Shenali Waduge
Given the argument that India planned for and orchestrated an internal problem in Sri Lanka in the form of the LTTE it had to have thought of varied off-shoots of such an endeavor and its own actions to counter same. Would it actually allow an Eelaam, if not how long would it desire the strife to continue, how best within this time frame would India be able to devour Sri Lanka and how would it deal with the other internal & external players must have been thought of by all those who strategized the Sri Lanka plan. It is perhaps not enough that Sri Lanka ensured Tamil Nadu did not end up a separate state for India to be thankful to Sri Lanka that it continues its dogmatic policy of attempting to further throttle a nation trying to come out of the abyss it forcefully had to weather just to satisfy Indian hegemony.
In 1963 constitutional amendments in India ensured no individual or political party promoting separatism could contest elections. India objective was to divert the separatist notion to Sri Lanka. The ploy of diverting this objective while it allayed any threats for separation in India resulted in a country forced into turmoil with a guerilla movement soon to become one of the most sophisticated guerilla outfits in the world with an uncompromising megalomanic leader (ironically this trait was what saved Sri Lanka from having a part of its land officially carved out or devolved) The premonition of a demand that was first voiced in the 1930s through -Tamil Nadu for Tamils could never be tolerated or allowed but it was nothing that could be easily subdued by force. The anger between Indira Gandhi and J R Jayawardena whose pro-western stance at the time invigorated a looking-East Indira Gandhi possibly helped trigger India gameplan for Sri Lanka vis a vis the LTTE. However, when India is now looking very much west we can but wonder if Indira Gandhi fixated anger is still applicable to Sri Lanka through India present policies? For why would India feel threatened by Sri Lanka, can we ever think of challenging the 2nd largest economy in the world? Why should India ever have to fear Sri Lanka whatever its abilities to develop.
It was however no coincidence that the elimination of the LTTE took place thirty years into the cancer planted and nurtured by India. By thirty years the LTTE cadres themselves have aged, wondering whether the Eelaam will ever take place, their families become fed up with a dream not coming true & children denied education & ability to become somebody therefore it was required to put that dream to rest & start on another endeavor. That it took a resolute President, an adamant Defense Secretary & an angered army commander wanting revenge for the assassination bid made on his life is undeniable, yet the behind the scenes assistance given to the GOSL by India ensured it belonged to the list of that actually helped Sri Lanka and also enabled them to forcefully tie the GOSL to Plan B which was to economically and socially control Sri Lanka. This is the economic trap that has been built up through the years with Sri Lankan leaders falling prey to the bigger plan being designed by India for Sri Lanka. However, far danger than any trade pact is the prospect of Indians actually coming, working & living in Sri Lanka. When unemployment is high amongst the Sri Lankans how would the Government cater to this with Indians setting up business & having labor brought in from India? It would be the rural base that would end up suffering the most. Surely a government that gains its numbers from the rural votes & survives on it must understand the repercussions of allowing Indians to set up shop & residence here. Would Sri Lanka end up another Vietnam or Nepal sooner than later with scores of illegitimate children? Given that the influx reaches disproportionate numbers can a future Government ever be powerful enough to demand that these foreign nationals leave our country when their Governments are actually promoting their stay? Can our Sri Lankan Governments even use military force as was the case with the LTTE our future problems will be far more dangerous than eliminating the LTTE. What we cannot chase out we should not accept should be our guiding principle.
In the modern context, countries unless they are mighty USA can’t suddenly eagle down on other countries and take it over. India is well aware of that. However, twice, US troops unceremoniously descended upon Iraq. UN didn dare to denounce the act. No human rights group cried the way they presently do. No westernized nation declared sanctions against the US since then the US has forcefully landed in Afghanistan, takes liberty to fire drones on Pakistan not many actually are even prepared to take the US and charge it with crimes against humanity.
Given that we believe the next plan is to annex Sri Lanka, India will not be able to do so in the same manner as the US. What applies to the West certainly doesn apply to the East whatever its friendship with the West. So possibly, it is why India is next trying to ensure enough of Indians are in Sri Lanka giving it enough right when the times comes to apply further pressure on Sri Lankan Governments. This is nothing that is likely to occur in a year or two but something that is very likely to occur with time and given the present leader attempting to tweak the constitution to contest more than twice we would urge him to ponder the possibilities of such an eventuality happening.
