Assignment JVP.docx

“They diffused their energies in sporadic attacks spread over many parts of the country, when concentration on a few strategic points might have suited their purposes better."  J R Jayewardene of Sri Lanka Quoted from “A Political Biography” by K M de Silva “Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.”  Vladimir Ilyich Lenin INTRODUCTION 1. JanathaVimukthi Peramuna (J.V.P.) was an off shoot of the Ceylon Communist party and a breakaway group. Its leadership was home grown. Leader of the JVP belonged to low cast family in down south which used to be the traditional strong hold of the leftists in Sri Lanka. Rohana Wijeweera had his higher education in the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. He was a political activist and the political conditions in Soviet Union made him realize that the USSR was not socialist. Once it was confirmed that he could not continue his studies in Russia due to his publicly known sympathy for China, he joined the newly formed Ceylon Communist Party led by N Shanmugathasan. While in the party, he slowly joined dissident groups within the party who were dissatisfied with Shanmugathasan's leadership. RohanaWijeweera and others decided to launch a revolutionary party in mid-1966 wherein Janata VimukthiPerumuna (People's Liberation Front) which they had to literally start from scratch. Rebellion Repression and the Struggle for the Justice in Sri Lanka – The Lionel Bopage Story by Michael Kollin Cooke, page 1, Agahas publishers, Colombo, 2011 2. JanathaVimukthiPeramuna led by RohanaWijewera attempted to overthrow the Sri Lankan Government in 1971 and 1987 – 1989 with an armed insurrection which were futile and ended up with mass human loss. Basis for the two insurrections seem different in contrast. First insurrection was aimed against the capitalist working class rallying around the majority of educated unemployed youth whereas the second insurrection was originated against the Indian expansionism. However, both the struggles were harshly crushed by the Government military forces. Foreign nations extended their fullest support military support for Sri Lanka in the first insurrection in 1971. AIM 3. Aim of the assignment is to discuss the reasons for failures of the two insurrections launched by Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (J.V.P.) in 1971 and 1987 to 1989. EVOLUTION OF JANATHA VIMUKTHI PERMUNA 4. The JVP was a cadre based party which subscribed to the Leninist concept of “democratic centralism”. It functioned as an underground organization. The main attribute of the JVP was that it adopted Marxism-Leninism to the local conditions. There was also a mass appeal of RohanaWijeweera who held lecture discussions on five inter related themes namely the ever present capitalist crisis, the Sri Lankan independence, Indian expansionism, left movement in Sri Lanka and the path of the Sri Lankan revolution. Sectarian Socialism: The Politics of Sri Lanka’s Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) by Rajesh Venugopal University of Oxford, Oxford, page 4, 2009 ([email protected]) 5. The origins of the J. V. P. were secretive and its organizational and political activities were conducted undercover and in a clandestine manner. The potential cadres of this movement were Sinhalese Buddhist youth who were disappointed with the existing socio-economic and political framework and the orthodox Marxists who formed the contemporary leftwing in Sri Lanka's parliamentary politics. 6. The historical evolution of the J V P falls into three stages. The first stage covers the period from 1964-1971, during which emerged as a left wing guerrilla organization. The armed struggle which the J V P launched in 1971 was of a short duration and was quickly suppressed by the government in power with great force and intensity. Yet the brief conflict created turmoil in Sri Lankan national politics and international relations unparalleled in its recent political history. As a result of the armed struggle, the JVP was proscribed by the regime in power in 1971. Most of its members had either been imprisoned or killed or had foresworn their allegiance to the cause by 1972. The J. V. P. was permitted to resume its political activities in 1977 after the withdrawal of the Criminal Justice Commission Act by the United National Party Government. 7. The second stage covers the period from 1977-1983, which includes the post insurrection period during which the J. V. P. felt compelled to revive itself as a political party willing to participate in a democratic framework. In fact, during this period the J. V. P. was called upon to transform itself from a covert threat into a political party which supported the process of parliamentary democracy. J. V. P. during its early stages rejected all forms of electoral politics and the parliamentary system. However, after 1977 they had to be complied with participation in the existing elective process in 1977 elections. The J. V. P. was formally recognized as a legitimate political party by the Election Commissioner in 1982. This new image of the J. V. P. was reversed when ethnic violence broke out in July 1983. The J. V. P. was proscribed once again and forced to revert to operation as an underground movement. 