The time is fast progressing for India to assert its regional authority to find a lasting solution for the plaguing political, military and terrorist crisis in Sri Lanka. India’s past direct involvement in Sri Lanka may be sour grapes for it to involve directly again. Unfortunately, the tear Drop Island is bleeding and will be bleeding profusely as the time passes if Indian foreign policy does not take a pragmatic turn.

It will be twenty years since Indo-Lanka accord was signed and Indian Peace Keeping Forces engaged to bring peace in Sri Lanka. All what happened since then is misery brought upon the Island population by the visionless Colombo leadership and the terror campaign of the LTTE and India too remain pained to re-engage as a result of its past experience. This remote attitude to distance itself from not engaging is permitting degeneration to progressively strengthen its hold on the Sri Lankan society.

Hard lessons have been learnt from the painful Indian engagement twenty years ago and India must now be more resolved to deal with the issues in a more positive manner. Military intervention in 1987 made India to understand that it alienated the middle ground opinion due to the appalling conduct of the Indian Peace Keeping force. Gun carrying army is army and the politicians remain aghast when the opportunity arises for any forces to behave in the manner experienced against the people.

Politics played by both Pirabakaran and Late President Premadasa to oust the Indian forces was the dirtiest and ugliest of kind one could think of. Arch enemies fighting against each other decided to go on honeymoon to get rid of the Indian from the Sri Lankan soil.

Their forging hands did not bring peace and tranquillity, instead death and destruction imposed on the people of Sri Lanka. President Premadasa paid the ultimate price for his dillydally dancing with the LTTE.

India’s approach must be firm and resolute and it must exert its authority as a regional power to bring amity between the two main Sinhala political parties. This must be a pre-requisite to any resolution to the conflict as fundamental changes are needed to either change the present constitution or amend it significantly to incorporate wider powers to all the communities to engage positively in the socio-economic and political progress of the country.

The present All Party effort to formulate a proposal to put forward to the people is progressing through anonymity and procrastination. There is no real will on the part of political leadership in Colombo to deal with the dispute politically. The age old confrontational approach is taking momentum and LTTE too is playing its card to further strengthen its hold on the Tamil community violently.

Indo-Lanka accord produced viable proposal for decentralisation, but unfortunately India failed because it forced the solution without engaging the conflicting parties to sign the resolution.

The LTTE has since become a lethal force and have consumed the lives many thousands including Rajiv Gandhi.

With the upbeat mood of the Indian economy and the role played by Sonia Gandhi in the Indian politics, it will be the best homage India could give to its dead leader and the innocent Tamils died in the IPKF operations by engaging forthrightly in the Sri Lankan crisis.

The politico-military situation for the LTTE is pathetically weaker now but a wounded tiger will try its deadliest acts of suicide missions. This is the only immoral authority LTTE holds at present. It is time for India to engage the wider Tamil community including the Diaspora Tamil leadership to find an accommodative way forward to resolve the conflict in Sri Lanka. The Tamils are waiting for an opportunity and that opportunity cannot be provided by political the leadership in Colombo or the LTTE or its apologist Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians.

A forthright, pragmatic and visionary approach by India will see Tamil people leaving from the LTTE hold like worms falling off from the dead animal carcass.