India faces the gravest foreign policy challenge in Sri Lanka since the Bangladesh crisis in 1971. At stake are not only its short-term and long-term relations with the island republic but the future of three million Tamils there. In terms of well-recognised conventions of international behaviour which this country has accepted and propagated, the two issues should be separated. New Delhi, however great its concern for the well-being of Tamils in Sri Lanka on humanitarian grounds, should leave it to President Jayewardene and his colleagues to deal with the problem as best they can, hoping that they would be able to restore a reasonable degree of normalcy soon enough. But in reality the two issues have got inextricably linked. Mrs. Gandhi will be under mounting pressure from the government and people of Tamil Nadu to do something to help the Tamils in the island unless the Sri Lanka authorities are able to end the violence against them and restore order. The all-party deputation which called on her on Sunday under the leadership of the state chief minister, Mr. MG Ramachandran is an expression of the anxiety that the killings in Sri Lanka have understandably aroused in Tamil Nadu. The Prime Minister has advised restraint. But let us face it, the effectiveness or otherwise of this advice will depend on developments in Sri Lanka where things are difficult.
It will be wrong and even dangerous to overdraw the picture. It is possible that violence on the island has peaked and that slowly things will begin to return to normal. Scars left by such inter-ethnic violence on such a vast scale inevitably take a long time to heal. But that is a problem with which we in this country are familiar. We have no right to feel particularly self-righteous and we should be willing to live with the problem in Sri Lanka so long as we are assured that the government in Colombo does not discriminate deliberately against the people of Indian origin and that it is in control of its military and police forces. The situation in this regard has not been reassuring. At times it has appeared that President Jayewardene is not in a position to ensure that his security forces comply with his orders and act in a non-partisan manner. While we should not rush to any firm conclusion in this regard, we should not play the ostrich either. However worked up the fellow Sinhalese prisoners might have been for whatever reason, it is inconceivable that they could have killed on two days Tamilian prisoners without the complicity of the jail authorities. These episodes, of course, need not have involved the army. But there is other evidence to show that the army too has been affected by the anti-Tamil sentiment among the Sinhalese population. While New Delhi must hope that this will pass and the army will play the role expected of it, it cannot ignore the present disturbing reality.
This too is not all. On the Sri Lanka government’s own testimony, three leftist parties are involved in an effort to topple it and they are exploiting the anti-Tamil sentiment among the Sinhalese community to achieve their objective. This is an extremely dangerous mix – of radicalism and communalism. We can understand that the leftist parties in question should be wanting to get rid of President Jayewardene. He is a rightist and he has never made any secret of his pro-West bias. But most Indians will find it rather odd that self-proclaimed leftists should resort to a communalist platform in order to embarrass the government. There is, however, no reason to be surprised over this turn of events. The left in Sri Lanka has always shown a strong bias against the Tamils. It began incidentally with Mr. Bandaranaike who ordered that English be replaced by Sinhalese as the language of instruction and administration. This hasty decision could have been justified in the name of nationalism and implemented without too grave a risk if the former Prime Minister had also accorded a proper place to Tamil. He did not do so. The rot has continued ever since. In 1971 the so-called Maoists rose in revolt against Mrs. Bandaranaike’s government. They too adopted a virulently anti-Tamil stance. Mercifully Mrs. Bandaranaike was able to defeat the insurrection with the help of friendly countries – India, the Soviet Union, Britain and so on. The situation is more complicated now. It is perhaps not possible for President Jayewardene to seek India’s assistance and New Delhi is likely to take a dim view of any move on his part to look for help elsewhere. Hopefully it may not be necessary for him to do so. But he is facing a tricky situation. He will need to demonstrate a great deal of resourcefulness and determination to pull his island republic out of the crisis which is threatening to overwhelm it.