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India & the Struggle for Tamil Eelam
Atharma Bhumi? [also
in PDF]
Sanmuga Suntharam
6 October 2006
 Comment
by tamilnation.org
Mr.Sanmuga Suntharam is right to point out the
amorality of India's role in the struggle for Tamil Eelam. He is also
right to point out the
abominably pernicious "caste" system that pervades India's body politic,
'the suicidal infighting of those who are called Dravidians', and the
'abominable betrayals and treachery' of Tamils like Karuna, Douglas and
Sangaree. But, having said that, Mr.Sanmuga Suntharam's conclusion may
have to be examined further. He says -
"Let us therefore forget the �motherland�
complex and tell the Indians that we are the only people who can be
relied upon as friends if they treat us with fairness. We are not asking
for favors. First we are asking them to stop harming us. Secondly, we
wish to let them know that any help they give us will be vastly in their
interest, too. Will the Mandarins in their government emotionally accept
this reality?"
If it is 'vastly in the interest of New
Delhi' to help the struggle for an independent Tamil Eelam why has New Delhi
not extended that help all these years? Is it that New Delhi is not astute
enough to see that which we see? Or is it that New Delhi recognises that
support for an independent Tamil Eelam will result in Sinhala Sri Lanka
turning to the US and/or China? Does New Delhi fear that support
for an independent Tamil Eelam will be counter productive - and will result
in the very thing that New Delhi wants to prevent - the increased
presence of extra regional powers in the Indian Ocean region? And does
it take the view that any help that an independent Tamil Eelam may extend
will not be sufficient to prevent that increase?
Romesh Bhandari was forthright in 1987 -
"..No one individual formulates and
decides (Indian) Government's policy. There are always in depth internal
consultations and discussions. There are several inputs before decisions
are taken. Any individual entrusted with a task does so on directions...
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...Besides being a
neighbour and non-aligned, 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..."
We may need to recognise the uneasy power
balance in the Indian ocean region reflected amongst other things by
Operation
Seabird. We may need to recognise that it is in the interstices of that
power matrix that the
struggle for Tamil Eelam
is taking place. The words of an American diplomat to a Tamil Eelam activist
in 1984 come to mind: "You know, India is not a super power, it should not
try to behave like one." New Delhi may be behaving the way it has done
for so many years, because it is not strong enough to do anything else.
It is not strong enough to support the creation of an independent Tamil
Eelam and at the same time
exclude the presence of extra regional powers in Sinhala Sri Lanka -
and in the Indian Ocean region. Having used the Tamil militant
movement to destabilise Sinhala Sri Lanka, New Delhi then infiltrated the
weakened Sinhala body politic through its many proxies and agents and
now its foreign policy is directed to stabilise its hold on Sri Lanka and
the Indian Ocean region - and the Tamils continue to be called
upon to pay the price.
It is the weak who usually act
amorally.
They are not strong enough to be fair.
Given the key roles played in the
Struggle for Tamil Eelam, by
India
, the United
States
and
China (with
supporting roles for the European Union, Japan and Pakistan)
it is not without importance for the Tamil people to further their own
understanding of the foreign policy objectives of these countries - this is
more so because the record shows that states do not have permanent friends
but have only permanent interests. We may want to remind ourselves yet
again of something which Veluppillai Pirabakaran said some 10 years before
-
"...We are fully aware that the world is not rotating
on the axis of human justice. Every country in this world advances its
own interests. It is the economic and trade interests that determine the
order of the present world, not the moral law of justice nor the rights
of people.
International relations and diplomacy between
countries are determined by such interests.
Therefore we cannot expect an immediate
recognition of the moral legitimacy of our cause by the international
community... The world is constantly changing and there will be
unexpected changes. At a particular conjuncture the international
situation might change favourably to us. At that time, the conscience of
the world will be conducive to the call of our just cause... In reality,
the success of our struggle depends on us, not on the world. Our success
depends on our own efforts, on our own strength, on our own
determination..."
