Lankan Tamils expect more from Modi

Rameswaram: Even as World leaders are congratulating BJP leader Sri Narendra Modi for having won a second term in the just concluded Lok Sabha elections to become Prime Minister again, some Sri Lankan Tamils spoken to from here have lot more expectations this time in India playing a constructive role to help resolve the ethnic issue in Sri Lanka.

Speaking from Yaazhpaanam-Kilinochi, Eliyakutti Sarangan said the Island-Tamils have much more expectations this time that the Indian government led by Mr. Modi will put pressure on the Island-government to arrive at an enduring political solution to the ethnic issue in Sri Lanka.

Sarangan said Mr. Modi's first term as Prime Minister, after he was elected in May 2014, raised hopes of India playing a constructive role in getting the Island-government to find a permanent solution to the Tamils problems there.

This expectation gained strength in the backdrop of the Tamils ‘anger’ with earlier Congress-led UPA regime for not doing enough to "stop the killings of thousands of innocent Tamil civilians" in the last days of the civil war in 2009, he said.

So the Tamils had then opposed the Congress government in India then, he pointed out.

However, after Mr. Narendra Modi assumed office in 2014, "nothing happened in the last five years", he rued. Even the Tamil National Alliance (TNA) in northern Sri Lanka had campaigned on this plank in the provincial elections in Jaffna that year that they would do something with the help of the Indian government.

"But in the last five years, there was no forward movement, even by an inch, in trying to resolve the ethnic issue," he said, adding, at least in the coming five years under Mr. Modi's second term, the Sri Lankan Tamils expect India to bring to bear on Sri Lanka the need to permanently resolve the ethnic issue.