The historic accord that few remember today

By M.R. Narayan Swamy Jul 28, 2007, 15:40 GMT

New Delhi, July 28 (IANS) It was hailed as India's biggest diplomatic coup when it was signed amid violent street protests. Twenty years and thousands of deaths later, the India-Sri Lanka accord of 1987, which sought to restore peace to the island, has become history - almost.

It was on July 29, 1987, that then Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi flew to Colombo to sign the agreement with president J.R. Jayewardene in a bid to end a raging Tamil separatist drive.

That was not the only thing the accord sought to achieve.

For the first time in Sri Lanka's troubled history, the country was formally recognised as a multi-religious, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society. It also brought about the only major act of constitutional reforms, devolving powers to minorities in the form of provincial councils with judicial, civil and police services.

It made Tamil an official language of the country, declared the island's northeast 'areas of historical habitation of the Tamil speaking people' and had provisions to end state-sponsored colonisation of Tamil areas.

Starting from the evening of July 29, thousands of Indian troops began to be deployed in the war-torn northeast, heralding a sudden peace the country had not known for years.

But after putting down a small part of its weaponry, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) refused to disarm itself, citing security reasons, and went on a killing spree of its rivals and others.

Sections of the Jayewardene government unhappy with the pact and also India's role were intent on tripping the Tigers. In the complex tragedy that followed, the Indian troops took on the LTTE in Jaffna from Oct 10, 1987.

The fighting dragged on for well over two years. By the time the soldiers returned home, both Gandhi and Jayewardene were out of office. An India-backed provincial government in the northeast had collapsed. And the Tigers ended up controlling Jaffna and large parts of the northeast.

But many blood-soaked years later, the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government are still fighting, India remains an interested but distant party to the goings on, and there is no light at the end of what looks a dark and unending tunnel.

Amid growing international concerns over Sri Lanka, does the accord still have some relevance?

'Though the agreement is a dead letter, though neither government wants to give any life to it, there are some fundamental principles advocated in it that still remain a source of inspiration,' said S. Sahadevan, a South Asia expert at Jawaharlal Nehru University here.

'It can be the starting point for a discourse on devolution of powers. However, legally and politically, the importance of the accord is somewhat lost now,' he said.

P. Rajanayagam, editor of Tamil Times of Britain, told IANS: 'The accord provided for a reasonable and comprehensive institutional architecture for the settlement of the ethnic conflict. The accord substantially addressed almost all the grievances of the Tamil people that had remained unresolved for decades.

'It presented a historic opportunity to once and for all resolve the ethnic conflict but was squandered away... The rejection of the accord, not allowing it to be implemented and taking up arms against India are acts of criminal folly and an utter betrayal of the Tamil people.'

V. Suryanarayana, another Sri Lanka expert who is based in Chennai, said the accord collapsed because it was never seriously implemented. 'The tragedy today is that the Sri Lankan government is not willing to give even what was in the accord.'

The fighting between the LTTE and Indians not only led to the death of nearly 1,200 Indian soldiers and hundreds of Tamils, combatants and non-combatants, but also disrupted the historically warm ties between India and the Tamil community.

So why is the accord's 20th anniversary passing so quietly?

Explained Sahadevan: 'Both the governments have buried the agreement; not just Sri Lanka, India also does not remember it. When you don't remember, how do you expect the other party which never liked it to remember?'

© 2007 Indo-Asian News Service