Dr. Subramanian Swamy – Former Union Law Minister
The outcome of the recent elections in Tamil Nadu has been the defeat of the most faithful of the LTTE touts in India. These financial orphans of the LTTE have been thoroughly exposed because Tamilians do not care for the LTTE, contrary to media projections. The common joke today is that ‘Puligal’ (Tigers) have been reduced to ‘Eligal’ (Rats) because they (the LTTE) have had to hide in holes in the ground to try save themselves.
But the end of LTTE does mean the end of Sri Lanka’s human rights crisis. The Sri Lanka crisis is the consequence of a festering wound from the past, which however fortunately, is neither malignant nor cancerous. The wound that has festered had been originally inflicted by the tactics of the British imperialists when to administer the colony that Sri Lanka had become, they relied on the Tamils of the island for the purpose, and also brought to the plantations indentured Tamil labourers to exploit the fields.
But, instead of sincerely brokering peace between the Tamils and Sinhalas to rectify justified grievances, the Indian government under the leadership of Mrs.Indira Gandhi decided to train the Tamil militants including the LTTE in various camps in India.
But the LTTE was a disloyal renegade from the very first day. The irrationally jealous Prabhakaran leading the LTTE snared in the Jaffna jungles and got assassinated the leaders of other militant Tamil outfits, and soon in the vacuum, the LTTE emerged as the main and dominant militant organization. In the classic pattern of guerilla organizations, the LTTE began to spread using the weapons of narco-terror and by buying influence using monetary means. The LTTE ferried Saddam Hussein’s illegal shipments of crude oil in their tankers using Panamanian and other dubious flags, drug-running for Afghans and Thais, weapons trade for the Sicilian mafia from Palermo in Italy and even antique smuggling for the highly placed in India. It became, through the ill-gotten funds, a purchaser of weapons in the grey and clandestine markets. The Tamil diaspora whose families were in Jaffna were subject to extortion, while some others romanticized their proximity to the ‘leader’ and paid handsomely for it later. Indian politicians, academicians, journalists, lawyers, and retired diplomats began receiving donations for speaking up for the LTTE and for denouncing the opponents of the LTTE.
Rajiv Gandhi tried to rectify that. The Indian government dispatched a 100,000 troops to the northern areas of Sri Lanka to safeguard the Tamils and get implemented on the ground the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka Accord signed by Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister and Jayewardene as President of Sri Lanka. The LTTE disinformation machine by now well established went on an over drive with salacious stories of the atrocities of the Indian army. Their Indian stooges held rallies and published booklets within India to discredit the IPKF. Rajiv Gandhi, by now beleagured by the Bofors scandal and the betrayal of the new President of Sri Lanka, Premadasa who had entered into a pact to fund the LTTE, agreed to withdraw the IPKF in a phased manner. However, RG lost his party’s majority in the elections to Parliament in 1989, and his successor V.P.Singh whose allies openly supported the LTTE, immediately withdrew the IPKF.
The LTTE, thus was portrayed in the anti-India media as having "defeated" the world’s third largest army, and thus acquired a larger than life image. It used it’s hero status with a vocal minority in Tamil Nadu who were LTTE’s large financial beneficiaries to build a network of supply chains within the Tamil Nadu state. They had access to hospitals for their injured cadre, supply of diesel, kerosene, and medicines for the Jaffna supporters, small arms manufacture units in Coimbatore, uniform stitching factory in Erode, and a modern wireless communication centre in Trichy. The second rank leaders of the LTTE traveled freely within the state in cars using the ruling DMK party flags to evade the police.
But the situation changed soon enough. The V.P.Singh government got toppled in 1990, and a government headed by Chandrashekhar took office. This author was the senior most Minister in that government and also perceived as the architect of the new government formation. Rajiv Gandhi extended his party’s support to the government. Within two months in office and under my supervision, the DMK government in the state was dismissed on the ground that there was collusion of the Chief Minister with the LTTE. The LTTE supply chain was thereafter destroyed.
The problem worsened for the LTTE with the declaration of mid-term elections to Parliament. The media hype, whether it was genuine, misinformed, or contrived disinformation, made out that Rajiv Gandhi would return with a majority in the elections, and become Prime Minister again. Having learnt of Rajiv Gandhi’s unguarded remarks that he would “fix” the LTTE once he returned to office, Prabhakaran set into motion a plan to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi.
