Tamil Nadu: From sympathy to support

When I sat to write this column last morning, Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader and former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayaram Jayalalitha was on her way to the MGR statue in Chennai to commence the token fast, to show her support to the Sri Lankan Tamils. Thousands of her party cadres had started their fast by that time. Jayalalitha’s ally Vaikoo, leader of the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, and his party supporters too joined the fast.
The fast will add to the emotional upsurge already evident throughout Tamil Nadu since the October 2 fast by the Tamil Nadu branch of the Communist Party of India. “We are satisfied that our token fast on Gandhi Jayanthi day had brought out a feeling of support for the suffering Sri Lankan Tamils,” they said in a statement to the media on Monday.
The emotional upsurge will peak in the next four days, with several sections of the people coming out in the open to express support for the Sri Lankan Tamils. Students will enter the protest today. The powerful All India Students’ Federation has called for the boycott of classes today. Traders will shut their shops throughout Tamil Nadu on Friday to express their support. And on Sunday, the Tamil film industry will hold a massive demonstration at Rameswaram.
Film director Bharathi Raja, the main force behind the demonstration, said, “We hope to attract a massive crowd to Rameswaran. Most of the popular actors and actresses would be there. We will shout our slogans loud so that it could be heard across the Palk Strait.”
The film personalities will travel the distance of 600km from Chennai to Rameswaran by a special train and a convoy of buses, thus stimulating emotional support for Sri Lankan Tamils. They will have a demonstration and a public meeting on Sunday and return to Chennai on Monday.
The combined effort of the ‘show of support’by the students, traders and the film industry will transform the hitherto demonstrations by individual political parties into a mass support base for the Sri Lankan Tamils. Several pro-LTTE groups had demonstrated in the past ten days and their leaders had courted arrest.
The involvement of the students, traders and film artistes would increase LTTE’s already strong support base. A comparison of the results of a survey published by The New Indian Express on Sunday with that of Ananda Vikatan survey of August 8, shows a substantial increase of support for the LTTE.
The Ananda Vikatan survey, being the first, probed the mood of the people towards the LTTE. Its aim was to find whether the war in the Wanni and the persistent propaganda by the pro-LTTE pressure groups had affected the thinking of the people of Tamil Nadu. To everyone’s surprise it found that the mood of the Tamil Nadu Tamils had altered in favour of the LTTE.
That survey found that 47.65 of the respondents wanted the ban on the LTTE lifted. It also found that that 54.25 percent of the people supported the LTTE and 55.4 percent supported the LTTE’s goal of establishment of Tamil Eelam.
The New Indian Express; showed that the people who wanted the ban against the LTTE to be lifted, had slightly increased to 51 percent. But the opposition to the LTTE had slackened. Ananda Vikatan survey showed that 27.43 percent firmly opposed the lifting of the ban. Last Sunday’s survey revealed that only eight percent wanted the ban to be continued. The rest- 24.91 percent- adopted the position of wait and see.
Ananda Vikatan survey also found that about 43 percent of the people wanted LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran arrested and tried for the Rajiv Gandhi assassination; while 40.07 wanted him pardoned. The balance 16.90 percent maintained that Prabhakaran did not commit that crime. That mood has undergone significant change.
The New Indian Express survey asked: If Sri Lanka overran the LTTE and V. Prabhakaran is cornered, then… we would ask that he be sent here to stand trial for killing Rajiv Gandhi - 06 percent; he should be given asylum in Tamil Nadu - 23 percent; he should be tried by the Sri Lanka Government for various cases of assassinations - 12 percent; we should appeal to the UN to intervene - 25 percent; hope he is killed in battle to save everyone trouble - 03 percent; we should send troops to prevent this happening - 31 percent.
The New Indian Express survey went deeper into Tamil Nadu people’s support for the LTTE. It tried to find out the type of support they were prepared to give the Sri Lankan Tamil people. Eight percent said they would gladly take part in a bandh (hartal) to express solidarity with the Sri Lankan Tamils; 22 percent said they would support Tamil Nadu giving shelter to Sri Lankan refugees; 16 percent said they would do nothing because they don’t support the cause; 14 percent said they were not interested, but, 40 percent said they would gladly donate money and material to Tamil Eelam.
The survey also tried to get the impression the people had about the LTTE with the question: What is the LTTE? Twelve percent said that it is a terrorist organisation; 30 said they are freedom fighters; 22 percent said they work with others to promote the Tamil cause and 36 percent said they are the sole and genuine voice of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka.
The survey has clearly shown that support for the LTTE is growing in Tamil Nadu and that the Tamil people are aware of the leverage Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and its leader and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi has in the central government. The survey shows that they want to make use of that weapon to make the central government intervene in the Sri Lankan problem.
The New Indian Express asked the people: What should our politicians do to help solve the Sri Lankan problem? Twenty six percent of the respondents said they should allow Sri Lanka to sort out its problem. But 34 percent said DMK should cut off ties with the UPA for arming and training the Sri Lankan army.
Forcing the Manmohan Singh Government to act, by pressurising Karunanidhi, is the strategy adopted by the pro-LTTE lobby, and Karunanidhi is going to do just that. Yesterday evening’s All Party Conference will authorise him to do that.(News-Bottomline)