In 1955, my wife and I happened to visit Sri Lanka and as we passed through Jaffna, at the railway station, we quietly asked the station master who looked like a Tamil, 'do tell us what are the conditions here?' He looked around, saw someone at a distance, and then told us, 'let us move aside to a place where our conversation will not be overheard.' Then we went out a distance and this man unfolded himself and said, 'We are aliens in this country, we are being oppressed. There is no safe way of living for Tamils in Sri Lanka.'

This was in 1955. We are now in 1988 when the situation has escalated steadily and all that we call human rights have been violated by the Government which obviously represented the jingoist sector of the Sinhala community. It is unfortunate that the electoral process has over the decades thrown up such a dominant group in Government, to crush, stage by stage, by a Python process, the Tamil population which is the largest minority, which is a cultural entity, an ethnic entity, almost a religious entity, a national entity. This minority had occupied high positions, key positions, strategic positions and contributed to the enrichment, the building up of the economy of the society in Sri Lanka. It was gradually eased out. It was not merely discrimination, discrimination is a very mild word to describe such a situation. They were being eased out, squeezed out, all that remained was the human being minus human dignity and cultural integrity. At last it reached a stage where violence was openly practised by the Sinhala hoodlums, if I may say so. The violence which was simmering below the surface was let loose and people could not know whether they would survive for the morrow.

There was a small but frightful film which I saw during those days. It showed Tamil families including women and children being dragged out and killed. Nobody was feeling safe in any part of Jaffna. Let us take Jaffna, northern, eastern parts, or Colombo and you can imagine the horrors perpetrated. Of course, these are familiar matters but often we have to remind ourselves about what had happened. Unless we have a live historical memory, we often forget the present issues which are projected by the past, Terrorism is a false label for the struggle of a people in despair facing genocide by State massacre. Just look at the technology of Tamil liquidation by Sinhala mafia. The electoral roll was used to identify the Tamils, even in the city of Colombo. You go to this house, this is a Tamil house; that shop, it is a Tamil shop. Therefore kill the people there, destroy their belongings and, if it is a Sinhala shop, leave it; this is Sinhala land, let him off. This kind of thing happened, of course, in Delhi immediately after Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Because Sikhs killed her, that kind of thing happened but I, as a citizen of India, feel ashamed that even though there were 2,000 murders in Delhi city, there was no action, no first information report, no criminal justice, nothing at all. Imagine all the people in Jaffna, all the people in the east being totally denied any right to life which is the basic right that we recognise under the United Nations Charter. To battle back for survival is not terrorism. That is why India helped the Tamil militants.

This is what happened. Taking the electoral roll and going from place to place, goondas raged and killed. There are some occasions of crisis and terror where a prison may be a sanctuary for the people. But here the Tamils inside the Welikade prison were dragged out, killed and the blood of the prisoners was offered to the Buddha statue within the prison premises. Could you imagine a greater sacrilege of the Buddha himself? Offering the blood of human beings inside the prison to the Buddha statue inside the prison campus? This is demoniac display with State abetment.

What we learn as lawyers is that when a man is killed there will at least be a post-mortem. But, an emergency was declared, a law was made by which even a post-mortem was said to be unnecessary.

Why? To make a long story short, there was State terrorism, not merely the fear of the Sinhalese sector going berserk. State terrorism practised at that time was so terrible that the President shamelessly declared: 'I am waging war'. Imagine a President of a country saying that he is waging war against a substantial minority in that country itself.

President Jayawardene did declare war on Jaffna and what was more, he said, 'no food, no medical supplies'. Hospitals were bombed. A country's President organising bombing of his own people! When the Tamil people there could not be treated as citizens of Sri Lanka, the ultimate result was that they had no human rights, no fundamental rights whatever, no right to life which is the very core of existence, all denied to the Tamils. It was in this situation, this macabre background, that the Tamils had to fight back. When the Tamils fought back there was an outcry that this was violence, this was terrorism. But at the same time, when the army of Ceylon practised terrorism, it was an army operation.

Why are we not going out to the world and talking to the nations about the desperate situation of the Tamils, these violations of human rights and the terrorism that is being practised by the State itself. Once I went to Brussels where human rights specialists met. I found people there were not informed about what was happening in ,Sri Lanka. The participants there were complaining that the human rights sub-committee and the United Nations had not been properly posted with what was taking place.

Inevitably, like a tiger at bay, the Tamil people had to fight back. For sheer survival. Once we appreciate the gory, grim and ghastly scenes which we had seen spreading over the decades, from 1948 onwards, we will realise the dialectical forces at work. When the Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, sent her messengers, her negotiators, President Jayawardene, capable of doing two things at the same time with perfect ease, fooled our emissaries.

