-By LeN South Asia Correspondent
(Lanka-e-News -04.July.2025, 11.30 PM) Beneath the gentle palm-fringed skyline of Jaffna and the rain-soaked hills of Sri Lanka’s tea country, an old question lingers like the morning mist: Why do Tamil politicians still place their faith in New Delhi rather than engage constructively with Colombo?
It is a question that ruffles feathers in both capitals — and among the increasingly disillusioned Tamil population of the north and east. For decades, leaders such as M.A. Sumanthiran, a senior Tamil parliamentarian and prominent figure in the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), have looked to India — not Sri Lanka’s own institutions — as the saviour of Tamil political aspirations. But with history being what it is, many now ask: Hasn’t India already had its say — and its way — with Tamil politics in Sri Lanka?
To understand today’s paradox, one must first revisit the turbulent 1980s. In a move that would permanently reshape Sri Lanka’s post-independence history, India — under Prime Minister Indira Gandhi — began training and arming Tamil rebel groups to destabilise Colombo’s rule in the north and east.
Officially, New Delhi cited its concern for the plight of Tamils in Sri Lanka. Unofficially, the Indian intelligence community viewed Colombo’s growing ties with Washington and its flirtation with regional non-alignment as a threat to Indian hegemony in the Indian Ocean.
According to former Indian intelligence officials who later spoke on record, the aim was not Tamil liberation — but Tamil leverage.
“We didn’t want to break Sri Lanka. We wanted to bend it,” said a retired Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) operative during a 2013 academic symposium in Chennai.
The results were devastating. Indian-financed militancy fractured the democratic Tamil political movement, radicalised its youth, and transformed grievances into warfare. The armed struggle, led by multiple groups and later dominated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), effectively destroyed the peaceful Tamil federalist movement — and invited catastrophic retaliation.
By the late 1980s, India’s monster had grown too large to control. The LTTE refused to be a puppet — assassinating rivals, rejecting Indian-imposed settlements, and eventually turning their guns on Indian forces themselves.
The Indo-Sri Lanka Accord of 1987, signed by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President J.R. Jayewardene, brought in the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF). Ostensibly there to protect Tamil civilians and disarm the rebels, the IPKF ended up embroiled in bitter combat with the LTTE and was accused of extensive civilian atrocities.
By the time the IPKF exited in 1990, more than 1,200 Indian soldiers were dead, thousands of Tamil civilians had been killed or maimed, and Sri Lanka’s sovereignty had been profoundly violated. Many in the north still speak of the Indian occupation with bitterness — not as peacekeeping, but as punishment.
And yet, three decades later, Tamil politicians like Sumanthiran continue to seek Indian support as if 1987 never happened.
The image is familiar to Colombo’s diplomatic watchers: Tamil MPs — mostly from the TNA — making their rounds at the Indian High Commission, attending closed-door meetings, requesting interventions, and issuing statements that echo New Delhi’s geopolitical narratives.
While such diplomacy is technically within their rights as elected officials, critics see something more troubling — an abdication of local agency.
“Why do Tamil leaders still behave as if New Delhi holds the keys to their destiny?” asks Dr. Niranjan Sathasivam, a political science lecturer at the University of Peradeniya. “India has used, discarded, and destroyed the Tamil struggle. It is not a neutral party. And yet, they treat Delhi as both priest and prophet.”
Indeed, while the BJP government under Narendra Modi has increased symbolic gestures — cultural exchanges, temple restoration funds, high-level visits — it has offered no serious commitment to constitutional reform, federal devolution, or post-war justice in Sri Lanka. Nor does it appear particularly inclined to do so.
“The BJP is not interested in Tamil self-determination. They are interested in countering China and influencing the Sri Lankan political balance,” said a Western diplomat in Colombo.
Yet Sumanthiran, a devout Christian, is now seen by some as genuflecting not before his faith, but before Modi’s political machinery.
“It’s as if he’s praying to the BJP,” said a Tamil journalist in Jaffna. “He has never once criticised India for their betrayal. Never mentioned the IPKF atrocities. Never acknowledged that India armed our youth only to annihilate them.”
