(February 12, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) The world has begun to tremble. China is on the way to becoming economically the most powerful country in the world. They are not only becoming the most powerful militarily but also from the nuclear aspect they can give a run to the US. They are the biggest creditors of the United States having also absorbed most of the US debts. Unlike in the case of the Soviet Union in the latter twentieth century when it was in decline during the cold war China is on the rise in the 21st century. However, it is in the interests of the Chinese economy to keep the US going lest they lose out on their credit. In this sense it is a cold war. Being the biggest consumer of oil, China have ensured the continuous supply from the biggest producer of oil namely, Russia.
Thanks to the war against the LTTE they have gained a firm foothold in the Indian ocean in Sri Lanka, Hambantota port being part of the string of pearls as part of their geo strategic consolidation of oil traffic which has also helped them militarily. Their power is being spread around. India has admitted that China have become more powerful than they are in every possible way. It is matter of time that India disintegrates to pre British colonial times. The federation of States will break up into individual independent governments and or States for they have been held together as a nation of Indians centrifugally and artificially brought together by the British. True Federation is a centripetal concept as in the case of the unification of Italy and Germany.
India is riddled with corruption with its democracy in decline. Their spineless Prime minister Manmohan Singh is a puppet of the so called Cambridge scholar Sonia Gandhi having attended an English language school there, whose primary aim is to eventually install her son Rahul (formerly Raoul) and her daughter Priyanka (formerly Bianca), having adopted Hindu names to hold the highest political positions in India. Given the ignorance and the abject poverty of most Indian people and the Hindu chauvinism of the opposing BJP this could eventuate. In a previous editorial we stated that the magnitude of the corruption in India would be seen in the conduct of their Commonwealth games. True to our word it is now revealed that the organisers owe hundreds of millions of dollars to Australian businesses that were contracted to provide its infrastructure. The latest revelation is the arrest of the former telecommunications minister, Raja, an ally of the ruling congress, who was very close to the DMK in Tamil Nadu for the biggest racket ever in India involving millions of dollars. We are now convinced that they are not only jokers but also bloody thieves.
The Chinese are a highly civilised and cultured people affording at least in theory, equality to their fifty two ethnic groups. Above all, they are largely a secular society with their religious beliefs private to them thanks to Mao, which accounts for their tolerance of other faiths. Buddhism embraced by 70 million of them is shrouded in superstitions. Their relative tolerance is quite in contrast to the barbaric Sinhala Buddhist State that sponsored Pogroms against the Tamil people culminating in the 1983 massacre of thousands of innocent Tamil children and adults for being Tamils. These were nowhere near the Chinese manner of quelling the Muslim Uighurs in Urumqi in the western province of Xin Jiang. The treatment of the Tibetans has been far more civilised than the manner the Tamils of Sri Lanka have been treated.
Given the strong possibility of a military dictatorship of the Rajapakse clan and no return to the democracy, ante 1972, China will very soon take over Sri Lanka politically, economically and socially. It will virtually rule over Sri Lanka which will eventually become their colony/satellite as Burma or even worse. Given the complete breakdown of the Sri Lankan economy and agriculture in their inability to feed the people, China will dump their sub standard produce and products which would be most welcome at ridiculously cheap prices thus competing with the Sri Lankan farmer and producer thus reducing their level of self reliance and the reduction of any level of agricultural development. The moral strength and the integrity of the peoples and those in power in Sri Lanka are so weak that they will not withstand the overwhelming Chinese economic influence and their social pressures but succumb to its hegemony. The Rajapakse dynasty will be looked after with all privileges and comforts as in Burma and Zimbabwe.
Brahma Chellaney, in Behind Sri Lankan Bloodbath (2009), wrote:
“Unlike China’s assistance, India’s role has received little international attention. But India, too, contributed to the Sri Lankan bloodbath through its military aid, except that it has ended up, strangely, with its leverage undermined….…….But having been outmanoeuvred by China’s success in extending strategic reach to Sri Lanka in recent years, New Delhi got sucked into providing major assistance to Colombo, lest it lose further ground in Sri Lanka”. Profound as it is, India have indeed lost considerable moral ground amongst the Tamil people.
