A Leading Contender
The indomitable spirit shown by Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (commonly known as JVP) since its inception, even after the total eclipse of its initial political leadership, is remarkable. Unlike many of the leftist political parties that swayed and assimilated into the mainstream spectrum of party politics in Sri Lanka, JVP survived and flourished. After a half-century of its survival before two insurrections, JVP stands as a catalyst factor in the coming presidential election of Sri Lanka.
Embittered by the cascade of failures attributed to the major political parties, essentially the nepotism of the Rajapaksa regime until the ousting of Gotabaya in 2022, the people seem to have developed trust towards JVP’s charismatic leader, Mr. Anura Kumara Dissanayake. Yet JVP’s intriguing history is twisted by the complex relations it carried out with various actors, mainly its antagonistic stances against India, which played a vital role in the early years of JVP’s formation. Thus, examining what JVP confronted in the past and how they are likely to affect the ascendency of JVP into the power vacuum becomes indispensable in fathoming the current dynamics.
JVP’s Anti-India Stance
Historically, JVP was known for its vehement hostility towards India as JVP’s founder, Rohana Wijweera, advocated for boycotting Indian products among the partisans. The Indian anathema of JVP during both the insurrections that it organized cemented on the doctrinal basis, in which Wijeweera saw India as a bullying state that tried to undermine the national interests of the island in its post-colonial state building.
In the famous “Panthi Paha“ (five lessons), the indoctrination of JVP ideology – inculcated by the JVP for its new carders – reserved the last lesson devoted to examining “Indian expansionism.” Veteran journalist Victor Ivan, one of the early carders of JVP, who later turned out to be an apostate, recalls how JVP abhorred Indian cinema, music, and all the cultural items related to India that highlighted the superiority of Indian culture, wherein the states around India were destined to flow under her orbit.
JVP’s antagonism to India is often imbued with its rapport with China, as Maoist ideology from China buttressed the party apparatus of JVP in its early encounter with Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s government. In the lost revolution that JVP launched in 1971, which turned out to be an unmitigated disaster, JVP leaders realized that they could not cling to power as India supported Mrs. Bandaranaike’s government to crush the guerrillas. JVP’s anti-Indian rhetoric reached the next level in the turbulent 1980s when J.R. Jayewardene’s government signed the Indo-Lanka peace accords, which irked JVP enough to organize the masses against the Indian Peacekeeping Forces.
More than 35 years after the change of the polemics against Indian expansionism, the current JVP faces the old foe in its path to secure state power. The meeting held between JVP leader Mr. Anura Kumara Dissanayake and Indian Foreign Minister Dr. Jaishankar is emblematic of the changing trends on both fronts. Ironically, the current Indian foreign minister, Dr. S. Jaishankar, was stationed in Colombo as the political secretary at the Indian High Commission in the 80s when JVP propagated its anti-Indian slogans. RAW (Research and Analysis Wing ) had placed a mole within the JVP to set up a back channel of communication with Indian officials. The deputy high commissioner at the time, Nirupam Sen, had encouraged such a liaison with the JVP and other southern leftist entities.
Why Sri Lanka Matters to India
It goes without saying Indian foreign minister and the policy-making structure in Delhi are well aware of JVP’s strengths and susceptibilities. Mainly India’s biggest worry on JVP lies in its tilt towards China in a context where Chinese presence in the island nation has reached a point of no return. Despite the constant diatribe posed by JVP in the mainstream vernacular media against Chinese investments in Sri Lanka under the Rajapaksa administration, JVP has not genuinely been hostile towards China.
JVP’s affinity with the Chinese Communist Party has been a stringent one dating back to its revival after the brutal suppression. JVP’s former leader, Somawansa Amarasinghe, in particular leveraged the ties with the Chinese Communist Party which resulted in increasing the financial capabilities of the party in the early 2000s. Under the present leadership of Anura Kumara Dissanayake, JVP augmented closer links with the Chinese Communist Party regardless of its ostensible criticism of China’s BRI. It was conspicuously visible when the JVP leader sent a congratulatory note to the general secretary of the CCP on its century celebration in 2021.
Factors Determining the JVP’s Future
The political history of Sri Lanka, in the aftermath of the Indo-Lanka accords, affirms how important it is for the ruler of the island nation to appease New Delhi in deciding foreign policy issues. The alleged RAW involvement in the 2015 presidential election in Sri Lanka and the ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s constant claims over conspiracy theories that led to the political limbo in 2022 expose the tip of the iceberg of realpolitik. Anura Kumara may appear to be a popular choice for people gutted by the series of political chicanery and despondencies. Still, JVP’s future dealings with India would be the eventual factor deciding the finality of Anura Kumara Dissnayake’s political existence.
Secondly, the current military apparatus of Sri Lanka is another considerable fact, that has some effects on the JVP’s quest for power. JVP confronted the military of Sri Lanka twice, once in 1971 and then during the 1987-89 period, during which JVP saw the military as an oppressive tool of the government. In fact, the machinery of the Sri Lankan military played a dominant role in the brutal suppression of the JVP in both insurrections by saving the total collapse of governments in power.
Nearly 40 years after the end of the fiasco, today’s JVP stands at a more stable juncture as a popular choice among the people. However, its popularity in the top leadership of the Sri Lankan military remains questionable, as the top-ranking officers in the three forces of Sri Lanka represent a different set of ethos antithetical to the politics of JVP.
Military coups have gained no significant value in the political lexicon of the island except for the attempted military coup in 1962, which was intended to be an elite coup organized by some disheartened Christian military officers to overthrow Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s government in power. The ideological motives of the senior officers who were involved in the 1962 attempted military coup, known as “Operation Holdfast,” deeply related to their disappointment over the policy changes under Sirimavo’s government. It is plausible to speculate that the same causes of appalment may arise from the higher echelons in the military under a JVP administration.
On the whole, the possibility of JVP’s rise to power can crucially depend on how its leadership manages the above-mentioned factors.
If you want to submit your articles and/or research papers, please check the Submissions page.
The views and opinions expressed in this article/paper are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Paradigm Shift.
Punsara Amarasinghe is a post-doctoral researcher affiliated with Scuola Superiore Sant Anna, Pisa. He is a PhD holder in Public International Law from the Institute of Law, Politics and Development at Scuola Superiore Sant Anna (Sant Anna School for Advanced Studies) in Pisa, Italy. He holds LL.M. from the South Asian University, New Delhi, and completed his undergraduate studies in law at the Faculty of Law, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka.
He completed another master's degree in international relations from the HSE, Moscow. He has held two visiting research fellowships at the Global Legal Studies Centre at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Sciences PO, Paris. He was affiliated with the Minerva Center for Strategic Studies at Hebrew University, Jerusalem for a brief period in 2019.