India's gross betrayal of the Tamil people of Sri Lanka

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India's gross betrayal of the Tamil people

WEDNESDAY, 16 JUNE 2010 00:00



A few days after President Mahinda Rajapaksa returned to Sri Lanka following his Indian tour, a bomb explosion occurred on a railway track in Tamil Nadu. This marked a red alert and signified a grave portent to New Delhi. This signal apparently appeared to be a reminder that Congress government. and the Sri Lankan government. together would not be allowed to share the peace dividends over the graveyard of the Tamil Tigers.

Since the eruption of the Sri Lanka's ethnic war, the main topic of discussion between the Sri Lankan government. leaders who toured Delhi and the Prime Minister of India has been the Sri Lankan Tamil people's issue. Since the time of the late Sri Lankan President J. R. Jayewardene, and until 2008 when Mahinda Rajapaksa toured India, the theme of the discussions in the relationship between India and Sri Lanka had been the Sri Lankan Tamil people and their issues. Indeed that had also been the crucial factor that has been determining the relationship between the two countries. Despite it, when President Rajapaksa undertook the maiden tour of India following the end of the Sri Lankan ethnic war, the Tamil people's issue continued to languish without receiving much attention.

Based on an announcement made by the Indian Prime Minister , the issue of the Sri Lankan Tamils is to be resolved via the 13th Amendment of the Sri Lanka Constitution as promulgated by the joint Indo Lanka communiqué. It has not been made mention however that the Sri Lanka President has endorsed this . The Sri Lankan President has instead stated that a solution acceptable to all parties shall be formulated. It becomes obvious to all who read the contents of this communiqué that the leaders of the two countries at their meeting have discussed the Sri Lankan Tamils' issue only because they cannot escape from it, and therefore incorporated it in the communiqué. It is learnt that , in fact, in Manmohan Singh's discussions , the Sri Lankan Tamil people's issue has not even received the attention or importance what the Sampur power project had received.

According to sources linked to the Sri Lank Foreign Ministry, the Indian PM did not even as much as press on the President on the implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution or the devolution of powers. Rather, he has taken great pains to ensure the completion of the 'Shopping list' sent by Delhi's South Block ahead of Mahinda's Indian tour, to Basil Rajapaksa who handles the task of coordinating with India under Mahinda's government. Opening of the Indian High Commission offices in Jaffna and Hambantota figured prominently in that list. Next in importance in that list is the finalization of the Indian Sampur power project which the Sri Lankan government first agreed, but subsequently were reluctant. The other, in the list was the Railway project. But, above all what claimed precedence over all these projects and was most paramount for India was Sri Lanka's confirmation that it will support India to secure a seat in the UN Security Council.

In other words apparently India's eagerness to fulfil its 'shopping list' desires has outrun its essential concerns, thereby bartering away the interests of the Tamil people and apparently committing a gross betrayal of them.

India is aware that President Rajapaksa is not inclined to resolve the Sri Lankan Tamils' issue to suit India's aims and objectives. But, India is also certain that if it brings pressure to bear on him, he would succumb, and it could accomplish its aims. Nevertheless, what India is seeking is by overtly pretending that the Tamil people's problems would be solved, it is covertly trying to implement its own economic programs within Sri Lanka using Mahinda.

President Rajapaksa, on the other hand who entertains the fear that he would incur the displeasure of the Sinhala people if he goes ahead with the devolution of powers to solve the Tamil people's issue is seeking refuge in procrastination while yielding to the economic programmes requested by India. The latter too, being aware of this situation fully, and by unrelentingly harping on the 13th Amendment is getting all its work done browbeating Mahinda.

It is in this backdrop, India is exploiting the innocent Tamil people to lever itself into a position whereby it could mould Sri Lanka to conform to its aims and agendas. Earlier too, when India feared that the J.R. Jayewardene government was going to allow the Trincomalee Harbour and the oil Installation to be under the control of the US,India by training the Tamil youths in Sri Lanka in weaponry, converted the ethnic issue into a brutal war.

India finally dispelled its fears by getting Sri Lanka to sign the Indo-Lanka Accord in 1987. Later , under the government of Ranil Wickremesinghe in 2002 , India took the Trincomalee Harbour on lease by pointing to the growing strength of the Tamil Tigers around the Trinco Harbour and claiming that this was posing a grave ominous threat not only to Sri Lanka , but also to India. Thereafter, during the period of the Mahinda's regime, India extended support to the Sri Lankan government to destroy the LTTE while making agreements to take over the Sri Lankan North East development projects.

In the 1980's when the Sri Lanka n war erupted, India was without a weapon to exert pressure on Sri Lanka. India manufactured a weapon for this . That weapon is the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. These innocent Tamil people were made weapons for India out of their own blood and sweat. Today, India is using that very weapon made out of the blood and sweat of the innocent Sri Lankan Tamil people to achieve its own economic aims and agendas at those people's expense.

The Tamil Nadu railway line bomb explosion clearly illustrates that the Tamils are no longer ready to brook India's ulterior motives nor continue to be patient .

It should be noted that the writer of this article, in an earlier article, published a week after the war was concluded, warned that the revival, if any, of the Tamil Tigers, will be from within Tamil Nadu, and not Sri Lanka. The cause for the uprising of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka in 1980 was the Sri Lankan government trying to suppress the Tamil people's issues. Today, if the Tamil Tigers are seeking to rear their heads again in Tamil Nadu, it is because India is assisting the Sri Lankan government to suppress the problems of the Tamil people. If India does not desist from playing this dangerous game of using the Tamil population to accomplish its own ulterior motives –its political and economic goals, it would become impossible to avert an imminent blood bath in Tamil Nadu.
 

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