Visiting BJP MP’s article heralding ‘paradigm shift’ in the way Sri
Lanka is looked at?
Swapan Dasgupta, a member of the Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP)
delegation that was in Sri Lanka recently at the invitation of the
Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies, whose article ‘Sri Lankan
diaspora powers Tamil politics’ ( http://www.dailypioneer.com/columnists/usual-suspects/sri-lankan-diaspora--powers-tamil-politics.html,
reproduced in the Daily News yesterday) is rapidly causing a sea change
of opinion about Sri Lanka in India as per our reports, emphatically
wrote: ‘TNA’s actions suggest that it wants to keep tensions and the
ethnic conflict alive.’
This and other observations has accounted for India’s resonance
towards this article – particularly since it’s from among a member of a
recent BJP delegation to Sri Lanka.
The piece showed that the writer was vastly enthused by the recent
developments in the Northern Province. Dasgupta asserted in his article:
… ‘Yet, at a lunch hosted by businessmen of Indian origin in Colombo, I
asked a Chettiar businessman how many Tamils there are in the capital
city.
“About 30 per cent of the city” he replied. “And do you control 60
per cent of the business?” I asked smilingly. “Only 60 per cent”, he
retorted with a tinge of disappointment. “It’s more like 70 per
cent” he said with a hearty laugh. Clearly, the noble Sampanthan’s
theory of Tamils being an endangered breed in Sri Lanka doesn’t have too
many takers south of the Elephant Pass.’
Dasgupta also tersely observed: ‘For India, which still takes a
needlessly gratuitous interest in the internal affairs of a sovereign
neighbour, ‘devolution’ basically means implementation of the 13th
Amendment which formed a part of the embarrassment called the Indo - Sri
Lanka Accord signed by Rajiv Gandhi and JR Jayewardene in 1987.’
About the ceding of police powers to the Northern Province Dasgupta
states: ‘Who can blame Colombo for its reluctance? It’s just four years
since the LTTE was decimated and it’s just too early for the Central
Government to let down its guard. It is not that there is a desire to
militarise the province. The Sri Lankan Army is present in large numbers
in the Northern Province but it operates well below the radar.
Logistically, the army wants to insulate itself in the security zones,
build strategically located cantonments and operate as a rapid response
force just in case insurgency resurfaces.’
Daspgupta’s very sanguine assessment of the North, as a member of the
BJP parliamentary delegation visiting Jaffna obviously took the wind off
the sails of the opinion makers who state that the only way forward for
the Northern Province is the implementation of the 13th Amendment with
full powers, and unabridged. |
