The Neelan Tiruchelvam & G.L. Peiris constitutional proposals emerged in the mid-1990s during the presidency of Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga, a period when the Sri Lankan government was projecting itself as seeking a "negotiated" political settlement to the ethnic conflict.
The proposals were principally developed by constitutional lawyer and parliamentarian Neelan Tiruchelvam and legal academic G. L. Peiris, who served as the government's chief constitutional adviser. It was claimed that their work sought to replace Sri Lanka's highly centralized unitary system with an extensive scheme of devolution through a new constitution that recognised the country's plural character while preserving its territorial integrity. Successive drafts, including the 1995 Devolution Proposals, the 1997 proposals, and ultimately the 2000 Draft Constitution, were considered to be watered-down versions of the initial proposals, and these proposals too failed, like many other such constitutional initiatives before them.
Over the past three decades, these proposals have generated extensive discussion. Much has been written about their constitutional content, the drafting process, and the personalities behind them, particularly Neelan Tiruchelvam.
Beyond the legal and constitutional arguments lies a more fundamental question of political intent. In this detailed essay/rant i would like to shift the focus away from the text of the proposals themselves and examine the circumstances, timing, and objectives that shaped their emergence.
Neelan Tiruchelvam is frequently portrayed as an eminent intellectual and constitutional expert who, together with G. L. Peiris helped formulate what is often described as a credible political solution to Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict. Yet this widely accepted narrative has largely escaped critical examination. Discussions of these proposals are often detached from the broader context in which they emerged, with little attention given to the collapse of the peace process, the war crimes and genocidal acts committed under the Chandrika Kumaratunga administration, or the Chemmani mass graves that are being unearthed right now. Equally striking is Neelan Tiruchelvam's own record, which raises difficult questions about his apparent silence during a period when Chandrika's military campaign targeted innocent Tamil civilians.
What democratic legitimacy did Neelan Tiruchelvam have to represent the Tamils?
He was not an elected representative of the Tamil people, nor of the Sinhalese or Muslim communities. Rather, he entered the country's legislative institutions as a nominated member, a position he attained following the legacy of his father, the late politician M.Tiruchelvam. He was more a product of nepotism than of merit.
Neelan’s association with the Ford Foundation further established his prominence as a constitutional expert. This is not presented here as an allegation, but as a matter of record. Yet the prevailing narrative, which portrays Neelan Tiruchelvam as a democratic voice for the Tamil people, often overlooks the fact that he never held an electoral mandate. Instead, he served as a government nominee tasked with contributing to what was described as a political solution to the ethnic conflict. This whole exercise and endeavour were primarily supported by funding from Ford Foundation with vested interests especially with its ties with C.I.A.
If so,
Why did the Sri Lankan government, sections of the international community, and much of the media portray Neelan Tiruchelvam as a representative of the Tamil people?
Why was this narrative constructed, what purpose did it serve, and whose interests did it ultimately advance?
At the very time the LTTE was engaged in peace negotiations with the government, the government, showed little genuine commitment to sustaining the process. It refused to lift sanctions or introduce meaningful confidence building measures that could have strengthened the negotiations and created conditions for lasting progress. Instead, its priority was to buy time, rearm, and consolidate its military position. While actively undermining the peace process, the government simultaneously projected itself as being committed to peace.
A key part of this strategy, was to limit every avenue that could provide the LTTE with political legitimacy or a platform for political expression, reducing it instead to the image of a purely violent or militant organisation with no political vision.
The Chandrika administration pursued this objective by first allowing the peace process to collapse while placing the blame entirely on the LTTE, and then by promoting figures such as Neelan Tiruchelvam and later Lakshman Kadirgamar as the acceptable political voices through which the Tamil national question would be framed.
