September 4, 2012 | The Hindu
Nothing could be more myopic than Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s outburst
against the visit of a Sri Lankan school football team to Tamil Nadu and her
decision to suspend an official for allowing a match to be played in the
government-owned Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Chennai. Her action has harmed the
image of the State and tarnished the reputation of India as an open and
tolerant society. The reason for the official’s suspension is that he allowed a
team from Royal College, Colombo, to play a friendly against a local Customs
team at the stadium on August 31. As part of the fallout, the students and
coach of a team from another school, Hilburn International College, Ratnapura,
which was planning to play against a Chennai school, were sent packing on the
Chief Minister’s insistence. It is tempting to see a connection between this
hostile act towards innocent schoolchildren and the strident political demands
Ms Jayalalithaa and other party leaders have been making in recent weeks that
India put an end to its practice of training military personnel from Sri
Lanka’s defence services. However, it is one thing to demand the government
desist from training soldiers from the island nation and quite another to ask
for — and then peremptorily impose — a virtual embargo on sporting and cultural
ties with ordinary Sri Lankans.
For quite some time now, Tamil Nadu has been asking New Delhi to act on
its Legislative Assembly resolution seeking early rehabilitation of
war-displaced Tamils in Sri Lanka and restoration of their rights on a par with
the Sinhalese majority. Far from taking note, the Government of India has
actively sought to strengthen ties with Colombo, especially after it voted in
the United Nations Human Rights Council in favour of a resolution that was
critical of Sri Lanka. Popular sentiment in Tamil Nadu is against sacrificing
the pursuit of equality, justice and dignity for the Tamils of Sri Lanka to the
goal of preserving India’s political proximity to Colombo. Nor can it be denied
that the Union government has been insensitive towards public opinion in the
State. When the call for an end to military training arose, it merely shifted
the Sri Lankan trainees from a facility in Tamil Nadu to another outside and
got Minister of State for Defence M.M. Pallam Raju to say the military training
could not be stopped since Sri Lanka is a friendly country. However, the
Centre’s callous attitude cannot serve as an excuse for irresponsible
grandstanding by Tamil Nadu politicians. We are already on a slippery slope.
Today a school soccer match has been cancelled; tomorrow the demand will be for
a ban on cricketers, tourists and pilgrims from Sri Lanka.
