Delhi’s snubs and signals to India’s utmost Isle

By Rajan Philips

From the Asian kings (and Parthian among these), From India and the Golden Chersoness, And utmost Indian Isle Taprobane, Dusk faces with silken Turbants wreathed; - Milton, Paradise Regained

The TNA MPs, LTTE’s parliamentary pollution neutralizers in Colombo, were rendered untouchables in New Delhi. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would not grant them an audience after they had been camping out for weeks in Delhi hoping for one. He snubbed them, the ‘bad Tamils’, with his left hand.

Almost at the same time, ambidextrously even, he extended his right hand to welcome the ‘good Tamils’ - representatives from the three non-LTTE parties, the one-man TULF and the miniscule PLOTE and EPRLF. The meeting with these parties was reportedly intended as “New Delhi’s exercise for a better understanding of the situation (in Sri Lanka) and to explore the possible role it can play to resolve the ethnic problem.”

As if to mix up its signals, New Delhi also considered inviting the southern JVP, again for a better understanding of the ground situation, although such an invitation would be seen as a reward for the JVP’s role of being the main detractor and the real war monger ever since the now defunct peace process began in 2002.

Quite recently a Colombo commentator offered New Delhi an unsolicited public advice: that before it embarks on a path of validating the JVP, India should reflect on the consequences of its previous role in nurturing the Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups, in general, and the LTTE in particular. Such outside advices seldom get registered in bureaucratic policy files. There is no need for a special understanding of Sri Lanka’s ground situation at present. The facts are brutal and the prospects disastrous: 220 killed and 220,000 displaced in the last two months. Cumulatively, and courtesy the tsunami, nearly 100,000 killed and over one million displaced over the last 20 years. Schools closed, hospitals paralyzed, homes abandoned, land scorched, people on the run - all in the beleaguered North East Provinces and facing the never ending political and legal parody: to merge, or to de-merge.

Any role that anybody can play, the main role that India must play, is to bring the current fighting to an end and start dealing with this continuing humanitarian shame and disaster. To regain the lost - but not quite a - paradise.

Snubs and Signals

India has been extending snubs and signals ever since President Mahinda Rajapakse took office, and both he and the LTTE began to lay competing claims for India’s understanding and involvement. The TNA snub is the most obvious, but there have been other instances of subtle snubs and positive signals, both official and via inspired musings from the sidelines. They are becoming quite a list:

1) Opposition to insistence on the unitary constitution and attempts to de-merge the Northern and Eastern Provinces.

2) Agreeing that LTTE is dangerous organization, but advising that this fact should not stand in the way engaging it in talks.

3) It is legitimate to call for a change in the leadership of the LTTE, but dangerous and ill-advised to seek its elimination. 4) Misgivings over the consequences of Pakistan’s current role in Sri Lanka - which seems to encourage the pursuit of military solution rather than political solution, and foster the military culture of launching aerial attacks within the country, something India never resorts to in all its handling of its many internal uprisings. 5) Consistent offering of India’s, help, advice and resources for Sri Lanka to develop a comprehensive and inclusive system of devolution as the basis for a permanent solution.

It is fair to say that politically and diplomatically India has been consistent in these positions although the emphases and the nuances may have varied from time to time. This is understandable considering the long time span and the many phases over which the Sri Lankan conflict has been intractably unfolding.

So many of India’s best and brightest have had a kick at the Sri Lankan can of worms, that the role of each of them can be associated with a personal moniker: the avuncular Thomas Abraham, Parthasarathy’s suave Brhaminism, the bullying Romesh Bhandari, the acute Tamilians - Chidambaram and Panrutti Ramachandran, and the hyper-diplomatic J. N. Dixit.

After Dixit, India opted for a more hands-off approach, and the late diplomat recounted in his memoirs that no constitutional proposal since the Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement has bettered what was included in that Agreement as the terms of settlement of the Tamil question. One of the main political developments since the Agreement, notes Dixit, is the emergence of the Muslim question. It cannot be pushed under the carpet any longer. Dixit also made the observation that the objective purpose behind President Premadasa’s insistence on the withdrawal of the IPKF was to end India’s oversight in resolving Sri Lanka’s Tamil question.

The fact is also that in their irresponsible arrogance many Sri Lankan Tamil notables concluded that their self-determination project was beyond India’s reach. The killing of Rajiv Gandhi was the most grievous expression of that arrogance.