Viewed in this broader context, the promotion of Neelan Tiruchelvam can be understood as part of a wider political dimension of counterinsurgency. Rather than relying solely on military force, states often seek to reshape the landscape of political representation by cultivating alternative centres of leadership from within the affected community. These figures, despite lacking an electoral mandate, are presented as legitimate political representatives and afforded institutional recognition, political access, and public visibility. In doing so, the State hopes to weaken the insurgent movement's claim to representative authority. This strategy is not simply about offering an alternative political voice; it is about narrowing the insurgency's political space by contesting its legitimacy and redefining who is recognised as the authentic representative of the community.
Within this framework, the elevation of Neelan Tiruchelvam served a broader counterinsurgency objective: to shift political legitimacy away from the Tamil national movement and towards state-endorsed actors operating within the government's constitutional framework.
This naturally leads to another question:
Was Neelan Tiruchelvam unaware of the role he was playing, or did he fully understand it? Was he simply being used as a political instrument, or was he acting independently?
If one accepts the latter proposition, then evidence of that independence should be visible at the moments when it mattered most. Did he publicly and unequivocally challenge the Chandrika government over the Chemmani mass graves? Did he openly condemn the Navaly church bombing or other incidents in which Tamil civilians were killed? The historical record does not reflect such public confrontations.
If he was genuinely an independent constitutional voice, why was that independence not exercised more visibly in response to some of the gravest crimes commited by the Chandrika government against the Tamils?
Including Chemmani...
The Chemmani mass graves existence first came to public attention in 1998 during the trial of Sri Lankan Army Lance Corporal Somaratne Rajapakse, who was convicted for the rape and murder of 18-year-old Tamil schoolgirl Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, together with her mother, brother and a neighbour. During the proceedings, Rajapakse claimed that between 300 and 400 Tamil civilians who had disappeared following the Sri Lankan military's recapture of the Jaffna peninsula in 1995–1996 had been secretly buried in the Chemmani area. His testimony led to court-supervised excavations in 1999, during which the remains of fifteen individuals were exhumed, several of whom were identified as victims of enforced disappearance.
Although these discoveries lent credibility to Rajapakse's allegations, investigations into the wider claims of hundreds of buried victims soon stalled, leaving many questions unanswered. Chemmani has since become one of the defining symbols of Sri Lanka's unresolved legacy of wartime disappearances and continues to be central to demands by victims' families and human rights advocates for credible, independent investigations and accountability.
Among those who responded most forcefully was Kumar Ponnambalam. As a lawyer and leader of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress, he ensured that the Krishanthi Kumaraswamy case did not remain an isolated criminal prosecution but was understood as evidence of a much broader pattern of enforced disappearances.
Acting on behalf of the victims' family and consistently highlighting the disappearances that followed the military occupation of Jaffna, Ponnambalam argued that the testimony of Somaratne Rajapakse required an investigation extending far beyond the murder trial itself. He maintained that the allegations pointed to systematic violations rather than isolated crimes and repeatedly called for an independent international investigation, arguing that domestic mechanisms lacked both the credibility and impartiality necessary to uncover the truth and prosecute those responsible.
Through his legal advocacy, public statements and interventions before international forums, Ponnambalam played a pivotal role in bringing global attention to the Chemmani allegations and framing them as part of the broader issue of accountability for wartime disappearances.
Nearly three decades later, Chemmani has now become the largest mass grave ever uncovered in the country, surpassing previous sites like Mannar. Following decades of limited progress after the 1999 excavations, renewed excavations commenced in 2025 after human remains were uncovered during construction work at Chemmani, Siththupaththi. Investigators have since recovered numerous human skeletons, including the remains of infants and young children, together with personal belongings such as clothing, toys and school related items. The discoveries have intensified calls from victims' families, human rights organisations and international legal bodies for an independent, transparent and internationally supervised investigation.
Against this backdrop, the contrast between Kumar Ponnambalam's position and Neelan Tiruchelvam's is striking. While Ponnambalam argued that only an independent international investigation could credibly address the allegations, Tiruchelvam advocated the opposite approach.
