Can a Communal, Chauvinist 'Marxist' Represent Democratic Change in Sri Lanka?

No one on the Left should allow Dissanayake and his party to cover up their crimes with a red flag.

Marxist Leader Anura Dissanayake.

(Photo: AP/PTI)

Less than a fortnight after Sri Lanka elected a new president, Anura Kumar Dissanayake, Tamil women gathered to observe International Children’s Day (1 October) — a day of mourning for their loved ones who “disappeared” while in military custody. For a decade-and-a-half, they have been demanding an international mechanism to find out the fate of their loved ones.

This time, their protest was disrupted and threatened by a supporter of the new president (popularly called AKD). This man shouted “This is Anura’s rule, I’m with AKD, and it is Malimawa now! You all are dogs. I will crush you. You are paid to protest, we will check your accounts. I will hand you over to the police.” [‘Malimawa’ is the ‘Compass’ symbol of the National People’s Power coalition led by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), headed by AKD.]

This incident is an ominous portent of something hidden by the celebratory headlines and analyses of Dissanayake’s victory.

Failing the Minimum Test of Democratic Character

The relevant question is whether Dissanayake’s politics has a democratic character, not whether it is Marxist or Leftist.

As in India, the first test of democratic character in Sri Lanka concerns the equality and dignity of minorities, and majoritarian communal politics. In Sri Lanka, this yardstick is the question of the Tamils and the politics of Sinhala-chauvinism.

Dissanayake, his party, and the coalition fail this test in every possible way. The six-decade-long violence against the people of Tamil nationality by the Sri Lankan army reached its peak 15 years ago, with the genocide unleashed by the regime headed by Mahinda Rajapaksa as President and his brother Gotabaya as Defence Secretary.

The genocide of the Tamils in Sri Lanka is one of the most horrific episodes of mass killings in history, and even today, the Tamil people in the country have no hope of justice, security, and equality. On the contrary, many parties in Sri Lankan politics compete in Sinhala-chauvinist stakes.

In such a situation, the first condition for democratic change is the political will to mount a campaign against Sinhala-chauvinism. Not unlike Prime Minister Modi, Mahinda Rajapaksa had gained popularity and power by presenting himself as a God-like national leader. He presided over an economic disaster that trapped the country in a web of foreign debt and austerity measures, resulting in crippling inflation and impoverishment.

For a long time, however, Sinhala chauvinist sentiment protected his popularity from being affected. But two years ago, Sri Lankans finally burst out in anger against nepotism, economic chaos and the dictatorship, and an uprising forced the Rajapaksa brothers to flee.

In the recent elections, Sri Lankans no doubt voted with the hope of change. Anura Kumar Dissanayake succeeded in channelling this hope in his favour by promising miraculous solutions and presenting himself as a common man, an outsider challenging the ruling elites. His election campaign, an article published in Frontline observes, was similar to Trump's and Modi's in this respect.

The article adds, “The JVP claims that it is communist but excludes Tamils and Muslims from almost all realms of activity. Compared to Dissanayake and his JVP, former President Mahinda Rajapaksa and his brother, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, appear to be a ‘lite’ version of Sinhala chauvinism.”

The Tamil party, the ITAK (Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi), supported Dissanayake's rival, SJB's Sajith Premadasa, and he got a large share of the vote in Tamil areas. The SJB is by no means free from Sinhala-chauvinist taint. But the Tamils noted that Premadasa, whose father was killed by LTTE, sought their support with a language of unity and respect. Whereas Dissanayake maintains that he has no regrets about supporting the genocidal war against the Tamils.

Veiled Threat To Tamil Voters

In May 2024, a day after Tamil Genocide Remembrance Day, JVP leader K D Lalkantha boasted that “only his party and one other led by extremist Sinhala monks are responsible for defeating “separatist terrorism.” He told military officials, “We both waged wars; we waged an ideological war and you did that with weapons.”

Addressing the Tamils during his campaign, Dissanayake made what sounded like a veiled threat. “I assure you again. We will win. Jaffna must also be a stakeholder of this victory. Do not be labelled as those who opposed this huge change. Ever. Be a stakeholder in this change… When the South is gearing up for change. If you are seen to oppose that change, what do you think the mindset of the South will be? Would you like it if Jaffna was identified as those who went against this change? Those who opposed this change? Would you like it if the North was identified this way?”

These words insinuate that if the Tamils of the North do not vote for the inevitably victorious NPP, if they refuse to be part of the national will for “change”, they will be marked (by the Sinhalas) as unpatriotic. If Tamils insist on opting out of the patriotic victory, they will be responsible if the patriotic Sinhala mindset reacts with violence.

If we say Dissanayake’s win represents a victory for the Sri Lankan people's aspirations for national change, we are implicitly boosting Dissanayake’s own ominous claim that the Tamils who refuse to be included in his victory are traitors to national aspirations.

Support for Genocide and Impunity

The genocide of the Tamils is no different from what is happening with the Palestinians. Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Defence Secretary in 2009, had justified the repeated shelling of hospitals, on the grounds that there were no civilians, only “LTTE sympathisers” and “terrorists”. He had angrily demanded what business the UN had to be counting civilian casualties. Israel’s position on Gaza is exactly the same.

