Debating about India’s gain from the win of a world renowned genocider carries a mercenary streak that the Delhi mandarins also applied in dealing with the Tamil issue. Nothing has changed since ‘Delhi’s Indo-Sri-Lankan policies in a disastrous log jam of its own creation’ appeared in blogs including ‘Groundreport.com’.
The hollowness of the Delhi mandarins’ noble sentiments is exposed in Bhadrakumar’s ‘Blood in our hands’ in Rediff.com 19 May 2009 revealing Delhi’s predicament in Sri Lanka (SL). This certainly is not a gain for India. The over jealous appeasing by the Delhi mandarins freed Colombo of the LTTE leverage emboldening SL into overplaying the historical China card to counter India’s regional ambitions as in the past. Delhi recently courted the US for a trusting friendship to counter the growing China threat to India. Yet Delhi’s historical suspicions about US influence in SL and the region re-surfaces constantly.
Delhi’s geo-political reaction to US plans to rescue the LTTE leadership from the narrow ‘no fire zone’ in May 2009 was to keep the US from regaining its influence in SL at all costs, China or no China. Such geo-politics to end the war sooner in May instead August (Sarath’s target date) in military terms meant more intensified and concentrated attacks and heavy civilian casualties during the fatal two weeks in May. This Delhi mandarin pressure in effect turned out to be more lethal than all the weaponry Delhi blames China of supplying SL. The brutality to the war was thus added by the Delhi mandarin pressure on SL to hasten the end of the war and Gothabhaya has repeatedly alluded to the Delhi ‘trio’ being in the loop when these war crimes were committed. Here, a Rajapakse win is an important gain for India with the Delhi trio escaping war crimes allegations.
The entire gain is for the main stakeholder; a strengthened Rajapakse regime has downgraded the Tamil issue to make Delhi’s role in SL reduntant. Delhi’s plea to SL to implement highly touted 1987 Indo-SL Accord falls on deaf ears. By this stance SL’s intent is to export the Tamil problem to TN/India knowing full well that Delhi will be incapable of delivering on its repeated promises to TN (with the Rajapakses implicitly agreeing previously) that the 1987 Accord will be delivered in full. SL puts Delhi in such a discomfort zone confirming its reputation for betraying TN and thus sowing the seeds of divisiveness in India. This also is SL’s implicit support for China’s plans to balkanize India. Any gains to India from its balkanization?
SL’s has benefitted much over time using this style of diplomacy; deporting back nearly a million up country Tamils under the 1964 and 1975 agreements, handing over Katchchativu (now being militarized adjacent to a heavily militarized North SL) to harass TN fishermen and exercising de facto surveillance over the entire Palk Straits including the TN coastline that is part of India. If required there is nothing to prevent SL inviting China its closest friend to participate in this surveillance of TN with its militarily sensitive assets just a few kilometers away. India relocating these sensitive assets assumes urgency for strategic reasons. Will there be any gain (except massive costs) to India in defending against an emerging military threat in its southern borders and guarding shipping lanes in the Indian Oceon critical to its economic survival though abdicating its role as protector of the TN fishermen to the mercies of the SL navy receives scant attention.
In sum, these justify Bhadrakumar’s admiration for the Sinhalese as a ‘highly sophisticate practitioners of diplomacy’ compared to the South Block mandarins in Delhi. The Delhi claim that a vote for a Rajapakse is ‘an implicit vote for India’ or a win for Delhi is the product of the Narayanan anti-Tamil mindset that views the Tamils/TN as expendable. TNA on behalf of most Tamils supported Fonseka (not Rajapakse) as the one who fought the war according to military rules in contrast to the Rajapakses as political masters who added added brutality to the war especially its iconic May Mullativu massacres (of tens of thousands of civilians and entire white flag waving Tamil resistance leadership) and these being war crimes.
By its support both covert and overt Delhi did effectively defeat the Tamils, physically eliminating their entire leadership leaving the hapless Tamils to the mercies of a murderous regime. Hence Delhi’s contention that a vote for Rajapakse is ‘an implicit vote for India’ and a win for India borders on absurdity. The big losers are the Tamils/TN and Delhi, the winner is the obdurate Rajapakse regime now opting out of the India sponsored 1987 Indo-SL accord that Delhi held out as the panacea for the SL problem.
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