The escalating conflict in Sri Lanka is having a direct impact now on politics in India, especially in Tamilnadu.  The DMK and other parties in Tamilnadu have demanded that the UPA government intervene to stop the Sri Lankan government from carrying on its military offensive in that country’s northern region and to make it take steps towards a negotiated political settlement.  To increase the pressure on the Central government, the DMK, which is part of the UPA, ordered the resignation of its 14 members in the Parliament.  Faced with this pressure, the UPA government has sounded a stern note and summoned the acting High Commissioner of Sri Lanka in New Delhi to convey its “concern” over the situation in Sri Lanka and to push for a political settlement.  Manmohan Singh is also said to have refused to meet the Sri Lankan President in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting, to show his “displeasure” over the slow pace of political negotiations in Sri Lanka.

There is no doubt that lakhs of people in Sri Lanka, mainly Tamils, are facing severe hardship as the Sri Lankan military has taken its battle right into territory controlled by the LTTE.  The Sri Lankan government’s claim that it is trying its best to look after the displaced people and those caught in the crossfire is contradicted by numerous independent observers on the ground.  Men, women and children are getting killed and fleeing in huge numbers, either to other parts of the island or across the straits to India.  They are in dire straits, deprived of food and other essential commodities.  They are caught in a war zone in which neither side is thinking of their interests or safety.

Given the critical situation as well as the long history of the Sri Lankan government’s callousness towards the plight of the Tamils there, it is no wonder that many forces in Tamilnadu are deeply anxious and angered.  However, the demand for greater Indian intervention in Sri Lanka at this time is not in the interests of either the Tamils or other people in Sri Lanka, nor in the interests of Indian people.

Just over 20 years ago, in 1987, the Indian government under Rajiv Gandhi had tried to intervene in Sri Lanka under similar circumstances.  It began by airdropping supplies in the name of assisting the beleaguered Tamils, and followed it up soon afterwards by imposing an “agreement” on the Sri Lanka government and sending its troops into northern Sri Lanka in the name of “peacekeeping”.  As it turned out, this move was deeply resented by all sections of the people in Sri Lanka. Faced with mounting losses and the joint opposition of both the government and the LTTE, the Indian government had to get out of Sri Lanka in great haste in just two years.  The Indian intervention in no way led to any increase in the safety and security of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka.

The campaign for Indian intervention in Sri Lanka today is also being joined by those who are citing reasons of India’s “national interests”.  Their argument is that if India does not intervene, China will use the situation to develop its presence in Sri Lanka, with which it has been developing close relations.  There is talk of developing a US-Japan-India strategic partnership in the Indian Ocean region to counter the Chinese.  From this viewpoint, Sri Lanka is just a pawn in a larger geopolitical game, and the crisis there is nothing but a convenient pretext for intervention whose aims are to bolster the Indian state’s power in the region.

This is an exceedingly dangerous scenario that threatens to draw the Indian people into conflict, not just with our neighbouring country Sri Lanka, but as part of a larger geopolitical game to boost the regional and global power of the Indian ruling class.  Since the Indian state has entered into a strategic alliance with the US, any such moves would also mean increasing the political and military presence of US imperialism in this region.  The peace and security of the Indian people and of South Asia as a whole would be greatly endangered as a consequence.

What, then, is the outlook for peace in Sri Lanka?  It must be recognised that not just Sri Lanka, but the whole of South Asia is rife with conflicts, in which large numbers of innocent people are being daily slaughtered in the name of religion, region, language and nationality. Many of the conflicts, such as in Kashmir and Manipur, have been going on for decades. This is in the first place a legacy of colonialism, especially British colonialism, which cynically exploited differences among the peoples to perpetuate its stranglehold.  When colonialism ended, this divisive politics was carried further forward by the ruling elites that were handed power by the colonialists.  Today there is hardly a corner of South Asia where people are not being pitted against each other by political forces that exploit their fears to keep themselves in power.  Complicating this situation in our region are the big power ambitions of the Indian bourgeoisie, which wants to assert its domination over the whole region, on its own and in alliance with other imperialist powers.  In this situation, it is up to the peoples within each country to repudiate the divisive politics of the colonialists and their present-day rulers and to settle their differences peacefully and with a cool head.  The Indian people, who are also at the receiving end of such rotten politics in our country, must resist all calls to go and intervene in conflicts in the neighbouring countries, whether in the name of helping one side or the other in those conflicts, or in the name of India’s “national interests”.  It is the working class and peoples who must boldly take the initiative in their own hands to sort out the problems both within each country and between the different countries of this region.