But Prabhakaran needed two things to obtain, to carry out his assassination plan successfully. First was to ensure that RG came to Tamil Nadu to be accessible to the LTTE assassins, and second, some people (as allies) highly placed in India, and so powerful that the blame for the assassination would not be pinned on the LTTE.
These two pre-conditions were understandable since trusted Tamil speaking LTTE cadres could not move around secretly and freely anywhere in India except in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry. Hence the assassination had to take place in Tamil Nadu.
But more importantly, seeing the popularity amongst Tamils of Chandrashekar government’s decision dismiss Karunanidhi’s state government, the LTTE could ill-afford the stigma of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. They had to have a powerful clique in India that could divert the investigative agencies from pursuing the LTTE as the suspects in the assassination.
The LTTE did succeed in getting Rajiv Gandhi to come to a convenient spot in Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991 to be able to assassinate him. How that was arranged is known, even though during his earlier visit in April 1991 it was decided by Rajiv Gandhi not to return to campaign in Tamil Nadu. His tour programme, after it was decided and drawn up, was also not kept secret. What has not been investigated so far is whether there is a nexus between the LTTE wanting him in Tamil Nadu and those in Rajiv Gandhi’s close circle insisting on his going there. This is a matter that normally should have been investigated, but D.R. Kartikeyan of the Special Investigation Team [SIT] terms of reference was just to determine who or which agency killed Rajiv Gandhi. On that question he did a brilliant job, and merits the highest national award for it. But investigation of the conspiracy angle was outside his scope of inquiry.
The Commission, set up before I had demitted office as Union Law Minister, under a sitting senior judge of the Supreme Court, Justice J.S.Verma (later CJI) to go into the security lapses, came to the conclusion that the security arrangements were adequate, but that the Congress Party local leaders wantonly disrupted and broke these arrangements. The Commission urged further in-depth inquiry into it. The successor Narasimha Rao government declined to accept the recommendation, and the Report was shelved. Instead the pro-LTTE circle in India began to lobby for a new Commission to go into the conspiracy angle in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination.
A Commission was indeed set up under Justice M.C.Jain, a retired former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. The Commission soon became a circus and a platform for nefarious propaganda. The attempts to frame others became ridiculous. Recently the Madras High Court had to impose a fine of Rs.1 lakh on a Congress Party worker for filing a scurrilous PIL to demand a re-investigation into the assassination, holding that LTTE did not carry out the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi!
But the motive then behind the inquisition by the Jain Commission was obvious—exonerate the LTTE by throwing up bogus leads and new accusations to unsettle the SIT probe being led by Kartikeyan, which probe was at an advanced stage of clinching the case against the LTTE. But the Supreme Court put an end to such mischievous attempts by holding in a 400 page judgment that the LTTE was the agency that killed Rajiv Gandhi on the direction of Prabhakaran. The assassin in chief is dead in the most demeaning of circumstances, the question of a wider conspiracy to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi is still open. The CBI-led body Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Agency[MDMA] is still investigating that aspect. But CBI's reputation today is in tattters.
Indeed the matter gets very intriguing when all the circumstantial evidences are put together. These are:
[1] Why and how was Rajiv Gandhi prevailed upon and by whom, to go back to Tamil Nadu to campaign when the then TNCC President, Vazhapadi Ramamurthy, the AIADMK leader and ally Ms.Jayalalitha, the TN Governor Bhisma Narayan Singh, and the Chandrashekhar government were all against it?
[2] How is it that not one Congress leader was in close enough proximity to Rajiv Gandhi [Verma Commission puts it as a circle within a diameter of 12 feet] to be killed or seriously injured at the detonation spot along with him ?
[3] On whose authority was the NSG restrained for 14 hours after reaching the site, from storming the hideout of the assassination mastermind Sivarasan and others in Bangalore till this murderous gang had committed suicide and could not sing for the authorities about the assassination?
[4] Why Ms.Sonia Gandhi wrote to President of India seeking setting aside the death sentence imposed by the Supreme Court on LTTE conspirators in the assassination, when Nehru did not for Godse and Rajiv Gandhi refused the pleas for Satwant Singh ?
