Indian Intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War | |||||||
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Part of the Sri Lankan civil war | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Sri Lanka | Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam | ||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
(President of India) Rajiv Gandhi (Prime Minister of India) V P Singh, (Defence Minister of India) Maj.Gen. Harkirat Singh Maj.Gen. Ashok K. Mehta | Velupillai Prabhakaran | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
IPKF: 1,165 killed, 3009 Wounded [1] | 632 killed [2] |
The Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War was the deployment of the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka intended to perform a peacekeeping role. The deployment followed the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord between India and Sri Lanka of 1987 which was intended to end the Sri Lankan Civil War between militant Sri Lankan Tamil nationalists, principally the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the Sri Lankan Military.
The original intention was the Indian Peace Keeping Force would not be involved in large scale military operations. However, after a few months, the Indian Peace Keeping Force engaged the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in a series of battles. During the two years in which it was deployed, the IPKF fought numerous battles against the LTTE. The IPKF began withdrawing in 1989, and completed the withdrawal in 1990.
According to Rejaul Karim Laskar, a scholar of Indian foreign policy, Indian intervention in Sri Lankan civil war became inevitable as that civil war threatened India’s "unity, national interest and territorial integrity." [3] According to Laskar, this threat came in two ways: On the one hand external powers could take advantage of the situation to establish their base in Sri Lanka thus posing a threat to India, and on the other, the LTTE’s dream of a sovereign Tamil Eelam comprising all the Tamil inhabited areas (of Sri Lanka) posed a threat to India’s territorial integrity. [3]
The LTTE and other Tamil militant groups developed strong relationships with political parties in South India, such as Pure Tamil Movement (led by Perunchithiranar), Dravidar Kazhagam (led by K. Veeramani), Kamaraj Congress (led by Nedumaran) during the late 1970s. [4] These Tamil parties firmly backed the militants' cause of creating a separate Tamil Eelam within Sri Lanka. Thereafter, LTTE developed relations with M. G. Ramachandran and M. Karunanidhi, who served as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, succeeding one another.
Although Sri Lanka was a key member of Non-Aligned Movement in its initial stages, the Government of Sri Lanka's policies became pro-western as J. R. Jayewardene was elected prime minister with his landslide victory in 1977 parliamentary election. Subsequently, he introduced a new constitution and open economy to Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is the first South-Asian country to adopt liberal open economy. [5]
Moreover, President J. R. Jayawardene did not enjoy the same warm relationship with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi that he had enjoyed with her father, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. [4] Thus, with the outbreak of Black July racial riots, the Indian government decided to support the insurgent groups operating in Northern Sri Lanka. [6]
India became more actively involved in the late 1980s, and on 5 June 1987, the Indian Air Force airdropped food parcels to Jaffna while it was under siege by Sri Lankan forces. At a time when the Sri Lankan government stated they were close to defeating the LTTE, India dropped 25 tons of food and medicine by parachute into areas held by the LTTE in a direct move of support toward the separatists. [7] Further Sri Lanka government accused, that not only food and medicine but weapons were also supplied to the LTTE. [8] Negotiations were held, and the Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord was signed on 29 July 1987, by Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President Jayewardene. Under this accord, the Sri Lankan Government made a number of concessions to Tamil demands, including a devolution of power to the provinces, a merger—subject to later referendum—of the Northern and the Eastern provinces into the single province, and official status for the Tamil language (this was enacted as the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka). India agreed to establish order in the North and East through a force dubbed the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF), and to cease assisting Tamil insurgents. Militant groups including the LTTE, although initially reluctant, agreed to surrender their arms to the IPKF, which initially oversaw a cease-fire and a modest disarmament of the militant groups.
The signing of the Indo-Lanka Accord, so soon after JR Jayawardene's declaration that he would fight the Indians to the last bullet, led to unrest in south. The arrival of the IPKF to take over control of most areas in the North of the country enabled the Sri Lanka government to shift its forces to the south (in Indian aircraft) to quell the protests. This led to an uprising by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna in the south, which was put down bloodily over the next two years.
