India’s role in Sri lanka is perplexing. They espouse the rights of Sri Lankan Tamils, whilst having unleashed terrorism of unprecedented levels that affected mostly the Sri Lankan Tamils. Why the Indian sympathy towards the Sri Lankan Tamils never extends to the Indian Tamils in Sri Lanka is a question that begs to be asked. Even Narendra Modi, as the first PM since Rajiv Gandhi to visit Sri Lanka, made a beeline to the North, completely ignoring the Tamils living in the central hills, arguably in worse conditions than Sri Lanka’s other citizens.

The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of relationship India, especially Tamil Nadu, maintains with the Sri Lankan Tamils is equally confounding. They lament and protest over their Lankan brethren and take cudgels with the Centra Government to intervene. Yet, think nothing of poaching on the Sri Lankan Northern seas.

They know that in the arid North, fishing offers one of the few and main livelihoods. Still, despite the protests, fights and negotiations, Tamil Nadu fishermen aggressively come into the Sri Lankan waters, intimidate the very people they swear to die for, and steal their catch. They do so while destroying the Sri Lankan fishermen’s boats and equipment, as well as the diverse marine life with their trawlers.

While this is a much publicized issue, the contempt with which the Sri Lankan Tamils are treated in TN is less articulated. TN films often features a Sri Lankan Tamil character as an oddity and is ridiculed throughout the film for his ‘quaintness’. It is when the character adapts ‘modern’ TN ways, he gains acceptance and respectability. It is interesting how Prabhakaran, who resided in TN in the early ’70s, and an avid film buff took these ‘good natured’ jabs.

Another point that is least discussed is the manner in which Sri Lankan Tamil refugees are treated in TN. While those with the means or support of relatives may find their independent accommodation, others are confined to refugee camps, even after residing in the area for considerable time. These camps are run with iron fisted discipline and any deviations from the rules and regulations are dealt sternly.

Negotiating Peace in Sri Lanka – Efforts, Failures and Lessons, edited by Dr. Kumar Rupesinghe, offers an insight to these compelling questions. The book is a compilation of experiences and perceptions by key figures and witnesses such as journalists during the tumultuous period in Sri Lanka. With remarkable candidness, they have contributed essays of the real events behind the headlines. Discussions of JN Dixit – Indian ambassador to Sri Lanka during Rajiv Gandhi’s tenure as PM, and Bernard Tilakaratne – High Commissioner to India from 1982-1989 and thereafter as Foreign Secretary until 1994, are especially scintillating.

Tilakaratna explains that the crux of the real problem actually lays with the Mr. Hyde nature of the TN politicians. In 1940s, under the Sri Lanka’s citizenship laws, the residence visas of many Indians residing in Sri Lanka, mainly as indented laborers, had expired. Under the Indo-Sri Lankan Citizenship Agreements, these stateless persons of Indian origin opted for Indian nationality.

“The majority of the repatriates of these categories,” writes Tilakaratna, “had to be accommodated mainly in TN with the attendant problems of resettlement and rehabilitation and the State Governments in power there, whether of the Congress Party of the DMK or the AIADMK, resented these moves.”

Though in 1964, an agreement was reached between the Sri Lankan and Indian PMs – Sirima Bandaranaike and Lal Bahadur Shastri, “the main point here is that even if this so-called ‘Stateless Problem’ between the two countries was amicably settled, some rancor remained in TN over the resettling of the repatriates there.”

The second issue arose with the India-Sri Lanka Maritime Boundary Agreement of 1974 and 1976. Accordingly, the island of Kachchativu in the Palk Straits became part of Sri Lanka – something for which the TN State Government never forgave the Central Government and vowed to regain it.

The third issue was that when Sinhala was declared the official language of Sri Lanka in 1956, it found a responsive chord in TN. They were also sensitive to the prospects of Hindi becoming the national and official language.

The Sri Lankan Government’s (SLG) decision to deal exclusively with the Central Government, despite the geographical proximity and the close relationship Tamils of the two divide shared, rankled the TN politicians further.

Hence, they took a hardline against Sri Lanka and fanned separatism and eventually terrorism amongst their Sri Lankan counterparts. Sri Lankan separatists found notable moral, logistical and financial support from the TN politicians since early ’70s. The Central Government was aware of these developments, and by the end of the decade, they too had become supporters. Dixit contradicts the popular belief that the Indian government was compelled to do so because of JR Jayawardena’s insensitivities to India’s security concerns.

This was the Cold War era and battle lines were drawn between U.S. and the Soviet Union – both equally confrontational. Matters came to a peak, recalls Dixit, with the Soviet military intervention in the Afghanistan conflict. Pakistan took advantage of the situation to build its defenses against India by pledging its support to America. They demanded “political, material and military support to enhance Pakistan’s strategic capacities against India”. U.S. in turn was interested “in utilizing Pakistan as a frontier state to further U.S. strategic objectives in the central Asian region”.

Though India’s diplomatic relations with China were fully restored in 1976, they remained uneasy neighbors. It did not help when U.S. and China partnered in their efforts to contain Russia.

India, as a perceived supporter of the Soviet movement into Afghanistan, became increasingly “targeted with political and economic pressures to reduce Soviet-Indian strategic equations, political and technological cooperation”. China and Pakistan, for their own agendas, fully encouraged these moves.

