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Of course, Chandraprema has his own bias and blinders and peddles his
spins for livelihood. Still I wish to quote him, since he had authored a book
in English on the JVP’s Pol Potism of 1987-89. Also, his exposure on the
military debacles suffered by the Sri Lankan army is a back-handed
compliment to the successes of LTTE’s foot-soldiers and Pirabhakaran’s
strategies. Excerpts:
“One should remember that the terrorists who killed the most number
of innocent civilians in this country [Sri Lanka] is not the LTTE but
the JVP. The JVP’s record has not been broken by the LTTE and will
not be broken even if the LTTE continues to fight and explode bombs
until the year 2020. The LTTE has killed thousands of armed forces
personnel but a lesser number of Sinhalese civilians. This is not due to
any ‘principles’ on the part of the LTTE. During UNP times the
civilian casualties of the LTTE were much bigger than the military
casualties. But after the PA assumed power [in 1994], due to
continuous bungling, soldiers were killed at the rate of thousands at
one go thus increasing the number of military casualties as against
civilian casualties.
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When the LTTE attacked civilians, even though such attacks were far
more numerous than the attacks on armed forces personnel, the
number of persons killed was less than in the case of military targets
due to the obvious reason of the greater concentration of military
personnel whereas civilians are widely dispersed and only a few can be
reached in a night raid on a Sinhala village. The most number of
ordinary Sinhalese were also killed by the JVP and not the
LTTE…”[Island, Colombo, November 7, 2001]
Amirthalingam
“Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi and Sheik Mujibur Rahman –
these three leaders share some distinct similarities in their epoch-
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from voting. All the other UNP members obeyed the orders of the party
whip.
Like Mahatma Gandhi and Mujibur Rahman, Amirthalingam also had
his share of incarceration for the cause he believed in. And like
Gandhi, he also became easy fodder for cynicism and ridicule in the
hands of politically biased journalists, commentators and cartoonists.
One should only just glance through the pages of the partisan press of
Sri Lanka from 1977 and tabulate the cartoons of Wijesoma, Opatha
and Amitha to learn how Amirthalingam was derided for the views he
stood for. A short, rotund figure in verti and saalvai with a pottu on
his forehead who always gets mugged by a loyal ‘Sri Lankan patriot’ or
who always was found hanging by the tail of a tiger – that has been the
caricature of Amirthalingam in the Sri Lankan ‘national’ press.
Amirthalingam differed from Mahatma Gandhi in one significant
manner. He was not a journalist or an author. So, he has not left
behind any significant writings which could be passed on to posterity.
What is left behind as his primary intellectual contribution remains
buried in the Official Proceedings of the Sri Lankan National State
Assembly (popularly known as Hansard). So that his contributions to
the human rights problem in Sri Lanka are not distorted or belittled,
efforts should be made to (a) compile the speeches made by
Amirthalingam in the Sri Lankan parliament (1956-1970 period and
1977-1983 period); and (b) publish them in Tamil and English. That
will be a memorable tribute for his four decades of public service.”
[Tamil Times, Sept.1989]
Still I stand by every word I wrote in 1989. The contempt shown by the
contemporary generation of analysts who cloak themselves with the ‘human
rights’ badge and banners (especially the Broken Palmyra scribes), for the
battles Amirthalingam fought in the human rights front for nearly 25 years
(1952-1977) is despicable. Amirthalingam fought his battles at a time when
‘human rights’ had not been hijacked into an industry, with sponsorship
from the repressive state officials, military men and news media.
