Nedu’s hopeless dreams and reality

By: Prabath Sahabandu, Editor of Colombo based daily "The Island"

If hanuman set this country ablaze with his tail, Nedumaran is trying to do that with his tongue, over which he doesn’t seem to have any control. He is threatening to forcibly enter Sri Lanka in a show of solidarity with the LTTE on the pretext of bringing relief to the people of Jaffna. He is said to be trying to muster the support of other notorious LTTE sympathisers like Ramadas and Vaiko thus aggravating the predicament of the Indian government vis-a-vis its political compulsions in the South. The Central government is said to be making frantic efforts to dissuade Nedumaran from embarking on his voyage and to avert a crisis.

The Congress leaders have no one to blame but themselves for what is happening. Nedumaran is only following a precedent that the Rajiv Gandhi government set in 1987. His government violated Sri Lanka’s airspace, dropped parippu and rescued Prabhakaran trapped in Vadamarachchi. Rajiv later did his utmost to undo what he had done but in vain. The mess has survived him as evident from Nedumaran’s attempt. (Unfortunately, like the Swedish press that sided with the Fuehrer, a section of the Indian press endorsed Gandhi’s gunboat diplomacy and allied sordid operations at that time. The problem with sowing the wind is that a bumper harvest comes in the form of whirlwind sooner or later.)

Nedumaran has earned notoriety for issuing threats and letting them fizzle out after his purpose —gaining cheap publicity—is served, if his past conduct is anything to go by. Like a gypsy’s monkey that has to turn somersaults at its master’s behest, Nedumaran makes a monkey out of himself from time to time to please his striped masters across the Palk Straits. He is only singing for his supper.

An attempt is being made in some quarters in this country to give the government a scare by blowing the Nedumaran drama out of proportion. That is something natural, given the psychological conditioning that some opinion makers and a part of the press here have been subjected to. They wet their pants at the mention of a foreigner’s name and run behind foreign diplomats seeking help, even if their bowels refuse to move. (We find it extremely difficult to bring ourselves to speak well of Prabhakaran but we grudgingly grant that he should be respected for the way he handles the international community. Look at the way he handled the truce monitors from the EU member states. He kicked them out of the country. He seems to believe in a saying popular among planters: You lick, they kick; you kick, they lick!)

Nedumaran is not Sri Lanka’s problem. If he is so hell bent on, as he is reported to be, coming here as an illegal immigrant, let him do so, mindful of the consequences. It is the government of India that has to ensure that he will behave. For, his journey is scheduled to begin from India and he will have to come past the Indian police on the shore, the Indian Coast Guard and the Indian Navy. A country is duty bound to prevent any of its citizens from travelling to a foreign country without a valid visa, especially when such an illegal trip happens to be given wide publicity in advance. This country is under pressure from the European Union etc. to stem the flow of illegal immigrants at the source in keeping with the international laws governing migration. As a result, trawlers full of illegal immigrants bound for affluent countries are seized from various parts of the country from time to time.

Therefore, all that Sri Lanka has to do is to request India to respect the international law in handling Nedumaran and his band of supporters threatening to canoe across the Palk Straits as part of their Save the Tiger campaign.

If the Indian government doesn’t care to stop him, he should be received with due respect at this end and sent where the Indian fishermen who stray into the Sri Lankan waters are kept so that the Indian authorities could make representation and secure his release. Until such time, let him be in the exalted company of illegal fishermen!

The real danger as regards Nedumaran’s threat is not the possible consequences of his much advertised trip to Sri Lanka but the blatant manner in which some South Indian politicians are flouting the Indian law and challenging the writ of the government. The LTTE is a proscribed outfit in India and Prabhakaran is wanted in connection with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, whose wife is now leading the Congress. How can any Indian politician act in violation of the Indian law and go scot free? We thought a culture of impunity prevailed only in this country, where politicians are able to get away with even criminal offences such as fraud and criminal misappropriation, having pleaded guilty to them, by paying just only the crown cost! India is no better, eh? Containing or neutralising the defiant elements openly championing the cause of an outlawed outfit hell bent on carving out a separate state a little distance away may be in the interest of India rather than that of Sri Lanka’s.

The dilemma of the Congress-led government is whether to ensure its own survival in the short run by giving the separatist groups within its alliance a free rein to inch towards their goal with the help of others of their ilk in a neighbouring country or to work for the good of the country by reining in those unruly elements.

Nedumaran is India’s baby!