Letter to a colleague: on LTTE

Back from the long siesta... Oh well, what goes up has to come down. Anyway. Here is a letter I wrote to a colleague on LTTE and terrorism.
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Here is a piece by Aatish Taseer in New York Times on the LTTE saga: (Linky). I thought I would comment on the article.

I am not sure if you know about Aatish. He is the son of an Indian journalist and commentator, Tavleen Singh, and a (now deceased) Pakistani politician Salman Taseer. Salman Taseer, as long as he lived, did not openly acknowledge Aatish as his son and Aatish primarily grew up in India with his mother. Towards the end, the father and son reconciled. But then, as fate would have it, Salman Taseer defended a Christian woman who was also accused of blasphemy and insulting Islam. So Salman got killed by a jehadi named Mumtaz al Qadri, who is probably in jail now but with a lot of sympathy from the general population of Pakistan which still sees this act as wajib-ul-qatl (crudely translated as due punishment for apostates, blasphemers and their supporters). Salman also had a visceral hatred for many things India, and it was an irony that just like most things in Pakistan, the primary thing that defined Pakistan (not being India with Islam being in danger in India and safer in Pakistan) goaded someone to kill another defender of the same idea. 

That partly explains Aatish's empathy for the Sri Lankan Tamils, at least in this article. I think the most common theme missed by many commentators on Sri Lankan matters is that things flow back and forth over time. The momentary hopelessness of the Tamil polity in forging their destinies is somehow seen as a bad thing or a good thing, if one gets emotionally invested in the situation. But if one discards that approach and sees things from an observationalist viewpoint, the triumphalism that is very common in the Singhalese population is pretty much a self-goal. Further, the triumphalism is displayed not only against the Tamils, but also the Muslims (who are also mostly Tamils, but never accorded that respect by either the Tamils or the Singhalese for their own complicated reasons). For their part, the Muslims have remained divorced from the violence of the different Tamil outfits, but there is often a last straw that breaks a camel's back. 

I will probably give the Tamils 10 to 15 years of cooling-off time before they start getting violent again. The one thing that is keeping the powder dry is the skewed demographics as of now, due to the emigration of Tamils to Europe, Canada and Australia and also the losses in the various wars. The Singhalese believe that posting ex-Army people in Tamil territories in the North and the East amidst the Tamil population would give them early warning signals of trouble that could allow them to ship soldiers to flashpoints, which is why they are speeding up infrastructure projects in collaboration with China. There are often limits to every such contingency measure. When things go unpredictable and belly-up, it is often a new issue that noone had imagined would happen which could then be post-facto rationalized -- the classical black swan argument or the argument on how complex systems fail. It is often not a single reason that causes things to go belly-up, its often a collection of small things just like in the Titanic or Pearl Harbor. 

I am not sure if there is a theory of self contradictory outcomes somewhere in the sociology literature. But one such candidate theory would be: any action that is well thought out to make a certain outcome less probable would often produce a certain other outcome which in turn could make the original outcome more probable. I am pretty sure that a variant of Murphy's laws can be twisted to this form. In any case, in the signal processing literature, we have a variant of this tradeoff called the bias variance tradeoff (Linky). To put it in simplistic terms, if the goal of an algorithm is to game/predict a certain unknown outcome based on indirect observations that are random, one could hope that the policies prescribed on average produce the intended outcome (no bias). But then with a certain realization of the observations that is actually seen, the variation from the intended outcome may be too huge so as to defeat and render useless the average property of this class. 

I think the Singhalese are trying too hard to game this scenario into the far future in case things go wrong. But there are simpler means to achieve that than by planting ex-Army men and land grabbing in what are seen as Tamil territories. I think reconciliation and trust is a better approach with some carrots and sticks. But then, we would nt have had the problem of the LTTE in the first place if reconciliation and trust was there to start with. The LTTE in itself came up only after the meltdown of the Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam pact (the Banda-Chelva pact as it is called), the loss of trust by the Tamil people on a mostly-democratic outfit TULF, leading to violent outfits from which emerged the LTTE as the victor. 

I believe some form of reconciliation has been achieved in how the Government of India (GoI) deals with some terrorist outfits. Of course, some of it is purely accidental and somewhat deep-down philosophical in terms of approach and life, and not because of great planning. For example, when the Mizo National Front (MNF) abandoned violence in ~1986 in one of the northeastern states (with a mix of tribal groups of which the Mizos were the dominant demographically), the Chief Minister of the state resigned to pave the way for a MNF government followed by a general elections in which the MNF won the popular vote. This regime only lasted for a short while as the leader of MNF died of natural causes, but Mizoram has more or less remained peaceful relative to the otherwise violent Northeast of India. But to coax the MNF to the table, the Indian Air Force was used to shell civilian locations, one of probably very few (if not perhaps the only one) uses of aerial bombardment against civilians in India. 

