Abbreviations:

TWG                 Third World Guide
TN                     Tamil Nadu
LTTE                 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, The Tamil Tigers
GDP                   Gross Domestic Product
NGOs                 Non-governmental Organisations
SEA                    South East Asia/-n
AIADMK            All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam,
DMK                  Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (Political parties in Tamil Nadu)
UN                     United Nations
U$D                   United States Dollars
NEP,                  the New Economic Policy
UMNO               the United Malay National Organisation
MCA                  the Malaysian Chinese Association
MIC                   the Malaysian Indian Congress
PBB                   the United Peoples´Party
DAP                   the Chinese-based Democratic Action Party
PAS                    the Islamic Party
TULF                 the Tamil United Liberation Front
NEP                   New Economic Policy
 
 
 

Excerpts from "India at a Glance", G.D. Binani & T.V. Rama Rao (1953:393):

Indians abroad:

British Malaya                        615,000,      Date of estimate    30/6-53
Ceylon                                   985,327                                    20/3-53
Nearest:  South Africa            365,524                                        1951

Ceylon:
"In certain countries like (South Africa and) Ceylon, their position is not happy and their future gloomy." (Binani, 1953:393)

"It is the toil of the Indian estate labourers that has made Ceylon a "smiling tea-garden" and has built up its economy ever since the latter part of the 19th century."(ibid. p.392)

Malaya:

Indians were for the most part "immigrant labour".

"Indians in Malaya form the third largest group there and therefore constitute a major problem in Malayan politics." (Sic!)

"Indians are willing to identify themselves completely with the national aspirations of the Malayans and the Chinese, but are urging that they be given equal status and full political rights as citizens." (ibid. p.392)

1a) An Introduction to the essay

Why on earth write an essay on such a peripherous phenomenon as the Tamil situation in those countries?
The reasons have become clearer to me while doing the research, even though my first seeds of inspiration came to me one day on the square in Bommanampalayam in Tamil Nadu, India, while doing interviews with the local landlabourers on local democracy in this village outside Coimbatore. In this village in the middle of southern India I discovered a shy sense of sympathy for the Tamil separatist movement in Jaffna, the northernmost part of Sri Lanka. This was in 1993, one and a half years after the Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had been murdered by supposed Tamil separatists in a Kamikaze-style bomb-blast. Support for the Tamil question was, as far as I could judge, latent and -so far- passive. In this village, poverty was striking and corruption among officials widesprea, like in the rest of India.

Many writers on India have (for quite some time actually) claimed that India, being "the world´s largest democracy", is on the verge of a break-up. This may or may not be true, I will return to the question later on, but I think that if it were ever true, then the risk has increased with time.

India has suffered severe hardships during the past few years. It is difficult to know where to begin, but Sikh separatism, fighting over Kashmiri independence, bloody riots in cities and violent clashes between hindus and moslems, the threat of a major war with Pakistan, bomb blasts in the financial capital Bombay are signs that things aren´t very peaceful on the Indian subcontinent at the moment. To this we have to add the disasters which have swept over the country in recent years; an AIDS-epidemic which the authorities long tried to conceal, earthquakes in which more than 30,000 people were killed, an outbreak of the plague. These I mention because they can under certain circumstances add to the factors which create discontent and result in major political and security-endangering turmoil, not to mention the strains such phenomena have on the economy.
 

Even though the above excerpts published as early as in 1953 mainly can be said to reflect the author´s perception of the countries in general, perhaps Indian foreign policy, they nevertheless raise some points worthy of discussion; the Indian immigrant communities in foreign countries and their assimilation or dissimilation from the politics in these countries, and how the two influence each other. Have the conditions for the immigrants changed? Why then the other two countries specifically - Sri Lanka and Malaysia ?
First, the Tamils constitute the major part of the Indian populations which have, in different periods, moved there.
Second, the three countries lie in an interesting proximity to one another. India and Sri Lanka are of course close, but Malaysia is as well. The whole Malaysian/Indonesian archipelago has long been experienced with ethnic movements. Apart from this, there is the fact that Malaysia is situated in South East Asia, and this adds the dimension of trans-regional studies which are all too scarce in academic research today, particularly considering the danger to world peace conflicts stretching over this distance can have.
Third, Malaysia is not an underdeveloped country any longer. Living standards among the Tamils in Malaysia as well as among other ethnic minorities, have become relatively high.
This means that we have three sides to this possible conflict; the financial, the ethnic, and the possible threat of the conflict spreading to other parts of the world.

