Shaping a Better Sri Lanka: A Dialogue with Pitasanna Shanmugathas and Kagusthan Ariaratnam
Photo courtesy of Constitutionnet
In a Groundviews podcast episode, host Kagusthan Ariaratnam and Canadian scholar Pitisanna Shanmugathas, discuss Sri Lanka’s turbulent history and the life of legal expert Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam. The conversation, spurred by Sanmugadas’s documentary, Neelan Unsilenced, examines a pivotal yet failed attempt at constitutional reform and its lasting relevance.
Ariaratnam, a former child soldier for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), shares his personal journey of becoming a double agent for India and later defecting to the military. He recounts working with the military from 1995 to 2009 under a promise of a political solution for Tamil grievances, a promise that was ultimately unfulfilled. This broken promise sets the stage for the central topic of the podcast: Dr. Tiruchelvam’s role in drafting the Union of Regions proposals under the government of President Chandrika Kumaratunga.
Shanmugathas explains that Dr. Tiruchelvam’s proposals were a monumental effort to move Sri Lanka away from its unitary state model, where power is centralised and can be unilaterally taken away from regional provinces. This political structure was seen as incompatible with the Tamil community’s needs and had led to decades of discriminatory policies and violence, including the 1983 Black July pogrom and the burning of the Jaffna library.
The Union of Regions sought to create a true federal system with meaningful devolution of power, particularly concerning land, finance and policing. It included built in checks and balances to prevent the central government from revoking these powers. Despite being the boldest and most progressive constitutional reform ever proposed in Sri Lanka, the proposals ultimately failed. Shanmugathas attributes this failure to a lack of a two-thirds majority in parliament and the opposition’s unwillingness to give the Kumaratunga government political credit. The LTTE also broke the ceasefire, further complicating efforts.
The podcast highlights the urgency of the documentary’s release as the new government led by President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has a super majority and a political platform that mirrors many of Dr. Tiruchelvam’s original ideas, including abolishing the executive presidency and devolving power. Shanmugathas hopes the film will educate the public on the flaws of the current unitary state and reframe Dr. Tiruchelvam’s legacy for a younger generation.
He argues that a federal solution is the only viable path, asserting that any ethno-nationalist state where one group is supreme over another is inherently dysfunctional. Dr. Tiruchelvam’s commitment to federalism and a united Sri Lanka rather than a separate state ultimately cost him his life. Shanmugathas concludes that his vision remains a crucial blueprint for peace and pluralism, not just for Tamils but for all communities. The documentary aims to serve as an educational tool to promote understanding and encourage current leaders to act on their promises for a more inclusive constitution.
