How can India a total failure help Sri Lanka?
H. L. D. Mahindapala
The 118 members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that met in Bali last week would have gone home feeling that it is no longer the prestigious moral force that stood in the middle of two big power blocs competing for dominance at the height of the Cold War. When the two titans were teetering on the verge of a nuclear holocaust new nations coming out of centuries of colonialism looked up to India as the leading light of the day.
The post-colonial regimes had faith and trust in the voice of India which was raised and articulated eloquently their aspirations in the UN by towering figures like Nehrus sister, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, and mostly Krishna Menon who, in this talkathons, poured scorn on the West with unmitigated contempt to restore the dignity and the respect which were denied to them under Western colonialism. The voice of India meant everything to the small nations sandwiched between the big powers. Indias moral stature had peaked to Himalayan heights because it was seen as the protector and guardian of the new nations.
Looking back it seems that it was only a false start. Over the years India has lost that moral stature. India has failed to live up to the ideals on which it was founded. The Gandhi-Nehruvian code of politics no longer inspires even the Indians. Asia witnessed two great political forces that changed the map of the world in the post-World War II era: 1) Maos Chinese nationalist revolution (Marxism was only a veneer) that overthrew the Western hegemony exercised through corrupt and pro-American Chiang Kai-shek and 2) the non-violent revolution led by Mahatma Gandhi. Both caught the imagination of the world as two different kinds of political moralities that could pave the way for the future.
However, it was the Gandhian non-violent revolution which was rated highly as the inspiring model for Afro-Asia. Gandhi-Nehruvian model was essentially an anti-imperialism and domination of small nations by big brothers. India no longer adheres to those founding principles. It has become a violent imperialist nation ready to use the big stick against those who refuse to toe its line. India is a morally bankrupt nation ready to align itself with any force that serves its self-centred interests.
India began by distancing itself from the American-led West. Then it had stature for standing up to the Western imperialists. Today it has sunk to the level of being the lap dog of America. The American Ambassadress, Patricia Butenis, in Colombo has only to snap her fingers for the Indian High Commissioner to run to her, wagging his tail, to lap up the latest saucer of American policy fed to her political pups, particularly those tail-wagging NGO stooges like Jehan (Pacha) Perera and **** Saravanamuttu.
From all appearances it seems clear that the American Embassy, Indian High Commission and the NGOs have ganged up to force Sri Lanka to kow-tow to Indian / international pressures using the report of the three-headed Advisory Panel of Experts (APEs) appointed by Ban Ki-Moon, known popularly as Bakamoona (Owl-faced) in the streets of Colombo.
When Velupillai Prabhakaran was alive this Gang of Three over-exaggerated the power of the Tamil Tiger terrorists and used it as a threat to browbeat and intervene in the domestic affairs of the Sri Lanka. For instance, Jehan (Pacha) Perera had the audacity to assume that the NGOs were a stake holder of great importance and demanded a front row seat in the peace process going on abroad. Of course, they used the threat of Prabhakaran in the guise promoting peace. Now they are using the report of the APEs to poke their unwanted fingers in the guise of promoting human rights and reconciliation. Prabhakaran was the bogey man used to interfere in Sri Lankan affairs. Now the APEs report is used as a threat to vilify and take to trial those who are alleged (on unsubstantiated evidence, mark you) to have committed war crimes and crimes and against humanity.
The West and their hired agents in the NGOs, of course, were angling in various ways to force President Mahinda Rajapaksa to toe their line. To his credit it must conceded that he has stood steadfastly and courageously in resisting all the foreign pressures and he has won election after election primarily on the strength of being the sole defender of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the nation. There are no chinks through which the Gang of Three could penetrate his armour. So the West has switched their tactics now to find fault and denigrate Rajapaksas image and that of the nation to achieve their political goals in the Indian Ocean Rim by using the report of the three-headed APEs,.
