Where angels fear to tread

It was not Rajiv Gandhi8217;s birthday. He had not won an election. He had not been granted the Nobel Prize. All that had happened was that the prime minister of India had pulled off a major diplomatic coup by persuading Sri Lanka to accept Indian troops. We all know what happened. More soldiers were killed in that whimsical misadventure than in the Kargil conflict. Adding insult to injury, to this day no Congressman has explained why Rajiv Gandhi rushed in where angels feared to tread. The men who died in Kargil were protecting India from invaders, what Indian interests were at stake in Sri Lanka?

Rajiv Gandhi devotees in the Congress respond with a variation of the infamous domino theory8217;. In the Cold War years it was felt by the best and the brightest in Washington that the fall of South Vietnam would trigger Communist coups in the rest of Southeast Asia, like one falling pin bringing down its neighbour. Rajiv Gandhi, or his advisors, apparently acted out of mistrust of south Indians in general and Tamilians in particular.

If, so their thinking went, the Tamils of Jaffna succeeded in breaking free from Sinhala domination and created a free nation called Eelam, would their cousins across the Palk Straits be content in India? Wouldn8217;t the Tamils of Tamil Nadu try to secede, perhaps join the new country? And what would happen in the rest of south India if Tamil Nadu parted ways with the Union of India?

Thirteen years later I continue to be baffled at the half-baked intelligence that was directly responsible for the deaths of so many Indian soldiers. And ultimately for the death of Rajiv Gandhi himself. Can anyone explain why the then prime minister ordered the Indian Air Force to conduct Operation Poomalai for the relief of the LTTE, and then chummy up to Colombo almost literally the next day?

Nobody in the Congress wants to admit it today, but sending the Indian Peace-Keeping Force IPKF represented a complete reversal of policy. The Indira Gandhi regime had encouraged the Tamil groups in Sri Lanka just as far as it could. I am not sure if militants were invited to India, but it is a fact that they were trained on Indian soil and financed by Indian money. Only the LTTE, out of all the many groups that sprang up in the early 1980s, refused to be completely servile to New Delhi; by 1987, there was no other Tamil organisation to challenge it in Sri Lanka.

I do not say that this was an honourable policy, nor that it was particularly intelligent. What was the point in encouraging secessionism in Jaffna when India faced precisely the same problem in Punjab? But it was better than any ab-rupt reversal. From beginning to end, nobody in the IPKF was given a clear-cut objective. By the end of the mission, both Colombo and the LTTE had agreed on at least one thing: the Indians were unwanted.

Given this history, I am not surprised that the Congress president has sought refuge in a prudent silence over the current crisis in Sri Lanka. What else can she do? She must now either admit if not in so many words that her husband was a jackass to interfere, or revere his memory and ask for another intervention. I wonder how long Sonia Gandhi can duck such questions; given the to-ing and fro-ing over both Kargil and then over nuclear policy, it is legitimate to wonder if she has ever thought about national security issues.

Fortunately, the Congress is not in power, which means India is spared any more of that party8217;s goofy policies. However, there is no shortage of advocates pushing for intervention in Sri Lanka, perhaps limited to aerial bombardment. quot;We cannot permit Jaffna to fall to the LTTE!quot; is the call. Which still begs the question: why?

I do not advocate the creation of Eelam. But nor do I understand why some people are so afraid of the very thought. Let me ask them, do you suspect the patriotism of the citizens of Tamil Nadu, or believe that their commitment to the integrity of the Union of India is any bit less than your own?

Yes, it is true that the Dravida Ka-zhagam raised the secessionist flag in 1947, but the DMK successor to the DK formally renounced that plank fifteen years later. Since then, both the DMK and the AIADMK have been allies of one or the other national party. Tamil Nadu today is just as firmly integrated into India as, say, Uttar Pradesh or Madhya Pradesh. If you ask me, the economic decay of the north is a greater threat to the nation than any spectre of separatism in the south.

I am not saying, by the way, that secessionism isn8217;t a problem at all; all I aver is that the trouble does not exist south of the Vindhyas. And wherever it is, or was, a dilemma, the roots could always be traced back to the Congress8217;s manipulative tactics, whether in Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, or Assam.

Eelam is Sri Lanka8217;s problem, a direct consequence of decades of Sinhala arrogance. We can reaffirm India8217;s desire to keep Sri Lanka united and we can deplore the calls for Eelam. But there is no reason whatsoever to go swimming in quicksand once again.