By Tamil Nadu Politicians: So the dissentors of Tamil Nadu who are also pro-LTTE terrorist sympathisers are at it again! It has to be reiterated as reported in the Hindu News Site that indeed “The latest campaign in Tamil Nadu masterminded by a desperate LTTE must not be allowed to undermine the sound policy decision upheld by successive Indian governments since 1991 to stay out of Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.” It has come to light very visibly and audibly that in Tamil Nadu “a lobby”, once again to quote a report in the Hindu” led by the MDMK and the PMK, have recently plunged into high-pitched activity aimed at garnering support for the LTTE, an internationally proscribed terrorist organisation.
[ad#200×200]What these entities hope to acheive objectively by their actions is unclear but in their meanderings they have also issued an ultimatum to the Indian Government that their membership in the Indian parliament would resign in two weeks if the Sri Lankan Military offensive against the Tamil Tigers was not halted so whom are they trying to kid other than themselves? Certainly not the Indian Government and never the Government of Sri Lanka whose joint agreements and collaborations by way of policy are etched in stone towards the safety of both nations as well as the entire region of South Asia.
As a matter of fact it would boost the entire cause of eradicating terrorism from the region if meddling organizations such as these who pose impediments rather than facilitations towards the cause resigned and dissapeared from the scene to let Sri Lanka and India get on with their task towards securing their respective territories from the terrorist menace which has been a scourge in the region for decades!
There seems to be a remarkable frog in the well mentality about these two groups of politicians and perhaps all of Tamil Nadu’s politicians who seem completely oblivious to India’s neo-political perspective relative to collaborations with Sri Lanka where India perhaps has finally realised the dangers the LTTE pose in a broader sense than being once viewed as mere terrorists fighting for secession in Sri Lanka and also cognizant that Sri lanka is on the verge of eliminating them. Thereby India for the common good of both countries has chosen to assist Sri Lanka in her cause and a seemingly bitter pill for the Tamil Nadu politicos to swallow!.
One hardly needs to ponder with any great effort that India’s political establishment and civil societies are faced with many terrorist related dilemmas to Indian well being and posterity not only from within the nation but also from the outside where the LTTE pose just such a threat or did in the past having had their strike force crippled at the present time by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces although their imminent threat has in all probabilities played constantly on their minds as something India would hardly want to infiltrate her borders and spill into India.
These parties with no real mandate than their own myopic convictions to do so as perceived by any discerning observer have launched a campaign in the Indian Nation using the excuse of expressing solidarity with the Sri Lankan Tamils trapped in the war zone in northern Sri Lanka as their theme and motivation for their demands but the timing of this campaign which appears to have materialised overnight, is a dead giveaway as astutely observed by the Hindu News site and hence the transparencies clearly indicate where these politicos are aiming at and this at a time when the LTTE are effectively being crushed by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces with nowhere to retreat to! Not even ironically to Tamil Nadu!
While the latest reports indicate that the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, are mere kilometres away from the LTTE’s administrative capital, Kilinochchi and have successfully surrounded the LTTE and their leader, virtually trapped in their bunkers, it also points to the direction of what might transpire in the very near future relative to the predicament the terrorists are faced with en route to elimination.
Indeed as observed by many news sources the LTTE terrorists are on a collision course with disaster! “For the first time in years, the Sri Lankan Government appears to be on the brink of a major success in its battle with terrorism. There is now the very real prospect of the capture of the elusive LTTE chief, Velupillai Prabakaran, who is behind the assassination of a former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi.” quote from the Hindu where despite the optimism by the Hindi of a live capture, cyanide could play a major role towards his mortality but captured or hauled in screaming and kicking he will be eventually.
It also needs emphasis that Tamil Nadu’s politicians clearly have a double standard, one for India and another for Sri Lanka where it is quite apparent that they condone fighting terrorism in India relative to Kashmir and the Islamist invasions in the North considered national responsibilities while also maintaining a watchful eye on other border regions with Pakistan and China but in the case of Sri Lanka fighting the insurgents of the LTTE for nearly four decades, something to gripe about and oppose while suggesting that India should get involved in halting what is now an outstanding priority for the Sri Lankan Government and its Armed Forces!
Admirably the Hindu has once again finely worded the truisms applicable to the LTTE in saying that quote “It was the LTTE which pioneered terrorism in South Asia and produced two generations of suicide bombers who have claimed numerous high-profile victims. For far too long have the legitimate aspirations of the Sri Lankan Tamils been held hostage to the hegemonic ambitions of the LTTE chief Prabakaran who has consistently sabotaged all attempts to find political solutions to the ethnic conflict.
When Pakistani generals and Islamist militants characterise the separatist uprising in Kashmir as a “freedom struggle,” the collective Indian national consciousness is understandably outraged. Politicians in India are rarely exercised over concerns that the human rights of innocent citizens are often trampled upon in police action against terrorists or their perceived accomplices. There is indeed a broad-based political consensus behind the Indian state when it takes strong steps to root out terrorism.
It is therefore all the more incongruous that the political parties in Tamil Nadu, including the ruling DMK and its principal challenger the AIADMK have decided to work themselves into a frenzy over the alleged violation of the “human rights” of the Sri Lankan Tamils in the context of the military action against the LTTE. Evidently, the game plan of the LTTE and its supporters is to rally Tamil chauvinist sentiment and translate that into pressure on New Delhi to signal its disapproval to Colombo, thereby weakening its moral authority in the eyes of the Sri Lankan Tamil community.
