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The
JVP and Tamil militancy
 Tamil
leaders and youth were frustrated when UNP Prime Minister Dudley
Senanayake told Federal Party leader S.J.V. Chelvanayakam in September
1968 of his inability to implement the agreement, especially, the
arrangement to devolve power to the regional councils, he signed
with him in 1965, due to strong opposition from Sinhala Buddhists
and the Buddhists clergy. The Tamil people had been let down earlier
by SLFP Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike in 1958 and his wife,
Prime Minister Srimavo Bandaranaike, in 1960, for similar reasons.
Tamil leaders decided to resume the non-violent struggle, while
radical youths started looking at the two revolutionary struggles
unfolding in southern Sri Lanka and in neighbouring Bangladesh.
In the south, Rohana Wijeweera was toiling to establish a new political
party to capture State power through revolution. In Bangladesh,
an armed guerilla group, Mukthi Bahini, had launched a struggle
to free Bangladesh, then known as Eastern Pakistan, from Pakistani
rule.
Tamil political leaders largely ignored the southern struggle and
started looking towards India, which was arming and training the
Bangladeshi freedom fighters, hoping that it would perform a similar
operation to help the Tamils. The youth, most of whom were Marxists
and nationalists, realised the difference between the two situations.
They reasoned that India’s self interest needed the weakening
of its enemy Pakistan and the keeping of Sri Lanka united.
Radical Tamil youths were, especially, attracted by Wijeweera’s
identification of the new sector of educated unemployed created
by the free education scheme. The rural sector, especially, the
sons and daughters of the underprivileged groups, had grown into
an angry pool ready to revolt against the State system, which they
regarded as oppressive. The traditional left parties, the CP and
the LSSP, neglected this group.
Tamil undergraduates at Colombo and Peradeniya enamored the hard
work Wijeweera put to mobilize the rural educated and student sectors.
Ajith Samaranayake, in a piece written nine years after Wijeweera’s
death, captures his period and life thus: “He travelled by
bus and train, walked miles, slept little and under very difficult
conditions, was always on the move, lecturing, agitating, rousing.
Sathyaseelan, Tissaveerasingham and their group first organized
the Unemployed Graduates Organization, the first Tamil group that
spoke of militancy. Two other groups also emerged during this period-
Sivakumaran group and the Thangathurai-Kuttimani group.
Then, in May 1970, while Wijeweera was preparing the Sinhala youth
for their first rebellion, the Srimavo Bandaranaike government provided
the motivation for the Tamil youths- standardadisation of the media.
Sathiyaseelan seized that opportunity and formed the Thamil Manavar
Peravai (Tamil Students’ Forum). At the inaugural meeting held
at the Jaffna Library Auditorium, Sathyaseelan spoke of Wijeweera’s
work of mobilizing the rural educated sector and of his intention
to capture State power using them.
The Thangathurai-Kuttimani group, which remained unnamed, keenly
followed the JVP’s military preparations of amassing weapons
and began manufacturing firearms. Prabhakaran (16), the youngest
and Kannadi Thanabalasingham were given the task of turning out
revolvers. Sivakumaran was content with individual acts of violence.
Thangathurai-Kuttimani group analysed in detail the causes for the
failure of the JVP’s April 5 revolution. It drew three lessons.
Firstly, it depended on the surprise factor of hundreds of youths
storming and taking over police stations. It did not provide for
the fight back by the State forces. Secondly, the attackers were
not adequately armed and properly trained. Thirdly, they did not
provide a fall back position. Prabhakaran, who was in that group,
benefited from that analysis.
The Tamil militants prepared for a long drawn out fight. The concentrated
on stocking weapons and providing their cadres better training,
Tamil militants continue to benefit from the JVP’s actions
and policies. For example, its opposition to the Indo-Sri Lanka
Pact was one of the factors that helped the LTTE to renege from
its commitment to India. The JVP’s second revolt of 1989, also
helped it. To defuse the JVP opposition, President Premadasa was
compelled to talk to the LTTE and get it onto his side.
Currently, the JVP’s demands, especially,, the demand to dissolve
the All Party Representatives Committee (APRC), has strengthened
the standing of the LTTE, internationally. The alternative it suggested
was to implement the present Constitution. “Implement the Constitution
we have now,” is what its leader Somawansa Amarasinghe told
an English daily last week. That is what the JVP had opposed for
the past 20 years!
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