India’s corruption and hypocrisy at all levels in relation to the Sri Lankan Tamils have been revealed in the manner that they have betrayed the Tamils all the way. In the matter of the rebuilding of the of the tens of thousands of the homes of displaced Tamils their statements are so ambivalent that we are not certain whether they would ever provide 50,000 house, repair them, or provide even 5000 houses. No dwelling has been reconstructed by India. As reported in the media in an exclusive meeting with a high-profile team of media heads from Sri Lanka at his office at the Ministry of Defence in New Delhi, Shiva Shankar Menon the national security advisor, revealing Indian hypocrisy in no uncertain terms said: “Sri Lanka should have its own home-grown solutions for the problems of its people in the North and the East and that other parties elsewhere including in Tamil Nadu should not worry if those people are happy…. If that is right, I don’t think the views of either the Tamil Nadu or Tamil Diaspora are important. If the people in Sri Lanka are happy with the solution they get, why should the people in Tamil Nadu worry about it?” (Sunday Observer 12 Dec. 2010).
It is the influence of China in the Kashmiri region that has reduced the severity of human rights abuses against the Muslims there that has strengthened the call for an independent Kashmiri state over which India has absolutely no tangible political or moral claim. Kashmir belongs to the Kashmiri people.
Further, In an exclusive interview with a group of media heads from Sri Lanka at the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi, the Indian Foreign Secretary had Nirupama Rao having watched entire political and economic the profile of Sri Lanka through a window of the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo states: “ Sri Lanka is moving in the right direction after eradicating terrorism…there are “unique opportunities” for Sri Lanka and India after terrorism was defeated by the Security Forces….everybody is enjoying the dividends of peace. “People are moving very freely...I saw from my hotel room people moving freely at the Galle Face Green even at midnight. They are enjoying the freedom to move without any fear….The resettlement of displaced people in the North is “going on in a very constructive manner”. “It appears to be moving in the right direction… we saw that paddy farmers had returned to normal life. This means that the agro industry is catching up. I hope it would be restored soon to its previous level…the number of displaced persons has dropped to under 17,000 and they too would be resettled before the end of this month ?” (Sunday Observer, 12 Dec 2010).
It is obvious that the Indians are wont to say what President Rajapakse wants to hear.
President Rajapakse of Sri Lanka though lacking in any finesse, regarded as the least literate of all Sri Lankan Heads of State is, however, an astute wheeler dealer when it comes to turning one bidder against the other in the auction to sell Sri Lankan interests to suit his dynastic ambitions and aspirations to foreign interests. Conceding China’s superiority over them, the Indians are no longer in the race for domination in the Indian Ocean not to mention the world. India in relation to Sri Lanka will soon learn their lesson.
In a previous editorial, we advocated that the Sri Lankan Tamils should show their backs to the Indians and woo the Chinese. It is a fact that the Tamils are deliberately denied access to the Chinese but are left at the mercy of India to be looked after. This is undoubtedly a strategy of the racist Rajapakse government to ensure the slow but certain destruction of the Tamil people and their culture in the very near future and we are certain that India will up to her expectations of the Rajapakse brothers. Malathi de Alwis in her “China Factor’ in post-war Sri Lanka (Inter Asia Cultural Studies), states: “If Eelam Tamils can befriend with Communist China and allow it to use Tamil homeland for mutual benefit Eelam Tamils might get what they want! Eelam Tamil Diaspora can cultivate their relationship with Western powers but they are not going to help the Tamils as they will only listen to India, when it comes to Sri Lanka [sic]. Therefore [sic], the only power that can really make a difference for the Tamils will be China and Tamils should start making contacts with China at the highest level (Gopi 2010)".
The Tamil people both in Sri Lanka and abroad should acknowledge China’s rising tide in the affairs of the world and the Tamils should recognise it to take them at the flood at every opportunity that would to lead on to fortune.
We repeat and reiterate what we stated in our editorial of 06 June 2010: “The question that has arisen in many Tamil circles is whether the Tamil people should show their backs to the Indians and turn to support the Chinese as the new strategy, with their children learning Chinese (Mandarin) developing to be a world language to be taught in schools. Furthermore, the plague of Brahminism will no longer haunt the Tamils. They should be pragmatic in turning to the winning side that will bring them more benefits, not wasting their time with India. This was also the view that the late N. Shanmugadasan, a former leader of the Ceylon Communist Party (Peking Wing) and intellectual, advocated in the 1960s and the 1970s as a remedy for the redress of Tamil grievances".
It will also be to the advantage of China to make overtures to the Sri Lankan Tamils both within Sri Lanka and abroad. The Tamil Diasporas in turn should reciprocate.
( The writer, Editor of the Eelam Nation)
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