India’s Vicarious Involvement In Sri Lanka’s ‘Tamil Question’ – Merger Of North & East Or Not

By Vishwamithra1984 –March 1, 2017

“Man is like a rope: both break at a definite strain…the solution is not splicing the rope; it’s lessening the tension.” ~Jack Vance

We may need India’s backing in the international arena in time to come. We may need India’s help to persuade the more extreme elements in the Tamil leadership community to adhere to this and reject that. We may need India’s support to sustain a more enduring peace, not as it is today- a mere absence of war and militancy- we might even need India’s whole-hearted patronage to convince the world leaders not to interfere with our internal political matters at all. Yet when, as per Indian Express of February 20, 2017, India’s Foreign Secretary states that ‘India will not be pressing Sri Lanka to merge the Northern and Eastern Provinces to form a single Tamil-majority, Tamil-speaking province as envisaged by the India-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987’, India has willy-nilly assured Sri Lanka and its Muslim community some lasting respite- that the ‘merger issue’, as it is called now, would be in the back burner, at least for some time.

The Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord was signed in Colombo on 29 July 1987 between Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President J. R. Jayewardene. The primary purpose of the Accord was to resolve the Sri Lankan Civil War by enabling the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka and the Provincial Councils Act of 1987. While its opponents condemned the Accord as a sell-out to the Indian-backed Tamils and their militant leaders, its supporters promulgated that it was the bedrock on which the whole socio-ethnic relations rested. Among the significant points of the agreement, the Sri Lankan Government made a number of concessions to Tamil demands, which included, among others, devolution of power from Colombo to the provinces, merger (subject to later referendum) of the northern and eastern provinces and official status for the Tamil language.

What irked most of the Sinhala chauvinists was the merger, not proposed but which became a fait accompli after the signatures of Gandhi and Jayewardene were placed, between the Northern and Eastern provinces into one. Although it was worded as subject to a referendum to be held later only in the Eastern Province, the pronouncement of the merger held stood between these two provinces as from the date the Accord was signed.

R. Hariharan writing a column to The Hindu in July 2010, almost exactly after one year after the crushing blow dealt to the Tamil militants led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE) and Prabhakaran, opines thus: ‘The Rajiv-Jayewardene Accord was perhaps too ambitious in its scope as it sought to collectively address all the three contentious issues between India and Sri Lanka: strategic interests, people of Indian origin in Sri Lanka and Tamil minority rights in Sri Lanka. Its success depended on sustained political support from both the countries. So the Accord got sidelined when political leaders who were unhappy with the Accord came to power in both countries almost at the same time. As a result, the Tamil minorities, who had put their faith in it, were in limbo. These unsavory developments have clouded the understanding of the positive aspects of the Accord. After all, it was the Accord that enabled Sri Lankan Tamils to gain recognition for some of their demands in Sri Lankan politics and in the Sri Lankan Constitution.’

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