- Only days later, Karunanidhi had the State Assembly pass a resolution in this regard. “The Central Government should come forward to initiate steps for fruitful talks leading to a political solution and permanent peace in Sri Lanka,” the resolution read. In piloting the resolution, the octogenarian Karunanidhi, who is now in his fifth innings as Chief Minister in four decades, chided not only alliance members for belittling the Government of India.__________________________
by N Sathiya Moorthy
(April 28, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) With Priyanka Gandhi Vadhera and Nalini Sriharan alias Nalini Murugan in the news over their secret meeting in a Tamil Nadu prison, India is back in the news in the contemporary Sri Lankan context. More importantly, the unplanned but near-simultaneous calls by Tamil Nadu’s DMK Chief Minister M Karunanidhi and the breakaway MDMK leader Vaiko – followed by a resolution of the Tamil Nadu Assembly -- for an Indian role in solving the ethnic issue in the southern neighbourhood has raised fresh expectations that New Delhi may after all be persuaded to play a more direct role in the matter.
As daughter of the slain former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Priyanka is reported to have given expression to the family’s position that they hold no grudge against the killers. Priyanka’s effort at making peace with the past is understandable, considering that as a family, the Nehru-Gandhis have seen enough of bloodshed. Only years earlier, men on security detail had mowed down Rajiv’s mother and incumbent Prime Minister Indira Gandhi – preceded by the violent death of his younger brother Sanjay, in a plane crash in the heart of Delhi.
“What happened to my father should not happen to any other member of the family,” Nalini’s lawyer, S Doraiswamy quoted Priyanka Gandhi as telling his client. “If the LTTE still has any anger or hatred against my family, it should be buried,” Doraiswamy further quoted Priyanka as saying, after his meeting with Nalini at Tamil Nadu’s only all-woman prison in Vellore.
A fortnight after the jail visit, the three death-row convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, including Nalini’s husband, Sriharan alias Murugan, have written to Priyanka Gandhi, thanking her for meeting Nalini. Doraiswamy said that he would now move the Madras High Court, seeking early freedom for his client, Nalini’s death sentence having been commuted after Sonia Gandhi wrote to the President in this regard years ago. As Doraisamy pointed out, Nalini has already served 17 years in prison, against the ‘normal’ 14 years of life imprisonment for murder-convicts.
“We are hopeful that Priyanka’s visit would soften the stand of the State Government” when Nalini’s fresh petition comes up for hearing, Doraisamy hoped. It is another matter that in earlier cases, the Supreme Court of India had held that life-sentence did not automatically mean that the convicts had the right to be freed after spending 12-14 years in prison. In the case of ‘commuted death sentences’ in particular, the Supreme Court has further ruled against remission of any kind.
As is known, Priyanka’s mother Sonia Gandhi is at present the president of the ruling Congress Party at the Centre. She was named Prime Minister after the Congress-led alliance won the parliamentary polls in 2004, but Sonia Gandhi stepped aside in favour of Manmohan Singh. Yet, Priyanka’s only brother, Rahul, is being tipped by party veterans for a more active role in political-administration of the country if the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) won the next round of parliamentary polls next year. For now, he is seen as the party’s poll mascot, if there is one.
Independent of Priyanka Vadhera’s meeting with Nalini, Chief Minister Karunanidhi called upon New Delhi to play ‘facilitator’ – if that is what he implied – for a negotiated settlement. “To bring about peace in Sri Lanka, the Union Government should come forward to organise useful negotiations so that a proper political solution is thrashed out,” he said in an exclusive media interview, which however was timed to coincide with the launch of the local edition of a national newspaper – and nothing else.
Only days later, Karunanidhi had the State Assembly pass a resolution in this regard. “The Central Government should come forward to initiate steps for fruitful talks leading to a political solution and permanent peace in Sri Lanka,” the resolution read. In piloting the resolution, the octogenarian Karunanidhi, who is now in his fifth innings as Chief Minister in four decades, chided not only alliance members for belittling the Government of India.
Intervening in the discussion on the subject, Karunanidhi also ticked off the Tamil militant groups in Sri Lanka (read: LTTE) for killing each other in internecine battles than in putting up a united front against the ‘Sinhala troops’.
Pointing out that the Tamils on the island were forced to take to arms only after the Sri Lankan State failed to respond to the Gandhian ways of the late S J V Chelvanayagam, the Chief Minister implied that the inability of the militant Tamil groups to achieve their goal owed exclusively to such fratricidal killings, including that of the moderate Tamil leader, Appapilla Amirthalingam. The message, if any, was clear.
