Indian handling of its southern front

Tamil Canadian Services: Tamil Eelam - Maravanpulavu K. Sachithananthan : "Even though Lanka and Ravana are names carrying a stigma among the Ramayana literate populace, Indians do not entertain any malice towards the present day Sri Lanka.

An innate suspicion and the consequent feeling of insecurity have historical reasons for the Sinhalese towards India in general and Tamil Nadu in particular. Sinhalese misgivings stems from the experiences of repeated military expeditions from the mainland to the island over a period of more than 2000 years. This attitude is directly related to the manifestations of the Sri Lankan policies towards India even today. The many fold interactive historical associations among the Kingdoms in the region including those in the island have left many landmarks in history as recorded in stone inscriptions and literary writings. Matrimonial alliances, military conquests, cultural exchanges and pilgrimages brought about this active interaction.

For the Sinhalese, the only external front was the influences and forces from or through Tamil Nadu. Whereas for the Tamils, it was from all sides and the Sinhalese front formed a very insignificant factor.

Given this historical and mindset backdrop, it is very easy to perceive the Indian (Tamil Nadu) reaction to the recent ethnic related happenings in Sri Lanka.

During the first half of this century, Sinhalese were concerned with the continued arrival of Indian labour and Muslim businessmen to serve British interests. There were anti-Muslim riots in the hill country. Muslims not only refused to evacuate but hit the Sinhalese back during the riots. Thereafter until now the Sinhalese have not tried their hands at the Muslims. Later, Sinhala Maha Saba members protested against the presence of Indian port workers and asked them to return home. Keralites working in the harbour and suburbs of Colombo voluntarily evacuated after 1925. Emboldened by this, the Sinhala chauvinists were toying with the idea of deporting the entire Tamil plantation community. For the first time in the century, India reacted to the emerging Sinhala nationalism and sent Jawaharlal Nehru to Colombo in 1939, which resulted in the formation of the Ceylon Indian Congress. Later the Indian National Congress at the instance of Mahatma Gandhi and Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru passed a resolution criticising Sri Lankan initiative to deport the plantation Tamils. Indian National Congress leaders were aware that any unrest due to maltreatment of plantation Tamils would become a concern of Delhi and Chennai.

Unlike the Muslims, the plantations Tamils were weak. This weakness of the Indian labour community beginning with the Keralite evacuation, gave the post independent Sinhala majority parliament to legislate two enactment's, one in 1948 and the other in 1949, disenfranchising the plantation Tamil community.

India became furious. Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru was at the helm of affairs in New Delhi. He refused to accept the plantation Tamil community back in India. He said that it was an internal problem of Sri Lanka. They were neither Sri Lankans nor Indians, and hence 'stateless'. Prior to independence in February 1948, Sri Lankans and Indians freely travelled without restrictions. A visa regime was initiated after the independence and Sri Lanka was particular that only visa holders from India could travel to the island. India was more liberal and visas could be obtained in India at the point of landing.

Until the early fifties, fishermen and traders from northern Sri Lanka arrived freely by boat at the many landing points along the coast of Tamil Nadu. Export and import of commodities were allowed from these landing points from Tuticorin stretching to Nagapattinam. But Sri Lanka permitted cargo and human traffic only from designated landing points like Colombo, Talaimannar, and Jaffna.

Sri Lanka declared any transportation of cargo and humans from its traditional landing points as illegal. The traffic was either called smuggling or illegal immigration (Kallaththoni). To enforce this policy Sri Lanka established naval units at Kankesanthurai, Karainagar, Talaimannar and Kalpittiy. India did not even have police outposts along the coastline to check this traffic. India acknowledged the historical exchange of goods, services and people across the Palk Straits and Gulf of Mannar and did very little to close its maritime border with Sri Lanka. India's borders were porous and the Sri Lankan borders had taps. This allowed the Tamils on both sides of the border to openly flout the customs, excise and immigration laws of Sri Lanka.

Colombo's policy towards the traditional boat traffic between the shores of north Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu reflected its need to protect the status quo in the ethnic composition of the island. Colombo was irritated by the slow influx of economic migrants who illicitly crossed over to the island and started settling down. These migrants maintained close connections with their kith and kin in Tamil Nadu and periodically remitted their savings allegedly causing a drain on Colombo's foreign exchange reserves but in effect were a paltry amount.

The naval units in northern Sri Lanka arrested many Tamils in the high seas and sent them to a camp in Slave Island for punitive detainment and subsequent deportation. This camp was a source of irritation between Colombo and New Delhi because New Delhi suspected that Colombo was dumping its unwanted plantation Tamils also into this camp for deportation to India. Tamil Nadu did not protest either to New Delhi or to Colombo of the inhuman conditions its own citizens were undergoing in the camp of Slave Island.

From 1947-1964, and Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru prevailed upon the Indian establishment to reject any proposal from Sri Lanka to take back the plantation Tamils. Having made nearly a million Tamils stateless, the Sinhala chauvinists were progressively depriving the Eelam Tamils of their rights to language, their traditional homeland, education and employment.

The Sinhala colonisation of the Tamil homeland began in right earnest in 1952. Sinhalese was made the official language in 1956. Tamils had a taste of Sinhala violence in 1956. This was followed by a Government sponsored pogrom in 1958.

There were no large scale protests in Tamil Nadu because the Congress party in power at that time in Tamil Nadu refused any public debate on what was essentially a 'central subject' - the external affairs. However, the Dravidian parties made their impact in the form of articles, platform speeches and press statements. Mr. C. N. Annadurai, the DMK chief had with him a sober lieutenant from Eelam, Mr. Eelaththu Adigal who gave the DMK leadership a detailed analysis on the consequences of the emergence of Sinhala chauvinism.

