( an experience in managing ethnic conflict )
by
Neville Jayaweera
Chapter 6
A protest through arson
Even in the relative stability of the mid 1960s in Jaffna, the GA was in constant peril of a sudden ambush or of being drenched by a squall of unsolicited publicity, as the two events I am about to narrate will testify.
One day in the first week of February 1964, a few months after the mass demonstration and march on the Kachcheri, I had been called away to Colombo on official work. Early one morning around 2 am, the telephone in my Mt. Lavinia residence rang. At the other end my wife Trixie was very agitated. She told me that the Kachcheri was on fire and was spreading to the Residency, which was immediately adjacent. However, with the help of my parents who were staying with her at that time, she had quickly summoned the police on the scene and they had fought the fire with water and sand and had extinguished it before it reached the Residency.
I had an appointment to see my brother Stanley that morning, but realising that I had to rush back to Jaffna at first dawn, called him to explain my inability to keep the appointment, and took the morning Air Lanka Dakota flight back to station. However, by the time I reached Jaffna, an Air Force plane ferrying Deputy Inspector General of Police L.I. de Silva(or Aleric Abeygunawardena, I am not sure) and police dog Rex, along with its 2 handlers, plus Colonel Morris Jayaweera from the army, and Commodore Darley Ingleton of the navy, was already on the ground at the Palaly Airport, having proceeded ahead of me on the orders of the Prime Minister herself. Obviously Stanley had apprised the Prime Minister early in the morning and her response had been swift and overwhelming. I was absolutely in awe of the magnitude and speed of the Prime Minister’s intervention!
I want to dwell a moment on this extraordinary characteristic of Mrs Bandaranaike’s personality. Once she had identified any public servant as deserving of her support, her loyalty towards him was absolute. The problem however was that, as recompense, she expected from him a personal loyalty to her in perpetuity, leaving no space for him to serve any other government, as I found out to my cost when I served Dudley Senanayaka’s government, with the same dedication, from 1965 -1970. Such proprietorial claims on a public servant’s loyalty is unwarranted for it not only makes a mockery of the concept of an non partisan public service, but it is also very hard on the public servant concerned, whose loyalty has always to be impersonal and directed towards the incumbent government. After all, a public servant must be just that, a servant of the public, rather than a lackey of any politician.
Police dog Rex
Let me return to my main narrative. By the time I arrived at the Residency, the surrounding Old Park was already swarming with uniformed men, journalists and onlookers and the police investigators and their dog Rex were already on their job.
The investigators found that, as a precautionary measure, the arsonists had used some cricketing gloves to protect their hands when pouring kerosene oil on to some ballot boxes that had been piled high in the rear of the Kachcheri veranda, which they were going to set ablaze. Unhappily for them, some kerosene oil had spilled on a glove, which also ignited when they started the fire. Whereupon, the man whose glove caught fire quickly flung it off his hand on to the floor, and in the ensuing melee left it behind. That was sufficient for smart police dog Rex. Taking the scent, Rex shot off like an arrow, vaulting over fences and parapets, followed by its two handlers, huffing and puffing, hardly able to keep the single minded canine on the leash. Rex ran straight on to the campus of a prestigious boy's school nearby, sprinted down a corridor, went into class room and pounced on a young boy of the university entrance class. On examination, the police found some new burns, corresponding exactly with the burn hole in the glove, on the young boy’s right palm, and he had no alibi to establish his whereabouts that night.
Embarrassingly, the young man turned out to be the son of a judicial officer presiding in a provincial capital elsewhere. Because of the special circumstances of the case, the police sought my permission to prosecute the young boy, but I explained to van Sanden, the Suptd. of Police, that this case had sensitive political overtones which we had to take note of. While it enabled us to expose the ugly face of the Tamil protest, it also provided us with an excellent opportunity to show magnanimity and to consolidate the reconciliation process which had already begun. I also said that regardless of the facts of the case, a prosecution will be construed as a persecution. Furthermore, I argued that purely on moral grounds, we should not destroy the promising career of a young man merely because of an juvenile indiscretion.
However, I telephoned the judge concerned and giving him the facts said that although it was within our power to prosecute his son and destroy his future and even jeopardise his own (the judge's) career, I would desist from going down that road. In exchange so to say, I wanted from him an assurance that he will personally reprimand his son and ensure that he will not get involved in such escapades thereafter. The judge was enormously grateful and contrite and said that he will not only discipline his son, but will also take him away from that school. I sent for the young man, and van Sanden and I gave him an almighty dressing down, all of which he accepted with great humility. I am glad that we did what we did, because the young man in question, never fell afoul of the law thereafter, went on to qualify as a doctor, obtained an FRCS ( Fellow of the royal College of Surgeons ) and settled down to a lucrative practice abroad.
