A Response to’’ Why blame
Jaya for arresting Vaiko?’’ By Gangadhar (Free Press Journal)
By V.Thangavelu
(1) It is ridiculous to
compare the Al Qaeda with the LTTE. The Al
Qaeda is mostly a faceless outfit without any goals or demands. Its members are religious
fanatics. On the other hand the LTTE is a national liberation movement, enjoying popular
support, holding territory and running a de facto government.
(2) If MDMK is a splinter
group and a political “non-entity” why use an axe to kill it? Vaiko was
supporting the LTTE for years, including the time he and his party entered into an
electoral alliance during the 1999 Lok Sabha elections with the AIADMK. Did not
Jayalalithaa then knew that Vaiko is a supporter of LTTE? Why use the POTA now? Does this
not then amount to mis-use of POTA? The BJP President Venkaiah Naidu, Arun Jaitley, former
law minister, George Fernandez, Defence Minister have openly stated that the arrest of
Vaiko is a mis-use of POTA. Is Gangadhar a better authority on the subject than these top
politicians who enacted the law in the first place?
(3) Does banning an
organization worldwide make it a terrorist organization? Does Hamas a terrorist
organization simply because USA has designated so? Is it not a fact that India all along
supported both the PLO and ANC and described both as national liberation movements?
(4) Gangadhar says “No
one thought at that time that the LTTE would grow into a monster, engage the government in
a civil war and killing thousands of innocent civilians”. Is Gangadhar an imbecile to think that when Indira
Gandhi directed RAW to train the LTTE (and other militant groups) that she did not knew it
was to fight a guerrilla war against the Sri Lankan army? Is he so naïve as to think
otherwise?
(5) Gangadhar makes
the audacious claim that “Vaiko and his extremist group of supporters were
wrong to identify the LTTE as the only force to speak for the Sri Lankan Tamils.” Pray
don’t Gangadhar read Sri Lankan newspapers? Attempts were made in the past, including
India during Rajiv Gandhi’s time, tried to create artificial leaders and Quislings
out of pliable and selfish Tamils by making them Ministers! But all such attempts failed
miserably. Today LTTE has been acknowledged as the sole representatives of the Tamils
by the entire Tamil population North, East and Hill country. Gangadhar should brush up
his knowledge of current events.
6) Gangadhar
asserts, “Over the years, the LTTE had ordered the killing of hundreds of
senior leaders of various moderate Tamil groups, some of them in Tamil Nadu. It continued
to recruit young boys and girls to carry and use its guns, collected funds through
extortion and drug running.” In the first place Gangadhar appears to be very
poor in your arithmetic! Hundreds of senior leaders? He must be kidding! In any case any
freedom movement has to eliminate the internal enemies before confronting the external
enemy. In LTTE case, the internal enemies are the Tamil Quisling groups and the external
enemy is the Sinhala dominated Sri Lankan government. Eliminating internal enemies is
strategically important when one country wants to fight another country. That is also what
Thiruvalluvar (never heard?) enunciates in his immortal work Thirukkural. He assigns one
whole chapter to deal with internal enmity. He says, “Open enemies who are like
the unsheathed sword need not be much feared. But persons who appearing as loving kinsmen
cause harm in secret are the real enemies to be feared.” In elaboration
(Chapter 88-Assessment of opposition) he exhorts “the felling of a thorny tree
when it is still young. Any attempt to cut it down after it is fully grown will only cause
harm to the hand.” Of course Gangadhar will like the Tamil people to fight on
two fronts and lose the war!
(7) As far the
charge LTTE is using child soldiers, the LTTE has denied the charge. However, if the LTTE
formations are no more than child brigades why is the mighty 150,000 strong Sri Lankan
Sinhala army unable to defeat them? Why it suffered defeat after defeat at the hands of
the LTTE? Or for that matter the mighty 4th largest Indian army? In any case I
wish Gangadhar study Tamil history. A Tamil mother who lived 2000 years ago sent her only
son in his teens to the battlefront when on hearing the beat of the war drums. She had
already lost her father on the first day of the battle and her beloved husband on the
second of the battle! So this trait is in Thamil blood or better in their genes! The LTTE
is fighting a superior enemy with unlimited men and weapons so they are forced to fight
with every resource at their command. It is high time Gangadhar stops complaining, “It continued to recruit young boys and girls
to carry and use its guns.”
(8) Gangadhar claims that that LTTE”
collected funds through extortion and drug running.”
This is a cock and bull story we have heard for the umpteenth number of
times and we are sick of it. I would have wished that Gangadhar came up with something new
instead of recycling the old rubbish. I challenge Gangadhar to prove his accusations! LTTE
may be guilty of few excesses here and there, but certainly not drug running and
extortion. Is Gangadhar both
blind and deaf to think that LTTE can fight and sustain a liberation war for two decades
by drug running and extortion without people’s support? For his information the
areas under the control of the LTTE are the only one completely free of the drug
menace. A liberation organization committed to emancipate Tamil people from
the clutches of the hegemonic rule of the Sinhalese cannot afford the luxury of engaging
itself in criminal activities. It is a shame the Free Press Journal carries such trash
camouflaged as fair political comment by this idiotic writer. I too can accuse Gangadhar
of running a brothel and making millions of rupees in the process.
