Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . Canada

12 April 2015

Mr. Gaurav Ahluwalia

First Secretary (Political) & Head of Chancery

High Commission of India in Sri Lanka

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Dear Mr. Ahluwalia:

What’s all this eye-wash by you on behalf of your country India, when you said I am constrained to write this letter in response to your far-fetched editorial titled Arming Terrorists –II issued the following statement that appeared in your esteemed newspaper on 2 April 2015.”   The paper you refer to is Sri Lanka’s The Island, and I am glad that you recognized it as an Esteemed newspaper” as it is indeed one, and that is why I trust the content of its editorial that you refer to.

But, Ahluwalia, Shish, man! You seem to be forgetting the crass mischief and cunning that you Indians were up to some 32 years ago.  And you Indians call yourselves, a good friend of our neighbour Sri Lanka, and which has been so for donkeys years,” and yet screwed, bludgeoned and bloodied Sri Lanka in Geneva, not once, but twice twinning with the western nations who wanted to get at Sri Lanka for eliminating the ruthless ‘Made in India’ Tamil Tiger terrorists, the goose that laid their golden eggs filled with Sri Lankan-Tamil votes for domestic parliamentary elections.   Good neighbour”, my foot.

Don’t be so absurd, Ahluwalia.   That disingenuous notion doesn’t cut mustard at all!

You need some nudging of your memory and let me help you with some facts.

FACT 1.    When Sri Lanka was haemorrhaging battling the ruthless  serial-killer Tamil Tiger terrorists who were trained by your Indira Gandhi’s Government in the early 1980s in almost 30 military camps in South India and some in the North, your Indira Gandhi’s Government succeeded adding pressure upon countries friendly to Sri Lanka to withhold any military assistance to my island paradise, Sri Lanka.  The motive of your Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was to destabilize Sri Lanka.  That was Indira Gandhi’s Indian Monroe regional doctrine at work.  She wanted to sit on the throne as the Queen of India’s regional conglomeration of small nations.

Twenty Ambassadors stationed in New Delhi were summoned and were told very firmly that such assistance would not be welcome by India.  By then the message was clear to the Sri Lankan government that the Indian subcontinent with its 800 million peoples carried more weight than this puny island democracy of just 15 million people, and that giant India was the region’s Big Bully Boy!

So Ahluwalia, let’s cut out that rogue Made in India eyewash of yours.

 FACT 2.  On Monday, January 28, 1985, Canada’s Globe and Mail published my letter challenging the defense of India’s friendly attitude on Sri Lanka (Tamils in Sri Lanka, Dec.28, 1984) by your Mr. M.K. Dhar from the Indian High Commission in Ottawa.

I wrote, I welcome the response by the Indian High Commission in defending its late Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, but I must point out that it was Sri Lanka’s President Junius Jayewardena who approached Mrs. Gandhi to arrive at a political solution.

One would have expected saner and more durable international relations from the Chairman of the non-aligned nations, but Mrs. Gandhi turned a blind eye on Sri Lanka’s Tamil terrorists operating from camps on  her Indian territory, and a deaf ear to representations by the Sri Lankan Government about these Tamil terrorists’ hostile activities against Sri Lanka.

 Since her party was running third in Tamil Nadu, Mrs. Gandhi guarded crucial southern Tamil votes by averting her attention from the well-heeled Tiger” terrorists who are still using southern India as their base to break up Sri Lanka.  India has never acknowledged the presence of these Tamil terrorists in Tamil Nadu, even though they stick out like sore thumbs.”

So Ahluwalia, let’s cut out that insipid bucket of nasty irritant eye-wash of yours.  It only tears my eyes to spit out dragon-fire anger at you Indians.

FACT 3.   You Indians never acknowledged that you trained the Tamil Tigers on your soil.   But Indira Gandhi’s Indian lie was exposed with the feature article Sri Lanka Rebels: Ominous Presence in Tamil Nadu in India Today of March 31, 1984, with photo illustrations.

Wow!  You damn liars, I said under my breath, and that’s when Indira Gandhi was shamed as a  God-damn liar.  And Sri Lanka couldn’t trust you lot any more as a good friendly neighbour” as that sentiment was as disposable as a week old bunches of beef- kebab steel-hooked hanging from a Kolkata street food stall under a hot sun.

So Ahluwalia, just give up trying to pull wool over our eyes.  That is a bit stupid isn’t it, after all what happened in the early 1980s.

FACT 4.   Your statement addressed to the Editor of The Island, 6. The attempt to pin the blame for the decades of violence in Sri Lanka on India is condemnable and a gross distortion of fact,” is sordid.

