The geo-politics that Prabakaran failed to understand

Nalini, who was jailed for the assassination of Premier Rajiv Gandhi, gestures during a media briefing in Chennai on November 13, 2022, after India’s Supreme Court ordered her release. (Photo AFP)

Although six convicts of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case were released by the Indian Supreme Court on November 12, four of them have been again detained as they are Sri Lankans who had entered India without proper travel documents. They are being lodged in a special camp in Tiruchi, Tamil Nadu. 

Some media reports indicate that the Indian authorities are in a quandary as to what action could be taken regarding them as they do not have documents to prove their country of origin. Yet, some of their details proven during the proceedings of the case might be used as proof of their country of origin, if they intend to deport them, according to some observers. 

Rajiv Gandhi assassination, that took place during an Congress Party election rally in Sriprumbuthur in Tamil Nadu on May 21, 1991, is a turning point in the Sri Lanka’s separatist war and there by in the recent Sri Lankan history as well. It is a result of the dynamics of the geo-politics in the South Asian region and it had a considerable bearing on the same dynamics which in turn paved the way for deep changes in the politics in both India and Sri Lanka. It also changed the relationship between India and Sri Lanka which had been severely soured in the context of an extension of the effects of the Cold War into the region, to a positive level.

Thus, the LTTE killed former Indian Prime Minister Rajive Gandhi, former Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, TULF leader A. Amirthalingam and many others. They miserably failed to change the suppressive attitudes of the Indian and Sri Lankan governments towards them by killing Rajiv Gandhi and Premadasa

The initial years of the separatist war in Sri Lanka, the Tamil armed groups seemed to be ideologically slanted towards left with some groups such as the EPRLF openly displaying pictures and quotations of Karl Marx, Engels and Lenin in their offices and propaganda materials. However, they, especially the LTTE openly dared to breach Lenin’s edict on individual terrorism. They killed leaders of rival armed groups, State officials and politicians. Even JVP, which stands for Marxism, unsuccessfully followed this method to the change course of the State oppression which they termed as State terrorism.

Thus, the LTTE killed former Indian Prime Minister Rajive Gandhi, former Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa, TULF leader A. Amirthalingam and many others. They miserably failed to change the suppressive attitudes of the Indian and Sri Lankan governments towards them by killing Rajiv Gandhi and Premadasa.  Yet, they, by these acts made a tremendous impact on the disgruntled or rebel groups in many countries. For instance, an armed Madhesi group in Nepal with which the Nepalese Government signed a peace deal in 2010 had named themselves Liberation Tigers of Terai Eelam, so that the initials of the name, LTTE becomes identical as that of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. (Interestingly, the word Eelam which means in Tamil “Lanka” had been borrowed from the Sri Lankan rebels)

The failure on the part of some of the Sri Lankan leaders as well as the Tamil armed groups, especially the LTTE to realise the geo-politics in the region cost the country and primarily the Tamils in the north and the east dearly. President J.R.Jayewardene, even being a seasoned and shrewd politician, chose to take the side of the Western powers during the peak of the Cold War provoking the wrath of India which was then a close ally of the USSR. And the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi provided the Sri Lankan Tamil armed groups with funds, weapons and training in early 1980s to fight against the Sri Lankan armed forces. In brief, as Zelensky of Ukraine did, JR, as he was commonly known, took the beating at the hands of the neighbour by supporting the latter’s enemy. 

Dynamics of geo-politics was alien to the perceptions of Velupillai Prabakaran as well. Even after all other Tamil armed groups renounced the armed struggle for a separate State within Sri Lankan territory in 1987, he fought not only with the Sri Lankan armed forces, but also with that of India.  Besides, he antagonised Tamil intelligentsia, Sinhalese leftists who initially supported his separatist cause and Muslims who were the majority in the Eastern Province. 

Despite India providing assistance to the Tamil armed groups, it in fact did not want an independent Tamil State adjacent to its Southernmost State of Tamil Nadu which was then home to 50 million Tamils. Indian leaders knew that such an independent Tamil State would result in separatist trends in Tamil Nadu as well while becoming a launching pad for secessionist movements that might so emerge in that State. Besides, it was a State where a separatist movement was active before it was outlawed by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1960s. 

India successfully convinced President Jayewardene’s government to accept the concept of devolution of power by diplomatically pressurising him using the senior officials of its Foreign Office such as G. Parthasarathy and Romesh Bandari by 1987. Also Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi used coercive means as well to implement the concept. He once, on June 3, 1987, sent a flotilla of ships to trespass into the Sri Lankan waters in the guise of sending food to people entrapped by the war in the Jaffna peninsula. On the next day 5 Indian planes escorted by two Mirage jets airdropped relief supplies in various places in the Peninsula.

Once it tamed Sri Lankan leaders, India no longer wanted to support the separatist cause of Tamil groups and hence thrust an agreement, Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord on both the belligerent parties in the neighbouring country, the government as well as the Tamil rebels in 1987. During the 4th SAARC summit in December, 1988 in Islamabad the then Indian Foreign Secretary S.K.Singh informed India’s official stance on the war in Sri Lanka to the media by categorically ruling out the possibility of carving out of a Tamil State in the island. Had Prabakaran realised, at least then what was in store for his struggle, tens of thousands of lives could have been saved in the next two decades.

Apart from the fears of separatism seeping into Tamil Nadu India was compelled to take military action against the LTTE as the outfit started to attack its forces, the “Indian Peace Keeping Force” (IPKF) stationed in the island, subsequent to the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. Yet, the Indian leaders were in a quandary when anti-India feelings began to mount in its Tamil State due to the sufferings of Sri Lankan Tamils at the hands of the so-called IPKF. Hence, it wanted to leave the matter to the Sri Lankans to settle among them. It was further facilitated by an unceremonious call by President Premadasa for the de-induction of the IPKF which was completed in March1991.
Nevertheless, Prabakaran’s ignorance on the dynamics of geo-politics prompted him to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi two months after that, as a measure of revenge, pushing the Indian authorities to actively support the Sri Lankan government in its effort to eliminate the Tamil rebels.

The geo-political compulsion exerted on India to finger into Sri Lankan affairs was largely taken off by the end of the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialism in the Eastern Europe in 1991 itself. Subsequently, India became closer to the West than J.R’s Sri Lanka. Hence, Indian leaders occasionally and ritualistically call on the Sri Lankan leaders to implement a comprehensive programme of devolution of power in the island which they can exploit in Tamil Nadu during elections. The call is now also used as a leverage to exploit economic gains as well.