It was easy to have dealt with an enemy through the use of weapons & a disciplined army and the key to the eventual success despite the leadership given by the President, the Defense Secretary & the Armed Forces Commanders was in fact the People of Sri Lanka. Had it not been for their backing the country would have been facing a military intervention. The west decided against this purely on the grounds that no army could have overtaken a country where the people stood firm & voiced their backing towards the elimination of the LTTE & its support for the Government.
The present scenario is far different and requires a very firm Government for it is their steadfastness that will ultimately seal the fate of the nation. For the people to back its Government the Government needs to be firm that the integrity of the country, its natural resources & its people will not be humiliated for any monetary advantage that may be given as favors, for the ultimate price our nation will have to pay back will be far more dangerous and disastrous and possibly irreversible.
What are the alarm bells that Sri Lanka needs to be watchful of vis a vis India actions? Most of India actions are predictable but many are not. A country that earlier had provided haven to Prabakaran parents was suddenly to deny making such a fuss over allowing his mother to take medical care. No sooner the President of Sri Lanka arrives on his first official visit to India following the elimination of the LTTE a major train accident is averted & blame sharply targeted at pro-LTTE factions in Tamil Nadu. Given Indian strategy it is likely to signal to us that the LTTE can be resurrected. Which ideally should have ensured that Sri Lanka navy now needs to be strengthened and holds the key to any infiltration. The Indian push to facilitate movement from Sri Lanka North to Tamil Nadu needs also to ring alarm bells for it takes no fool to ascertain that many of the LTTE cadres had to have been from Tamil Nadu the Tamil population figures, those that live outside of Sri Lanka and even within Sri Lanka outside of the North and East, those that were rounded up and in camps towards the final stages of the war, when tallied just does not make the 2.4million Tamils that should actually live in Sri Lanka. Some of the LTTE fighters had to have been from Tamil Nadu who would have helped with the hit & run attacks and returned to Tamil Nadu or died in battle or who may now be practically Sri Lankan for lack of proof!
There are some learned few who still however maintains that Sri Lanka must eternally pay homage to India for what? India has humiliated our country. It is still baffling why despite the Right to Information Act no Indian has demanded the cost incurred to the Indian state to destabilize Sri Lanka which ultimately resulted in the deaths of their own soldiers.
ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ In a country that has its own share of never-ending separatist movements it begs to question whether these are purposely induced or whether India desires for such destability to carry out its other goals! Given that its army is the 5th largest in the world one can but wonder at its effectiveness especially considering the manner in which they carried out their role in Sri Lanka (IPFK presence) and taking 3 days to flush a handful of militants who had practically taken Mumbai by storm. If no military action is likely to be taken why is India not giving into some of the demands of these separatist groups? Essentially India may have a large army, its weapons may be sophisticated but it has no success stories to actually boast of. The Indian experiment with the LTTE vis a vis the military push failed or rather it was never meant to be a military effort which is clear by the manner in which the Indian armed forces were clueless about their objective in Sri Lanka. It also explains why so many Sri Lankan Tamils ended up being killed and many more women ended up raped. If India never determined to actually wipe out the LTTE, it makes us wonder how it could have allowed the LTTE to turn itself into a conventional army, watch it procure sophisticated arms & even become the first terror group to fly planes!
How would India have dealt with an LTTE in the eventuality that it became too powerful for the Sri Lankan army especially given the unpredictable nature of Prabakaran? The only cowardly way was to actually assist the Sri Lankan Government and this is exactly what occurred. LTTE was espousing for far more than what India was ready to deal with and India thirty year plan had reaped perfect results. The desires of the West at this juncture would not have come into play. For the West, the religious movements & NGO/INGO lobby the prevalence of internal strife helps to advance their western doctrines and it is in this milieu that many of the Christian/Catholic dominated NGOs set up offices in Sri Lanka & started out their own campaigns 90% of whom were functioning under the guise of humanitarian workers.
It is obvious that the West is using India as its front to remain zoomed in on Asia and its developments. India naturally would benefit by allowing western presence limited to the advantages that come India way. Nevertheless, by India descending upon Sri Lanka through the trade pacts & service agreements presently being discussed it would be only a matter of time that Sri Lanka would permanently loose any sense of ownership it has on its country & the present leaders would be held accountable for that loss and humiliation wherein future leaders may not even be able to contest in a democratic Sri Lanka.