In his parliamentary speech during the Adjournment Debate on the Allegations of Mass Graves in Chemmani on 22 July 1998, Neelan Tiruchelvam did not explicitly condemn President Chandrika Kumaratunga or her government, nor did he attribute responsibility to the State or condemn the government's cover-up.
Instead, he argued that "the Human Rights Commission is empowered by the Act to investigate" the allegations, devoted considerable attention to explaining the Commission's statutory powers, and concluded:
"The public has the right to a full, impartial and professional investigation into the alleged graves in Chemmani. We urge the Government to provide whatever assistance the Human Rights Commission may require to conduct such an investigation."
Although Tiruchelvam referred extensively to United Nations forensic protocols and acknowledged that international forensic experts could assist in the excavation process, he did not call for an international commission of inquiry or an independent international investigation. Instead, his speech envisaged the investigation being conducted by Sri Lanka's Human Rights Commission, with the Government providing the assistance necessary for that process.
In contrast to Ponnambalam's insistence that domestic institutions lacked credibility, Tiruchelvam's intervention placed confidence in the existing institutional framework of the Sri Lankan State as the appropriate mechanism for investigating the allegations. Whether that reflected a principled constitutional preference for strengthening domestic institutions or a political calculation is open to interpretation, but the distinction between the two approaches is both clear and significant.
This was not an isolated instance.
If one examines Neelan Tiruchelvam's parliamentary interventions, public speeches and published commentaries more broadly, a consistent pattern appears to emerge. He frequently addressed the constitutional and procedural dimensions of the conflict while avoiding direct characterisation of the suffering experienced by Tamils in unequivocal terms.
Rather than explicitly identifying the victims as Tamils targeted on the basis of their ethnicity, or describing abuses in clear moral or political language, his interventions were typically framed within the vocabulary of constitutionalism, institutional reform and legal process.
Equally striking is the absence of sustained public criticism of President Chandrika Kumaratunga or her government, even during periods marked by serious war crimes against Tamil civilians.
At times, his public posture appeared closer to that of a trusted adviser within the Chandrika administration than that of a political representative willing to openly confront the government over its actions.
Another question that warrants close examination is the timing of the proposal itself.
The constitutional draft associated with Neelan Tiruchelvam and G. L. Peiris was presented abruptly after the collapse of the peace process, giving the impression that it had been waiting for precisely that moment to be unveiled. If its primary purpose had been to facilitate a negotiated settlement, it would have been more logical to introduce it while peace talks were still underway, when both parties remained engaged in dialogue.Instead, the draft emerged only after the negotiations had broken down.
Equally significant is the manner in which the draft was prepared. It was not the product of broad public consultation or an inclusive political process, but rather a document developed by a small group of individuals. If the government was genuinely committed to achieving a lasting political settlement, and if it had confidence in the proposals advanced by Tiruchelvam and Peiris, why was there no attempt to place the draft before the parties during the peace process itself and invite discussion on its contents? Why was it introduced only after the talks had collapsed?
The timing of its release raises difficult questions.
Was the draft deliberately withheld until the peace process had failed, or was it intentionally released prematurely in an incomplete form?
Whatever the answer, the sequence of events invites closer scrutiny of the draft's underlying political purpose. Was it genuinely intended as a framework for implementation, or was the act of releasing it, rather than its eventual adoption, the real political objective?
From this perspective, the constitutional draft appears to have served another political purpose, which was to further isolate the LTTE from the political process.
Significantly, the proposals were neither presented to the LTTE nor accompanied by any meaningful attempt to engage the movement or the broader Tamil polity in discussions over their contents. If the objective had truly been to secure an inclusive and durable political settlement, one would have expected the principal Tamil negotiating party to have been consulted, or at the very least invited to respond to the proposals. Instead, the draft was advanced without such engagement, reinforcing the perception that its purpose was not to build consensus but to establish an alternative constitutional narrative that bypassed the LTTE altogether.
