Columns
Tamil Nad ill wind may herald Lanka’s tempest of doom
View(s):Two weeks ago Tamil Nad Tiger God Mother Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalithaa called upon the United Nations to hold a referendum amongst Tamils in Lanka and those displaced elsewhere to determine the establishment of a separate state of Eelam on Lankan soil. This week, not to be outdone, Tamil Nad’s opposition party, Muthuvel Karunanidhi’s DMK called upon the Indian central government to hold a referendum under UN auspices for the Lankan Tamils and the Tamil Diaspora to decide on a permanent solution to the ethnic crisis.
A few years ago a call by two political parties of an Indian state to demand of the United Nations and the Indian Government to hold a referendum in another sovereign nation would have seemed ludicrous and would have been dismissed by many as the fevered frenzied frothing of manic minds gripped by delusions of grandeur. No more. Today there has been a dramatic shift in the power structure of India when the states, having come of age and realising their own strengths, have begun to lay down terms to the centre and dictate to other sovereign nations as if they were sovereign states themselves.
From the Gandhamadana Mount of Southern India’s Pamban Island where Hanuman took off on his flight to set fire to Ravana’s Lanka blows an ill wind whose chill is ominous, whose velocity is gathering moment, and whose ordained target is to hit Lanka’s shores at the destined moment and to fall at will.
And if Lanka chooses to ignore the galloping gale gustily heading toward her, she will do so at her peril. For what may now be laughed off and treated with scorn as a mere ludicrous overblown puff of political rhetoric designed solely to feed the Tamil Nad voters’ Eelam gluttony may well turn out to contain the evil omens that harbinger Lanka’s own tempest of doom.
Take your mind back exactly forty years ago to Cyprus, a small island set in the deep blue waters of Mediterranean Sea, 47 nautical miles off the southern coast of Turkey. Lanka is just 22 miles across the Palk Strait from South India.
In 1960, Cyprus obtains independence from Britain under an Agreement signed between Britain, Greece, and Turkey, with the three states also assuming positions as guarantors of the rights given to the minority Turkish Cypriots which includes 30 per cent representation in Parliament and in the administration even though they constitute less than 20 per cent of the population, like the Lankan Tamils who form only 12 per cent in Sri Lanka.
Britain had ruled the island employing as it usually did, even in the case of Lanka, with a divide and rule policy and in 1950 when the majority community of Greek Cypriots rebelled against the colonial power, Britain immediately expanded the Auxiliary Police and later established a Special Mobile Reserve manned solely by the minority Turks which crushed the majority uprising.
This and other similar acts create animosity between the two communities which finally erupt in communal violence in 1964. Similar scenario, isn’t it, to what the Sinhalese felt under the British seeing how their Tamil brethren enjoyed British patronage while they were thrown the crumbs.
With the Greek Cypriots having formed a militant group called EROVK to attack the Turkish Cypriots, the latter formed a similar organisation, the Turkish Resistance Movement known as TMK. The stage is now set for a showdown.
Like India, who sent in her air force and invaded Lanka’s sovereign airspace to make ‘parrippu’ drops as humanitarian aid to northern Tamils in the 1980s, Turkey sends in her navy with a consignment of weapons to the TMK one year after Cyprus gained independence. This cargo is discovered and the episode becomes famous as the ‘Deniz’ incident.
With communal violence breaking out in 1963, the leaders call for peace but to no avail. Within one week Turkish Army comes out of its garrison to seize the island’s most strategic position the Nicosia to Kyrenia road considered to be the land’s main artery.
One year later Turkey calls for the partition of the island and makes moves to invade. Only the US President Johnson’s letter threatening Turkey makes her stall her plans. Under a US plan negotiations with Turkey and Greece begin. In 1967, with fighting breaking out again, Turkey again threatens to invade on the pretext of protecting Turkish people even as Russia has nearly done in the case of Crimea, and makes the charge they are forced to do so to prevent the ethnic cleansing, genocide by Greek Cypriots.
