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The latest Wikileaks revelations throw light on how the LTTE influenced political parties in Tamil Nadu in the 1980’s and 1990’s, starting from the IPKF days till the crackdown on the dreaded outfit after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination.
Two dispatches sent by the US mission in Chennai to Washington; one in April 1990 and the other in March 2009, compare contrasting approaches of AIADMK supremo J. Jayalalithaa and DMK chief M. Karunanidhi towards the LTTE.
Assuming office as chief minister soon after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, Jayalalithaa ordered a crackdown on the LTTE, which for long had operated openly in the state. A bureaucrat, who held a key security portfolio at the time, said that Jayalalithaa ordered him to do “whatever it takes, to finish off the LTTE in Tamil Nadu, even if it required extrajudicial killings of LTTE associates in the state,” said a dispatch sent by the then US consul general in Chennai, Andrew T. Simkin. The cable further added that she is an “iron lady” and “even her fiercest critics acknowledge that Jayalalithaa’s aggressive approach went a long way towards pushing the LTTE out of Tamil Nadu”.
On the contrary, the US mission officials had written to their bosses in April 1990 that then chief minister Karunanidhi was tilting towards the LTTE. The cable sent almost a year before his government was dismissed, said his pro-LTTE stand was generating widespread controversy and dismay in Tamil Nadu, particularly in the light of his strained relations with the Tigers in the past.
He was burning bridges with Delhi because of his hardliner pro-Tamil Eelam stand; the cable said and added that it may be at significant political cost. The US mission also raised suspicion as to whether Karunanidhi had put up with the LTTE activities in Tamil Nadu out of fear for the terrorist group.
One should not discount the role of the government of India in supporting the LTTE. “It should not have permitted the LTTE to operate from Indian soil,” said G. Parthasarathy, a former diplomat, who was in Rajiv Gandhi’s office from 1986 to 1989. “Karunanidhi was viciously critical of the LTTE in the past. But once he returned to power in 1989, he turned an LTTE supporter,” said Parthasarathy. “His mistake was that he allowed the constitutional machinery to break down in Tamil Nadu as the LTTE ran riot,” he said. The 1991 electoral verdict was against the LTTE and terrorism and Jayalalithaa was just fulfilling her constitutional duty in flushing them out, Parthasarathy added.
