Anura Kumara Dissanayake has made New Delhi his first stop abroad after being sworn in as the president of Sri Lanka in October 2024 and winning a two-thirds majority for the National People’s Power (NPP) alliance in November’s parliamentary elections. But before you start cheering, pause for a moment and ask yourself: who is this leader who has successfully overthrown 75 years of rule by a handful of families that have held the nation in their iron grip since the independence of Sri Lanka?
While heading the NPP coalition, Dissanayake represents the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)—People’s Liberation Front—that took to vicious violence and conducted two major insurrections. As the most prominent youth leader of the JVP, he was an active participant in terrorist attacks on innocent civilians, including Sri Lankan Tamils.
While recalling this less than savoury past, we have to note that Dissanayake has apologised for past violence and, in consequence, his candidates won all but one district in the Tamil-majority north and east provinces. His two-thirds majority is the result—in his own words—of his country-wide support from “north, east, west and south”.
Imaging: Deni Lal
The JVP was earlier opposed to any devolution to the Tamil-majority areas and it has refused to entertain the long-standing Tamil demand for a federal set-up and the inclusion of Tamil among Sri Lanka’s official languages. In the recent elections, however, the Tamils abandoned their own traditional Tamil leaders and supported Dissanayake despite his reputation as a violent hardcore Sinhala-Buddhist extremist.
But, for all that, there is one major lacuna that is crying to be filled: the final place of the Tamil minority in Sinhala-majority Sri Lanka. To settle this key question, the 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution was negotiated by former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi with former Sri Lankan president Junius Jayewardene in 1987. It explicitly assured the merged north-eastern province, where the Tamils are in a majority, of a place of equality and honour in Sri Lanka where, on all important issues, including land and law and order, the Tamil majority would be able to rule itself without the fetters of the central government in a unitary state. That fell short of both federation and separation advocated by most Tamil political and militant groups but was reluctantly endorsed by the Sri Lankan government as the only alternative to the disintegration of their nation-state.
But neither then nor now has the JVP acknowledged the validity or even legitimacy of the 1987 accord, which they hold was imposed on Sri Lanka by India through the 13th amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution. The JVP stand reflected the anger of the naval rating who almost killed Rajiv Gandhi with the butt of his rifle at the farewell parade for the departing prime minister.
So, notwithstanding the 34 paragraphs of the joint communique that sets the course for the future of India-Sri Lanka relations, the key question of the future for Tamils in Sri Lanka remains unanswered: if not the 13th amendment, then what?
Has Narendra Modi’s India abandoned the Sri Lankan Tamils, with dangerous implications for New Delhi-Chennai relations and thus the unity and integrity of India? Or has Dissanayake taken the Modi establishment into confidence about what he has in mind? Above all, has the JVP leopard changed its spots? Or is the Dissanayake dispensation on the road to the same kind of minority-bashing, as is the Modi government?
Aiyar is a former Union minister and social commentator.