Question

Question #a8fa0

Answer 1

The reasons behind Rajiv Gandhi's dispatch of Indian Peacekeepers to Sri Lanka in 1987-1990 remains a hotly contested issue, but India's prime interest was to maintain its own stability.

Explanation:

The rise in Tamil nationalism on Sri Lanka was partly a result of discrimination by the Buddhist Sinhalese majority, but the early '70s was also a time for insurgencies of various kinds all over the world and a variety of Tamil insurgent groups appeared. At first, the Tamils of the Indian state of Tamil favored the cause of their cousins in Sri Lanka and India tolerated some support for the various guerrillas.

However, the main preoccupation of the Indian Congress Party and the government in New Delhi has always been to restrict regional seperatist politics; India cannot afford to dissolve into a squabbling balkanized patchwork of independent states. Through the 1980s, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) slowly emerged as the most effective Tamil group, largely by attempting to eliminate all rivals as the champions of the cause.

Moreover, Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE supremo, had been talking about a larger pan-Tamil state and was financing his war through transnational criminal enterprises, often running through Tamil Nadu. India became concerned, tried to negotiate an end to the conflict, and increasingly made its will known. On July 29th, 1987, Sri Lanka signed -- with some reluctance -- the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord. The deployment of an Indian Peacekeeping Force was central to the attempt to stablize the region.

Predictably, the LTTE paid no attention to the Accord, resisted all demands that it disarm and started to attack the IPKF. The Indian intervention also resulted in a personal animus by Prabhakaran for Rajiv Ghandi, resulting in his murder by an LTTE female suicide bomber in July 1991.

One of the best reviews of the overall episode: Gunaratna, Rohan (1993). Indian intervention in Sri Lanka: The role of India's intelligence agencies; 1993, South Asian Network on Conflict Research. ISBN 955-95199-0-5.