Rajiv's killing was Tigers death-knell - Indian Express Editor

In choosing to die the way he did and where he died, Rajiv Gandhi's end was the death-knell of the separatist movement in Sri Lanka and ended the larger political sympathy for Sri Lankan Tamil separatism in India, Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekar Gupta said.

He was addressing the inauguration ceremony of the study courses in International Relations at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS) last week.

Speaking on 'India-Sri Lanka Relations in Post War Context', Gupta said Tamil Nadu and New Delhi and the northern Indian elite had had hitherto a distorted the picture of Sri Lanka owing to the war in the country, until the killing of Rajiv Gandhi, which made Indians in general realize the monstrosity of a violent movement.

Gupta added that many of his political contacts in Sri Lanka, who later personally acquainted him, were progressively annihilated by the same brutality of the separatist movement.

"The war is over now, but there is an intellectual challenge to change the paradigm on which India-Sri Lanka relations were built over the past 30 years. India-Sri Lanka relations was dictated for a long time by the conflict. Moreover India has to be concerned about the influences of a bigger country in Sri Lanka and hence the responsibility of Indian policy makers to shift from conformist suaveness to more aggressive engagement," Gupta said.

He said Sri Lanka was one of the first countries in South Asia to emulate the Asian Tigers by opening its economy and tossing away the yolk of socialism, which has remained the bane of many countries.

Sri Lanka readily embraced globalization and opened its economy with a degree of conviction that is still lacking in India, he said.

Gupta said India has not responded adequately to Sri Lanka's connectivity, because New Delhi is too far and is weighted down by Tamil Nadu politics, as Tamil Nadu politics is central to the survival of the Centre.

"The Indian way of coalition politics has shaped up in such a manner that no political party can set up a ruling coalition in Delhi unless the party that won the election in Tamil Nadu is part of that coalition," he said.

India-Sri Lanka relations that was thus far dependent on the northern war could be redefined, so Sri Lanka could reach out to India beyond Tamil Nadu, said Gupta who reminded that policy makers, politicians, diplomats, think-tank wallahs and journalists cannot be intellectually apathetic and indolent to the external challenges that could impinge on the relationship between the two countries in the future.