DMK and its Dynastic problems: Manmohan Singh faces Difficulties in cabinet formation

The unexpected and may I add, rather shortsighted, electoral verdict from Tamil Nadu has given the thumbs up for the most rabid kind of dynastic and family based politics. The real issue before the aging patriarch of the Karunanidhi family is to reconcile the conflicting and increasingly unquenchable differences between the children of Muthuvel Karunanidhis's several wives and party loyalists. It is a well known fact that the daughter Kanimozhi is now emerging as his chosen successor in the "literary" field and therefore he would like to give her some post in the Central Government as a platform for her to develop and flourish after his demise. This is strongly opposed by his two sons, one with the improbable name, Stalin and the other the Lord of MaduraI, Alazhagiri. Now there is the curious presence of dayanidhi Maran the nephew and the most educated and ariculate of the Karuna tribe. The Congress is comfortable with this man and is willing to give him a minister ship.
The Congress which started this charade of Dynastic Politics is in no moral position to cry foul as it is shamelessly playing loyal coutier to Rahul Gandhi and Sonia. It would have been better if the BJP had made dynastic fascism as an electoral issue as the people of India did not struggle for freedom to hand over the nation to the New Mughals of Delhi. The DMK is fully exploiting the moral turpitude of the Congress in order to promote family members to high political positions. The DMK party is also full of servile trash like the Congress, but old hands like T R Baluu are unwilling to hand over their future to the tender mercies of the Karuna family and are putting up a stiff fight and hence the delay in the DMK participation. The DMK tried to put a spin on this by making it appear that it is the Congress which is being unreasonable; in fact the INC is only bending backwards to please the DMK and is willing even to appoint the Spectrum King A Raja and the SethuSamundar Samrat, T R Baalu to cabinet positions. So when the Congress is asked to only bend by the DMK it chooses to crawl.It appears that the struggle for succession has already begun in the DMK. The different factions are only arm twisting their way into a post-Karunanidhi world and the family wants desperately to retain control over the Party as the Party hold all the wealth

Sri Lanka After Vellupillai Prabhakaran

The military victory announced by the President of Sri Lanka over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam marks the end of 25 years of one of the most brutal and ruthless insurgent movements of the 20th century. Unfortunately many of the western powers such as UK, the EU, even USA before 9/11 identified the LTTE as a genuine liberation movement and extended both political and diplomatic support. The large Tamil diaspora spread out all over the world, in its shortsighted pursuit of identity politics supported the LTTE with money and material. It appears that it was the self serving Tamil diaspora spread out over Canada, England and Sweden that largely supported the organisation with aimed at complete control over the lives and destiny of the Tamil population of Sri Lanka.
The LTTE founded by Vellupillai Prabhakaran in 1972 waged a brutal war of extreme violence against the Sri Lankan state. In its pursuit of ethnic cleansing of Northern Sri Lanka it brutally attacked the Buddhist/Sinhala polulation and terrorised the Muslim population to quit the Northen Jaffna Peninsula. The world condemned the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia ans Serbia but it did not bother to condemn what the Tigers did in the name of Tamil pride. The LTTE ruthlessly and brutally killed several key Tamil intellectuals and politicians so that the slot of Tamil leadership could be occupied by Prabhakaran. Throughout the 1980's and 1990's leaders of the PLOTE and EPRLF were systematically eliminated by LTTE assasins. In fact the LTTE pioneered the dubious tactic of suicide bombing long before it became stock in trade of Islamic militancy. The murder of the former president of Sri Lanka, Premadasa, the killing of Rajiv Gandhi and the attempted assassination of Chandhrika Kumaratunga were all carried out by suicide bombers. In addition politicians of every shade of moderate opinion both Tamil and Sinhala were killed by the LTTE. Laxman Kadirgaman, Gamini Dessanayake, Lalith Athulathmudali were just some of the politicians killed on the orders of Prabhakaran.
The LTTE could not have become such a major terrorist organisation without the overt and covert support of the Indian Government. In 1983, when Mrs Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister of India, the Government of India permitted the setting up of 16 training camps for the LTTE cardres in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M G Ramachandran even referred to the LTTE terrorists as tambis, or younger brothers. No wonder then that the LTTE took full advantage of the situation and openly carried weapons even in the streets of Chennai and there have been several instances of LTTE men clashing with their rivals. The famous shootout with Uma Masesvaran who was later killed by the LTTE is still recalled with horror. In 1985 a bomb placed by the LTTE in Chennai airport exploded killing 65 people. In spite of the repeated acts of violence carried out on Indian soil, the Government of India continued to support the LTTE.
In 1991 the LTTE carried out the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in full public view using a human bomb, Dhanu. The LTTE justified the assassination of the former Prime Minister on the ground that he had sent the Indian Peace Keeping Force to Jaffna in order to implement the Indo-Sri Lankan accord. If this accord which formed the basis of the 17th amendment to the Sri Lakan Constitution had been implemented the Tamil problem would have been solved as the Sinhalese for the first time agreed to the devolution of powers to the Tamil provinces of the North and the East. The LTTE did not want peace and set about killing Indian soldiers and more than 2,500 Indian soldiers lost their lives in that costly misadventure. Alienating India was a costly mistake as the Sri Lankan government quickly converted the disquiet that India felt into indifference to what was happening in Sri Lanka.
The defeat of the LTTE makes the job of the Sri Linkman government all the more difficult as it must now work very hard to win the hearts and minds of the Tamil population. The President has made a noble beginning by saying that all Sri Lankans will be treated with dignity and equality in an inclusive state. The death of Prabhakaran has opened up a window of opportunity in Sri Lanka and the Government must act.
The last few days the saw widespread suffering in the war dfront as the LTTE held the civillian population as a human shield. Rajapakshe went ahead with his task of crushing the LTTE and in so doing the cost in human terms was huge and so a good beginning has to be made to win over the Tamil population and the distinct lack of triumphalism in Rajapakshe's speech in Parliament today is a sign of statemenship

