Time to face the music in Geneva!

A few weeks ago, the word from Delhi on US-sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka the UNHRC Sessions in Geneva was ‘yes’.  Let us translate: ‘Yes, we will vote ‘yes’ on the resolution’.  No surprises there because a) India voted ‘yes’ in 2012, and b) India is India (read ‘Not Sri Lanka’s friend) and c) this is an INDIAN Resolution, an INDIAN doosra although it is being delivered by the USA. 

The latest though is that India is ‘undecided’.  Now, in diplomatic circles, this indecision would be correctly read as evidence that the main protagonist is trying to extract the maximum juice from the Sri Lankan orange while not appearing to be anywhere near the fruit. 

Delhi has a problem.  It is called ‘Tamil Nadu’.  No, it is not Tamil Nationalism, which has been safely offshored to Sri Lanka.  It is about elections and related arithmetic.  It’s a political reality that figured in the calculations of all Indian political leaders.  So Delhi needs to ‘deliver’ something that’s at least halfway sweet to Jayalalitha.  On the other hand Delhi has to do this without appearing to be the bad guy that Delhi is because that might constitute the last brick in the Great Wall of China that India is building. So Geneva 2013 would ideally (for India) end  with Sri Lanka agreeing to India’s ‘solution’ (plus some other benefits, just like the Indo-Lanka Accord was not just about sorting an ‘ethnic’ conflict) for the price of the resolution being ‘watered down’ or even withdrawn (by the USA, not India, of course!). 

Sri Lanka’s main strength at this point is the fact that it is weak.  In other words Sri Lanka is in ‘Nothing to Lose Land’.  There’s no way that the Government can agree to India’s proposal (a re-hashing of the various Eelam proposals or Interim Eelam proposals) and still hope to retain popularity among all ethnic groups. 

Equal rights by definition cannot exclude anyone.  A 13A Plus, in the way India envisages, would concretize an Eelamist myth regarding traditional homelands. That would threaten the Sinhalese.  That would exclude the Sinhalese.  Equal rights can be obtained in other ways and should be obtained too. Sri Lanka doesn’t need India’s permission or India’s recommendations on such matters. 

We must recollect at this point that those who ruled India (either as whole or in part) have always attacked the Sinhalese; one remembers the Chola invasions and the tyrannies of the likes of Raja Raja and Magha.  Dr. Manmohan Singh is but a 21^st Century avatar of these gentlemen. 

President Mahinda Rajapaksa observed recently, ‘Sri Lanka is like a volley ball; everyone is taking turns at punching it to cover up their sins’.  He did not elaborate, but here’s a list that ought to be read by whoever is negotiating defeat for Sri Lanka in Geneva:

We have the German SPD needing to cover up history of killing millions in the 20^th Century. We have the USA, wanting us to forget the monumental crimes against humanity in all parts of the world as well as against the First Nations in America and African Americans. We have Britain’s genocidal conduct in colonies and subsequent crimes against humanity as partner-in-crime of the USA. We have India and the Kashmir they want the world not to talk about.

The bottom line though is that given the amount of bucks and weapons of mass destruction these countries possess and given Sri Lanka’s poverties in these respects, the ‘cover up’ will continue.  But since Sri Lanka can only be expected to be goaded to sign agreements against Sri Lanka’s interest, each one more pernicious than the ones that came before, this is as opportune a moment as any to call India’s bluff.

Sri Lanka can take the following position:

‘Go ahead.  Table the resolution. We’ll face the vote, we’ll face the music.  All we can do is do our best and we have.  We’ve done what you have not done, ever. Try rescuing 300,000 people held hostage by the Al Qaeda (or by the US Marines), trying feeding them 3 meals a day.  Try thinking about releasing over 10,000 terrorists after rehabilitation.  Stop. Don’t even try. You cannot.  So let’s cut to the chase.  Let’s take the vote. We want to see who are friends are.  Ms. India, go ahead, vote.  We want to know where you stand, so that we can decided in which direction we should move.  Wait, did we hear someone mention China? Maybe we heard wrong. So, to get back to the point, vote.  We have little to lose, but even in defeat we would like to see the face of the enemy, we would like to know the names of those who did us in.  Simple.  ‘

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India is our ‘friend’, right?