These facts were not lost on the political leaders. It convinced them that far from persecuting the people of Jaffna, my administration was driven only by the highest moral considerations and by a constant deference to the demands of justice and fair play.
The ultra vitriolic Tamil paper, the Eelanadu, saw the incident in a completely different perspective. It claimed that the so called arson was in fact a set up by the police, who being disgruntled by the growing rapprochement between the Sinhala and Tamil leaders, wanted to trigger a new round of repression. This was of course an absurd story, considering the totally unbiased evidence produced by the principal witness, Rex the police dog!!
The High Commissioner’s misadventure
So far, I may have given readers the impression that my work as GA of Jaffna had to do only with the ethnic conflict and little to do with much else besides. That would be a wholly wrong impression. Although maintaining law and order, dissolving prejudices and misunderstandings between the communities, and building bridges between the government and the Tamil leaders, consumed a large portion of my time and energies, my work as GA also involved much else besides. Indeed, it involved the whole panoply of a GA's normal duties and not least, receiving High Commissioners and Ambassadors who visited the district officially. While I cannot narrate my work even in some of these sectors, without being tiresome and boring, I want to recall an extraordinary event which developed into a “diplomatic incident”.
I said that one of the duties of the GA Jaffna was to receive visiting High Commissioners and Ambassadors in his office or Residency. It was a convention special to Jaffna, from a long way back, and did not normally devolve on the GAs of other districts. I believe the convention was established from as far back as the mid-nineteen eighties, long before Colombo had any foreign embassies on its soil.
Throughout most of the nineteenth century, the GA of Jaffna had been Sir Percival Acland Dyke, a son of the Earl of Devonshire and every bit a Victorian aristocrat. He had been a colourful and flamboyant personality, absolutely authoritarian and though supercilious and arrogant towards his fellow white Civil Servants, had been patriarchal and tolerant towards his subjects and reciprocally, utterly loved by the people of Jaffna, who called him the Rajah of the North. In actual fact he modelled himself as one of the Indian Rajah’s so much so that he claimed virtual autonomy from Colombo for the Northern Province and was given the exceptional privilege of communicating directly with Whitehall bypassing the Governor in Colombo. At one time Dyke was offered the Governorship of Kenya, and then of Uganda, but he turned down both offers, preferring instead to remain as GA of Jaffna. As time passed by, the governors who came to Colombo were all so junior to him in service, that he would insist that they should obtain his permission before venturing into the Northern Province. That I believe was the origin of the convention for foreign heads of mission posted to Colombo to call on the GA of Jaffna.
I believe that this convention was later endorsed by the Ministry of Defence and External Affairs because of the sensitive political circumstances prevailing in Jaffna, and visiting Heads of Mission had to be briefed about the diplomatic pitfalls and minefields waiting for them.
The normal protocol in Jaffna was for the Embassy concerned to inform the GA of the intention of its Head of Mission to visit the district and to inquire whether the HC/ Ambassador may call on him, whereupon the GA would give him a date and time to see him. During my time in Jaffna all High Commissioners and Ambassadors, including the US Ambassador, the Ambassador for the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Ambassador for the USSR, and all Commonwealth High Commissioners visiting Jaffna, adhered to this protocol very strictly.
Accordingly, one day the Indian High Commission contacted me and said that their H/Commissioner (HC) would like to visit my district and would like me to give him a date to call on me. At that time, although the tension with the Federal Party leaders had abated, some radical Tamil hotheads were imploring of India to intervene on the side of the Tamil people and had actually asked the Indian HC to visit Jaffna to see the "repression" for himself and recommend to Delhi that they should intervene on the side of the Tamil cause. Against that background, I thought it would be very unwise and embarrassing for the Indian H/Commissioner to visit Jaffna at that particular time and accordingly advised him to put off his visit for a later date, and that if he came, he would most certainly be politically ambushed by the locals, exposing him to a grave diplomatic embarrassment. Not hearing from the HC thereafter, I assumed he had taken my advice and postponed his visit.