Come on, Ahluwalia, stop trying to paint your Indian politicians of Lok Sabha and of Tamil Nadu, lily-white.  For one thing the lily-white paint wouldn’t stick on human-skin that is soaked in Made in India, Cleansing Namaste Lying Oil .

It were Indira Gandhi’s RAW who collected  in late 1983, the barefooted Tamil guerilla’s who couldn’t shoot straight and missed their targets by almost 12 inches for military training to destabilize Sri Lanka.  They were trained in armed combat, weapons training with 303, Kalashnikovs, revolvers, leopard crawl, monkey crawl, ghost walk, first aid, to use G3pistols, SLR, LMG, SMG, No.36 Browning Revolvers, rocket launches, 2” Mortars, explosives, grenade throwing, Guerilla warfare, Military tactics, burying land mines, and so forth in camps at Parangimali, Salem Kollimalai, Kanjipuram, Meenabakkam, Sengalpattu,Valachcheri and Thanikramam and many more like in Deheradun at the foothills of the Himalayas.

Strap yourself to your chair Ahluwalia in case you will feel like crawling under your Desk with embarrassment and shame when reading the following factual  information how Sri Lanka’s good friendly- neighbour, Indira Gandhi’s India, was making an effort to screw Sri Lanka royally and destabilize her between 1984 and 86.

Here are the camps in India that trained the Tamil guerillas (Tamil Tigers) which you tried to deny.

LTTE  (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) – 6 camps in the Districts of Anna (1 camp), Thanjavur West (1 camp), Thanjavur East (1 camp), Madurai (1 camp) and Ramnad (1 camp) of Tamil Nadu.  The total strength of trainees in these camps was 495 cadres including 90 female Tigers.  The camp at Sirumalai (Anna District) was the only camp where 90 female Tigers were trained together with 40 male Tigers;

TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation Oganization) – 5 camps were reported to be in the Districts of Ramnad (3 camps) and Salem (2 camps).  There were a total of 233 male cadres undergoing military training in these camps;

EROS (Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students) cadres were trained in two camps in the Districts of Ramnad and Pasumpon Muthuramalingam districts.  There were 8 male trainees in these camps going through a regime of physical and arms training;

EPRLF (Eelam Peoples Revolutionary Liberation Front) cadres were trained in military camps in the districts of Thanjavur West (3 camps), South Arcot (2 camps), Trichy (1 camp) and Ramnad (1 camp) with a total strength of 73 male trainees who were trained in guerilla warfare, as well as physical and arms training.  These camps reported to have possessed sophisticated weapons like Light-machine guns, as well a military transport vehicles as military training tools;

PLOTE (The Peoples Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam) was conducting training in 18 camps in the districts of Thanjavur West (11 camps), Pudukottai (4 camps), Tirunelvei East (2 camps) and Thanjavur East (1 camp).  A total of 2,236 cadres in addition to 94 female cadres were getting trained in these camps.   The camps possessed transport facilities, boat and combat weapons.  Predominantly, the training comprised guerilla warfare and also physical training, swimming and boat driving to create a Sea wing of the Tamil Tigers.

And there were other assorted guerilla organizations like the Tamil Eelam Army (TEA), TELA (Kanthan Group), TELA (Rajan Group) and a few others who were given military training at Tamil Nadu camps.

Ahluwalia, I think you should take a sip of water in case you feel choking and dizzy having been exposed to these facts that you are still in denial with.

I hope you are not going to be that stupid again,  being an Indian  diplomat (First Secretary-Politics) at your Colombo Mission, or  even if you are a non- diplomat who has the audacity to deny all these facts, and  now feel embarrassed for  being critical of The Island editorial.  You just cannot wash off the film of Sinhala and Muslim blood from your palms having aided and abetted the Tamil Tiger killings of innocent Sinhalese and Muslims, by promoting to establish the mono-ethnic, racist, Tamil separate State of Eelam in the North and East of Sri Lanka for the Tamils.

The first group that was chosen by your RAW for training in Tamil Nadu was the TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization).  With your India’s assistance TELO became a front line armed group, bombing and massacring innocent people, etc.

After the military training and having graduated these barefooted Tamil guerillas as ruthless Tamil Tiger terrorists, they were sent back to Northern Sri Lanka carrying Kalashnikovs in their arms like babies, and with festoons of live bullets around their necks like floral blood red Hibiscus garlands around separatist Tamil politicians at political rallies, and stacks of paper money in their pockets.

And you, Ahluwalia, better believe it and don’t pretend that you are a babe in the woods, playing hide-and-seek among mounds of twigs and fallen leaves.