It was not the first time that Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans have been treated shabbily in India and by Indians.  Friday’s vandalizing of an office of the Bank of Ceylon in Tamil Nadu by pro-LTTE elements of that state who are wont to shed copious tears over ‘the plight of Tamil brethren in Sri Lanka’ ironically left two Tamils, one Sri Lankan and one Indian, injured.  It is a well-known fact that for all the love professed for Sri Lankan Tamils by Tamil Nadu politicians, they (Sri Lankan Tamils) are subject to ridicule and harassment in that State and treated with derision and suspicion.  If there are CCTV cameras at the Chennai Airport, the footage would reveal a lot about ‘love’.

It is now customary for uncouth Tamil Nadu politicians to whip up hysteria among ill-educated supporters and organize demonstrations and attacks on Sri Lankans.  It is customary for Delhi to issue statements of concern and trot out assurance-homilies regarding safety.  And yet, officials have been harassed, pilgrims attacked and properties damaged.  That’s ‘India Shining’, one supposes.  But India is a ‘friend’.

A quick recap is called for.  India funded, armed and trained the LTTE terrorists to destabilize Sri Lanka to the point of annexure (ref Rajiv Gandhi’s statement on turning Sri Lanka into a second Bhutan).   The LTTE blunted development, terrorized a nation, killed thousands of innocent civilians and more than any other entity caused untold suffering to the Tamil community (courtesy forced recruitment of children, hostage-taking and turning regions the Tamils lived in into combat zones for decades).  India helped them.  But India, ladies and gentlemen, is a ‘friend’. 

India took up an anti-Sri Lanka position at the UNHRC in March 2012 and is said to be readying to do a repeat this year.  India tried to and is still trying to secure a strategic foothold via the Sampur Power Plant with exclusivity clauses as well as cost-upping inferior technology specifications.  India has always arm-twisted Sri Lanka to sign trade and other agreements with unequal benefits.  Indian companies are trying to secure drilling rights in the Mannar basin.  All for the love of Sri Lanka.  India is wary of Chinese influence in Sri Lanka, perhaps because India feels that China is not Sri Lanka’s friend and that as Sri Lanka’s ‘friend’, India needs to protect ‘Lil’ Bro Sri Lanka’.  The condescension should be ignored because, after all, India is Sri Lanka’s ‘friend’. 

India dumped a mammoth white elephant called the 13^th Amendment preying on J.R. Jayewardene’s inability to do simple arithmetic.  The ‘13^th’ was used and is being used by those who want a Sri Lanka break-up to concretize the myth of ‘Traditional Tamil Homelands’, never mind the fact that the majority of Tamils live outside the Northern and Eastern provinces.   India is a ‘friend’, though.   

Indians visit Sri Lanka, some as tourists, some on business.  Indian companies operate freely in Sri Lanka.  India exports a lot to Sri Lanka, including cheap and sub-standard drugs.  That’s ‘friendship’ and we have to conclude that there are nice, decent, Sri Lankan ‘friends’ who facilitate such ‘friendship’, for it takes two hands to clap. 

The point is that Sri Lankans who take issue with India would at worst just demonstrate outside the Indian High Commission.  Indians are not button-holed and screamed at.  Indian properties are not vandalized.  Is that out of ‘fear of reprisal’?  Hardly.  India has shown its worst face and ended with egg on it, ironically courtesy of the bad-eggs they warmed in Tamil Nadu (that’s the IPKF, dubbed at the time as the Illan Parippu Kana Force, or ‘Force that asked for it and duly got it’). 

In short India and Sri Lanka are friends but ones who have different ideas about what constitutes friendship.  Different ideas about civilization too, one might add.  People learn from one another, though, and over time ‘friends’ pick up each other’s traits.  It is hard to think that India would become less uncouth and thug-like though.  It would be a pity, however, if Sri Lanka became like India and did the works-both-ways-brother number on Indians and Indian establishments here.  

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THE 25th ANNIVERSARY OF THE INDO-LANKA ACCORD

It is time to abrogate the 13^th Amendment

What are the landmark political moments of post-Independence Sri Lanka?  We could mention Independence Day, the 22^nd of May 1972 when we became a republic, the shift to the ‘open economy’ in 1977, the scripting of the 1978 Constitution, July 1983, the 1988-89 bheeshanay, the passing of the ill-fated 17^th Amendment in 2001 and the military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009.  And yes, the 29^th day of July, 1987.  The last is the least mentioned by those who are asked to respond to the question posed.  And yet, just like the 1977 Constitution, the 13^th Amendment and the Indo-Lanka Accord that birthed it have had lasting and devastating impacts on Sri Lanka and Sri Lankans.

