Economic Times insinuates Tamils to follow Colombo in ditching India

[TamilNet, Saturday, 22 September 2012, 09:38 GMT]
The editorial of Mumbai-based The Economic Times on Friday insinuates that Tamils will never get justice from India unless they too compete with Colombo in playing the card of China and Pakistan, commented a political analyst in Jaffna. The Economic Times editorial, criticising the opposition to Rajapaksa’s visit as chauvinism wrecking New Delhi’s strategy said: “India has many bones to pick with Sri Lanka, including thwarting Colombo's game of playing Pakistan and China off against India. This calls for a combination of unrelenting pressure on some subjects, such as political rights of the Tamil minority, and generous accommodation on some others.” Responding, the Jaffna analyst told TamilNet that ‘unrelenting’ here implies indefinite hoodwink and ‘generous accommodation’ accommodates annihilation of the nation of Eezham Tamils.

According to The Economic Times (ET), “India has to promote people-to-people ties, build an expansive economic relationship with Lanka that gives a large cross-section of Lankans a vital stake in maintaining good relations with India and make Colombo deliver on principles and promises of democracy that it cannot afford to forswear.”

This is a wishful thinking the Mumbai-based ET tries to project to camouflage the corporate greed of India bulldozing all other issues, the analyst commented.

Further comments from the political analyst follow:

Colombo playing the card of China and Pakistan is not new. It will go ever escalating. The way New Delhi pampers genocide and chauvinism of Colombo the Sinhala state will not stop without destabilising even Tamil Nadu.

Only a mobilised international action recognizing the right to protection of the long-affected Eezham Tamils and granting independence to their nation would make the Sinhala state to relent, look back and seek reconciliation. India helping to such an international process is the way for reinventing and restructuring good relations with all the peoples of the island.

India’s strategy defended by the ET editorial is also not new. Coming from the Krishna Menon legacy of India’s foreign policy, it is a failed strategy that ended in genocide and opened the southern flank of India to its adversaries. Where was The Economic Times when the strategy was leading to the genocide?

Criticizing the Tamil Nadu politicians as ‘self-styled champions’ The Economic Times says, “If they think that the people of Tamil Nadu do not have the sense to realise that their aggressive competition to stage the most attention-grabbing protest against Rajapaksa will only harm the Lankan Tamils, they are sadly mistaken.”

Seriously out of touch with the grassroot realities in Tamil Nadu, or desperate in giving a deceptive picture to the rest of India, the editorial said that the ‘maturity’ of the Tamil Nadu people would negatively respond to the competitive aggression of the Tamil Nadu political parties against the visiting head of state, i.e., Mahinda Rajapaksa.

While in truth it is the public anger and strong grassroot sentiments that impel the political parties in Tamil Nadu to respond to the situation, only an Extra Terrestrial could conclude like the ET editorial that people of Tamil Nadu would not support the protest against Rajapaksa.

India’s national leaders must convey the virtues of New Delhi’s strategy to the people and checkmate the chauvinists, says the ET editorial.

Which one of the so-called national leaders has credibility for people to trust in this instance, when the current President of India, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee himself, as Foreign Minister in 2009, has gone on record for misleading the world on the number of Tamil civilians in the war zone at the height of the genocide in Vanni?

There was a striking difference in the reporting of The Hindu on Friday. For the first time it has depicted Rajapaksa as “accused of genocide,” and the correspondent Mahim Pratap Singh said that Rajapaksa’s arrival in Bhopal and denial of entry to Vaiko were an irony, even though another feature on the same day by Sandeep Dikshit was painting a rosy picture of Rajapaksa assuring provincial council elections in the North. All have seen what has happened in the East.

Most of the Indian media was rhetorically harping on Mahinda Rajapaksa saying that the Tamil issue should not affect the age-old ties between India and the island. It is high time that Indian media should investigate who was responsible for the age-old ties turning into a partnership for genocide.

But the editorial of The Economic Times, India’s most popular, ‘national,’ financial daily, has crossed all the limits and it looks as though it has come straight away from Mahinda Rajapaksa’s international campaign desk.

The Economic Times headquartered in Mumbai in the Times of India building and published in 12 cities in India, has a circulation of 8,00,000 copies. Mr. Rahul Joshi is its current editor.

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Sri Lankan Tamils will not be helped by chauvinist attacks on president Mahinda Rajapaksa