Yet, the fact remained that Karunanidhi’s observations and the Assembly resolution – the latter, the third in two years on the Sri Lankan issue -- came only days after MDMK’s Vaiko had spoken for and on behalf of the Sri Lankan Tamil community at an international conference in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, organised by the Indian spiritual group, Art of Living, which is headquartered in Bengaluru, formerly Bangalore.
Defending the representative character of the LTTE in the affairs of the Sri Lankan Tamils for long, Vaiko’s was possibly the lone voice on their behalf at Oslo. Speakers at Oslo included Jon Hanssen-Bauer, the Norwegian facilitator to the failed ceasefire agreement (CFA) in Sri Lanka, and a host of Government representatives from Colombo.
In a subsequent meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Vaiko wanted India to mount diplomatic pressure on Sri Lanka, to find a workable solution to fulfil the aspirations of the island-Tamils. In this context, he also wanted Colombo’s military offensive against the LTTE stopped. Obliquely referring to the end-2001 unilateral ceasefire declared by the LTTE, that too when the Sri Lankan Government was still recovering from the shock and humiliation of the Katanayake-I airport attacks Vaiko said that it was now the turn of Colombo to announce a truce.
Yet, there does not seem to have been any call from, or commitment by Vaiko that the LTTE too would work for, on and with a truce, if at all acceptable to the Colombo Government and the Sri Lankan armed forces. Given his well-known sympathy for the ‘Sri Lankan Tamil cause’ and support for the LTTE in this regard, and also his meeting with senior Norwegian officials, including Minister Eric Solheim, now guiding the peace facilitation team, it is unclear as yet, whom Vaiko was batting for in a strict political sense of the term – Norway, LTTE, the Tamil community, or all of them put together.
As is known, New Delhi does not seem to have had any quarrel with Vaiko and the rest that have often called upon the Government of India not to supply weapons to Colombo in its war with the LTTE and for bombing Tamil civilians in this garb. New Delhi has time and again repeated its well-evaluated position of not supplying lethal weapons to the Sri Lankan Government for fighting the ‘ethnic war’. India has also consistently reiterated the position that there could be no military solution to the ‘ethnic issue’ and that a negotiated political solution alone was the way out for all stake-holders in the island-nation.
Ironically, for all the calls for Indian involvement in revitalising the peace process – made on behalf of the LTTE on the one hand and the Sri Lankan Tamil community on the other -- the signals from within Sri Lanka have been confusing at best and contradictory, otherwise. The LTTE is continues to be seen as hunting with the hound, while the LTTE-sympathetic moderate polity of the Tamil Nationalist Alliance (TNA) keeps running with the hares. Or, so it seems.
Starting with LTTE leader Prabhakaran’s annual “Heroes’ Day” speech in end-November, the militant outfit is often seen as going rather out of the way to hurt Indian sentiments. The latest one of its kind was the LTTE statement, describing India ‘rolling the red-carpet’ for the visiting Sri Lankan Army chief, Lt Gen Sanath Fonseka, as a ‘historic blunder’, and indicating that New Delhi might arm the SLA to teeth, to target the Tamil community.
In doing so, the LTTE was seen also as questioning the legitimate responsibilities and duties of the Indian State for addressing the nation’s long-term strategic and political concerns in the larger Indian Ocean neighbourhood. Such concerns should normally go beyond the legitimate aspirations of the Sri Lankan Tamil community – and should not be trampled upon by the Colombo dispensation, either.
But then, the LTTE statement on this score also reflected a mindset that New Delhi’s words could not be trusted when it came to arming – rather, not arming -- the Sri Lanka Army. Pro-LTTE elements in Tamil Nadu often mouth similar perceptions, which go well beyond not helping matters.
It is on sensitive issues such as these that all those seeking an Indian role in the stalled peace process in Sri Lanka need to focus their attention on. The substantive issues have a way of tackling themselves – or, not tackling themselves. It is not a chasm but a mindset that they need to fill – a mindset that believes in the unbelievable, et al.
In this background, Priyanka’s was a personal initiative and Vaiko’s, a political statement. Karunanidhi as Tamil Nadu’s seasoned Chief Minister, whose DMK party is a partner in the ruling Congress-led UPA coalition Government at the Centre, is much more significant than the other two. So is the Norwegian pronouncement on a ‘decisive role’ for India, considering that from within the international community, India knows Sri Lanka best – and also the fact that most Sri Lankans, if not all, trust India the most.
(To be concluded)
(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), the Indian policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. The views expressed here are those of the writer’s, and not of the Foundation. email: sathiyam54@hotmail.com. Blog at: http://chanakyam.blogspot.com)
- Sri Lanka Guardian
Post a Comment