To avoid invasion the Greek Army is forced to withdraw some of its troops. Hear the familiar refrain made by Tamil Nad of Sinhalese committing genocide, of the TNA dominated Northern Provincial Council using the euphemism ‘ethnic cleansing’ and repeatedly calling for the withdrawal of the Lankan Army from the North?
Then, after a series of events orchestrated by Turkey to create the necessary political conditions, The Turkish Army invades Cypress, and occupies the northern coast of the island. It is called ‘the 1974 Peace Operation’ almost the same name the Indians used when they occupied the north of Lanka as the Indian Peace Keeping Operation” and it is done on the basis of Turkey being a guarantor of Cyprus’s independence.
The UN Security Council imposes a ceasefire but Turkey violates it by expanding her hold on the Nicosia and Kyrenia corridor. One year later Turkey launches her second wave of invasion and occupies forty per cent of the entire island. The bifurcation is complete. It still is.
In 1983 the Turkish Cypriots’ leader makes a unilateral declaration of independence from Cyprus calling the new nation Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and though no nation, other than Turkey recognises it, it is there and is functioning as such for the last thirty years. Many UN resolutions have condemned Turkey and the UN Security Council reaffirms this each year as a matter of religious rite and calls for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Cyprus. Turkey answers that if done, it would serve to resume the killings.
That then is the lesson recent history shows us and Cyprus is a glaring example of it. It reveals how minority rights and their perceived denial of it, their grievances and their discriminations can be exploited, exaggerated and encouraged by coveting nations, the people misled, trained, armed and let loose to create the ground conditions that justify external intervention in neighboring lands. And once a country has placed her stamp on another’s land, the near impossibility that exist to dislodge the iron boot.
Thus the call for a referendum amongst the Tamils of Lanka to decide whether they wish for an Eelam on Lankan soil should not be dismissed slightly. It may be the first step in a long mapped voyage of de facto conquest. It comes from a powerful quarter which should not and cannot be ignored. Tamil Nad is no longer a vassal state, its leaders not backwater second level politicians but personages who have sprung into the national limelight as the new formidable players in the new power game. India’s dominating centre is in fear of losing its grip.
Preposterous as the Tamils Only referendum demand is, it is futile to argue the rights of the Sinhalese to determine the unitary status and territorial integrity of the land they call home. Consider for instance the Provincial Council system. The Constitution, the entire political structure, the hierarchy of democratic institutions were radically changed overnight with one stroke of Rajiv Gandhi’s pen when the provincial council system was introduced as a means of benefitting the Tamils of the North. Decentralisation was introduced not to improve the lot of the Sinhalese in the southern province or the Muslims in every province but solely as a means of redressing the grievances of one minority group. And that was at a time when the world was with us. Now with a fast reducing contact list would Lanka be in a position to refuse UN-backed demands without suffering further retaliation?
If provincial councils could be introduced without even a by your leave from the Sinhala people, holding a referendum under an UN or Indian auspices without Sinhala participation will be child’s play. The obvious result of the referendum would further be held as evidence of the Tamils of Lanka wanting their own separate homeland, their own utopian state of Eelam to establish which they would say have been paid for with blood.
Emboldened by UN resolutions, empowered by UN sanctions, it may lead in the future to a Cyprus style situation, leaving the country vulnerable to the threat of a possible invasion and subsequent partition.
Before that day dawns, before the tempest doom hits landfall the Government as a whole and the Foreign Ministry in particular must learn to read the warning sign beaming in the horizon and conduct its international affairs in a realistic manner and start building bridges with our neighbours and western nations, salvaging the burnt boats to sail anew as a fit member in the international club of civilised nations.
Or else the blood sweat and tears spilled, secreted, and wept by Lankans to win the long drawn terrorist war will turn out to be in vain and the fruits of peace we still strive to bloom will remain nipped in the bud.