Economic emancipation and freedom of the people of Eastern and Northern Provinces should take precedence over parochial linguistic nationalism..!!!

Politics
Recommendations for Political Reforms of the Tamil Community
With reference to The Island Newspapers front page article "SLMC, TNA move SC against Elections Amendment Bill" by Chitra Weerarathne the Pathfinder Foundation held a Public Seminar - SANVADA on the 5th of June 2009 titled " Towards the Revival of the Economy in Northern Sri Lanka" where the key note speaker Dr. Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, a leading Economist made several proposals with regard to reform of the politics of the Tamil community in Sri Lanka.

The Pathfinder Foundation is soon releasing a Policy Brief based on Dr. Sarvananthan’s presentation to the Parliamentarians and other key policy makers. The Brief includes the following proposal as outlined:

Tamil democratic politics requires profound reform. All the present Tamil political parties (former armed groups) having ‘Eelam’, ‘Tamil Eelam’ or ‘Tiger’ in their name should rename their parties (Eelam People’s Democratic Party - EPDP, People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam – PLOTE, Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Front – EPRLF, Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation – TELO, Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students – EROS, Thamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal – TMVP – Tamil People’s Liberation Tigers, Popular Front of the Liberation Tigers – PFLT). ‘Eelam’ or ‘Tamil Eelam’ has been a disaster to the Tamil community. Even the TULF should take off ‘Tamil’ and ‘Liberation’ from its name.

All the aforementioned Tamil political leaderships have been largely preoccupied with language, land, religious, and political rights with only a marginal interest in economic rights and freedom. Thus, Tamil politics throughout the twentieth century was heavily concentrated on ethnic cum linguistic politics. It is time for the Tamil community to take a deep breath and ponder, what went wrong? Narrowly focused ethnic cum linguistic politics should be replaced with regional politics by fostering Eastern and Northern regional identity, which is multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious, multi-caste, multi-class, and multi-gender.

A rainbow coalition of different people of the Eastern and Northern Provinces is the need of Tamil politics in the twenty-first century. Such a broad democratic coalition should be multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious, multi-caste, multi-class, and multi-gender with regional identity (as opposed to racial or ethnic identity) as its political motto.

Historically, leaderships of the Tamil political parties in the North East have been Jaffna-centric that has alienated the non-Jaffna Tamils, particularly those of Batticaloa district. Economic emancipation and freedom of the people of Eastern and Northern Provinces should take precedence over parochial linguistic nationalism of the days gone by. It is not that language is unimportant, but it should not take precedence over economic well being. Thus, a fundamental re-orientation of Tamil politics is long overdue.


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