The idea of the nation-state has been declared dead and I do agree. Increasingly more peoples and populations do not have one state but are confined to live either in exile or as oppressed minorities, like the Kurdic people in Turkey, Iraq, Syria et c., parts of the Tibetan people, mainly in large exile communities in northern and southern mountaneous regions of India, the Gypsies in Eastern Europe, and many different peoples have at times tried to draw on ethnic sympathy from their former countrymen, this split is a common feature in and rather characteristic of the present situation in ex-Yugoslavia. This new and common phenomenon casts light on a new perspective of democracy. Does democracy only count for people who live in nation-states, and who are already in majority? The right to freedoms which should count for everyone in the world should not be dependent on such issues, but comprise all those characteristic features we would accept as belonging to the term democracy today. It follows that I will use the concept ethnic as the common property of a group which may be either cultural, racial, religious, or a combination of these.
 

The Democratic Rights:

Freedom to choose your own government and the right to supervised self-rule or independence for certain large ethnic minorities.

Freedom of thought, expression, political participation, and openness - public insight into all official matters on all levels of authority

Freedom from abuses like torture, opinion registration, army intervention in interior politics, political imprisonment et cetera within as well as across national boundaries.

Freedom from poverty and starvation, i.e. the right to a more or less efficient income distribution system valid for everyone independently of ethnic, in which is to be included regional, religious, and cultural such as linguistic, belonging.

Protection of the rights of minorities, whichever common feature they may have which makes them a minority.

The setting up of a supra-national body whose aim it is to protect minorities and to promote co-operation between countries and NGOs in overcoming ethnic conflicts.

These rights basically draw on the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, and I therefore call  them Democratic Rights. These I regard as factors contributing to make a political system relatively democratic rights-minded, i.e. no country as far as I am aware fulfills all these points.
 

Methodology:

The method I will use is a comparison of the conditions for Tamil separatist feelings to develop in the three countries in the world where most Tamils live. This is done in order to answer questions like the following:

       What are the possible scenarios for the future development of the Tamil conflict and the growth of and obstacles to an extension of democratic rights in Sri Lanka from an international perspective?

       How does financial prosperity relate to democratic rights for the Tamils in the three countries?

       What does my term "democratic rights" imply ? Are the rights of a stateless, third-world based people different from those of peoples in the west?

1b) A general background to the Tamil situation in India, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia

India

Population:c. 890,000,000, of which 83% belong to one of the various lines of hinduism there is, 12% are muslims, 2.6% christian, 1% buddhist, c. 200.000 parsis, 12.000 jews, 60.000 Tibetans, more than 10.000 Chinese, et cetera.

The caste system is probably the most Indian phenomenon one can find. The basic features of the caste system were imposed by tribes from the north of Aryan, (Persian) descent to rule over the "low-caste" locals. The roots of the caste system lie in the Hinduistic belief in reincarnation, which in short means that a person does not have one life, one body, one soul. The deeds of the atman (the self) decide which shape next "life" will take. Good deeds promote a superior position in the next life, bad deeds a bad position. This comes down to everything, caste, vocation, place of birth, sex, many of which go hand in hand, i.e. if you are born into one caste it is in practice impossible to change your fate, be it work-, marriage partner-, or  place of livingwise. Subsequent to a large number of reincarnations, the atman - granted it has followed the prescriptions of how to live a good Hindu life- can finally leave the vicious circle of rebirth, redeath a.s.o. and enter nirvana, meaning obliterate itself and become one with the whole, with brahman, sometimes by Western thinkers called the world-soul. This has implications. India has always been a very divided, sectionistic society. Tradition has still got a firm grip on life in the villages, where most Indians live. Only in the major cities have western standards had any whatsoever impact on people and their thinking. Basic features of the caste system are strict rules on touching and eating. Food and human contact are senstitive areas, and in some cases it is forbidden between members of the different castes, due to the fear of "contamination". This has had an implication of keeping races and ethnic groups in India intact, i.e. the way they have been for a very long. The south and the north have long been separated by these racial, caste-features, as well as by political and geographical boundaries. This divide is important to my discussion of the Tamils as one homogenous group (Basham 1982, Myrdal 1979, Sonden-Hällquist 1971, Naipaul 1992). Even if government politics are secular (within a Hindu framework) the Indian society is strictly divided. This can be seen in the ethnic riots which occur from time to time as well as a general sense of ethnic and religious awareness.