In doing so, the government was able to project the appearance of pursuing a political solution while simultaneously excluding the very actors whose participation would have been indispensable to any negotiated settlement.
This concern was not confined to a handful of critics. It was echoed by several prominent figures within the Tamil political landscape, including S. Thondaman, Alfred Jeyaratnam Wilson, R. Sampanthan, and others, all of whom questioned the government's political approach and warned against efforts to sideline the principal Tamil negotiating party.
As mentioned above, Neelan Tiruchelvam's proposals were largely developed as a closed exercise, without any meaningful process of public consultation. They were not, however, the only constitutional proposals being advanced at the time.
The Ceylon Workers' Congress (CWC), under the leadership of S. Thondaman, produced its own devolution proposals, while a separate initiative emerged from the Group of Concerned Citizens of Sri Lanka in Britain. Their proposal, drafted by the London solicitors Bates, Wells & Braithwaite and titled A Proposal for Peace: A Framework for the Constitution of the Union of Ceylon, offered an alternative constitutional framework. Significantly, this was a proposal that the LTTE indicated it was willing to consider.
Although these proposals differed in substance, they shared a common premise that distinguished them from the government's approach. Both recognised that any durable political settlement required meaningful engagement with the LTTE, not its exclusion.
S. Thondaman articulated this concern explicitly in the proposals submitted by the Ceylon Workers' Congress (CWC).
In his view, the success of any devolution arrangement depended not only on its legal framework but also on its political legitimacy among the Tamil people.
He wrote:
"The warring parties — the Government and the LTTE — have to become negotiating partners if the devolution package is to be accepted and implemented. Legal shape to the proposal is crucial. But no less crucial is an appropriate political structure to take on devolution, to implement it and to consolidate the gains of autonomy. Political pragmatism would suggest that a politico-administrative structure already in the North-East is the best machinery to implement the Government's effort at devolution.
The LTTE which has relentlessly spearheaded the struggle for freedom for over twelve years is well equipped to wield power, exercise authority and maintain law and order. The task of governance under the devolution package is therefore best entrusted to the charge of the LTTE. Tamils who seek success in a political arrangement have an obligation to concede the lead role of the LTTE in the fight for autonomy.
The Government too is constrained to acknowledge the LTTE as the legitimate recipient of devolved authority. This authority should be entrusted to the LTTE for a period of five years. The LTTE has the obligation during its tenure of five years to build up the legal framework and to develop democratic institutions for the sharing of power and the exercise of authority. The Central Government has the responsibility of providing to the LTTE support for the steady evolution of the democratic process."
-The Lanka Guardian, August 15 1995, The CWC Proposals, Devolution Package, Response of the Ceylon Workers Congress, S.Thondaman.
Thondaman's observations directly challenged the assumption that a constitutional package could succeed by bypassing the LTTE. His argument was that legal proposals alone were insufficient; political legitimacy was equally indispensable.
By insisting that the LTTE be recognised as the recipient of devolved authority during a transitional period, he underscored what many contemporaries regarded as a political reality: no constitutional framework could command legitimacy among the Tamil people while excluding the principal party to the conflict. In that sense, his intervention stood in sharp contrast to the government's approach, which sought to advance constitutional proposals while simultaneously narrowing the LTTE's political space.
Neelan Tiruchelvam, however, remained publicly silent on this question. That silence is itself significant, particularly given the centrality of the issue to the constitutional proposals he championed. Rather than publicly addressing the criticisms that the LTTE had been excluded from the process, he continued to endorse the draft.
At the same time, his close associate Lakshman Kadirgamar advanced the government's "War for Peace" campaign, arguing that a political settlement of this nature could only become viable after the LTTE had been decisively defeated militarily. Viewed together, these developments raise an important question:
Was the constitutional draft intended to facilitate negotiations, or did it become part of a broader political strategy that accompanied and justified the government's military campaign?
The proposals functioned not merely as a constitutional initiative, but also as a means of presenting the ongoing war as a necessary step towards an eventual political settlement.