It is 25 years after the fact.  Col. R. Hariharan, a retired Indian military intelligence who served with the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka as Head of Intelligence and who is a regular commentator on military and political affairs in South Asia has offered a recap of sorts.  He has compared two Indian interventions, in East Pakistan and Sri Lanka.  

India-lovers have bent over backwards to tell Sri Lankans that India is a friend and was here to help us.  They have and they will.  Hariharan puts it bluntly.  He admits that it was not a love-affair, but one informed by strategic goals.  Nothing wrong in that.  Countries must do what’s best for countries.  That ‘doing’ should be read just like that and not sugar-coated with silly terms like ‘friendship’ and ‘concern’.  In short, India was not doing Sri Lanka any favours.  We have it now from the mouth of the top intelligence officer. 

Hariharan laments that the Accord failed in Sri Lanka: ‘The devolution of powers to the Tamil minority promised in the Accord remains unfulfilled despite the 13th Amendment. But the Accord retains the potential as an instrument of Indian influence in the region.’

The second part of this lament should be flagged.  So let us flag: ‘Potential as an instrument of Indian influence in the region’.  So, for all the shop-talk about ‘redressing Tamil grievances’ the Accord (and also the 13^th Amendment) was about ‘Indian influence in the region’, Messers R. Sampanthan and M. Sumanthiran please note. 

Hariharan has to defend frill of course and we are sympathetic to this need.  He says, ‘The most significant achievement of the Accord was the introduction of the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution which provided a degree of autonomy to the newly created provinces and it still exists as the only constitutional tool available to redress Tamil grievances’.

He does not outline ‘Tamil Grievances’ (note, not ‘aspirations’) and therefore does not have to link the territory-based ‘solution’ to a problem that can be articulated in territorial terms.  He doesn’t have to deal with the fact that there is no history that Tamil nationalists can come up with to give beef to the whine about ‘traditional homelands’.  He doesn’t have to deal with the demographic reality of the majority of Tamils living outside the Northern and Eastern provinces.  He doesn’t have to talk about ethnic cleansing by the LTTE and can be silent about identity-related population densities in the Eastern Province. 

Hariharan confesses that Indian had no clue about ground realities.  He passes the buck to ‘civil intelligence’ of course, but the bottom line is ignorance.  It is clear that realization is yet to dawn.  There’s nothing wrong in Indians being patriotic, after all Arundathi Roy (activist) and Harsha Bhogle (cricket columnist) have become very defensive when India seems at risk of break-up or India is critiqued, respectively.  Hariharan, moreover, is a military man and not an academic.

What has the Accord done, though, quite apart from trying to satisfy Indian strategic interests?  Here, in Sri Lanka, that day in late July twenty five years ago was marked by the burning of buses.  It gave an impetus to the JVP which quickly donned a nationalist garb and fed on general public dismay.  Close to 60,000 people died in two bloody years.  The 13^th Amendment helped legitimize Eelam mythmaking, turning randomly drawn provincial boundaries into borders of a fictional homeland.  That boundary line has kept feeding narrow Tamil communalist politicians and politics.  And we are not even going into the fact that two-thirds of the money allocated for PCs go to just maintain them or that the 13^th has spawned hundreds of regional thugs and ‘takers’.     

The debate should not be about 13 Plus or 13 Minus, but when (and not if) the 13^th will be abrogated.  India is welcome to its strategic interests.  Sri Lanka must be about Sri Lankans and their collective present and future.  Fiction doesn’t help.  Applauding and legitimating fiction leads to tragedy.  The 13^th Amendment caused blood to flow.  Our children need not bleed too to keep alive that discredited document and certainly not to satisfy India’s strategic interests. 

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Unpacking the Menon visit

Visiting Indian Defence Advisor, Shivshanker Menon is reported to have insisted that Sri Lanka should sort its own problems, with India ready to help if requested.  Although we know that diplomacy is about saying the palatable and doing the distasteful on the sly, India being India especially, it is prudent for the Government to be mindful of sensitivities. 

This envoy of the Indian Government has also urged the Tamil National Alliance to join the Parliamentary Select Committee, thereby effectively snubbing that party for attempting to use India as an instrument to arm-twist the Sri Lankan Government into submitting to their (the TNA’s) proposals.  This too, is good, subject to the cautionary footnote, ‘too much should not be made out of appearances’.  For example, the TNA can ‘concede’ by accepting the PSC and the Government could thereafter get the PSC to come up with ’13 Plus a la India’s preferences’.  It’s good to be alert. 

