Tamil, Terror and Tenacity
My article published in Udai India
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The nightmares of 2009
armed conflict in SriLanka have been revived now for political reasons.
Students in TamilNadu are agitating for the cause of Tamil Eelam
(a separate nation demand), the welfare of the Tamils in SriLanka,
Prosecution of the SriLankan President Mahinda Rajapakse, Imposition of
economic sanctions on SriLanka and severing of diplomatic ties with that
nation. The war and the related crimes happened four years ago. The politicians
in TamilNadu especially those who hold the Eelam cause high now, were
docile, dormant and inert while having all the power with them to have made an
effective attempt to stop the killing of innocents. The students were also
there in 2009. All were docile when people were killed and shouting after 4
years which is akin to refusing donating blood for a dying patient but crying
at the cemetery years after the death.
armed conflict in SriLanka have been revived now for political reasons.
Students in TamilNadu are agitating for the cause of Tamil Eelam
(a separate nation demand), the welfare of the Tamils in SriLanka,
Prosecution of the SriLankan President Mahinda Rajapakse, Imposition of
economic sanctions on SriLanka and severing of diplomatic ties with that
nation. The war and the related crimes happened four years ago. The politicians
in TamilNadu especially those who hold the Eelam cause high now, were
docile, dormant and inert while having all the power with them to have made an
effective attempt to stop the killing of innocents. The students were also
there in 2009. All were docile when people were killed and shouting after 4
years which is akin to refusing donating blood for a dying patient but crying
at the cemetery years after the death.
The political power and
the pleasure of swindling crores of money were important for the ruling lot
then. They were of the belief that throwing away a pittance worth of their
swindle will get them the required number of votes to continue in power. Thus
they announced a list of freebies to the general public if they come back to
power, not to be given from their swindle, but from the taxpayer’s money in the
treasury.
the pleasure of swindling crores of money were important for the ruling lot
then. They were of the belief that throwing away a pittance worth of their
swindle will get them the required number of votes to continue in power. Thus
they announced a list of freebies to the general public if they come back to
power, not to be given from their swindle, but from the taxpayer’s money in the
treasury.
Yet, they lost the elections miserably. The self styled leader of the World
Tamils, Karunanidhi, ran to his native to contest elections rather than from the
much boasted fortress of his DMK party, Chennai. Karunanidhi’s hand
held heir apparent M.K.Stalin had won from a suburb in Chennai but nature of
that victory is very much debatable. DMK was routed in the elections with
the rival AIADMK getting a thumping majority. AIADMK made a brilliant move by sticking
to the Eelam cause rightly, as the terror organization LTTE was defeated in the
2009 war. The LTTE had declared to silence their guns after the war. The
point was to help the common Tamil people in the SriLankan territory. They were
put up in camps under some of the worst living conditions of the world.
Most of them still are. The SriLankan Government was to be asked sternly to go
in for the welfare work as the war was over and
won.
But India, being ruled by people without a vision for the national good for a
while now from 2004, has sided with the SriLankan Government to the core that
it did not bother to ask the right questions about the wrong doings. The
ally from down South Karunanidhi was satisfied with his so called fasting
between the hours of breakfast and lunch to protest against the killing of
innocents in the war. It is a fact that death is part of any war, but not
something like ethnic and cultural cleansing that has been happening in SriLanka after the terrorists were
eliminated. A ball park estimate says hundreds of thousands of unarmed common
men, women and children were killed. This was after the false claim of
Karunanidhi that the bombings were stopped after his farce of a fasting for a
couple of hours.
When questioned about this while he was basking in the glory of his own party
deputies praising him for ‘solving’ the Eelam problem. He simply blamed
Pranab Mukherjee, the then External Affairs Minister of India, for giving
him the wrong information. But no reactions for the wrong information which,
when passed on, was instrumental in the death of hunderds of thousands of
men, women and children who were unarmed and yearning for
life. Karunanidhi did continue to support the UPA Government after
this 2009 killing of innocents. He famously lamented that he was a slave and he
was not in a position to help another slave in distress.
