The Indian armed forces and Indian intelligence under Indra did a clean job in the 70’s delivering for Mukti Bahani a Bangladesh free from the yoke of Punjabi oppression. In contrast the IPKF that undertook a noble mission to save the Tamils who also lovingly and warmly welcomed it (to Sinhala anger) turned sour; deficient inputs from the likes of Hariharan as MI chief in the field contributing. However though he let down Rajiv, Hariharan served the SL cause. Years passed, Hariharan struggles to explain his role in the failure using SL’s most commonly used scapegoats, the Tamil militants. Reading between the lines of his note a bitterness underpins his partisan line undermining the credibility of his inputs to the SL issue. The reading public is left to wonder whether he is part of the SL war machine waging a propaganda war against the Tamils. Customarily SL delivers a Karuna treatment to those who do not add value to the genocide even as its spokespersons.

It is unfortunate that the ‘Tamil trauma’ paper is pre-judged as a ‘predictable rant about the plight of the SL Tamils’. On the contrary readers do seem to appreciate it for addressing the implications of current developments on peace prospects. Hariharan toeing his patron’s line dismisses the paper as a ‘dust(ing) up the grievances book’. SL regimes look up to such supportive comments as a great favour when its efforts to erase clean its genocidal record flounders. The tone of Hariharan’s comments also displays a haughty disdain of human sufferings and the views of those outside his circle.

Hariharan goes further to praise SL regimes (unlike under LTTE) allowing the Tamils ‘the freedom to differ …have not lost their voices’. How very flattering to Hariharan’s patrons; the SL genociders. With the media and NGOs shut out of the affected areas and strongly disagreeing, a once high powered ex-intelligence person cuts himself off the mainstream thinking to become an embarrassment to the present generation of Indian intelligence. Though graphic pictures of the Tamil sufferings in the affected areas unlike in the Darfur case are blacked out to the world, news censorship is porous today. The diaspora who are in constant contact concerned about kins’ lives in affected areas are a source of news feed that is appropriately vetted before release by the world class media. This world class media confirms the severity of the Tamil sufferings.

SL is indeed grateful to the likes of Hariharan also for contributing to the hijacking of the debate from the 5+ decades long ‘genocide’ to a so-called Tamil ‘terrorism’ (LTTE). Hariharan appears to further the SL regime’s agenda urging the Tamils to bury (‘think out of the box’) the SL genocide story totally (including the 3 decades of passive democratic resistance to state violence) in exchange just to save their lives in a peace of sorts. This suggestion effectively degrades the pain in Tamil struggle to an empty ‘rant’.

Perhaps Hariharan took his lessons on fighting ‘insurgency’ from the Israelis. The international debate on the Palestine issue was hijacked away from Israeli occupation, the Shattila massacres and continuing Isreali oppression to non-issues like resistance’s funding, reform of the PLO and factional fighting, the Hamas factor; an effective counter-insurgency ploy. The Tamil factional fighting under civil war conditions were and are instigated and operationally supported by Hariharan’s patrons, who in the circumstances are a party to the ‘canibalising’. Hariharan’s silence on SL’s role in the canibalising is conspicuous. How useful are such partisan inputs of an ex-intelligence expert for public debate?

Hariharan’s problems with numerical proportion and history are evident when he states ‘of course non-Tamils were ruthlessly driven out of LTTE areas longtime back’. Hariharan omits to mention the far greater (nearly a million Tamils) numbers who were driven out of non-Tamil areas and SL compared to at the most the fewer tens of thousands non-Tamils from Tamil areas. A study of population statistics confirms this especially that the non-Tamils in the North (the LTTE heartland) were particularly low. Hariharan seems to take pride in singing the half true tunes of the SL theme song. Millions and millions moved across between India and Pakistan during the civil war preceding the partition. Would Hariharan the eminent intelligence expert who hastens to blame the LTTE also similarly blame the Congress and the Muslim league for ‘driving out’ non-Indians and non-Pakistanis out of their respective areas? Hatiharan problems with history explain his inability to put events in proper perspective.

Given the upbringing and training especially the strong Gandhian influence on the Tamils of my generation that despite the pain of SL genocide (killings/street assaults/now starvation) the Tamils scrupulously avoided violence following Gandhi’s teachings. Violence both at the individual and the state levels are evil. The peaceful Tamils resistance was driven to violence purely in self defense to save lives facing brute state violence only after 3 decades of peaceful resistance. State violence has deepened the Sinhala/Tamil divide to a degree which any amount of contact with acquaintances of the likes of Kadigamars only creates the illusion of a shallow divide. The Tamils throughout SL living in fear of their lives could not be expected to be forthcoming on this sensitive issue. Objectivity requires that this fear element is factored in any assessment of the depth of the Sinhala/Tamil divide.

Though agreeing that the concern of the parties to the conflict be to look to the future any solution has to take on board the lessons of history (which is not ‘dusting up the grievance books of a historical conflict’) ignoring which is sure to invite greater peril for the Tamils.

V S Subramaniam