SRI LANKA HOLIDAYS: Close ranks with Mahendra Rajapakse against Indian interference

SRI LANKA HOLIDAYS: Close ranks with Mahendra Rajapakse against Infamous Indian Meddle & Muddle policies
Close ranks with Rajapakse to save the island: It's Now or Never. bunpeiris

Following is an except from India’s hand in Sri Lankan conflict By Neville de Silva, The Sunday Times 29th June 2008

An Indian commentator Manvendra Singh writing in the Indian Express some years back said : “From the beginning of India’s involvement with militant Sri Lanka Tamil groups in 1981 until late 1983, its intelligence agencies were actively involved with, and in the promotion of, the LTTE; and for most of this period, the Congress was the ruling party.” The LTTE however bit the hand that fed it by assassinating Rajiv Gandhi. The group that Indira Gandhi nurtured and aided killed her son.

India’s current dilemma is that as the military conflict escalates it has to be seen to be doing something if not for moral reasons, certainly for political reasons to maintain political support for the Congress especially in Tamil Nadu. But how far is it prepared to go to convince, if not compel, Colombo to take another route to solve the conflict.

As long as Sri Lanka is not dependent on New Delhi for its weapons it does not have all that leverage over Colombo, for the Rajapaksa government has other sources of supply such as China and Pakistan, an issue that is already offending India. The more political pressure it applies publicly on Colombo the more the Rajapaksa administration gains popular support locally because the Sri Lanka people have had enough of Indian chicanery of the past. What we have is the regional superpower in a political bind, uncertain about what to do and unsteady about playing the hand it has been dealt or dealt itself.