition for democratic change is the political will to mount a campaign against Sinhala-chauvinism.
Like Modi, Mahinda Rajapaksa had gained popularity by calling himself a God-like national leader. He presided over an economic disaster that trapped the country in a web of foreign debt and austerity measures, resulting in crippling inflation and impoverishment – but for a long time, Sinhala chauvinist sentiment protected his popularity from being affected.
But two years ago, Sri Lankans finally burst out in anger against nepotism, economic chaos and dictatorship, and an uprising forced the Rajapaksa brothers to flee.
In the recent elections, Sri Lankans no doubt voted with the hope of change. Anura Kumar Dissanayake succeeded in channelling this hope in his favour by promising miraculous solutions and presenting himself as a common man, an outsider challenging the ruling elites.
His election campaign, an article published in Frontline observes, was similar to Trump’s and Modi’s in this respect. The article adds, “The JVP claims that it is communist but excludes Tamils and Muslims from almost all realms of activity. Compared to Dissanayake and his JVP, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, appear to be a ‘lite’ version of Sinhala chauvinism.”
The Tamil party ITAK supported Dissanayake’s rival, SJB’s Sajith Premadasa and he got a large share of the vote in Tamil areas. SJB is by no means free from Sinhala-chauvinist taint. But Tamils noted that Premadasa, whose father was killed by LTTE, sought Tamil support in a language of unity and respect. Whereas Dissanayake maintains that he has no regrets about supporting the genocidal war against the Tamils.
Support For The Genocide And Impunity
The genocide of Tamils is no different from the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Defence Secretary in 2009, had justified the repeated shelling of hospitals, on the grounds that there were no civilians, only “LTTE sympathisers”, “terrorists.” He had angrily demanded what business the UN had to be counting civilian casualties. Israel’s position on Gaza is exactly the same.
Protests against the Gaza genocide have been demanding a ceasefire; which Israel has refused. In the 2004 elections in Sri Lanka, the JVP contested as part of the UPFA coalition that was defined by its demand for the dissolution of the 2002 ceasefire agreement between LTTE and the Sri Lanka government. The UPFA won, and Dissanayake became Minister of Agriculture, Lands and Irrigation in a Government with Chandrika Kumaratunga as President.
In the 2005 Presidential elections, JVP supported Rajapaksa who ran “on a platform specifically opposed to the ceasefire.” In 2006 Dissanayake was one of the prominent MPs present at the JVP’s launch of the “Joint Front to Protect the Nation” (JFPN) – a platform to demand the abrogation of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement and an all-out war to “defeat the LTTE.”
Israel’s blocking of humanitarian relief in Gaza is especially horrific. In 2004, a tsunami killed “over 35,000 people, two thirds of which were reported to be from the Tamil North-East.” Dissanayake led the successful campaign to block President Kumaratunga’s proposal to distribute post-tsunami aid jointly with the LTTE. In fact this was one of the main issues that led to Dissanayake and other JVP MPs resigning from the Government He was thus directly complicit in the war crime of withholding tsunami relief to Tamils.
Dissanayake and the JVP fully supported, in fact demanded, the “military solution” – i.e. the genocide of the Tamils, and they have vigorously protested against any proposal to bring perpetrators of war crimes to justice, or to allow international human rights monitors.
Insurrection And Anti-Imperialism – Chauvinism By Other Names
The JVP styles itself as a ‘Marxist-Leninist’ party. It has led two armed insurrections, the first began in 1971 and the second in 1987.
Both insurrections however had a marked Sinhala chauvinist character. A report by the University Teachers For Human Rights (Jaffna) notes for instance that “The strength of the J.V.P. lay in the fact that it adopted the powerful weapon of Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism. […] The famous ‘five classes’ conducted by the J.V.P. included the topic of Indian expansionism in which the hill country Tamils were portrayed as India’s fifth column. Their anti-Tamil stance gave renewed vigour to the racist feeling of the petit-bourgeois rural youth in the south of the country. The J.V.P. gained much ground by raising this patriotic cry, mixed with Marxist rhetoric. This culminated in the 1971 insurrection which was crushed brutally by the regime of Mrs. Bandaranaike, who was later on an ally of the J.V.P. for a short time during the aftermath of signing of the Peace Accord in 1987.”
The second insurrection mobilised Sinhala support against the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Accord – which, unsatisfactory as it was, conceded a modest measure of federal autonomy to the Tamils seeking self-determination, and recognised both Tamil and Sinhalese as national languages with English as the link language.
