By Vishwamithra –

 “A treaty is valid only so long as it serves the self-interest of both parties .” ~ Chanakya

In my last column, I attempted to outline the trajectory of the ‘Tamil Question’- the complex ethnic crisis in Sri Lanka that eventually mutated from a political debate over minority rights into a brutal, thirty-year civil war. It was an evolution that pitted the state’s military apparatus against an array of fiercely determined Tamil militant groups, culminating in the dominance of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE). However, reflecting on that analysis, in addition to a sincere suggestion made to me by one of my close friends, both professionally and personally, I confess to a significant oversight. I failed to emphasize the rapid, uncompromising escalation of Tamil militancy, its total rejection of the traditional non-violent political approach, and its shift from demanding local autonomy to fighting for a completely sovereign state of Tamil Elam.

More importantly, I bypassed the crucial external driver of this transformation. By refusing to compromise with the Sinhala majoritarian government, the militant movement did not just spark an internal war; it fundamentally shifted regional geopolitics. This localized ethnic dispute dragged Sri Lanka’s giant northern neighbor, India, directly into the crossfire. India did not merely watch from the sidelines; it actively shaped, fueled, fought, and was ultimately scarred by the conflict. To understand the Tamil Question, one must look beyond Colombo and Jaffna and examine the strategic anxieties, covert operations, and tragic miscalculations that emanated from New Delhi.

To understand why India became involved, we must first look at the profound shift within the Sri Lankan Tamil political landscape in the late 1970s and early 1980s. For decades following independence, as was enunciated in my last column, Tamil political leaders relied on conventional democratic mechanisms. They staged peaceful protests, engaged in parliamentary debates, and negotiated pacts with successive Sinhalese leaders to secure basic protections for language, education, and land rights.

Yet, every single legislative agreement was systematically dismantled or abandoned by a majoritarian state apparatus responding to populist pressure. The turning point arrived with the State-sponsored anti-Tamil riots of Black July in 1983. It was a cataclysmic outbreak of communal violence that left thousands of Tamils dead and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

For a younger, marginalized generation of Tamils, Black July was the definitive proof that peaceful coexistence under a centralized Sinhalese state was an illusion. The old political guard, defined by civil disobedience, lost its mandate overnight. In its place rose a constellation of highly armed, disciplined guerrilla factions, the most ruthless of which was LTTE led by Velupillai Prabhakaran.

These young militants did not want a seat at the table in Colombo; they wanted to build a completely separate state: Tamil Elam. This ideological shift was absolute. Any interim administrative compromise offered by the Sri Lankan state was viewed as a trap or a betrayal. By taking up arms and demanding total secession, the militants ‘internationalized’ what had been an internal governance crisis. They created an unstable, warring territory right on the doorstep of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Why did India care? To a general reader, it might seem natural for a large nation to intervene out of humanitarian concern for a persecuted minority. While sympathy existed, nations rarely deploy military assets or intelligence networks purely out of altruism. India’s initial entanglement was driven by cold, hard realism and geopolitical anxiety.

During the 1980s, the Cold War was still very much alive. India, under Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and later Rajiv Gandhi, maintained a non-aligned foreign policy that leaned heavily toward the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Sri Lankan President J R Jayewardene shifted his country’s foreign policy sharply toward the West. Jayewardene sought economic and security ties with the United States, Britain, Israel, and according to some speculation, Pakistan- India’s arch-rival.

New Delhi viewed these developments with deep alarm and anxiety. Rumors that the United States might secure naval access to the strategic, deep-water harbor of Trincomalee on Sri Lanka’s Eastern coast sent shock-waves through India’s defense establishment. Trincomalee is one of the finest natural harbors in the world; a hostile or Western naval presence there would severely compromise India’s maritime security in the Indian Ocean. Furthermore, Sri Lanka had brought in Israeli intelligence advisors to train its security forces. From New Delhi’s perspective, Sri Lanka was rapidly becoming a proxy base for external powers looking to encircle India. The “Tamil Question” provided India with the perfect lever to exert pressure on Colombo, reassert its regional dominance, and force Jayewardene back into India’s geopolitical orbit.

To manage this crisis, India adopted a highly dangerous dual policy managed by its external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). On the one hand, India officially called for peace, territorial integrity, and diplomatic solutions in Sri Lanka. On the other hand, it began covertly arming, training, and financing various Tamil militant factions- including the LTTE, TELO, and EPRLF- in secret camps set up across the southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu. This covert strategy served two distinct purposes:

The Diplomatic Lever: It gave India total control over the intensity of the conflict. Whenever Jayewardene’s government drifted too close to Washington, India could increase the flow of weapons to the militants, destabilizing Sri Lanka and forcing Colombo to negotiate with New Delhi.

The Domestic Safety Valve: The central government in New Delhi faced massive political pressure from the State government of Tamil Nadu. The local Indian Tamil population shared deep linguistic, cultural, and familial ties with the suffering Tamils across the Palk Strait. By appearing to support the Sri Lankan Tamils, the central government kept local political unrest at bay and prevented a domestic separatist movement from gaining traction within India itself.

However, this was a high-stakes gamble that backfired spectacularly. New Delhi assumed the Tamil militants would remain pliant proxies, grateful tools to be turned on and off at will. They fundamentally misunderstood the nature of Velupillai Prabhakaran and the LTTE. The Tigers were not fighting to be a footnote in India’s regional strategy; they were fighting for absolute independence.

Using Indian money, weapons, and sanctuary, the LTTE systematically assassinated and eliminated competing Tamil militant groups, establishing a brutal monopoly over the Tamil national movement. By the time India realized it had created an uncontrollable force, the LTTE was strong enough to defy its own creator.