India during the conflict had planned their strategies well. Leaders of the past unconcerned about our own loss of life would have cared little to actually think patriotically before signing any of these foreign agreements. Most of these are now being thrust forward for immediate activation & despite the GOSL not been solely responsible for inking these pacts it will be upon their shoulders if they actually activate them. Given that they have won elections with massive mandates it bemoans them to ensure that Sri Lanka land, resources nor its people are disadvantaged in any way through any of these pacts. They have advisors who are obtaining handsome remunerations & it behooves them to do justice for what they are given in finding ways to come out of this abyss.
The real Tamil Homeland is in Tamil Nadu
If India never meant to have an independent state in Tamil Nadu it certainly would not have wanted an Eelaam created in Sri Lanka. It is important at this juncture that we differentiate the Tamil nationalism vis a vis Tamil Nadu and a call for a separate Dravida Nadu and the LTTE/Prabakaran separate state. The two does not have any connectivity apart from the fact that the target audience was Tamil. Why is Tamil Nadu separatism & LTTE/Prabakaran separatism different? It is simple really.
There are 75million Tamil people in the world. Of this number 55million live in India/Tamil Nadu. Sri Lanka has only a mere 2.4million Tamils. LTTE and Prabakaran used the -Tamil slogan to ensure it could run a guerilla movement, obtain western sympathy, set up & commence propaganda campaigns that would ensure it had a flow of legitimate funds against the illegitimate activities it was soon to add on, eliminate Tamils that went against its doctrine and to finally ensure its leader would be almighty of a movement that was never about fortifying any rights for Tamils.
Was it a wonder that the LTTE scuttled peace talks, avoided compromising solutions or even dared to experiment outside of their main objective? It was a perfect ploy for the other players involved from the international community, to missionaries, UN, NGO lobby who had their own objectives being met through the LTTE gameplan & its leader obstinacy. It was unfortunate that to this group joined the Tamil people in Sri Lanka most of those who lived outside of the North & East & used the LTTE as a means to better their own lives flying off to western shores on the sympathy note and using the ethnic discrimination tag to facilitate the needed documentation for travel. Years on they should ponder at their own guilt for the manner in which most Tamils in the North & East have lived over the years under the threat of LTTE. The discriminationƒÆ’‚¢ƒ¢- tag worked superbly for it would ensure that the numbers of refugees into these western shores would end up doing the shoddy jobs that their natives were reluctant to do & moreover it would allow these Governments to use fisticuff methods upon the GOSL & tie it to agreeing to varied decisions that would ultimately be a disadvantage to Sri Lanka & its people as a whole. A perfect example is the GSP plus does this trade concession have anything to do with human rights. By denying this the likelihood would be the loss of over 300,000 direct & indirect jobs. Would that not be a human right denied?
A simple set of questions is appropriate to be answered at this stage. Was the LTTE ever the mouthpiece for the 75 Tamils in the world? If so, would it have meant that Tamil Nadu had abandoned their quest for a Tamil homeland in India because there cannot ever be two or several Tamil homelands in the world? Why is it that all through the long struggle only Sri Lankan Tamils living abroad were crying out for an Eelaam essentially shouldn it have been 75million demanding that the world recognize a right for a Tamil Homeland in Sri Lanka North & have Prabakaran as its leader? However, throughout we have only seen handfuls of Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora in action. If there had been 75million Tamils actually voicing their solidarity with the LTTE the LTTE would have been earning more than the USD300million that it generated annually to run its terrorist operations in Sri Lanka, buy over foreign politicians, UN & other NGO/INGO sympathy & even train other aspiring insurgents.
