Tamil Nadu seized by political storm

As blood flows freely in Sri Lanka, the Indian government finds itself in a struggle of political interests and Tamil Nadu finds itself in a tizzy. In this particular crisis, it is particularly difficult for the Indian government to separate emotion from calculation and pragmatism from pride. The Oracle examines all of these complex questions, almost exclusively from the point of view of Indian interests and finds that there are hardly any good choices to made.

First, India needs to understand the emotion of her Tamil constituents. For all other Indians, the Tamils are family and hence India should prioritize the Indian Tamils' point of view in determining state policy towards the LTTE situation in Sri Lanka. First the Tamils of Sri Lanka do have a very good case against their government; they have long been oppressed, denied civil rights and even citizenship. The Ceylon Citizenship Act of 1948 expressly prevented people of Indian and Pakistani origin from obtaining Sri Lankan citizenship. In fact, until 2002, people of Indian origin in Sri Lanka were not recognized as equal citizens even on paper. As such, the Tamil grievance towards the Sri Lankan government has a firm basis in fact. Not all militancy is equal; there is still such a thing as desperate people being forced to arms for self defence in a lawless land with a repressive government. The government of Sri Lanka should not be allowed to take advantage of the sweeping global sentiment against "terrorism" and masquerade its unjust, racist self as a legitimate government seeking to weed out enemies of peace; not when they denied civil rights on the basis of race a mere six years ago.

Revolutions tend to take on a life of their own. Although the LTTE was born out of legitimate grievances, it has spun itself into a hateful, murderous militant organization that holds down Indian Tamils in Sri Lanka with a iron hand. The LTTE turned against the IPKF many years ago and even went on to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi. The LTTE deals with dissenters such as Col. Karuna with a heavy hand and has a taste for extreme violence, blood and gore.

As such, the task of the Indian government is three fold:

a) To explain to the Tamils of India that the LTTE is a violent organization that has no respect for human rights and can only bring further poverty, despair and death to the Sri Lankan Tamils.

b) To make it clear to the Sri Lankan government that India will take any action necessary to ensure that Indian Tamils in Sri Lanka live are afforded with the fullest extent of civil, human and democratic rights once the LTTE has been wiped out.

c) To scare away the Chinese, who are looking at Sri Lanka to be another bead in the "string of pearls" they want India to wear. As such, India needs to step up its military presence in the region even further. As the United States increasingly looks to Colombo as the primary strategic station in South Asia, instead of Karachi in unstable Pakistan, India's task should not be too hard. Nevertheless, with the Chinese paying for a massive port in Sri Lanka, India needs to beware of the Chinese beachhead in the Indian Ocean.

President Rajapakse of Sri Lanka is a wily man; even as the United States, India and China eye his country for strategic goals, he is able to work with the major powers to his own advantage. Under the now universal bogey of fighting terrorism, he is flushing out the LTTE to make space for himself. He has repeatedly refused to mention what peace he would offer to Indian Tamils once the war is over. The war itself has been conducted with the bloody ruthlessness of an expansionist monarch, rather than with the cautious approach of a legitimate government that is conscious of human rights. The aims of his war have been, almost entirely territorial, rather than the enforcement of justice and law.

For India, this situation is simply unacceptable. Unless India is capable of mustering its huge military forces for power projection in its own backyard, India will remain a second class power. Unfortunately, India has sent no messages at all to this effect.

So much for the international situation. The flip side of this issue is in Tamil Nadu, where both the AIADMK and DMK are vying to project themselves as friends of Lankan Tamils. However, both sides lack the conviction to take concrete steps. When the DMK ministers and MPs at the Centre resigned, Jayalalitha dared Karunanidhi to step down from power in Chennai. This was an inane remark, since policy in India is decided at the national and not at the state government level. Similarly, Karunanidhi "expressed satisfaction" over the Centre's efforts to change the situation in Sri Lanka based on a mere statement made by Pranab Mukherjee to Parliament, when, in fact, the UPA Government had done nothing to make itself heard either in Colombo or in Kilinochchi. The country can have a sigh of relief over the fact that both sides are just lame ducks. It means that neither has the conviction, or even the lung power, to raise the bogey of "Tamil Nationalism", whatever that means. It shows that regionalism in India is a dying ideology, one that cannot win many followers even when the provocation is extremely strong. In all this confusion, blood and gore, that is the only piece of good news.