- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 0
-
Sparkle (0)
The past week South Asian neighbors Sri Lanka and India wrote page-turners for future generations: While a decades-old bloody ethnic war came to an end in the island nation, India returned 76-year-old Manmohan Singh and his Congress Party-led coalition to a second term, making the economist -- popularly regarded as the father of India's economic liberalization -- only the second prime minister in the last three decades to be re-elected for the country's top job.
For the first time, India's female representation in the people's house -- a dismal story in itself -- crossed the double digit percentage mark (10.7%): Of the 500-odd women who contested the polls [over 7,000 men were in the fray], 58 were elected to Parliament. Also, the Lok Sabha (the lower or people's house) is looking more youthful, boding well for a country whose educated young have been consistently indifferent towards politics.
But first, Sri Lanka: Velupillai Prabhakaran, head of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam) or Tamil Tigers -- who led a vicious battle with the Sri Lankan army, alleging government atrocities against the country's Tamil minority in the north and the east -- is reportedly dead. As is his entire family. The defeat of the LTTE brings to a halt a bloody civil war that has claimed over 70,000 lives and left several thousands displaced and in distress. The guns have been silenced, but the peace is an uneasy one. While Sri Lanka celebrates the end of hostilities, the country's Tamil diaspora are mourning the death of a leader who they regarded as their only voice against alienation.
Which explains why people worldwide are reacting with caution. The Tamil Tigers -- one the world's most disciplined and ruthless guerrilla outfits -- have been crushed by an equally severe Sri Lankan military onslaught, during which he army shut out the press and aid agencies, and ignored global calls of restraint from countries that worried the battle would be won over piles of innocent civilian bodies. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapksa has not shown too much of his compromising side lately, either. (Remember the "suicide note" of Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge?).
Now that he has put an end to the Tamil separatist movement and is the country's reigning hero, will he find the peacenik in himself to make concessions for ethnic minorities? Or, as many fear, will he begin a witch hunt for LTTE sympathizers? Will he and the Sinhalese care to win the peace, now that they have won the battle?
It is not hard to see why the country is jubilant: many attempts at peace -- including a Norway-brokered deal between the Tigers and the government -- have failed. At the end, it was single-minded, focused, brutal force that ended the rebellion.
But as South Asia's history reveals, plurality is the only way to peace and Sri Lanka might just have to heed the world's suggestions that the Tamils be given their rights, and allowed to keep their language and their beliefs. It is just as unlikely that non-militant Sri Lankan Tamilians will give up their struggle.
The proverbial battle for hearts and minds may have just begun.
India has had one complicated relationship with its southern neighbor. If this BBC report is accurate, the people of Sri Lanka are of Indian origin -- all of them, Sinhalese and the Tamils. The tension between the Sinhalese Buddhist majority and Tamils have been festering ever since and India has been entwined with its history just as long. Although Indian Tamils (mostly in the southern state of Tamil Nadu) are known to be sympathetic to their ethnic brethren across the Palk Strait, the government send in an Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in the '80s to fight the Tigers. It was "India's Vietnam": The IPKF retreated after suffering heavy losses. The last political straw came in 1991 when Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assasinated in India by LTTE operatives. India outlawed the LTTE.
Since then, despite the sympathies of Indian Tamils, the political top brass has maintained its distance from Sri Lankan politics.
But the recent brutal war with the Tigers coincided with
