The Role of India

“India the regional super power forced the Indo Lanka agreement on the Sri Lankan government and Dixit became the self appointed Viceroy of the country. However India underestimated the strength of Sinhalathva, and had to withdraw the so called IPKF that kept no peace in the country. With the withdrawal of the IPKF India began to lose its grip and the westerners gradually re entered the scene. However, even at the time of signing the infamous ceasefire agreement (CFA) that did not cease fire in the country, between Ranil Wickremesinghe and Prabhakaran, India was the "aiya" of the region.”
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by Prof. Nalin de Silva

(April 02, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Liam Fox is back again but he may not succeed as he did last time when he was able to obtain the signatures of both Chandrika Kumaratunga and Ranil Wickremesinghe for a memorandum of understanding. It is said that Fox is on an invitation by the minister of foreign affairs but we do not know whether he got himself invited.

In politics, especially in so called international relations what is stated is very often different from what has actually taken place in this age of the common man who is supposed to be the person who exercises sovereignty and what not through his agents such as the cabinet ministers. However, it is often the common man whether in Europe or other regions who is kept in the dark, and this is about two centuries after the so called enlightenment in Europe.

In any event India cannot be very happy with Liam Fox visiting Sri Lanka at the moment, especially when she has the upper hand vis a vis the western powers on the internal matters in Sri Lanka. As we have said on many occasions the Tamil problem in Sri Lanka was internationalised not just a few decades ago but a few centuries prior to the first visit of Fox. The problem was created by the Dutch when they imported Vellalas or agricultural labourers for their tobacco cultivations in the seventeenth century. Then later on the British imported Tamil labourers for road constructions and for work in the plantations when they introduced the "world market" to Sri Lanka paving the way for all the economic problems we are burdened with today under so called modernity. These workers were settled down in the present Baticaloa district and the up country areas. All these were colonisations whether in Jaffna, Baticaloa or what is known as the plantation areas, very often either displacing the Sinhala people or reducing them to a minority in the respective areas. However these colonisations by the colonialists are not referred to as such, but on the contrary, on the basis of colonial colonisations the so called historical habitats have been created. It was under the auspicious of India that historical (hysterical) habitats were mentioned in the Indo Lanka agreement. Instead of referring to the creation of these hysterical habitats as colonisation, the settlement of Sinhalas by the D S Senanayake government in the areas that were occupied by their ancestors before they were expelled by the colonialists is called colonisation. This is the kind of logic that the Tamil Vellala elite have been using with the connivance of the west as well as of India.

Recently there has been talk again on so called disenfranchising of estate workers. What is not recognized is that these estate workers who were brought by the British were British subjects and not citizens as such of this country. As British subjects they were given the franchise together with the other British subjects including the Sinhalas by the British. We should remember that not only when the elections to the state council were held in 1931 and 1936 but also when the first parliamentary elections were held in 1947, we were a colony and not an independent country, and we were all supposed to be British subjects. When the country became independent the government had to decide who the citizens were and accordingly the citizenship acts were introduced. When the plantation workers were defined as non citizens then as a corollary it followed that they had no franchise. It was not a case of disenfranchising but an instance where some British subjects who had been imported by the British being not recognized as citizens. They could not be disenfranchised as they had had no franchise as citizens of Sri Lanka at any time. They had franchise as British subjects and not as citizens of Sri Lanka. In the case of the others also the situation was the same. The newly independent Sri Lanka had the right to define who her citizens were and the first parliament had duly exercised that right. All those who were defined as citizens were entitled to vote and not the others. The fact that India agreed to take back some of these people illustrate that they were not citizens of Sri Lanka, as otherwise India would have agreed to receive citizens of another country as citizens of India. It has to be mentioned that when Mahatma Gandhi came to Sri Lanka he said that if these plantation workers wanted to live in Sri Lanka they should learn Sinhala. In any event the Sri Lankan leaders at that time could have asked the British to take the plantation workers who were not recognized as citizens to Britain, as some other countries have done. However, due to some reasons the leaders of the government did not make that request and later even some of those who were to be sent back to India under Sirima Shasthri Pact were allowed to remain in Sri Lanka by the government of JR Jayewardene.