America and its allies in the West view Sri Lanka as a nation of strategic interest(Robert O Blake) to pursue Americas global domination. America would be happy if it makes Sri Lanka a client state that would be a strategic partner like India (also Robert O Blake) in the Indian Ocean which is coming under increasing challenges from China. America and the West are quite content that India is now wagging its tail and licking their boots. But they are worried that Sri Lanka is not so docile saying Yes, Sir, No, Sir Our bags are full of American stooges, Sir. Before going any further, please note the difference: Sri Lanka has only strategic interests while India is a strategic partner.
All things put together, the anti-Sri Lankan gang will use every trick in their bags to (1) intervene and put maximum pressure on Sri Lanka to follow them like tame dogs and (2) manipulate and turn world opinion against Sri Lanka using the report of the APEs with the ulterior motive of justifying operations to effect regime change, despite bland statements of denial by Robert O Blake, Americas strategic partner in India and their soft-power agents in NGOs. Right now they are kissing the hands of Mahinda Rajapaksa which they cannot cut. But given the opportunity they will not only cut the hand but even the throat of Sri Lanka.
What is immoral and unacceptable in the new scenario is India joining hands with America to point a finger at Sri Lanka using the report of the APEs. Its silence on this issue, when Russia, China, Israel, Pakistan and the Arab nations are articulate in backing Sri Lanka, is as good as siding with the APEs. India stance on this is most deplorable because it was on the side of Sri Lanka just before it officially became a strategic partner in Americas global agenda. India, it should be noted, was also a partner in the war against the Tamil Tiger terrorists particularly after the Tigers killed their prime minister a slap in the face of Indias regional super power status. Besides, Sri Lanka too went out of its way to help the Congress win the election held when the Security Forces were on the verge of giving the finishing touches to the terrorist war by halting the offensive in the last few days. Having learnt its lesson in halting the Vaddamarachchi Operation in 1986 India did not repeat its bogus humanitarian intervention of dropping parippu from air when Sri Lanka was on the verge of eliminating the Tamil Tiger terrorists in Vellamullivaikal in 2009.
Indian intelligence knew what was happening and it was unofficially encouraging and approving the Sri Lankan forces for ending the war which the Indians helped to start a task which Indias mighty armed forces failed to achieve with its IPKF forces on the ground.. India was in the thick of it from the beginning to the end. It is utterly hypocritical of India to wash its hand off and allow Sri Lanka to bear the burden of criticisms and accusations when India was the primary cause of the war and the inevitable violations of human rights. Besides, how can India play the role of Pontius Pilate when its record in battling the Tamil Tigers ended in the killing of 5,000 Jaffna civilians, in addition to the raping of women, torturing suspected civilians, incarcerating civilians without trial within a period of 32 month? So why isnt Ban Ki-Moon, who has bungled critical global issues ever since he sat in UNSGs chair, appointing another set of APEs to investigate Indias record in Sri Lanka?
India had the best opportunity in post-Vadukoddai War to mend fences with Sri Lanka and win her confidence and trust as a future partner in the Indian Ocean. Indias duty was to throw its full force behind Sri Lanka as it did in May 2009 at the UNHRC and worked together to defeat the EU-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka. But after cementing the Indo-American entente cordiale India has been rather backward in coming forward to help Sri Lanka which India needs as its strategic partner in the southern flank. There can be two possible explanations for this volte face: 1. American influence which is attempting to manipulate Sri Lankan politics through Indian arm-twisting and 2. the domestic factor of Tamil Nadu with the new Chief Minister, Jayalalitha Jeyaram, sitting comfortably on a thumping majority and making noises about the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Of course, 2 has always been in factor in Indo-Sri Lanka relations and both nations have managed to maintain fairly cordial relations despite Tamil Nadu. It is the entry of American in a big way to India that is worrying. Earlier, the relationships were limited to Colombo-Chennai-Delhi. Now a fourth factor has entered the equation: Washington.