The current model of dealing with what the GoI deems as the pro-talks faction of one of the major outfits in the Northeast, the ULFA, is also precisely this. The pro-talks leaders were all safely put up in Bangladesh, hosted by the various Islamist regimes under Zia-ur-Rehman, Hossein Mohd. Ershad and then Begum Khaleda Zia from the late 70s and early 80s till now. When a change of regime happened in 2009, GoI coaxed the Bangladeshis to hand over these people in return for a land swap agreement with net loss of territory for India (the final fruition of the Indira-Mujib accord of 1974) and water sharing on the Teesta river which is absolutely critical for Bangladesh. Neither of these has fruitioned now for Bangladesh, but that is a different story. The GoI has treated these ULFA leaders with a good amount of respect, even though electorally if they contest today, it will be a walkover for the current regime in Assam. I think the GoI will be happy to see them form a political party and burn their credentials over a period of time, as every terrorist outfit always does if it takes the democratic approach.

Historically too, that approach has been followed by the GoI in different forms. The Communist party formed the first democratically elected government anywhere in the world in the southern state of Kerala in 1956. Nehru, despite being a Fabian socialist and a good friend of Stalin, Brezhnev and Khruschev, was deeply suspicious of dictatorship of any kind, even the Proletariat one. So it did take a fair amount of moving away from his position via rhetorical gymnastics to allow the CPI to take over the Kerala government. The CPI takeover of educational institutions from the Catholic Church and the consequent violence led to the Constitutional use of an approach (now sparingly used, thankfully) to disband the state government. But I think the CPI has been coaxed into democratic politics with all the barrel of a gun speeches primarily restricted to rhetorical fanfare. This is a remarkable transformation which the Maoists accuse the Communists of. In fact, the Maoists would treat the Communists as their biggest enemies before attacking any other party in India today.

The same can be said about many other political parties in India in different states: DMK in Tamil Nadu, Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, Akali Dal in Punjab (which then splintered into many outfits with different consequences), Asom Gana Parishad in Assam, and so on. Even the definition of a successful terrorist outfit is not well defined. I believe the most successful ones are some of these political parties, DMK especially. Despite all these attempts over the years, India still has approx. 50-60 terrorist outfits, a good ~30 of them would be based out of the Northeast, ~10 Islamist outfits, mostly from J&K, ~10 Leftist outfits, and a few Hindu and Sikh ones. 

Its amazing that these attempts at neutralizing outfits, Indian style, has not been studied that much. There are a large number of lessons to be learned, good, bad and ugly, and one could try to discern conscious policies from historical accidents. The limits of predictability in policy making and the consequent agnosticism that brings into the picture have not been well understood, either in the Indian context or elsewhere, which is why we see folks keep getting too protective of their own ideas and turfs. Again, signal processing literature rescues us by allowing an inevitable Cramer-Rao lower bound to any estimator/predictor.

Further still, the metrics used for defining success for the outfit as well as the government is also needful of reassessment. A terrorist outfit would do well to transform to a political party that can pilfer the state coffers at will. The government would want this eventuality to happen as it would enhance the State's claim to suzerainty in a theoretical sense and would also be de facto assured in a practical sense with certain caveats. Yet, despite a commonality of eventual goals, we do not see all terrorist outfits abandoning themselves overnight. I think this is because terrorism is a cat and mouse game where from a game-theoretic viewpoint, the Nash equilibrium is clear. But both parties are greedy to seek a solution in the Pareto boundary that favors only itself. 

To connect it back, this is precisely what Prabhakaran was. Even amongst the greedy terrorist outfit chieftains, he was greedy beyond explanation. Which is one reason why the people who were coaxed into condoning him and his actions, either of their own free will or unwillingly, will have to bear the cross for his sins. But then this is just another short-term momentariness in a long-term back and forth, which could be easily predicted to a certain degree under the caveats mentioned above. 

A thousand questions on Tamil-Singhalese relations

The 140 character Twitter mindset of today means that people often do not have the time or the patience or the enthusiasm to ask a thousand questions. Here, I start with a small set of questions on the Tamil-Singhalese relations. Of course, I do not know the answer to them all, nor do I have the time to address what I do know. May be, if and when time allows me (a big fat yawn!). But asking the relevant questions is an important task, and much more important than providing answers. So here they are.

Understanding the Tamil-Singhalese relations today cannot be ignorant or unmindful of history, a bad word for many people with an agenda that is uncorrelated with truth-seeking.

0) The very early immigrants from South India to Sri Lanka - now called the indigenous people (Yakkas/Veddas), even before the Singhalese and Tamilians migrated to the island.

