{"id":107385,"date":"2020-10-08T16:48:26","date_gmt":"2020-10-08T23:48:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=107385"},"modified":"2020-10-08T16:48:56","modified_gmt":"2020-10-08T23:48:56","slug":"is-india-pushing-sri-lanka-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/10\/08\/is-india-pushing-sri-lanka-beyond\/","title":{"rendered":"Is India pushing Sri Lanka beyond?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Palitha Senanaake<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

The Press and social media in Sri Lanka had\nbeen awash these days with what transpired at the recent summit between the Sri\nLankan Prime Minister and his Indian counterpart Hon. Narendra Modi. The reason\nfor this media interest had been the controversial request made my Mr. Modi, in\nresponse to Sri Lanka\u2019s assurance that their foreign policy is \u2018India first\u2019.\nMr Modi in trun mentioned  that Sri Lanka\nshould implement the 13th<\/sup> amendment fully to grant equality to\nTamils and to accommodate Tamil aspirations. In a sequel, Mahinda Rajapakse sidelined\nthe Tamil part  and stated that\naspirations of \u2018all the Sri Lankans\u2019 will be accommodated in the proposed new\nconstitution. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tamil issue had been the moot point in\nIndo \u2013Sri Lanka relations for the past few decades and considering  the recent \nhistory  of this issue as long as\nIndia places \u2018Tamils first\u2019 in its relations with Sri Lanka, the Island nation\nwould be pushed to a position  where it will\nhave to choose between its goodwill to India and its own  national well- being.  Succinctly, Sri Lanka could take care not to\nbe engaged in any activity that will endanger the security of India, but if on\nthe other hand if India demands that Sri Lanka should endanger its own\nstability as a nation, that would certainly be too much to expect from the\nisland nation. Considering the fact that India imposed itself on this issue but\nfailed, having played its part in a manner India thought was appropriate, this\nsuggestion now would certainly create consternation in the Sri Lanka constituency  leading to a recalcitrant strategy on the\npart of Sri Lanka.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 13th<\/sup> amendment was introduced\nunder duress and undue influence on Sri Lanka by India at a time when the\nisland nation\u2019s survival was threatened by a terrorist outfit that had earned\nthe sympathy and support of the West and India. Although the move lacked\npopular support in Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan President Jayawardene at the time\nconsidered it necessary to enter in to this agreement purely on the condition\nthat India takes the responsibility of disarming the militant movement if Sri\nLanka implemented the provisions of the 13th<\/sup> amendment. This was a\nmaster stroke on the part of President Jayawardene because he postulated that\nthe LTTE, being the terrorist outfit for whom peace is anathema, could never be\nbrought to mainstream even if you offered them concessions India proposed. On\nthe other hand Mr. jayawardene \nmaintained that as long as India continued to support the LTTE, Sri\nLanka would never be able to overcome the LTTE militarily. Thus it was an ingenious\nmove to make India realize what the LTTE was and then cease to patronize it so\nthat Sri Lanka could then neutralize the movement eventually.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as envisioned by Jayawardene, the\nconflict continued despite the 13 amendment and it then turned out to be\nbetween the Indian army and the LTTE instead of the SL army and the LTTE. Two\nyears later, the Indian army that practically forced itself on Sri Lanka\nentertaining notions of superiority due to their numbers and resources,\nwithdrew from Sri Lanka, battered and bruised, with the pride badly dented. The\nTamil Diaspora authored a book titled, \u2018The Satanic Forces\u2019 projecting the\nIndian forces as the most primitive and  \narchaic army in the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The\nsituation in Sri Lanka was even more ironic because the devolutionary\nprovisions India wanted for the Tamils through the 13th<\/sup> amendment\ncould never be availed by the Tamils because of terrorism in the \u2018Tamil areas\u2019\nwhile those were thrust upon, superfluously, on other peaceful provinces of the\nisland. Thus we had a situation where the majority in Sri Lanka was\nadministered a medicine for a sickness that they never had while the Tamil\nminority for whom the medicine was prescribed for their alleged illness was\nunable to take it due to LTTE activity.  A paradoxical situation indeed, where the\nmajority would suffer with unwanted medicine while the minority also suffered\nfor not being able to take the medicine. \nWell, that was the situation from 1988 up till 2009 when the Sri Lanka\narmy overwhelmed the LTTE. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we consider the ravaging of the\nconflict thereafter between the SL army and the LTTE, the position is even more\ndireful. The numbers of civilians and the combatants killed up to 1987( Indo-Lanka\naccord) was only a few hundreds and it was mainly combatants whereas from 1987\nup to the time LTTE was vanquished, the death toll reached nearly 70,000 in 23\nyears. After the Indian exit, the LTTE fought with a new sense of confidence\nclaiming that they defeated the Indian army which is the 4th<\/sup> biggest\narmy in the world and therefore the SL army was just \u2018peanuts\u2019 for them.  