Politics in India has a long histrory of thinking and theorising, but the institutions in "the world´s largest democracy" today are basically the extension of those inherited from the British colonial empire. The country has a long history of wars, different invasions (all from the north) and the kingdoms of the south have always been able to defend themselves (Myrdal, 1979). Politics and decisions are being made at at least three levels: the Union , the state, and the district level which stretches all the way down to the local  politics of the village councils, the Panchayat Rajs. Many of the institutions, the bureaucracy, and the public sector suffer from inefficiency and corruption, but thanks to the size of the country, India is still considered to be a major power, maybe a nuclear one as well,  in international politics in Asia.. Recently, demands for separatism have been heard shouting increasingly loud and from different parts of India. Some claim that India is on the verge of a break-up. That is easy to say, far more difficult is it to tell when this break-up is coming. One striking thing, whether it be the union government in New Delhi, the strong Congress Party, the heritage fom Nehru, Hinduist tolerance, "the Indian mind", tradition, or its politics of secularism,  is how they have managed to keep the country together.

The Tamil population in India:
The Tamils are one big part of the race known as Dravidians who live in southern India. The term Dravidian originally refers to their language group, to which the very old Tamil language belongs. Their ancient cultural heritage dates back to early times and their present culture has retained traditional elements like the works of national poets like Bharathiar, and the aphorisms of Tiruvalluvar, both of which are very much alive and kicking today. Most Tamils stem from the Australo-negroid race, which is characterised by  very dark skin. This can still very easily be seen in southern India, where most people are dark, some nearly black because of the caste-system´s inherent prohibition of intermarriage between different castes, except in very rare cases. Those with fair skin in the south almost always belong to the upper castes (Brahmins and others).  In the south of India, many people are christians, due to mission from the Portuguese and other colonial empires. The main religion in Tamil Nadu however is hinduism, with Muslims forming a large minority. A small jewish minority can be found in Kerala, which is the coastal state to the west of T.N. In spite of the diversity in the south, there have been much less ethnic troubles  there than in the northern parts of the country.
 

Tamil Nadu lies in the southeastern part of the country, with its capital Madras situated on the east coast.It is a relatively prosperous state with incomes from abundant natural resources. The textile industries around Coimbatore in the mid-eastern part of the state, coffee and tea plantations in the Nilgiri Hills, different kinds of crops, like paddy, banana plantations, coconuts et cetera and a long coastline making for fishing are the main sources of income. The southern part of the state is characterised by a tropical climate with lush tropical rainforests while the northern parts of the state are drier. Nights can get chilly in the mountaneous Nilgiri Hills region. There are many Hindu temples and a few natural reserves in TN as well.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Sri Lanka,The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
Population: 16,810,000 (-89), 256 inhabitants/square kilometre, 70% Sinhalese, 22% Tamils (the largest minority group)
Religions: 69% Buddhists, 15% Hindus, 8% Christians, 7% Muslims, 1% other religions (TWG 93/93,pp.540-542)

Exports: tee and mate 27%, garment 22%, gems 6%, natural rubber 6% ,

The Tamil population in Sri Lanka:

A history of the country and the conflict
SL gained independence from the colonial ruler Great Britain in 1948. But the conflict between the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority has persisted throughout the nation´s history, possibly as long as there have been immigrants from India.The relations with India have changed from time to another, depending on the domestic situation, but has - possibly thanks to Sri Lankas much smaller size - never been neither friendly nor very unfriendly.

The Tamils can be divided in two groups, the Sri Lankan Tamils came 2000 years ago, and the Indian, which are the more recent immigrants. Nevertheless it is a homogenous group, sharing cultural and racial characteristic, and they are uniform in their quest for a free Tamil state. Their main means of income in Sri Lanka is as tea and coffe plantation workers.