[5] How is it defensible for the widow of Rajiv Gandhi to have an open political alliance with those who have acted at the behest of the LTTE such as the DMK, PMK, MDMK and the Dalit Panthers? The last three justify the assassination ! How can the awarding of one acre of land next to the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi and a donation of a lakh of rupees be justified for the Dravida Kazhagam (DK), which DK does have any presence in the Delhi area? Of the 26 convicted by the Trial Court in the assassination case, nine belong to the DK.
The Rajiv Gandhi assassination is an important question of national security for Indians because the LTTE was a foreign terrorist organization that killed our leader in our country, merely stating that because his policies were not to the LTTE's liking he had to be killed. Can we be safe if we allow such a terrorist organization to strike roots in our neighbourhood and have a terror infrastructure than can vitiate the democratic politics of India with money, narcotics, and plain murder?
The LTTE from day one has been part of the problem of the Tamil-Sinhala conflict, and not a part of the solution. Part of the problem is the inability of the Sinhala majority to share power with the Tamil minority. Such a sharing can be best done in a Constitution with sufficient devolution---by replacing the present unitary Sri Lankan one with a quasi-federal Indian type or fully federal US type.
Tamils and Sinhalas are one people. They have the same DNA structure. There is thus no ethnic difference between them. They all had originated in the Indian mainland and today speak sister languages, Sinhala and Tamil, with a large vocabulary in common with Sanskrit and Pali, both Indian languages. Their scripts have both evolved from the Brahmi script. Thus, there is no fundamental linguistic difference either. Their religions, Hinduism and Buddhism believe in the same distinguishing and fundamental theology of darshan, re-incarnation and karma. In fact, Buddhism began as a reform movement of Hinduism and these reforms have been absorbed by Hinduism. Hence, there is also fundamentally no religious difference between a Sinhala Buddhist and Tamil Hindu.
The two communities grew apart during the colonial period because the Tamils had access to the British imperialist invaders, due to their earlier contacts with them on the Indian mainland. This gave the Tamils professional and educational advantages. The Sinhala majority upon getting Independence used their brute majority to try and close the gap by undemocratic equalization procedures and denying power to the Tamils by adopting a unitary constitution that had no safeguards for the Tamil minority. This of course backfired, in fact has landed Sri Lanka in to spiraling crisis.
The way out today, consistent with India’s national security aims, is for Sri Lanka to immediately adopt a Resolution in their Parliament to implement a devolved Constitution, and for India to assist liberally Sri Lanka since the LTTE insurgency menace is now finished off. The US, China and Israel, nations which can contribute for the implementation of this solution, must back India in this intervention.
A word of praise for the resoluteness of President Rajapakse would also not be out of place. India must formally honor him for putting an end to the organization that killed Rajiv Gandhi and so many democratic minded leaders. At this hour I remember also Gamini Dissanayake who was murdered by the LTTE merely for promising Indians Prabhakaran's extradition,
- Asian Tribune -
Comments
Thank you Dr. Swamy for a
Thank you Dr. Swamy for a good summary. It is indeed true that the so-called Tamil and Sinhala of SL are virtually identical.
Thus there is no need for a "federal" solution ala India. What SL needs is making equal opportunities available for all through anti-discrimination/villification laws, develop all regions (this is what devolution means in a small island) equally and to repeal all anachronistic laws which enforces discrimination such as Thesavalamai law of Jaffna which discriminates against other castes and sinhala, muslims and burgher in favour of Vellalah elite (Hindu and Christian).
When these things happen then the people of SL will truly feel equal to each other in terms of opportunities and brotherhood.
As HE the President of SL said today, there are no ethnic differences in SL, only the differences between those who love the country and those who don't.
An exceptional assessment as
An exceptional assessment as well as suggestions by Dr. Swamy.
I concur with his vision for a solution: "Such a sharing can be best done in a Constitution with sufficient devolution---by replacing the present unitary Sri Lankan one with a quasi-federal Indian type or fully federal US type", however, with a some key exceptions.