Israel’s policy of systematic settler colonialism on Palestinian land (continuing in the West Bank even as the onslaught continues in Gaza) is mirrored by Sri Lankan regimes that have offered up to five acres of land to Sinhalas willing to settle in lands belonging to the Tamils, including Tamil Muslims.

In the 2004 elections in Sri Lanka, the JVP contested as part of the UPFA (United People's Freedom Alliance) coalition that was defined by its demand for the dissolution of the 2002 ceasefire agreement between the LTTE and the Sri Lanka government. The UPFA won, and Dissanayake became Minister of Agriculture, Lands and Irrigation in a government with Chandrika Kumaratunga as President. In the 2005 Presidential elections, the JVP supported  Rajapaksa who ran “on a platform specifically opposed to the ceasefire.”

In 2006, Dissanayake was one of the prominent MPs present at the JVP’s launch of the “Joint Front to Protect the Nation” (JFPN) – a platform to demand the abrogation of the 2002 Ceasefire Agreement and an all-out war to “defeat the LTTE.”

In 2004, a tsunami killed “over 35,000 people, two-thirds of which were reported to be from the Tamil North-East.” Dissanayake led the successful campaign to block President Kumaratunga’s proposal to distribute post-tsunami aid jointly with the LTTE. In fact, this was one of the main issues that led to Dissanayake and other JVP MPs resigning from the government.  He was, thus, directly complicit in the war crime of withholding tsunami relief to the Tamils.

Additionally, while releasing the NPP Manifesto, Dissanayake said it “will not seek to punish anyone accused of rights violations and war crimes.” 

It is shameful that so many on the Left who are rightly outraged about the genocide in Gaza, should welcome the victory of a man who supported the genocide of the Tamils in Sri Lanka. 

Insurrection and Anti-Imperialism – Chauvinism By Other Names

The JVP styles itself as a ‘Marxist-Leninist’ party. It has led two armed insurrections, the first began in 1971 and the second in 1987. Both insurrections, however, had a marked Sinhala chauvinist character.

This report by the University Teachers For Human Rights (Jaffna) notes, for instance, “The strength of the JVP lay in the fact that it adopted the powerful weapon of Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalism. ... The famous ‘five classes’ conducted by the JVP included the topic of Indian expansionism in which the hill country Tamils were portrayed as India's fifth column. Their anti-Tamil stance gave renewed vigour to the racist feeling of the petit-bourgeois rural youth in the south of the country. The JVP gained much ground by raising this patriotic cry, mixed with Marxist rhetoric. This culminated in the 1971 insurrection which was crushed brutally by the regime of Mrs Bandaranaike, who was later on an ally of the JVP for a short time during the aftermath of the signing of the Peace Accord in 1987.”

The second insurrection mobilised Sinhala support against the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Accord, which, unsatisfactory as it was, conceded a modest measure of federal autonomy to the Tamils seeking self-determination, and recognised both Tamil and Sinhalese as national languages with English as the link language.

The JVP’s “anti-imperialism” was a fig leaf for racial profiling. It labelled the Tamils, especially plantation workers of Indian origin, as a “fifth-column instrument of Indian expansionism.” Its enthusiastically chauvinist campaign served the racist and genocidal cause of the Sri Lankan state (indeed its leaders boast of this role), and the very state it helped empower turned on it with horrific brutality, crushing the insurrections.

The JVP’s 'Patriotic' Assassinations

In the Black July riots in 1983, Sinhala gangs backed by the Jayawardena government killed thousands of Tamils. The government scapegoated left parties including the JVP, without any evidence to back such allegations.

Still, there is no denying that the JVP contributed heavily to the chauvinist climate that enabled the mass killing of the Tamils.

Sinhala trade unionists, politicians, and left activists whom were insufficiently chauvinist towards Tamils were termed unpatriotic traitors ("anti-national") by the JVP, which formed an armed wing – the Patriotic People’s Armed Troops (PPAT) – to assassinate such persons.  

Source of Hope?

Yes, the people of Sri Lanka want change. Yes, getting rid of the burden of economic crisis and austerity is a big challenge for the new government. But the Tamils are Sri Lankan citizens too. Dissanayake’s victory holds no hope for their aspirations, instead, it constitutes a fresh threat to them.

No one on the Left should allow Dissanayake and the JVP to cover up their crimes with a red flag. Their ‘Marxism’ is a sham, their politics is racist and communal.

They are not “left-leaning”, but “fascist-leaning.”

The only hope is that enough people in Sri Lanka, especially the Sinhala majority, will insist that democratic change requires an end to Sinhala-supremacism. The onus is on those who voted for the victors to make sure that justice for the Tamils is a common democratic cause; to demand that the new government, without delay, implement the 13th Amendment, ensure punishment for perpetrators of war crimes against the Tamils, and arrest and prosecute the Buddhist monks and politicians who incite hatred and violence against them and other minorities.

(Kavita Krishnan is a women's rights activist. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)