ƒÆ’-¡ƒ”š‚ With the elimination of the LTTE what essentially occurred was the division of the Tamils themselves became further highlighted. The LTTE had ensured that the moderate Tamils most of whom preferred to live & work in peace were silenced, many of these were silenced forever. With the fall of the LTTE it was visible to see exactly how many actually sided with the LTTE out of choice & out of fear. We cannot begin to understand the turmoil that the people of the North & East would have had to suffer under the LTTE dominance. Earning USD300million annually one would have expected much of the North & even parts of the East to have been developed especially since the bulk of NGOs/INGOs were actually stationed there as peace crusaders. But the reality was far different. What emerged was nothing of what we would have expected a group that was fighting for liberation for Tamil people. Instead of schools, hospitals, libraries, parks the LTTE had built underground safe havens for its leaders & its cadres. While they were enjoying a plush life the people had to end up sacrificing their children as child soldiers. The surprising part of this reality was that many of these UN offices & other NGO/INGO offices were actually located practically next to these LTTE offices and is it not natural to question whether these officials never for a moment thought of the injustice that the LTTE was actually doing to their own people? Did they not apprise their head offices of the actual situation & the ground realities that they did not and the messages that eventually emerge as official statements reveal the hypocrisies that actually prevail in this world and once again questions their moral right to function as humanitarian workers.
In reality the LTTE was never the actual voice of the Tamils in Sri Lanka nor Tamils of the world. Yet, the world has remained silence to the very pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora setting up what they call a Transnational Government of Tamil Eelaam. Despite 1million Tamils being located all over the world the votes that these representatives received were an embarrassment to say the least in many places far less than 10% of the Tamil population of these countries went to vote. The result is hardly a sample to actually term themselves victorious or representatives of the Sri Lankan Tamil people let alone all Tamils of the world. Besides why would this TGTE have only Sri Lankan Tamils contesting an espoused Eelaam should be for all Tamils of the world not just Sri Lankan Tamils. Nevertheless, while questioning the legality of such an exercise when most of these representatives do not plan to ever come to Sri Lanka or perhaps may not even know parts of the North or East, we can but wonder why this trend has not caught on with the other separatist movements where their natives living in foreign climes can also be setting up Transnational Governments what an international fiasco that would lead to Perhaps some group can even set up an alternate UN for these Transnational Governments as well. There should be a limit to some of the absurdities that prevail.
We are all well aware of how the LTTE ran its operations. It is nothing that the FBI, the Interpol or any other intelligence outfit are unaware of. Given this scenario & also the fact that leading nations of the world have proscribed the LTTE & continue to maintain the ban, why it would still allow these Tamil representatives to openly call for an Eelaam & pledge support for the LTTE is baffling unless they plan to use this new ploy for a purpose? Why would the parliamentary representatives of these countries even decide to attend LTTE events & speak on behalf of them when in their country the LTTE has been included as a terrorist-outfit?
The entry of LTTE /Prabakaran & now the TGTE has actually diverted the real issue at hand that is the quest for the real Tamil Homeland in Tamil Nadu. Perhaps this is one reason why most foreign Governments remain silent in view of their allegiance to India. They would not want to crush the Tamil homeland theme away from Sri Lanka & towards Tamil Nadu which serves India perfectly. The lackluster approach of the Tamil Nadu politicians possibly as a result of much North Indian maneuvering has ensured that Tamil Nadu right to demand independence from the Indian state remains hidden under the LTTE/Prabakaran & now TGTE propaganda machinery.
It is nothing for Sri Lanka to actually worry over. The present lot of LTTE combatants are now been rehabilitated & 106 couples married in a ceremony that should have shamed the TGTE members who enjoy living in their comfort zones in the West and desire to have innocent men, women & children return to the jungles so that they could fatten their coffers by restarting to raise funds. The likelihood of this ever happening is scarce so long as the GOSL makes sure that Tamil Nadu infiltrators are controlled for that is how things ended up going haywire.
It is obvious that India will do whatever possible to ensure that Tamil Nadu doesn resurrect its justified right for a separate independent state from India & so it is likely that so long as it is to India benefit the West will also tow the line but with the go ahead for some of its own agenda taking momentum and if Sri Lanka has changed its policy to bind it close to the Eastern block though the balance may have been maintained the country is in for harder times unless every decision that is taken is not judged carefully. It is at this important juncture that our public officials must take ownership of their role and advise the leaders correctly and for the people to provide a backing against the odds the GOSL must ensure that the country land, natural resources nor its people are compromised in any way this is an inalienable right of the Sri Lankan citizenry & no Government which is only a custodian of the country & its people for a limited term can work outside of this mandate.