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India’s Involvement
The political as well as armed struggle by the Tamils against the political and economic domination of the Sinhalese following Sri Lanka’s independence from the British in 1948 was once an internal issue concerning only the populace of Sri Lanka.
India, the neighbouring giant always held a ‘hands off’ approach and maintained a friendly big brother relationship with regards to its foreign policy with Sri Lanka.The emergence of a tilt of the Sri Lankan government led by J. R. Jayewardene towards America and its interests in the late 1970’s in agreeing to certain economic and military facilities, bypassing India’s interests, brought about a change in this ‘hands off’ approach by India.
It was also at this time that the Tamil youths, frustrated at not being able to get into universities because of standardisation which they saw as favouring the Sinhalese at their expense, and the many jobless despite them having secondary education, gave birth to the armed struggle. The attacks against the Sri Lankan security forces at the time were small, sporadic and weak. They were mostly directed at the police and centred on bank robberies.
However, it gained momentum after 1983, when Sinhalese hooligans cajoled by the J.R. Jayewardene’s UNP government, unleashed a reign of terror on the middle and upper middle class Tamils’ homes and establishments in Colombo, and in some Sinhalese areas.
The Indian establishment led by Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister, saw a golden opportunity in this situation to ‘pluck two fruits in one stone’: to bring the Sri Lankan government into its fold and to gain the support of Tamil Nadu for her Congress Party. Because of these factors, along with the strategic importance of Sri Lanka to India due to its geographical proximity, Sri Lanka became the concern of India as well.
India aided and abetted logistically and politically the armed movements and the claim of the Sri Lankan Tamils for a just political solution that is devoid of majority Sinhalese domination in the predominantly Tamil areas. The armed struggle and the political demands of the Tamils strengthened beyond all expectations because of India’s overt and covert support.
India’s Mediation
It is a historical fact that in a war between two nations or countries, a third country, more powerful than the two warring parties, who also has geopolitical interests, has to intervene to bring out an agreement. The third-party also plays the crucial role of underwriter, ensuring no breach in the agreement or return to hostilities.
In the case of the warring Sinhalese and Tamils, India is the only country that fits the description of the aforementioned “third country”.
With the assassination of Indira Gandhi, J.R. Jeyawardene assumed that he was now free to assume his alliance with the West. But Rajiv Gandhi, who followed his mother as Prime Minister, also followed her policy of containment of Sri Lanka. In 1987, through diplomatic as well as through brinkmanship, which famously included unauthorised food parcel air-drops in an open act of violation of the sovereignty of Sri Lanka, forced the Sri Lankan government to sign an agreement with India known as ‘Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987”.
J. R Jayewardene expected the West to come to his aid and warn India to lay its hands off Sri Lanka, but by then the West had decided to leave Sri Lanka under India’s sphere of influence. Moreover, the West did not want to antagonise India because of its lucrative and huge market with a population of about a billion against Sri Lanka’s paltry 20 million.
Incorporated in the Indo-Sri Lanka accord, albeit subject to referendum at a later date, was the merger of the North & Eastern provinces where there was predominance of Tamil speaking people. This was the first time that the Sri Lankan government had conceded to the concept of a Tamil homeland.
The period from 1983 to 1987 is a mere four years. Nowhere in the world has an armed struggle for a political solution been brought to an end within such a short period through the intervention of a third party.
But to the detriment of Tamil interests, the leadership of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which was more armed than others, opted to join with the Sinhala chauvinist elements and caused to negate the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord and India’s involvement. LTTE and its misguided and misinformed supporters along with the sycophant Tamil media were not farsighted or intelligent enough to solidify the political position of the Tamils. This despite the support of neighbouring India who was prepared to underwrite the Accord, help in the formation of a Tamil National Army and provide large sums of funds and technical assistance for swift and substantial economic development of the North & East.
What followed the sabotage of the Indo-Sri Lanka accord was a colossal loss of life and destruction, and an irredeemable regression of the Tamils to a situation of social and economic deprivation and displacements. The number of lives and property lost before 1987 is miniscule compared to that of after this period.
Interests of the Countries
It was touted at that time by those Tamils who contributed to the sabotage of the India’s involvement, as if a discovery, that India was not genuinely interested in satisfying the aspirations of the Tamils and that India’s interest was only to safeguard its own strategic, political and economic interests.
No country would interfere in another country’s fate with the intent merely to restore the rights of the people unless it was linked to its own strategic, political and economic interests as well. This is a political reality. It is the responsibility of a true and visionary leadership of the people to ensure that the respective interests coincide and do not conflict. It was a golden opportunity that has been squandered by the leadership of the Tamils from which the unfortunate ordinary Tamil people still continue to suffer with no end in sight.
Subsequently, with a large number of Sri Lankan Tamils settling in various countries as refugees, these countries too became venues for intense political activities for the Tamil cause. A substantial section of the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora was hoping, and continues to hope that these countries would assist them in achieving their goal of the ‘right of self-determination for the Tamils in Sri Lanka’ – which is in fact an euphemism for a ‘separate state for Tamils in Sri Lanka’. They ignore or choose to underplay the political reality that no country or group of countries, be it USA, Britain, Denmark, Norway, Canada, Australia, or Switzerland, would interfere to help the Tamils achieve their political rights without an ulterior motive that involves their own political, economic or strategic interests.