Mr. E. V. Ramasamy Naiker, the DK leader was espousing the cause of the downtrodden in Tamil Nadu. In the process of attempting to dismantle the caste-based Hindu feudalism, he was hoping that the underprivileged might be better off as Buddhists. Mr. E. V. Ramasamy Naiker visited Colombo once. Mr. E. V. Ramasamy Naiker met Dr. G. P. Malalasekhara, a Sinhala Buddhist ideologue at a Buddhist conference in Burma.

Tamil Nadu's emotional reaction to the horror and agony inflicted on the Eelam Tamils in 1958, was conspicuously low, even though Sinhala moderates like Mr. Tarzie Vitachi, were abhorred by the ghastly inhuman acts of their fellow Sinhalese.

In 1960, Eelam Tamil reaction to the successive discriminative enactments, and government orchestrated violent onslaughts sharpened and took the form of a campaign of peaceful non-violent civil disobedience movement. This peaked in April 1961 with the gheroing of the district administrative units in the Tamil homeland by Tamil Satyagrahis. Mr. C. Vanniasingham came to Tamil Nadu and met leaders of all political parties in an attempt to galvanise the slender support base in Tamil Nadu for the Satyagraha movement. The Congress leadership pointed its fingers to Delhi and told Mr. Vanniasingham to contact them as external affairs was a central subject. Mr. C. Rajagopalachari told Mr. Vanniasingham and others from Eelam that the United Nations should be invited to intervene in the conflict. He also wrote a one page article in Swarajya (1961) clarifying the two different situations, viz., first of the plantation Tamils and second of the traditional inhabitants of Eelam. In that article he appealed to the Sinhalese leadership to exercise restraint and exhibit statesmanship in dealing with its own citizens. He supported a federal form of government as a sound basis for containing the grievances of the traditional Tamil inhabitants.

Mr. Kasi Anandan, then a student in Chennai, undertook a one-day token fast in Marina in support of the Satyagraha campaign in Sri Lanka and Mr. C. Rajagopalachari gave him the fruit juice to end the fast. That was the first protest registered in the recent past in Tamil Nadu in support of the Eelam Tamils.

Subsequent to the visit of Mr. Vanniasingham, Mr. Pathmanathan from Batticalloa was stationed in Chennai by the Federal party to be in touch with the leaders of political parties in Tamil Nadu. Also there were large number of Ceylon students studying in the various university colleges in Tamil Nadu. They also lobbied with the political leadership. Consequent to the efforts of these students (Mr. Kasi Anandan and myself included), Mr. C.N. Annadurai agreed to hold a public meeting at Marina in early 1961 in support of the Satyagraha campaign in Eelam. That was the first public meeting in Tamil Nadu during this century held in support of the Eelam Tamils in their campaign for justice.

This meeting was an isolated event. However, it gave the Eelam Tamil Campaign a pat in the back. Sinhala chauvinists confirmed their suspicions of an 'unholy link' between the island Tamils and the mainland Tamils.

Tamil Satyagraha movement received a soft blow from Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru in his last visit to Colombo during 1964. He reportedly said that the concept of Satyagraha ended with Mahatma Gandhi and was not any more relevant in the resolution of internal conflicts. During this visit he avoided a direct meeting with Mr. S.J.V. Chelvanayakam, who by then had emerged as the leader of the Tamil protest campaign. However, persistent pressurisation resulted in an invitation to Mr. Chelvanayakam to a function held at the residence of the Indian High Commissioner where and Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru was also present. During the Indo-China war, Colombo wanted to play a mediator role. Prime Minister Mrs. Bandaranaike went to Peking and then she came to New Delhi. This obviously irritated New Delhi. India did not feel comfortable with influences Colombo may have from forces inimical to India.

When and Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru died, Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri took over as Prime Minister. New Delhi wanted to reduce the number of hostile fronts across its borders. It wanted to mollify Sri Lanka and relented to one of its repeated requests to take back the plantation Tamils.

The Sinhalisation of the island required,

1. The deportation of the plantation workers,

2. The colonisation of the Tamil homeland,

3. Giving Sinhalese language, and Buddhist religion the pride and prominence in the social and political fabric of Sri Lanka.

The 1964 Srimavo-Shastri pact was a step forward in the Sinhalisation of the island to which New Delhi unwittingly consented by taking back about 400,000 plantation Tamils in return for conferring Sri Lankan citizenship to the rest. This retrogressive Indian contribution (a policy of appeasement) was rejected in toto by the Eelam Tamil leadership, which from 1948 has been campaigning for the full-fledged citizenship rights to all plantation workers.

The 1965 Hindi agitation and the emergence of DMK to wield power in Tamil Nadu rekindled the hopes of the Tamil protest campaign in Sri Lanka, but then the Eelam Tamil leadership had frozen their civil disobedient movement for a while to participate in the Colombo government. That silenced any slender support that DMK might have wanted to give to the Eelam Tamil protest campaign.

It should be said to the credit of the Tamil Nadu leadership that at no time in their post independent history they established any form of political contact with the Sinhalese leadership or with the Colombo government to the detriment of the Sri Lankan Tamils. None of them visited Colombo or publicly received Sinhalese leaders in Tamil Nadu

The message from Tamil Nadu to the Sinhala leadership was clear.

"Your attempts to discriminate and/or dislodge the Tamils in Sri Lanka will not be recognised by us. We will not be friendly with you. Because you are a government recognised by the Govt. of India, we are obliged to provide you the necessary official facilities.'' The presence of a Deputy High Commissioner for Sri Lanka in Chennai has been one of the official windows Sri Lanka enjoyed in Tamil Nadu to monitor and measure the pulse of the Tamil Nadu reaction to its Sinhalisation agenda. "