When I wrote this eulogy in 1989, I was not aware that Amirthalingam was a
victim of Imperial India’s itch. For any one wondering, what I mean by this
itch, I reproduce excerpts from an editorial captioned ‘Imperial India’ which
appeared in the Economist magazine, three months before Amirthalingam’s
assassination and a rebuttal to this editorial by M.Rasgotra, who was then
the High Commissioner for India in London. The editorialist of the
Economist magazine noted:
“India is even bigger than it looks. Its soldiers control a large part of Sri
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Being an employee of the Indian civil service, the then High Commissioner
of India for UK had to respond, and his rebuttal letter was a vintage example
of ‘We did the right thing bombast’ for which Indian diplomats had been
potty-trained assiduously. I reproduce first three paragraphs of this letter for
its verbose parries on India’s imperialist tendencies and a vital statement on
India’s stance regarding Eelam. Wrote Mr. Rasgotra:
“Sir – Your condemnation of ‘Imperial India’ (April 15th) is shocking
in the immensity of its prejudice and the immoderation of its language.
What lurid imagery! ‘India’s new empire’; ‘India’s bureaucrats having
authority over the entire sub-continent from Iran to Burma’; ‘Indian
siege of Nepal’; ‘India garrisoned by its army of 1.2 m[illion] men’.
And finally ‘Imperial India’. There was an imperial India – the India of
Clive and Curzon, which conquered Burma, sent expeditions to Lhasa,
waged wars in Afghanistan, ruled Ceylon from Madras and maintained
not an ambassador in Kathmandu, but a resident. But all that ended
with the Raj – a good 42 years ago. There must be some comfort in
interpreting someone else’s present in colours of one’s own past.
You say, ‘earlier, India had supported Tamil demands for a separate
state in Sri Lanka’. I dealt with the problem in its early phase from
1982 to 1985 as India’s foreign secretary. I took every possible
occasion to make it clear to all concerned that India had no sympathy
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for Elam. It had none then; it has none now. Indian soldiers are not
there to ‘control a large part of Sri Lanka’. At great cost of money and
Indian lives, they are trying to disarm the Tamil Tigers, who want to
break up Sri Lanka with the force of arms.
I doubt anyone will take seriously your dark murmurings about India
plotting the coup in the Maldives to get its soldiers into that country.
The coup foiled, those soldiers got out pretty fast. A very few remain
and they too will be out as soon as the Maldives government can
relieve them…”[Economist magazine, May 6, 1989]
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the groups that comprise the Eelam National Liberation Front’. Gandhi
complained that, ‘certain Tamil extremists were killing other Tamils’.
The TELO joined in the growing condemnation, and in a statement
hoped ‘that no organization involved in the liberation struggle was
involved’. Strong rumours attributed to both the Sri Lankan
government and Indian intelligence, pointed the accusing finger at the
LTTE, which had two years previously shot at Alalasundaram in the
leg on alleged charges of corruption. The Tigers vehemently denied the
accusation. Initially, few believed them…” [Book: Tigers of Lanka,
1996, pp.160-161]
While both Narayan Swamy and the Broken Palmyra scribes had indicated
that TELO was responsible for the assassinations of Dharmalingam and
Alalasundaram, for reasons of propriety or convenience, they have not
digged further to inform on whose instructions TELO carried out this attack
on the Tamil legislators. It was an open secret to Eelam Tamils that TELO
had been turned into the puppet of RAW operatives, and as inferred by the
Broken Palmyra scribes the motive for those two assassinations was to
smear the image of Pirabhakaran who resisted being controlled by those
RAW operatives.
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which was constituted in 1947. The RAW had tasted success in its infancy
stage when it ‘created’ Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971. Then, its turn of
playing in the Sri Lankan field opened in 1983 due to the bungling of
J.R.Jayewardene.
In this context, before answering why the RAW operatives could have been
the conspirators for the assassinations of Dharmalingam and Alalasundaram,
I wish to provide some background on the activities of RAW, as I had culled
from a review article penned by Capt.S.M.Hali, to the Defence Journal (the
monthly magazine of Armed Forces of Pakistan) of Feb-March 1999. It was
entitled, “Raw at War – Genesis of Secret Agencies in Ancient India”. Hali
himself has picked up segments of cited information from a 1981 book
‘Inside RAW’ (Vikas Publishing, New Delhi) by Asoka Raina. According to
these sources,
1. The prime objective of RAW is to monitor the political and military
developments in all adjoining countries, which have direct bearing on
India’s national security and in the formulation of its foreign policy.
