Given the key roles played in the Tamil Eelam
struggle
for freedom by India,
the United States and China (with lesser 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 British Foreign
Secretary, Lord Palmerston was right when he remarked
150 years ago
'We have no eternal allies and we have no
perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and
perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to
follow.'
States do not have permanent friends but have only
permanent interests. And, it is these interests that
they pursue, whether overtly or covertly.
Furthermore, the interests of a state are a function
of the interests of groups which wield power within
that state and 'foreign policy is the external
manifestation of domestic institutions, ideologies
and other attributes of the polity'.
In the end, the success of the Tamil Eelam
struggle for freedom 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.
Otherwise we will continue to confuse our people
by leading them to believe that all that needs to be
done is to wake up the international community to the
justice of our cause and all will be well.
Unfortunately the
world is not rotating on the axis of human
justice.
In an important sense for the past 25 years and
more, it will be true to say that two conflicts have
raged in the island of Sri Lanka. One is the conflict
arising from the struggle of the people of Tamil
Eelam to free themselves from alien Sinhala rule. And the other is
the conflict resulting from the struggle between
international actors for power and influence in the
Indian Ocean region - a struggle reflected in the two
geo political triangles: U.S.- India - China
relations and China - Pakistan - India relations. For
the US we may read the Trilaterals i.e. US, European
Union (including UK) and Japan. But that is not to
say that the interests of the Trilaterals have always
been congruent with each other - Iraq is a recent
example.
Furthering our understanding of the strategic
interests of the 'international community' (i.e. the
Trilaterals, India and China ) will better equip us
to engage in the real task of addressing those
interests - and indeed, engaging with them. Each one
of us (both Tamils and the 'international community')
may want to remind ourselves yet again of the
words
of Sri Aurobindo, written a century ago in June
1907 -
"The mistake which despots, benevolent or
malevolent, have been making ever since organised
states came into existence and which, it seems,
they will go on making to the end of the chapter,
is that they overestimate their coercive power,
which is physical and material and therefore
palpable, and underestimate the power and vitality
of ideas and sentiments.
A feeling or a thought,
the aspiration towards liberty, cannot be
estimated in the terms of concrete power, in so
many fighting men, so many armed police, so many
guns, so many prisons, such and such laws, ukases,
and executive powers. But such feelings and
thoughts are more powerful than fighting men and
guns and prisons and laws and ukases..."
Each one of us may also want to pay more careful
attention to the story line in Gillo
Pontecorvo's film, Queimeda -
"... (The captured leader of the liberation
struggle) Jose Dolores does not assail his captor;
he tries to inspire and convert him. He tells the
young man (who guards him) that he does not wish
to be released because this would only indicate
that it was convenient for his enemy. What serves
his enemies is harmful to him. "Freedom is not
something a man can give you," he tells the
boy. Dolores is cheered by the soldier's
questions because, ironically, in men like the
soldier who helps to put him to death, but who is
disturbed and perplexed by Dolores, he sees in
germination the future revolutionaries of Queimada.
To enter the path of consciousness is to follow
it to rebellion.....Pontecorvo zooms to Walker
as he listens to Dolores' final message which
breaks his silence: "Ingles, remember what you
said. Civilization belongs to whites. But what
civilization? Until when?" The stabbing of Walker
on his way to the ship by an angry rebel comes
simultaneously with a repetition of the Algerian
cry for freedom. It is followed, accompanied by
percussion, by a pan of inscrutable, angry black
faces on the dock. The frame freezes, fixing their
expressions indelibly in our minds.."
And perhaps each one of us may also want to pay
more careful attention to the words of Professor
Johan Galtung , uttered not a hundred years ago (and
said not in a film) but more recently in February this year
in an interview with a Sinhala journalist -
"..But imagine it happens: Killinochchi is flattened, Mr P
is dead, LTTE dissolved. Will the Tamil
dream of a Tamil Eelam die?
Of course not. It will be revived, and new cycles
of violence will occur. And probably new CFAs. And possibly the
same mistake, confusing ceasefire with peace,
using it as a sleeping pillow to do nothing..."
அச்சம்
என்பது
மடமையடா,
அஞ்சாமை
திராவிடர்
உடமையடா..
