Conflict: Lakshman Kadirgamar: how the south
constructed him, the Tamils saw him
By J. S. Tissainayagam
“The LTTE has wreaked havoc so many times and now killed the best foreign
minister this country ever had. It was he who changed the international opinion of
this Island, which was hitherto referred to as a land of barbarians.”
These are the words of Venerable Ellawela Medananda thero of the Jathinka Hela
Urumaya (JHU) spoken during the debate on August 18 to extend the state of
emergency. What was it that prompted this Buddhist monk, well known for his
virulent anti-Tamil positions disguised as patriotic utterances, to say these words
about late Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, who was popularly regarded as a
Tamil?
Even a cursory glance at the rhetoric that has been emanating from the south
following the assassination of Kadirgamar shows how he had become a construct,
which anti-Tamil forces could exploit for their own purposes. At the time of his death
he symbolised the Sri Lankan state as the extreme sections of the Sinhalese
community envisaged it. As such, the construct was very carefully built, including
what Sinhala nationalism wanted to project and rejecting what it wished excluded.
This construct was used by Sinhala nationalists in the south as a weapon to
undermine the Tamil struggle to win their rights and establish their identity in this
country. It helped the Sinhala ruling class both against the LTTE’s war for a
separate state, as well as to block demands by the liberal sections of the Sinhala,
Tamil and Muslim communities, to reform the existing state structure and make it
more inclusive and pluralistic.
The construct had a number of elements that were interwoven with each element
complementing and helping to reinforce the other. These elements were articulated
either singly or in a bundle to create the impression that the nationalist sections of
the Sinhala ruling class and their constituencies required, both during Kadirgamar’s
political life, as well as at his death.
The most important element that went into this construct was that he was known as a
Tamil. By making him the foreign minister, he became a Tamil who represented the
Sri Lankan state in its relations with other states in the comity of nations. His position
as a Tamil representing the Sri Lankan state in its dealings with the international
community, at a time when others in the Tamil community were fighting for self-
determination alleging Sri Lanka was discriminating against that community, went a
long way in undermining the rebel cause. Kadirgamar’s high profile position as
foreign minister (the United States used / uses General Colin Powell / Dr.
Condoleeza Rice, both blacks, for the same reason) was therefore strategic.
Having made Kadirgamar an important minister in PA/UPFA cabinet, southern
politicians angled their rhetoric cleverly to show that he was beyond parochialism
and small mindedness. By doing this they automatically portrayed Tamils fighting for
self-determination because their ethnic identity was inadequately reflected in the
composition of the Sri Lankan state, as narrow-minded and intolerant, and thereby a
lesser breed. This strategy also fed neatly into the well-know stereotype of Tamils
favouring their own kind – the ‘nammada aal’ phenomenon.
How Sri Lanka’s ruling class manipulated this for its own ends is best seen from a
statement made by that great upholder of liberality and tolerance – JVP’s Wimal
Weerawansa. “The late foreign minister was a leader of rare calibre. He was a
person who thought beyond his community to project a Sri Lankan identity,” said
Weerawansa, at the joint party leaders meeting after Kadirgamar’s assassination.
But while portraying him as a staunch defender of the Sri Lankan state, the south
has also tried to show him as a greater lover of the Tamils. Deputy Defence Minister
Ratnasiri Wickramanayake said, “He was a genuine friend of the Tamils…”
Kadirgamar’s ‘love’ for the Tamils is described differently in a curious piece
appearing in a Sunday newspaper soon after his death, where the author claims that
when Jaffna was under siege by the LTTE in 2000, it was Kadirgamar who ‘saved’
the city. Less said about such views the better!
The second element of the carefully cultivated construct was Kadirgamar’s Buddhist
leanings. The most vocal exposition of this was his request at the United Nations that
Vesak be made an international holiday. The publicity given to this was enormous.
Even if that was a brief that Kadirgamar undertook for the country, his very public
profession of at least the ritual aspects of Buddhism was obvious from his meeting
the mayanayakes and other members of the Buddhist hierarchy on personal
matters, and offering flowers when was sworn in as foreign minister.
Kadirgamar was laid to rest according to Buddhist rites, a ceremony that the south
gave as much publicity to as it could. As of now, nobody is aware as to whether he
wanted to be buried according to Buddhist rites or not and the claims his family has
raised about his Christian roots further muddies the question. However, it does not
gainsay the fact the south used Kadirgamar’s public participation in Buddhist rituals
as liberally as it exploited his Tamilness for its own cynical purposes.
The third element in the construct contains two parts: he was an ‘educated’ man,
and was associated with many icons of excellence both internationally and
nationally. His formidable achievements in studies and sports as well as his career at
Trinity College, Kandy, the universities of Peradeniya and Oxford, training in the law
both at the Law College, Colombo and the Inns of Court in England, and a
distinguished professional career were listed by the media in great detail.
What is interesting in Kadirgamar’s signal personal achievements is that they were
attained outside the northeast of Sri Lanka. In the hands of the southern nationalists
these went to reinforce the image of a man who had been trained and equipped to
achieve what he did, not in the Tamil-majority northeast, but in the Sinhala-
dominated south and of course, overseas. It put Kadirgmar firmly as part of Sri
Lanka’s bourgeoisie and thereby in a different social class from the leadership of the
LTTE and the vast majority of its supporters.