However, one day shortly thereafter, Visvanathan, my Divisional Revenue Officer(DRO) Thunukai reported to me that the HC of India, whose name I shall not mention for reasons of courtesy, had been camping out in his division, i.e. well within the Jaffna District, on a shooting expedition. Even if I had ignored the violation of protocol by the HC in visiting my district without notifying me and against my advice, he had actually violated the law of the land by participating in a shooting expedition during a closed season and had now to shelter behind a claim of "diplomatic immunity" in order to avoid prosecution under the Wild Life Protection laws of the country. Eventually when the HC got round to seeing me in my office the same week, with great courtesy but without mincing words, I pointed out to him the error of his ways. He was profusely apologetic and claimed that his office had not briefed him about the protocol and about the closed season etc, and I accepted his apology.
The diplomatic faux pas on the part of the HC was quite understandable, because he a was not a professional Indian Foreign Service diplomat, but a retired colonel from the old British Army of India, who had been rewarded with a diplomatic appointment upon retirement. He was the typical hunting, shooting, fishing, bluff and bluster military man, who had neither an understanding of, nor a taste for, diplomatic niceties, and would have been happier in an officers' mess swapping hunting and fishing yarns over whisky on the rocks, than in discussing diplomatic issues around a table. However, with his personal apology to me, as far as I was concerned, the matter was closed, and should have ended there. It was not to be.
The disloyal toast
A nondescript group of locals calling themselves "The Tamil Citizen's Movement" had organised a public reception to the visiting HC to which they had also invited me along with the Puisne Judge, the District Judge, the Magistrate, and the Suptd. of Police and a whole lot of politicians. Although I was a bit suspicious about the bona fides of the event, I had no alternative but to go along. However, the real intentions of the organisers became evident when the time came round for toasts and speeches.
When proposing the "Loyal Toast" the chief organiser, Mr Handy Prerimpanayagam, who was the principal of a school, and a good speaker he was, after launching a tirade against the government, formally proposed that the HC should recommend to Delhi to intervene in SL on behalf of the Tamils, and urgently too. Not least, as he raised his glass and asked the diners to drink the “Loyal Toast” he remarked,
“Your Excellency, ladies and gentlemen, as for the loyal toast, the less said the better”,
and drank the toast. I could not drink to that charade of a "Loyal Toast" and I continued seated, while to my horror the High Commissioner himself raised his glass and drank to it. I not only remained seated but, as the others resumed their seats, I turned to the High Commissioner, who was seated on my right, and without addressing him as “Excellency”, said, “ Mr High Commissioner, by drinking that toast you have administered a slap on the face of the country to which you have been accredited. I am amazed at your lack of diplomatic sense. Be assured, you will hear more about this”, and leaning across him to the gentleman who was presiding, and who proposed the toast, Mr Handy Prerimpanayagam, said, “ Mr Prerimpanayagam, you have every right to express discontentment with government policy but you have no right to be a traitor”. So saying I got up, and throwing my crumpled napkin on to the table, strode out in high dudgeon, for all to see.
The same night I briefed my brother Mr Stanley Jayaweera of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and asked him to brief the Perm Sec. Mr N.Q.Dias. Early the following morning I had a call from N.Q.Dias. He was in a rage with the Indian HC for conduct which he interpreted as interference in the internal affairs of the country and he summoned me to meet him the following morning in Colombo. The papers sensationalised the event to such a degree that when I arrived in the Fort Station by overnight train from Jaffna, there were a dozen or so journalists and camera men waiting on the platform to talk to me. Ignoring them, I drove straightaway to see the Perm. Sec. N.Q.Dias. After hearing all the facts from me, the Perm. Sec. summoned the High Commissioner to Colombo and voiced to him the government’s displeasure over his indiscretions in Jaffna. Obviously on instructions from the Prime Minister, N.Q. Dias then reported the incident to New Delhi and conveyed to them the “displeasure” of the government over the conduct of its High Commissioner in Colombo. In diplomatic jargon, conveying "displeasure" over the conduct of an Ambassador or HC is only slightly less serious than declaring the diplomat concerned persona non grata. New Delhi responded positively and within a few months, the HC was recalled to Delhi on the ground that his term was up in any case, which was a convenient face saving exit from a diplomatic faux pas.
In case the point is missed, I want to draw attention to the manner in which Mr N.Q.Dias reigned in foreign Heads of Mission posted to Colombo, and prevented them from running amok in the country, as they generally did after 1977.
The caste factor
Earlier on in this chapter I referred briefly to the rigid caste structure of the Tamil people as a factor in understanding the Tamil revolt and said that I would deal with that question in depth later in on. Let me now turn to that issue.
To be continued.
2853 words