1) Setting the stage -- Tamil migration patterns, Portuguese Inquisitions and the conversion of the Jaffna kingdom, Tamil-Singhalese commingling, formation of the Lankan identity

2) British era -- Impact of the British Rule on Tamil and Singhalese societies, The role of the Donoughmore and Soulbury Constitutions on Lankan identity and future makeup, Reforms in the Tamil Hindu and Singhalese societies, Cross-pollination of ideas between the Then Indhiya Saiva Siddhantha Sanmaarga Sangham and Lankan Tamil society, Flow of ideas from the Theosophical Movement to the Mahabodhi Society and the resurgence of Buddhism, Profile of elites in the Tamil, Singhalese, Burgher and Muslim sections of Lanka

3) Plantation Tamils and their travails in the context of Tamil and Indian migration to such places as Malaysia, Burma, Singapore, Guyana and the Caribbean, Fiji, South Africa, Kenya, and Mauritius. The similarities and differences with respect to hard labor, profile of societies migrating, etc.

4) Why did SL not join the Indian Union in 1948? There are good explanations why Nepal, Burma and Sri Lanka not join India upon independence, not all of which have to do with Nehru bashing. There was a good reason why the Burmans wanted to be out of British India in the late-20s to mid-30s. There was a good reason why the Tamils favored a Union with India after 1948, but the Singhalese did not. There was a good reason why the Kathmandu Valley based elite did not want a Union with India. There was a very good reason why Patel and Nehru did not force these neighbors to join India. There was a very good reason why Indira Gandhi annexed Sikkim. Some of these facts are to be understood in context of the information that India had at that point in history, not based on what we know now. Reshaping history based on future information is not only non-causal, but only ammo for rhetoric warfare with little meanings to reality.

5) Why was Katchhathheevu handed over to Sri Lanka? What was Sri Lanka's role in the 1971 war with Pakistan? How did the Soviets help India on the one hand and hurt India on the other? Who was responsible for the non-war on the West Pakistan side? And in this task how were they similar to the other superpower of that era? What were the commonalities between Sri Lanka, Maldives, Mauritius and Sri Lanka as virtual carrier fleets in the Indian Ocean? What did the Singhalese do to force the hands of the British and the Americans in taking over Diego Garcia, esp with respect to the Kankesanthurai port and Tirikonamalai air base?

6) G. Ponnambalam and S. V. Chelvanayakam -- their similarities and differences, their travails and their stories, their promises and their hopes for different sections of Tamils, and why these all got dashed by the Singhala Only act of the Sri Lankan Constitution.

7) Rise of YMBA and JVP -- Who was Rohana Wijeweera? Why was he allowed to run riot in Sri Lanka? What was the role of LSSP in the travails that led to the first JVP uprising? What was the Soviet role in this melee, particularly the Stalinists at the Patrice Lumumba University? How did Nehru react? How did SWRD Bandaranaike react? How did the Indian foreign policy change in response to the JVP threat? Why did the TULF constitute itself? What was the reaction in Tamil society at large?

8) Where did the TULF fail? Why did splinter groupings come up? PLOTE, EPDP, EPRLF, TELO, LTTE -- who supported them in TN and India? Why did MGR take a soft spot for the Kandy boys? Why did Indira Gandhi take a soft spot for LTTE initially? Why did the LTTE come up front and decimate everyone else? Who were Amirthalingham, Douglas Devananda, Mahathiya, etc.? What did the Vaddukkodai resolution promise? What was the impact of the Jaffna library burning in 1981 on support to the LTTE? What was the impact of the riots in 1983? Why did India help SL attain respectable cricketing status in 1983? What happened to the MJ Gopalan trophy between TN and Sri Lanka?

9) Why did Indira Gandhi go against the LTTE over time? What did Rajiv Gandhi take away from Indira Gandhi's tenure? How did Rajiv's tenure differ from Indira's? What led to the IPKF pact? What are the commonalities between the accords that Rajiv signed with AGP, Punjab, Mizoram and SL? What role did the air lifting of soldiers to the Maldives coup have on SL? Why was J.N. Dixit unsuccessful? What was the agenda behind IPKF? Why did the IPKF fail badly? Was the Tamil accusation that the IPKF soldiers commited rapes and brutalities right or wrong, fact or fiction? If it was fact, were such acts justified or not? Were the IPKF misunderstood saints or well-meaning soldiers or was the grayness somewhere in between? How did Indians react to stories of rape and brutalities on civilians unconnected with guerrilla warfare? How did the Sri Lankan Tamil society react?

