The Indian Union and Eelam
© Prakash J. Mascarenhas
Eelam is the northern and western parts of the Island of Ceylon. The Tamils came to settle the island before the Aryan Sinhalese immigrated from Orissa. In time, the Tamils and Sinhalese pushed aside the aborigine Vedhas, and divided the island among themselves.
There were separate independent kingdoms, some Tamil, others Sinhala, with now one, then another dominating. Then the Portuguese came in. They took over the entire coast, all around. The Sinhalese Kingdom of Kandy survived independent. Soon the Portuguese were supplanted by the Dutch, and at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, they ceded Ceylon to England. .
The Royal House of Kandy died out, and and was succeeded by the cognate Tamil King of Madurai. However, ethnic differences caused a revolt, with the Sinhalese nobles calling in the English to annex the Kingdom. Thus all Ceylon came under England. .
Shortly after independence, under Bandarnayak, a Christian who, for populist reasons, reverted to the Sinhala's majority Buddhism, the Sinhala began to persecute and downgrade the Tamils...
Following a series of provocations, various Tamil outfits began to take up arms. Finally the situation became so drastic, that Tamil refugees began to flood the Indian Union, and there was a build up of popular support for intervention within the Indian Union...
Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister of the Indian Union, sent in troops, and then, without consulting the Tamils, made a treaty with the Sinhalese for mere autonomy and which committed against Tamil Independence. The freedom fighters were constrained under Indian military pressure to conform to this Treaty...
However, as days went by, the Reaction set in, and active fighting broke out against the Indian forces. In retaliation, the Indian forces committed grave atrocities, among other things, rapes. All this was minutely documented in all the Indian newspapers. Finally, the situation became intolerable, and the Indians evacuated. .
Eelam struck back for this act of betrayal by the Indian Union by striking at the perpetrator - Rajiv Gandhi, a man who, like his mother and grandfather deserved to be hanged as a common criminal a hundred times over, for crimes against humanity!