Showing posts with label Jayalalithaa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jayalalithaa. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 09, 2015

The Tamils Of Sri Lanka And Me

Hillary Clinton And The Global Gender Basics
Does The World Government Have To Await A Total Spread Of Democracy?
World Government And Federal States
Abraham Lincoln?
Blaming Hillary For Benghazi = Blaming W For 9/11
The International Importance Of Owaisi

Percentage of Sri Lankan Tamils per district b...
Percentage of Sri Lankan Tamils per district based on 2001 or 1981 (cursive) census. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I was Barack Obama's first full time volunteer in all of New York City. I identify with the blacks in America because I grew up Indian in Nepal. It is hard to explain. How can India be such a big country, and Nepal such a small country, and how can Indians in Nepal be having a hard time?

Well, Nepal is no exception. Indians are having a hard time in every South Asian country, the most glorious example perhaps is Sri Lanka, the most literate South Asian nation. Sri Lanka's high literacy rate is proof political discrimination and persecution is not something on the Human Development Index. Political problems have political solutions, and Sri Lanka's democracy has not delivered for its minority Tamils.

I have never believed in political violence, but when I started my full time work into Nepal's peace process early in 2005, I tried very, very hard to understand the political motives of the armed Maoists. I abstained from demonizing them. I believe in democracy, in human rights. In many ways I am more American than Americans. I believe in a total spread of democracy across the world. And I believe it is possible through peaceful means. And I don't suffer from America's original sin - race - like some white Americans sometimes do. That helps make my thinking on democracy much clearer. My gospel of democracy has no hint of white supremacy in it.

Somethings are political, somethings are personal, some are both. I am a Madhesi in Nepal. When Hridayesh Tripathy, a Nepali politician I admire, first showed up in Kathmandu as a Member Of Parliament, his house was attacked. In the aftermath he threatened to turn Nepal into a Sri Lanka. We Madhesis in Nepal identify with the Tamils in Sri Lanka. The word Tamil exists in Delhi. The word Madhesi does not yet exist in Patna, or Lucknow or Delhi. Power brokers in Delhi do business with the power brokers in Kathmandu who suppress the Madhesis, all the time. It is a terrible blind spot to be in.

At the geopolitical level, China can come in and help the Sri Lankan elite enact genocide on the Tamils, and India has not much to say. A Chinese border incursion in Ladakh is much less offensive.

Tamils should be able to achieve equality in Sri Lanka through democracy, otherwise democracy itself is the wrong tool. Tamils should be able to achieve equality in Sri Lanka through peaceful means, otherwise peaceful methods are suspect. But I don't think democracy is suspect, I don't think peaceful methods are suspect. The right to self determination is a fundamental human right, it is like free speech, it is like freedom of religion.

Sri Lanka is going to go for fedaralism in which there is a Tamil state, and each state in that federal Sri Lanka has a right to self determination, the kind that Scotland and Quebec itch with. And Sri Lanka is going to do that because that is the right thing to do, because that is Sri Lanka's obligation as a signatory to the Universal  Declaration Of Human Rights. Sri Lanka is going to do that because India is a big country and Sri Lanka is a small country, and it can not afford not to. Sri Lanka is going to do that because, if necessary, China itself will be taught a lesson or two in democracy, federalism and human rights. That is why the Tamils are going to be given federalism with the right to self determination. The right to self determination is not a debate, any more than free speech is. It is a right. Every Tamil in Sri Lanka was born with it.

The right to self determination is not a one way road to secession. It is an opportunity for Sri Lanka to become an inclusive state where minorities like Tamils and Muslims get their due share in national life. Sri Lanka is not just for Sinhalas. And if Sinhalas want a country just for them, they should be granted that.

Massive atrocities were committed when Rajapaksha ("Ravana") militarily eliminated the LTTE. Tens of thousands of innocent, civilian Tamils were killed, maimed, violated, scarred for life. Like Stalin said, one death is a tragedy, a million deaths? Statistics. This was Rajapaksha statistics. That was not a democratic act by a democratic leader. And I am glad he has been ousted at the ballot box. I hope some day he is served justice.

A friend of mine, CK Raut, a Cambridge University PhD in Computer Science, was jailed a few months ago, and recently released by orders of the court. His ways are non-violent, and he seeks to create a new country called Madhesh.

My immigration lawyer for the past few years has been a Tamil, a Harvard Law School graduate like Barack Obama: Rudrakumaran Visuvanathan.