10) How did the LTTE rise as a terrorist group? What were its strong points? What were its weak points in hindsight? What made LTTE what it was -- a fearful, loathsome, powerful outfit bonded by people with a need to free themselves from a fubar Singhalese society? What did India get right in its dealings with the GoSL and the LTTE? What did it get badly wrong? What was the role of Tamil "civil society" in TN on this issue? Who were TNRT and TNLA? What was the connection between Veerappan and VP? Why did Vai Ko rise in the DMK? What about Kolathur Mani and Pazha Nedumaran? What was Ramadoss' role in the SL issue? Where do all the politicians in TN fall in line vis-a-vis Sri Lanka? Where do they differ? What was Sivanthi Adithhanar's Naam Tamizhar Party's role in the SL crisis? What was the role of the erstwhile Raja of Ramnad? What was the role of Velankanni Church? What is the caste profile of the LTTE? Why did LTTE split not once, but twice? What was the role of conversion of a certain segment of Tamils to Christianity? Why did/do the LTTE and the Tamil Hindus share a painful relationship with the Tamil Muslims? Why was the LTTE still a rank-and-file Hindu dominated terrorist entity? How did Anton Balasingham become its advisor-cum-ideologue? Who was Adele?

11) Op. Oyaadha Alaigal -- the meaning of the idea and its ruminations in TN, the key players involved, the attack strategies, the Elephant Pass victory, the Palaly air base bombings, the Sea Tigers, the Air Tigers, Indian Coast Guard's role in coralling LTTE assets and how it failed miserably, military lessons to be learned, what lessons do they have for counterinsurgency operations in the Maoist heartland in India today, in India's extended neighborhood, for COIN against supposedly ethnic/political/azaadi-seeking terrorist outfits as against Leftist or anarchist terrorist outfits 

12) Political lessons for GoI, for GoTN, for SL society, for Tamil society, for Indians, for people at large. How will this issue end? Will it end? What can GoI do today? Why the past is a circle just like what the Buddhism's kaalachakra says about life? How the SL brand of Buddhism and the nonsense taught in Indian textbooks about Buddhism are not the same? Why some of the non-violence preaching societies such as Burma, Tibet, SL, Cambodia, Thailand, etc. are the most violent today, not only against other ethnicities of the same country, but also against neighbors? What lessons do Indians need to take from their surface level understanding of the conflict in SL? And finally, was Ambedkar correct in marshalling the SCs toward Indian Buddhism? What is the way forward for Indian Buddhists if that route was wrong? What would result in closure for everyone involved?

The Travel Records of Chinese Pilgrims Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing

SOURCES FOR CROSS-CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN ANCIENT CHINA AND ANCIENT INDIA By Tansen Sen

I normally do redirect you to other material just for the heck of it. So I give you an abstract from the above 10-page work by Professor Tansen Sen. It has rich maps that I am sure you will love. So click, read and ensoy.

The spread of Buddhist doctrines from India to China beginning sometime in the first century CE triggered a profusion of cross-cultural exchanges that had a profound impact on Asian and world history. The travels of Buddhist monks and pilgrims and the simultaneous circulation of religious texts and relics not only stimulated interactions between the Indian kingdoms and various regions of China, but also influenced people living in Central and Southeast Asia.  Indeed, the transmission of Buddhist doctrines from India to China was a complex process that involved multiple societies and a diverse group of people,  including missionaries, itinerant traders, artisans, and medical professionals.

Chinese pilgrims played a key role in the exchanges between ancient India and ancientChina.They introduced new texts and doctrines to the Chinese  clergy, carried Buddhist paraphernalia for the performance of rituals and ceremonies, and provided detailed accounts of their spiritual journeys to India. Records of Indian society and its virtuous rulers, accounts of the flourishing monastic institutions, and stories about the magical and miraculous prowess  of the Buddha and his disciples often accompanied the descriptions of the pilgrimage sites in their travel records. In fact, these travel records contributed to the development of a unique perception of India among members of the Chinese clergy. For some, India was a sacred, even Utopian, realm. Others saw India as a mystical land inhabited by “civilized” and sophisticated people. In the context of Chinese discourse on foreign peoples, who were often described as uncivilized and barbaric, these accounts significantly elevated the Chinese perception of Indian society.

Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing were among hundreds of Chinese monks who made pilgrimages to India during the first millennium CE. The detailed accounts of their journeys make them more famous than others. These travel records are important historical resources for several reasons. First, they provide meticulous accounts of the nature of  Buddhist doctrines, rituals, and monastic institutions in South, Central, and Southeast Asia. Second, they     contain vital information about the social and political conditions in South Asia and kingdoms situated on the routes between China and India. Third, they offer remarkable insights into cross-cultural perceptions and interactions. Additionally, these accounts throw light on the arduous nature of long-distance travel, commercial exchanges, and the relationship between Buddhist pilgrims and itinerant merchants.