Outright uprisings in more modern times started in the 50s. The founding of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) took place on 4th May 1972, and was the product of a fusion of three political parties; the Federal Party, the Tamil Congress, and the pro-Indian Ceylon Workers Congress. During the late seventies and early eighties, economic deterioration, IMF-imposed government cutbacks, and subsequent unemployment added to the discontent. In 1983, the ethnic conflict, which had been bubbling under the surface, suddenly worsened. The crisis points in July and August left hundreds dead and thousands of wounded and homeless. More than 40,000 Tamils fled from government troops to Tamil Nadu in India. In 1984, Sri Lankas President Junius Jayewardene made overtures towards Israel´s government, which had offered to help keeping the rebels pacified. Throughout the 1980s the conflict has worsened successively, attracting more and more Tamils to join LTTE/The Tamil Tigers. There is popular support for them and their charismatic leader Vilupillai Prabhakaran, The Tamil Tigers have a reputation of being one of the best trained and best armed terrorist/freedom fighter groups in the world. Parts of the financing comes from abroad, f.ex. from Tamils in TN, India (TWG 93/94). There are of course, as always in guerrilla warfare other groups on both sides in the conflict. Peace negotiations in the eighties did not have any results, and a seven nations meeting in 1986 in Bangalore in India remained in practice fruitless. In 1987 India´s  president Rajiv Gandhi and Junius Jayewardene signed an accord granting a certain amount of freedom and autonomy to the Tamil minority in the north and northeast. India acted as apeace-keeping force, and this only made the situation worse. Indian military presence became a further cause for irritation and renewed confrontations. Violence increased as the two sides could not come to an agreement.  After elections which drew only 50 % of those allowed to vote and continued troubles on the island, the Indian government decided to send its 60,000 troops back. 1000 Indian soldiers had died in Sri Lanka.

Even though the Sri Lankan government has sharply increased its "defense" budget during the past decades , the conflict has not yet reached an end. In 1991 2,000 Tamil guerrillas and 170 government soldiers died at "Elephant´s Pass"(official figures) - and since then peace negotiations have stood still. In 1992 the LTTE leader Prabhakaran stated that he wanted a degree of autonomy for the northern and eastern provinces, a reduced version of the initial demands. Obstacles to a solution of this conflict are among others, the inflential Buddhist clergy and the Sinhalese Popular Liberation Front which both violently oppose concessions to the ethnic minority. According to Amnesty reports there is an abundance of killings of thousands of civilians, torture, treason, embezzlement on the part of the President Premadasa in 1991, corruption, abuse of power et cetera (TWG 93/94).
 
 
 
 
 

It is in the north and northeast that LTTE are fighting for a free Tamil state, Eelam.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Malaysia, The Federation of Malaysia

Population:17,900,000, 51/sqkm, Malays over 50%, Chinese 33%, Indians (mostly Tamils) 10%. Traditionally Malays are farmers, civil servants, and army recruits, the Chinese work in trade, industry, and in the mines. Indians are mostly occupied in the rubber farming industry or in the liberal professions. Islam is the official religion, practiced by most Malays.

The main exports are tin, rubber, petroleum, manufactured goods like transistor radio receivers et c.

