Over the past few days the spotlight has been extremely intense on Tamils, especially the Captive Tamils & LTTE (Tamil Tigers) of Sri Lanka. There is no doubt in any body's mind that once-upon-a-time the Tamils of Sri Lanka were oppressed & suffered much told misery  under the majority Sinhalese. Naturally, this became the fountainhead of growth of aggressive deliverance methods both moderate & extreme. The extremist group called the LTTE swallowed all moderate groups and went 'guns,bombs & planes' to take more than law into its own hands. Somewhere down the line the LTTE became fully qualified and ‘graduated with honors’  as a terrorist outfit- and rightfully so because of its actions. The Oppressed became the Oppressor.  Once the Tiger tastes human flesh and finds it easy prey, it evolves into what we call a Man-eater. The only way a Man-eater can be contained it to shoot it-finish it off, or perhaps,  make a sanctuary preventing willful contact with Man - as Jim Corbett has physically demonstrated and taught us all so well!

Man comes into this world as a baby completely naked and unarmed (with the exception of Karna of the Mahabharata!) incapable of doing anything immediately (until he gradually grows and acquires thinking abilities). Man cannot survive except through his mind. His brain his is only weapon. Animals obtain food by force. Man has no claws, no fangs, no horns no great strength of muscle. He must plant his food or hunt for it for which he needs a process of thought. From the simplest basic necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from a single attribute of man –the functioning of his reasoning mind (Ayn Rand, Fountain Head).

With this in the background, tell me,  is not absolutely clear that the LTTE deserves no sympathy whatsoever nor ‘dark-goggled good friends’ across cultural waters? The point being made about Tamil oppression (in the form of bloody violence over 25 years), will not good friends advice one to think-to use our only non-exhaustible resource of the mind to hammer a solution? To first protect the harmless people it is fighting for? Who are these good friends defending? The Man-eaters, or the Tamils?  But can one talk sense to a Man-eater or make it think and see reason? Has a single strike been organized to force the Man-eating LTTE to cease-fire, lay-down arms and use its mind for Tamil right? Why the rightful Hunter rather than the wrong-doing Hunted, in this case?

It is ridiculous for the Indian Home Minister to state that the Sri Lankan Army is worse than the LTTE, just to garner a few Tamils votes in the elections.  Is it not duplicity that India is parading (trying without really trying) to restraint Sri Lanka from finishing-off Man-eaters while on the other side Pakistan is being faulted every second over the past 40 years for failing to contain its own Man-eaters?

Is it  Democracy where a Politician’s  only intent is to get your vote in his /her favor to use the accruing power,  to monopolize and further his/her own selfish , parochial interests & narrow personal  objectives (in your name or  in the name of your culture)vicariously! There is something terribly wrong over here! Think it over!