The Insurrectionary JVP and the Sri Lankan State – Mick Moore

By Sri Lanka Brief-20/09/2021

Much has been written about the insurrectionary Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP—Peoples Liberation Front). The main focus has been on the character of the organisation itself, why it emerged, and how it was defeated in 1971, and again in 1989. This paper deals with a different set of issues: the ways in which the Sri Lankan state and the insurrectionary JVP interacted and shaped one another. This reflects a broader interest in the question of why the quality of national governance in Sri Lanka has deteriorated so much in the 50 years since the first JVP insurrection of 1971. I suggest that JVP-state interactions can help explain that deterioration. But only so far. There is much more to that story – which is far too big and complex to explore further here.

Invented Insurrections
My primary argument is that the two insurrectionary JVPs – that we can label JVP1 and JVP2 – were in large degree ‘invented’ by the state. The nature of the ‘invention’ however differs:

• In 1971, the state – and foreign ideological sympathisers[i] – accepted and replicated the JVP’s (aspirational-cum-delusional) self-definition as an organised, coherent, disciplined and ideologically-motivated organisation that came close to toppling the government. In reality, JVP1 was a sprawling, loose-knit, undisciplined network that never stood a chance of success. Even before the April insurrection, the government was exaggerating the JVP threat to distract attention from its own considerable political and economic problems. Later, the government needed some retrospective justification for the fact that the police and the armed forces had tortured and slaughtered thousands of young people in the process of restoring control of those rural areas from which the police had withdrawn. The narrative that the JVP had been a deadly torpedo aimed directly at the ship of state helped justify the carnage.
• Following the defeat in 1971 and the subsequent repression, banning, trials and imprisonment, and later release of some of the leaders, the JVP again became legal in 1977. By the early 1980s, the JVP had been reinvented as a movement that, while still talking of revolution, was in practice substantially committed to competing for votes in elections. It did that with some success. But that trajectory was abandoned when the government proscribed the JVP as part of a blatantly phoney attempt to blame left wing political organisations for the 1983 pogrom against the Tamil population; that in large part resulted from the acts of omission and commission of government itself and components of the ruling party. Further, the police had been continually harrying JVP members since the movement re-emerged, obliging them to pay a high price for adopting the electoral route. The facts of proscription and harassment, and the political weakness of the government, especially after Indian troops occupied part of the North in 1987 in connection with the escalating separatist conflict, provided the ever-imaginative and innovative JVP leader Rohana Wijeweera, with a new opportunity to take the path of armed insurrection. It is likely that, had it been allowed to do so, the JVP would have continued on the democratic path. It had commanded significant popular support and sympathy.

I conclude by sketching out how the need to combat the JVP contributed to the creation of a more militarised state apparatus, more capable of combatting terrorism, more adept at using terrorist-type methods against its opponents, and more closely aligned symbolically and culturally with the notion of Sri Lanka as a Sinhalese-Buddhist state.

The Insurrectionary JVP and... by Thavam Ratna