8. The third stage which deals with the post 1983 period contends with the J. V. P’s renewed violent activities, particularly after the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of July 1987 which they vehemently opposed. J. V. P. revived its guerrilla cum terrorist activities with greater intensity with the ensuing presence of the Indian Peace Keeping Force (I. P. K. F.). JVP INSURRECTION IN 1971 9. J. V. P. attempted to capture state power through extra parliamentary means but miserably failed without popular support to the claimed revolution. Compared to the previous radical events in the country, the uprising was extraordinarily fierce and created a chain of violent political cycles which Sri Lanka has not yet been in a position to fully recover. It was a serious threat to the political stability of the country and greatly eroded the legitimacy of democracy. Although the major danger disappeared after three weeks, it took nearly three more months to completely eradicate the rebellion outposts in the jungles and remote villages. Official death toll was 1200 but unofficial figures reliably estimated it to be around four to five thousand. Judging by the facts, the JVP itself supported the United Front which consisited with traditional leftist parties to come to power in the elections in 1970 and launched the insurrection within a year. REASONS FOR FAILURE OF THE JVP INSURRECTION IN 1971 10. There are plenty of reasons which led to the failure of the revolution in 1971which need to be discussed. 11. Wrong Practice of Political Ideologies. It seems that Rohana Wijeweera did not acquire his theories from the Russian revolutionary literature but from some contemporary pseudo revolutionary theories popular among his contemporaries like Kassim Hanga of Zanzibar and Che Ali of Indonesia. Kassim Hanga and the group led a ‘one-day revolution’ in Zanzibar in January 1964 which was successful and it is more likely that the model initially Wijeweera wanted to follow in Sri Lanka. Putschism, Ethnic Chouvinism and Social Revolution by C. A. Chandraprema, page 6, Colombo 1989 It was evident that they insisted a struggle rather than before arising it within the population itself as it seems that there was no demand for a revolution from the majority of the population. 12. Poor State of Arms and Ordnance. The rebels were poorly armed and often badly led. Their major weapon was surprise attack and once the initial attack was repulsed the government forces were able to regroup and make devastating counter attacks. The rebels were armed only with crude home made weapons shot guns and a handful of stolen sub machine guns. Weapons used by them were no match to modern weapons of the armed forces. They used the poor tactics such as using replicas of guns to deceive the armed forces. Bombs were primary in make such as patrol bombs and Molotov cocktail. Carder ‘Podi Athula’ lost a hand whilst making a local bomb and several detonators went off prematurely in a ceiling of a building in Universirty of Peradeniya. 13. Cohesion of the Ruling Party and the Opposition. Another reason to fail was that the majority of people were against the insurrection and the UNP and UF supporters joined hands to capture and hand over the insurgents to the police. It is to the credit of the then Opposition Leader J.R. Jayewardene despite the blunders he committed later as President that he and his party gave unstinted moral support to the Sirima Bandaranaike Government in suppressing the insurgency which was aimed at overthrowing a democratically elected government. The insurgents presented no serious alternative political program to the people where it lacked the popular support. They were not the spearhead of a popular outburst against an unpopular regime whereas they were opposed by a popularly elected government allied with traditional leftist parties only 10 months before the insurrections broke out. 14. Immature and Inexperienced Members. Most of the motivated members were in their younger age with no much lesser political knowledge and experience. Even the J. V. P. leader himself had stated that their initiative was an unripe one. There were few areas in the country the insurgents controlled for brief period in April. They demonstrated an amazing immaturity and inexperience even in those areas they controlled. Finally, while these youthful revolutionaries managed to control if not occupy some areas of the island and compelled government forces to confine their activities to the large towns and main trunk roads where they never showed any solid use of strategy. 