It is unfortunate that
Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi
should use his literary skills to attack Pala Nedumaran, a Tamil
leader who has steadfastly supported the Tamil Eelam Freedom Struggle
for more than a quarter of a century. It is unfortunate but it will
not come as a surprise to 70 million
Tamils living in many lands. It will not come as a surprise
because
Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi
has frankly declared that his policy on Tamil Eelam is the same as New
Delhi's policy on Tamil Eelam. And we must take him at his word.
"On May 25 2006, Karunanidhi, freshly elected to power in Tamil Nadu, home to the
largest concentration of Tamils in the world, held a 15-minute one-to-one
meeting with Arumugam Thondaman, leader of the Ceylon Workers Congress (CWC) and
a special envoy of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse. On Monday, after
calling on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and separately meeting Congress
president Sonia Gandhi in New Delhi, Karunanidhi revealed to reporters what he
had told Thondaman: "The central government's policy (on Sri Lanka) will be the
state government's policy." "
Times of India,
6 June 2006
Eight years before Mr.Karunanidhi's frank statement,
India's former Foreign Secretary and later National Security
adviser declared in 1998 with equal frankness that New Delhi's policy on Tamil Eelam
was an amoral one.
And it appears that Mr.Karunanidhi's policy on Tamil Eelam has always kept in step with
that of New Delhi
and has been no less amoral.
In the
early1980s, Mr.Karunanidhi voiced support for the Tamil Eelam struggle within
the frame of
Indira Gandhi's interventionist
effort to destabilise West leaning President J.R.Jayawardene's Sri Lanka and move it away from the
Western orbit. At that time (in 1983) Mr.Karunanidhi
declared grandiloquently at the Marina beach that if he was asked whether he was a
Tamil or an Indian, he would reply that he was both a Tamil
and an Indian. But he went on to add, to the tumultuous cheers of his audience, if the questioner persisted and insisted
that he choose and repeated the question again - are you a Tamil
or an Indian, he would reply that he was a Tamil first and
only then an Indian.
But even then, at a meeting with a Gandhian organisation in New Delhi in
1984, a north Indian peace activist bitingly remarked to a Tamil lobbying
group (which included the writer) - "Do not imagine that you have the support
of Mr.Karunanidhi. Please remember that when Indira Gandhi tells
Mr.Karunanidhi to stop, the barking will stop." He added, "Indira Gandhi has
enough ammunition to make Mr.Karunanidhi stop."
Unsurprisingly, later when
New
Delhi's approach changed (having sacrificed Tamil lives in the altar of
New Delhi's strategic interests and succeeded in moving Sri Lanka away from
extra regional forces) Mr.Karunanidhi also changed - and the barking
became more muted. And so
today at a time when New Delhi is actively engaged in giving material
and ideological
support to a
murderous President Rajapakse regime bent on annihilating the people of Tamil
Eelam, it appears that Mr.Karunanidhi is anxious to make his own
contribution to New
Delhi's strategy by denigrating and defaming Pala Nedumaran who has had the
courage to consistently support his brothers and sisters in Tamil Eelam in their
struggle for freedom from alien Sinhala
rule. That the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu and that too a 'Kalaignar'
should write of Nedumaran -
'வலியின்றி புலிக்கூட்ட முதுகினிலே
குத்திக் கொண்டே பணம் பறிக்கும் இனத் துரோகி!'
will shock and anger many Tamils. Strength ( வலிமை) is reflected
in a
fearless and steadfast commitment to principle - it is not reflected in the opportunism of a weather vane.
It is that fearless and steadfast commitment to principle that Pala Nedumaran has shown
during the past several decades - a fearless and steadfast commitment which has earned for
him the respect and affection of hundreds of thousands of Tamils
living in many lands. Pala Nedumaran is no traitor to the Tamil cause or the Tamil people - and
Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi insults not simply Pala Nedumaran but a
whole people by suggesting otherwise.
Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi will hopefully learn that strength will
not come by hanging onto New Delhi for your
political advancement. The words of
TELO leader Sri
Sabaratnam in August 1985 come to mind:
"There are two types of power. One is 'Thongura' power where you hang on to some
body else and seek to derive power from them. The other is the power that accrues to you
when you serve your people. Thongura power is not power - because with it, you can only
help yourself, you cannot help your people. The only true power is that which comes from
your own people."
And, ofcourse, Sri Sabaratnam had every reason to know.
Given Mr.Karunanithi's past
contributions to Tamil language and literature, Tamils in many lands may
refrain from responding to him by using his own intemperate language.
They may therefore refrain from saying -
'வலியின்றி புது
டெல்லி முதுகினிலே
குத்திக் கொண்டே பணம் பறிக்கும் இனத் துரோகி!'
However, Tamils living today in many lands and across distant
seas will seriously question the reasons for
Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi's continuing support for a
New Delhi establishment which is concerned to encourage and prop up a
Sinhala government which rapes,
murders,
executes,
abducts,
attacks
Tamils
in their homes and shops,
bombs,
massacres,
displaces Tamils in their thousands from their homes
and denies them their
fundamental and democratic right to govern themselves
- Tamils who Chief Minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi often describes as his
'udanpirapukal'.
When the history of Tamil Eelam comes to be written (as surely it
will), the question will be asked: where was the 'Dravidian leader',
Muthuvel Karunanidhi?
And history will, no doubt, provide a fair answer - he was busily
concerned with advancing his own political future.
[see also comment by Kasil Hariharan]