“The rise of Tamil militancy in Sri Lanka,” continues Dixit, “and the Jayewardene Government’s serious apprehensions about this development were utilized by the U.S. and Pakistan to create a politico-strategic pressure point against India in the Island’s strategically sensitive coast off the Peninsula of India. Jayewardene who was apprehensive of support from TN to Sri Lankan Tamils was personally averse to Mrs. Gandhi and was of the view that she could not control the Indian-Tamil support to Sri Lankan Tamils. He established substantive defensive and intelligence contacts with the U.S., Pakistan and Israel.”

It must be noted however, Jayewardene had cordial relationships with Gandhi’s predecessor, Morarji Desai and later a good rapport with her son and successor, Rajiv Gandhi – at least initially. This indicates, more than Jayewardene’s diplomatic failures, serious miscalculations on Gandhi’s foreign policy.

Wikipedia notes, “as the PM of India, Gandhi was known for her political ruthlessness and unprecedented centralization of power. She went to war with Pakistan in support of the independence movement and war of independence in East Pakistan, which resulted in the creation of Bangladesh, as well as increasing India’s influence to the point here it became the regional hegemony of South Asia. ”

Being a strong personality, she should have brought to heel rabid TN political elements. Indeed, states Dixit, it was not in India’s best interest to support the “establishment of a separate state in the basis of ethnicity and religion causing disintegration of a neighboring multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual state,” for “then India would find it difficult to maintain its overall unity and territorial integrity when facing the challenges of separatism in Punjab and Kashmir.”

Usually, writes Thomas Abraham – The Hindu correspondent in Sri Lanka from 1988-1992, governments “fund and train insurgent groups when the aim is to destabilize and topple unfriendly governments and replace them with more friendly regimes. But rarely has a country fueled and trained an insurgency against a neighboring country with which it enjoys historically good relations, and has no intention of destabilizing it.”

He continues, “it is not possible to fuel militancy in a friendly country,” which is an act “fundamentally unfriendly” and “still claim to be a good neighbor”.

Tilakaratne too notes that during Gandhi’s tenure as PM, the northern province experienced “a serious escalation of terrorist violence. SLG was deeply concerned, not without a sense of anguish and helplessness,” to the support the terrorists enjoyed in India – from the bases in TN to “training camps mainly in the South and elsewhere for these separatists in the use of sophisticated weapons.” This tacit support of India received wide publicity, “even in the Indian media”.

Thus, observes Abraham, Sri Lanka perceived India’s policy was to destabilize the country despite the purported efforts to resolve the so-called ethnic conflict. The Indian good offices were “rarely perceived as ‘good'”, and “Indian proposals were inevitably viewed with a jaundiced eye.” India’s extended hand of friendship was accepted reluctantly simply because SLG had no choice.

Both Dixit and Tilakaratna outline reasons for Gandhi to unleash unwarranted aggression against a friendly nation. Dixit explains that when Hindi was accepted as both the national language and the official language in all states of India in 1965, Tamil Nadu was the first constituent state to threaten India with secession. At the time, it was nullified. However, apparently it was perceived that “if India did not support the Tamil cause in Sri Lanka, there would be a resurgence of Tamil separatism in India”. Therefore, it was important for Gandhi to maintain “positive equations” with the TN politicians.

“The other important yet unpublicized reason was,” states Tilakaratna, “that India’s general elections was due in 1984 and Mrs. Gandhi had lost her electoral support in several parts of India, including some of her traditional strongholds in the south and it was very important for her to retain the support of TN and also maintain the strength of her Congress (I) bases.”

SLG perceived that Gandhi’s move to support terrorism was not just to appease TN, but also to manipulate the terrorists “to impose on Sri Lanka a solution to the ethnic conflict that would best serve India’s strategic interests in South Asia,” notes Tilakaratne.

Abraham agrees as he points that “three major instruments of state policy: diplomacy, covert operations and the armed forces” were used in an unprecedented manner. The largest peacetime force was deployed outside India’s frontiers since Independence to counter the terrorists armed and trained “in the largest covert operation that India’s intelligence agencies had ever taken”. Indian civil servants were sent at the same time to help Sri Lanka administer the Northern and Eastern provinces.

“The aim was to use the militants to acquire leverage over President Jayewardene and impress on him that he risked the breakup of his country unless he negotiated seriously with the Tamils,” confident that India could reign in the terrorists at the required moment. They however did not factor that these groups becoming independent from India.

While groups that were totally dependent on India’s support remained pliable to India’s moods, others such as People’s Liberation Organization of Tamil Eelam and Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam found their own “political patrons, sources of finance and weapons suppliers”. In fact, the very first terrorist groups, “including Uma Maheswaran, leader of PLOTE, had received training in Lebanon” even before India started training them. Thus, India lost control of a force that was created just to twist Jayewardene’s arm.

This was evidence in the challenge the Indian Peace Keeping Force faced with its encounters with the LTTE using guerrilla tactics unfamiliar to IPKF. Thus the IPKF could not counter these moves, especially in heavily populated areas. What can a professional soldier really do when a young girl in pigtails suddenly whips out a gun from under her skirt and starts shooting?

Eventually, India managed to force the contentious 13 Amendment on our constitution thanks to the seeds planted by Gandhi. However, the proposed Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement and the speculated Hanuman Bridge have received a severe backlash from the Sinhalese, who will not back down. Therefore, all India gained from sowing terrorism in Sri lanka was destroying all prospects of negotiations India sought to gain. More damagingly though is that, until the present generations push daisies, India will remain a pariah in the Sri Lankan eyes.