On granting of concessions aimed at peace ,\nthe LTTE leader was on record propelling his followers, Our goal is nothing\nbut a separate state, see,  we killed\nhundreds and they offered us District Councils; we killed thousands and they\noffered us Provincial councils ; we killed tens of thousands and they are now\noffer us a Union of Regions. So the theory is, that the more we kill the more\nwe get \u201d. Then should we stop killing?\u201d This shows that, terrorists take to\narms, not because they want solutions but because they want to continue in\ntheir own way taking the law on to their hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, now the question is, having\nutterly failed in its attempt to bring peace to Tamils in Sri Lanka according\nto its own perception of \u2018what the Tamil problem is\u2018  in Sin Sri Lanka, and also having become the\n\u2018villain\u2019 of both, the minority and the majority of Sri Lanka, it is beyond\nreason why India is should demand that Sri Lanka should persist with the aborted\n13th<\/sup> amendment that India was instrumental in introducing. The 13th<\/sup>\namendment solved no \u2018ethnic problem\u2019 in Sri Lanka but exacerbated it, if at\nall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other side of all this is, what is\nIndia\u2019s interest and should India be concerned about an \u2018ethnic issue\u2019 in Sri\nLanka? In Sri Lanka, there is an ethnic minority called \u2019Indian Tamils\u2019 and\nthey get on well with the majority and today they have reached commendable\nsocial heights having come to Sri Lanka as indentured labor during the colonial\ntimes.On the other hand it is with this group called \u2018Ceylon Tamils\u2019 that this\nwhole question of a \u2018Sri Lankan Tamil issue\u2019 revolves. These \u2018Ceylon Tamils\u2019,\nclaim that they had been in Sri Lanka for 3000 years, a period that exceeds the\ndocumented Sinhala history in Sri Lanka. Recently a Tamil leader, C.\nVigengeshwaran  claimed in Parliament that\nthe Tamil  language is the language\nspoken by the oldest inhabitants in Sri Lanka. This claim is in contrast to all\nthe evidence available, even in India and thus infuriated the Sri Lankans.  Thus, Tamils have created their own history on\nSri Lanka, just as Goebbels did on Europe when Hitler wanted to justify his\ninvasion of Europe. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, the issue with the \u2018Ceylon\nTamils\u2019 in Sri Lanka is not about aspirations or equality but that of who has a\nbigger claim for the country.  K. Narayan\nSwamy who authored  4 books on the LTTE\nand the Sri Lankan conflict states that the members of the LTTE use Leon Uris\u2019s\nbook,\u2019 the EXODUS\u2019, as their Bible. Now what does this book EXODUS relate? It is\nabout how Israelis, having settled in Palestine, made it their home by bringing\ntheir Diaspora to settle in that country, chasing the Palestinians away. Tamils\ntoo have a powerful Diaspora living in 63 countries in the world and they dream\nof having their own country, one day. For this they have chosen Sri Lanka from\nwhere most of the educated Tamils have hailed and in where they were able to\nlaunch a protracted struggle for some time.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Practically too as a further proof of this,\n the Tamils leaders have never perceived\nthe concessions granted by the Sri Lanka Government to the Tamils since\nindependence, as a gesture of goodwill in a spirit of co-existence. Instead they\nhave treated such concessions as their \u2018right\u2019 and have used those only to\nfurther their separatist ambitions.  For\ninstance the language rights were granted to Tamils in 1961 by the SL\nGovernment. The Tamils however did not wish to stop at that and wanted their\nlanguage upgraded to the level of Singhala and this they achieved through\nIndian intervention.  After having\nreceived that too, now the Tamils wanted the country\u2019s national anthem to have\nlyrics in Tamil. Similarly, with the Indo Lanka accord in 1987, the Tamil\nleaders agreed to the 13th<\/sup> amendment as a lasting solution. But\ntoday they are talking in terms of 13 plus as a solution to their problem.  It is the same with other concessions granted\nas well and this points to a plan originally conceived by SJV Chelvanayagam in\n1947 that the Tamils should have their own separate state eventually by\nfollowing  a policy of \u2018little now and\nmore later\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The obscure reality of the Tamil issue in\nSri Lanka is that, the Tamils have been fighting in Sri Lanka for three decades\nwith the most organized terror outfit in the world, not because they did not\nhave power but because in the global context they enjoyed the edge over the Sri\nLanka Government, diplomatically and in other ways.  Imagine with all that western support and the\nsupport of India? The Sri Lanka leaders know this well enough and now that\nterrorism is gone they need to handle the diplomatic aspect delicately.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In such a scenario should India interfere\nin the internal affairs of Sri Lanka when Sri Lanka has spelt out its foreign\npolicy as being \u2018India first\u2019? Beyond that the real question for India Is,\nwould the creation of a separate Tamil state in Sri Lanka be in India\u2019s\ninterest? And then what would be the repercussions of such an event in the ret\nof the Southern Indian states?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Palitha Senanaake The Press and social media in Sri Lanka had been awash these days with what transpired at the recent summit between the Sri Lankan Prime Minister and his Indian counterpart Hon. Narendra Modi. The reason for this media interest had been the controversial request made my Mr. Modi, in response to Sri Lanka\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}