A Tamil daily newspaper has quoted TNA leader R. Sampanthan saying that Menon had expressed India’s losing patience about a solution not materializing.  Now if it is Sri Lanka’s internal matter, then the timeframe should be Sri Lanka’s and not India’s concern.  However, to the extent that the Sri Lankan Government accepts that there is a problem, then foot-dragging is something that cannot be condoned, either on the part of the Government or the main articulator of grievance, the TNA.  The TNA is yet to articulate substantiated grievance and the Government is yet to ask the TNA to do so.  Both parties have opted for the convenience of barb-exchange.  That’s good politics, but bad statesmanship. 

As for India’s ‘impatience’, quite apart from the fact that it smacks of interference, regional political realities should not be pooh-poohed by the Government.  India has legitimate concerns insofar as the so-called ‘Tamil problem’ plays a role in Indian power configurations.  Indian politics demands those in power and those aspiring for power to use and abuse the ‘Tamil Issue’ as a political football.  This is how Sri Lanka (and of course Tamils in Sri Lanka) gets factored into the Indian political equation.  Diplomatic niceties notwithstanding, it is prudent for the Government to be mindful of these realities and play its cards without compromising its own political interest and more importantly the overall aspirations of all Sri Lankans. 

To this end, firm steps should be taken to overcome the current impasse, and these should include calling the TNA’s bluff by demanding a full statement on grievances, investigating their true dimensions and resolving for the same, with or without the TNA’s involvement.    

Perhaps what’s really telling is Menon’s claim that India stands for a ‘United Sri Lanka’.  What it most important about the word ‘united’ is that it refers to something that is impossible to obtain through legislation. The word is often used by the TNA and other federalists in post-LTTE Sri Lanka when referring to a ‘solution’, for example, ‘A solution within a united Sri Lanka’. 

‘Unity’ can be obtained in all kinds of political and constitutional formations.  People can be united in a unitary state and they can be united under a federal constitution.  There is nothing to say that either ‘unitary’ or ‘federal’ automatically produces ‘unity’. 

The obtaining of unity then is dependent on acknowledgment of anomaly (and this is not limited to ethnic issues), an even greater focus on commonalities and a consistent privileging of reason over emotion, fact over myth, lived reality over communalist exaggeration of grievance and the political expedience of inflating aspiration. 

As for ‘solution’, the relevant parties should always keep in mind that all things have outcomes, and for this reason, the following are musts, a) the citizens should be kept informed, b) what the PSC (or any other deliberating forum) comes up with must be treated as ‘proposal’ and subject to public appraisal, c) the political fallout must be deliberated on and not something future generations are made to live with and die for.  The 13^th Amendment, if anything, is a case in point where India’s arm-twisting and J.R. Jayewardene’s malleability produced a curse which wrecked political stability and produced a bloodbath.  

['The Nation' editorial of July 1, 2012.  Other editorial comments are available at www.nation.lk]

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On the ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ of Indo-Lanka relations

[This article first appeared in 'The Nation', on November 28, 2010] 

In a thoughtful piece titled ‘For a treaty of peace, friendship and cooperation with India’ in The Island of Saturday, November 27, 2010, former ambassador, K. Godage has laid out the basis on which Indo-Lanka relations should be developed.  He has considered the history, the geopolitical realities, the today-factors and outlined the ‘ought to be’ in cogent terms.

Godage refers to the ‘Gujral Doctrine’ and suggests that India should revert to that progressive and far-thinking document when considering for relations with other South Asian countries.  He has pointed out that there is a complete trust-breakdown at present between India and other South Asian countries and this is true. 

India has not been the good-hearted neighbour at all times and even when it helps out (as some claim it did during the last stages of the war), such largesse has been considerably outweighed by India’s pernicious history of fermenting division and orchestrating destabilization, not to mention the natural and legitimate moves to secure economic benefit in overall engagements with Sri Lanka.  The Gujral Doctrine insists that India gives and accommodates without demanding reciprocity.  That’s a nice wish.  The reality is the opposite and indeed one where there is little ‘giving’ or ‘accommodating’. This is not surprising because one really cannot expect much from a nation that cannot ‘give’ anything to nor ‘accommodate’ the vast majority of people in Kashmir and indeed has limited its giving to maiming and killing. 

