Widespread speculation has followed the announcement that Indian External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee would visit Sri Lanka shortly as a result of Tamil Nadu pressure on the central government to take decisive action against Sri Lanka.
Much of what appeared in the media on this proposed visit was based on briefings by Tamil Nadu chief minister Muthuvel Karunandhi. He led a delegation from the southern Indian state to New Delhi to protest against Sri Lanka and urge the Manmohan Singh government to demand that Colombo call a ceasefire with the LTTE and bring the military operations to an end. Opinion ranged from how much of what Karunanidhi told the media was actually acceded to by the Indian government and how much is his own ego-boosting spin.
Wherein lies the truth will probably emerge when Mr Mukherjee does come to Colombo whenever that might be. Right now the foreign minister has other priorities, particularly the triangular relationship- India, Pakistan and the US- that came to centre stage after the Mumbai massacre that some have, mistakenly to my mind, dubbed India’s 9/11. Those imperatives would surely take precedence over any attempts to intervene in Sri Lanka’s ongoing military pressure against a secessionist group which has been outlawed in India for the last 17 years and whose proscription was extended for a further two years only a month ago.
What the tragic events in Mumbai have done is to generate widespread indignation in India against the whole spectrum of politicians, political parties and officialdom. With Indian national and some state elections due next year no political party, national or regional, can afford to downplay the importance of, if not ignore, national security and India’s right to defend itself against terrorism, whether it is home grown or external. To do so in the current Indian environment when feelings are running high, is to commit political euthanasia. “Every sovereign country,” Pranab Mukherjee told the NDTV news channel after Mumbai, “has its right to protect its territorial integrity and take appropriate action as and when it feels necessary.” Admittedly in this case Mukherjee was referring to terrorist attacks from outside India, specifically Pakistan though names were avoided.
If, as Mukherjee concedes, every sovereign nation has the inherent right to protect its territorial integrity, then the principle must hold whether the threat to that integrity comes from within or without.
It is inconceivable to argue that a nation has a right to defend itself only against an external enemy and not one within. Interestingly the incoming US president Barack Obama underlined the same principle when asked at a media conference shortly after the Mumbai multiple attacks. He said that sovereign nations have a right to protect themselves against terrorism, for surely that is what Mumbai was. So have been the many attacks in Sri Lanka where civilians have been indiscriminately killed. Obama’s observations are vital as some believe that his administration will be soft on various groups that have been banned under US law as foreign terrorist organizations. In fact LTTE supporters are hoping that the ban on the organization will be lifted opening the doors to public fundraising for the Tigers. “In the world we seek there is no place for those who kill innocent civilians to advance hateful extremism,” he said
Speaking the other day in the Lok Sabha, Pranab Mukherjee said that there are no good terrorists and bad terrorists, echoing words once used by President Rajapaksa. “There could be no double standards in the fight against terrorism,” Mukherjee said. If India believes that a sovereign nation has the right to defend its territorial integrity, then it must accept without demur and despite the noises emanating from Tamil Nadu, that Sri Lanka enjoys the same right. The difference is that while India believes that much of the threat, though not all of it, comes from outside, the threat to Sri Lanka is from within.
What the Tamil Nadu delegation has asked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to do is pressure, if not coerce, the Sri Lanka government to stop military action and enter into a ceasefire with the LTTE. If so India violates the basic premise Mukherjee articulated that there cannot be double standards in fighting terrorism. How could New Delhi justifiably argue that it has a right to defend its integrity as a nation but not Sri Lanka which is expected to enter into a ceasefire thereby applying the double standards India says one should eschew? India is surely aware of the history of ceasefires with the LTTE. The longest of them entered into in 2002 and monitored by Scandinavians was violated nearly 3000 times by the Tigers during which it engaged in terrorist acts including assassinations and attempted assassinations.
Did Tamil Nadu show the same anger and concern when some 1200 Indian soldiers were killed by the LTTE, the very group on whose behalf it is now raising its voice, camouflaged as concern for Tamil civilians? If Tamil Nadu’s concern is genuinely about Tamil civilians caught up in the conflict zone, then should its ire not be directed at the LTTE which, according to Jaffna Bishop Rev Thomas Savundranayagam in an interview with the Indian Express, ‘are being prevented from leaving those areas by the LTTE’. He said the LTTE was using civilians as forced labour. India cannot surely be unaware of all this and what happened to the many rounds of peace talks from which the LTTE inevitably pulled out under one ruse or another.
If India is genuine-and why should it not be when it is under attack- in its commitment to fighting terrorism as it pledged to do in the SAARC Declaration last August, then it should help Sri Lanka to do the same, for ultimately this impinges on peace and stability in India and the region. | 
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