ACHA PEACE BULLETIN
http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/ACHAPeaceBulletin
A
publication of Association for Communal Harmony in Asia (ACHA)
www.asiapeace.org & www.indiapakistanpeace.org
Editor: Pritam K.
Rohila, PhD asiapeace@comcast.net
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Volume
XIII, No. 6: July 15, 2009, Next Issue August
15, 2009
_____________________________
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL
*Youth for Peace, Non-Violence and Shared Progress, Pritam K. Rohila, Ph. D.
ARTICLES OF THE MONTH
*For the peace
dividend, Beena Sarwar, The Hindu, July 14, 2009
BOOKS
*The Great Divide: India and Pakistan, Ira Pande
(Ed)
*Gandhi’s Collected Works (being reprinted for the
second time)
*Nuclear
Free India Vol.1, Issue 5, June 15, 2009
EVENTS
*August 9-21, Lucknow, Kolkata, and Pune, India: AUGUST KRANTI DAY 2009
*August 16, Rockville, MD, USA: MUSHAIRA-KAVI SAMMELAN
*Sep 27-Oct 1, Chandigarh, India:
4th INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS PEACE
FEST
*October
2, New Zealand to Argentina: WORLD
MARCH
*October 2-8, Pune, Maharashtra, India: 4th INDO-PAK STUDENTS PEACE CAMP
*October
16-18, Islamabad, Pakistan: NATIONAL INTEGRATION YOUTH CAMP
*Dec
3-9, 2009, Melbourne, Australia: World’s Religions Parliament
JOBS, INTERNSHIPS & VOLUNTEER PROGRAMS (FOR THE COMMON
GOOD) MEMBERS’ CORNER
*Awais Sheikh
*Ashfaq Fateh
PEACE & HARMONY NEWS FROM
INDIA & PAKISTAN
PEACE & HARMONY NEWS FROM
SOUTH ASIA
PEACE & HARMONY SONGS
*No
Saazish, No Jang, by Shavar Khan
UPDATE: KASHMIR
UPDATE: NEPAL
UPDATE: PAKISTAN
UPDATE: SRILANKA
*Home Grown Solution Needs to Include 13th Amendment, Jehan Perera, July 13, 2009
EDITORIAL
*Youth for Peace, Non-Violence and Shared Progress, Pritam K. Rohila, Ph. D.
“Youth for Peace, Non-Violence and Shared Progress,” has been chosen by the Association for Communal Harmony in Asia (ACHA) as the theme for this year’s India-Pakistan Peace Day campaign.
Considering what is currently happening in India and Pakistan, it appears important that activists work on promoting peace WITHIN each of the two countries, in addition to fostering it BETWEEN them.
In this context, the role Indian and Pakistani youth assumes added importance. We are pleased to note that some important events for youth are being organized at Chandigarh, Lucknow, Kolkata, and Pune in India, and at Islamabad in Pakistan between August 9 and October 18.
Also, ACHA is spearheading an effort to help young people to not only become good citizens of their respective country, but also develop into agents of peace and harmony by learning to respect others whose beliefs and opinions are different from theirs.
We propose that Indian and Pakistani youth are formally taught ways to respect themselves and their choices rather than blinding following what others tell them. They need to be helped to learn to express themselves in non-abusive, nonviolent ways.
We will welcome any help provide to us.
ARTICLES OF THE MONTH
*For the peace dividend, Beena Sarwar, The Hindu, July 14,
2009
http://www.hindu.com/2009/07/14/stories/2009071451040900.htm
Initiatives for bilateral contact
at the popular level should go a long way in correcting the India-Pakistan
dissonance
The upcoming meetings between the
Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries of Pakistan and India on the sidelines
of the Non-Aligned summit in Egypt on July 14 and 15, again raise hopes for a
revival of the composite dialogue process, suspended since the November 26,
2008 attacks in Mumbai. India accuses Pakistan of not doing enough to contain
terrorism. In turn, Pakistan accuses India of not cooperating in terms of
sharing evidence and translations.
The Mumbai attacks came barely four
days after President Asif Ali Zardari’s ground-breaking address to the Hindustan
Times Leadership Summit, via satellite link from Islamabad, on November 22.
Mr. Zardari, Pakistan’s first head of state to promise a
“no-first-nuclear-strike” policy against India, talked of a common South Asian
economic bloc, even a passport-free “flexible Indo-Pakistan visa regime.”