The Premadasa purpose has admittedly failed and Tamil overreaching has been cut down to size. Everyone wants India involved now, but not necessarily for the same reason, or goal. There lies the rub.

India and the rest of the world can only do so much, and unless the Sri Lankan counterparts pursue the peace and political initiatives with persistence and sincerity there will be no movement on the road to resolution. Only suicidal spinning, on the road to dissolution.

India’s Example

Dixit’s assessment of the Indo-Sri Lanka agreement offers the threshold for devolution that the All Party Committee and the Experts Panel should keep in mind as they design the newest devolution package.

Mani Shankar Aiyar, India’s Minister for Panchayat Raj, last week addressed the All Party Committee and the Experts Panel on the usefulness of India’s Panchayat Raj model for Sri Lanka. There could indeed be useful lessons to be drawn from the Panchayat model for empowering people in local governance, but the political dimension of the Tamil and Muslim questions should not be lost sight of.

Panchayat governance in India is the fruitful fusion of a historical institution and modern federalism. The two have evolved together remarkably under colonial rule and since independence, and one cannot be separated from the other.

Even as they work out the details, the experts and their political masters should take note of the example of the Indian state and India’s leaders of state and nation in successfully establishing ‘self-rule and shared rule’ in India - at the level of the Union, the states and, yes, the Panchayats.

They should, in particular, look for inspiration in Jawaharlal Nehru’s very decent haste in responding to one act of self-immolation - Potti Sriramula’s fast unto death in Hyderabad, in 1952, and creating within one year Andhra Pradesh as a new state in the Union.

The Sri Lankan leaders, on both sides of the ethnic divide, with thousands of lost lives to account for, have much to show by way of inspiration and much to achieve through sensible leadership. Dixit makes another perceptive observation, in his memoir, about the emergence of the Sri Lankan military as a political force on the ethnic question, and its determination to secure a strong position prior to negotiation. The recent statements by Sri Lanka’s military leaders are consistent with this assessment.

In theory, there is nothing apparently unexceptionable about a national army taking on internal rebellions, but in practice the judgment on such encounters can only be determined by the specifics of each case.

In the case of India, thanks to its multi-polar ethnic reality, all national institutions including the armed forces are reflective of the Indian mosaic. Given Sri Lanka’s largely bi-polar reality and the army recruitment practices infamously put in place by N.Q. Dias in the 1960s, any and every confrontation between the army and the LTTE becomes a Sinhala-Tamil dog fight, and such fighting is not conducive to reaching a political solution.

Sri Lankan Roles and Responsibilities

The blame for Sri Lanka’s current political impasse rests with all Sri Lankan political organizations, and the LTTE’s share is second to no one’s. The danger is that the political impasse is now being sustained and driven by the military dynamic.

As India explores the possibility of a new, and more active, role in Sri Lanka, it has all the reason to be cautious and circumspect. The least that can be expected of India is for it to play its hands clean, open and above board, in the true Nehruvian tradition of regional relations and eschewing the post-Nehruvian proclivities for machinations.

What it means is that India has to play a genuinely facilitating role in bringing the two major parties, the SLFP and the UNP, to reach a consensus on the parameters of the solution to the Tamil and Muslim questions.

If it could persuade the JVP to rally towards such a consensus, then all powers to New Delhi in accomplishing that.

It means pressurizing in consort with the Co-Chairs the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government to unequivocally commit to cessation of all violence, not only by and against each other but also by proxies and against innocent civilians. It means enabling whatever ‘patronizing’ influences there is in Tamil Nadu or other countries with expatriate Sri Lankan Tamils to create a democratic Tamil political coalition that will engage and include, but not exclude, the political sections of the LTTE.

While snubbing the bad Tamil politicians and welcoming the good, India has to give some thought to what the Tamil people in the North and East might be thinking.

Right now, they are not thinking of Panchayats or federalism, peace or self-determination, but of escaping a life condition that is becoming all too nasty, brutish and short.

In their hour of helplessness, the Tamil people would like to see their representatives identify themselves with their current plight and fearlessly speak out on their behalf - even if it means for a change criticizing the government.

Hopefully, those Tamils whom India is recognizing as good representatives are not lacking in such boldness.