Soon after the July 1983 anti-Tamil riots in Sri Lanka and the influx of Tamil refugees into Tamil Nadu, the training of Tamil militants began in Tamil Nadu with the knowledge and patronage of the Tamil Nadu government, says Air Marshal (Rtd) Bharat Kumar in his book Operation Pawan: Role of Airpower with IPKF.

India’s national intelligence agencies started their training program only in 1984, when New Delhi felt that Tamil Nadu’s initiative in the matter might not be in the overall Indian interest, the NIE reported.

“The training of Tamil rebels had commenced in Tamil Nadu with full knowledge and in some cases, under the patronage of the state government.

New Delhi’s suggestion to rein in these Tamil groups were not acceptable to Tamil Nadu leaders. Since the Central government could not afford Tamil Nadu ‘invading’ Sri Lanka, various Indian intelligence agencies also got into the act from 1984 onward. It was better that the Indian state got involved in Sri Lanka rather than the Tamil Nadu government because of obvious repercussions,” Bharat Kumar says.

Unlike Tamil Nadu leaders M.G.Ramachandran and M.Karunanidhi, Indian Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi were not for an independent Tamil state in Sri Lanka. They saw the arming of the Tamil militants as an instrument to pressurize the Sri Lankan government to find a permanent solution to the Sri Lankan Tamil problem.

-Agencies