The Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh advised the visiting Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians to work with Mahinda Rajapaksa to find political solution, according to media reports Friday. The TNA parliamentarian A. Vinayagamoorthy was cited saying: "Prime Minister Dr Singh advised us to take along with us the Muslims, the upcountry Tamils and others and work unitedly with President Rajapaksa to evolve a solution to the Tamil problem. We told him we will try to do so." The MP further said: "We depend hundred per cent on India for help to find a political solution acceptable to our people. We will be happy if President Mahinda Rajapaksa gives us what India thinks is reasonable."
Meanwhile, according to media reports Saturday, Communist Party Leader and Mahinda Rajapaksa government’s minister D.E.W. Gunasekara, addressing the annual conference of the Communist Party, held in Jaffna this time, said the Sri Lankan government requested Indian assistance and advice to formulate ‘the final solution for the ethnic conflict’.
Besides meeting Manmohan Singh, the TNA parliamentarians also called on the External Affairs Minister S M Krishna, Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Foreign Secretary Nirupama Menon Rao.
The Sri Lankan High Commissioner in New Delhi hosted a dinner to the visiting MPs.
The MPs were advised to drop the rhetoric and mindset of the 1970s and 1980s, be pragmatic to a very different Sri Lanka and deal with Rajapaksa who appears to be making a ‘sincere effort’ to solve the ethnic problem, The Island said citing an unnamed source.
What the Tamils experience of the Sri Lankan state is a worse mind set and rhetoric than they were in the 1970s and 1980s. Subservience and total loss of identity is what they mean pragmatic, Tamil circles commented.
“They may have no appetite for Eezham Tamil liberation and our aspirations may be too outdated for them, but what alternative have they cared to give us other than making us feel more than ever today that our aspirations are righteous and irrefutable,” a university student in Jaffna responded.
Heeding to ‘advices,’ the new political alliances and political parties forged by Tamil groups in an atmosphere deprived of political freedom, carefully avoided the use of the word Eezham, which was in the name of all the militant organisations, Tamil political circles pointed out.
There is a pertinent point in the objection raised by people like Prof. S.K. Sitrampalam that why the identity of Thamizh Arasuk Kadchi should be abandoned in making TNA a political party, Tamil political circles further said.
(For updates you can share with your friends, follow TNN on Facebook and Twitter )