| Published on 26-09-2006 In World | | Viewed 2305 times | | Muslims? Ahem…Er….LTTE cheerleaders fumble |
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| Written by
RajanMarx | 
Any kind of nationalist movement generally remains hostage to majority sentiments. Minorities of any type, ethnic, racial, linguistic or religious are seen as a liability and they instantly provoke suspicion, if not downright hostility.
The Indian freedom struggle was no exception, though leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru did all that they could to make the polity as inclusive as possible. Still Pakistan happened and Kashmir is scorching us.
When visionaries and noble souls can fail, little wonder then the LTTE apologists in Tamil Nadu are caught repeatedly fumbling on the issue of Sri Lankan Muslims. Damned, if they do, and damned, if they don't.
If they denounce Sri Lankan Muslims, their secularism becomes suspect and they have problems in projecting themselves as friends of Muslims in Tamil Nadu. But if they don't, their loyalty to the LTTE cause could become suspect. With the result, they generally sidestep the issue.
Deafening silence greets any outrage on Lankan Muslims. See, so far none has reacted to the brutal killing of 10 Muslim road-workers in Ampara district a couple of days ago.
The entire Muslim community is up in arms over there. The massacre has been followed by firing on protesters by the army. Most political formations and civilians in general suspect the hand of the Special Task Force in the incident, and the government itself is trying to pacify Muslims by promising to relocate the STF.
I don't intend discussing the troubled position of Muslims in the Lankan ethnic tangle, nor the Muslim attitudes in general. I reserve such issues for a future occasion. At the moment we will confine our attention to our unabashed LTTE apologists.
Whether Vaiko, Dr.Ramadoss, Thol. Thirumavalavan or Pazha Nedumaran, they all pretend to be ardent followers of Periyar EVR, the non-Brahmin iconoclast who, almost single-handedly demolished the Brahmin hegemony in Tamil Nadu. Interestingly the attitude of the Dravidian movement itself towards Muslims has been rather ambiguous.
In the initial days Muslims shared platforms with Dravidian speakers, and they all tore into the Hindu orthodoxy. But Muslims became uneasy whenever Periyar fulminated against any kind of religious beliefs. Certainly they would not have been pleased with his repeated calls to women to break free of the shackles of a patriarchal society, and they came down hard on Naavalar Nedunchezhiyan in 1952 when he reportedly observed in a public meeting that Thirukkural was more relevant than Quran. Finally Nedunchezhiyan was forced to issue some kind of retraction, but even then he accused a section of Muslims with trying to destroy the Dravidian movement.
On different occasions, the Dravidian leaders have tried their best to reach out to Muslims – Periyar rooted stridently for Pakistan, hoping for a quid pro quo for his own Draavida Naadu demand, but that did not materialise. He was predictably cheesed off.
Still the uneasy alliance continued for long. DMK is known to command a vast reservoir of support among minorities, unlike the AIADMK which is seen to be closer the Hindutva ideology, thanks to Jayalalithaa's own predilections.
But over a period of time the Dravidian politicians seemed to have lost all enthusiasm for the Muslim cause, despite their occasional obeisance, like participating in the ID celebrations and electoral tie-ups.
After Karunanidhi's ascent to power, the DMK further degenerated. Ideology was at a discount and everyone and everything became a means to feather one's nest. This cynical approach reached its nadir when the DMK, the PMK and the MDMK blithely joined hands with the BJP in 1999 and preferred to look the other way during the Gujarat carnage.
The MDMK chief Vaiko was easily the most atrocious of the lot, going around the country, drumming up support for the BJP.
"Oh, they all lauded my spirited defence, you know," he boasted in a newspaper interview, referring to the reaction of the BJP leadership to his speech in parliament on Gujarat.
Dr.Ramadoss heading the PMK had invited Shiv Sena leaders to take part in a conference he organized in 1997. Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray had hailed Prabhakaran as a valiant defender of Hindus against the onslaught of Budhists.
Anyway, as he realized "the merits of real politik," Ramadoss's ardour for Muslims cooled. The man who had patronized such incendiary elements like Palani Baba had little difficulty in joining the BJP-led coalition or justifying every one of their actions.
Thirumavalavan of the Dalit Panthers of India, who professes to be more anti-Hindu than the others, also joined the DMK-BJP alliance with alacrity in 2001.
Of course, Pazha Nedumaran, being His Master's Voice, has no problems on any count.
The Tiger lobby never once breathes a word in support of the Lankan Tamil Muslims, it must be remembered. Whether the Kaathaangudi massacre of 1992 or the expulsion of Muslims from Jaffna by the Tigers or the reported disappearance of Muslims youths during the Mudur clashes, they have nothing to say. When prodded, they come up with some platitudes.
These leaders had gone to town on the bombing of an orphanage run by the Tigers, but have no time to react to the LTTE's Amparai massacre.
The jihadi groups, Home Guards and the like started rearing their heads in the Sri Lankan Muslim community in the early nineties. Even otherwise Muslims have had a troubled relationship with the Tamil nationalists, but there used to be a lot of Muslim youth in the Tamil militant groups.
But Prabhakaran's impatience, arrogance and aggression progressively alienated that community and the process could be said to have reached a point of no return now.
If the LTTE had to beat a humiliating retreat from Mudur recently, it was because the local Muslim populace refused to shelter them. If anything they started informing the army of the Tiger positions and movements.
A cleverer Lankan establishment could have cashed in on the process, offered some kind of a piecemeal solution, co-opted Muslims and shown up Prabhakaran even more unreasonable than he actually is. But then they had never been known for their wisdom or foresight.
(There are a couple of exceptions though - Chandrika and Ranil, in different contexts, did seem to be nearing some sensible deal, but that was not to be.) And now you have Muslims agitating against the STF.
Our self-proclaimed champions of the Tamil race run for cover whenever faced with searching questions on the LTTE misadventures. Incidentally it is the upper caste Vellalar-dominated Lankan Tamil diaspora that is oiling the LTTE war machine and it is the lower castes that are used as canon fodder. But Dalit leader Thirumavalavan and OBC leader Ramadoss would not dare tread such territory.
It is no doubt irritating that in their enthusiasm for the Tigers (genuine or feigned), they should be willing to sacrifice the case of other Tamil-speaking sections, also much wronged. But it is also heartening that the Vaikos and Thirumavalavans don't cut much of an ice with the large Tamil masses.
Those with a significant mass base, Karunanidhi and Jayalalithaa, don't see the need to cozy up to Prabhakaran in order to establish their own Tamilness. (That neither of them is driven by any concern for the larger good of the community is yet another story altogether.) Anyway Tamil nationalism has lost its appeal among the Hindu Tamils, which is indeed good news for the minorities in Tamil Nadu. |
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