Lakshman Kadirgamar's own remarks in 1995 provide further insight into the political thinking that accompanied the constitutional proposals. In an interview that year (Kadirgamar Interview, Chandrika: Sure of Consensus- Mark Nicholson & Mervyn De Silva
-The Lanka Guardian, August 15 1995), he openly stated that the government's strategy was not to engage the LTTE politically, but to isolate and weaken it while building support for its devolution package through other political actors.
He explained:
"Instead, the government aimed to isolate and undermine the Tigers by winning cross-party support for its proposed devolution package. He believed most Tamil parliamentary politicians would back the measures, and the opposition United National Party would be 'hard pressed' to object."
Kadirgamar further described the proposed package as a constitutional framework that had been discussed with selected Tamil groups, outlining devolved powers over land, policing, education, and finance, while deliberately leaving unresolved questions such as territorial boundaries and the final structure of devolution.
(I will discuss the territoiral boundaries issue in detail in my next essay on this topic)
Most significantly, however, he acknowledged that the proposal was not conceived independently of the military campaign. Rather, its implementation depended upon changing the military balance on the ground.
As he explained:
"The package would be only a 'framework'... Timing would partly depend on the outcome of fighting in the north."
He went even further by conceding that, having chosen to exclude the LTTE as a political interlocutor, the success of the constitutional proposals depended upon the military weakening the movement to the point where alternative Tamil political actors could emerge. In his own words:
"He conceded that since the decision to ignore the LTTE as a political interlocutor, success in pushing through the proposed devolution measures would rely heavily on the Sri Lankan army managing to 'enfeeble' the Tigers as a military force."
These remarks are significant because they reveal that the constitutional initiative and the military campaign were not being pursued as separate tracks. Rather, they were presented as mutually dependent. The political framework would become viable only after the LTTE had been sufficiently weakened militarily, allowing alternative Tamil actors to occupy the political space. This proves that the devolution proposals were conceived not merely as a mechanism for negotiation, but as part of a broader political strategy that accompanied the government's counterinsurgency campaign.
The same themes resurfaced during the Law & Society Trust consultation on the Draft Constitution, held on 26–27 June 2000 at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall in Colombo. The consultation, documented by Patricia Hyndman in the Law & Society Trust Review (Vol. 10, Issue 152, July 2000), brought together constitutional lawyers, academics, civil society representatives, and political leaders to examine both the substance of the Draft Constitution and the broader prospects for resolving Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict.
Although participants differed on the constitutional model itself, there was broad agreement that the success of any settlement depended upon who participated in the political process.
Among the principal contributors was Dr. Rohan Edrisinha, a constitutional lawyer and legal academic who served as Executive Director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives (CPA) and was widely recognised for his work on constitutional reform, devolution, and human rights. Addressing the question of negotiations, he argued that any constitutional settlement would lack credibility if it excluded the principal armed party to the conflict.
As recorded in the proceedings:
"It was necessary to involve the LTTE in negotiations. An agreement without the LTTE would not be sufficient to bring about a peace."
He further observed that, if constitutional reform genuinely offered the prospect of peace, the Sinhala electorate might be more willing than previously assumed to consider more expansive forms of devolution, including asymmetrical federal arrangements.
A similarly significant intervention came from R. Sampanthan, then Secretary-General of the Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) and one of the most senior Tamil parliamentary leaders of his generation. Sampanthan approached the issue from a different but complementary perspective. Rather than arguing that the LTTE should simply be brought into negotiations, he first emphasised the need for a credible political commitment from Sri Lanka's two principal Sinhala parties, the People's Alliance (PA) and the United National Party (UNP).
Reflecting upon decades of failed constitutional initiatives, he argued:
"Until the two parties are agreed on meaningful and viable devolution, which has the real commitment of both parties, the LTTE will be justified in claiming that they cannot trust the government and should not engage in negotiations."
