India’s New Sri Lanka Policy to Be Tested Soon

NEW DELHI —  India has called on the antagonists in the bloody, 10-year-old ethnic conflict in neighboring Sri Lanka to sit down together Monday. For India, it represents a dramatic shift in policy since Rajiv Gandhi took over as prime minister.

The peace talks, bringing together representatives of the government of Sri Lanka (formerly Ceylon), the main Tamil political party of Sri Lanka and the five largest Tamil guerrilla groups, are scheduled to take place at Thimpu, the capital of the remote Himalayan mountain kingdom of Bhutan.

Four of the guerrilla organizations, led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, have threatened to boycott the meeting, insisting that the Sri Lanka government has violated a cease-fire agreed to June 18. But the Indian government is continuing to put pressure on the groups, all of which have offices in India.

India conceived, organized and brokered the Thimpu meeting as a means of resolving the conflict between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Tamil people. It is not likely that under Rajiv Gandhi’s mother, Indira, such a meeting would have been possible, mainly because Sri Lanka’s leaders mistrusted her motives.

Indira Gandhi permitted the Tamil rebels, who want to establish a Tamil state called Eelam in the north and east of the island, to live in India, to proselytize and even--according to Indian press accounts--to run training camps and stockpile arms in India. The Indian state of Tamil Nadu, which lies just 30 miles across the Palk Strait from Sri Lanka, has been a staging ground for the guerrillas.

One guerrilla group, the Liberation Tigers, operated a clandestine radio station in India. The leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front was given quarters in the state guest house in Madras, the capital of Tamil Nadu. There the front’s secretary general, A. Amirthalingam, would entertain the press and rail against the Sri Lanka government.

India’s policy was partly a concession to the political exigencies of Tamil Nadu. Its 50 million Tamil people share a language and cultural ties with the Tamil people of Sri Lanka. About 300,000 Indian Tamils work on the tea estates of Sri Lanka, and many of Sri Lanka’s Tamils have relatives in India.

Indira Gandhi played a dangerous game with the rebels, allowing them a haven in India and even hinting that India might intervene on the Tamils’ behalf if the often brutal retaliatory tactics of Sri Lanka’s armed forces went too far.

But in a country with violent separatist movements of its own, including the Sikhs’ Khalistan movement in Punjab state, India could not really afford to set an example for its own rebels by supporting the Tamil separatists. Ironically, Indira Gandhi often accused neighboring countries, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma, of harboring Indian insurgents while Tamil guerrillas flourished in India.

The situation changed last December with the election of Rajiv Gandhi, who had succeeded his mother after her assassination in October. Rajiv could afford to lose some political support in Tamil Nadu; his election victory included more than 80% of the seats in Parliament.

Also, the people of Tamil Nadu were unhappy about the flood of Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka coming across the strait and settling in Madras and other Indian cities. The Tamils were competing for jobs and places in the schools, some of which were crowded with the children of wealthy Tamil families from Sri Lanka.

To win the trust of the wary Sri Lankans, Rajiv Gandhi encouraged the little country’s leaders to visit New Delhi, and several times he sent his foreign secretary, Romesh Bhandari, to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. Finally, in early June, he met with Sri Lanka President Junius R. Jayewardene.

After the Jayewardene visit, Gandhi told a gathering of American journalists, “We will not allow Eelam”--the proposed Tamil state. It was the first firm, unambiguous statement by an Indian leader on the Sri Lanka question. Now there could be no doubt: Not only would India not support a separate Tamil state, it would not allow it.

Joy in Colombo

In Colombo, Gandhi’s statement was greeted with joy. Lalith Athulathmudali, the minister of national security, who has directed the anti-separatist campaign, said: “Mrs. Gandhi never went beyond saying she supported the ‘unity and integrity’ of Sri Lanka; Rajiv said he will not allow Eelam. To me, that puts it in an impossible dream situation.”

In Jaffna, the Tamil rebel stronghold and center of much of the bloodiest fighting, rebel groups were dismayed by the shift in Indian policy. According to sources there, the guerrilla groups have started to talk about moving their forces and supplies back to Sri Lanka or to another country.

“Rajiv has said there will be no Eelam,” said Jaffna’s Catholic Bishop B. Deogupillai, who has maintained close ties to the rebel groups. “That is the big gain the government has won. Now the militants have to change their plans. Before, the (Sri Lanka) government was always blaming India for its problems. Now they are happy with Rajiv Gandhi.”

Perhaps most delighted, if secretly, by India’s unequivocal stand against a separate Tamil state are the leaders of the Tamil United Liberation Front, which despite the name is a moderate force on the island. It is generally conceded that any movement for a separate Tamil state is condemned to failure unless it has the cooperation of India, so the Liberation Front leaders can now negotiate for greater Tamil autonomy within a unified Sri Lanka.

Armed with the Indian prime minister’s assurance that India does not support a separate state, the Jayewardene government and the ruling United National Party were able to persuade Sinhalese anti-Tamil elements, particularly in the Buddhist clergy, to go along with a peace plan--including the meeting scheduled for Monday with the Tamil rebels.

With India applying pressure on the Tamils in India, a cease-fire was announced on June 18, and for the most part the cease-fire has held. When it has faltered--Tamil guerrillas killed a Jaffna college principal and community leader because he arranged for cricket games between local college boys and government troops in an effort to ease the tensions--the Indian government has openly condemned the rebels, something unheard of in Indira Gandhi’s time.