He lost the elections to the State Assembly in 2011 and then felt the heat of
the people’s disbelief. He then tried to bring back to life the TESO (Tamil
Eelam Supporters Organisation) which he killed decades ago unilaterally
while the organisation was jointly headed by two other leaders one is
K.Veeramani, a yes man of MK, and the other who still raises voice the
Eelam Tamils’ cause Pazha. Nedumaran, whom MK hates for opposing his fast
changing stances on the issue depending upon his own family’s political
and business ambitions.
Now that the TESO failed to take off and deliver the expected results, some
kind of soap opera scenes were enacted to make people believe that the UN
has been mooted for justice to Tamils. That too failed to impress the
public, so MK announced that he would withdraw support for the UPA Government.
This was done with an expectation of some assurances from the UPA top
brass on meeting some of his expectations so that he can stay afloat
politically in the wave of the recent Eelam Tamil protests and cling on to
his self awarded title of Leaders of the Tamil creed.
The recent Tamil Eelam
protests have got a fillip with Channel 4 telecasting videos of killing of a
teenage boy, Balachandran, by the SriLankan army. That boy happened to be the
LTTE chief Prabakaran’s son. This is unthinkable by any human mind to kill an
unarmed boy after assuring him of no harm and feeding with some snacks. The
argument that Prabakaran has given guns in the hands of many teenage boys and
girls while allowing his own children to have fun due for that age, will not
justify by any means, the killing of this teenage boy. Killing of Balachandran
is culpable homicide amounting to murder and punishable by any law assuring
free and fair human life.
protests have got a fillip with Channel 4 telecasting videos of killing of a
teenage boy, Balachandran, by the SriLankan army. That boy happened to be the
LTTE chief Prabakaran’s son. This is unthinkable by any human mind to kill an
unarmed boy after assuring him of no harm and feeding with some snacks. The
argument that Prabakaran has given guns in the hands of many teenage boys and
girls while allowing his own children to have fun due for that age, will not
justify by any means, the killing of this teenage boy. Killing of Balachandran
is culpable homicide amounting to murder and punishable by any law assuring
free and fair human life.
Now, let us look at the students protesting for the Eelam cause with fasting
and a series of demonstrations. Some students even claim a ‘Gandhian way’ of
travelling in trains without tickets. They also claim of organising a
boycott of classes conveniently facilitated by the State Government by
declaring a leave for all arts and science and law colleges. Engineering
and medical students have been spared from this forced leave of study. What is
the benifit the Eelam cause is going to derive from spoiling the studies of
almost all students and ruining the health of some students in India? While
they travel in trains without tickets would ruin the economy of India rather
than strengthen the cause of Eelam by the worth of a pittance.
A couple of questions on the students’ protest of 2013.
- What were they doing from 2009 to 2013?
- Why they didn’t protest with
a vigour in 2009 when the killing happened? - Why are they boycotting classes and ruining their
future? - Why the parents are silent on this ruin of their
kids’ future? - Who is in the back ground of this and what is
their purpose? - Many of the student protesters are not aware of
the history of the SriLankan-Tamil bloody conflict from 1983 and how do
they protest for something that is unclear to them? - Their emotions are tickled and their future is
toyed with. Who benefits from such stupidity?
A ready-made answer
is kept ready by the protesters, or rather their masterminds, that the opposers
of these protests by students are against the Eelam cause and hence
anti-Tamil. They also say that the North Indians are not supporting this cause.
While Pakistan is a national issue, Eelam is not. It is a fact. But why is
Eelam not an issue of national importance like Pakistan or Bangladesh? We
need to delve deep into the issue. The Eelam Tamils issue nor the attack on
Indian fishermen by SriLanka was taken to the national stage effectively
by any of the people who claim to work for the cause or even to do the supreme
sacrifice. They simply play with the emotions of the locals and students,
claiming that the Tamils are given a step motherly treatment by the North
Indians. While Kerela fishermen can become national sensation, while an
issue in Andrha Pradesh or Karnataka can become national issues.
is kept ready by the protesters, or rather their masterminds, that the opposers
of these protests by students are against the Eelam cause and hence
anti-Tamil. They also say that the North Indians are not supporting this cause.