While most Tamil militant groups laid down their weapons and agreed to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict, the LTTE refused to disarm its fighters. [9] Keen to ensure the success of the accord, the IPKF then tried to demobilize the LTTE by force and ended up in full-scale conflict with them. The three-year-long conflict was also marked by the IPKF being accused of committing various abuses of human rights by many human rights groups as well as some within the Indian media. The IPKF also soon met stiff opposition from the Tamils. [10] [11]
Operation Pawan was the codename assigned to the operations by the Indian Peace Keeping Force to take control of Jaffna from the LTTE in late 1987 to enforce the disarmament of the LTTE as a part of the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord. In brutal fighting that took about three weeks, the IPKF wrested control of the Jaffna Peninsula from LTTE rule. Supported by Indian Army tanks, helicopter gunships and heavy artillery, the LTTE were routed; however, the IPKF lost 214 soldiers in the hostilities. [12]
The Jaffna University Helidrop was the first of the operations launched by the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) aimed at disarming the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) by force and securing the town of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the opening stages of Operation Pawan during the active Indian mediation in the Sri Lankan Civil War. Mounted on the midnight of 12 October 1987, the operation was planned as a fast heliborne assault involving Mi-8s of the No. 109 Helicopter Unit, the 10th Para Commandos and a contingent of the 13th Sikh Light Infantry. The aim of the operation was to capture the LTTE leadership at Jaffna University building which served as the tactical headquarters of the LTTE, which was expected to shorten Operation Pawan, the battle for Jaffna. However, the operation ended disastrously, failing to capture its objectives -owing to intelligence and planning failures. The heli dropped force suffered significant casualties, with nearly the entire Sikh LI detachment of twenty nine troops falling to the heavy fortifications of the university and fighting until death, along with six Para commandos falling in battle.
Nationalist sentiment led many Sinhalese to oppose the continued Indian presence in Sri Lanka. These led to the Sri Lankan government's call for India to quit the island, and they allegedly entered into a secret deal with the LTTE that culminated in a ceasefire. But the LTTE and IPKF continued to have frequent hostilities. In April 1989, the Ranasinghe Premadasa government ordered the Sri Lanka Army to clandestinely hand over arms consignments to the LTTE to fight the IPKF and its proxy Tamil National Army (TNA). [13] [14] Although casualties among the IPKF mounted, and calls for the withdrawal of the IPKF from both sides of the Sri Lankan conflict grew, Rajiv Gandhi refused to remove the IPKF from Sri Lanka. However, following his defeat in Indian parliamentary elections in December 1989, the new Prime Minister V. P. Singh ordered the withdrawal of the IPKF, and their last ship left Sri Lanka on 24 March 1990. The 32-month presence of the IPKF in Sri Lanka resulted in the deaths of 1,165 Indian soldiers and over 5000 Sri Lankans. The cost for the Government of India was estimated at over ₹10.3 billion. [15]
Support for the LTTE in India dropped considerably in 1991, after the assassination of ex-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi by a female suicide bomber named Thenmozhi Rajaratnam. The Indian press has subsequently reported that Prabhakaran decided to eliminate Gandhi as he considered the ex-prime minister to be against the Tamil liberation struggle and feared that he might re-induct the IPKF, which Prabhakaran termed the "satanic force", if he won the 1991 Indian general election. [16] In 1998 a court in India presided over by Special Judge V. Navaneetham found the LTTE and its leader Velupillai Prabhakaran responsible for the assassination. [17] In a 2006 interview, LTTE ideologue Anton Balasingham stated regret over the assassination, although he stopped short of outright acceptance of responsibility for it. [18] [19] India remained an outside observer of the conflict, after the assassination.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was a Tamil militant organization that was based in the northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the northeast of the island in response to violent persecution and discriminatory policies against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan Government.
The Sri Lankan Civil War was a civil war fought in Sri Lanka from 1983 to 2009. Beginning on 23 July 1983, it was an intermittent insurgency against the government by the Velupillai Prabhakaran-led Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. The LTTE fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north-east of the island, due to the continuous discrimination and violent persecution against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lanka government.
Velupillai Prabhakaran was an Eelam Tamil revolutionary. Prabhakaran was a major figure of Tamil nationalism, and the founder and leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE was a militant organization that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka in reaction to the oppression of the country's Tamil population by the Sri Lankan government. Under his direction, the LTTE undertook a military campaign against the Sri Lankan government for more than 25 years.
The Indo-Sri Lanka Peace Accord was an accord signed in Colombo on 29 July 1987, between Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sri Lankan President J. R. Jayewardene. The accord was expected to resolve the Sri Lankan Civil War by enabling the thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of Sri Lanka and the Provincial Councils Act of 1987. Under the terms of the agreement, Colombo agreed to a devolution of power to the provinces, the Sri Lankan troops were to be withdrawn to their barracks in the north and the Tamil rebels were to surrender their arms.
Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) was the Indian military contingent performing a peacekeeping operation in Sri Lanka between 1987 and 1990. It was formed under the mandate of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan Accord that aimed to end the Sri Lankan Civil War between Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the Sri Lankan military.
The Tamil Eelam Liberation Organization (TELO) is an Eelam Tamil organisation which campaigned for the establishment of an independent Tamil Eelam in the northeast of Sri Lanka during 1972-1987 which later accepted the December 19th proposals. The TELO was originally created as a militant group, and functioned as such until 1986, when most of its membership was killed in a conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Its surviving members reorganised themselves as a political party, and it continues to function as such today.