Godage says that Sri Lanka should not anger or cause concern in India by appearing to undermine India’s strategic regional interests.  This is sensible advice.  We do not live in a flat world and we must keep in mind that we don’t have the military might to back us in a self-righteous shouting match with India, even though India, after the IPKF fiasco must know that a military adventure in Sri Lanka will cost it dearly (India, we note, is hard pressed to keep her own terrorists at bay and ‘Kashmir’ ought to have taught the regional thug that an irate citizenry will harass an invader to the point of tears and beyond).  We need to keep things in perspective, yes. 

Bilateral relations, however, is a two-way street even between parties of unequal strength.  India’s non-Gujral ways of operation can push Sri Lanka to seek non-intruding help from other sources.  There is no help that comes without strings, of course, but there are strings and there are strings. Some come with the tag ‘reasonable price’ and some with the ugly sticker ‘blackmail’.  Relations with India, sadly, appear to be more of the latter type whereas the China and Iran strings seem more palatable. 

There is a reason why Sri Lankans are wary of India and this is not just because of Indira Gandhi breast-feeding Eelamism and terrorism and her son Rajiv playing J.R.Jayewardene every which way he could.  There is a reason why Pakistan is seen as a friendly country.  There’s a reason why the Minister of External Affairs G.L. Peiris has to say ‘we haven’t taken devolution off the agenda’ when his Indian counterpart, S.M. Krishna says ‘Sri Lanka must not sort out her outstanding issues including finding a political solution for the Tamil people’, even though devolution was not mentioned in the ‘friendly’ observation.  I can’t imagine G.L. Peiris responding in this manner if for example Makhdoom Shah Mahmoon Qureshi, the Pakistani Foreign Minister said ‘it would be nice if Sri Lanka sorts out all outstanding issues pertaining to grievances and aspirations articulated by the Tamil people’.   

It will take statesmanship of a far superior kind and one which necessarily includes a high degree of humility on the part of India to come anywhere close to the Gujral Doctrine.  As of now, India has got the rhetoric right and that’s such an easy and such a tiny part of the deal. 

Godage was a diplomat and this shows in the tone of his writings. He says, ‘Please allow us to sort out our problem and do not seek to impose external solutions to problems we understand best and need to sort out in our national interest.’  Yes, India wants us to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Even when they kick us in our national gut.  Until a time comes when civility and respect underline all bilateral relations between India and her neighbours, niceties will be surface-made and will not have any depth in political, economic or any other reality. 

I doubt if S.M. Krishna will hear Mr. Godage.  I am not hopeful he will hear me.  That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it Mr. Godage.  We need dialogue and we beg for it.  India wants monologue.

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Some thugs can’t even name themselves…

It has been reported that Rajiv Gandhi, on his way to sign the Indo-Lanka Accord, had told Tamil Nadu politicians that the agreement he was to sign with the then president of Sri Lanka, J.R. Jayewardene, would bring Sri Lanka under the Indian orbit, just like Bhutan.

The before and after of the Indo-Lanka Accord is well known, but considering the recent joint-statement issued by the ministers in charge of external affairs of the two countries, it is worth a recap.  India, under Rajiv Gandhi and before him, under his mother, Indira Gandhi, armed, funded and trained Tamil separatists from Sri Lanka and as such has remained the principal instigator of and contributor to terrorism and all its horrendous and tragic consequences.  

The ‘after’ of the Accord saw the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) engaged in wanton acts of brutality against the very people whose interests the accord was supposed to uphold. The IPKF is guilty of destruction, torture, death, displacement, rape, petty theft and other such ‘peaceful’ operations in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. Having rescued the LTTE from certain defeat via the Accord, India ended up having to deal with the wrath of the terrorists it spawned, breast-fed, spoon-fed and gun-fed.  ‘Tail between legs’ was how the IPKF left Sri Lanka.  By this time, natural antipathy to a regional thug had beefed up the fascist JVP of Rohana Wijeweera to launch its second and infinitely more bloody insurrection, leaving 60,000 dead in just over 2 years. 

India left behind one thing. The 13^th Amendment to the Constitution, whose political worth lies in the legitimacy it gives to the boundaries of the Eelam map, never mind the objections of history, geography and demography.  While some say that India did help Sri Lanka in combatting the LTTE, i.e. after 2005, no one can claim that such ‘help’ did not come with a political price tag.  It was not about a friendly and repentant neighbor doing the right thing. It was the neighbourhood thug engaged in extortion. 

Today, two years after terrorism was vanquished.  We celebrate this moment and must remember that we can do so mainly because of the political leadership, the security forces and the citizenry of this country.  If India helped (even grudgingly) in some manner, we would say ‘thank you’, but we need to point out that it is the least that India could do, considering her considerable and significant contribution to problem-cause. 

