Chapter 1: The background

Yesterday, a friend of mine said that LTTE was just a terrorist organization. War in Sri Lanka was their internal matter, just like J&K and Punjab are India's internal matter. As she said terrorism is terrorism. But that is what we think at macro level. To find the differences, we need to take a trip down the history and get into the details.

Sri Lanka can not be compared with J&K or Punjab. Issue in J&K and Punjab were that they were part of Indian union and wanted so called independence just because the leaders were under Pakistan's influence. It would be prudent to remind that they were never subjected to atrocities from Indian union.

Sri Lanka on the other hand was totally different. Tell me what would your thoughts be when all innocent females of your town are raped not because they were terrorist but just because they spoke Tamil ? Pregnant women are cut up their foetus removed just because they spoke Tamil. Your father, uncles and brothers - all law abiding and industrious citizens - are rounded up one night and dont return for weeks. When you go looking for them, you find some mutilated bodies. You finally manage to identify them by their birth mark ?

All this and more happened just because they spoke Tamil. No provocations at all. And this went on for a long time. Would you believe Sri Lankans didnt even allow India to send relief material to these tortured souls. Ships carrying relief material from India were threatened by Sri Lankan Navy and sent back. It was then that IAF carried out Operation Poomalai.

It was after the refugee influx and rising pressure that GOI finally acted. Camps were set up in India to train units that could fight back. And mind you, their fight was for equality and not a separate state initially. But brutality of Sri Lanka finally forced these organizations to put up a demand for total independence.

Next chapter: Emergence of LTTE