Courage and Conviction by Gen. (Retd. V.K. Singh)

Author:Gen. (Retd. V.K. Singh) [Gen. (Retd. V.K. Singh)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789383064465
Published: 2013-11-30T05:00:00+00:00

8

A KING’S LIFE

Bollywood

By 1989, President Jayewardene had been replaced by Ranasinghe Premadasa, and he wanted the IPKF out. He even went to the extent of actively supporting the LTTE in its fight against the IPKF. VP Singh had replaced Rajiv Gandhi as prime minister and he too wanted to bring the IPKF home. The sentiment in south India was negative, so much so that the Tamil Nadu chief minister, Karunanidhi, even refused to visit the wounded in military hospitals in Madras. We had walked out of Sri Lanka as a battalion with our heads held high; almost all Indian Army units that had fought on the island had performed well on the ground. While we had gone to Sri Lanka to protect the Tamils, what we actually ended up doing was on no one’s radar.

Over 1,200 pyres had consigned the mortal remains of our fallen officers and men to the flames. The Sri Lankan Army’s offensive against the Tamils was halted in 1987 by India, which held all the cards at the time, including the option of armed intervention in support of the Tamil population (which, we must understand, was not all a part of the LTTE). Shortly after 25 Rajput de-inducted, the rest of the IPKF soon began to extract itself out of the island and the process was completed by March 1990. For India and Indians, Sri Lanka became our Vietnam, perhaps not so much physically, but certainly mentally.

A decade-and-a-half later, when President Percy Mahinda Rajapaksa decided to resume the offensive against the Tamils and began the final push, India assisted him covertly. Even William Shakespeare, master of irony, would have been baffled by the developments. With no checks and balances, the Sri Lankan Army decimated the LTTE and, with it, the Tamils. Today, we find ourselves in a real dilemma: do we alienate the Sri Lankans by condemning the massacre and risk them opening their door to the Chinese (remember the paranoia about the presence of Pakistan and Israel in Sri Lanka in 1987); or do we not condemn the Lankan Army’s genocide and risk alienating the whole of Tamil Nadu?

For people who remember those who laid down their lives in the island country, it will be comforting to know that Sri Lanka built a memorial in 2008 for our martyred soldiers who fought as a part of the IPKF. In India, the names of our fallen men are etched in granite only at memorials within army locations. The rest of India, especially the political class, just does not care. Unfortunately, for those who died, they have been long forgotten by their own country.

There was insufficient post-critical analysis of the Sri Lankan episode even within the Indian armed forces. During a visit to the Higher Command Course in Mhow, General Rodrigues (who had been vice chief for a fair period of the IPKF’s deployment) got into a terrible tangle when questioned on Sri Lanka by officers who had finished commanding their units as a part of the IPKF.

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