15. It was obvious these ‘revolutionaries’ in a mighty hurry by listening to Wijeweera and other speakers at the largely attended first public meeting of the JVP held at Hyde Park, Colombo on 10 August 1970. The United Front had just come to power but the JVP was apparently was not ready to give the new rulers sufficient time to attend the country’s pressing problems although their one time mentors the ‘Parlour Bolsheviks’ who sang the virtues of armed revolution for nearly four decades (old leftist parties) were with the government. 16. Lack of Tamil Representation and Urban Proletariat. Main contributory factor was the “narrowness of its social base”. The “urban proletariat” did not support the struggle. In fact, they were active in the counter offensive in many cases. They received no support from the Tamils, whether Sri Lankan Tamils or the Malaiha Tamils. Furthermore, support for the J.V.P. was confined to few districts in the Sinhalese heartland. 17. Leadership Vacuum and Lack of Communication. Senior leadership was behind bars when the revolution was launched which clearly showed that there was no clarity of instructions which resulted in no synchronization of attacks. Bad planning, poor communication prevailed within the party and possible state spies within the organization allowed the armed forces to easily crush the rebellion and launch a campaign of terror against the JVP and its supporters. A child like attempt to seize the first lady had also been detected and repulsed in advance. 18. No prominent targets. The 1971 insurrection lasted for five weeks. The rebels did not succeed in assassinating a single prominent member of the ruling coalition or for that matter physically hurting either a Parliamentarian or a Cabinet Minister or a senior police officer. It cannot be credibly argued that they posed serious a threat to state power as they were to do in 1987-90. JVP INSURRECTION OF 1987 – 1989 19. Although the party briefly came to the democratic mainstream after their release from prison in 1978, it resorted to the old game after going underground following the ban the UNP government imposed on it in 1983 in the wake of the events of Black July that year. One crucial element in the JVP's political psychology has always been the constant fear that the movement would be suppressed or annihilate at any moment using any excuses by the ruling classes. The proscription of 1983 reinforced the JVP's fear of imminent repression. The movement went underground and as we can now see with the benefit of retrospective analysis it went back to the old strategy of armed insurrection. 20. The JVP's politics of armed insurrection in this period of second insurgency also underwent a significant transformation. In the new paradigm of insurrectionary politics, the JVP no longer saw itself as the agency of Sri Lanka's socialist transformation. Rather, the JVP's self-understanding during this period was that it was the sole patriotic force the historical mission of which was to liberate the 'motherland' from traitors, aggressors and foreign invaders. The patriotic transformation of the JVP occurred in the broad context of the militarization of Sri Lanka's ethnic issue and India's military involvement in an attempt to contain the conflict. Being in the underground for four years from 1983 to 1987, the JVP suddenly reemerged in July 1987 as a considerably resourceful underground military organization. It is not difficult to surmise that from 1983 to 1987 the JVP re-organized itself in preparation of a second attempt at an insurrectionary war and the direct Indian involvement in the Sri Lanka's conflict offered the movement a political space of tremendous potential. REASONS FOR FAILURE OF THE JVP INSURRECTION FROM 1987 TO 1989 21. Elimination of the Centre of gravities. Second attempt of the J. V. P. also failed because of the adoption of harsh counter insurgency measures by the Sri Lankan security forces and the systematic elimination of the top JVP leadership. As the JVP was a cadre-based party and did not have mass support, elimination of the top leaders disrupted the chain of command and soon the movement collapsed. 22. Lack of the Mass Support and Public Sympathy. The extensive use of violence, destruction of public property, work stoppages, demonstration by school children inspired by JVP student wing and unauthorized curfews caused lot of inconvenience to the general public. Gradually the JVP was losing their sympathy. The only section from where the JYP got support, though not vocal, was from the Sinhala entrepreneur class who had business links with countries other than India and had always resented the role played by the businessmen of Indian origin in the Sri Lankan economy. 23. Indiscriminative attacks and Public Harassment. They gave a deadline to police and security forces to resign by 20 August 1989, which was later extended to 28 August 1989, or else see their families killed when there was no mass uprising or desertions as the JVP claimed. This proved to be a big tactical mistake on the part of the JVP. The JVP did not pay attention to the threats issued by the security forces. Their tactics was marked a certain over-confidence. One popular JVP poster warned the army, "Remember, we will take blood for blood, life for life, parents for parents, property for property. One day someplace, somewhere, we will get you, do not forget”. 