It is an all-too-familiar pattern —
goodwill gestures followed by incidents of violence that are used to set back
the peace process (the bus yatra-Kargil; talks-the Samjhauta Express blast;
peace overtures-Mumbai). Who benefits from these? It is certainly not the
ordinary people but the right-wing, the security apparatus, the military
establishments and the arms lobbies on both sides.
Those who critique the push for peace
as an obsession of the “liberal elite” and the “Punjabi lobby” ignore the
sentiments at the grassroots level: while being aware of the problems, people
on both sides are keen to live in peace as neighbours. This is what surfaces
during interactions with “ordinary people” across the ethnic and economic
divide — as the Indian delegates found out when they met with fishermen’s
families, workers and community-based organisations in the low-income
localities of Karachi, Hyderabad and Lahore.
At a seminar in Karachi recently to
honour Nirmala Deshpande (‘Didi’), the peace activist who passed away in May
2008, most members of the audience were poor women from far-flung localities
brought over by community-based workers. Prominent writers, political leaders
and activists who addressed the seminar included three Indian delegates (the
visas of the other two were “pending for clearance”).
Mumtaz, a young Pushtun mother
distracted by a six-year old and a suckling toddler, said her husband was a
daily-wage-earner who was at work that day. To be honest, she said she had
hoped to get something out of the seminar, like food (which was served at the
end). She had completed the eighth grade at school, and it showed in her bright
eyes. She had attended one such event in the past. What did she think of the
event? “I don’t understand everything they are saying, but I do understand that
they want peace between India and Pakistan,” she replied. “We should live in
peace with our neighbours. Maybe then our lot will improve. We all want that.”
Jaipur-based Kavita Srivastava of the
People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) had come with a concrete agenda: to
get information about five Indian prisoners incarcerated in Pakistani prisons
since 1991.
“Only two are in touch with their families, we don’t even know if the other
three are alive,” she said. “When they heard that I got my visa, their families
walked for a whole day to meet me. With tears in their eyes they begged me to
bring any information I could.”
Ms Kavita spent an evening in the
Ranchore Lines with some women belonging to the Silawat community, Rajasthanis
with families on both sides of the border. Shakeel Silawat of the Youth
Progressive Council who helped organise the meeting, says such visits are
important to increase mutual contacts. “After all, we are one region. We should
be able to meet.”
I remember an engineering student I
interviewed in 1995 for Outlook’s launch issue. He hated India’s Kashmir
policy and would not wear India-made jeans — but believed that India and
Pakistan should cooperate economically even while maintaining separate
identities.
A student from Kolkata who had
visited Lahore with the Nirmala Deshpande-led women’s peace bus in 2000
following the Kargil conflict had no Partition baggage or ties with Pakistan.
Yet she was overcome with emotion upon arriving in Pakistan. She befriended an
engineering student who was volunteering with the group “out of curiosity”
(having never met an Indian but hated India and Indians). He told me that,
despite disagreeing with official policies “now at least we can talk about our
disagreements.” Young Pakistanis and Indians wept as they said goodbye three
days later.
I am reminded of these encounters by
Ashutosh Varshney’s essay ‘Founding Myths’ (in The Great Divide,
HarperCollins, 2009) in which he suggests that India-Pakistan rivalry be
re-imagined “as a thoroughgoing competition, not as a do-or-die conflict.”
The essay further said: “A
distinction needs to be drawn between two terms: adversaries and enemies.
Adversaries can be respected, even admired; enemies are killed. India and
Pakistan must cease to be enemies; they need to become adversaries competing
vigorously to become better than the other.”
The stakes are high for both the nuclear-armed
neighbours riddled by internal insurgencies and ‘religious’ militancy, endemic
poverty and high military budgets that directly and negatively impact
development.
Mr. Zardari’s talk of a South Asian
bloc and easing of visa restrictions did not emerge from a vacuum — peace
activists have been presenting such out-of-the-box ideas for years. The
visiting Indians added more to the previous talk, like twinning press clubs and
even granting dual nationality to Indians and Pakistanis (“believe me, many
would take it,” asserted award-winning social activist Sandeep Pandey from
Lucknow).
These ideas may be ahead of their
time — but then, so was the Pakistan-India Forum for Peace and Democracy
notion, first articulated in 1994, that Kashmir is not just a territorial
dispute between Pakistan and India but a matter of the lives and aspirations of
the Kashmiri people, who must be included in any dialogue about their future.
