‘India should stop calling Eezham Tamils a minority’

Eezham Tamils are a nation having historical sovereignty and territory in the island called Sri Lanka. Members of the Indian Establishment should stop humiliating them any further by calling them as ‘minority’. Tamil brethren of Tamil Nadu should be sensitive enough and stop such fundamentally faulty approaches and psyop war of the New Delhi-Chennai-Colombo axis on the historical nation of Eezham Tamils in the island. Edification of Chennai and New Delhi is basic to make the world see the crisis in realistic perspectives. Eezham Tamils, in their casual and social interaction should consciously stop using the recently invented name ‘Sri’ Lanka of genocidal connotations, when an official Tamil name Ilangkai and another ancient Tamil name Eezham are available to refer to the island, writes TamilNet political commentator in Colombo.

The Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Menon Rao, visiting the island last week was quoted saying “political settlement that would meet some of the needs of the minorities”.

The visiting Indian army chief General Vijay Kumar Singh has asked the Sinhalese, the ‘majority community’ in Sri Lanka, to be largehearted towards the ‘minority Tamils’, reported P K Balachandran of Indian Express Monday.

It is now almost one hundred years since the implementation of the first major colonial political reform, the MacCallum constitution of 1912, by the British after their administrative unification of the island in 1833.

The minority-majority formula initiated then, whether communal representation, or later the universal adult enfranchisement since 1931, didn’t work in the last one hundred years in the island.

It was always misunderstood by the Sinhala nation to culminate in a genocidal war – the military commander Fonseka during the height of the war saying Sri Lanka belongs to the Sinhalese and the President, Mahinda Rajapaksa, saying the same in a different language immediately after the war that he would see no one is a minority in the island.

The Indian general of IPKF legacy wanted to sound non-political when he said that he would leave envisaging defence cooperation of India and Sri Lanka to the political leadership of the two countries. But he was political no less than Sarath Fonseka on a core and sensitive issue when he was referring to ‘minority Tamils’ and was pleading the ‘majority Sinhalese’.

The consistently faulty approach of the Indian Establishment towards the chronic crisis in the island provides the space for pretending India-friends like Dayan Jayatilleke to nullify the integrity of Tamil homeland and call even a federal solution a ‘fantasy’ on one hand and to advice Colombo of the importance of maintaining balance between China and India on the other hand.

While political solution is in the lip service, recent media reports from Colombo brim with news on the India-China competition in the economy of the island providing space for ‘chauvinistic’ Colombo to quietly carryout the genocide.

From the ill-reputed Indian mining corporate Vedanta of Chidambaram connections buying Cairn India oil dig in the Tamil waters to Chinese capturing labour market and gem market in the south, the news reports didn’t fail to point out how the people of the island are not the beneficiaries.

The media reports also provide glimpses on India’s tolerance to Sinhala military occupying vast tracts of Tamil land in large numbers for the permanent subjugation of Tamils and the Chinese building permanent houses for the occupying military.

While there are no signs of political solution, no signs of rights for Tamils to develop themselves and no signs of free movement for Tamils in their land, there is again news that Dr. M S Swaminathan will be engaging in ‘agricultural development’ in the North.

Eezham Tamils are more concerned about India’s outlook to the crisis than concerned about the outlook of any other power or country.

If the Indian Foreign Secretary was facing outbursts in Jaffna it was because the Eezham Tamils think that they have the right to do so because of the emotional bondage they still feel, despite what India had done to them. They wouldn’t have felt that liberty had it been the President of Sri Lanka or even the US Asst. Secretary of State. People of India have to understand this sentiment, if not understood by their Establishment.

Especially after witnessing the genocidal Vanni War, and witnessing the ongoing open demonstration of structural genocide by state in the island, Eezham Tamils can’t afford to have any genuine dialogue with whether Colombo, New Delhi, Washington or any others, unless the dialogue begins from the recognition of the nation of Eezham Tamils and its sovereignty in the island.

Whoever among them recognises the above as the beginning of reconciliation will only get the collaboration of Eezham Tamils, cooperation of global Tamils and the good will of the civilised majority of the silently watching humanity.

But how long the people of Tamil Nadu are going to be gagged from raising the fundamentals and how long the global Tamils are going to subscribe for watching the ‘dance of deer and peacock’ is the question.

Meanwhile, it is saddening to note that sections in the Eezham Tamil diaspora under the influence of psyops and the use of English are insensitive to the significance of symbols and still use the post-1972 name ‘Sri Lanka’ of genocidal connotations in their social, cultural and casual interactions.

Eezham Tamil children in the diaspora innocently use this self-defeating symbol of state because they are not educated on this by their parents.

Even for those who still harp on a ‘united Sri Lanka’ there is an official and ‘constitutional’ name Ilangkai in Tamil, if they think the ancient Tamil name Eezham for the island, from which the Sinhala E’lu and He’la derived, is too political for them.

Haven’t these sections seen examples in Europe that a country could be officially called in different names in different languages by the nations within that country? Even India is officially called differently in English and in Hindi – India and Bharat, written differently in Roman and Devanagari scripts.

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