The statement referred to above clearly indicates that we should be sober in our celebrations.  It is one thing to defeat the LTTE and quite another to keep separatism at bay.  The one did not follow the other and only the naïve would believe that it should.  The LTTE represented the military option of the separatism, and for a time it did seem that guns could carve an Eelam out of Sri Lanka, whereby a community with no historical claim, amounting to less than 6% of the population (counting out Tamils living outside the so-called ‘traditional homelands’), would get control over one-third the land area and half the coast.  After the military option petered out, Tamil chauvinism had to get back to what I call the Chelvanayakam Option -- a little now, more later – with ‘little’ being the legalizing of the homeland claim (not even supported by myth, by the way) through the 13^th Amendment. 

What’s the source of India’s fascination with the 13^th?  Right now, the Congress Party is deep in some foul smelling matter.  Scandals, mismanagement and the usual dissatisfaction with incumbents have seen a drop in popularity, a decline which has found articulation in electoral debacle.  Tamil Nadu returned not ally but opponent.  It is clear that retaining power at the next General Election could come down to obtaining Jayalalitha’s support or else neutralizing it.  For all the antipathy that her state has toward Tamils from Sri Lanka when they do come there, either as refugees or on visit, the idea of a Tamil Homeland and related sloganeering continues to have a lot of political currency.  Placating Tamil Nadu is not a political choice for the Congress Party. It is an imperative. A ‘must’.

The wording of the ‘Joint Statement’ indicates a lot of arm-twisting on the part of Delhi.  Mentioning ‘investigations into allegations of human rights violations’, shows that Delhi must have cited moves by international thugs to harass Sri Lanka; it’s got ‘we will protect you brother, but at a price,’ the cost being the 13^th Amendment, which too has been mentioned.  Well, mentioned with a ‘plus sign’, meaning land and police powers (included in the 13^th as of now) and other things besides.  In reality, the small print is about editing the concurrent list in favour of Eelamist positions. 

Now it is not only the Congress Party that has problems. India, as a nation, is in crisis.  It has countless separatist struggles to deal with, a grand mismatch between projected image of emerging power and a lived reality of misery and numerous other problems that the IPL, braggadocio, a few nuclear reactors etc together or separately cannot take out from the governability equation.  India wants, nay craves, international recognition. India wants ‘thug-status’ acknowledged, i.e. by obtaining a permanent position in the UN Security Council. And nothing shows that country’s national angst than the fact that it cannot shed the name given by those who invaded and pillaged it.  Indeed that country because what it is courtesy of the invader.  That’s a huge psychological handicap to overcome. We understand. 

The Joint Statement shows that Sri Lanka’s Minister of External Affairs had positioned himself (and thereby the country) as India’s vassal. There’s no mention of India’s endless wars, crimes against humanity, lack of domestic mechanisms to investigate known crimes against humanity (in Kashmir and elsewhere) and Sri Lanka’s concerns about these followed by India’s commitment to addressing them. 

Why should Sri Lanka give guarantees of any kind to India?  Sure, Sri Lanka is not as big as India, has a smaller economy and even though the average standards of living are far superior, Sri Lanka doesn’t have the fire power or the bucks that India can mobilize.  Sri Lanka is a smaller market and therefore cannot use its population statistics as leverage. For example, ‘we are a huge market, remember!’ is not a flag that can be waved to ward off the would-be de-stabilizer.

Sri Lanka has one thing that India does not, a ‘one thing’ that has stood us well over the centuries when dealing with invaders.  A sense of dignity.  Whatever is bartered away by politicians, the people recover, sooner or later. Whatever the costs!  The costs, in this case, will most definitely be a major electoral reversal for those who sell out. 

Sri Lanka did not become another Bhutan.  It will not.  Where Rajiv Gandhi failed, his wife will not succeed. Where J.R. Jayewardene failed, G.L. Peiris will not succeed. 

Twenty seven thousand members of the security forces paid with their lives to defeat the LTTE and keep separatism at bay.  Close to a hundred thousand of our citizens perished in this 30 year long conflict. Sixty thousand were killed in 1988-89 and India helped in that particular ‘evacuation’ by way of the Indo-Lanka Accord.  We have seen enough blood, courtesy of our neighbor.  They can make us bleed, again and again.  But death comes slowly.  This is something that India should realize. G.L. Peiris too. And of course Mahinda Rajapaksa.    

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