Malaysia comprises three parts; Peninsular Malaysia, Sarawak, and Sabah on Borneo. Independence from the British was declared in 1957, and Singapore broke away from the union in 1965. Malaysia has always been a centre for trade, and has a long period of experience in accomodating different groups of people. In 1824 a treaty was signed by England and the Netherlands, dividing up Malaysia and Indonesia between the two sea powers. The English encouraged immigration of Chinese and Indian work force. The Indians came mainly from Tamil Nadu in south India, and were employed as workers in the booming rubber farming industry. The colonial administration set up a three band education system, which differed for the three groups. Ethnic politics took a new turn when the British proposed a new Malayan Union with equal citizenship rights for all. This seemed threatening to the Malays who founded UMNO to defend their interests. In the 1950s UMNO lessened its focus on Bumiputra (Malay) rights and became an alliance of parties.  In the 1970s, the government introduced NEP, the New Economic Policy, to increase the Malays´share of corporate equity ownership. The Chinese and the Indians have felt discriminated against due to this policy.
Lately, Malaysia has experienced an economic boom, and the country belongs to the group of Tigers-to-be, including Indonesia, Thailand, and possibly Vietnam. Politics in Malaysia have long revolved mainly around ethnic issues, with ideological ones previously on the margins, but a change can be sensed. What is more urgent at the moment is a perestrojka when it comes to human and democratic rights. There is an internal security act which allows detention without trial, in 1988, the chief judge and three other supreme court judges were fired after disputes between the judiciary and the executive. Critics then accused the government of threatening the judiciary´s independence. Political rallies are forbidden, and public meetings and street demonstrations require a police permit. For 20 years, the government has been controlled by the National Front, Barisan Nasional, formed by the United Malay National Organisation (UMNO), the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), The Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), and the United Peoples´Party (PBB). Increasing threats come from the opposition´s loose alliance, in which take part the Chinese-based Democratic Action Party (DAP), the PAS (the Islamic Party), and newly formed Semangat 46 (a breakoff faction of UMNO). Both the parties in government and the opposition parties are ethnic group-based, and of course, as the smallest minority, Indians are the most vulnerable group to changes in government.
(ibid. pp. 398-401)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

India and Malaysia quite resemble each other in that both are large countries with huge populations which can be divided in big factions. These minorities are being subdued or being taken care of, by means of politics of secularism. One state, but freedom of religion. The difference between the two lies in Malaysia´s economic boom, the like of which India has yet to experience.
 
 

Literacy (1990)
                       All   Male  Female
India               48%,   62,     34
Malaysia         78,      87,     70
Sri Lanka        88,      93,     84
 

Education enrollment
                     Primary school                   Secondary        University
India        Male:112%,Female:82            54,31                  581/100,000
Malaysia           97                    96            58,59                  638
Sri Lanka          109                 106            71,76                  400

GDP (1989)                                         Annual Growth Rate

India          870      U$D/Year
Malaysia    5,070                                          2.1% (90-99)
Sri Lanka   2,120                                          1.2% (90-99)
 

HDI, Human Development Index: based on longevity (life expectancy at birth), education (adult literacy), and income (GDP in earning power).

India              0.308/1
Malaysia        0.802
Sri Lanka       0.665

Source: UNESCO, Statistical Yearbook 1991 and UNICEF,
Estado Mundial de la Infancia -92, New York 1991
 

The Tamils in the World

Since it is impossible to get hold of figures for different ethnic groups on differences in income, literacy a.s.o., the over-all figures for the countries will have to fill the gap as a substitute. Some comment is needed even if the figures above show rather clearly the differences between the three countries. The Tamils in India may be neither the worst nor the best off of the different peoples there.  While researching the matter, I have found no apparent reason neither to confirm nor to deny the plausibility that the Tamils in Malaysia are finacially or politically worse off than the other large minority, the Chinese. Both groups may of course be subordinated the Malays who are in majority. It seems to me more likely that this is the fact in Sri Lanka, where the Sinhalese (i.e. majority) rule the country and where there is a civil war going on against a Tamil separatist group. Whether the feeling of being prejudiced, the presence of which I do take for granted in Sri Lanka, is real or falsely perceived is not of great importance for this cause. The fact of the matter is that there is an old tradition of separatism on the island with at least some popular support.There are strong ties with the Tamils in India. Tamils also live as large minorities in Indonesia, Singapore, Mauritius, and the Fiji-islands.
The Tamil language has 40 million speakers on the Indian subcontinent, and it is as old as Sanskrit
(Tiruvalluvar, 1971:7)

2) Five Possible Scenarios

Scenario 1, It depends on Sri Lanka

The Jaffna-situation catches fire, i.e. fighting intensifies, and this spreads to India and/or Malaysia where support for the Tamil Tigers will openly be exclaimed by local Tamil religious or political leaders, possibly accompanied by terrorist attacks.The murder of Rajiv gandhi in 1991 was an isolated but not unrelated instance of such tendencies.

Why not?
Financial and political (i.e. social, human rights-wise) satisfaction prevails among people in general in India and Malaysia. No notice is taken of Sri Lankan issues. This seems to be the case in Malaysia, but maybe not in India.