I do not think that Fox is here to discuss resettlement of some of these people in Britain as now the problem has been "absolved". The presence of a Fox or a Doyle, the British agent who negotiated the Sinhala British Agreement known as the Kandyan convention in 1815, has to be watched intensively whether they are on invitation or not. Fox is coming in the aftermath of the APRC report submitted to the President about two months ago, which was accepted by India thus keeping the westerners away at least for some time. India has also been involved with the problem and during the time of JR Jayewardene India trained Prabhakaran, Uma Maheswaran and their followers. There were three reasons for this act of India against Sri Lanka. One was the western biased foreign policy of the Jayewardene government. The second was the Indian attitude of being the regional policeman in South Asia. In this connection one cannot ignore the Panikkar doctrine according to which Indian Ocean is the ocean of India. Then thirdly there is the Indian attitude towards Sinhalas especially the Sinhala Buddhists. India will never forget that none of the Bharat states, including the Cholas were able to occupy the country. We remained independent thanks to the Sinhala kings, the Bhikkhus and the people who fought for the country and it was not a mean achievement. Also the Sinhalas are responsible for preserving Buddhism (Theravada) after the Hindu religion formulated by Shankaracharya absorbing Buddhism and some parts of Jainism into the Vedic culture wiped out Buddhism from the country of birth of Prince Siddhartha.

India the regional super power forced the Indo Lanka agreement on the Sri Lankan government and Dixit became the self appointed Viceroy of the country. However India underestimated the strength of Sinhalathva, and had to withdraw the so called IPKF that kept no peace in the country. With the withdrawal of the IPKF India began to lose its grip and the westerners gradually re entered the scene. However, even at the time of signing the infamous ceasefire agreement (CFA) that did not cease fire in the country, between Ranil Wickremesinghe and Prabhakaran, India was the "aiya" of the region. It has been revealed that the Norwegians visited Delhi number of times before signing the so called CFA to obtain the approval of the regional super power. However, since then the westerners gradually became more influential through the Scandinavian monitors who were no better than the monitors that come up with computers, as they were only reflectors of the LTTE, the NGO "intellectuals", the media organisations, the diplomats who did not have any inhibition to interfere with internal matters, human rights organisations and UN and its subsidiary agents who kept on coming like the Nuwara Perahera , with the US, UK, Norway, EU, Japan Devala Peraheras behind them, and naturally India got worried.

The APRC prelude to a report has given India some breathing space but not for long. Within hours of submitting the APRC report to the President, India welcomed it silencing the westerners who are thinking of a Kosovo type solution, armed with reports prepared by Arbours and Barbers. The west has not given up and Fox’s is a cunning trip to test waters. It is not for nothing that Prabhakaran has told a TNA MP that he was expecting a Kosovo type "solution". The UNP, SLMC, TNA are the agents of the western powers and it is clear that they are working towards a merger of the eastern and the northern provinces. Though India forced JR Jayewardene to merge the two provinces under duress, the Sinhalas, the non SLMC Muslims who do not want to live in a Tamil dominated merged province were successful in obtaining a de-merger of the provinces. It appears that in the absence of the MEP and the JHU the SLMC, LSSP, CP have come to a "consensus" to merge the two provinces again. It is only a "con sense" and as the representative of the MEP, I am in a position to state that the MEP would not abide by these "con senses". If India or anybody thinks that the west would not go against India in promoting a Kosovo type solution then it is based the mistaken assumption that west would always go with the regional super power. Kosovo and Serbia are not far away from Russia but the west would not have thought twice to implement their solution in Kosovo.

UNP and SLMC who have come to an agreement on eastern province provincial council elections may be thinking of a merger and a Muslim region in the eastern province. These so called solutions based on ethnicity will never work as they would go against even the principle of solving the problems of an ethnic minority, as claimed by the ethno-devolutionists. The vast majority of the "ethnic minorities" would be living outside these regions and their "problems" would not be solved. The ethno - devolution of power would lead to separation and the Sinhala people would oppose any such devolution. India would have to take all these factors into account in formulating a policy towards Sri Lanka and if she fails to recognize the aspirations of the Sinhala people then it would finally go against her.
- Sri Lanka Guardian