BETA

Sixty years ago, India and Pakistan attained their independence. The departing British broke up ‘British India’ into two segments, India and Pakistan. In breaking up British India, the British showed the same disregard for national identity as they were to show in Sri Lanka shortly after.

The British, having decided to carve out two countries out of their Indian Empire, ‘imported’ a British judge Cyril Radcliffe to determine the boundaries of each of these two countries. This man Radcliffe had never been to British India before its partition and never visited India or Pakistan after. He was neither a historian nor even a geographer and was probably appointed by the British government because he had been a judge and maybe, had a ‘sound’ upper middleclass background. On arriving in India, he perhaps sat at one of the ornate tables in one of the many opulent offices of the British Raj, with a map of British India before him and determined the fate of millions of persons by drawing an  arbitrary line on the map, to determine which parts should go to India and which to Pakistan. It is clear that the British government of the time had little understanding of the enormity of human suffering he was to create. He even dreamed up, an ‘East Pakistan’ that had no geographical link with the rest of Pakistan, being separated by the vast land mass of India from main Pakistan. Needless to say, this East Pakistan decided in time, that it would be independent of main Pakistan and, broke free, with the help of India under Indra Gandhi, and set up Bangaladesh.

This break up of British India it is believed, resulted in up to half a million people being killed and tens of thousands of women, both Hindu and Muslim, being raped or abducted. Over 10 million persons of varying religious or racial hues were displaced. The story of British departure from India is a terrible story of British inefficiency, ineptitude and callous indifference. The British Empire was run by upper middle class or aristocratic British administrators often barely out of their teens, who had little special training for the work they were to perform but had the right ‘connections’. These persons were mostly, products of the British public schools with their narrow outlook and a belief in a God given duty to ‘rule’ the natives. God and Empire, was their cry.  

Today, many persons believe that the violence in the sub continent started overnight after partition and independence. This was not so. Violence had commenced long before independence. The Gandhian non-violent struggle for independence had gradually become a violent struggle, in isolated pockets of the country. This violent struggle was however directed against the British and was part of the struggle for independence. However, with the arrival of Mountbatten as Viceroy under the new Atlee Labour government, most Indians clearly expected that independence would not be far away.  This is when racial violence commenced, particularly in places like Kolkata (Calcutta) and the Punjab. 

During all this bloodshed and violence in the sub continent of India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) experienced comparative peace and clam. The Island had a parliament very recently elected, under a constitution introduced by the Soulbury constitutional commission. The country, at that time, was multi cultural in nature. English was the official language as also was the medium of instruction in schools. Having a single language for the running of the government and conducting business, along with the same language as a medium of instruction in schools, led to an intermingling of the different religious and racial groups. In schools, students of different racial and religious groups got together in the classroom or in the playground and this led to tolerance and understanding.

Ceylonese (Sri Lankans) of the day, felt themselves superior to the Indians or the Pakistanis. Ceylon, in the early years of independence, had a population that was highly literate and cultured. Most Sri Lankans could read and write if not in English at least in Sinhala or Tamil. These were the halcyon days of the island when even policemen understood, spoke and responded in English, while all government departments conducted their work in English. A Ceylonese who went abroad for study, in whatever discipline, in an English speaking country, had no difficulty in easily melding with the local people.

However, the British had sown the seeds for future unrest. In British India Cyril Radcliffe had laid the scene for the traumatic displacement of over 10 million persons. In Ceylon, Lord Soulbury laid the scene for a proportionately smaller but equally traumatic unrest particularly affecting the Tamil nation. Thanks to Professor Suntheralingam, Lord Soulbury has admitted that he had erred in not providing safeguards for the smaller Tamil nation on the island.

There is no doubt that the British colonial rulers blundered when they granted independence to the island.  Unlike in India, where they were confronted by numerous large and small princely states apart from the Mughal Empire, in the island of Ceylon, they were confronted by two nation states – the Sinhala and the Tamil. Yet, where in India they split their Indian Empire into two (that later became three) states, in Ceylon, they forced the Tamil nation into submission as a subordinate slave nation under the Sinhalas.

The Tamil nation, after years of blatant discrimination and treatment as a  virtual slave nation, has been fighting for the last 30 years for their independence from Sinhala tyranny and the right of self determination. But, what have the British government done in response? They have branded the Tamil freedom fighters as ‘terrorists’!

Karen Parker the American lawyer in Human Rights and Humanitarian Law has this to say about the Tamil freedom fighters.  ‘The war in Sri Lanka is between the government’s armed forces and those of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE are a military force, with an identifiable chain of command and territory under their command. The LTTE combatants are in military uniform, carry out military operations on land, sea and in the air that under international rules are legal military operations. The LTTE is fully entitled to combatant status under humanitarian law.’

Apparently the British government feel that by labelling the freedom fighters as ‘terrorists’ the problem they caused, will go away. As Karen Parker says in her briefing paper to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)  that under the U.S. use of the term ‘terrorists’,  ‘George Washington and the Continental Army would be terrorist organisations, and the Boston Tea Party a terrorist act.’

It is sad that today, while both India and Pakistan are celebrating 60 years of independence with all indications that they will take their due place before long, among the leading world powers, Sri Lanka, that gained independence around the same time with all the promise and great expectations, has fallen by the wayside. Today, Sri Lanka is just a ‘Banana Republic’ with semi educated legislators who are interested only in lining their own pocket, with rampant corruption both among the legislators and the administrators. To quote Karen Parker once again, now that Russia is seeking to sell offensive jet aircraft to the Sri Lankan government ostensibly to offset U.S. aid ‘So now we have a US/Russian war by proxy in Sri Lanka with the annihilation of the Tamil people a real possibility.’