By 1987, India’s dual policy had pushed Sri Lanka to the brink of collapse. The Sri Lankan military launched a massive, punishing offensive- Operation Liberation- to recapture the Jaffna Peninsula from the LTTE. The offensive cut off food, electricity, and medical supplies to the civilian population, triggering an acute humanitarian crisis. With images of starving civilian Tamils flooding Indian television screens, Tamil Nadu erupted in fury. Political pressure on Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi reached a breaking point.

India decided to abandon its covert posture and show open, coercive military muscle. When the Sri Lankan Navy blocked an Indian flotilla carrying humanitarian aid, India responded with Operation Pumalai. On June 4, 1987, five Indian Air Force transport planes, escorted by fighter jets, violated Sri Lankan airspace to airdrop food and medical supplies over Jaffna.

The message to President Jayewardene was unmistakable: Stop your military offensive, or India will invade. Cornered geopolitically, Jayewardene capitulated. On July 29, 1987, he and Rajiv Gandhi signed the historic Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. Under this treaty, Sri Lanka agreed to devolve political power to the Tamil-majority Northern and Eastern provinces through a new system of Provincial Councils (enshrined in the 13th Amendment to the Constitution). In return, India agreed to send a military force to enforce a ceasefire, oversee the disarmament of the Tamil militants, and guarantee the territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. This force was named the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF). It was supposed to be a short, triumphant policing mission. Instead, it became India’s Vietnam.

The foundational flaw of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord was that the primary combatants- the LTTE- were never formal signatories to it. Prabhakaran viewed the accord as a betrayal of the dream of Tamil Elam, designed to strip his forces of their weapons while leaving them vulnerable to an untrustworthy Sinhalese State. The LTTE refused to hand over its heavy weaponry. Within three short months, the deployment disintegrated. The IPKF, which had landed to protect the Tamil population from the Sri Lankan military, found itself ordered to hunt down and disarm the LTTE by force. President Jayewardene has succeeded in converting an internal issue into a massive geopolitical one, specifically for India.

The resulting conflict, code-named Operation Pawan, was an absolute disaster. The Indian Army was trained for conventional warfare against nations like Pakistan or China. It was utterly unprepared for the brutal reality of urban guerrilla warfare in the dense jungles and narrow streets of Jaffna. The LTTE used a devastating array of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), landmines, snipers, child soldiers, and highly motivated female suicide bombers. The IPKF, operating with poor intelligence, language barriers, and heavily restrictive rules of engagement, took massive casualties.

Compounding the tragedy, the IPKF quickly lost the hearts and minds of the local Tamil civilian population. Accusations of human rights abuses, arbitrary detentions, and civilian casualties turned the locals against the Indian troops, who were now widely viewed as an occupying alien army. Meanwhile, in the South of Sri Lanka, the presence of thousands of foreign Indian soldiers on sovereign soil triggered a violent, nationalist backlash among the Sinhalese majority. Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), at the time still headed by Rohana Wijeweera, launched their second brutal insurrection against the Sri Lankan government for signing away the nation’s sovereignty to India.

By 1989, the geopolitical irony was complete: the newly elected Sri Lankan President, Ranasinghe Premadasa, and the LTTE found themselves in temporary, secret alignment on one single issue- they both wanted the Indian Army out of the country. Premadasa officially demanded the withdrawal of the IPKF. Defeated, politically isolated, and having lost over 1,100 soldiers, the last Indian troops quietly withdrew from Sri Lanka in March 1990.

The blow-back from India’s intervention did not end with the departure of its military forces. The ultimate, tragic price was paid on May 21, 1991, at an election rally in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu. A young female LTTE suicide bomber named Dhanu walked up to the former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, bent down to touch his feet as a sign of respect, and detonated an explosive vest. Gandhi was killed instantly, alongside 14 others.

Prabhakaran ordered the assassination out of fear that if Gandhi returned to power, he would redeploy the IPKF to Sri Lanka to crush the Tigers. It proved to be a fatal strategic error for the LTTE. The assassination completely alienated the Indian public and political establishment. Overnight, the widespread sympathy for the Tamil cause in Tamil Nadu evaporated. India officially banned the LTTE as a terrorist organization and permanently shut down its operational sanctuaries within Indian borders.

For the remainder of the civil war, which dragged on until the total military defeat of the LTTE in May 2009, India maintained a strict hands-off approach to direct military action. However, the strategic structures India left behind- most notably the 13th Amendment- remain the only internationally recognized baseline for political devolution in Sri Lanka to this day.

The evolution of the Tamil Question is a cautionary tale of regional hegemony and proxy politics. In my previous writing, by treating the conflict as a simple bilateral war between the Sri Lankan state and Tamil rebels, I ignored the structural reality of South Asian power dynamics. The growth of Tamil militancy was deeply intertwined with Indian patronage, and its eventual radicalization was accelerated by Indian manipulation. India sought to use a marginalized minority’s cry for justice as a tool to protect its own maritime borders and push back against Western alignment. In doing so, it unleashed forces it could neither comprehend nor control.

When analyzing modern ethnic conflicts, we must remember that a localized struggle for rights rarely stays local. As long as smaller nations border regional powers, domestic failures to achieve political compromise will always invite foreign intervention, making outsiders permanent stakeholders in both the tragedy of the war and the elusive search for peace.

The current President, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, has to deal with a very complicated issue: the Tamil Question. One thing he must remember is that we must never expand the borders of our internal problems to become geopolitical footballs for the big guys to play. So long as the Tamil Question remains a local one, we should be able to deal with it more equitably; otherwise, we would once again be at the mercy of our geopolitical giants: India and China. A defining feature of the current political landscape is that the parliamentary opposition has been so thoroughly marginalized that it poses no real threat to AKD’s legislative agenda.

*The writer can be reached at vishwamithra1984@gmail.com