Intentionally or otherwise, the ruling DMK in Tamil Nadu seems to be conferring on the ‘Sri Lankan Tamil issue’ the place that the State’s voters did not attach during the critical weeks of the parliamentary polls in May 2009. With Assembly elections due by May next, it’s the ruling party that seems piqued by events and developments pertaining to Sri Lanka, giving the Opposition the morale and momentum that they had lacked after making the ‘end-game’ in the ‘ethnic war’ their one-point election issue last year, and losing it badly, too.
Party supremo and State Chief Minister M Karunanidhi set the ball rolling by calling for the ‘World Tamil Conference’ in the ‘Cotton City’ of Coimbatore, if only to try and offset some of the negative publicity against him, nearer home and more so abroad, about his perceived ‘anti-Tamil ploys’ at the height of the ethnic war in Sri Lanka. He however had to downgrade it and rechristen the meet as ‘World Classical Tamil Conference’ as the parent global organisation declined to be a part of the Coimbatore show, citing paucity of time as the official reason. If the conference did help matters to an extent, the DMK has since taken up related issues to the public in ways political adversaries did not expect it to do.
As if to deny the Opposition, election-year space on this count or to upstage them, the DMK recently called for a protest in Chennai against the Colombo Government over the death of a Tamil Nadu fisherman, allegedly at the hands of the Sri Lanka Navy (SLN) in mid-sea. Sure enough, the Opposition would have raised the issue at all forums, starting with the public arena, but the early-bird advantage that the ruling party sought to obtain meant that the latter had to sound harsher yet. MDMK leader Vaiko and others staged a protest rally, also in Chennai, demanding the closure of the Sri Lankan Deputy High Commission in the city. Not to be left out or out-done, DMK’s electoral ally in the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), led by Thol Thirumavalavan, too staged a similar protest, on the same demand. Going another step, pro-LTTE film-maker Seeman, the founder of the infant ‘Naam Thamizhar Katchi’ (‘We, the Tamils’ party) threatened the lives of Sinhalas visiting and walking the streets of Tamil Nadu if the SLN did not stop harassing and killing fishermen from the State. He was arrested promptly and detained for a year under the National Security Act (NSA). It is possible that the DMK’s early entry into the protest scheme may have triggered competitive demands and threats from the rest, whereas in the previous years, the ruling party’s programmes of the kind used to be a political culmination/conclusion of those by the rest. The DMK thus always had the last word, not this time.
Demand for ‘special envoy‘
More recently, the Chief Minister received a delegation of Tamil National Alliance (TNA) Members of Sri Lankan Parliament, headed by their leader, R Sampanthan. Since then, Karunanidhi has urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to depute a ‘special envoy’ to Sri Lanka, to study the rehabilitation of the Tamil civilians affected by the ethnic war, and the current condition of the IDPs. He had received a team of TNA leaders not long after the conclusion of the ethnic war, and this was the second such meeting. According to reports, the TNA leaders had expressed lack of satisfaction in the progress of the rehabilitation work, and also reservations about the sincerity of the Sri Lankan Government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa on the ethnic front. In a way, this was a digression from the back-home statements of the TNA leaders, who were otherwise engaged in talks with the Sri Lankan Government. As was only to be expected, the talks have not progressed beyond a point. Both sides have been calibrating the timing of the talks and also the issues for discussion, more in political terms than otherwise.
Promptly, Opposition AIADMK leader and former Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has described Karunanidhi’s call for a ‘special envoy’ as a product of ‘election fever’ Hoping to grab a live-issue in the election year after others had failed to re-energise her cadres or attract public attention, Jayalalithaa and her electoral allies like Vaiko would not be the ones to let go off an issue if the DMK was offering them one on the platter. For its part, frontline TNA leader Suresh Premachandran has claimed ‘lack of clarity’ in India about on the question of naming a ‘special envoy’. More importantly, he has said that the Government of India should name only an ‘unbiased’ person as ‘special envoy’. Fresh yet another round of talks with the Indian leadership at New Delhi, Premachandran, forming a part of the TNA delegation for the purpose, also said that there was still confusion in Government of India over the ethnic issue. In the previous decades when the ethnic issue had dominated bilateral relations, Sri Lankan Tamil leaders of all hues had often charged Indian facilitators/negotiators as biased and partisan, lacking in knowledge and depth. Premachandran, like most other moderate leaders of the Sri Lankan Tamil community, used to be a militant then, and had also shared the knack for nodding to Indian proposals while in New Delhi, but criticising the same back in Jaffna.
Independent of the DMK’s initiative, intended or otherwise, the Tamil Nadu voters may – or, may not – focus on the ‘ethnic issue’ this time, too. If they had not done so the last time round, when the ethnic war in Sri Lanka had peaked to an all-time high and the end of the LTTE very much in sight, there is no reason why they should do so now. If anything, they had voted on purely local issues of livelihood concerns, where the DMK Government’s social sector schemes proved to be the clincher. While the demand for a ‘special envoy’ and a decisive political programme on the fishing issue may have limited electoral relevance, as the party in power the DMK better knew that these are concerns that could be whipped up at will but for which no tangible and lasting solution could be offered either by the party or the Government that it heads. Thus by making demands that could not be fulfilled overnight even if wished, be it on the Government in New Delhi or in Colombo, the DMK, over the coming months, could be seen more as a weakling in an area where its role and locus standi are limited, and whose complexities political parties and leaders in India are yet to comprehend in a fuller measure than already. Given India’s past experience with the signing of the India-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987, which every moderate and non-LTTE Tamil militant groups in that country agreed in principle but distanced themselves once back home, there is also no guarantee that the DMK’s revived hobnobbing with the TNA now would serve any larger purpose, now or later. For the Congress ally of the DMK in the State and at the Centre, where alone the two parties share power, the political embarrassment could be later if the Manmohan Singh Government comes to be depicted as not heeding to the ‘collective call’ from Tamil Nadu even after the Government of the day in the State and the ruling ally had appealed variously. It could be an embarrassment that both the DMK and the Congress could do without in an election year…
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