There are two kinds of people in
the world, largely – the optimists and the pessimists, the rich and the poor,
the healthy and the weak, the young and the old, et cetera. However, in my home
state of Tamil Nadu in India I have seen three kinds of people as far as the
Tamil issue in Sri Lanka is concerned – the good, the bad and the ugly. The
first are the dangerous and hawkish people who staunchly defend a solution
carved out with guns and bombs and sealed in blood, even if it is that of
innocents. The second are the ones who don’t give a damn about the whole issue,
the more dangerous ones, because going by The Right Honorable Edmund Burke – the only thing
necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. The third is
the category in which, I believe, I fit in. The people who have every feeling
of comradeship with our brethren in Lanka, crying when they cry and withering
in pain as the shells explode and shudder every time the mines go off, deep
within our hearts. We are often dismissed as anti-Tamils, cowards, congress
party agents and backstabbers by the people in the first category and as
people-yet-to-get-a-life by the second category.
One of the justifications the
central government gave the country when the government extended a
quasi-support to the Lankan government on the operation against the Liberation
Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) was to prevent the Chinese or the US getting a
stronghold in India’s backyard by stepping in to fill the void left by India’s
indecisiveness on an issue having a huge bearing on the emotions of countless
Tamils and the security of the country. However, what we have witnessed ever
since the end of the war is a Lankan government that is intoxicated having
bathed and drunk on the successes of the war, an even more displaced Tamil
population and more humiliation for India in the world stage with its weaknesses
exposed as regard its policy towards Lanka with the latter cozying with China,
faster.
It is beyond me why would India,
a nation that can detain Italian marines for killing fishermen, even voice it
out to Sri Lanka over similar incidents. The Chinese cooperation has extended into
infrastructure building and offers of military assistance are also being heard.
And the latest space cooperation, I think, is just an indication of what is yet
to come. India may have pulled off many diplomatic victories but Sri Lanka is
somewhere I think we messed up. Hope the irritant in the relation with Maldives
doesn’t go the Sri Lankan way.
