Abstract
From the Conclusion [see
also India & the
Tamil Eelam Freedom Struggle
]
Front Note by
tamilnation.org
Dr.Mayilvaganan's
article in 'Strategic Analysis'
is an useful addition to the literature on
India's
involvement in the
Tamil Eelam
Freedom Struggle.
It is understandable that as an
Associate Fellow of a New Delhi based Indian think tank,
Dr.Mayilvaganan
takes the view that -
'India
has to impress on the (Sri Lanka) political leadership the urgent need
for a devolutionary power-sharing arrangement acceptable to all
communities, in line with its oft-stated policy on Sri Lanka.'
Dr.Mayilvaganan is right to point out that India's policy
on Sri Lanka is an oft stated one. The Achilles Heel in India's oft-stated
policy is to be found in the words 'acceptable to all communities'.
Professor Marshall Singer
gave expression to this Achilles Heel in 1995 -
"...One of the essential elements that must
be kept in mind in understanding the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict is that,
since 1958 at least, every time Tamil politicians negotiated some sort
of power-sharing deal with a Sinhalese government - regardless of which
party was in power - the opposition Sinhalese party always claimed that
the party in power had negotiated away too much. In almost every case -
sometimes within days - the party in power backed down on the
agreement..."
Professor Neil
Devotta said it in 2005...
"...Beginning in the mid-1950s Sri Lanka's politicians
from the majority Sinhalese community resorted to ethnic outbidding as a
means to attain power and in doing so
systematically marginalised the country's minority Tamils...parties
in power seek to promote dubious conflict resolution only to be
checkmated by the respective (Sinhala) opposition which typically claims
that the proposed solutions are bound to eventually dismember the
island"
And
Sathasivam
Krishnakumar of the Liberation Tigers said it in June, 1991, long before
both Professor Marshall Singer and Professor Neil Devotta -
"
Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism has been institutionalised in Sri Lanka
and today it has become more powerful than the politicians themselves.
Indeed even if the Sinhala politicians seek to settle the conflict,
Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism may try to prevent such a settlement. This
is the political reality that those who are aware of the Sri Lankan
situation are well aware of. This Sinhala chauvinism which was nurtured
by Sinhala politicians for their electoral advantage,
has grown into a
Frankenstein monster which now has the power to destroy and make
politicians. This we understand very well..."
India's oft stated policy fails to openly recognise
that which Tamils living in many lands including Tamil Nadu have long
recognised - the existence of a
Sinhala Buddhist ethno nation
intent on conquering
and ruling the people of Tamil Eelam.
"...In the Sinhala language, the words for nation,
race and people are practically synonymous, and a
multiethnic or multicommunal nation or state is incomprehensible to
the popular mind. The emphasis on Sri Lanka
as the land of the Sinhala Buddhists carried an emotional popular
appeal, compared with which the concept of a
multiethnic polity was a meaningless abstraction..." [Sinhala
Historian K. M. de Silva in Religion, Nationalism and the State, USF
Monographs in Religion and Public Policy, No.1 (Tampa, FLA: University
of South Florida 1986) at p31 quoted by David Little in Religion and
Self Determination in Self Determination - International Perspectives,
MacMillan Press, 1996]
Tamils have long recognised that 'Sri Lanka' is in truth a
Sinhala Buddhist ethno nation which seeks to masquerade as a Sri Lankan
'civic nation' - a Sinhala Buddhist ethno nation with a
Sinhala flag, with an unrepealed
Sinhala Only Act, with
Buddhism enthroned in the Constitution, with a
Sinhala 'Sri Lanka' name which it gave itself unilaterally in 1972, and
for whom Sri Lanka is
the land of the Sinhala Buddhists.
And so long as that
Sinhala Buddhist ethno nation
believes that it can conquer the Tamil homeland and rule a people
against their will through quislings, so long will it fail to see the need
to talk to the Tamil people on equal terms. So long also will it fail to see
the need to recognise the existence of the Tamil people, as a people, with a
homeland and with the right to freely choose their political status. So long
also will it fail to see the need to structure a polity where two nations
may associate with each other in equality and in freedom.
