{"id":17509,"date":"2013-03-02T20:38:30","date_gmt":"2013-03-03T01:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=17509"},"modified":"2013-03-02T20:38:30","modified_gmt":"2013-03-03T01:38:30","slug":"purported-concern-for-sri-lankan-tamils-is-only-an-expression-of-separatist-sentiment-in-tamil-nadu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=17509","title":{"rendered":"Purported Concern for Sri Lankan Tamils is only an Expression of Separatist Sentiment in Tamil Nadu"},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/p>\n

C.A.Chandrapema<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the stormy debate in the upper house of the Indian parliament the Rajya Sabha, last Wednesday is anything to go by, perhaps there is insufficient appreciation in this country of the difficulties faced by the Indian central government vis-a-vis its Sri Lanka policy. The Rajya Sabha debate was not play acting \u2013 that was a real life debate reflecting the realities of Indian politics. This debate calling attention to “the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka” was opened by V.Maitreyan of Tamil Nadu. External Affairs Minister Salman Kurshid tried to keep his statement focused on re-settlement and rehabilitation but that was not what the Tamil Nadu members wanted to hear. Ultimately the debate was not about any \u2018plight\u2019 of the Tamil people but about India\u2019s foreign policy. Kurshid was forced to digress from his topic of resettlement and rehabilitation and how much India has contributed towards it, to say that the Indian government\u2019s constant attempt has been to persuade \u2018our friendly government of Sri Lanka\u2019 to stand by the commitment that it has made to the world about the 13th Amendment.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the course of his speech, Kurshid further expressed the hope that Sri Lanka will reach out to the proponents of the resolution in the UN-HRC (meaning the USA) and that there will be a consensus as to the wording and content of the resolution. “At this juncture, we would encourage the United States and Sri Lanka to directly engage on the draft resolution and aim for a mutually acceptable outcome,” was what he said. This irritated the Tamil Nadu politicians no end. V.Maitreyan drew attention to the fact that last year too on the eve of the US sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka, “the then Minister of External Affairs, S.M. Krishna, made a statement in Rajya Sabha. The External Affairs Minister has now changed. But nothing has changed in Sri Lanka and that the statement by Minister Khurshid has more or less repeated the rhetoric of last year\u2019s Statement by S.M. Krishna with only updates on statistics.” Maitreyan also charged that even though the Indian government voted against SL because of the outcry in Tamil Nadu, India bailed out Sri Lanka by diluting the impact of last year\u2019s resolution by softening its tone, tenor and content.<\/p>\n

Another TN member D.Raja even alleged that India supported the war waged by the Sri Lankan Government on \u2018Tamil people\u2019. This was challenged by the Chairman of the Rajya Sabha who told Raja not to make \u2018blanket accusations\u2019. Another TN politician Tiruchi Siva said that Mr. Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the Congress Chief Minister in West Bengal, when there were problems for the Bengalis in East Pakistan, (before the creation of Bangladesh) asked the Government of India to either send its Army to go and rescue the Bengali people or that his police (the West Bengal police) would go there. Siva stated that TN politicians are not going to that extent but they only hold rallies and conferences and pass resolutions. Rajya Sabha member Siva argued India should have moved the resolution against Sri Lanka herself, but that she has not done so and that hence, the least they could do is to support the US resolution. He also stated that the Sri Lankan President should not be invited to India; and that India has only two options – to be friendly with SL or maintain friendship with South India.<\/p>\n

S. Gnanadesikan a TN politician belonging to the Congress Party, tried to introduce reason to the debate but he was constantly interrupted. Gnanadesikan said that while the atrocities committed by the Sri Lankan Army must be probed, he also counseled caution because \u2018there are nearly eight lakhs Indian-origin Tamils are living with the Sinhalese in Colombo\u2019. He said that “The ethnic Tamils, which we call as Jaffna Tamils, are living in the Northern part of Sri Lanka. The ethnic Tamils of Eastern Sri Lanka already separated earlier, they had an election and a Tamil Chief Minister, Mr. Pillayan, is ruling the Eastern part of Tamil Sri Lanka.” Gnanadesikan also made the point that the USA plays politics in the international arena and that while India is trying to help the Tamils, the US is interfering in this matter because of the growing Chinese influence in Sri Lanka. \u2018Otherwise, the US would not poke its nose there\u2019. He urged the government of India not to leave the matter to the US, but to interfere and be a facilitator without merely leaving the issue to the US and Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Minister Kurshid said that it is not possible for India to impose time limits within which Sri Lanka has to respond. The minister also said “I only want to urge upon all the Hon. Members that we may have differences, we may have disappointments, we may have distress, we may have pain, we may have anguish, we may have anger, but we should not be saying that Sri Lanka is an enemy country.” To this V.Maitreyan responded by saying that “It is an enemy country…and it will continue to be so till the Tamils get justice…” To this a BJP member from Andhra Pradesh M.Venkaiah Naidu said “Sir, that may be their opinion. But that is not the opinion of the country.” The embattled minister Kurshid expressed his appreciation to Venkaiah Naidu member by saying “Sir, I am deeply obliged to the Hon. Member of the BJP for speaking something which we all have to.”<\/p>\n