Velupillai Pirabakaran, Maha Veera Naal Address -
November 1993
In the end, the success of the struggle for
Tamil Eelam will be a function of the capacity of the leadership of the
struggle to mobilise its own people and its own resources at the broadest
and deepest level - and this means, amongst other things, broadening and
deepening the understanding of the Tamil people of the
motivations of the international actors in relation to the struggle for
Tamil Eelam. Furthering our understanding of the strategic interests
of the international community, will better equip us to engage in the real
task of addressing those interests - and to show that the emergence of
an independent Tamil Eelam will not pose a threat to many of the
underlying interests of all the parties
(not simply India) concerned with the conflict in the island. On the
contrary, it is the attempt to suppress the
struggle of the Tamil people to be free from alien Sinhala rule which
will pose a threat to the stability of the Indian Ocean region.
reflects the
deep felt feelings of more than
70 million Tamils
living in many lands and across distant seas. And
Velupillai Pirabakaran was right to say many years ago "உலகெங்கும்
தமிழன் பரந்து வாழ்ந்தாலும்,
தமிழீழத்திலேதான்,
தனியரசு உருவாகும்
வரலாற்றுப் புறநிலை தோன்றியுள்ளது...""
[ see also
1.
From "China fear" to "China fever" - Pallavi Aiyar, Hindu, 27 February
2006; 2.
China undertakes construction of Hambantota Port, 11 April 2005; 3.
China, Sri Lanka Joint Communique
, 3 September 2005 and 4.
Sethusamudram Project ]
As if by rote the Tamils of Eelam say affectionate things about
India; - India, our mother country; India, the Dharma Bhumi; India, the
heartland of our culture; India, our protector; India, this; India, that....
This is as good a time as any to take stock of our ideas about India and to
discard our misconceptions and to re evaluate our relationship to India. Not
just because of India�s recent contumelious and shabby treatment of our
representatives, not only because of the
seven thousand innocent Tamils killed and many women raped by the Indian army
and not only because of
the decision to hand over Tamil freedom fighters to the Sinhalese thereby
leading to collective suicide of the heroes, not only because of the
banditry in
international waters and the cause of Kittu�s death, not only because of
giving hundreds of millions of (US) dollars to the Sri Lankan government at
crucial times to prevent the Tamil freedom fighters recovering our sacred land,
not only because of the continuing naval support and spying services provided to
the GOSL, not only
because
India opposed Finland�s draft resolution on Human rights violations by the
Sri Lankan government but also because we have to disabuse our minds about
India, our �mother� in the face of its hostility towards Eelam Tamils and their
aspirations.
Firstly, "India" is not our mother country. The India of
today is a creation of the British. It is far fetched to think that, for
example, the Muslims of Indian Kashmir or the Sikhs of Punjab are in anyway
our "siblings". They do not look like us; they do not speak our language nor
profess our religion; majority of them may not even know of our existence.
The central fallacy of the Eelam Tamils� affectionate attitude to the
Indians of India is an expectation of reciprocity. This was a non-starter
and the fondness had always been a one-way street.
Contrary to the self-serving accusations by the Indians and the
Sinhalese that the British practised the strategy of "divide and rule" they
indeed put together a disparate collection of separate states in India and
dissolved the distinctive Tamil and Sinhalese kingdoms and conjoined them to
facilitate imperial bureaucratic control. However, the most thorough going
genetic and deep division of the Indians was devised and institutionalized by
the Brahmins although the
abominably pernicious "caste" system. . It is hierarchical, socially
structural and skilfully integrated into the Hindu belief system. That is
perhaps the most invidious division of humanity ever devised by man, thanks to
the Brahmins.
Even in the new British-made India most Indians instinctively, in their minds,
and informally divide their country into South India and North India. North
Indians speak Indic languages and have adopted Urudu/Hindi - the Persian, Arabic
and Sanskrit based Creole language -as their lingua franca and the official
language of the Indian government and claim a mythican "Aryan" ancestry for
themselves. The South Indians, though their languages are members of the family
of Dravidian languages, except the non-Brahmin Tamils, barely recognize their
Dravidian connection. Their common language of discourse is English and their
languages have become "pidginized" with a mix of English and Hindi
(Persian/Arabic/Sanskrit!) Hindu India - "Hinduism" with its fundamental credo
of casteism, the only common thread running through this
factitious
nation - is ruled by an Italian Catholic through a Sikh Prime Minister. (Anyone
who had read
V.S. Naipaul�s An Area of Darkness will have an inkling of the rabid racism
a Sikh can descend to). Though generally Hindu leaders are drawn from the high
caste, the Indians seem to, instinctively, accord high caste status to persons
of European origin such as Sonia.