Final Stages of the War
The LTTE leadership continued to be uncooperative in arriving at a political solution within the framework of a united Sri Lanka by placing some unacceptable preconditions. India felt that this stance was being covertly encouraged by certain western countries that were inimical to the interest and domination of India in the region. These countries, having had India surrounded by China which has its own interests to weaken the progress and influence of India, and an antagonist Pakistan, wanted to have a cauldron burning continuously at its tip in the form of an unsettled Sri Lanka. The Indian establishment decided that the LTTE must be eliminated.
That the Sri Lankan Tamil issues have become pawn in the international power game is evident by the events that unfurled during the final days of assault on the LTTE positions by the Sri Lankan security forces.
The West, having declared war on terrorism mainly to keep in check the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, could not refrain from proscribing the LTTE. Its methods such as suicide missions, although confined to Sri Lanka, were similar to that of the Islamists. Despite this, these countries, except in a few instances, continued to turn a blind eye to the covert and overt activities of the supporters and sympathisers in open defiance of the proscription. They wanted the LTTE weakened, but alive and active in Sri Lanka so that by its spill over effect into nearby Tamil Nadu, would continue to be a thorn in India’s side.
During the final days of the war, the western governments encouraged vociferous protests by the Tamil Diaspora, the organisers of which under the guise of protesting against the human catastrophe were in fact protesting to save the LTTE from annihilation. The discerning observer would have noticed that none of the protesters held any banners or slogans condemning the LTTE for holding civilians as a human shield; on the contrary, there were attempts to project that the civilians actually chose to remain in the war zone!
The Western countries allowed the protests to continue in an unprecedented manner despite disruptions to traffic, inconvenience to its citizens and vast sums of money expended on the provision of security. This could only be for two reasons: one was that they too wanted the LTTE to survive, and the other was the appeasement of the Tamil Diaspora, necessary to win some of the marginal seats that were feared would go to the opposition parties in the elections.
In the final days of the war, a section of the Tamil Diaspora buoyed by this obvious support of their protests, were wrongly misled into believing that the West would save the LTTE, signalling to the leadership that a rescue was imminent when it was clearly cornered by Sri Lankan forces. This is one factor that led to the LTTE’s refusal to surrender earlier and eventually led to its demise. They now propagate through some of their media caricaturing India as the number one enemy of the Sri Lankan Tamils and that it is their sole bane.
That Sri Lankan Tamil issues have become pawns in the power game was also evident when the West wanted to bring a resolution condemning the Sri Lankan government for violation of human rights during the war. But the countries opposed to the West’s influence in the Asian region, aligned to thwart this attempt. This included India, China, South Africa, Cuba (it may be noted that the latter two had fought wars against oppression in their countries), Russia and Iran. Not only did the alignment of these countries defeat the motion, paradoxically, they even brought a counter-resolution in favour of Sri Lanka — that it must be supported in its efforts towards the resettlement and reconstruction of the internally displaced people. It passed because a majority of the countries not aligned to the interests of the West voted in favour of it.
China & Pakistan too rushed to support Mahinda Rajapakse’s government because they wanted to curtail the influence of the Western countries in the Asian region and more importantly they did not want India to take the Sri Lankan cake in full and wanted substantial shares for themselves.
Now the West continues with their designs through human rights issues and war criminal accusations, encouraging certain sections of the Tamil Diaspora in their futile exercises of re-mandating the Vaddukodddai Resolution and Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam, all of which have nothing to do with the political realities now in Sri Lanka.
The Indian establishment, determined to preserve its influence on Sri Lanka, continue with their delicate balancing act which involves succour to Sri Lankan Tamils, managing their elected representatives, keeping the majority Sinhalese happy and ensuring that there is no adverse political impact of any significance in Tamil Nadu.
Understandably, India’s line of approach towards a political solution to the ethnic conflict would be to apply the necessary pressure, political and otherwise, to implement the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987 both in letter and spirit since it is the architect of it, and was agreed to by both countries. To thwart India from succeeding in this, the West and other countries allied to its interests, will want the confrontation between the Tamils and Sinhalese to continue. They persist with encouraging the influential Tamil Diaspora, endowed with wealth acquired in the West and are now in search of social prominence, self-importance and identity under the guise of concern for their brethren in Sri Lanka. A large section of the ordinary Tamils seems to have bitten this bait. The unfortunate by-product of this is that an innocent section of the Tamil Diaspora is indirectly contributing to the continued suffering of the Tamils in Sri Lanka.
Venturing on Clay Horses
India is the only country that needs a peaceful Sri Lanka. It would therefore work towards this by promoting reconstruction and reconciliation and a political solution largely based on the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. Those who have a genuine interest in the Sri Lankan Tamils, those who do not want their misery to continue, those who do not want to push them further into the abyss of death and destruction, have a responsibility to extricate the Tamil issues from being the pawns in this political game. This is destructive for the whole of Sri Lanka. The fate of Tamils, whether one likes it or not, is inevitably linked with the interests of India.
If the Sri Lankan Tamils weaken India’s hands and believe that the West will help them to attain their political rights, peace and prosperity, it is akin to “venturing into deep waters on the back of clay horses”.
The earlier this is understood the better. The Tamils should set on a course that is realistic under the circumstances without day-dreaming and accentuating the misery of those unfortunate living in Sri Lanka.
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