2. RAW has been organized on the lines of the CIA.
3. The functions of RAW vary according to the target. The main ones
being, Collection of Information, Collation of Information and
Aggressive Intelligence. The last category includes espionage,
psychological warfare, subversion, sabotage, terrorism and creating
dissension, insurgency and, ultimately insurrection to destabilize the
target country.
4. The modus operandi of RAW include India’s foreign missions,
Multinationals, Media, Collaboration with other espionage agencies,
Third country technique – (i.e., obtaining information and operating
through third countries), and last but not the least, spotting and
recruitment.
5. Under the recruitment category, Hali notes, “RAW operatives are on
the lookout for local recruits to serve their ends. Acting on the
Chanakyan principles, they tend to exploit human weaknesses for
wine, women and wealth, and, at times resort to blackmail. Separatist
tendencies and ethnic or sectarian sensitivities are also well known
grounds for manipulation…”
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Those who have studied the history of CIA remember well that CIA gained
its notoriety when it reached the adolescent phase during the late 1950s and
1960s by plotting the overthrows and assassinations of leaders who were
perceived to be anti-American. Plotting the overthrows and assassinations of
Indonesia’s Sukarno, Congo’s Lumumba and Cuba’s Castro had become
part and parcel of the CIA’s clumsy history. For these activities marking the
adolescent phase of an Intelligence Agency, I provide a label – the
‘adolescent itch’ of espionage. Like human adolescents, who crave for
recognition from adults by indulging in adult activities such as smoking
cigarettes, boozing, and patronizing prostitutes, some of the professional
frolics of intelligence operatives also border on incredulity. Promoting
assassinations in territories beyond its own land has become an ‘adolesent
initiation rite’ for Intelligence agencies to receive ‘recognition’ among their
peers.
Nathan Miller, in his book Spying for America – The Hidden History of
U.S. Intelligence (1989) provides some examples such as the CIA making a
pornographic movie with an actor wearing Sukarno mask, and spraying the
TV studio with a chemical where Castro was to give a speech so that Castro
would lose his charismatic appeal or dusting his shoes with a chemical to
damage his beard. There is paucity of such material for RAW’s activities,
though I have no doubt that Pirabhakaran may be willing to share with
Eelam Tamils, some of the hilarious ‘deeds’ of RAW operatives in the
future. But, the 47-year old K.V.Unnikrishnan, the RAW’s top field officer
in Madras falling prey to the ‘honey-pot’ trap of CIA’s and Sri Lankan
intelligence team in 1985-86 was an embarrassing episode in the annals of
Indian intelligence wallahs. [Salamat Ali’s report ‘Sex for secrets: An Indian
official is caught in the leaking act’, Far Eastern Economic Review,
October 15, 1987, p.40]. This was a classic case of a hunter being caught by
his own trap.
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The Sri Lankan link to the Unnikrishnan honey-pot trap has been provided
by none other than J.N.Dixit. He is a seasoned pro that he doesn’t even
mention RAW by name in his memoirs. To quote him,
“In some of my discussions with Lalith Athulathmudali in the first half
of 1986, I felt that he was extraordinarily well informed about the
personalities in our intelligence agencies and in the Ministry of
External Affairs at headquarters who were dealing with Sri Lankan
affairs. I reported these perceptions to Delhi. The general comment
which I conveyed was that the Sri Lankan mission in Delhi and the Sri
Lankan Deputy High Commission in Madras seemed to be very
effective in gathering information and operational intelligence. In the
event, my being impressed by the efficiency of the Sri Lankan
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Like the military lingo, the diplomatic euphemism is also colorful. Kindly
note the lingo used by Dixit such as ‘negative activities’, ‘procedural action’
and ‘neutralized’. It is reasonable to infer that in this honey-pot trap
episode, only Pirabhakaran came out without a tarnished image, due to his
innate intelligence and precautionary steps in keeping away from the RAW
operatives.
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