This formulation has now permeated the political discourse.
When Mr. Pandey and others
participated in a peace march in 2005 from Delhi to Multan, villagers along the
way enthusiastically welcomed them (though the urban-based media largely
ignored this “rural” activity) and endorsed their demands. One, resolve all
problems through dialogue; two, de-weaponise and remove the armies from the
borders; three, end the visa restrictions.
“One cyclist stopped and said, ‘Make
the third demand your first [one]. Once that happens, the rest will sort
[themselves] out’,” recalls Mr. Pandey.
The Indian delegates have now left
with a renewed sense of the urgency that Pakistanis feel about the need for
peace with India. They also realise the need to go against the tide back home
and push the Indian government to go beyond pressuring the Pakistani government
to “take action.”
There may be no immediate results to
any of these initiatives. But the very fact that the governments allow them to
take place, by itself speaks for the realisation of the need to at least
maintain such contacts. And in the long run, they create pressure for peace
from below — something for the political and bureaucratic establishments to
bear in mind when they next meet.
(Beena Sarwar is a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker based in Karachi: www.beenasarwar.wordpress.com )
BOOKS
*The Great Divide:
India and Pakistan, Ira Pande (Ed), Hardback, 360 pages, Indian Rs. 495.00,
ISBN: 9788172238360
http://www.harpercollins.co.in/BookDetail.asp?Book_Code=2313
At a time when India and Pakistan are both reeling under terror attacks and
hysterical talk of an impending war, it is important to take stock of where we
have reached, individually and as part of the Indian subcontinent; sixty years
after the two nations were carved out as two distinct entities.
This volume of essays by writers from both sides of the border attempts to do
just that. As the editor, Ira Pande, says in her introduction, 'There is a
balance here between the 'hard' topics (politics, economy, diplomacy, religion
et al) and 'soft' (music, crafts, language, cricket, cinema) to bring out the
full range of our engagement with each other.'
*Gandhi’s Collected
Works (being reprinted for the second time) http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/476085/
The original edition
of the 100-volume “The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi” is now being reprinted
at Ahmedabad for the second time ever. The printing has been ordered by the UPA
government.
In the basement of the
main library in Gujarat Vidyapith, a team of women sit in front of the
computer, displaying scanned pages from the original edition – known as the KS
Edition, after its third and final editor K Swaminathan – and clean them up, painstakingly
removing blemishes, ink and printing blots (sometimes even tea and coffee
spills) and making sure each letter is legible.
The university is now
working in tandem with the Centre, the government supplying the original
volumes it has, with the institute providing the others. Six volumes have
already been printed at the Niyati Press in Ahmedabad, and the remaining
volumes will be printed after the scanned versions have been cleaned of
blemishes.
*Nuclear Free India Vol.1, Issue 5,
June 15, 2009 http://nfijournal.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/nfe5-june09.pdf
Contents:
1. Nuclear Promises (Zia Mian)
2. For Nuclear Sanity (Praful Bidwai)
3. Another Nuclear Anniversary (Pervez Hoodbhoy)
4. What Good is the A- Bomb? (Farooq Saleem)
5. Nuclear Disaster in South Asia (Brian Cloughley)
6. National Alliance of Anti Nuclear Movements Launched
7. Kanyakumari Declaration
8. Toxic Link : The WHO and The IAEA (Oliver Tickell)
9. The Catastrophic Economic of Nuclear Power (Harvey Wasserman)
10. The Public Hearing in Jadogoda - Citizens Demands
11. A Report on the UCIL
plans in Jadugoda
EVENTS
*August 9-21, Lucknow, Kolkata, and Pune, India: AUGUST KRANTI DAY 2009
9th - Receive and reception of Pakistani Delegates (P.D.) at Lucknow, they will attend August Kranti Divas at Lucknow organised by B.B.P.P.F. Reception of delegates at Jawhar foundation, Aminabad.
10th – Interaction with Student and various groups will be held at Lucknow University and Islamia College.
11th - Sightseeing program for foreign delegates.
12th - Reception of Bangladeshi delegates at Howrah Station. In the afternoon, interaction program with youths organized by All India youth League.
13th - Delegates will visit Murshidabad, the Capital of the independent Nawab Siraj Ud Doullah of Bengal Bihar and Orissa in 1757.
14th - Joint independent day is proposed to be observed at ’0’ hour in suitably place as sanctioned by Kolkata Police.