JVP’s “anti-imperialism” was a fig-leaf for racial profiling: it labelled Tamils, especially plantation workers of Indian origin, as a “fifth column instrument of Indian expansionism.” Its enthusiastically chauvinist campaign served the cause of the Sri Lankan state – and the very state it helped empower turned on it with horrific brutality, crushing the insurrections with bloodbaths.
The Election Campaign
The 13th Amendment
A key outcome of the 1987 Accord was the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution, which mandated the creation of Provincial Councils, allowing self-governance in all nine provinces of the country, including Sinhala majority provinces. Sinhala chauvinists including the JVP strenuously oppose this provision, since it would allow Tamils in the country’s North-East to run provincial councils with decision-making powers extending to subjects of land and policing.
During his election campaign Dissanayake declared to Tamils that he would not implement the 13th Amendment. But he did assure Buddhist monks that he was committed to protecting Buddhist supremacist Constitutional provisions.
War Crimes
Releasing the NPP Manifesto, Dissanayake said it “will not seek to punish anyone accused of rights violations and war crimes.”
Boasting of Being the ‘Ideological’ Wing of Genocide
In May 2024, a day after Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day, JVP leader K D Lalkantha boasted that “only his party and one other led by extremist Sinhala monks are responsible for defeating “separatist terrorism.” He told military officials, “We both waged wars; we waged an ideological war and you did that with weapons.”
Veiled Threat To Tamil Voters
Addressing Tamils during his campaign, Dissanayake made what sounded like a veiled threat:
“I assure you again. We will win. Jaffna must also be stakeholders of this victory. Do not be labelled as those who opposed this huge change. Ever. Be a stakeholder in this change… When the South is gearing up for change. If you are seen to oppose that change, what do you think the mindset of the South be? Would you like it if Jaffna was identified as those who went against this change? Those who opposed this change? Would you like it if the North was identified this way?”
These words insinuate that if the Tamils of the North do not vote for the inevitably victorious NPP, if they refuse to be part of the national will for “change”, they will be marked by the (Sinhala-dominant) as unpatriotic. If Tamils insist on opting out of the patriotic victory, they be responsible if the patriotic Sinhala mindset reacts with violence.
Around me I see Indian Left leaders saying “The JVP’s history is problematic on the question of self-determination, but in this particular context the victory of a Left-leaning platform is a victory for Sri Lanka’s people and their aspirations for democratic change. Time will tell if Dissanayake meets those aspirations to exit the IMF stranglehold.”
When the Indian or international Left say Dissanayake’s win represents a victory for Sri Lanka’s people, they are implicitly supporting Dissanayake’s own ominous claim that Tamils who refuse to be included in his victory are traitors to ‘the nation’s people.’
Leftist leaders and parties in India are celebrating Dissanayake’s victory, saying Sri Lanka’s people have chosen a Marxist, left-leaning leader. They congratulate Dissanayake, calling him a comrade.
Being democratic and opposing bigotry is an entry-level requirement to being a decent human being, never mind a democratic politician. I am not interested in arguments within the Left about whether or to what extent Dissanayake is a Marxist who meets a “higher Leninist standard” of supporting the right to self-determination. My point is that by saying we will judge him by supposedly superior Left standards, we are helping to disguise the fact that he fails to meet the barest minimum democratic standards.
What a shame it is that none on the Indian or international Left seem to have been able to say: Yes, the people of Sri Lanka want change. Yes, getting rid of the burden of economic crisis and austerity is a big challenge for the new government. But Tamils are Sri Lankan citizens too. Dissanayake’s victory holds no hope for their aspirations, instead it constitutes a fresh threat to them. Democratic change requires defeating Sinhala chauvinism.
No one on the Left should allow Dissanayake and the JVP to cover up their crimes with a red flag. Their ‘Marxism’ is a sham, their politics is chauvinistic and communal. They are not “left-leaning”, but “fascist-leaning”.
The only hope is that enough people in Sri Lanka will take responsibility to stop the new regime from “change” in the direction of more chauvinism and authoritarianism. We hope they will lose no time in demanding that the new Government implement the 13th Amendment, ensure punishment for perpetrators of war crimes against Tamils, and arrest and prosecute the Buddhist monks and politicians who incite hatred and violence against Tamils and other minorities.
Kavita Krishnan is a women’s rights activist and writer based in Delhi, India.