Rudra pushes for ICC trial on Lanka
Launching a signature campaign to press for a trial by the International Criminal Court (ICC) into the genocide of Sri Lankan Tamils, Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE) Prime Minister V Rudrakumaran on Wednesday said active support of the people of Tamil Nadu was crucial for generating international opinion to render justice to the Sri Lankan Tamils ...... Inaugurating the campaign in Chennai through skype, he urged the United Nations to refer the genocide of Sri Lankan Tamils to the ICC or establish a similar credible international judicial mechanism for investigation and prosecution of the war crimes and genocide. ...... Citing the UN Internal Review Report on Sri Lanka, he said there were 70,000 casualties in the first six months of the war and quoted former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton who had listed Sri Lanka along with Bosnia, Burma, Congo and Sudan where rape was used a tactic of war. ..... the new Lankan government’s call for a domestic or hybrid mechanism to replace any international judicial process was an attempt to deflect the call for referral to the ICC and to delay other meaningful actions on accountability. Efforts to establish a domestic truth and reconciliation commission, he said would be another diversionary tactic to protect those who committed serious crimes against Tamils. ...... Listing out the reasons for an international investigation, the TGTE Prime Minister said “Even though the President has changed, the political environment vis-a-vis Tamils has not changed. Several former military personnel, including the military commander at the end of the war General Sarath Fonseka are in senior positions in the current government. The fact that the military apparatus is still intact and the militarisation of the north east continues to perpetuate fear among Tamils and had a deep impact on day to day activities. Therefore, it is unlikely that victims and witnesses will be truly independent before a domestic or hybrid tribunal”. ....... Besides, President Sirisena has served as Defence Minister during the end of the war, when large number of Tamils were killed and Sri Lanka did not have criminal provisions for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. ...... The unitary Lankan State and judiciary were not ethnically neutral and most of the crimes were perpetrated by the State apparatus. The island judiciary was always subservient to political leadership when it came to abuses against Tamils. Even under a Tamil Chief Justice, no prosecution was ever brought against anyone for the mass killings of Tamils in 1983, he added.

Saturday, June 07, 2014

The Federal Front Is A Great Idea

English: Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Baner...
English: Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee attends a news conference in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata September 7, 2008. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


If and when Modi's time is up, it will be someone from the Federal Front who will take over. That is what I foresee. And so step one perhaps is a Federal Front leading the opposition.

AIADMK 37
Trinamool Congress 34
Biju Janata Dal 20

That alone is 91.

Telangana Rashtra Samiti 11

That takes it past 100, which is double whatever the Congress can muster.

Credit goes to Mamata for coining the term.

There is a real role in the Upper House for this Front.

The BJP grew almost entirely at the expense of the Congress. The BJP did not eat much into the votes of the non-Congress, non-BJP parties which together get as many votes as the Congress and the BJP combined. That is grounds for a pre-poll formal, structured alliance.

You broker peace between Mulayam and Mayawati and you get Uttar Pradesh, you broker peace between Nitish and Laloo and you get Bihar. Delhi goes to whoever gets the Hindi heartland.

But right now my bet is the BJP will also form the state government in Uttar Pradesh in a few years. Bihar, I don't know. I don't know what Nitish has on his mind. I think he would like to fight solo and sweep Bihar like his colleagues Mamata, Jayalalita and Patnaik.

Regional parties may form ‘federal front’, isolate Congress in Parliament
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Saturday, May 17, 2014

Nitish Is Hurt

English: Nitish Kumar
English: Nitish Kumar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
"If Naveen's BJD and Jayalalithaa's AIADMK could fetch 44% votes each to bag 20 of the 21 LS seats in Odisha and 37 of the 39 LS seats in Tamil Nadu respectively, why was JD (U) trounced despite the fact that I have worked no less hard to better things in Bihar?"
'Hurt' Nitish unlikely to leave Bihar for BJP
Sources close to the CM said Nitish was bitterly baffled at the way the voters rejected him in the just-concluded parliamentary election despite all the "hard work" he has done to put the once-BIMARU state on the rails of development. He is citing the examples of J Jayalalithaa, Naveen Patnaik and Mamata Banerjee, who won the election impressively for their respective party in their respective states despite the NaMo wave.
Nitish is hurt. He deserved as good if not better than Jayalalita, Patnaik and Mamata. But the consumer is always right, the voter is always right. That is one of the laws of politics.

Bihar and UP make up the Hindi heartland and by definition are the most contested states in the country. That is not true of Tamilnadu, Orissa, and West Bengal. It is like real estate in the city center is more expensive than in the outskirts.

Nitish ditching Modi did not go well with the voters. Nitish made it sound like he would accept Advani for the PM post, but not Modi. Why would that be? Is it because Advani is secular? Really? The Ram Mandir Rath Yatra Advani? Advani as PM would have given India its traditional "Hindu rate of growth," something below 5%. Modi is a better modern technocrat. To say the BJP was okay, but Modi was not sounded like words coming out of a confused mind.

The better proposition would have been to claim he was better than Modi, and to have waged a national campaign to that end.

If Nitish had swept Bihar with 35 out of its 40 seats, then Modi would still have been Prime Minister. The NDA would still have had a majority.

It is not like Nitish lost to something or somebody minor. Modi only waged the most brilliant election campaign India has seen to date. The contest was for the top job in Delhi. Modi was running. Nitish was not running. And so Modi won because he was the only one running for the top job. Not even Rahul was officially running.

Now the best option for Nitish is to engineer a JD(U)-RJD-Congress alliance in Bihar and also a SP-BSP-Congress alliance in UP. And shoot for 2018. If the JD(U), RJD, SP, BSP, and Congress can sweep Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, they can have Delhi. But it is not just about alliance building. It is more about development, that thing that Nitish knows a ton about. The only way you can beat Modi is by outdoing him on development. Alliance building alone will not do the trick.

The center of gravity in Indian politics still lies in the Hindi heartland.

Expressing personal hurt is not going to work. Jayalalita, Patnaik and Mamata did not wage frontal attacks on Modi. Nitish did. But it came across as impulsive, rather than a thought out plan to offer a credible alternative.

Uttar Pradesh: SP + BSP + Congress
JD(U) + RJD Could Sweep Bihar
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