Here, Dr.Mayilvaganan is right to point out the
re-emergence of the Tamil Nadu factor in relation to the conflict in the
island of Sri Lanka -
"...There is a view in Tamil Nadu that India played a
role in the division of LTTE, primarily to weaken the LTTE and force it
to come to the negotiating table. But people in Tamil Nadu would rather
argue that any effort by India aimed at trouncing the LTTE at the
moment, when the government of Sri Lanka has launched its full-scale
offensive against the LTTE, would be construed as inimical to the
interests of the Tamils and give rise to spontaneous opposition by the
people of Tamil Nadu... and have adverse consequences for internal
politics in the state by strengthening pro-LTTE Tamil nationalist
forces.
Dr.Mayilvaganan is also right to point out that -
'..it is well known that in the absence of a genuine
devolutionary arrangement any Tamil outfit supported by India or Sri
Lanka will lose out to LTTE in terms of its support among the Tamils of
Sri Lanka'.
This then is the nub of the matter - and it is here that
New Delhi may find itself between a rock and a hard place. The rock
being the people of Tamil Nadu and the LTTE - and the hard place being
the uneasy
balance of power in the Indian Ocean region -
"...as India and China gain economic heft, they are
moving to expand their control of the waterway, sparking a new - and
potentially dangerous - rivalry between Asia's emerging
giants...Encouraging India's role as a counter to China, the U.S. has
stepped up exercises with the Indian navy and last year sold it an
American warship for the first time, the 17,000-ton amphibious transport
dock USS Trenton. American defense contractors - shut out from the
lucrative Indian market during the long Cold War - have been offering
India's military everything from advanced fighter jets to anti-ship
missiles... Meanwhile, Sri Lankans - who have looked warily for
centuries at vast India to the north - welcome the Chinese investment in
their country."
Gavin Rabinowitz, Associated Press, 6 June 2008
Again, despite American defense contractors 'offering
India's military everything from advanced fighter jets to anti-ship
missiles', India may be concerned to march to the beat of its own drummer -
"...Last April (2007), at a two-day
workshop at the Indian Defense Studies Analysis (IDSA), a New
Delhi-based think tank, discussions took place on emerging U.S.-Indian
strategic relations. One Indian analyst pointed out that although
Indians are eager to obtain U.S. technology, a "trust deficit" still
exists, based on past U.S. sanctions on India, and Indians worry that
at a crucial time they might not be supplied with replacement parts if
the relationship goes bad again.... A senior Indian military
official delivering a luncheon address to the conference cautioned that
Indo-U.S. relations are likely to remain fluid, and unpredictable. He
asserted that those relations can be better described as an "evolving
entente," and argued that given its size, location, and ambitions,
India will always march to the beat of its own drummer..."
Geostrategic Import of the Coming Bay of Bengal Naval Exercise -
Ramtanu Maitra, Executive Intelligence Review, 27 July 2007
Unsurprisingly,
Sinhala Sri Lanka seeks to
use the political space created by the geo strategic triangle of
US-India-China in the Indian Ocean region, to purchase the support of all
three for the
continued rule of the
people of Tamil Eelam by a permanent Sinhala majority within the
confines of one state. And so, we have
India in the Trincomalee oil farm, at the same time we have a
Chinese coal powered energy plant in Trincomalee; we have a
Chinese project for the Hambantota port, at the same time we have the
attempted naval exercises with the US from Hambantota (to contain
Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean); we have the
grant of preferred licenses to India for exploration of oil in the Mannar
seas, at the same time we have a similar grant to China and
a 'road show' for tenders from US and UK based multinational
corporations; meanwhile we have the continued presence of the
Voice
of America installations in the island and the
ten year Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) was signed by
the United States and Sri Lanka on 5 March 2007.
Given the uneasy balance of power in the Indian Ocean
region, Dr.Mayilvaganan's invitation to New Delhi to go down the so
called 'genuine devolutionary power-sharing' path may also evoke in New
Delhi feelings of deja vu. It was Winston Churchill who reportedly remarked
that the farther you look back into history, the further you can look
forward. And in the case of India's search for 'genuine devolutionary
power-sharing' we need to look back only a mere 20 years.
