AK: How do you understand the 'national question'?
JW: In a country where you have different communities – whether you call them peoples or nations or national minorities – every community has an inherent right to due share of state power. When you have a community that is numerically smaller, which is dispersed, then there is no question of regional autonomy. Because they are dispersed, then aspirations haveSi to be met by, for example, an electoral system and checks with a strong bill of rights, as well as equality through better university education, etc. But the equation changes when you have communities that are geographically concentrated; the demand changes from equality to state power. Such a community would want to express its cultural identity in political form, and make a demand for its share of state power.
In most countries today, we have multi-cultural situations. And in almost all of these countries, the majority has initially refused to share power with the minorities. Majoritarianism is universal. But having said that, certain majorities come to terms with this reality sooner than later, and are bold enough to accommodate the other communities in terms of state power. That is what happened in Belgium and that is what happened in Spain, and a little later in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales. There, the majority communities reluctantly or otherwise understood that if the country is to move forward you have to solve the problem of state power. But some majorities simply refuse to address the question of state power – for example, the Serbs of the former Yugoslavia. That is the problem we have in Sri Lanka. I won't say the Sinhalese have gone to that extent, because there was a period of ten years, from 1994 to 2004, where about 50 percent of the Sri Lankan population came around to accepting power-sharing as the only way out. So for me, the national question is essentially a question of state power.
How did the attempts at democratic governance that began during the 1930s impact the national question and the minorities?
The Donoughmore Constitution of 1931 in fact provided room for power-sharing, but 1936 changed everything. At that point, after the election to the State Council, the majority manipulated it in such a way that the minorities would not be represented in the Board of Ministers. I think that is the first lesson that the Tamil community learned – that the majority has its way if it wants it. Before that, there was very little support for the 50-50 [representation] demand, but after 1936 the Tamil community woke up to the reality.
Then came 1948, with independence and the Soulbury Constitution. Section 29 [the minorities-protection clause] was no safeguard when the Indian Tamils were disenfranchised. The Tamil Congress was in government at the time, and it could stop it. Only the left parties confronted it, along with Tamils who broke away from the Tamil Congress and, of course, the representatives of the Indian Tamil community. That led to the birth of the Federal Party. I would call that lesson number two, even though during the elections of 1952 the people in the north voted the Tamil Congress into power. And even the founder of the Federal Party, Chelvanayagam, lost his seat to a member of the UNP [United National Party]. So you see, despite those initial lessons, the Tamils wanted power-sharing at the Centre and rejected federalism.