15th - Road show in Kolkata
16th – An interactive seminar on “Two nation-one vision” at Indian Association Hall, Kolkata. Pakistan Delegates and part of Bangladesh Delegates leave for Pune.
17th - In Train
18th – 20th program at Pune and in adjoining areas.
21st - Delegates depart for Delhi on their way to Pakistan and Bangladesh.
More info from Manik Samajdar m_samajdar@yahoo.co.in
*August 16, Rockville, MD, USA: MUSHAIRA-KAVI
SAMMELAN to be organized by the Aligarh Alumni Association of Metropolitan
Washington (AAA) in collaboration with the Metropolitan Washington Chapter
of the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO), to celebrate
independence of the Indian subcontinent, starting at 3:00 p.m., at the
Executive Building, 1, Monroe Street. Following Urdu and Hindi poets are
participating A. Abdullah, Abulhasan Naghmi, Akram
Mahmood, Astha Naval,
Aziz Qureshi, Baqar Zaidi, Dhanajay Kumar, Gulshan Madhur, Habib Bajwa, Madhu Maheshwari, Mohammad Anwar, Narendr Tandon, Naseem Farogh, Noor Memon,
Qamar Kazmi, Rahman Siddiqi, Rakesh Khandelwal, Razi
Raziuddin, Rekha Maitra, Saroj Joshi, Satyapal Anand,
Shakeel Azad, Suman Shukla, Tahira Rida, V. Thaker, Yusuf
Rahat and Zaheer Parvez.
In addition to poetry recitation, the program will includes presentation of articles on contribution of Ganga-Jamuni culture to the independence movement.
More information from Zafar Iqbal, Ph.D., Coordinator (301-540-POEM or aabta.india@gmail.com), Rafat Husain, Ph.D., President, AAA (301-869-8780), or Renuka Misra, Ph.D., President, GOPIO (301-330-5098).
*September 27-October 1, Chandigarh, Punjab, India: 4th INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS PEACE FESTIVAL. To
promote peace, equality and living in harmony with nature.the Festival (including a Peace Parade, Carnival games, Make
and take crafts, Multi-cultural performances, Peace Talks & Peace Stalls, Magic
Shows & Face Painting, Film Shows & Music to UNITE, Nature trails &
discussions of Environmental issues, Clowning & Fancy Dress Cat-walk, One
Sky One World kite fly) will be organized by Yuv Satta, in association with
COVA, and other organizations. Student community across the world is invited to
participate.
The last date for registration is 30th July 2009. To register mail to yuvsatta@gmail.com your brief profile with age, gender and a comment on why you want to participate
All logistics support in Chandigarh http://chandigarh.nic.in/ (including boarding, lodging, food, refreshments, sight-seeing, travel) will be provided by the organizers. The participants have to arrange for their travel to and from Chandiarg at their own expense.
More
information from Parmod Sharma, Coordinator, Yuvsatta, R. No. 12, 16, Karuna
Sadan, Sector 11, Chandigarh, India - 160 011, Cell: 91-9872609816 e-mail: yuvsatta@gmail.com, Website: www.yuvsatta.org
*October 2,
New Zealand to Argentina: WORLD
MARCH beginning in New Zealand on October 2, 2009, the anniversary of
Gandhi’s birth, declared the “International Day of Nonviolence” by the United
Nations, will conclude in the Andes
Mountains (Punta de Vacas, Aconcagua, Argentina) on January 2, 2010. This 90-day
March will pass through many countries having all climates and seasons, from
the hot summer of the tropics and the deserts, to the winter of Siberia. A
permanent base of a hundred people of different nationalities will complete the
journey.
*October 2-8, Pune, Maharashtra, India: 4th INDO-PAK STUDENTS PEACE CAMP, at JP Naik Centre. To promote the spirit of peace, non-violence, tolerance, forgiveness and brotherhood, CYDA, in collaboration with CYDA-India, intends to organize for students and/or youth of 17-25 years. A number of mixed group activities shall take place; no lengthy and boring lectures would be made. Last date for registration is July 30, 2009.
Detailed information will be available on the CYDA website (www.cydapakistan.org). For more info send an email to info@cydapakistan.org and cydapakistan@gmail.com
*October 16-18, Islamabad, Pakistan: NATIONAL INTEGRATION YOUTH CAMP 2009. CYDA will organize this 3-day residential seminar-cum-workshop to promote peace and harmony between the youth of Pakistan irrespective of their gender, religion, location or province.