In 1987 (given the balance of power between the US and the
then Soviet Union)
India's the Foreign Secretary Romesh Bhandari spelt out India's approach -
"..Sri Lanka is a small island strategically located
in the Indian Ocean having harbours on which some outsiders have their
eyes. Continued strife and disorder only weakens Sri Lanka and makes
itself vulnerable to foreign interference, presence and even
involvement. None of these can suit India.....it has been made clear at
all times to Sri Lanka, that India's national compulsions cannot also be
set aside. In any final reckoning these would prevail over anything
else... "
Sri
Lanka - Settlement by Persuasion, Romesh Bhandari, Indian Foreign
Secretary, 11 July 1987
In the
final reckoning India's
national compulsions did prevail over everything else.
And it was the
people of Tamil Eelam who were called upon to pay a heavy price for the
Exchange of Letters between Sri Lanka and India directed to secure
India's strategic interests in the Indian Ocean Region.
The war
crimes committed by Rajiv Gandhi's Indian Army in Tamil Eelam
are engraved in the memory of the people of Tamil Eelam.
"..the Indian Army came here,
massacred
innocent Tamil civilians,
raped our women and
plundered our valuables. The acronym IPKF will always stand for
Indian People Killing Force where we are concerned. We will one day
erect a memorial in the heart of Jaffna town, in the centre of Hospital
Road, in memory of all the innocent civilians � ranging in age from the
very old past 80 to young children massacred by the IPKF and to the
women who were raped."
IPKF - Innocent People Killing Force, Dr. T. Somasekaram
"...as an Indian I feel ashamed that under the
Indo Sri Lanka agreement, our forces are fighting with Tamils whom
they went to protect...I believe that the Indian Government has
betrayed its own culture and ethics...The guilt, therefore, rests
entirely on those who sent them to do this dastardly business of
fighting in Sri Lanka against our Tamil brothers and sisters..."
India's former Foreign Secretary, A.P.Venkateshwaran, speaking in
London in April 1988
And with the full might
of the Indian Army present in Sri Lanka, all that India was able to
'persuade/pressure' Sri Lanka to offer was the
comic opera of the 13th Amendment
- a sophisticated script, but nevertheless, a comic opera.
".. Under the Sri Lanka Constitution executive power
will continue to be vested in the President and in respect of provincial
matters it will be exercised by his loyal servant the Provincial
Governor... And it is the Governor who will have financial control. It
is the Governor who will be in control of the provincial public service.
The 13th Amendment may, take credit for inventing a new constitutional
species - Provincial Ministers without ministerial power. In the
delightful phraseology of the 13th Amendment, the functions of the Chief
Minister and the Board of Ministers are 'to aid and advice' the
Provincial Governor in the exercise of his functions.
...In days gone by, the ruler of a people appointed
Ministers to 'aid and advise' him. But today we live in a 'democracy'.
And so, we have an executive President, who will appoint a Provincial
Governor, who will be aided and advised by Ministers, who will be
elected by the people. The Tamil people should be duly grateful that
they have been permitted to 'aid and advise' their rulers. The Tamil
national struggle has at last borne fruit! The unselfish friend of the
Tamil people, the Indian Government, with the might of the 4th largest
army in the world, has persuaded the Sri Lankan Government that the
Tamil people should be actually permitted to 'aid and advise' their
rulers. The mountain has indeed laboured. And there are some amongst us
who even urge that we should not look a gift horse in the mouth!.."
Thirteenth Amendment to Sri Lanka Constitution - Devolution or Comic
Opera, Nadesan Satyendra, March 1988
Furthermore, though the
1987 Indo Sri Lanka Accord recognized the Northern and Eastern Provinces
as areas of historic habitation of the Tamil people, the 13th Amendment and
the Provincial Councils Act refused to translate that recognition into
constitutional reality. And here let us recognise that even if the
Northern and Eastern Provinces are joined together, the Tamils will continue
to have an Executive Governor appointed by, and holding office during the
pleasure of, a Sinhala President. If the Northern and Eastern Provinces are
not joined together, then the Tamils will have the privilege of having two
Governors appointed by, and holding office during the pleasure of, a Sinhala
President.