Why?
If Tamil Nadu suffers politically or financially the popular, open support for the Tamils in Jaffna will increase, with subcontinental groups trying to draw on Tamil identity, and either demands for a free Tamil State in India
will be heard, or mass migration will follow. The same but to a lesser extent goes for the ethnic Tamils in Malaysia.

Scenario 2

The Sinhalese government in Colombo, with its support from New Delhi, successfully wipes out the Tamil Tigers, forcing their leader Vilupillai Prathakaran and his closest officers into exile (possibly to Pakistan or some other country not so friendly towards India). This might make the conflict escalate and spread until it involves nuclear powers other than India. For Pakistani, Israeli, and other International involvement, see below.

Why not (yet)?

Support and sympathy for their fellows among the Tamils in India and Malaysia will and does depend on a range of factors:  their own financial and democratic well-being and influence as mentioned above media coverage, bias in information, the perceived or real amount of India governmental backing of a Sinhalese offensive, the perceived or real amount of atrocities committed by the Sri Lankese army, NGO reports et c.

An insight in these matters may be what - apart from the expected costs - keeps the Colombo government from giving the Tigers a final blow.

Scenario 3

This leaves us with scenario 3, which is the present situation; a half stalemate, a frontline wavering to-and-fro, near stability, a kind of half-peace with the occasional offensive from either side.

How solve?
U.N. intervention would help the Sri Lankan people! If the war could come to an end, preferably by talks, and if the solution, whichever it might be, was agreeable to the major sides of the conflict, then the first obstacle to a promotion of democratic rights in Sri Lanka  would ahve been overcome. Politicization and involvement by other powers in the region for example China or Pakistan, or the actual, open Israeli support of the Sri Lankan government, would only inflate the tensions and seriously threaten world peace. The danger of the Tigers becoming martyrs would in such cases only add to their admiration among their passive supporters.
If the conflict is escalated in this way, then the U.N. should make use of a peace-creating force in Sri Lanka and wherever necessary, but presently talks on setting up a peace-keeping unit in Sri Lanka is crucial if we are ever to achieve peace. Resumed talks with supervision from outside, preferably by the U.N.. would be of immediate interest for both sides in this conflict. Talks have not helped so far, presumably because no outside, supranational body has been used as a supervisor or mediator. That the matter has, at times at least, been considered serious by international political actors could be seen in the 7-SEA-nations meeting in the eighties.
 

Scenario 4 It may depend on India

But it is not over with that. An escalation of this conflict may have its roots in the rise of demands for a free Tamil state in India. Such demands seem - at present - not to be imminent. But in case other Indian states broke away from the union, Tamil Nadu would stand a great chance of succeeding, because of its being very wealthy and its abundancy of natural resources, not to mention its geographical position on the seaside not far away from Thailand and Malaysia. These conditions could help creating consensus and ethnic awareness among Tamils in TN and strengthen their unity in demanding separatism from India.

Reasons:

There is weak support for India´s leading party Congress in both Madras and the rest of the state, the local parties are the main opponents in politics in T.N. Where Congress - outside the north Indian so-called Hindu Belt - successfully participates in politics, it is usually because of its co-operation with locally based parties, for instance in Tamil Nadu, where co-operation and financing has occurred with and of AIADMK.

There has been a North-South divide with caste alienation and animosities through history. There is still a sharp contrast between the high-caste and fair-skinned peoples of the north and the black, predominantly low-caste peoples of the south, since they haven´t intermingled due to the strict caste-laws, which forbid them to do so.

Co-operation with the southwestern state Kerala would be plausible, since both states are comparatively wealthy, and have natural, common borders to the north. The two states to the north, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh are poorer and therefore less apt to be accepted as partners in a future South Indian State. The close ties between the Tamils in India and Sri Lanka would contribute to this line of development.
 