This does not augur well for Indo-Sri Lanka relations because the entry of more players, whether domestic or foreign, is bound to complicate the already tangled relations, making it more difficult to disentangle the differences that can lead to more serious consequences. Besides, mounting pressure on Sri Lanka is going to be counter-productive because it will only force Sri Lanka to move away from India as a reliable partner for its security, territorial integrity, peace and reconciliation.
India cannot win the confidence of Sri Lanka by interfering in its domestic affairs. India should know by now that meddling in the domestic affairs is going to put any government in great difficulty either in negotiations with the TNA, the puppets of the Tamil Tigers, or its relations with India. Even the willingness of any government to accommodate the Tamils allied to the Tigers will be rejected if it is seen as a measure coming from Indian pressures.
India must be feeling this already because despite all the goodwill acts of India in the post-war period the public opinion is more in favour of China than India. India is now faced with the conundrum of its heavy financial investments not reaping its political benefits. Though China has invested less it has gained heavily on political goodwill. This backlash against India is inevitable given Indias narrow-minded, ill-conceived, and almost asinine interventions in Sri Lanka. Indian foreign policy is still bogged down in the region purely due its short-sighted stupidity. India has faced ignominious defeats at the hands of those in the region. Not only China in the north but even the Tamil Tigers boast that they defeated the fourth largest army in the world. Indias military and political failures in the region are solely due its monumental diplomatic blunders.
Indias future relations with Sri Lanka must cease to be guided by its myopic mania of trying to fix SAARC problems with a big stick. India could have achieved its goal of leading SAARC with respect if it knew how to handle the region more sensitively. Take the case of Sri Lanka. Mark you, the shame of Indian failures in Sri Lanka came not only from the Tamil Tigers but also from a Naval rating in the south who hammered Rajiv Gandhi with the butt end of his gun at a farewell parade. So India got hammered and insulted from both sides. But the most demeaning insult to Indias might came from the Tamils whom the Indian rushed to liberate. And, with all the power of the karmic force that boomerangs, it came from Dhanu, a terrorist trained by the Indians. She gave Rajiv Gandhi a Jaffna Tamil poomalai (garland) which India could never forget. There is no one to blame for Indias miserable failure in Sri Lanka including the 13th amendment which it forced down the throat of Sri Lanka other than the short-sighted arrogance of Indian panjandrums who think that they know what is best for Sri Lanka and her neighbours.
The loss to India is not so much life of one of its prime ministers as loss of prestige, respect and dignity in the eyes of the world: to be hammered and thrown out of Sri Lankan by a bunch of Tamil terrorists trained by them is the ultimate humiliation for India. and they deserve it. The monster they trained turned against them. India cant even win the loyalty of those whom they rush to defend. The ingratitude goes to the Jaffna Tamil leadership. The credit, of course, goes to the Sri Lankan government which craftily used the Tamil Tigers, who were trained by Indian colonels, to attack the IPKF forces.
Indias experiences in Sri Lanka should teach them to leave the complex and tangled politics in Sri Lanka alone allowing them to work out their own solutions. India has much to gain by keeping their hands off Sri Lanka instead of poking their unwanted fingers in the domestic affairs. They got their fingers burnt the last time they came in under the pretext of humanitarian assistance. It is a classic example of why R2P should not be applied in cases where it is not wanted.
India also knows that it has nothing more to offer than the discredited 13th Amendment which exploded not only right across Sri Lanka but also in Indias face. India knows that its 13th amendment is as welcome in Sri Lanka as the IPKF raping women in Jaffna or Prabhakaran, one of Indias creations, plucking Tamil children from the arms of helpless Tamil parents. The failed 13th Amendment also delivers the clear message that whatever solution is chosen it must have the approval of all communities. So is India pushing the 13th Amendment plus (meaning police and land powers) to solve the Sri Lankan issue or to exacerbate it and destabilize Sri Lanka hoping to gain from the ensuing violence?