Sumanthiran and his allies maintain that Indian involvement remains essential because of Sri Lanka’s "unreliable majoritarianism". Colombo, they argue, has repeatedly broken promises to the Tamil people — from the aborted Bandaranaike–Chelvanayakam Pact of 1957 to the stalled 13th Amendment implementation promised under Indian auspices.
“We cannot ignore the regional context,” Sumanthiran told local media in April. “India is our closest neighbour and has always played a key role in shaping Sri Lanka’s political landscape.”
But to many Tamil civil society members, that logic feels outdated — and humiliating.
“Do we really want to be begging from the same country that trained child soldiers on our soil and then bombed our villages?” asked a senior activist in Mullaitivu. “Do we have no shame?”
Others point to the irony that even today, India publicly insists the solution must come from within Sri Lanka — while Tamil politicians keep flying to Delhi or whispering to Indian envoys in Colombo.
In the wake of Sri Lanka’s historic economic collapse and the political shift it triggered, the National People’s Power (NPP) party — led by Anura Kumara Dissanayake — has emerged as a formidable alternative. The party, with its leftist credentials and anti-corruption stance, has made overtures to Tamil constituencies, offering a new beginning based on equality and decentralisation.
Many in the south view the NPP as the first Sinhala-majority party in decades willing to talk seriously about Tamil grievances without racial posturing. Yet, curiously, the Tamil political leadership has remained lukewarm.
“They have not even formally sat down with the NPP leadership to explore a framework,” said Prof. Rajan Hoole, a Tamil academic and human rights campaigner. “They are still waiting for Modi.”
This hesitation has caused increasing friction with Tamil civil society groups, who are now demanding that the TNA and its allies stop using Indian influence as a shortcut to domestic engagement.
“The NPP may not be perfect,” said Rev. Emmanuel Navaratnam, a priest from Kilinochchi. “But they are here. They are willing. They are not the same as the old chauvinist parties. Why are our politicians wasting time in Delhi when they should be in Colombo negotiating real change?”
For the vast and influential Tamil diaspora — particularly in the UK, Canada, and Australia — this pattern of dependence on India is becoming increasingly unacceptable.
“In the 1980s, they asked us to fund the armed struggle. Then we were told to support political engagement. Now they’re asking us to trust India again?” said Arun Siva, a Tamil barrister based in London. “We’ve been pawns in every geopolitical chess game. Enough is enough.”
There is growing pressure within diaspora groups to shift focus back to community rebuilding, economic development, and local political engagement — not proxy games with regional powers.
A recent open letter signed by over 70 Tamil professionals worldwide criticised Sri Lankan Tamil MPs for “outsourcing political responsibility to New Delhi” and called for a “homegrown Tamil political movement rooted in accountability and dignity.”
The costs of this political outsourcing are not abstract. The 30-year war that followed India’s meddling cost Sri Lanka trillions in lost economic output, destroyed generations of Tamil youth, and militarised the state in ways that persist to this day.
And yet, there has never been a formal Tamil political reckoning with India’s role.
“There is collective amnesia,” said Dr. Shamara Pathmanathan, a political psychologist. “No memorials for the Tamil civilians killed by the IPKF. No parliamentary resolutions. It’s as if Tamil political leaders are afraid to speak the truth about India — lest the patron turns its back.”
But increasingly, younger Tamils are asking: Is silence about Indian betrayal a prerequisite for Tamil leadership?
As Sri Lanka slowly emerges from its post-default fog and grapples with systemic reforms, the question remains: Will Tamil politicians finally turn inward and engage with the country’s evolving democratic space, or will they continue to outsource Tamil destiny to a foreign capital that has done more harm than good?
There are signs of a generational shift. Grassroots Tamil movements in the north are beginning to bypass party structures. Young leaders are calling for cross-ethnic coalitions, justice for war victims, land rights, and language equality — within the framework of Sri Lanka’s evolving political architecture.
“We need truth. We need courage,” said 28-year-old activist Yalini Thurairajah, speaking at a recent youth forum in Batticaloa. “And we need leaders who stop asking for favours and start demanding rights — here, not in Delhi.”
-By LeN South Asia Correspondent
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by (2025-07-04 23:18:18)
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