Detailed information will be available on the CYDA website (www.cydapakistan.org). For more info send an email to info@cydapakistan.org and cydapakistan@gmail.com
*December
3-9, 2009, Melbourne, Australia: The 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions, will bring together the world’s religious and spiritual communities,
their leaders and their followers to a gathering where peace, diversity and
sustainability are discussed and explored in the context of interreligious
understanding and cooperation.
Parliament
participants will work with others and within their own traditions to craft
faithful responses to indigenous reconciliation, global poverty and global
warming, environmental care and degradation, education of the young and the
challenges of social disengagement, voluntary and forced migration, artistic expression
and spirituality, the value of sports, ethnic and religious tensions. More
info from http://www.parliamentofreligions2009.org/home.php
JOBS, INTERNSHIPS & VOLUNTEER PROGRAMS (FOR THE COMMON
GOOD) *http://www.graduationpledge.org/jobs.html
MEMBERS’ CORNER
*Awais Sheikh has been appointed new
counsel for the Indian citizen Sarabjit Singh, who is confined in death
cell at Kot Lakhpat Jail, Lahore. He plans to prepare a fresh mercy petition
for the accused to Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, according to a July
7 Press Trust of India news report http://www.ptinews.com/news/158399_Sarabjit-s-lawyer-to-file-fresh-mercy-plea-to-Prez
*Ashfaq Fateh, in his capacity as the spokesperson for the Itihad Labour Union, has been assisting some Toba Tek Singh’s Christian sanitary workers who were recently sacked by the Sanitary Inspector. The workers have been engaged in a sit-in at TMA offices for eight hours daily.
PEACE & HARMONY NEWS FROM
INDIA & PAKISTAN
*http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndiaPakistanPeaceDay/
PEACE & HARMONY NEWS FROM
SOUTH ASIA
*http://groups.google.com/group/peace--harmony-news-from-south-asia
PEACE & HARMONY SONGS
*No
Saazish, No Jang, by Shavar Khan
ACHA member, Shavar
Khan has recorded this song, in which he has endeavored to develop a Peace
Anthem with allusions to religious bigotry/extremism &
terrorism, neo/western imperialism – impending problems that plague
all South Asia – with ‘regionalism’ as a proposed solution to this turmoil. In
the song, he has also appropriated and weaved words from speeches of various
South Asian and global popular/democratic leaders like Gandhi Ji, Jinnah sb.,
Benazir Bhutto and Obama to drive home the point that ‘relatively speaking’ all
have emphasized the need and hope for Peace. In other words, ‘People desire
Peace’ (vis-à-vis the ‘establishment’ that have other ulterior motives). The
idea of using these leaders as ‘spokespersons for Peace’ is to also ‘connect’
with the populace of India, Pakistan and NRIs/Ps – the South Asian Diaspora.
The song can be downloaded from http://www.shahvaralikhan.com
News
stories about the song can be seen at
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200907071040.htm
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4772470.cms
UPDATE: KASHMIR
*http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KashmirSolutionsForum/
*www.drshabirchoudhry.blogspot.com
*http://kashmirforumorg.blogspot.com/
UPDATE: NEPAL
*http://www.nepalasiacenter.com/
UPDATE: PAKISTAN
UPDATE: SRILANKA
*Home Grown Solution Needs to Include 13th Amendment, Jehan Perera npc@sltnet.lk , July 13, 2009
In May this year when the Sri Lankan government was faced with the serious threat of being subjected to investigation by the Human Rights Committee of the United Nations it made several promises to the international community that helped to sway the vote in its favour. These promises included moving forward without delay in healing the wounds of war in the country, specifically resettling the displaced persons and in finding a political solution to the ethnic conflict. The implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution which established devolved provincial governments stood at the centre of this promise.
On numerous President Mahinda Rajapaksa has made reference to the government's
commitment to implementing this partially implemented law. He has even
said he is willing to go beyond it, as 13th
Amendment plus 1. But now, after the military victory over the LTTE,
there isincreasing emphasis placed by the government on a yet unspecified and
vague “home grown” solution. Government spokepersons have stated that in
the same way as they defied international expectations in militarily defeating
the LTTE with their own plan and strategy, so will they finally bring a
political solution to the ethnic conflict in their own way.