Both, Indian and US federal systems are asymmetric systems and perhaps not suitable for Sri Lanka for variety of reasons. Perhaps what would be more practical and efficient is a symmetric federal-like arrangement among devolving units with some redrawing of provinces boundaries to give a semblance of geo-symmetry. This will eliminate the controversial dual-ethno-state (i.e. Sinhalese state vs. Tamil state) asymmetric federal model which in my view is too polarizing and not suitable for Sri Lanka. A federal-like system in which power is devolved from the center to the symmetric units will be hugely beneficial to all inhabitants of the units than the present centrally controlled and managed system (with an incredibly inefficient bureacracy).
I totally disagree with one
I totally disagree with one or two things of Dr. Swami’s analysis. But the main point is very true, that the LTTE was not a part of the solution but a part of the problem. As it is now decimated, Sri Lankans have a golden opportunity to rebuild the country. Unlike in India, we never shed a drop of blood (or even a drop of sweat for that matter) to gain independence in 1948, as a result of which, our leaders as well as majority of masses could not get rid of the feeling that westerners are the best and should be followed to the letter. Now we feel the same way the Indians would have felt when they gained independence in 1947. As our president said there are only two categories of people, patriots and non-patriots. Let’s forget about the non-patriots, because they will face a natural (political) death in near future. But as for the patriots, irrespective of their race, let’s start building our country, our nation.
Dr. Swamy means well when he
Dr. Swamy means well when he talks of a federal solution which in the case of large countries like India and the US makes sense, but in the case of a tiny island with its resources so irregularly distributed that the regions cannot have symmetric devolutions of powers in any meaningful way, devolution will once more become reason for disparities and discontents between regions which do not manage to keep up with the development goals expected. Disparities in situations like Bihar in India which is a very poor state that needs special inputs and assistance in order to impel it out of its economically depressed situation which has led to terrorist ideologies taking root, as opposed to Tamil Nadu which receives a lot of foreign direct investment and has shown enormous eocnomic growth as a result, would be more apparent. In Sri Lanka such disparities would be more likely to lead to intense clashes and problems of discontent due to the small distances between regions. Certainly the local people of the regions should be the main deciders of priorities on how their budgets are spent, etc., but in order not to let disparities between regions become reasons for dissatisfaction, the local governments will have to work very closely with the Central govt., which means that in Sri Lanka "devolution" would ultimately amount to a sham.
Another point is that devolution was not something that the South ever asked for or wanted. It is the Tamil leaders who for reasons of their own demanded it and had found support among a few political elements in the South, largely for expediencies of forming coalition governments.
The question thus arises: Why do the Tamil people still want devolution when more of them, especially the more affluent, live in the South? Does it mean that these elites will move to the North or East? Their dissatisfactions with the unitary system should be discussed honestly and openly and solutions sought that would make sense in a country where the histories and demographics are complex and do not conform to the normal criteria and patterns that make for devolution as the suitable and successful model for governance.
If people in Sri Lanka who already have their basic needs taken care of through state-provided Education, Health, Housing and Food, feel that they have the opportunities to extricate themselves through hard work and honest competition from the situations in which they feel themselves underprivileged, the country can return to being the thrice-blessed land that Elders remember. For this a curtailment of population growth is essential together with sustainable development which should be the fundamental formulae within which the pursuit of REASONABLE progress with responsibility and contentment can be achieved and kept. The frenetic pursuit of material progress is certainly not the answer. Let Sri Lanka keep things slower remembering that the MIDDLE PATH is the sustainable path of progress. It is compatible with Sri Lanka's culture and pace of life. Solutions could be sought within that cultural framework which would be more enduring. The war has taught the nation much about our common humanity, and it is from that standpoint that the solutions must emerge.
AML
Oh come on Swami! You are
Oh come on Swami! You are still unable to understand us! SRI LANKAN CONSTITUTION ONLY SPEAK ABOUT A SINGLE COUNTRY AND NOT AN UNITED COUNTRY. Our warriors won this battle after sacrificing everything, not to give a FEDERAL solution. Local government and Provincial government system has already provided ENOUGH autonomy (But not ENOUGH as separatists' wishes, like police powers ect.) Now TNA bulls also can come to the elections and contest (It is doubtful whether they contest, because now the cow boy who has given orders to these fine bulls is shot dead! and they must be wondering what to do next - biting a cyanide with hay is a good solution!!!)
Post new comment