The Tamil Cause Is Just

A.P. Venkateswaran
Former Foreign Secretary of India

It is a privilege for me to have been asked to come and speak here today. At the outset let me pay my sincere compliments to George Fernandes for not having been intimidated by the stupid decision of the Government of India to ban this gathering. It did not surprise me when I read about the ban in the newspaper because the Home Minister comes from a party which knows nothing about the freedom of speech and it also tells you the danger of having coalitions where fish, birds and animals are married together.

Dear Friends.

I had the doubtful distinction of being the foreign secretary of India at a time when the problem in Sri Lanka over the Tamils and Sinhalese had come up to a battle. The fighting was very intense and time was made by Mrs Indira Gandhi to try and get Sinhala Sri Lanka Government to the negotiation table. She could do that by giving moral support and some material support to the Tamil militants. But that material support was very small although today people make claims that it was enormous amount of assistance .

The policy I think was right because India as a foreign country to Sri Lanka should not interfere in a civil war in taking place there. It is a stupid thing in interfering civil wars.

But Rajiv started taking even more intense participation in what was happening in Sri Lanka. When I was foreign secretary what I could do was to send the Tamil Parliamentarians who were here back to Colombo to negotiate. Why was that decision taken? Because in my view as Parliamentarians although they had been expelled from Parliament by Jayawardene they represented the Tamils. So they could negotiate with the Tamils and the devolution package which came about and which was finally agreed upon in December 1986 was an outcome of this effort. But then this did not work out.

Sinhalese betrayed the Tamils:

I left the Government. But I watched with keen interest what was happening and this intervention policy of the Government of India in Sri Lanka  increased. The problem had been there for many years between the Tamils and Sinhalese. If anybody has read the Sri Lankan History they would know that the biggest event in the Sinhala mind was the defeat of the Tamil king Ellalan by the Sinhala King Dottagamunu and that took place more than 2000 years ago. So the undercurrent of hostility has been there and the irony was that both the groups has originally come from India. Sinhalese from Bihar and thereabout . Bihar as you know does not have a great record for peace - and the Tamils from Tamil Nadu.

But during the colonial days, the Tamils were the more educated which led to great anger in the minds of the Sinhalese people. Then the time came for independence of Sri Lanka , Ceylon as it was then called. The Soubury Commission came to Colombo and it was at that time that strong assurances were given by the Sinhalese to the Tamils that they will be treated with complete equality. But every equality disappeared. After Ceylon became independent the Tamils were consistently discriminated against. They were of course two groups of Tamils. We must make the distinction very clear. The first group goes back to the original king of Ellalan 2000 years ago, and the other Tamils were plantation labourers who went  there 100 year ago or there about to work in the Tea plantations.

When Tamil was rejected even as a language of the State and when the atrocities were increasingly committed against Tamils we had first the Chelvanayagam pact which was far in advance in the so called devolution package of 1976.  The Chelvanayagam pact was thrown out because of Buddhist priests demonstration led by Jayawardene against the pact. The same Jayawardene agreed to the famous India-Sri Lanka accord in 1987.

Any sensible person will have a doubt whether there was a seriousness of intent on the part of the Sri Lanka Government under President Jayawardene to respect the agreement. Even on the day when the agreement was signed in the afternoon when there was a press conference President Jayawardene declared that why he  agreed in the Indo-Sri Lanka accord to have the Northern and Eastern provinces merged was that when the time came to have a referendum on the merger later he would actively campaign against the union of these two provinces. That shows how serious he was about  the agreement.

LTTE is the only force:

Now let me say something about the LTTE. The LTTE is a force which led the Government in Colombo taking the Tamil case seriously. I remember in 1983 when G.Parthasarathy went to Colombo after killing of several Tamils ruthlessly all over Sri Lanka. The fact of the matter is that nothing transpired; things got worse and after 1983 the LTTE became supreme force of the Tamils. Till the LTTE came into existence the reputation of the Tamils was that their courage was greatest in the absence of the enemy. But after LTTE came into existence the Tamils were considered a very militant fighting force. You may or may not agree with the policy of the LTTE.  But you have to respect anybody who is willing to give up his life for a good cause. How many of us are willing to give up our lives for a cause. If you cant help them do not hinder them. In any case you have no right to interfere with the Sri Lankan affairs. It is their civil war. I told Rajiv Gandhi. But he did not like it.

I was present at the meeting between Jayawardene and Rajiv Gandhi. Jayawardene as you know is called the 20th century fox - even by the Sinhalese. Jayawardene somehow was doing his best to persuade Rajiv Gandhi that if Eelam came about in Sri Lanka then the Tamils in Tamil Nadu will join up with the Eelam in Sri Lanka and make greater Eelam. Rajiv Gandhi being totally ignorant of reality was buying it. I told him that there is no question of Tamilnadu receding from Indian union. The Tamils in Tamil Nadu know where their bread is buttered. They will remain in the Indian union. But Rajiv Gandhi took Jayawardene's blandishment seriously. After that I left .

India Sri Lanka accord was signed. There was no case for India's interference in Sri Lanka and those 1400 people who died as General Metha said would have been alive if they have not been sent to Sri Lanka. May be 5 or 6 times of those number of Sri Lankan Tamils would have been alive to day if the IPKF had not gone to Sri Lanka. We went and committed ultimate cruelty, the ultimate atrocity by killing people for no cause. Was the security of India enhanced? Was there any remote chance of India's security been threatened by happenings in Sri Lanka? No It was just a desire to act in a grand manner.

When the present President came to India there was a reception in the Sri Lankan High Commission to which I was invited. After the reception few people were asked to remain for serious exchange of views. She still struck me for being quite sincere. I told her that you must move forward and negotiate with the Tamils and if she could do it sincerely she will succeed. In any case it is better to have tried and lost then not have tried at all. Trying for peace may succeed or may not succeed. But you have to try for it in any case.

If the earlier proposals which were not acceptable to Tamils are now repeated in the new proposals what do you expect? I can only submit one thing. I am not speaking on behalf of the LTTE . I am not speaking against the Government of Sri Lanka. I am speaking from my personal experience. Let me say this. The Tamils have come to stay at least in Sri Lanka  as a force to be reckoned with.

The movement which was started is not going to die. You may have military victories against them with or without the American Green Beret about whom you may read in newspapers. But their sprit will not be killed. We know how the Americans ran away from various places - starting with Vietnam even from little Somalia. They are good at destroying but not sacrificing their life. Eventually in any battle of this kind on land you have to be willing to die and I hope that the Tamils have understood to stand up and recounted. I am a Tamil and half keralite. There was an English poet called John Donne who said that the death of any man diminishes me. So too the denial of human rights to any person diminishes and I think that the cause of the Tamils in Sri Lanka is just I hope that this struggle will not stop without those rights are being recognised.