All of you readers must be aware of the current Sri Lanka - Tamil Nadu - India conflict of words that is going on. The matters have come to such a worse situation that Sri Lanka is out of the equation now and we are fighting among ourselves.
A brief look at the history of the Sinhala - Tamil fighting takes us back to the days of British Raj in India. As is the root for all conflicts in the world this one is also driven by the Divide and Rule policy of the British. The start of the Tamil and Sinhalese conflict dates back to 1919 when the first Sinhalese national moment took place. The consequences were that the Tamilians who had lived for ages in the Sinhala majority Ceylon became second rate citizens. Slowly the seeds of Tamil Eelam or a Tamilian state began to grow. This slowly led to formation of two distinct ideological groups in the 1960s, one was focused on Tamil Eelam through electoral route and one was focused through an armed guerrilla warfare with the Sinhalese rulers.
India had no part to play in the above chess game between the two ethnic groups after the great riot between the Tamils and Sinhala nationalists. India started discretly taking sides with the Tamilian population and covertly helped them. 1983 onwards the Indian government started funding the armed groups beginning in August 1983, till May 1987, Indian government, through its intelligence agency Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), provided arms, training and monetary support to 6 Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups namely the LTTE, Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO), People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE), Eelam Revolutionary Organisation of Students (EROS) Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front (EPRLF) and Tamil Eelam Liberation Army (TELA).
Out of which the LTTE led by its charismatic leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran was the most vicious of them all. He killed the leaders of other factions, merged them with LTTE and started to rule the north part of Sri Lanka as it was now known, from his head quarters in Jafna.
In between President Jayewardene and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi signed a peace accord in 1987. As per the accord the Sri Lankan Government made a number of concessions to Tamil demands, including devolution of power to the provinces, a merger (subject to referendum) of the Northern and the Eastern provinces into the single province, and official status for the Tamil language. However the peace accord ran foul with the LTTE and India had to send its soldiers to Sri Lanka to fight the LTTE. It is now known that President Premdasa asked his Sri Lankan soldiers to hand over arms and ammunition clandestinely to LTTE to fight the Indian Army.
Indian Army faced heavy causalities and Rajiv Gandhi lost the Prime Ministerial race to V.P.Singh. V.P.Singh promptly called the IPKF (Indian Army) back to India.
In 1991 the LTTE dealt the most severe blow to India. It managed to assasinate the Prime Ministerial candidate, who looked sure to win that election, Mr.Rajiv Gandhi. The LTTE killed a man who tried to help them out of the quagmire into a new dawn of peace. Maybe the LTTE didn't want peace because at one point of time it is said that 80 % of the male Tamil population of the norther Sri Lanka was part of the LTTE and Prabhakara was ruling the province like a virtual dictator.
Now lets move to the current situation, Prabhakaran was killed on 18th May 2009 and the Sinhala - Tamil issue looked like dying a natural end. In 2013, the United States moved a resolution in the United Nations Human Rights Council(UNHRC) against the war crimes committed by Sri Lankan Army against the Tamils and India supported it. But now the Tamil Nadu Government led by CM Jayalalitha wants India to move a resolution in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) of which India is a rotating member.
Daily protests are taking place in Tamil Nadu for this cause and CM Jayalalitha has asked the Sri Lankan players be banned from IPL (the annual cricket jamboree).
Here my questions to the supporters of CM Jayalalitha are
1. Have you forgotten that the LTTE led by Prabhakaran killed one of our ex-PMs Rajiv Gandhi.
2. It is right for us to meddle into the internal affairs of a third country just because some of its parts are Tamilian majority.
If the 2nd point is true than why didn't India send troops to Fiji when thousands of people of Indian ancestory was imprisioned and a electorally elected Indian Prime Minister was diposed off by the ethnic leadership their.
Regarding the first point, I did like to point out that not only did they kill Mr.Rajiv Gandhi they also hurt Indian sentiments for the Indian Government had made LTTE. Now again CM Jayalalitha is making the same mistake of dabbling into affairs which are foreign to us. Please remember we have already lost a very good human being due to our interference in unwanted matters, now by indulging in mudslinging and counter allegations against the Central Government, CM Jayalalitha is just making the people of Tamil Nadu look the other way. In a state where development should be the key issue, such type of protests are not needed. Indeed use these resources for betterment of its own people rather than carry out protests for people of a third country who will only bring pain to us.
We are already doing our bit by helping the refugees who have come from Jafna and are staying in Tamil Nadu. If you like this article read more about India here. Kindly post in your comments on this article
Vijay Prabhu
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