The Indians, like all big powers, will never learn. Their actions demonstrate amply the way politics work in history as described by Bernard Shaw: If the lessons of history teach us anything it is that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Indian idiocy is not second to the local Indian stooges who preach that the Sri Lankans must help the Indians to help us. This is the giddy limit in political thinking. This is the equivalent of saying that the chickens in the coop must help the big, bad fox to help the chickens! Did India need Sri Lankas help to train, finance, direct the Tamil terrorists to destabilize Sri Lanka for its own political gain? Does India need Sri Lankas help to use the report of the three-headed APEs to hit Sri Lanka on the head? How can Sri Lanka help India when India is prodding the TNA to ask for more? In any case, the consistent goal of India has been to make Sri Lanka a client state serving Indian interests. So why should Sri Lanka help Indians make us boot-lickers?
In the past India has done a good job of messing up Sri Lanka again without the help of Sri Lanka. It must be noted that when India gave some assistance in defeating the Tamil Tiger terrorists India was merely undoing their own mistakes. They exported Tamil terrorism to Sri Lanka, violating international law, and it was Sri Lanka that had to face the brunt of Indian-sponsored terror.Sri Lanka is in no way obliged to thank India because it is Sri Lanka that had to pay for the mistakes of India.
India intervened to make Sri Lanka submissive to its will by exporting terror. Sri Lanka is in no way obliged to help India to make Sri Lankan submissive stooge. It is India which is obliged morally, legally and politically to help Sri Lanka to clear the mess it created by destabilizing Sri Lanka through its terrorist agents. And since India has failed, both in its aggressive thrusts to make Sri Lanka a stooge and later in imposing political solutions for peace, the most sensible option available is to let the Sri Lankans work out their own formulae to problems exported by the Indian bully.
The anti-Sri Lankan phillipics of pro-Indian rajas, proposing that Sri Lanka should help India to help us are also another way of blaming Sri Lanka and exonerating Indias share of responsibility for what went wrong in the past. These comments have all the qualities of chewed grass coming out at the other end of the bull. India has exhausted all means of helping Sri Lanka. It tried military intervention and it failed. It tried negotiations and its Indo-Sri Lanka Agreement was shot to pieces by Prabhakaran. Rajiv Gandhi promised the Chief Ministership to Prabhakaran and he told him to shove it up his sherwani. The 13th Amendment caused more problems than those intended to solve. In fact, neither the Sinhalese nor the Tamils want it. So how can Sri Lanka help India when it does not have a viable solution?
This idea of helping India to help us could come only from crippled minds of retarded nincompoops debasing themselves at the feet of their turbaned masters throwing crumbs in their direction. What do these Indian stooges think the response would be, say for instance that of Fidel Castro if they asked him to help America to help Cuba? President Mahinda Rajapaksa in his address at the Victory Parade gave the answer to these Indian idolaters. Having won the war that India could not win he said bluntly we won it without foreign help.
What he should have also added is that Sri Lankans could have won the past and the future faster if the bungling and meddlesome foreigners kept their dirty hands off Sri Lanka. If the West and India did not provide safe havens for the Tamil Tiger terrorists and implemented UN Security Council Resolutions on terrorism, particularly 1373, Sri Lanka could have won peace much earlier.
This is something that the political Pereras and Silvas, allied to the NGOs, should learn. They should not shoot their mouths off as if India has the magic wand to solve problems of her neighbours. If India had the vision or the power neither SAARC nor Sri Lanka would be in this parlous state today. Any sensible look at Sri Lanka will confirm that it needs no enemies when it has helpers like India. Obviously, these pundits, who advocate that Sri Lanka should help India to help us, (in other words, become stooges of India) seems to have offered their minds to be used as spittoons for the Indians. They must be quite happy to carry Indian saliva in their brains.
We have no objections if these pundits desire to live off Indian snut and saliva. But please dont underestimate the capacity of Sri Lankans to solve their own problems. They have done so for millennia mainly the threats from India. This is only the latest episode. If these pundits have nothing better to do than proposing stooging as an escape route they should take a sobering dip in Nanthikadal. And better still, they should take permanent residence in there for the rest of their lives.
LankaWeb – How can India