 

Scenario 5, It may (presumably) not depend on the Malaysian situation

Perhaps, in a very far future, the Tamils in Malaysia may have become politically/financially influential but wealth won´t cause separatism. At least not the kind which demands attention from fellow ethnic brothers in other countries, rather it may cause splits within the ethnic group instead. Even if politics in Malaysia have long been carried out in an ethnic group framework, this is no longer the only line of conflict. Democratic rights issues like freedom of speech, political participation, a repressed socialist movement, concern about the tropical rainforest exploitation, and the protection of the rights of the very tiny minority of aboriginal peoples are also on the agenda today. Democratic rights issues carry equal weight for allethnic groups in Malaysia. To overcome the obstacles, people will not - presupposing a continued economic expansion - fight each other. This is due to "capital and its effect as an opiate for the people" to paraphrase Marx, partly on the malaysia has had long experience in accomodating a large heterogenous and ethnically diverse population, but it is dependent on that other related issues are taken care of in a fair manner, the distribution of such thing as income, education, work opportunities et c.
 

3a) What can we learn?

This essay does not confirm that people in Asia need a different set of democratic rights than do those of the rest of the world. The mixture of different ethnic groups like in Malaysia may indicate the opposite; i.e. that these rights are truly universal-in character, and should therefore be conceived as such. Also, they are not only classical Greek in origin. Socrates and many of the other great Greeks spent long periods studying at universities in Egypt, and the ideas and the philosophy which we in turn have inherited to count as the base for democracy in effect have their roots in Africa, as well as in Asia, among all in India where a rich tradition of political philosophy has existed for thousands of years.

Split ethnic division is part of the future. Even if the Tamil question were to be solved soon, there would still be fragments of people never repatriating. There will always be minorities, and to an increasing extent, these are aware of their common cultures and their ties to other ethnic groups coming from the same region.

Economy versus democratic rights. Would more money help? It would work against rebellion as long as its distribution would be considered to be more-or-less fair. If not, it would probably work in the opposite direction, or just as bad be interpreted as an ethnic injustice. Prosperity alone cannot help the Tamils in India or Malaysia if they do not get political influence correspondingly. Would more democracy help create wealth?I take the stand as an advocate of the democratic rights (or for that part, functioning democracy) as in the long run promoting the stability which inevitably renders the state (and which benefits the enterprises) more freedom of action against poverty, corruption, recession, unfair competition and inequal distribution of income, jobs, education and on and on. To claim the opposite would be to overlook the financial strains of a nation´s economy that expenses for war, arms race, maintaining the military and the police exert. These are only the immediate costs of ethnic sectionism. A break-up of the union in India or elsewhere, a civil war ike in former Yugoslavia will prove disastrous to the nation´s economy for ages ahead. The list of countries which have experienced a boom when fully abstaining from putting these suffocating costs on the governmental budget or being sponsored by external financial aides is impressive: Costa Rica, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Taiwan. To this we add the list of all those countries sustaining themselves by means of arms dealing and we see that defensive/repressive forces expenses are crucial to a nation´s economy and financial well-being. The question remains: Is it stability or democracy which promotes financial growth? It is indeed thought-provoking, but not of immediate interest here. Let us contend that stability does at least notimpede economic growth, like some have tried to argue in connection with the rent-seeking theory. Democracy in itself cannot be an obstacle to economic development if one by democracy means - as I would like to - respect for the human rights, free and fair elections, freedom from oppression et c, in short, respect for democratic rights. State intervention in market economies is something utterly different. But then, which role does money have in democratisation?

The difference lies in that poor people want their material wishes to be satisfied more urgently. A starving person, or one with a leaking roof to his slum-dwelling cannot wait. For them democracy and democratic rights is a matter of less concern than an improvement in financial living standards. The educated middle-class would promote democratic rights, or a democratic transformation with a longer perspective in mind. In India, future development involving participation or the absence from participation of the recently arisen middle-class will tell whether they promote democratic rights or not. In Sri Lanka the same thing will not be seen in the northern and the northeastern parts of the country until stable peace has been achieved. In Malaysia like in for example Indonesia, the situation is less clear. Wealth there has not promoted democratic rights as much as one could hope for. Perhaps more time has to run before this proves true. For India, the crux is whether or not in an economic upsurge the gains will be distributed evenly.

What then, would democratic rights mean for the Tamil group? It would mean the same basic things it does for any ethnic group. Basic democratic rights, i.e. freedom from oppression and the freedom to choose your own government and freedom from abuses of democracy, torture, unfair political intervention by the army, and corruption. But this essay has tried to point out two things, namely that democracy and democratic rights as we must regard it today is no longer a matter for the nation-state, like it has been for too long in India, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka. And even though elections are free in these countries, democracy, and especially what I call democratic rights has had to suffer for example due to democratic/bureaucratic inefficiency in India, oppression of a minority in Sri Lanka and a denial of the right to political participation and freedom of expression in Malaysia.
 