Speaking further, Kurshid said that the Indian foreign policy is that in the SAARC Region, all of us have to march together and we have to speak with one voice and come to the aid of each other, help each other, both with advice and with assistance as we are called to do so from time to time. This was interrupted by members, V.Maitreyan, Tiruchi Siva, D.Raja, and Kanimozi (Karunanidhi\u2019s daughter) saying that they have not got a convincing reply from the External Affairs Minister. At this point Minister Salman Kurshid walked out of the chamber amidst the shouting of unprintables which were expunged from the parliamentary record and D.Raja shouting that this is not fair and that the minister cannot walk away like that. Ultimately, the TN members also walked out in protest against the walk out by the minister.<\/p>\n

Right from the beginning of this debate, the underlying sentiment in Tamil Nadu was apparent. Various comments were made at the very outset about Minister Kurshid\u2019s statement being available only in English and Hindi and not Tamil. Through the confused exchanges, Venkaiah Naidu (an Andhra Pradesh member of the BJP which stands for a united India) said “Sir, copies of the statement should be made available in both the languages (Hindi and English) and nothing else.” At one point when Kurshid lapsed into Hindi, TN members shouted at him to him to speak in English. At this point Minister Kurshid said in obvious irritation at the veiled separatist sentiments being expressed, “Should I continue to speak in English? Sir, this is something which we need to resolve somehow. Some people prefer Hindi language and some prefer the English language. But, you know, in Hindi, it was said that we should be willing to be bada bhai to the nations in our neighbourhood. If you translate that into English, it sounds unacceptable, because then it becomes “Big Brother.” And, I think, Mr. D. Raja, will never accept an expression like “Big Brother.” He does not want anybody to be a “Big Brother” to anybody in the world. Therefore, we will not “Big Brother,” but we will be equal partners.”<\/p>\n

Perhaps what we should realise is that there is no country in the world that is going through what India is going through on account of a neighbouring country. It should also be noted that the whole tenor of debates in the Indian parliament on Sri Lanka has changed completely since the 1980s. If not for the TN factor, India\u2019s relations with SL would be substantially different. There is a clear distinction visible in the attitude of the Indian central government and Tamil Nadu towards SL. The suspicion in Sri Lanka about India is mainly a hangover from the 1980s when Tamil Nadu was dormant but the Indian central government followed the short sighted policy of supporting terrorism in SL so as to bring the SL government to heel.<\/p>\n

From now and well into the foreseeable future, Indian Central Governments will be weak and unable to reign in Tamil Nadu. A different set of protocols may have to evolve in the bilateral relations between India and SL, whereby cooperation will be more behind closed doors than in public view. The Indian central government and even the Indian national opposition know only too well that this purported concern for SL Tamils is only an expression of separatist sentiment in Tamil Nadu and nothing else. If there had been genuine concern for SL Tamils within Tamil Nadu, there would have been an outcry in TN about Indian fishermen poaching in northern Sri Lankan waters and thereby depriving SL Tamil fishermen of their livelihoods.<\/p>\n

The question of Indian fishermen in SL waters is a matter that constantly figures in the bilateral relations between India and Sri Lanka. But Tamil Nadu insists upon its right to steal the catch of the Sri Lankan Tamil fishermen of the north and there is no outcry in TN about that. During the Rajya Sabha debate mentioned above, every speaker from Tamil Nadu referred to the photographs of Prabhakarana\u2019s son Balachandran released by Channel 4 and made emotional appeals to the government of India to bring the perpetrators of this war crime to book even without any confirmation that any such killing has actually taken place. However, not one speaker from Tamil Nadu even made passing mention of the single, outstanding and recurring issue in Indo-Lanka relations – the poaching that occurs on a daily basis in the Palk Straits.<\/p>\n

One thing that India can do to avoid this annual upsurge of separatism in Tamil Nadu is to prevail upon the US to give up its policy of bringing resolutions against SL because these US resolutions destabilize India more than they destabilize Sri Lanka. It is this Hillary Clinton era US policy of hounding Sri Lanka that has given rise to a whole industry of annual documentaries and reports on Sri Lanka which are lapped up by Tamil Nadu and that in turn fuels annual surges of separatism in India. Given the fact that the present US Secretary of State John Kerry has long been a critique of the way Hillary Clinton was handling the Sri Lankan issue, it would not take much to convince Kerry that what South Asia needs is not more instability. Since the US is now allied to India, it is in the US interest to see that India is able to maintain close relations with nations in its own backyard. India should convince the US to leave South Asia to India. If as the Rajaya Sabha member Gnanadesikan says, the USA is hounding Sri Lanka because of Sri Lanka\u2019s proximity to China, this process is going to make China and Sri Lanka come even closer together thus defeating the very purpose this policy was supposed to achieve.
\nCOURTESY:SUNDAY ISLAND<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By C.A.Chandrapema If the stormy debate in the upper house of the Indian parliament the Rajya Sabha, last Wednesday is anything to go by, perhaps there is insufficient appreciation in this country of the difficulties faced by the Indian central government vis-a-vis its Sri Lanka policy. The Rajya Sabha debate was not play acting \u2013 …<\/p>\n

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