Editorial The Island

Former Indian Union Law Minister Ram Jethmalani has said the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi created the LTTE to protect Indian interests as she believed China and Pakistan were establishing their power in Sri Lanka. He has made no revelation. That Sri Lanka got a RAW deal from India is only too well known.

Jethmalani has also suppressed part of the truth, we reckon. India was troubled by the late President J. R. Jayewardene’s pro-American foreign policy more than Sri Lanka’s ties with Pakistan or any other country. It was also to tame JRJ, who used to ruffle the feathers of the Gandhi dynasty that Rajiv went to the extent of violating this country’s air space and having Indian boots here.

Ironically, India has not only forged strong ties with the US during the last three decades but also joined the latter’s diplomatic witch hunt against Sri Lanka! Rajiv paid for the egregious blunders he and his mother made, with his dear life, and his party, the Congress, is currently engaged in a political battle with Tamil Nadu over moves to release his killers. Both Indira and Rajiv must be spinning in their graves!

What Jethmalani has left unsaid is that India rectified its blunder five years ago by having its Frankenstein monster blown out of the water on the banks of Nanthikadal. It backed Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE fully though there were times when it dilly-dallied owing to pressure from some key Congress allies in Tamil Nadu like Karunanidhi, who even staged a fast in a bid to save Prabhakaran.

Since the defeat of the LTTE, India has adopted a different strategy to protect its interests. It stands accused of trying to control Sri Lanka’s North by manipulating the newly-elected Northern Provincial Council (NPC), which has even called for direct flights between Jaffna and South India. New Delhi, it may be recalled, employed a similar method in the late 1980s, when it had its puppet, Vartharajah Perumal, installed as the Chief Minister of the then merged North-East Province, but its plan went awry due to the Premadasa-Prabhakaran honeymoon which caused the IPKF to pull out prematurely. Perumal fled the country, unable to face the LTTE, after declaring unilateral independence as a face-saving exercise.

Jethmalani has said that ‘Indira wanted some force inside Sri Lanka to safeguard Indian interests’. This time around, India seems to be playing its cards well. It has become a generous benefactor of the NPC, calling for the devolution of more powers, and raising Sri Lanka’s alleged accountability issues in Geneva. Some political observers have argued that there is the possibility of Sri Lanka’s North going the same way as Ukraine’s autonomous region, Crimea, where Russians have moved in, claiming to protect the interests of Ukrainians of Russian descent. The proponents of this view may have sought to give Sri Lanka a scare, but their argument is self-defeating in that it provides justification for the Rajapaksa government’s refusal to devolve more powers to the periphery!

What moral right does India have to raise ‘accountability issues’ in Geneva, having created terrorism which snuffed out tens of thousands of lives in this country?

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has been sentenced to 50 years in jail for aiding terrorists responsible for crimes against civilians such as massacres and using child soldiers in neighbouring Sierra Leone. Obviously, the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi could not have created the LTTE on her own; there must have been many others involved in that destabilisation project. They must be still alive and perhaps in responsible positions in the Indian government, military, foreign service and intelligence agencies. The question is why they are not held accountable for the LTTE’s crimes.