After returning they started to kill innocent members of the Sinhalese fisher and farming folk,  Muslims at prayer in mosques, detonating claymore mines at Street corners during rush hours to blow the innocent civilians to smithereens, blowing up bridges and passenger buses, trains and planes,  etc.

FACT 5. Here’s another fact that would rubbish another of your denials about your India supporting the Tamil Tiger terrorists to destabilize Sri Lanka in support of Indira Gandhi’s Regional Monroe Doctrine.

In the early-mid 1980s, Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister M.G.Ramachandran of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and  M. Karunanidhi the leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), beside giving the TELO and LTTE sanctuary pumped them with millions of rupees for their cause of creating a Mono-ethnic, separate, racist Tamil state, Eelam, in the North and East of Sri Lanka.

Haro…hara!…This is indeed a treacherous dishonest act by Sri Lanka’s friendly neighbour, India. What piffle, Ahluwalia. As what is reassuring about the past of India’s interference in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs is that all of this did happen, and you are still  in denial.

The Fact remains, Ahluwalia, that India, Sri Lanka’s good neighbour armed the ruthless Tamil Terrorists, to destabilize her, and there shouldn’t be any If’s or But’s.

 I realize that you are an Indian diplomat, and you have to toe the Government’s line of, Oh, no we wouldn’t do it to our goodly neighbour, Sri Lanka,  we are innocent!” and in particular guard your job, even though the facts of India arming Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger terrorists are staring at your face with ample disgust.  But let’s not be stupid by denying these facts anymore.

 FACT 6.   In a document relating to Sri Lanka, released by the National Archives in London under the 30-year declassification rule says, Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had asked her British counterpart Margaret Thatcher to stop helping Sri Lanka with military advice to crush the separatist Tamil Eelam movement in the 1980s.”

 Ahluwalia, tell me, why the heck should Sri Lanka want any more international enemies, when she has her friendly neighbour, India, standing behind her back with a katar in her right hand to cut her throat.   How can Sri Lanka trust you Indians any more?  You tell me!

FACT  7.  In item 4 of your criticism of The Island editorial, you say: Any rational person who has knowledge of India-Sri Lanka relations would be well aware of the fact that IPKF was deployed at the invitation of Government of Sri Lanka.  IPKF was withdrawn when Government of Sri Lanka informed  Government of India that IPKF’s services were not required.”  And your item 5, says Nearly 1200 soldiers and officers of the IPKF made a supreme sacrifice for the unity and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka.

All what you say is non-plus, poppy-cock and sordid the way you twist facts to make you Indians look like martyrs and neighbourly angels.  What nonsense.  Here are the facts Ahluwalia.  You may accept or reject them as you wish, but I advice that you be judicious, as you may eventually end up looking a Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the liar of them all” fool.

Did I say, ….you twist facts to make you Indians look like martyrs and neighbourly angels.?”

 Of course, yes, Indian angels who took flight in Mirage 2000s screeching over Sri Lanka’s Northern skies violating the air space of a sovereign nation and scaring the jeepers out of the country’s President Jayewardena as you all did on June 4, 1987.  What arrogance… India, what a bully flexing its strong guns carrying arms.  This was the precursor to force the signature of Sri Lanka’s  President Jayewardena, on the India-Sri Lanka Peace Accord on 29 July 1987, with two Indian war ships parked in the waters outside Colombo to intimidate Sri Lanka.  That was crude and pathetic, wasn’t it?  Worse than a High School Bully!

The Indian angels who were on a humanitarian mission in Mirage 2000s were escorting five Indian Air Force Antonov –AN32 Transport planes with 25 tons of food and relief supplies to drop them to 800,000 Tamils in the Jaffna peninsular that you all thought were in distress.

It was when Wing Commander Subash Chandra Narula had raised his thumb when the Antonovs were over Jaffna Peninsular at sunset, the signal for the air force Sepoys” to push 25 tons of supplies that  came floating down under parachutes to land on the kabook ground.  The drop was near a railway station 4 miles north of Jaffna city.  The Sri Lankan Government called this insidious move a naked violation of our sovereignty.”

Shish!  All this aggression by Sri Lanka’s friendly neighbour.   That friendliness is not worth a couple of masala wade, that would satisfy the hunger of a destitute street person in Tamil Nadu.

And so I wrote this letter to The Ottawa Citizen which picked up ink on June 24, 1987 titled Indian Bully”.

 For some of us, it was a sick joke by bully-boy India to send unsolicited humanitarian aid to the Tamils of Jaffna” (June 4).

