In order to bring peace and tranquility to the war torn Jaffna Peninsula of Sri Lanka in August 1987 Rajiv Gandhi the nice guy acted as peace broker between the Tamils and the Sinhalese, as he had done in July 1985 when he signed the much publicized but doomed to failure, Punjab Accord with Akalis in the province of Punjab in India. There too, he wanted to bring peace and tranquility in the strife torn Punjab and harmony amongst the different sections of the community. Both the peace initiative pursued by this, pseudo nice guy image of Mr. Gandhi, has failed miserably.

The Punjab is still burning with anger. The Sikh young men and women are disappearing in thin air. Innocent Sikhs are being murdered by the police and army personnel in fake police encounters. Instead of peace and tranquility there is destruction and grief. Those very Akalis who were partners in the Punjab Accord are now being hounded by the Director General of police, Mr. Reibero. The duly elected government of the Akalis has been replaced by the direct rule from the center. The peace keepers in Punjab, the Indian police and army personnel, have taken the role of mercenaries. The reports of different commissions appointed to oversee the implementation of the accord are gathering dust and some of them have not even seen the daylight. None of the promises made to the Akalis have been fulfilled. The accord itself has not been implemented faithfully by the government headed by the nice guy, Mr. Gandhi.

It is not a coincidence that the peace accord signed by the Tamils/ Sinhalese and the India government has met the fate as of Punjab accord in India. Those very Tamils who were being trained in the Southern part of India before the accord are now being murdered by the Jawans of the Indian army. Tamil women and children are being shot dead in cold blood. Tamil leaders are being hounded like the Akalis in Punjab. Those Tamils living in south of India who were rejoicing at the signing ceremony of this ill-fated accord are now demonstrating against Gandhi, The northern peninsula of Sri Lanka has become a mini South Vietnam and the interior motives of the Indian government are coming to the surface slowly and steadily. It has been recently reported that Indian civil servants are being flown in to run the civil government of Jaffna, this time it is Jaffna, next time; it will be Sri Lanka itself.

Both these peace initiatives were doomed to failure right from the beginning. They were not signed for, love for peace, to save the human lives or for the love of human life. If that would be the case, then Sikh children would not be jailed, Sikh women would not be humiliated and Sikh young men and women would not be murdered in cold blood by the Indian army, Indian Reserve Police and Central Reserve Police Force in the province of Punjab. These accords were signed out of political expediency, they were signed out of pure selfishness on the part of Mr. Gandhi, and they were supposed to project a pseudo image of the nice guy as a man of peace. The later one was signed to divert the attention of the Indian public from the web of scandals of corruption in which Mr. Gandhi found him at home and the political losses his party suffered at the hands of the opposition.

It is high time that the western democracies and the leaders of the Commonwealth countries take a hard look at the policies of the Indian government at home and abroad. When they would do so they will find that at home under the cloak of democracy the basic human rights of the minorities are trampled with full vengeance. Recently, Amnesty International published a scathing report about the torture being practiced in the Indian jails. The religious and social freedom of the citizens of India is being curtailed day by day through the draconian laws passed by the Congress (I) controlled parliament. How can nation fight racism in South Africa which is racist at home. Charity begins at home. How can the soldiers of the Indian army exercise restraint abroad when they are acting as mercenaries at home. The non-alignment policy of India is nothing but a hoax or a charade sooner or later to be discovered by those who believe in it. Had the Commonwealth leaders assembled at Vancouver in Canada seen through the thin veil of expansionism of India they would have never endorsed the so-called peace initiative of India in Sri Lanka. A nation which is indebted to the leader of the communist world for army arsenal, technical development and money cannot refuse to act as its satellite. Democracies of the world have to pause and think how large, the largest democracy of the world, is really large.