Poor Indira did not anticipate a presence like President Jayawardene who could fill the bill, double-speak, double-think, newspeak, all things he could do with perfect ease. So he would one day sympathise with the Tamils and say that he was Gandhi's disciple. The next day he would send a whole army to wipe them out. Even the young Prime Minister of India who had also been trying to negotiate for some time would send one day Bhandari, another day somebody else, third day still another. For each day he was changing horses mid-stream but we are not here so much concerned with Rajiv Gandhi. I think it is wrong for us to focus on him�we should give importance to people who otherwise might go into oblivion. Rajiv Gandhi, moved by the inhuman siege of Jaffna, sent compassionate food and medicines.

PEOPLE OF INDIA DISTURBED

Anyway, it is not right for you to confuse between the Government of India or the Prime Minister of India and the people of India. Do you not think that the Americans are greater than Reagan? No more can you identify the people of India with Rajiv Gandhi. The people of India are very disturbed at things happening there in Sri Lanka. Anyway, even the Prime Minister of India at a certain stage found that what was being done to the Tamil people in Sri Lanka was beyond all understanding and he said, 'We will send mercy ships of food and medical supplies'. Imagine thinking of sending mercy ships of food and medical supplies to Jaffna Tamils because they were being starved of these by their own Government! I can understand Hitler trying to do it for some other Governments but here we see this monster regime starving out its own people, denying them the basic help and medical supplies. The "powerful" Sri Lanka Navy told the Indian vessels, 'Please return'. Then the next day or two days later, we found the Indian Air Force going and dropping supplies. In those days, one never knew whether these supplies reached any of the needy Tamils who were hungry. We are not concerned here with dissecting those details. All that I need say is we reached a situation in which suddenly we discovered one day that midwifery, that historic midwifery, of a still-born child, the so called India-Sri Lanka Accord. A serendipity indeed!

One need not have expected its viability. You did not require an astrologer to say that it would have died a natural death. Because when there is a convulsion of a historic character, when there are a whole people in political locomotion, angry, indignant and determined to maintain their rights, and that is what the Tamil people were trying to do at that time, when they were struggling for survival, it's not one man murdering somebody else. It is a whole people being obliterated and then they resolved 'we shall survive'. It is not one person, it is not Prabhakaran who decided to do so. It was not the LTTE. It is a whole people. 2,000 E men cannot perform what is being done today or what was being done then.

It is the whole Tamil people. It is this historic might that has confounded Jayawardene and Rajiv Gandhi in arriving at an Accord on their own as if they were producing some kind of talisman, some remarkable settlement.

A statesman, as distinguished from a politician, is one who has a vision of the future, a feel of the past, an understanding of the contemporary forces at work. You cannot be a dialectical student if you do not inform yourself of the contradictions at work. I cannot appraise what is happening in Sri Lanka unless I gear myself to an understanding of the dynamics of the forces at play. You would realise, Rajiv Gandhi should have realised, Jayawardene's forces must have been knowing it, that a whole people were being tortured and subjected to terrorisation. 'Let's kill. And you don't make any noise about it because you are not concerned that they are human, therefore they cannot have human rights. All that you need do is to retrieve your reputation by mentioning names like Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru in this kind of situation.' These holy names being chanted for perpetration of the most diabolic crimes! This is the JRJ cult!

This was the situation of extermination. Mahatma Gandhi once argued that when a government becomes satanic, sedition is my duty. So it was after a huge upsurge by the Tamils and they had resisted this demoniac assault on their human rights, this Accord was born. The preamble to the Accord has a touch of grandeur and strikes authentic notes of history, for the authors speak of the historic home of the Tamils in the North and the East, of the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious character of the Island. The mystic chords of memory thus give life arguing the case for a historic homeland and home rule for the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Devolution of power, joinder of North and East, recognition of ethnic identity and participation in the collective process of governance are all implicit in the preambular recitals. The right to self-determination without separation, the right to self-rule without sovereignty, the right to a federal status without secession are the logical consequences of the preambular imperatives.

I do not stand for the disintegration of the Island nor for the formation of a Tamil Sovereign State. Self-determination can have a limited connotation implying reasonable autonomy within the parameters of a republic. Eelam, as constitutional pundits may construe, has no compulsive semantics and may be compatible with an effective federal existence. Look, for instance, at what Lenin did when the October Revolution was achieved. He insisted that the Bolsheviks should declare themselves in favour, along with the right to self-determination even of the smallest nationality, also of the concession of 'cultural autonomy' to national minorities included within the State. This won the participation of national entities in the revolution of October 1917.