With unmistakable symbolism, India is ruled from Delhi, the seat of the Mogul
empire and imperial British Raj. Until last year only Persian, Arabic and
Sanskrit were recognized as the classical languages of, believe it or not, -
India (!) studiously excluding Tamil which is older than any of these languages
and totally indigenous. To the minds of the North Indian rulers of India, Arabic
and Persian were more authentically Indian than anything Dravidian! These facts
put into perspective the absurdity of the Eelam Tamils claiming any affinity
with India.
Moreover, calling India (which India?) our mother country is contrary to the
accepted view of the pervasive presence of the Dravidians in the then contiguous
land encompassing the Indian land mass and the island of Ilankai,
contemporaneously. The Nagas and Yakkas of the island were certainly Dravidians
and it is a plausible speculation that the First Sangam of then (South) Madurai
might have been in North Eelam itself. Hence it is not an established fact that
there was no presence of a Dravidian language (perhaps Tamil) on the island
prior to its presumed importation from South India.
It is instructive to remember that Sinhala - the language - is the oldest of the
Indic languages and the Sinhala (the people) claim descent from North India -
the India that now rules that land. Hence their claim to �India� as the mother
country would be recognized more readily by the ruling class of India and will
receive more support than that of the Tamils. In fact, the Sinhalese are more
correct in calling India their motherland than the Eelam Tamils for whom Eelam
is the motherland because Eelam Tamils are the Yakkas and Nagas, the authentic
indigenous descendants of the original homo sapiens of the island.
Manifestly, Eelam Tamils� attachment to
Tamil language and
its glorious past is
very real and profound.
That is a major rationale for our fight for Eelam. Granted,
our culture - whatever it means - in its present form was shaped
considerably by the culture of the Tamils of Tamil Nadu. We look up to them and
almost totally depend on them for the preservation and growth of Tamil and
Tamil-based culture. Moreover, we are deeply grateful to Tamil leaders like
M.G. Ramachandran,
Vaiko and
Nedumaran
for the help and sacrifices they made on behalf of Eelam and its people.
But the inescapable fact of "Dravidianism" is the suicidal
infighting of those who are called Dravidians. (Sukrivan of Ramayana a
putative Dravidian betrayed his own brother and got him murdered by Rama and
by contrast Rama had the absolute loyalty and fraternal love of his
brothers. Vibushanan another Dravidian of Ramayana fame betrayed his own
brother Ravana). Close to home even more abominable betrayals and treachery
are in progress minute by minute, all by Tamils like Karuna, "Douglas" and
Sangaree (the "destroyer") who have formed an unholy alliance with the
Special Task Force (STF) of the GOSL and are on a killing spree of Tamil
civilians. If as suspected in some quarters,
Karunanithi,
the archetypal Dravidian sabotaged, out of local political rivalry, TNA�s
appointment to meet with Prime Minister Singh, it is a despicable
machination, but entirely in keeping with the worst of Dravidian behavior.
Indians have their behavior pattern fashioned by years of
casteism, foreign rule and
colonialism. They are obsequious, timid and reverential towards those who are
perceived born to be superior and cruel and nasty to those presumably to be born
to serve them unquestioningly. And, those born superior are Aryans. "Aryan" is
defined in India as all the North Indians (other than the "untouchables") and
the Brahmins of South India. The lighter the skin color the more Aryan one is.
Ironically, because of this obsession, the actors of Bollywood the Indians swoon
over, are mostly Muslims who look like the Mogul rulers. When Rajiv Ghandi
visited Sri Lanka, subsequent to the "welcoming" assault by a member of the
"disciplined" "honor" guard all ill feeling evaporated when J.R. Jayawardhene
referred to Rajiv as the "Second greatest Aryan to set foot on Sri Lanka soil",
the first presumably having been Vijaya! After listening to that warm reminding
of the glorious racial ties
Rajiv went ahead and screwed the Eelam Tamils.
The present day mandarins of India who like their namesake "manthris" who
ran down India all the way towards foreign conquest and ruination over more than
3000 years are, if they are from the South, Brahmins who are overtly and
avowedly anti - Tamil.
Remember the judge who sentenced 26 Tamils to death which sentence was
mostly thrown out by the supreme court of India consisting of non-Brahmin
judges? Remember the reporters in Colombo for the The Hindu (Hidebound Indian
Newspaper, Disseminating Untruths) who were acting as the propagandists of the
GOSL? There is that oddball Subramaniam Swamy who cannot open his dysfunctional
mouth without impugning the Tamil Tigers and Jayalalitha the b-witch who treats
the Indian Tamils like cattle and hates the Eelam Tamils with a vengeance.
