India's stakes in Sri Lanka's unity

By Malini Parthasarathy

At this moment, when the troubled island of Sri Lanka is entering an extremely challenging phase in the prolonged ethnic conflict with the LTTE poised to regain complete control of the Jaffna peninsula, it is time for India's politicians and diplomats to face the implications of this deadly sequence of events. It might certainly make sense for the Vajpayee administration to rule out intervention in the military conflict on the island. But official policy must begin to consider whether or not there is a contradiction between the country's own strategic and political interests and the partisan considerations of the Tamil Nadu politicians who parade themselves as guardians of ``the interests of the Tamil people'', yet continue to covertly support the LTTE's murderous and fascist rampage in Jaffna. The opportunist manner in which leading Tamil Nadu politicians have seized upon the current crisis in Sri Lanka to whip up Tamil chauvinism in support of the LTTE adds a dangerous dimension to this country's security environment.

The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Mr. M. Karunanidhi, has expressed himself against India's intervention on the basis of the dubious argument that such an intervention would mean that India was ``part of the war effort leading to the death of Tamils''. Apart from the MDMK's Vaiko, whose recent remark on the Sri Lankan President, Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga's surviving the assassination attempt evoked sharp controversy, the PMK led by Dr. S. Ramadoss has unabashedly and openly demanded that the Government recognise ``Tamil Eelam'' now that the LTTE appears to be winning the battle. It is evident that as the Tigers gain ascendancy in northern Sri Lanka, the pro-LTTE forces in Tamil Nadu have begun to shed their inhibitions about demonstrating their LTTE sympathies. What is also important to note is that the chauvinist and incendiary portrayal of the current conflict between the Sri Lankan military and the LTTE as a case of a ``Sinhala army hunting down Tamils'' is a gross distortion of the ground realities. The LTTE which has systematically and ruthlessly eliminated the entire range of Tamil moderate political leadership and has not emerged from any kind of process of democratic selection can hardly be said to be representative of the Sri Lankan Tamil people. For the DMK and its allies in the NDA to suggest that the current struggle by the Sri Lankan Government to establish its authority in the north of the island is an ethnically partisan effort which is being resisted by a ``heroic fighting force'' in the LTTE, is not really in the interest of the Sri Lankan Tamil people who have not been allowed to democratically decide if it is the LTTE who should represent them.

Given this manifest convergence of interests between the LTTE in Jaffna and this section of Tamil Nadu political opinion, it does seem that the Vajpayee administration would have to make unambiguously clear that the reasons for the Government's disinclination to intervene militarily have only to do with the fact of India's past experience in this regard, particularly the embarrassing imbroglio over the IPKF and not at all to do with any sense of ``solidarity'' with the LTTE. Few would question the logic of the Government's stance that direct intervention in the fighting in Sri Lanka would be unwise given the painful experience of the past when the IPKF was bogged down in the Jaffna peninsula locked in deadly combat with the LTTE guerillas but had unfairly become the target of the ire of the Premadasa regime and the Sinhala Buddhist clergy in Colombo. Given that the IPKF debacle was seen as a humbling of sorts, of Indian diplomacy, and it was followed by the brutal assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by an LTTE suicide bomber, it was not surprising that the assassination of a former Prime Minister traumatised the national psyche and the consequent public and political revulsion manifested in a total retreat from an official interest in Sri Lanka.

It is also evident that despite the fact that New Delhi has been appreciative of the Sri Lankan President, Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga's earnest efforts for a political solution to the ethnic crisis, reflecting in her proposals for devolution of power and constitutional reform, official Indian policy has kept a scrupulous distance from an involvement in the process of resolving the ethnic crisis. Thus, in this sense the decision of the Vajpayee administration not to intervene in the military conflict is a consequence of the policy approach of the '90s. But it might be time for New Delhi to take a closer look at the implications of the LTTE's resurgence in northern Sri Lanka and judge whether such a development is at all in India's interest.

First, the political context of the ethnic conflict has changed radically since the early '80s. Between 1983 and 1987, India was unwittingly sucked into Sri Lanka's ethnic conflict as a result of the exodus of Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who poured into Tamil Nadu because of the Army's ruthless pursuit of a military strategy that did not spare the civilian population. Politically, India had every reason to empathise with the efforts of the Tamil political groups, particularly the TULF which was working hard to get the Sri Lankan state to give equal emphasis to Tamil minority rights in crucial arenas. The Indian diplomatic effort which might have ended painfully in the IPKF debacle had also a beneficial consequence in the Indo-Sri Lankan agreement which offered a framework for the articulation and embodying of Tamil minority political and cultural rights. That conceptual breakthrough provided a basis for a paradigm shift in Sri Lanka. Since then, the Sri Lankan state, particularly under the administration of Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga, has committed itself to a substantive process of constitutional reform and devolution of power that will place the Tamil minority on an equal footing with the Sinhala majority, with clear control over its destiny in the north and the most part of the east. The Kumaratunga administration, unlike its predecessor regimes, has sought to offer a non-chauvinist dispensation, and even if tactically, it has failed to make headway, it continues to be the most promising instrument of a potential peace process.

This is not to suggest that the Sri Lankan President has not made strategic mistakes or tactical blunders on the way in her attempt to bring peace to Sri Lanka. But in her acknowledgment of the need to address the ethnic crisis through constitutional and political reform, she offers a way out of the morass that is far more healing than the LTTE's trail of murder and destruction. The LTTE's track record as an interlocutor, as Indian diplomatic experience will testify, is one of slipperiness and unreliability. The Vajpayee administration must recognise that this is a crucial moment when it is vital not to be taken in by the orchestrated campaign masterminded by LTTE-sympathising Tamil Nadu politicians whose own partisan designs require them to portray the LTTE as freedom-fighters and the Sri Lankan Government as a chauvinist aggressor. Even if for tactical and strategic considerations, India cannot intervene militarily in the conflict, the Vajpayee administration must make it categorically clear that in political and diplomatic terms, it will throw its weight behind the Kumaratunga Government. It must also indicate clearly that on no account will it offer even the slightest encouragement to the LTTE's separatist and fascist designs, which, in the ultimate analysis, are harmful to India's interests as well.

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