There is a strong sense of déjÀ vu, listening to the rhetoric and speeches of leaders in Tamil Nadu, whose understanding of the Sri Lankan political situation is mired in a time-warp, their images of the ethnic conflict drawing primarily from scenes of two decades ago, particularly the flashpoint of 1983, when the Wellikada prison massacre highlighted dramatically the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamil community and brought thousands of refugees to Indian shores. But after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian national psyche recoiled from a continued engagement with the Sri Lankan ethnic crisis.
Since the 1990s, New Delhi’s policy has been to acknowledge the terrorist character of the LTTE and the imperative of a military confrontation with that organisation, while continuing to offer moral encouragement to Colombo to find a political solution that would provide a framework to empower the Tamil community. Meanwhile, India made clear its utter repugnance for the LTTE by banning it not just because it was involved in the murder of Rajiv Gandhi but because it viewed the LTTE as a terrorist movement that would continuously strive to stimulate the secessionist sentiment in Tamil Nadu as long as Sri Lanka continued to have ethnic strife.
The situation in Sri Lanka itself has undergone profound changes since the 1980s, when it was easier to conceptualise purely political solutions and rule out military responses to the violent dimensions of the conflict. At that point in time, it was indeed possible to sideline the militant groups of Sri Lankan Tamil politics by engaging the political interlocutors in the Tamil community such as the urbane leaders of the TULF, notably Appapillai Amirthalingam, who recognised the key to political empowerment lay in the democratic process. But with the ruthless elimination of every credible interlocutor in the Tamil community by the LTTE which insisted that it was the sole representative of the Sri Lankan Tamils, the space for a political solution has narrowed over the years, rendering null and void the several exercises seeking a devolution of power to the Tamil community.
Yet the Thirteenth Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution which was a consequence of the Indo-Sri Lankan Agreement of 1987, envisaging devolution of power to provincial councils has become a touchstone for the resolution of the ethnic conflict. The Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, has made it clear that he remains committed to a political solution of this sort. In a meeting with the All Party Representative Conference (APRC) last Saturday, Mr. Rajapaksa emphasised that it was the duty of the Sri Lankan state “to ensure to the Tamil people of the North the same democratic rights as enjoyed by the people in all parts of the country.” He also took care to explain that the military action against the LTTE was against terrorism and not against the Tamil community.
The Sri Lankan President has acquired unprecedented political space for his military campaign against the LTTE. Several factors including the rebellion of the powerful LTTE commander Karuna and the fact that there is now in place an elected provincial council in the Eastern Province have rendered irrelevant many of the points in the earlier Sri Lankan Tamil political platform. That there is a credible and workable political solution now in sight has made it easier for Colombo to launch military operations against the LTTE. It is indeed the sovereign right of Sri Lanka as it is of India to eliminate any terrorist organisation that poses a fundamental threat to its survival as a nation.
The parties in Tamil Nadu which have strong ties to the LTTE such as the MDMK and the PMK are in the forefront of this new campaign which has sprung to life overnight after decades of silence. Their rhetoric is dated and wearily familiar. The MDMK’s Vaiko, brimming with moral indignation, has lashed out at the Centre for allegedly sending military assistance to Sri Lanka which was “unleashing a genocidal attack on the Tamil race”. Likewise the PMK’s leader S. Ramadoss has alleged that “the situation on the island threatens to eliminate the entire Tamil race”.
That the LTTE’s shadow lurks behind this new campaign is evident in the demand of Dr. Ramadoss that the Union government recognise the “Eelam Tamils struggle for their rights.” There is also an implied acceptance of the LTTE’s claim to be the only authentic representative of the Sri Lankan Tamils in the declaration of Dr. Ramadoss that the LTTE is “acting as a fortress for ethnic Tamils.”
As the LTTE has presumably calculated, this binge of competitive chauvinism has compelled Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi to up the ante on this issue, adding for good measure, his own dramatic assertion that unless the Centre cooperates in stopping the attacks on the Sri Lankan Tamils, not only would the Sri Lankan Tamils perish but so also would the “Tamils in Tamil Nadu.” The strategic design behind the campaign to “express solidarity” with the Sri Lankan Tamils that is now under way in Tamil Nadu should not be underestimated.
For the last decade or so, New Delhi has successfully resisted the various attempts made by the LTTE and its supporters in Tamil Nadu to force it to intervene in the Sri Lankan ethnic crisis. If New Delhi were to express its disapproval, even implicitly, of Sri Lanka’s sovereign right to recapture its own national territory from the LTTE, it would weaken the moral authority of India’s own actions in regard to its struggle against terrorism and the separatist agitation in Kashmir. This latest campaign in Tamil Nadu masterminded by a desperate LTTE must not be allowed to undermine the sound policy decision upheld by successive Indian governments since 1991 to stay out of Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.”
This attestation is a clinically evaluated (for accuracy ) morale booster for Sri Lanka’s cause and the military campaigns of her Army and the Nation’s Administrators who are unequivocally compelled to applaud the huge contribution it presents which is tantamount to a wonderful dispensation of fair play and justice which should sink into the craniums of the Tamil Nadu branch of LTTE sympathisers whilst urging on both India and Sri Lanka towards their ultimate objective of ridding the Region and the Nation of Sri Lanka of the scourge of terrorism for good!
-Lankaweb-