MADRAS: It is too harsh to blame Rajiv Gandhi for India’s ‘Catastrophic’ Sri Lankan policy, and most of the blame should go to his Policy advisers says a new book by a retired Tamil Nadu intelligence official who claims to give an authentic account of the explosive Sri Lankan Tamils’ issue which has dominated the state’s politics for over a decade.
- Mohandas, once the all successful state intelligence chief makes the claim in his book MGR, The man and the myth’ which deals with the regime of matinee idol and the former chief minister, M.G.Ramachandran between 1977 and 1987.
The book says Rajiv Gandhi has been too harshly held responsible for several blunders on Sri Lanka, but advisers who had vested interests’ convinced him to continue with the dual policy of being committed to the island’s integrity on one hand, and permitting the training of armed militant groups on India’s soil on the other,
Sometime after Rajiv took over, I had reliable information that he was taken aback on knowing the details of India’s Sri Lankan policy,” Mohandas says the book. About the setting up of training camps for the militants by the Center in the early 1980s without the knowledge of the state government, Mohandas says “It was a take-over of Tamil Nadu territory by the Center. The camps were run like “Mini Union territories.”
Described by many as MGR’s “eyes and cars,’ Mohandas, who kept a close watch on militant groups, particularly the LTTE, refutes critics that he had functioned as an *Extra-constitutional authority’ in dealing with militants.
From day one, my stand was that we had no business in Sri Lanka, as the ethnic conflict was purely an internal matter of that country,” he says. “I thought we were sitting on a time bomb,” he says of the law and order problems created during the early days of militant activity in Tamil Nadu.
He also alleges that the Center tried to cover up the involvement of Tamil militants in the December 1985 blast at the Madras airport which left 30 dead,
According to Mohandas, senior central intelligence officials wanted him to pursue a theory that the Israeli agency, ‘Mossad,” had blasted the airport to ‘discredit the Tamil militants.’ However, the state authorities were stubborn in tracking down the real culprits, three Sri Lankan Tamils and three locals. The ‘Tamil Eclam Army’ TEA, a splinter militant group was found to be involved in it he says.
Let the Center stew in its own juice,” was MGR’s cryptic comment when the author apprised him of the Center’ attitude, which ran counter to his own intention to bring the culprits to justice, the author says.
Referring to the top secret operation of disarming the LTTE in November 1986, Mohandas says he was then criticized for doing it on his own with no order from the state or Central governments. He could not deny this charge then as the whole operation was cloaked in secrecy.
Thad orders from both the chief minister and the Prime Minister (Rajiv Gandhi)”, but nothing written, except a communication from the Union home ministry to the slate that “stringent steps” should be taken to protect the Sri Lankan president, J.R Jayawardene, who was then visiting India for the SAARC conference at Bangalore, he says.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 10, 1994
