India and the LTTE

Shivshankar Menon’s book on some of India’s major foreign policy decisions, Choices, gives the history and the reasons for India’s continually changing stance in the LTTE story in Sri Lanka.

 

Sri Lanka’s original Tamils are very different from the Tamils of India. Under Britain’s divide and rule policy, they were the favoured elite – the English-speaking class that was disproportionately represented in the civil services. Another big chunk of Tamils in Sri Lanka were brought in by the British to work on the plantations. After independence, a resentful Sinhalese majority declared the Indian-origin Tamils stateless, i.e., non-citizens, and changed the national language to Sinhalese. Tamils were next discriminated against in jobs.

 

By the 70’s, the Tamils’ resentment boiled over and violent outfits sprang up. Amongst them, the LTTE went on to dominate. Tit for tat violence soon became the norm. In the 80’s, the growing violence in Sri Lanka raised 2 concerns in India: (1) the movement might spread to Tamil Nadu; and (2) foreign powers might be called to intervene, right in India’s backyard. Hence India decided to establish communication channels, and even train the LTTE, the assumption being that they’d have influence and some control over future events.

 

In ’87, the Sri Lankan army moved in full force towards Jaffna. As its own vocal Tamil population demanded help for the Sri Lankan Tamils, India airdropped medicines and food onto besieged Jaffna. It then brokered a peace accord whereby some power would be given to the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka, and Tamil would also be a national language. The IPKF was then created and sent to accept the surrender of arms by the LTTE. But then the truce fell apart, with both sides blaming each other. The IPKF was now expected to fight the LTTE, but parts of the Sri Lankan establishment viewed its presence as an affront to their sovereignty. Caught in an impossible position, the IPKF finally left Sri Lanka in ’90. The whole episode was a disaster for India: it was now hated by both sides. And led to Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination by the LTTE in ’91.

 

After 9/11, the global mood against terrorist organizations changed. As the civil war in Sri Lanka continued, there was an exodus of its Tamils into Western countries as well. The West now cared, and by 2005, had banned the LTTE. They also tried to broker peace deals, without success. Seeing the way the wind was blowing, Sri Lanka decided to send in its army to wipe out the LTTE for good in 2009. India had to make a choice. Post the Rajiv assassination, the mood in India was no longer supportive of the LTTE. Nor, in a post-9/11 or post-26/11 world, could India support a terrorist organization. And lastly, India didn’t want to antagonise Sri Lanka in a world where China was rising. After all:

“Sri Lanka is an aircraft carrier parked fourteen miles off the Indian coast.”

And so, this time around, India only tried to minimize civilian casualties. From a victorious Sri Lanka, India asked for and got the assurance that there would be no permanent Chinese military presence in their country. Sri Lanka also agreed to get most of its military training and intelligence from India. Most, but not all. Menon says this was expected: most countries in Asia know they can play India and China against each other, and try to get better deals for themselves.

 

Menon wraps the entire saga perfectly with these lines:

“Using Reinhold Niebuhr’s definition, politics is inevitably tragic, that things do not get into politics unless they are otherwise intractable, that there are no “solutions” that meet everyone’s demands or interests.”