In his article `Merchandising a murder' (November 10), Shekhar Gupta is correct in reiterating what the Congress and DMK are denying -- that their governments at the Centre and state provided military and economic support to Sri Lanka's Tamil guerrillas in Tamil Nadu. Which is an old truth, but there is one irony about Indian opinion-makers and Sri Lanka.

Though Tamil disaffection lies at the root of the island's ethnic war, the Tamil viewpoint is rarely heard in India, which is surprising indeed because the Tamils form one side in a conflict that has killed 5,000 people at our door-step.

While formulating India's policy towards Sri Lanka, our Foreign Office should consider one human question: Why are Sri Lankan Tamils so different from the Tamils in India? The Tamils in India are so gentle and law-abiding that they are sought as tenants by Indian house-owners. But the Tamils of Sri Lanka have produced the most ferocious fighters in the history of modern warfare. The contrast is significant.

The reason lies in their history. The Jaffna Tamils were not born ferocious. They became so as a reaction against their systematic suppression by the Sinhalese majority. The persecution began when the island got its first Sinhalese government in 1948. The first thing it did was to disenfranchise one million of its estate Tamils (not the Jaffna Tamils). Sri Lanka was the only home they knew, being the descendants of coolies brought to the island by the British to work on tea plantations.

They were turned into ``stateless citizens' by two citizenship acts and sought to be deported to India. The proposed deportation was only a forerunner of anti-Tamil actions to come. In the mid-fifties, Sinhala was declared as Sri Lanka's official language. Buddhism became the island's de facto religion. Quotas in universities, medical and engineering colleges ensured the admission of low-scoring Sinhalese students over high-scoring Tamils. Between 1956 and 1970 out of 20,000 people recruited for the island's newly-created corporations, nearly 99 per cent were Sinhalese.

Even then, things would not have boiled over except for a series of anti-Tamil riots which culminated in a 1983 massacre when Sinhalese mobs in Colombo lynched 3,000 Tamils and caused another 50,000 to flee their homes. That was the cathartic moment when the Tamils turned to arms for a separate Tamil nation. They believed they would always be crushed under the Sinhalese. Even today, after 14 years of bloody strife, the Tamil will to fight has not flagged, while 12,000 government soldiers have deserted the Sri Lankan army. The LTTE continues to be the only ``terrorist'' group in the world to produce hundreds of women guerrillas, cyanide capsules dangling from their neck.

The persecution of Tamils in Sri Lanka has been documented by many foreign writers who feel sympathy for them. So it's natural for the same sympathy to exist among the 55 million Tamils of Tamil Nadu. Even Indira Gandhi sympathised with Sri Lankan Tamils. So much so that she violated Sri Lanka's air-space to drop food to them when they were sought to be starved into surrender.

India's sympathy for Sri Lankan Tamils was turned into hostility by two events. One was our fruitless military intervention in which we lost some 1200 soldiers and achieved nothing. The second event was Rajiv Gandhi's assassination which damned the LTTE in Indian eyes. The assassination was the Tigers' biggest mistake. It turned a friendly India into a suspicious enemy. But this is a point at which an issue needs to be posed. Should one crime cause India to forget about the misfortunes of some three million Tamils?

Ironically, Sri Lanka's Tamils were the island's most prosperous people. They always dominated government, education, and the professions. The reason was historic. They were quicker in learning English than the Sinhalese. So they got government jobs in the British colonial empire, and the Sinhalese didn't. That lead consolidated in passing decades and the greater prosperity of the minority Tamils aroused the hostility of the majority Sinhalese. That reaction laid the seed for the 14 years of war the island has seen.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.