While Pakistan is a national issue, Eelam is not. It is a fact. But why is
Eelam not an issue of national importance like Pakistan or Bangladesh? We
need to delve deep into the issue. The Eelam Tamils issue nor the attack on
Indian fishermen by SriLanka was taken to the national stage effectively
by any of the people who claim to work for the cause or even to do the supreme
sacrifice. They simply play with the emotions of the locals and students,
claiming that the Tamils are given a step motherly treatment by the North
Indians. While Kerela fishermen can become national sensation, while an
issue in Andrha Pradesh or Karnataka can become national issues.
Any of the States in the south of India are aligned with the mainstream
national politics, but only TamilNadu is emotionally separated due to
the diversionary tactics employed by the Dravidian outfits who
aimed for a separate nation for themselves and their patriarch the EV Ramasamy
Naicker had even observed the Independence of India as a black day. The
Dravidian separatists demanded a Dravidian country encompassing the four
southern States of TamilNadu, Kerela, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. While
the other three States had got out the clutches of this evil while the
Kannadiga EV Ramasamy Naicker and the Telugu bidda Karunanidhi
have succeeded in making the Tamil speaking people believe that they are
their saviours by following the lines of T.M.Nair, a Malayalee who started a
movement to split
Hindus along caste lines
and remain in limelight based on those divisions.
and remain in limelight based on those divisions.
Their attack plan was to deride Hindu religion and thus cut the connecting
emotional bond with the rest of the nation culturally. Their ammunition was
movies with which they created a hatred towards Hindu culture and
projected Tamil as if a separate atheist language, while a great deal of religious
literature aging thousands of years were simply kept off the eyes of the a
generation. Religion is projected as malice along the communist lines while the
leaders who did such a projection with a vigor and violence did not even
question their women folk going to temples for worship. They were so money
minded that they started to loot the State at all fronts and nearly made
the State a banana republic.
The Tamils of Eelam were used by Karunanidhi and his cronies as a vote catching
cause in TamilNadu on emotional grounds rather than a cause for bettering the
lives of the so often claimed blood brothers on the other side of the Palk
Straits. The Katchatheevu, a prime island on the Indian side, was given away to
SriLanka by the Indira Government in the 1970s and Karunanidhi did not
even raise his eyebrows for compromise of the welfare of the State’s
fisherfolk. But he has turned the blame on the Congress party of Indira
Gandhi for ruining the lifelines of the fisher-folks with his master
demagoguery. When the fisher-folks were killed by the SriLankan Navy
for decades, MK who was in the power in the Union Government did not even
grunt.
To make the issue a national one, first off the issue has to be taken to the
national level and not with such emotional outbursts of Tamils ignored by the
Northies within the borders of TamilNadu. If North Indian ignore Tamils
and are not trustworthy as claimed by the self styled leaders of Tamil creed,
why the self styled champion of Tamil cause MK had been visiting Delhi to get
power in the national Government?
Some ideas to get the issue to the national mainstream:
- Get the BJP in as the leaders have shown concern
over the killings, while Congress leaders were keen to satisfy self
centric DMK. - Get non political organizations with a national
presence to make this a national issue. - Stop blaming North Indians for apathy as the
Tamil Leaders have been acting with a separatist mindset and not the
Northies who have kicked the Tamils out. - Attack on fisher-folks are reported in media as
Tamil issues and not as an Indian issue, as if TamilNadu is separate from
India. - Eelam issue is seen as an international issue,
but it is an issue of ethnic Indians being attacked by SriLanka. This was
not made clear to justify an Indian intervention.
Without aligning the
issue with the national mainstream thought blaming the North Indians or some
sane thinkers as outcasts will not serve any cause worth a fight.
issue with the national mainstream thought blaming the North Indians or some
sane thinkers as outcasts will not serve any cause worth a fight.
So, the need of the hour is for the people to stop falling prey to the self
serving separatists and join the national mainstream to get the issue a support
of the whole nation as we get against Pakistan’s excesses, or for the Kerela
fishermen or any other issues.