              When India is seething with poverty, misery, starvation and the impoverished  sick, trying to feed the Tamil separatist terrorists doesn’t seem right.

 Sri Lanka should have unloaded the supplies onto Sri Lankan fishing boats flying the Sri Lankan Red Cross flags, tagged the consignments – Mother Theresa India”, and sent them sailing off to the Indian shores.  She certainly would have been happy to receive them, and so would have the starving sick Indians that she is caring for. Especially those in Tamil Nadu.”

 Ahluwalia, your implications that IPKF landed on Sri Lanka soil was by the invitation of Sri Lanka, and 1,200 of their soldiers made a supreme sacrifice for the unity of Sri Lanka is an unhealthy thesis.

Come on, Ahluwalia, you seem to be an incorrigible joker.  Are you trying to tell us that the forced Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord that was signed under duress by Sri Lanka’s President Jayewardena on July 29, 1987,  with a couple of Indian war ships parked in the waters outside Colombo, did not have a clause that India agreed to establish order in the North and East through a force dubbed the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF),  and to cease assisting the Tamil terrorists.  And that the IPKF would disarm the Tamil terrorists in 72 hours?

Come on, you know it, don’t you?  And  I am sure you studied the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord like a child studying the alphabet, A,B.C.D…, when you were assigned as the First Secretary (Politics) at India’s Sri Lankan Mission in Colombo.  Right, Ahluwalia?

So the fourth biggest army in the world landed on Sri Lankan soil, code named Operation Pawan, to disarm the Tamil terrorists that India trained which they thought could be done in 72 hour and it was a military cake walk,  Ha! The IPKF was in for a surprise,   The Tamil Tigers that India trained to destabilized Sri Lanka took them on and sent the IPKF back to India carrying 1,200 body bags of their comrades who fell in action.  There was brutal fighting with their Tamil Boys whom they trained to fight the Sri Lankan Forces.  What a turn of events!

Were the Tamil terrorists good and diligent students of the Indian Army instructors in the 30 military training camps in mainly South India?  Of course, they were.  The classic battle was when the Tamil Tigers used the Helidropped IPKF  10^th Para Commandos and a contingent of the 13^th Sikh Light Infantry for target practice shooting them when they were floating down in parachutes.

Ahluwalia, being an Indian diplomat, I feel certain you were aware of this  military incident which happened at mid night of 12 October 1987, when the Helidrop operation on the Jaffna University to capture the LTTE leadership at the Jaffna University Building which served as their Tactical Headquarters went awry.  It was planned as a fast heliborne assault involving Mi-8s of the No.109 HU.   But, hey, these Tamil Tigers were trained to intercept intelligence information of the Sri Lankan armed forces.  Sure enough’ they used their training to intercept your intelligence communications and waited for your flying angels to float down to pop them one by one as their target practice by dodging  behind University buildings in the mid-night dark.  This helidropped forces suffered significant casualties, with nearly the entire Sikh LI detachment of 29 troops falling, along with six para-commandos falling in battle.

Well, Ahluwalia, if you say that these IPKF commandos made a supreme sacrifice to bring unity among the ethnic groups in Sri Lanka. I find your thesis hard to swallow.   Every one of those para-commandos  and  of the Sikh detachment would have been alive today if not for Indira Gandhi’s arrogance  poking her fingers in Sri Lanka’s internal affairs.  And over 27,000 Sri Lankan soldiers would not have met death at the hands of the Indira Gandhi’s India trained Tamil Tigers, again if not for the hegemonistic-arrogance of Indira Gandhi wanting to train these barefooted Tamil guerillas in armed combat to destabilize Sri Lanka.  And the Sri Lankan armed forces had no choice but to defend the lives of Sri Lankan citizens, the island’s sovereignty and its territory with guns and bullets.   It may sound simplistic, but this is what happened in a nutshell.  And that is how India’s  ‘we will teach Sri Lanka a lesson cookie’ crumbled.  And that is the rub.

Well, Ahluwalia, I hope this information opened your mind in what was involved in India’s attempt to destabilize Sri Lanka, and wanting  to appease M.G.Ramachandran an M.Krunanidhi of Tamil Nadu and  wanting to hand over with, we are friendly neighbours’ cunning, the North and East of the island to the separatist Tamils for their Eelam.

And Rajiv Gandhi in his arrogant bombast did say in Madras, having forced Sri Lanka to sign the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord on 29 July, 1987, that The Tamils got what they wanted and more.”

And now you know why your critique of The Island’s editorial got my goat and rejected your eye-wash in toto.

Sincerely,

Asoka Weerasinghe (Mr.)