Political parties in the southern state of Tamil Nadu in neighbouring India this week whipped up anti-Sri Lanka sentiment by organising a day-long fast to protest the 'killings of Tamil civilians' in the course of the stepped up military offensive against the LTTE.

By all accounts, the fast was seen a harbinger for political re-alignments in the state, with the Left parties bringing most of the smaller parties under one front and then have a tie-up with the AIADMK, the party of the former chief minister J. Jayalalitha, and trying to edge out the ruling Congress Party, and the mainstream BJP. In short, it was all politics at the expense of the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils.

This is not the first; nor the last of these fasts, which are more a farce, than a fast -- the silver lining being that not all political parties joined in the protest, signalling that not all of India is of the same wave-length and mind-set.

No doubt, there is some genuine concern in the state of Tamil Nadu. The sensitivities involved in fellow Tamils being victims of a military offensive into rebel-held areas of Sri Lanka cannot easily be dismissed. The Sri Lanka Government seems to have pooh-poohed the fast, with the Cabinet spokesman going on the basis that the Government has not been officially informed of the proceedings. That may not be the best way of approaching the subject, because fighting in the island triggers a humanitarian issue, causing an influx of refugees into the southern Indian state, snowballing into a political issue in India.

This then puts pressure on the central Indian coalition Government, which relies heavily on the support of regional parties, like those in Tamil Nadu, for its political survival. So, the Sri Lankan Government cannot just summarily dismiss events in Tamil Nadu. On the other hand, need one be apologetic to the state of Tamil Nadu for what is happening in the Wanni area of Sri Lanka today?

True, they have had to deal with thousands of refugees and their natural increase over a period of nearly a quarter of a century since the dreadful ethnic riots of July 1983 in the island-nation. But, consider what the political leadership of Tamil Nadu has done to fan this insurgency in Sri Lanka and cause misery to hundreds of thousands Tamil people living in the North and East of the country over this period of time.

Quite apart from the early years, when the Indian central Government engineered the bloody insurgency in Sri Lanka, only to reverse its role with the advent of the controversial 1987 Peace Accord with Sri Lanka, and then, the assassination of her one-time Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, Tamil Nadu politicians have been competing with each other, elbowing each other in the race for the hand of the LTTE hierarchy.

They have openly collected funds from the Tamil Nadu public and handed the cheque to an armed movement fighting for separation in their southern neighbourhood. They liked to be photographed with the guerrilla leaders. They were driven by populism, not on what is right and wrong, spitting racial venom across the narrow waters that divide the two countries. Their leaders couldn't have cared less to ever visit Sri Lanka and interact with the political leadership of this country. As much can be said about the Sri Lankan political leadership's interaction with the Tamil Nadu political leadership. One can legitimately ask how many times the much-travelled Foreign Minister of Sri Lanka has visited Chennai during his stint, other than to take a connecting flight to some western capital, and on the other hand, the number of times he's been to London, New York or even Rio de Janeiro.

While the Sri Lankan Government needs to upgrade its relations with neighbouring 'states' - those of southern India -- Tamil Nadu politicians who find it politically expedient to hitch their wagon to the ethnic star might consider some soul-searching and see whether the excessive atrocities that have been committed by Tamils on Tamils in Sri Lanka, the forced recruitment of children to go into combat with a much better equipped opponent, the long years of living in fear of life and liberty for hundreds of thousands, often in refugee camps, and the sheer impoverishment of those Tamil people is the liberation that they espouse for their brethren across the seas.

What is happening in the Wanni is not to anyone's liking, but there is increasing acceptance that surgery is now the only cure for this quarter-century-old wound. Tamil Nadu knows how its central Government cracked down on its own moves for separation in the 1960s, and would not allow anything of the kind ever again.

Their politicians must not be seen as undermining moves to bring ultimate peace to the Tamils of this island-nation by shedding 'crocodile tears' on the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils for pure political gain; as much there being a major onus on the part of the Sri Lankan administration of reaching out to the southern states of India on a policy of good neighbourliness.