[first published in
South Asian Analysis Group (an Indian Think Tank with S
Chandreshekaran as its Director - regular contributors include
Col R Hariharan, an MI specialist in counter-insurgency
intelligence, served with the IPKF as Head of Intelligence in
Sri Lanka; and B Raman, Additional Secretary (retd),
Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director,
Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Distinguished Fellow
and Convenor, Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai
Chapter]
“It appears evident, then, that the Indian State failed to take
the political force and mass appeal of Tamil nationalism
seriously If the violence and perfidy of the Sri Lankan State
had given rise to Tamil nationalism in the first place, the
popular commitment to Eelam was cemented and solidified by the
Tamils bitter experience with the Indian State. The current
policy of supporting the unity and integrity of Sri Lanka while
not addressing the spectre of Tamil nationalism will therefore
have to be construed as a policy not much different from that
which resulted in the physical intervention by India in support
of Colombo. The question that needs to be asked is how realistic
is it for the Indian Government to persist with such a policy
when ground realities have changed significantly during the
intervening period."
It is only natural that
India, the regional power, should have an abiding interest in
the manner in which the conflict in the Island of Sri Lanka is
resolved. The Tamil National Alliance MP, Mr Gajendra Kumar
Ponnambalam’s declaration that the Tamil Nation has no intention of
working to undermine the interests of any foreign power was
primarily meant to reassure India of the Tamil nation’s foreign
policy perspective.
In this brief paper, this writer argues the case for the region’s
dominant power to re-evaluate its foreign policy in respect of Sri
Lanka. It is no secret that foreign policies are subject to review
from time to time to ensure that they continue to serve the
country’s national interests in all circumstances. Policies, which
might have served the country’s interests at some point in the past,
may well prove to be counter productive if pursued without reference
to changes in ground realities.
India’s foreign policy in respect to Sri Lanka has indeed been
subject to such reviews and changes in the past. They have failed
only when policy makers have misread ground realities. Such a
failure occurred when Rajiv Gandhi mislead by a coterie of advisers
physically intervened in Sri Lanka. The consequence was horrendous
for the Tamils (of whom around 8,000 were killed) and losses for the
Indian army (which lost close to 1,000 soldiers).
J.N
Dixit, India’s High Commissioner in Sri Lanka during that
ill-fated intervention admits that this was a failure in his book
“Assignment Colombo” published 10 years after the event. His
assessment of ‘flaws’ in this policy, however, falls far short of
identifying the real reasons for the disaster. Dixit attributes
“over optimism on the part of the Indians re Jayawardene’s ‘change
of mind’ “ and “lack of ‘reasonableness’ amongst the Sri Lankan
Tamils’ as the reasons for the failure. Elsewhere in the book, he
acknowledges his underestimation of the LTTE’s resolve, the error in
believing that the LTTE could be ‘isolated from the Sri Lankan
Tamils’ and the ‘xenophobic’ mindset of the Sri Lanka Government.
The book, however, is conspicuous by its failure to address the
central cause for India’s foreign policy disaster.
Kadian, author of the aptly titled “India’s Sri Lanka Fiasco” comes
closer to identifying the primary reason for the fiasco by stating
that this rests with “the failure to carry the Tigers along with the
Accord”. In Kadian’s opinion India’s leverage to influence events in
the Island (after its partisan role in intervening on behalf of the
Sinhala Government) have been compromised by the ill-fated accord.
Kadian regards Indian Policy makers concern with India’s Southern
neighbourhood to be misplaced and argues that India’s interest is
better served by concentrating its resources in the North. “It is
the tiger from the north and not the Tamil Tiger in Sri Lanka that
India must contend with” .
According to Sankaran Krishna, Chairman of the Department of
Political Science at the University of Hawaii and author of “India’s
Role in Sri Lanka’s Conflict”, Indian policy (ever since the 1990’s)
has settled on “explicit commitment to the unity and integrity of
Sri Lanka”. In other words, to support Colombo’s dominance of the
entire Island.
This commitment to the “unity and integrity of Sri Lanka” is
sometimes followed by a clause that proclaims “support to the
legitimate aspirations of the Tamil people”. But then there is
hardly any elaboration as to what these aspirations are. Hence this
clause can only be interpreted as a sop to Tamil sentiments.
