Lankan Tamils an emotive issue but never key in elections

A life-long opponent of the now-defunct Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and not-so-friendly with ethnic Tamils in Sri Lanka, the late J Jayalalithaa projected herself as a saviour of the race by making the last phase of the 30-year-old civil war in the neighbouring country her party’s major plank during the 2009 Lok Sabha polls.

She put the DMK and Congress, who were the ruling coalition at the Centre, on the mat, accusing them of aiding the Sri Lankan military to “kill lakhs of Tamils”, and even promised to march the Indian Army into the neighbouring country to “liberate” the northern part of the island-nation if a Third Front government was voted to power.

However, her party, AIADMK, won only 12 of the 39 seats at stake in Tamil Nadu, and the DMK-Congress combine romped home yet again. The 2009 defeat of the AIADMK was a clear indicator that the Sri Lankan Tamils problem had ceased to be an election issue in Tamil Nadu long back, though it is still an emotive issue.

Jayalalithaa herself forgot that she had ridden to power in June 1991 with a thumping majority after former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, with whom she was close, was assassinated in Sriperumbudur near Chennai on May 21, 1991 by LTTE cadres. That was probably the point of departure for many Tamils in Tamil Nadu as far as the issue of Sri Lankan Tamils was concerned.

Also Read | In Sri Lanka, India’s loss, China’s gain

The plight of Sri Lankan Tamils, an emotive issue for Tamils here as they share cultural and civilisational ties, had been turned into a raging political issue by the Dravidian parties – both DMK and AIADMK – over the years. Though their plight never mattered much to the ordinary voter when he pressed the button on the voting machine, political parties even today do not forget to rake up the issue, especially ahead of elections.

The Congress, though accused of helping the Sri Lankan government in the last phase of the war that ended with the killing of LTTE chief V Prabhakaran, had made its outreach to the ethnic Tamils in Lanka a major poll issue in 2014.

The BJP has followed suit – in speeches concerning Tamil Nadu by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior leaders of the party, a mention of the plight of Lankan Tamils and his government’s efforts to get them a political solution is a staple.

Last week, when Modi addressed a meeting in Chennai, he listed development projects that India has been implementing in Sri Lanka, such as building houses for displaced Tamils, renovating the railway network dismantled due to bombings during the civil war, and efforts to help Tamil culture thrive in the country. During his visit to Sri Lanka in January, Foreign Minister S Jaishankar raised the issue of Lankan Tamils, perhaps with the upcoming Tamil Nadu elections in view.

The Sri Lankan issue became so politicised that at one point anything related to Sri Lanka evoked opposition from Tamil Nadu.

Former PM Manmohan Singh had to cancel a visit to the island-nation to participate in a Commonwealth meeting in 2013. But once Mahinda Rajapaksa was defeated in the 2015 presidential polls, the issue lost its relevance and political parties could no longer oppose India’s outreach as the new regime was led by Maithiripala Sirisena.

“Although it occupied significant media space and high decibel political rhetoric, the Sri Lankan Tamils issue has hardly ever been an election issue where the voter has had a multitude of other issues concerning his life, such as livelihood, irrigation, and corruption. The only time it came close to being a poll issue was in 1991, and that too because of the killing of an Indian leader on the state’s soil,” senior journalist R Bhagwan Singh told DH.

After the war, several outfits have mushroomed in Tamil Nadu, claiming to fight for the rights of the Eelam Tamils.

Singh, who has tracked the civil war in Sri Lankan closely, said the Lankan Tamils issue just became an easy topic for all political parties to deliver sermons on and further their election agenda. “If the problem was a potent poll issue, Vaiko, a staunch supporter of Lankan Tamils, would have been Chief Minister by now,” he said.

Sri Lankan Tamils, in general, and the LTTE, in particular, enjoyed immense goodwill in Tamil Nadu till about the early 1990s. The LTTE lost popular support after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the Lankan Tamil issue as a whole took a backseat in Tamil Nadu politics until 2008, when the civil war in Sri Lanka intensified and the LTTE began losing ground.

The “welfare of Sri Lankan Tamils” finds mention in the manifestos of almost every political party, but the DMK and AIADMK – which have ruled Tamil Nadu alternatively since 1967 – have not done enough for thousands of refugees from Sri Lanka who are still stuck in Tamil Nadu, having come here fearing the civil war.

The refugee organisations accuse India of not doing enough to ensure that war crimes by the Sri Lankan Army are probed, and of “hobnobbing” with the powerful Rajapaksas, who now occupy the top positions in the island-nation. Both UPA and NDA think reaching out to the Lankan Tamils will get them closer to people in Tamil Nadu who have no love lost for the national parties, though the Congress continues to have a committed vote share of around 4%.

The Dravidian parties, especially DMK, did exert pressure on the Centre, then led by Congress, to change its stand at the UN Human Rights Council at least twice. India, in a departure from its earlier stand, voted in favour of resolutions brought by the US against Sri Lanka for alleged war crimes during the last phase of the civil war. The decision came under fire from foreign policy experts but many opined that domestic issues should also be kept in mind.

However, Prof Ramu Manivannan, who headed a “fact-finding” mission to Sri Lanka, blamed successive Indian governments for not doing enough for ethnic Tamils.

“In the name of Tamil Nadu, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has had a separate set of rules in dealing with Sri Lanka but Tamil Nadu’s concerns were never really kept in mind. India has now lost its way in dealing with that country,” Manivannan, Head of the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Madras, said.