The importance the south paid to Kadirgamar as an elite product of Sri Lankan
society is best seen in the newspapers, which ran his list of achievements and the
encomiums he received from the high and mighty, juxtaposed to scathing editorials
against his killers. It was as if the Tamils were unable to appreciate his greatness
and had, like the base Indian, thrown the pearl away.
Finally, the construct represented him as a man who valiantly strove to preserve the
unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of his country by pursuing a relentless war
against LTTE ‘terrorism.’ The venerable thero quoted above and others called him
Sri Lanka’s “best foreign minister” because he helped to ban the LTTE in the U.S
and elsewhere and while the Sri Lankan military pursued a bloody ‘war for peace’
against the Tamils, defended the Sri Lankan state at international fora and with
world leaders.
In the address to the nation following her foreign minister’s death, President
Chandrika Kumaratunga said, “Minister Kadirgamar spoke against terrorism and
convinced the international community that terrorism is not a freedom struggle. He
was instrumental in getting the international community to recognise the LTTE for
what it is.”
These elements form the main pillars that went into the construction of Kadirgamar’s
public image. The image-building was assiduously pursued by the Sinhala and
English media as well as Sinhala politicians and opinion-makers so that Kadirgamar
appeared to personify the Sri Lankan state to make it appear that he and the state
were one in the war against the LTTE.
But how far does this construct, which is a product of the south, seem relevant to the
Tamils? For them, Kadirgamar’s aloofness from their fears and hopes meant he was
far removed from the concerns of their community. It was made worse by his actions
to strengthen the Sri Lankan state, which the Tamils regard as a Sinhala-dominated
entity. The result was a deliberate and systematic undermining of the Tamil struggle
for equality and justice.
We have to understand that Kadirgamar’s career with the government spanning
almost a decade should have convinced him that a solution to the conflict would
necessarily depend on how power is configured between the stake-holding ethnic
and religious communities on the island. As a government minister he would have
been engaging in the conflict (or conflict resolution as his southern admirers see it)
having conceptualised how he would like to see power distributed among those
stakeholders.
There are basically three ways in which this could be done: 1) Sri Lanka could split
into two sovereign entities, one governed by the Sri Lankan state and the other by
the LTTE, 2) There could be a sharing of power between the southern political
forces and the LTTE and 3) Sri Lanka could be governed by Colombo as the sole
repository of power.
To this writer it is fairly clear which of these three options Kadirgamar chose – the
last. One can understand his hesitation to work towards the fulfilment of the first
option. After all, there are other Tamils too who think in the same way. But there are
a number of Tamils who have pursued the second option. For instance, Tamils
admire late Minister S. Thondaman, who despite being a leader who represented the
Upcountry Tamils and functioning entirely within the Sri Lankan system, worked
towards creating structures for a political resolution of the ethnic war, which included
authorship of the Thondaman Proposals in the early 1990s, which for that time were
very progressive.
But Kadirgamar forsook the second option for the third. His admirers however say he
worked for the second option albeit silently. How such a thing is tenable is quite
puzzling.
What Sri Lankans with even a modicum of intelligence have come to acknowledge
today is that the Tamils have cause to be disgruntled with the Sri Lankan state and
Sinhala hegemony. The peace process is transforming that disgruntlement
expressed through arms, to bargaining through dialogue.
Where does Kadirgamar stand in this process? While being at the forefront of
violence during the ‘war for peace’ (1995-2001) and deliberately lying about military
excesses, he stridently opposed every move that was made to share power with the
Tigers from the CFA to the ISGA proposals, and most recently the P-TOMS.
What is more, he was at the forefront of moves to rearm the state to pursue the
military option against the LTTE by advocating closer military ties with India and
undermining the CFA by encouraging the Karuna group and the likes of Douglas
Devananda, whose EPDP works closely with the army.
Kadirgamar’s actions against the Tamils and moderate, accommodative politics do
not stop there. Little before his death he was known to have been conspiring with
the JVP (the party whose democratic credentials he once openly defended in Britain)
on how the more racist sections of the SLFP, hand in hand with the JVP, could wrest
power from the moderate elements in that party.
So from the actions of Kadirgamar one could deuce that he would have favoured the
third option, and worked towards a Sri Lanka governed by the Sinhala elite, with an
utterly debilitated Tamil leadership of mostly the anti-LTTE parties thrown scraps as
part of the deal for peace.
Therefore Kadirgmar was not a tortured soul uncomfortable with Sinhala hegemony
as well as Tiger militarism and wracked by shades of intellectual doubt as to where
he belonged. He pitched his camp firmly among the forces interested in debilitating
the self-respect and power-base of Tamils, hoping perhaps that eventually a rump
Tamil leadership could come to some sort of accommodation with the Sinhalaese.
This is why after his death the Venerable Ellawela Medananda thero can call him
“the best foreign minister the country ever had.”
[Courtesy: Northeastern Monthly - September 1, 2005