24. The task of the security forces was made easier by the fact that JVP cadres and supporters were identifiable in the villages and thus retaliation was swift. The most disturbing part of the counter violence unleashed by the security forces was that they did not distinguish between members, supporters and family members. Some civil rights lawyers and human rights activists were also murdered. The JVP was not able to withstand the counter violence of the security forces. 25. The basic law in this strategy was that once the JVP had lost the upper hand, it did not allow any escape route. They were also not able to control the violence they had unleashed. What is important in guerrilla warfare is that the use of force has to the selective and specifically against the symbols of state authority or repression. The moment it became indiscriminate, the masses were alienated and their support was not forthcoming. It is important that the political front of the organization should have played an active and effective role to gain popular support. 26. Poor Supply of Arms. Its main problem had been a lack of regular supply of sophisticated arms and sufficient manpower. Without the tire power to take on the military they had no chance of winning in the short term or even long run. JVP's threat to the security forces to 'desert or die' proved to be self-defeating. It is likely that this threat was only a tactical move and never meant to be carried out. 27. Wrong Cause for the Struggle. Although the JVP demonstrated its ability to paralyze the civil administration and was often referred to as the Rathri Anduwa (night government) and the Kuda Anduwa (small government), their political programme was inadequate to mobilize the masses. A strategy to overthrow the prevailing capitalist state could not have been based on anti-Indianism alone which had to grow beyond that. JVP had no agrarian programme to speak of as in 1971. Since the JVP failed to give political meaning to its military actions, the anticipated mass uprising did not occur and ultimately allowed the Sri Lankan state to crush it. 28. However, the conditions which were created due to the insurgency were not conducive to the functioning of the political front. Therefore, the process of mobilization of the masses was confined to a narrow and chauvinistic stand on anti-Indianism in an absurd way. This proved to be their strength as well as their downfall. The presence of the IPKF was used as the basis of their propaganda war and it was this very presence of the IPKF which enabled the Sri Lankan security forces to be deployed against the JVP in their counter-insurgency operations. CONCLUSION 29. The JVP's strategy to capture power was characterized by two models. The first was a fairly conceptualized and unique model of capturing power in a single blow, by simultaneous attacks on police stations throughout the country. The other was a model of 'sectoral paralysis', whereby the economy and civil administration were paralyzed sector by sector, prior to the final takeover of state power. In this approach, JVP had considered using the parliamentary opposition as a popular front to ride to power. 30. Ingenuity of the JVP leadership was behind both these strategies. Rohana Wijeweera could have devised a model of insurgency keeping in mind the specific socio-economic, political and geographical conditions in Sri Lanka. While in the first model, geographical considerations took precedence but in the latter it was the political factor and that is the struggle for power was against a highly unpopular political regime. The impetus was provided by the political regime authorizing the Indian government to place its army on Sri Lankan soil. This was a potent issue around which the JVP tried to mobilize the masses. In the long run, both the models failed because they did not have any contingency plan in the event of failure. Thus, once the strategies were operationalized, there were no escape routes. While after the first insurrection, the JVP leaders as well as the cadres managed to get away with light sentences. In the second attempt, the insurgents got trapped in the violence they had unleashed. JVP's incapacity to match state violence resulted in the complete elimination of the movement eventually. BIBILIOGRAPHY 1. Rebellion Repression and the Struggle for the Justice in Sri Lanka – The Lionel Bopage Story by Michael Kollin Cooke. 2. Sectarian Socialism: The Politics of Sri Lanka’s Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) by Rajesh Venugopal. 3. Putschism, Ethnic Chouvinism and Social Revolution by C. A. Chandraprema. 4. Sri Lanka, A lost revolution, an inside story of JVP by Rohan Gunaratna 5. Political Violence in the third world, A case study of Sri Lanka, 1971 to 1987 by Gamini Samaranayake. 6. The Patriotic Struggle of Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna : A reappraisal by Owenn Benett. 11