The muzzling of Vaiko

Let’s not forget that it was Sinhalese racial discrimination that forced the Tamils in Jaffna to adopt terrorist resistance. They were gentle folk and among island’s richest and most educated. But they rebelled because their very success made them targets of Sinhalese hate. Sri Lanka saw a Buddhist fundamentalism years before the word was born. When the first Sinhalese government came to power after British rule, the first thing it did was to disenfranchise one million estate Tamils. Sri Lanka was the only home they knew, but they were jeered at as foreigners and told to return to India.

The estate Tamils were turned into ‘stateless citizens’ by two citizenship acts. In 1956, the Tamil language was downgraded with Sinhala being declared as Sri Lanka’s official language. The Hindu religion was downgraded and Buddhism made the island’s de facto religion. Quotas in educational institutions ensured the admission of low-scoring Sinhalese students over high-scoring Tamils. The Tamils were also shut out of government jobs.

Although traumatised what could the Tamils do? They were being oppressed by parliamentary democracy and they were scattered and too few in number — 18 per cent — to count in electoral terms. They didn’t rebel even then. But then a breaking-point in 1983 when periodic anti-Tamil riots culminated in a massacre. Rampaging Sinhalese mobs lynched 3,000 Tamils and turned 50,000 of them into refugees. The Tamils picked up arms. And their resolve is best symbolised by the Tigers.

Given this history, it is natural for Vaiko and 60 million Tamils here to sympathise with Sri Lanka’s Tamils. But India’s BJP leaders don’t — they tread the same anti-LTTE path although they should have been roused by the suffering of Sri Lanka’s Hindu Tamils. In retrospect, India’s indifference is appalling. The Arab world rallies around the Palestinians. Russia is protective of Russians in former Soviet territories. But India remains supremely indifferent to the suffering of Sri Lanka’s Tamils.