After all, there should be no better way of governing the
Tamil people than through a Tamil Governor appointed by, and holding office
during the pleasure of, a Sinhala President. It would be an approach that
would rival that of Hitler who sought to govern Norway in the 1940s through
a Norwegian whose name was Quisling - and thereby made an everlasting
contribution to the vocabulary of the English language.
Finally, the provisions of the Provincial Councils Act itself may be amended
from time to time by a simple majority of members present and voting in
Parliament. The 13th Amendment not only provided a constitutional script for
a comic opera - it also enabled the Sinhala playwrights to change the script
from time to time.
The short point is that under the 13th Amendment power
continued to reside in a Sinhala dominated Central government, within the
frame of an unitary constitution with executive power vested in a Sinhala
President. The blunt reality is that those who proclaim that the 13th
Amendment was intended to share power between the Tamil people and the
Sinhala people, are, to use a colloquialism, 'trying to pull a fast one' on
the Tamil people.
And it was this
Constitutional
comic opera that Rajiv Gandhi's India sought to sell to the people of Tamil
Eelam in 1987 as 'genuine devolution
and power sharing' - with disastrous consequences. Why was India
unable to do more? Why was India unable to 'persuade/pressure' Sri Lanka to
offer a constitutional structure
where two
nations may associate with one another in equality and in freedom and at
the same time underwrite guarantees for the security of each? Why was
India unable to 'persuade/pressure' Sri Lanka to offer even a centralised
federation such as the Indian federation?
Here, the circumstance that the
1987 Indo Sri Lanka Accord (and Indian armed intervention in the island)
did have the overt support of the US is not without significance. On the
surface, it was surprising that the US supported an Accord which called for
the dismantling of the Voice of America installations in the island and
increased potential Indian influence in the Indian Ocean - an Accord which
was hailed by Rajiv Gandhi as having secured India's strategic interests in
the region.
But, the US appears to have have taken the view that India's
direct involvement was a way of ending the less
manageable covert support that India had extended
Tamil militancy during the period 1981 to 1986. The old story of the
invitation extended by the spider to the fly comes to mind. The US was
mindful that should India's influence in the island tend to become
stabilised, President Jayawardene (who for many years was called 'Yankee
Dick' by his political opponents) and US supporters in the Sri Lanka cabinet
(like the then Sri Lanka Prime Minister Premadasa and National Security
Minister Lalith Athulathmudali) could always be encouraged to delay or even
sabotage the implementation of crucial terms of the Accord. It was after all
a 'West leaning' UNP that was in power and not a 'non aligned' SLFP.
In the event, the arrest of top ranking LTTE leaders
including Kumarappa and Pulendran did provide National Security Minister
Lalith Athulathmudali with that opportunity. His insistence (backed by
President Jayawardene) that the arrested LTTE leaders should be brought to
Colombo for questioning despite the amnesty proclaimed in the Indo Sri Lanka
Accord, forced Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to choose - and Rajiv Gandhi
chose to support Sri Lanka (in an attempt to salvage India's role in the
region). The subsequent suicide of Kumarappa, Pulendran and others was the
final straw that broke the fragile peace that the Accord had secured.
(see
Eyewitness Account of Incidents in Jaffna - September to November 1987).
Many may conclude that Rajiv Gandhi
in the end succumbed to forces bigger than those that
India could manage at that time.
"Inter-state relations are not governed by the logic
of morality. They were and they remain an amoral phenomenon.."
Jyotindra Nath Dixit
Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka 1985 /89, Foreign Secretary in
1991/94 and National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister of India
2004/05,
speaking in Switzerland,
February 1998
Inter-state relations may not be governed by the logic of
morality, but the failure of New Delhi to pursue a principle centered
approach to struggles for self determination in the Indian region
weakens India - and does not strengthen it. An unprincipled
approach, apart from anything else, may well encourage the very
outside 'pressures' which New Delhi seeks to exclude.
