Triumph and tragedy in Sri Lanka

By Rajeev Srinivasan

(May 04, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) The news and the images coming out of Sri Lanka are horrendous: 1,00,000 Tamil civilians trapped on a tiny beach, where cadre of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam are making their last stand. The LTTE is using the civilians as a human shield (according to the Sri Lankan Government); the Army has shelled hospitals and killed non-combatants (according to human-rights groups).

The visuals of long-suffering Tamil refugees fleeing the war zone with nothing more than the tattered clothes on their backs remind us of the curse of the Indian sub-continent: Religion and ethnicity-based conflict, generally leading to the genocide of Hindus. We saw this in 1947 and 1971. Millions of Hindus were ethnically cleansed from Pakistan and Bangladesh then, and the handful remaining are now fleeing newly-Talibanised territories; they are being driven out of Sri Lanka’s Jaffna and the Eastern Province at the fag-end of a brutal civil war.

The LTTE certainly did not expect to fade into oblivion, its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran a fugitive. Only a couple of years ago, the Tigers were rampant, scoring victories on land and sea, and terrorising Colombo with their so-called ‘air force’. What turned things around? Probably much covert aid from Governments, including India’s, wary of the Tigers’ penchant for redrawing boundaries by force (and China’s, fishing in troubled waters).

That, and internal dissension. The turning point was the defection in 2004 of ‘Colonel’ Karuna Amman, formerly LTTE commander in the Eastern Province. The LTTE ran a tight ship, and defectors generally were liquidated, but Mr Amman — as reported by the Wall Street Journal last year — thrived, and has become a Minister, although he is at loggerheads with his erstwhile protégé and now Chief Minister of the Eastern Province, Mr Pillaiyan.

After sama (negotiations) and dana (give-aways) failed, bheda (creating dissent) worked, and now the Sri Lankans are applying the last of the four tactics of classical Indian statecraft, danda (punishment). This is an object lesson for India’s pusillanimous politicians who advocate sweet talk and appeasement of terrorists; and for Obamistas, advocating a land-for-peace (India’s land, to be given to Pakistan, so that the ISI would leave the Americans in peace) deal. Pandering does not work, the iron fist does. Crush the terrorists first, then talk to real people.

There is a startling silence in India about the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils. This has to do with two factors. First, most of the shrieking banshees in the human misery cottage industry do not care about the human rights of Hindus, and Sri Lankan Tamils are about 85 per cent Hindus. Second, the killing of Rajiv Gandhi by the LTTE, and the incessant noise by the DMK in its favour have genuinely turned off many people. The LTTE’s idea of its ‘Tamil Eelam’ (they have taken down the maps on their Website showing this) consists of north and eastern Sri Lanka, all of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and parts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. In other words, most of south India. This is comparable to the jihadi dream of a ‘Mughalistan’ consisting of most of north India.

It further appears that this ‘Eelam’ was meant to be a Christianistan, in fearsome symmetry with ‘Mughalistan’. Let us note in passing that at the time of partition, missionaries had demanded a ‘Christianistan’ consisting of the North-East, tribal areas of the Central Provinces (Chhotanagpur), and Travancore. Clearly, they have not given up the idea.

The Church has a well-known modus operandi. In Rwanda, the Church fomented genocide by dividing Hutus and Tutsis — who, to the casual observer, and to the geneticist, appear identical — through claiming that the former were short and dark, and the latter were tall and fair, and that Tutsis were oppressing Hutus. Several Christian godmen and godwomen have been convicted of crimes against humanity for their direct role in the massacre of Tutsis.

In India, too, the Church has fabricated a divide between the alleged ‘Aryans’ and ‘Dravidians’ — tall and fair vs short and dark, oppressor, and oppressed — which was initially the handiwork of a White missionary named Caldwell. It remains an interesting but little-known fact that churchman Max Mueller, who invented the entire ‘Aryan’ fiction, recanted in later years, admitting he was wrong.

The Church has had a dubious role in Sri Lanka too. It is surely curious that most of the top cadre of the LTTE are Christians (examples include Prabhakaran, who is a Methodist, Anton Balasingham, the suicide-bomber Dhanu, who killed Rajiv Gandhi). Senior non-Christians in the LTTE, remarkably, have been captured, have died in battle, or been liquidated.

And the LTTE has wiped out all other groups representing the Tamil cause. The very ruthlessness of the LTTE is an indicator of its thought-process. The Church, and the LTTE, had no use for moderates or for negotiation.

There is another party with ill-intent in all this: China. As part of its ‘string of pearls’ strategy, it previously supported violent Communist insurgents, but these were wiped out by the Sri Lankan Government. Now China is supplying heavy equipment, including planes and artillery, to the Army. Beijing’s likely objective: The prized deep-water port of Trincomalee, which would help China control shipping in the Indian Ocean, not to mention be a serious problem for India in its own backyard.

But with the apparent demise of the LTTE, the Sri Lankan Government should be able to negotiate from a position of strength. Tamils can see that militancy and terrorism has achieved nothing but catastrophe for them. The Sinhalese, if they are wise, will deal magnanimously with their Tamil fellow citizens and reconcile with them. They must recognise that Tamils have genuine grievances arising from discrimination against them for decades. They need to appreciate that the LTTE is not synonymous with Tamils. Then Sri Lanka can can become the success story of the subcontinent with its superior health and education record.

-Sri Lanka Guardian