(9) No one really
knows for certain who was behind the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi. The trial by a Special
Court denied due process of law to the accused persons. Out of 26 people the
Supreme Court of India acquitted charged 18 of them. In any case what about
the more than three thousand Tamil civilians, including doctors and nurses of Jaffna
hospital, shot and killed by the IPKF? What about rape of hundreds of Thamil women and
girls? Is it his logic that the IPKF
dispatched by Rajiv Gandhi can kill and rape Thamils, but they should not in turn
retaliate? For Gangadhar information, Thanu the alleged suicide bomber was most
probably a rape victim herself! Rajiv Gandhi simply paid the price for his political
stupidity, idiocy and folly by dispatching the IPKF to another country to kill Tamils!
(10)
Gangadhar
speaks of LTTE threat. But the Chief Minister Ms. Jayalalithaa, the superstitious Ayyankar
with inflated egos from Kannada, has stated for the umpteenth number of times that she has
wiped out the LTTE from Thamil Nadu? So where is the threat?
(11)
Again
the baseless accusation that “The fanatical pro-LTTE groups in Tamil Nadu
had visions of a Great Tamil State comprising of the Eelam and Tamil Nadu. They dreamt of
such a state that would recreate the glory of the ancient Tamil kingdoms of the Cheras,
Cholas and Pandyas kings. Men like Vaiko belonged to this theory and would be willing
courtiers to their great emperor, Raja Maharaja Prabhakaran! Did the rest of India want to
go this?” This is a deliberate
and time tested dis-information campaign by sworn enemies of Tamils. Vaiko has publicly
declared that he does not stand for an independent state of Tamil Nadu, not to speak of a
Great Tamil State. As for glorifying Chera, Chozha and Pandyas- what is wrong to do so? If the North Indians (read BJP) wants to recreate
Rama Rajya (Rama is only a mythical figure), why not Chera, Chola and Pandyas whose
kingdoms came to an end only a few centuries ago?
(12)
Gangadhar smack self-satisfaction that “Britain
had allowed the use of its territory for LTTE to propagate its views. Now, this had been
withdrawn and the LTTE had been banned both in the UK and the US” is simply
laughable. It portrays Gangadhar as a frog in the well. For his information though LTTE
remains proscribed in UK and US, there is no ban in regard to its political activities and
raising funds for humanitarian assistance. With all its faults, US unlike India, remains a
vibrant democracy whose judiciary is fiercely free and independent in upholding the rights
of free speech and assembly guaranteed by the constitution.
Now I have a question for Gangadhar.
On April 8th, 1929 Bagawat
Singh threw bombs at the well of Delhi Central Assembly. The bombs missed the
target, but. Bagawat Singh was arrested. tried for treason and sentenced to death. Is he a
terrorist or a martyr? Let us hear from the apostle of Non-violence
M.K.Gandhi about Bagawat Singh.
“ Bhagat
Singh and his two associates have been hanged. The Congress made many attempts to
save their lives and the Government entertained many hopes of it, but all has been in a
vain. Bhagat Singh did not wish to live. He refused to apologize, or even file an appeal.
Bhagat Singh was not a devotee of non-violence, but he did not subscribe to the religion
of violence. He took to violence due to helplessness and to defend his homeland. In
his last letter, Bhagat Singh wrote --" I have been arrested while waging a war. For
me there can be no gallows. Put me into the mouth of a cannon and blow me
off." These heroes had conquered the fear of death. Let us bow to them a
thousand times for their heroism.”
If Bagawat Singh is a hero for Gandhi and Indians because he had conquered the fear
of death, so are the Tigers for Prabhakaran and Tamils.
Likewise the assassination by shooting of Mr. Ash by Vanjinathan at the
Maniyachi railway station. Vanjinathan is
rightly considered and hailed a hero not a terrorist.
So Gangadhar, what is sauce for the Indian goose
should be sauce for the Tamil gander as well!
Who is a terrorist and who is a freedom
fighter depends on which side of the fence a person stands. The militants who are fighting
Indian occupation are described by President Musharaff as freedom fighters. He is openly
extending moral, diplomatic and political support! And Pakistan is considered by US, the
country that spear heads the war against terrorists, as a strong ally. When L.K.Advani,
Deputy Prime Minister of India asked US to declare Pakistan a terrorist state, US rebuffed
it saying “As far as putting Pakistan on the terrorism list (is
concerned), just to point out again Pakistan has been a very stalwart ally in the fight
against terrorism." So Gangadhar
should go and grow grass instead of talking about terrorism!
Journalists like V Gangadhar are perverted individuals who cash on
terror and see a Tiger under every bush. They indulge in fabrication, distortion, and
concoction to tarnish the LTTE black, but the just struggle of the Tamil Nation will
emerge victorious sooner than later. The heroic struggles of East Timorians, Slovaks,
Croatians, Bosnians etc.etc. shines like bright stars in the sky for Tamils to emulate!
Ms. Jayalalithaa is just a passing cloud that will be blown away by the winds of change and consigned to the dustbin of history. Gangadhar should advise her to concentrate on good governance to solve the pressing problems of ordinary people instead of wasting her time and energy to jail her political foes. Last year it was the former chief Minister M. Karunanidhi whom she vowed to pay back in the same coin by locking up in the same cell in the same jail and compelling him to eat from the same plate! At this rate she will bring ruin upon herself without any effort from her foes.