Stalin and Karunanidhi. Photo by Feroze Khan
Eelam is an inherently divisive idea and Karunanidhi espouses it only in the most cynical manner. Sri Lankas races are mixed and dividing up the land isn’t a solution. So there’s a racial defined state in the North and East – what about the Tamils in Colombo, where minorities are a majority? What about Kandy or Hill Country? Like in India, equality has to transcend race and be national in scope. Unless you want to experience the fun of partition, a la Pakistan.
As I said before, the Indian parliamentarians who boycotted the visit of Sri Lanka are fundamentally unserious about reconciliation here. They actually reject the basic premise, that we are one people capable of unity, prefering vengeance and division instead. It’s bullshit.
Karunanidhi and his compatriots in Tamil Nadu won’t use their power to demand a separate state there because they actually have significant leverage within the Indian political system. Rather than counselling Tamils in Sri Lanka to follow a similar example, he’s using historical issues here as a political football, which is extremely cynical and unfair. His prescription of a referendum for Eelam is simply a terribly idea, one which he wouldn’t dare propose in India.
But the idea here is that Sri Lanka is like the Palestinian issue to the Arab world – a perenial cause for politicians to posture around, but not something they’re willing to make sacrifices and compromises to actually achieve peace.
In Sri Lanka that means WORKING WITH OTHER RACES and other people that live here. Including, shudder, the elected government. It means involving Tamil, Tamil speaking people and everyone in the political process, such that the have the wherewithal to have political power like Karunanidhi and then, like, fuck with the Maldives for fun.
That should be the end there, but this goes to show that if you give a mouse a cookie, he’s going to ask for a glass of milk. India’s Congress tried to placate divisive Tamil Nadu parts by voting against SL on the recent UN resolution, but now Karunanidhi is going full retard by calling for division in a neighboring country recently wracked by violent insurrection, which India also lost a former Prime Minister too. This is obviously not the policy of the Indian government, but that’s what they get for coddling these cynical forces.