Gajalakshmi Paramasivam

25 March 2021

 

 

 

 

LANKAN TAMILS ARE NOT COMMODITY IN CUSTODY OF INDIAN TAMIL POLITICIANS

 

[Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram today urged the people of Tamil Nadu to punish the AIADMK-BJP alliance in the upcoming state assembly elections for abstaining from the UN Human Rights Council vote on Sri Lanka.] NDTV article -Gross Betrayal Of Tamils": P Chidambaram Shreds Centre Over Lanka

What kind of mind would treat the Sri Lankan Tamil community as a ‘Commodity’/pawn to be used in State elections? The following in Wikipedia gives us an indicator:

[He was the Tamil Nadu Youth Congress president and then the general secretary of the Tamil Nadu Pradesh Congress Committee unit. He was inducted into the Union (Indian federal) Council of Ministers in the government headed by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi on 21 September 1985 as a Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Commerce and then in the Ministry of Personnel. His main actions during his tenure in this period was to control the price of tea and he has been criticized by the Government of Sri Lanka for destroying the Sri Lankan tea trade by fixing the prices of the commodity in India using state power. ]

The price of Sri Lankan Tea directly affects Hill Country Tamils of Sri Lanka, who for a long time were known as Indian Tamils whose plight is presented by Wikipedia as follows:

[Sinhalese nationalists resented the growth of the Tamil population and pressured the government to send them back to India. Therefore the government introduced the Ceylon Citizenship Bill. The act came into force in 1948, and it granted citizenship to about 5,000 Indian Tamils. However, more than 700,000 people (about 11%) were either non-citizens of Ceylon or became stateless. The Indian and Pakistani Residents Citizenship Act (1949) also failed to solve the issues. In 1954, the Nehru-Kotelawala Pact was signed to deal with the same issue. Nevertheless, the issue remained unsolved. In 1962, there were nearly 975,000 people, classified by Ceylon as "Indian nationals" and by India as "stateless". Although India denied any legal responsibility for these people, it acknowledged a "sentimental interest" in them.]

In 1948, I was yet to be born. Mr Chidambaram would have been 3 years old. But I grew up in an environment where Indian Tamils ranked last in the list as the folks of Thunaivi are in Vaddukoddai, even today. As per the above  Mr Chidambaram as an Indian Tamil would have been aware of the low status allocated to his community in Sri Lanka. Yet there is no record of him having tried to ‘balance’ the books of Equal footing, through ‘tea pricing’ to compensate for the official status of ‘statelessness’ of this community. It is also significant that he was criticised ‘for his ministry's failure to prevent the 2011 Mumbai bombings, despite massive investments in security following the 2008 Mumbai attacks.’

When one’s status is  way below one’s earned status, the force of Truth empowers one with different abilities. Hence Differently Abled, in the case of those who oppose lower than their earned status. I learnt this through my own experience in Australia. Colombo Tamils also learnt this. I have presented this in my response to one of my readers who raised the following in response to my article ‘UNHRC VOTE AGAINST THE LTTE TAMIL DIASPORA’:

Reader : ‘The planned massacres of the Tamils during 1956 to 1977 were executed by what kind of terrorists? What was the purpose of that terrorism? Why weren’t those terrorists brought to light? Had the 9/11 terrorist attack in the U S A happened in those periods, the real terrorists who originated terrorism in Srilanka would also have been included in the list of terrorists. Are acts of Burning Tamils alive, brutally pulling out the eye of Tamil prisoner, looting and burning of Tamil houses Etc., not considered acts of terrorism? Has UNHRC voted against these terrorists also?’

Gaja: I was six years old in 1956. I experienced the 1958 riots as part of a family that was by then very much Colombo Tamils. My uncle Sanmugarajah led the team that opposed in defence and did not retaliate. Later he became General Manager of Ceylon Electricity Board and to me that was due to his courage that sustained him in that group.. When my father decided to send us to Jaffna after the riots – uncle asked – ‘Are they going to take the earth on which your home stands?’ We went to Jaffna anyway and sold the house. Uncle continued to live in Colombo and he died in Colombo. Colombo was his homeland.

In 1977, I had the anxiety but was not directly attacked. That probably was due also to us living in Colombo 7 at that time. Each one experiences anxiety and fear as per their own feeling of ownership. As uncle often said – the brave die only once.

Within the Tamil community each family experienced differently. But majority continued to repair and live. They were the brave ones. I continued to live in Colombo after 1977 experience. I was in PNG during the 1983 experience but had the experience through my family in Colombo – including uncle Sanmugarajah’s family. I therefore conclude that Americans also repaired and continued to live in their homelands after 9/11. The rest is for intellectual advancement.

Yes, the UNHRC has voted strongly against Sinhalese also. But because they had to go through the government as per their jurisdiction, the fact that they highlighted LTTE separately means that they found the LTTE atrocities to be far more criminalistic than that of the government. If Eelam had been a separate entity it is highly unlikely that it would have had the acceptance of the UN at the same level as Sri Lanka. Likewise, if Sri Lanka became Sinhala only through its government.

It is alright to live within one’s own territory and govern as per one’s own belief based structure. Both enforced their rule through gun power and this confirmed lack of belief. The government soldiers committed all those atrocities to the Sinhalese communists also. It is their karma that resulted in the Chinese takeover of Hambantota.

As Gandhi said – we have the authority to discipline but punishment needs to be left to God.

Regards

Gaja]

 

I was happy to read Mr N S Vekatraman’s article ‘UN Resolution Against Sri Lanka Is Partisan And Unfair – OpEd’ and identify with common aspects. I responded as follows:

 

[Very well said. As a Sri Lankan Tamil, I fully identify with the true feelings of the author whose voice is indeed the voice of the deprived including in Sri Lanka. As indicated, it was not just Sri Lanka on trial but all those who assisted either side for selfish reasons]

Both Mr P Chidambaram and Mr N S Vekataraman are Indian Tamils. Former is stagnating at political level whilst the other has risen to Governance level through Service to the needy. Likewise Sri Lankan Tamils. So long as we stay with the borders of our Belief – we would be owners of  the issue. Those who go outside those borders desire wins and lose ownership points. That was how both sides to the war lost or weakened ownership in Sri Lanka. They are both ready to be taken over by stronger players in Politics. The UNHRC vote has given us the time and space to prevent such takeovers and develop our self-governance so we would merge as Equals at global level.