Sentiments, which had served an earlier generation of Indian Foreign
Policy makers under the Prime Ministership of Indira Gandhi to
counter the Sri Lankan regime’s inclination to look to the West,
Pakistan and China and thus pose a challenge to India's position as
South Asia’s foremost regional power.
As early as 1980, the Jayawardene regime in Sri Lanka was seen as
adopting a provocative stance re India’s implicit role as the
regional power. According Sankaran Krishna “on a variety of
issues-the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, on declaring the Indian
ocean a zone of peace, on the issue of broadcast facilities to the
Voice of America, on the use of Trincomalee harbour, on membership
in ASEAN- she (Indira Gandhi) judged Jayawardene regime as striking
too independent and provocative posture.… In looking for an
appropriate issue to bring Jayawardene to heel, Mrs Gandhi
inevitably hit upon the situation of the ethnic minority in Sri
Lanka... Now the fate of the Tamil minority became an important
issue for the national security and integrity of India”. Sankaran
then concludes that this particular, phase of India’s Foreign Policy
was initiated by the “central government under Mrs Gandhi for
reasons having to do with assertion of India’s hegemony over Sri
Lanka”.
It is now known that as part of this policy India armed and trained
Tamil militants, not in order to gain Tamil Eelam, but to complement
the diplomatic pressures being exerted on Jayawardene.
There is no doubt that this policy served India well in bringing
Colombo well under its influence. Unfortunately, when the Rajiv
Gandhi administration sought to physically intervene in an attempt
to exercise this influence and at the same time reverse the effects
of its earlier policy of arming the Tamils, the policy simply
failed. It failed because it ignored the spectre of Tamil
nationalism, which by then had grown into a formidable force. Rajiv
Gandhi had underestimated the potency of this nationalism and
believed that the LTTE, the vanguard of this nationalism could be
crushed.
In the words of
Nadesan Satyendra, UK based Tamil activist; “Reason tells us
that the central failure of the Indo-Sri Lanka peace Accord was the
refusal to recognise Tamil nationalism”
Sumantra Bose,
author of States, Nations Sovereignty not only agrees but also
believes that the physical intervention had further consolidated
Tamil nationalism.
“It appears evident, then, that that the Indian State failed to take
the political force and mass appeal of Tamil nationalism seriously
If the violence and perfidy of the Sri Lankan State had given rise
to Tamil nationalism in the first place, the popular commitment to
Eelam was cemented and solidified by the Tamils bitter experience
with the Indian State.
The current policy of supporting the unity and integrity of Sri
Lanka while not addressing the spectre of Tamil nationalism will
therefore have to be construed as a policy not much different from
that which resulted in the physical intervention by India in support
of Colombo.
The question that needs to be asked is how realistic is it for the
Indian Government to persist with such a policy when ground
realities have changed significantly during the intervening period.
Indian policy makers now need to pay heed not only to the spectre of
Tamil nationalism but deal with the reality that Tamils now exercise
physical control over substantial proportion of their land, have
acquired military parity in respect to the Sri Lankan State and have
established an effective mechanism to administer the land under
their control. The net result is that today, in the island of Sri
Lanka there are two-power centres- Colombo in the South and
Killinochi in the North.
India’s foreign policy must reflect these to ensure that both power
centres while accommodating each other do not undermine India’s
interests in any way.Mr
Ponnambalam’s declaration has signalled Tamil perspective in
plain and unequivocal terms.
Bibliography
Bose Sumantra: States, Nations, Sovereignty, Sri Lanka, India
and the Tamil Eelam Movement, Sage Publications, New Delhi,
1994.
Dixit J.N: Assignment Colombo, Konark Publications, Delhi, 1998
Kadian R: India’s Sri Lanka Fiasco, Vision Books, New Delhi,
1980
Sankaran Krishna: India’s Role in Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict,
Marga Institute, Colombo,2001
Seevaratnam N: The Tamil National Question and the Indo Sri
Lanka Peace Accord, Konark Publications, Delhi, 1989
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