What the Tamils urgently need is the recognition of their collective right to autonomous existence as the redemption of their tryst with ethnic destiny. This is what the Tamils demand and the Sinhalas should accommodate, not crush, as their brutal bracket attempted. Their homeland is North and East joined together, broadly speaking. This is virtually recognised in the Accord. But in the clauses of the instrument this unification is precariously dependent upon a revocation by referendum. Such a referendum clause, with opportunities for colonisation and instigation of heterogeneous elements, is a stultification of the preambular promise, a treachery against Tamil unity. The land question is also vital but has been slurred over in the instrument. The emergency provisions de facto denied even minimal autonomy. The Triarchy, where the junior-most partner is the Tamil provincial power, is subjected to the discretionary power of a puppet Governor and the overall paramountcy of the President and the Sinhaia-dominated Parliament. Again, here is another disenchantment and frustration. The legislative and administrative powers conceded to the provinces are illusory.

The Indian State, within the Indian Republic, is itself weak and fragile and there is great demand for more powers. Compared to such a situation, the devolution of power to the Tamil Province in Sri Lanka makes it a glorified municipality. There are many more fundamental flaws in the Accord which have induced even the most moderate Tamil group, the `TULF', reject outright the 13th Constitutional Amendment and the companion legislative bill. To use military coercion and macabre pressure to make the Tamil militants accept what is suicidal is nothing short of historic injustice. This is precisely what the IPKF, as an instrument of terror, is now hell-bent upon. It is Peace Keeping Force used to engineer an ulterior purpose and therefore generates resistance. The Tamils of Sri Lanka have great regard for India, for Gandhi, for Nehru, for Indira Gandhi, and have great expectations from that noble neighbour, but by a travesty of history and a vicious quirk of Rajiv vanity, the Indian army has made the Tamils hate Indians. The Sinhalas hate the Indians since the birth of Sri Lanka. Now the Tamils also hate, as even Indian generals from Jaffna have stated. That is the punishment for infantile strategies and unprincipled policies.

The Indian army has great traditions. The Indian people have great stakes in the reputation of its jawans. It is therefore our patriotic duty to insist that the IPKF, around one hundred thousand strong, does not do injury to the national honour or violate human decencies even under provocation. Blind defence of all that the Indian army does is not patriotism but bigoted chauvinism. After having come to London and met many Tamils from Jaffna I have gathered some facts about the horrendous doings of soldiers from India, suppressed by the media. Gruesome killings of patients in hospitals and reckless shootings of civilians, including such innocents of the brother-in-law of the former Chief Justice (a Tamil) are indefensible, whatever the LTTE provocation. Rape of girls and of women are credibly attributed to the jawans. Could you believe that women shot and killed were robbed of their Mangal Sutra made of told, by some blackguardly soldiers from India? Even instances of rape followed by killing have been mentioned to me. Tortures of many innocents, supported by affidavits, have been narrated to me. I confess that I am ashamed of these delinquents in uniform. The time has come for an Indian Commission to visit the Island and investigate the doings of its army men. Our national pride is wounded if a fraction of the crimes attributed were true. I protest against the Occupation Army syndrome and sympathise with the Tamils of Sri Lanka that they have been subjected to humiliation, harassment and vulgar violence. The militants may fight and may pay the price but the innocents shall not be molested or murdered. Gandhi will turn in his grave if the stories given to me reach him. Nehru and Indira would be stricken with pain if the violations imputed to the jawans were veracious.

I can understand a cease-fire but not a surrender of arms. The L I TE must stop violence and simultaneously the IPKF too. That is cease-fire. But if the entire weapons of the Tigers were surrendered and later the IPKF were ordered out of the Island by Jayawardene�he is capable of it and will be pressurised to do it�then the void created would make the Tamil people an easy prey for the Colombo army and the Sinhala hoodlums. The Prime Minister of India must guarantee effective devolution and joinder of North and East. To negotiate these matters a cease-fire may be necessary, but not a surrender of weapons which will render the militants helpless cannon fodder to the berserk Lankan forces.

Let me conclude that it is foolish for one hundred thousand Indian soldiers to chase a single Prabhakaran or attack a few thousand LTTE men. The 13th Amendment and the legislative, bill are a fraud on the Accord. What we need today is a guarantee of the grant of the basic collective rights of the Tamil brothers and sisters and a vindication of the human rights both individual and as a group. This is the historic struggle on which they have launched and for which they will die. The strength is derived from the soul of a suppressed people seeking liberation on human terms. Victor Hugo once wrote:

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.

The Tamil people of Sri Lanka are now inspired by one idea, the idea of peace, honour, self-determination in the shape of effective political autonomy.

Therefore not all the armies of the world can resist that idea. This is simple history, this is simple political sanity, therefore, let us try to see that the human rights of the Sri Lankan Tamil brothers and sisters are protected, defended, that is the planetary duty of any person, any patriot. Wherever human rights are 'hit1erised', we must defend the victims.