"...Peoples speaking different languages, tracing
their roots to different origins, and living in relatively well defined
and separate geographical areas, do not easily 'melt'...
A people's struggle for
freedom is also a nuclear energy and the
Fourth World
is a part of today's enduring political reality..."
The Buddha
Smiled - Nadesan Satyendra, 12 June 1998
"... to equate a resistance movement fighting against enormous
injustice with the government which enforces that injustice is
absurd.... does this mean that people whose dignity is being assaulted
should give up the fight because they can�t find saints to lead them
into battle?.... "
Arundhati Roy in conversation with Shoma Chaudhury, March 2007
Now, twenty years after
1987, the 13th Amendment comic opera is once again being touted as opening
the path to 'genuine devolution and power sharing'. And this time
round, the
uneasy
balance of power in the Indian Ocean region includes not only the
US but also
a rising China as well. We are reminded of
George Santayana's reflection that
those who do not learn from history are condemned to relive it.
"...There is a view in Tamil Nadu that India played a role in the division of
LTTE, primarily to weaken the LTTE and force it to come to the negotiating
table. But people in Tamil Nadu would rather argue that any effort by India
aimed at trouncing the LTTE at the moment, when the government of Sri Lanka has
launched its full-scale offensive against the LTTE, would be construed as
inimical to the interests of the Tamils and give rise to spontaneous opposition
by the people of Tamil Nadu.... although India has limited options in Sri Lanka,
there is a general perception in Tamil Nadu that India is shirking its role in
the Sri Lankan crisis to its disadvantage. Indian inaction would, many believe,
complicate the situation and perpetuate the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and
have adverse consequences for internal politics in the state by strengthening
pro- LTTE Tamil nationalist forces.
If the conflict intensifies, it would certainly lead to large-scale influx
of refugees to Tamil Nadu, compelling India to react. Moreover, the LTTE might
use the influx to build its support-base in Tamil Nadu, as it is trying now.
This will complicate the internal security scenario. LTTE might already have
established new supply and support bases in the state with the help of organised
smuggling groups.
There is an overwhelming belief that India can and should work as an
impartial facilitator, because it has enough leverage with both parties to
persuade them to come together for a meaningful dialogue. This was indicated to
the author in his fieldtrip to Tamil Nadu in early 2007 by many respondents. In
this process, India needs to work closely with the international community. To
devise an appropriate policy response, India has also to factor in the
reluctance of the Sri Lankan government to accede to the legitimate demands of
Tamils and the failure on its part to evolve a devolutionary framework
acceptable even to the Sinhalese majority.
India has to impress on the
political leadership the urgent need for a devolutionary power-sharing
arrangement acceptable to all communities, in line with its oft-stated policy on
Sri Lanka. It is well known that in the absence of a genuine devolutionary
arrangement any Tamil outfit supported by India or Sri Lanka will lose out to
LTTE in terms of its support among the Tamils of Sri Lanka. Thus the primary
onus lies with the Sri Lanka state to evolve a genuine devolutionary
arrangement, and India can help it in this exercise. Many in Tamil Nadu also
suggest that India find some indirect way of communicating with LTTE, may be
through TNA, and persuade LTTE to look for alternatives beyond absolute
secession."
The
Tamil minority in Sri Lanka have traditionally exerted a sympathetic pull on
their co-ethnics in Tamil Nadu. This has inevitably influenced India�s policy
towards Sri Lanka. The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 changed this
pattern and the popular sympathy for Tamil militancy ebbed considerably in its
aftermath. However, the spontaneous reactions by the political parties of Tamil
Nadu to the Sri Lankan government�s indiscriminate air attack on Tamil majority
areas since mid-2006 and the flight of refugees to India indicate that Tamil
Nadu may have resurfaced as an important factor in India�s Sri Lanka policy. For
New Delhi, it can neither afford to see the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE) strengthen its foothold by taking advantage of influx of refugees, nor
can it be a silent spectator to the humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka as the
Government of Sri Lanka appears determined to find a military solution to the
ethnic problem. There is, therefore, a need to analyse the re-emergence of the
Tamil Nadu factor in the post-Rajiv Gandhi assassination phase.