Sri Lanka’s Presidential Election Reopens Old War Wounds For Tamils

Sometime in October of 2012, I found myself fortuitously sitting in the Indian Embassy in Beijing. The then-ambassador to China, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar asked me about how I liked living in Singapore; where at that time I was working with sports broadcasters ESPN STAR Sports.

Prior to his Beijing posting, Jaishankar, had previously served in Singapore as the top envoy (2007–2009). He was reminiscing about his days in Singapore and remarked that one of the best things that Singapore and Lee Kuan Yew had done was to create a system that fostered racial harmony and equality.

He drew an interesting parallel with Sri Lanka, where he had also served at a crucial period from 1988 to 1990 as first secretary. It was a time when the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) were tasked with fighting the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Mr. Jaishankar was the political adviser to the IPKF. His comparison between Singapore and Sri Lanka made for an interesting analogy.

He was deep in thought for a brief period and then mentioned that Singapore, like Sri Lanka, had three dominant races-the ethnic Chinese, the Malays and the Indian community, predominantly Tamils. Sri Lanka, too, had three major ethnic divides (in roughly the same ratio as Singapore)-the predominantly Buddhist Sinhalese, the minority Tamil and, of course, the third sect, Muslims (where religion is subcategorized as a race).