Sampanthan therefore recognised that the LTTE's distrust of the constitutional process could not be dismissed in isolation; it had to be understood against the repeated failures of successive governments to sustain bipartisan support for constitutional reform.
He then turned specifically to the constitutional proposals first introduced in August 1995. Significantly, he did not argue that they should replace or bypass the LTTE. Instead, he maintained that meaningful devolution should be enacted so as to create a genuine political challenge to the movement. At the same time, however, he expressed disappointment that the proposals had progressively lost much of their substance.
As the consultation records:
"Ever since the proposals had been put on the table in August 1995, Tamil leaders, including Dr. Tiruchelvam, had been able to fine-tune the proposals. However, since then, such proposals had been whittled down. Therefore, history will repeat itself and the Tamil people will once again feel that their interests had been betrayed. This defect has given the LTTE an opportunity to escape the political process."
These observations are noteworthy because they came from individuals who broadly supported constitutional reform rather than armed conflict. Yet both Edrisinha and Sampanthan independently arrived at a similar conclusion: a durable constitutional settlement required political legitimacy, and such legitimacy could not be achieved by excluding the LTTE from the negotiating process.
Sampanthan's intervention goes further by acknowledging that the gradual dilution of the 1995 proposals undermined their credibility among Tamil constituents, thereby reinforcing the LTTE's argument that the constitutional process lacked the political commitment necessary for a lasting settlement.
It is important to note the context in which these observations were made. The consultation took place in June 2000, several months after the assassination of Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam in July 1999, and was organised by the Law & Society Trust, an institution with which Tiruchelvam had been closely associated and which he had helped shape. Consequently, the remarks made during the consultation cannot readily be dismissed as criticisms originating from political opponents or those hostile to his constitutional vision. On the contrary, they were expressed within a forum organised by an institution closely identified with Tiruchelvam's own intellectual and constitutional legacy.
Based on the above, we have to reassess our understanding of the constitutional process led by Neelan Tiruchelvam and G. L. Peiris. Rather than functioning primarily as a genuine attempt to resolve the conflict through an inclusive political settlement, the process appears to have operated alongside and, in important respects, complemented the state's wider military and counterinsurgency strategy.
The constitutional proposals, instead of becoming a bridge to negotiations, were presented in a manner that politically isolated the LTTE while providing the government with a constitutional narrative to accompany its military campaign.
As i write this, the number of bodies exhumed from the Chemmani mass graves has surpassed 450.
I would like to once again reiterate, These victims were forcibly disappeared, killed, and buried by the Sri Lankan Military during the Chandrika Kumaratunga administration, the very period in which Neelan Tiruchelvam remained one of the government's most prominent constitutional advocates. Yet there is no record of him publicly and unequivocally condemning the government over the Chemmani mass graves or the wider pattern of atrocities committed against Tamil civilians.
His parliamentary interventions were often framed in broad constitutional language, carefully avoiding direct confrontation with the government over its conduct of the war.
That silence becomes a recurring feature throughout this period.
Neelan remained silent while the Chandrika regime and her military disappeared, killed and buried Tamils in Chemmani.
Neelan remained silent while the constitutional proposals he helped shape and the whole exercise of constitutional reform was merely used as a tool to fuel the war and the Tamil Genocide.
He remained silent while his role as counter insurgency political agent aligned with a broader state effort to diminish the LTTE's political legitimacy and narrow the political space available to the Tamil national movement.
For many Tamils, therefore, Neelan Tiruchelvam was never remembered as a vocal advocate during their darkest years, but as a figure who remained silent while his master carried out the Tamil Genocide.
His assassination undoubtedly silenced his voice. Yet, that silence did not deprive the Tamil people of a public advocate they had relied upon for justice and accountability. Rather, it deprived the Sri Lankan state of a voice that had become an important component of its counter insurgency strategy against the Tamil Struggle. That distinction lies at the heart of the debate over Neelan Tiruchelvam's historical legacy.
-Mr பழுவேட்டரையர்
26/07/2026
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