The Dravidian Parties and the Sri lanka Jaffna Tamil Crisis

George Orwell pointed out several decades back that politicians use words not to communicate but to obscure, confuse and obfuscate. The Dravidian Parries, political, cultural and transgender ones, are past masters in this game. Take the term Sri Lankan Tamils, for instance. The use of this particular term would suggest that Sri Lankan Tamils are entirely Jaffna and Eastern Tamils only. The fact is that the Jaffna Tamils are of high-caste vellala origin and hence the Dravidian Political parties support them. The MBC and BC oriented politics of Tamil Nadu means that there so-called Jaffna Tamils get sympathy for reasons OF THEIR CASTE ORIGIN., The sympathy of the Dravidian politicos for the Sri Lanks based Tamils is not based on humanitarian principles but on caste considerations. The other section of the Tamil population in Sri Lanka, the plantation Tamils, are of Schedule caste and poor social and economic backgrpound, and therefore the BC and MBC dominated Dravidian8an parties show no sympathy for the Plantation Tamiols. The greatest surprise is the fact that Sc based parties like the Dalit Panthers led by Shri Timumavalavan also eschew the Plantation Tamils. Why does not the plight of the Plantation Tamils npot create any waves in Tamil Nadu, and the living and political conditions of the plantatation Tamils is much worse than the situation confronting the Jaffna based Tamils.The Indian media always confuses the issue by making it appear that the Jaffna Tamils are the sole Tamil population in Sri Lanka. The plantation Tamils were sent to Sri Lanka through the kankani system by which labor was recruited for the plantation economy in Malaysi8a, Sri Lanka and South Africa. The recruits usually came from ther lowest social sector and in India they would be classifies as the SC community. For this reason the Dravidian political dispensation does not highlight the conditions under which the highland Tamils live.The Plantation Tamils have no cultural or political rights and after 5 generation they are even considered stateless. These Plantation Tmils because of the lower social and economic status in the Tamil caste system are looked down by the Jaffna Tamil and do not intermarry or have social ties with them. The fact remains that the Plantation Tamils have no sympathy for the cause of the Jaffna Tamils. Karunanidhi must be laughing all the way to the election booth. His stunt of fasting lasted less than one hour and he went to thye grave of Mr Annadurai in the Marina with 6 air coolers a clutch of wives and party men. His shameless stunt may get him some votes in the game of competitive chauvinism indulged in by the high cast dominated Dravidian parties. It is obvious that Rajapakshe has a tight game plan and the killing of LTTE chief Prabhakaran is the beginning of the end of the politics of Dravidian EXCLUSIVITY