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution was promulgated in the context of the
Indian effort at mediating an end to the conflict in 1987 and was an outcome of
the Indo Lanka Peace Accord. It is therefore not home grown and gave a
degree of autonomy to the provinces that they had not enjoyed in the context of
Sri Lanka’s unitary constitution. There was an imposed aspect to the 13th Amendment, because it took place in
the aftermath of the Indian invasion of Sri Lankan airspace and the halting of
Sri Lankan military operations against the LTTE.
It is therefore to be expected that India would be particularly observant about
the implementation of this law. The implementation of the 13th Amendment would help to restore
some measure of Indian credibility as Sri Lanka’s superpower neighbour. If the
Sri Lankan government were to strengthen the provincial council system along
the lines of President Rajapaksa's earlier pledge of 13th Amendment plus 1
there is no doubt this would be satisfying to the Indian government and help to
maintain its own credibility in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu which is
liable to become volatile on the issue.
APC Effort
The All Party Representatives Committee (APRC) appointed nearly two years ago
by President Rajapaksa to work out a mutually acceptable political solution has
utilised the existing arrangements for the devolution of power as found in the
13th Amendment to be the basis of its own proposal for a political power
sharing p proposal. Although the sincerity of those who have met
regularly in the APRC on more than 120 occasions cannot be doubted, there have
been weaknesses in the structure that have eroded its credibility to some
extent. One is that the largest opposition party, the UNP, and the
largest Tamil party, the TNA, have not been participating in the process, the
former due to grievances with the government and the latter on account of not
being invited to participate in the APRC.
A further weakness has been the cavalier attitude with which the government has
often treated the APRC's proposals in the past. When the APRC was about
to unveil its interim proposals the government withheld these proposals and
instead proposed to implement the 13th Amendment as it existed. On the
other hand, the APRC has sought to clear the ambiguities in the existing provincial
council law, such as the list of concurrent powers that are shared by both the
central government and the provincial councils to the invariable disadvantage
of the latter. The APRC has also proposed entirely new improvements to the
scheme of devolution, by creating an entirely new upper chamber, by which
representatives from the provincial councils will have a voice in central
government.
In this context the most recent declarations by sections of the government
spearheaded by representatives of the Sinhalese nationalist parties are neither
surprising nor reassuring. With General Elections looming and
Presidential Elections also a possibility the government would not wish to
antagonise any section of the voting population, especially amongst the Sinhalese
majority who constitute about three quarters of this electorate, and whose
undivided vote would propel President Rajapaka and his government to yet
another election victory. The Sinhalese voters have been strongly
influenced by the Sinhalese nationalist agenda. The government needs to balance
this against earning the disfavour of the Tamil people and the international
community to whom it has made promises.
Home Grown Option
There is concern within the government that the devolution of power will led to
the multiplication of separatist sentiment, even if only to carve out small
ethnic enclaves, from the Muslim and Hill Country Tamil people, in addition to
the demand by the Sri Lankan Tamils of the north and east. An indication
of the government's approach to dealing with the ethnic minorities was seen in
the manner in which it compelled the EPDP and TMVP leaderships to contest
elections under the ruling party's banner, rather than separately in a manner
that highlighted autonomous Tamil political power.
On the other hand, in adopting the "homegrown" approach to the
solution to the ethnic conflict the government needs to bear two factors in
mind. The first is that the political solution to the ethnic conflict cannot be
imposed on the Tamil people. What the government has successfully
demonstrated is that a militant movement can be defeated by military
means. But the nationalism of one people cannot prevail by force of
military victories or larger numbers over the nationalism of another people.
The solutions to ethnic conflicts, if they are to be sustainable, need to be
negotiated ones that are based on mutual accommodation, with space for more
negotiations and accommodations in the future. An imposed solution to an
ethnic conflict, even if it is described as being a political solution, is
likely to break down in the longer term. The imposed nature of the 13th Amendment in 1987 can also be given
as evidence for its failure in implementation. The value of the APRC’s
proposals is that they are the result of over 120 meetings within the ruling
coalition and with some opposition parties, which seek to give a home grown
quality to the 13th
Amendment.
The second factor that the government needs to take into account is the
promises that it has made in the recent past, which are being watched by the
international community. These promises include resettling the bulk of
the internally displaced people by the end of the year, and also the
implementation of the 13th
Amendment. At a time when its relations with the Western countries
has become troubled in many respects, Sri Lanka needs to keep faith with the
countries that have supported it during the period of war, especially India
which is its closest neighbour. This is a relationship that needs to be
strengthened by keeping to promises made.