Compassion bedaubed with politics

Saturday 20th February, 2021

Congress Leader Rahul Gandhi says he has forgiven his father’s killers. He said so, the other day, in answer to a question during an interaction at the Bharathidasan Government College for Women, in Puducherry. He felt a great pain but not anger, he added. If he is telling us the truth, then he is too good to be in politics characterised by anger, rancour, animosity, greed, revenge and other such base instincts; he should be in an ashram, guiding others on their spiritual journeys, instead of seeking power and venting his spleen at his political rivals. How come a person who claims to be so compassionate as to forgive his father’s killers launches into tirades against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and others at the drop of a hat?

There is hardly anything that politicians do not politicise to gain political mileage. They do not spare even noble qualities such as compassion.

In 2016, the then President Maithripala Sirisena made a big show of what he made out to be his compassion; he granted a presidential pardon to a former Tiger who had conspired to kill him. It was obvious that he sought some political mileage out of that pretentious act of grace. Interestingly, he never forgave Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had enabled him to realise his presidential dream. He also made a determined bid to have his former political boss and his family members thrown behind bars, but in vain. It is said in politics that if you cannot beat them, you should join them. He did just that, later on. He is now in the exalted company of the Rajapaksas

“Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind,” said John Donne. But it needs to be said that Rajiv Gandhi reaped what he had sown. All those who mollycoddled the LTTE suffered the same fate as the proverbial young lady of Niger, who rode on a tiger joyously but returned inside it. President Ranasinghe Premadasa also made that blunder. He gifted arms, ammunition, money, building materials, etc., to the Tigers, who had taken on the IPKF, only to be assassinated by the LTTE a few years later. Among those who made the same mistake were many Tamil political leaders who affectionately called the Tigers ‘our boys’.

Even the states that sponsor terrorism get into trouble just like political leaders however powerful they may be. The US created terrorism in Afghanistan to get rid of the Russians only to be hoist with its own petard when bin Laden turned his guns on it. The western powers bent on denigrating China would have the world believe that coronavirus was created in a laboratory and accidentally leaked. They themselves are guilty of having created an extremely dangerous virus as it were—terrorism, which continues to plague the world. But for them, most of the Global South would have been free from bloody conflicts, which have created a huge market for their weapons and are serving their geo-political interests.

What would have happened if the US, the UK, France and other European nations had succeeded in their endeavour to coerce Sri Lanka into sparing the LTTE leadership during the final battle in 2009? Terrorism would have survived, and crimes such as the forcible child conscription, political assassinations, extortion, massacres and bomb attacks on buses and trains would have continued during the last 12 years or so; thousands of lives would have been lost. The aforesaid countries owe an apology to Sri Lanka for having striven to perpetuate terrorism here. What moral right do those who harbour bloodthirsty terrorists and try to rescue them when they are about to get their comeuppance have to champion human rights? Curiously, they were silent when JVP terrorism was crushed to save democracy twice. Maybe, they did not care because the JVP does not have thousands of its backers in western capitals to raise funds and vote for politicians there.

Rahul’s memories of Prabhakaran and his father’s association with the LTTE must be vivid. K. Venkataramanan revealed in an article published in The Times of India, in the immediate aftermath of the conclusion of the Eelam War IV, that Rajiv, during his honeymoon with the LTTE, had got Rahul to bring his (Rajiv’s) bulletproof vest, and placed it on Prabhakaran, asking the latter to take care. Now that Rahul has publicly declared that he has forgiven his father’s killers, the question is whether the victims of the LTTE have forgiven his father, who was instrumental in creating Tiger terror here and inflicting untold suffering on Sri Lankans.

Rahul should also ask the families of more than one thousand Indian soldiers who died here, fighting the LTTE, whether they have forgiven the killers of their loved ones. Most of all, he should ask them whether they have forgiven his late father who sent them on a disastrous mission here to fight an enemy he had created. This question must also be posed to the current Indian leaders who have joined the US in the human rights witch-hunt in Geneva against those who neutralised the LTTE’s military muscle and, thereby, not only saved Sri Lankans but also enabled some Indian politicians who feared the Tigers to heave a sigh of relief and shuffle off their heavy bulletproof vests.