Northern Tamils eager to exercise political choice- Calcutta
Telegraph
The day the siege of Mumbai started, another besieged part of the
subcontinent celebrated the birthday of the chief of a terror
organisation - the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - one of the oldest
in this part of the world, and still one of the most fearsome.
It must have done wonders to India’s self-confidence that on Heroes’
Day in the Tamil-dominated north of Sri Lanka, Velupillai Prabhakaran
not only thanked Indian leaders for all the ‘support’ they had extended
to the LTTE and its cause, but also pleaded that they exercise
themselves a little further and get the ban lifted on the organisation.
Prabhakaran has his reasons to believe in the ability of his Indian
sympathisers. It is to their sincere efforts alone that the LTTE owes
its resurgence as a talking point in Tamil Nadu’s local politics, if not
in national politics.
The scarcely-defined boundaries between sympathy for the Tamils and
that for the LTTE, marred further by the unbridled passions of leaders
of the Pattali Makkal Katchi and the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra
Kazhagam, are showing promises of waylaying precious national objectives
as also foreign politics.
It is perhaps this hope that is encouraging the LTTE to put behind
its military reversals, the worst ever in its history, and look ahead.
The reason why the LTTE is pushing for a lifting of the ban in India is
obvious. It could lead to a similar lifting of proscriptions on the
organisation in the United States of America and in Europe.
But more than these possibilities, or India’s more pro-active support
that a de-proscription may signify, it is the immediate symbolism of the
move that the LTTE hankers after. This measure alone will remove the
stigma that has beseeched it after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination,
reaffirm the synonymity of the Tamil cause with that of the LTTE and
re-establish it as the final arbiter of the fate of the minority
population in Sri Lanka.
This is important because the political settlement of the Sri Lankan
Government, despite its limitations, and the restiveness of the Tamil
people to overthrow the yoke of the LTTE’s control and to exercise their
political choice, are threatening its control.
It needs a little help from beyond the border to keep its claws from
slipping.
Editorial, Calcutta Telegraph
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