Recently, there was some excitement over the press release below.
Technically, the $52 bil can be raised from the Tamils outside of Sri Lanka quite easily......about $17k per pop. Add with the several Tamil billionaires' contribution to the Ealam pot, maybe the average for the rest drops to say, $2,000 each. But this is not a numbers game.
The Singhalese -Tamil conflict has been going on for more than 900 years. The "who was here first" argument is like the chicken and egg debate. Depends on whose his-story one subscribes to. Historically, Sri Lankan Tamils (also called Ceylon Tamils) are descendants of the Tamils of the old Jaffna Kingdom and east coast chieftaincies called Vannimais. The Indian Tamils (or Hill Country Tamils...mostly in Kandy area) are descendants of bonded labourers sent from Tamil Nadu to Sri Lanka in the 19th century to work on tea plantations. The Tamils (from India) being one of the oldest unified races in the world probably have more claim to the land where Adam & Eve lived but I'm not discussing that here.
When the Rajapaksa brothers "defeated" the LTTE in 2009, there was much rejoice among the majority Singhalese. Albeit some 100,000 people were deliberately butchered (the UN has termed it genocide) by the Army (under the current president's orders) in May 2009, till today, the Rajapaksas and their ilks have not been brought to trial. The Tamils in SL are generally poor and when there's no money, nobody is interested in fighting for "human rights" nor the CNNs of the world are interested........unlike in Ukraine. In a sad way, brown lives don't matter as much as the white's. (I hope FB doesn't jail me again for telling the truth).
I think this new proposal by the Tamils for Biden (a society in the US), while intended for good purpose, serves to give false hope to the downtrodden Tamils in Sri Lanka. In my opinion, the GOSL is unlikely to accept this offer because:
1. It will be a direct insult to the Singhalese majority - selling "their" country for money. Prostitution comes to mind. Land is ALWAYS a sensitive issue......Malaysia fought Singapore over a piece of barren rock (fortunately in court). Land is always a national pride and many wars were fought over it. I bet Russia is regretting the Alaska sale to the US.
2. After gloating over their victory, do you expect the SL Army to agree to the partition. The last time a partition was held in the Indian sub-continent, more than a million people were killed. The situation is similar now. Tamil owned lands in the North, North East and South East have been "infiltrated" with Singhalese settlers....often brought in by the SL Army to break the Tamil ties to the land.
3. In fact, rewards are being offered to Singhalese to settle in Tamil areas. Likewise with religious places - temples are demolished or converted to Buddhist shrines. The list goes on. Do you expect the Singhalese govt to give all these up for $52 bil?
4. For some 50 years since independence, Sri Lanka has been touting itself as a model Asian country. And now, to carve out part of it's land to Tamils - will indicate that there was failure. Not that the rest of the world doesn't already know but to admit failure, is another thing.
5. The Sinhala Buddhist caucus is very powerful in SL. It's the only form of Buddhism that has violence deeply rooted in it's philosophy (although the Singhalese Buddhist that you and I know will deny it) - go check, Buddhist priests have been known to kill Hindu Tamils and supported pogroms in the past. Conceding defeat to the Tamils (by partition) will be a direct slap on these crazy monks. They will never allow the GOSL to even consider this proposal.
6. Part of the reason why SL was able to "survive/succeed" was due to the Tamil DNA. Although bullied, cajoled and subdued (reminds us of another Asian country ?) by the majority, the minority Tamils had some world beating qualities and its shown in the likes of Ananda (Malaysia), Gnanalingam (Malaysia), Rajaratnam (USA), Chandran Ratnam (SL), Ken Balendra (SL), Tharman (S'pore), Subaskaran (UK) and many others. The Tamil DNA has helped Sri Lanka progress faster. Now, losing this "intelligence pool" of the minority race by partition, would be a daunting prospect to the SL govt...all for $52 bil. It's no a no brainer.
There are many other lesser reasons why the proposal is unlikely to be accepted by the GOSL but I hope I'm wrong for the benefit of the SL nation.
A couple of years ago, I had penned a piece on another option....one that is expected to cost at most $10 bil. When the going gets tough, the tough get going......somewhere else.
You can read this in my blog: https://r-tickles.blogspot.com/.../cut-loss-now-and...
As Moses said....."follow me to the Promised land". It took the Jews almost 3000+ years to get Israel. Will the Tamils in SL also wait that long?
Or will there be enough gumption and instinct to make the move now. Only time will tell.
