India’s double standards

http://musliminsuffer.wordpress.com/2008/12/29/indias-double-standards/

While India blames Pakistan for inaction after Mumbai’s terror attacks, it turns a blind eye to a dangerous terror organisation


Kapil Komireddi
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 December 2008 13.00 GMT
Article history

“There should be no double standards in the global fight against terrorism,” the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh declared last week. The message was intended for Pakistan, but if Dr Singh is concerned about double standards, he should look closer to home.

Earlier this month Sri Lanka’s state-run Sunday Observer published an interview with the country’s army chief, Sarath Fonseka, who, while expressing solidarity with India after the Mumbai attacks, severely criticised some Indian politicians for supporting the LTTE. Fonseka had particularly harsh words for the powerful Tamil Nadu politicians Vaiko Gopalsamy and P Nedumaran, calling them “jokers” and accusing them of being venal mouthpieces of the LTTE. He wondered why these men would support an organisation that had assassinated an Indian prime minister, and warned that they were a threat to India’s own integrity.

Within hours of the interview’s publication, Tamil Nadu’s political establishment united in condemnation of General Fonseka. In a letter to the Indian prime minister, Vaiko demanded that New Delhi seek an apology from the president of Sri Lanka. “In a democracy,” he wrote, “army generals do not criticise leaders of a foreign country.” Sensing trouble, Sri Lanka’s president issued a statement “regretting” General Fonseka’s remarks, and last week the Sunday Observer’s editor Dinesh Weerawansa was summarily sacked. But all of this, far from diminishing General Fonseka’s claims, only casts light on India’s own irresponsible role in the vortex of terror that threatens to consume Sri Lanka.

The LTTE could not have grown without the support of successive state governments of Tamil Nadu in India. Founded in 1972, the LTTE was among the many groups formed to resist the majoritarian constitution of Sri Lanka which imposed Sinhala as the “sole official language” upon the country. Tamil Tigers used Chennai as a safe haven, and their activities, as the Indian historian Ramachandra Guha wrote, “were actively helped by the state government, with New Delhi turning an indulgent blind eye”. The 1987 pact signed by Rajiv Gandhi and JR Jayawardene put a temporary halt to this, and India agreed to send peacekeeping forces to Sri Lanka to help Colombo disarm the LTTE, an adventure so disastrous that one Indian journalist at the time called it “India’s Vietnam”. The Tamil Tigers retaliated by assassinating Rajiv Gandhi.



The LTTE is arguably the world’s most dangerous terrorist organisation. It is the only terrorist outfit to have successfully carried out assassinations of two heads of government. Its international cadres regularly extort money from Tamils in Canada and Australia and even Britain. By imposing the “one family, one fighter” rule, it has enslaved the very people whose liberation it claims to fight for. It has its own air force (Air Tigers), its own navy (Sea Tigers), an elite fighting unit (the Charles Anthony Regiment) and a dedicated suicide squad (Black Tigers). The Tamil Tigers make al-Qaeda look amateurish. But because the LTTE’s victims are not western, it does not elicit the same kind of response that Islamist terror groups do.

India banned the LTTE in 1992, but a report released by Jane’s Information Group last year identified Tamil Nadu as the principal source of LTTE’s weapons; and Fonseka was not exaggerating when he said that the Indian politicians who support the LTTE are a threat to India’s own integrity—much as the men who supported the Mumbai attackers are a threat to Pakistan’s. Vaiko, the LTTE’s fiercest Indian supporter, was recently arrested for suggesting that India’s unity would be jeopardised if it supported the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil Tigers.

New Delhi did not intervene on behalf of Tibetan protesters—even though their leader, the Dalai Lama, was described by the Indian prime minister as the “personification of non-violence” — and it was conspicuous in its silence over the protests in Burma. It has accepted that Tibet is an integral part of China, and it has struck lucrative petroleum deals with the Burmese Junta—even though protesters in both nations have relied mostly on non-violent means to make their voices heard.

But it has consistently meddled in Sri Lankan affairs, stymieing Colombo’s efforts against an adversary that has used almost exclusively violent means to achieve its ends. Much of this is no doubt a consequence of coalition politics: the government in New Delhi has to do certain things to keep its allies happy. But New Delhi dismisses Pakistan’s messy internal problems as an excuse which Islamabad invokes to justify its inaction against Islamist terrorists based on its soil. How can it use the same excuse to carry on its do-nothing policy against Tamil terrorists based on its soil? After the Mumbai attacks Singh stated in emphatic terms that there can be no negotiations with terrorists; then, kowtowing to pressure from Tamil Nadu politicians, he agreed to send his Foreign Minister to Colombo to push the Sri Lankan government to do exactly that. If this does not amount to double standards, what does?

source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/28/india-mumbai-terror-attacks

===
-muslim voice-