3b) Solutions:

The solutions I suggest to these democratic rights deficiencies are the following:

India: Freedom from the Union Government in New Delhi or state representation in a supra-federal body whose aim it is to decrease the danger of ethnic conflict. The independence of the state has to be more fundamentally secured by the Indian Constitution. Co-operation by locally based parties such as the AIADMK and DMK against the federalist Congress-party is a must if independence shall be reached. This counts both for Tamil Nadu and other states. Like in 1947, when India gained independence from the British, unity against divide-and conquer-politics  is the only solution.
Obstacles:Historically, India has always absorbed and accumulated invaders or external elements, perhaps especially the south of India. But they have not had self-rule since very ancient times, when feudal emperors ruled the south from Mysore, nowadays the state Karnataka (Myrdal 1979), the Congress party´s still rather tight grip on politics in all parts of the country, Hindu nationalism which is one of the conflict parameters which may split a uniform ethnic uprising in the south.

Malaysia: The censorship of the press, prohibition of political rallies et c mean that full democratic rights are absent or at least that the system is considered to be very vulnerable to disruptions by the country´s leaders. Politics is an ethnicity-centered feature in Malaysia. Therefore we can say that at some time the political leaders have feared ethnic unjustice and its consequences. Democratic rights would mean (sustained ?) educational, political, financial,  and occupational chances for everyone, no matter which background they have, freedom of speech, of press, a suspension of the political rally-prohibition et c. The time for the Malaysian government to act is now, as financial prosperity is increasing, whereas action taken later, in less prosperous times, would be hazardous.
Obstacles: One ethnic group (the Malays?) increasingly taking over business and politics and repressively ruling over the others (Hettne 1992) or an economic recession or depression with reverberating ocial consequences for parts or the lot of the population..

Sri Lanka: Here it would mean freedom from the civil war which has ravaged the island for years, for the whole population, not just the Tamils. In the long run, increased independence for the Tamil state on Jaffna, with a destination Eelam is what democratic rights means for the Tamil people.
Obstacles: Sinhalese terrorist groups, the government in Colombo, which probably will have to experience changes in leadership before negotiations can be effective and compromises reached (Huntington, 1991), and of course the Tamil Tigers who, even though they have agreed to compromise on certain original demands, do not abstain from violence and terrorist attacks.

Conclusion:
I suggest a substitution of the U.N. security council, by a U.N. body, or conglomerate of bodies, whose aim it is to protect these democratic rights, sponsored by membership fees as well as fines from the governments of countries who fail to abide the rights, countries who so-to-speak break the law. That is my contribution to the current debate on a supra-national "world police". The structure of this body, its ways of decision-making, which NGOs to let in and to what extent, the role of international capital (which should contribute, since it would benefit from a successful implementation of this organ) has to be explored further. But let me finally just point out two advantages with this model. One, The archaic structure of the U.N. security council would finally be done with, and world power representation could be distributed in a more up-to-date way than accpording to the end of the second world war-paradigmatic structure which has ruled till today. Two,  the similarly archaic U.N. principle of non-intervention in other states´ interior affairs (which has been with us since the early days of colonialism and the 1884 Kongo Conference) would be disposed with soon. This need has already been observed by political scientists. In this U.N. year of the aboriginal peoples 1994 the time has come to change paradigms. We cannot keep on watching nation-states as instances of the whole of reality when increasingly more (minority or exiled or both) peoples are actually granted the legitimate rights as separate states. We further cannot keep on regarding democracy as something which only depends on free elections (were they ever fair?). It contains so many more things, which are not only connotations. The democratic rights of freedom of expression, of a more-or-less efficient income distribution system, freedom from torture, political opinions registration, the army taking part in politics et cetera are all parts of the very disputed concept which we today call democracy, a concept which all people have a right to enjoy, not just those of us fortunate enough to live in a more-or-less homogenous nation-state in a stable and wealthy part of the world.
 

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