India�s policies and actions are not even remotely governed by any perceived
special relationship with Eelam Tamils because there is none. Any love that we
harbor towards India is totally spurned and unrequited. Its policies are
determined by the mandarins who, like the Neocons of the Bush Administration,
act on the basis of an agenda which is not always identical to one that is in
the interest of India. They know that if they aided in the victimization of the
Eelam Tamils there is none to effectively challenge them. The possible protest
of the Tamil Nadu Tamils, they know, will be weak and inconsequential. If Eelam
Tamils were all Muslims, Indian mandarins will, literally, be up in arms at the
slightest infringement of their rights. India understands Muslim solidarity and
fears it. This is congenital. But Tamils - they can be dispensed with! There are
economic interests to consider, however.
GOSL has, cynically, granted to India a lease of oil tanker
farms in Tamil territory of Trinco. The possible privilege of access to the
Trinco naval harbor is another tempting carrot that is dangled. India,
therefore, has quite deliberately put its interests in conflict with ours on
a long term basis. The latest of these Indo/Sri Lankan ugly manoeuvres is
the agreement to build a power plant in Sampur, recently grabbed from the
Eelam Tamils. Thus India, either acts out of fear of repercussions or out of
unscrupulous economic interest, neither of which we Eelam Tamils present.
Pakistanis, though inimical to Eelam Tamils, are not encumbered
by Aryanism, Brahminism and fear of Muslims. They audaciously support Islamic
cross-border attacks against India and justify this as Kashmiri freedom struggle
but at the same time supply arms, bomber pilots, strategic advice and financial
help to GOSL to kill the Eelam Tamil freedom fighters, with impunity and no
qualms. India quietly and supinely acquiesces in this flagrancy.
 Quite
obviously the Northern/Brahmin rulers of India think that it is less desirable
for the Eelam Tamils to survive than Pakistan to get stronger and influential.
GOSL, in almost every situation of conflict between India and Pakistan, either
took the side of Pakistan or "malingered" and feigned neutrality. Yet India
treats the Sinhala government as the favored child. Even the most virulent
anti-Indian JVP leader Wimalawansa was given refuge, protected and sent back to
Sri Lanka to continue his hateful shenanigans, this time against the Eelam
Tamils, possibly on India�s instructions? India�s steadfast and continuous
support concomitantly with simultaneous bad mouthing of Eelam Tamils both within
India and internationally is not only reprehensible, it is criminal. The harm
India has done to us ranks very close to what the Sinhalese are perpetrating.
Its gratuitous insistence on Sri Lankan "Territorial integrity", a fetishism
promoted by ex-colonial nations, is uncalled for, deeply hurtful to the Eelam
Tamils by promoting Sinhala racist hegemony and paradoxically destablizing by
ensuring endless conflict. India treats Tamil Eelam the way US treats Cuba - and
Pirabhakaran, veritably like US�s treatment of Castro. When Prime Minister Singh
at the Non-Aligned Nation�s Conference parroted those noble sentiments in Cuba
did he not feel queasy? When in Cuba he so warmly greeted 'Douglas' who is
accused of so much of inhumanity to the Tamils of Eelam, was he thinking of the
violent Cuban factions in Miami who are bent on destroying Castro and all that
Cuba stands for, and are therefore treated like privileged princes.
We cannot and should not look up to the Indian government for any succour. Let
us therefore stop ingratiating ourselves with India. They are not the type that
helps the downtrodden. In India the under caste are and have been treated
abysmally badly for millennia. If India wants to be a regional "power" it will
not be able to attain that by armed strength alone. It cannot even handle
Pakistan - it fears Pakistan. It needs friends - genuine friends - not fair
weather friends like Sri Lanka. If India forms an alliance with Eelam Tamils we
will take care of India�s interests in our neighbourhood very well. Give us the
arms and we will keep Pakistan at bay. We can certainly contain the Sri
Lankan/Pakistan nexus.
India, for long, has taken the Eelam Tamils� loyalty for granted. It is as if
they think we owe them fealty. The central fallacy in Eelam Tamils� loving
attitude towards the Indians is the expectation of reciprocity. This was a non
starter and the fondness has always been a one way street. Let us therefore
forget the �motherland� complex and tell the Indians that we are the only people
who can be relied upon as friends if they treat us with fairness. We are not
asking for favours. First we are asking them to stop harming us. Secondly, we
wish to let them know that any help they give us will be vastly in their
interest, too. Will the Mandarins in their government emotionally accept this
reality?
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