Anton Balasingham Stanislaus was a Sri Lankan Tamil journalist, rebel and chief political strategist and chief negotiator for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist Tamil militant organisation in Sri Lanka.
Gopalaswamy Mahendraraja, also known as Mahattaya was a member of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam who was killed for leaking secrets to India's RAW.
Shanmugalingam Sivashankar was a Sri Lankan Tamil rebel and leading member of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a separatist Tamil militant organisation in Sri Lanka.
Operation Poomalai, also known as Eagle Mission 4, was the codename assigned to a mission undertaken by the Indian Air Force for airdropping supplies over the besieged city of Jaffna in Sri Lanka on 4 June 1987 to support the Tamil Tigers during the Sri Lankan Civil War.
The Jaffna University Helidrop was the first of the operations launched by the Indian Peace Keeping Forces (IPKF) aimed at disarming the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) by force and capturing the city of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the opening stages of Operation Pawan during the Indian intervention in the Sri Lankan Civil War. Mounted on the midnight of 12 October 1987, the operation was planned as a fast heliborne assault involving Mi-8's of the No.109 Helicopter Unit, the 10th Para Commandos and a contingent of the 13th Sikh Light Infantry. The aim of the operation was to capture the LTTE leadership at Jaffna University building which served as the Tactical Headquarters of the LTTE, which was expected to shorten Operation Pawan, the battle for Jaffna. However, the operation ended disastrously, failing to capture its objectives due to intelligence and planning failures. The heli-dropped force suffered significant casualties, with nearly the entire Sikh LI detachment of twenty-nine troops, along with six Para commandos, falling in battle.
Operation Pawan was the code name assigned to the operation by the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) to take control of Jaffna from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as the Tamil Tigers, in late 1987 to enforce the disarmament of the LTTE as a part of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord. In brutal fighting lasting about three weeks, the IPKF took control of the Jaffna Peninsula from the LTTE, something that the Sri Lankan Army had tried but failed to do. Supported by Indian Army tanks, helicopter gunships and heavy artillery, the IPKF routed the LTTE at the cost of 214 soldiers and officers. Many Indian soldiers died
The assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, former Prime Minister of India, occurred as a result of a suicide bombing in Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu, India on 21 May 1991. At least 14 others, in addition to Rajiv Gandhi, were killed. It was carried out by 22-year-old Kalaivani Rajaratnam, a member of the Sri Lankan Tamil banned separatist rebel organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). At the time, India had just ended its involvement, through the Indian Peace Keeping Force, in the Sri Lankan Civil War.
India–Sri Lanka relations, Indian-Sri Lankan relations, or Indo-Sri Lanka relations, are the bilateral relations between India and Sri Lanka. India has emerged as the foremost partner for Sri Lanka in the endeavor to revitalize its economy, reform its bureaucracy, and enhance decision-making processes for future economic collaborations. Both countries have reached an agreement to strengthen their economic and energy ties, signaling a new phase of cooperation and mutual benefits. Only 4% of Sri Lankans have a negative view on India, the lowest of all the countries surveyed by the Ipsos GlobalScan. The two countries are also close on economic terms with India being the island's largest trading partner and an agreement to establish a proto single market also under discussion at an advanced stage. There are deep ethnic and cultural links between the two countries. India and Sri Lanka share a maritime border. India is the only neighbour of Sri Lanka, separated by the Palk Strait; both states occupy a strategic position in South Asia and have sought to build a common security umbrella in the Indian Ocean. Both India and Sri Lanka are republics that are members of the Commonwealth of Nations. India has achieved the distinction of being the initial nation to submit its formal endorsement for the financial assistance and debt restructure proposal of Sri Lanka to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), headquartered in Washington. In a bid to foster and safeguard the Buddhist connections between India and Sri Lanka, Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi unveiled a grant assistance of USD 15 million during the Virtual Bilateral Summit in September 2020. This financial support is intended for various purposes, including the restoration or establishment of Buddhist monasteries, the education of young monks, the enhancement of interaction among Buddhist scholars and clergy, the establishment of museums dedicated to Buddhist heritage, the facilitation of cultural exchanges, collaborative efforts in archaeology, and the mutual showcasing of The Buddha's relics.
Shanmuganathan Ravishankar was a leading member of the TOSIS, the intelligence wing of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist Tamil militant organisation in Sri Lanka.
The Jaffna hospital massacre occurred on October 21 and 22, 1987, during the Sri Lankan Civil War, when troops of the Indian Peace Keeping Force entered the premises of the Jaffna Teaching Hospital in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, an island nation in South Asia, and killed between 60 and 70 patients and staff. The rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the government of Sri Lanka, and independent observers such as the University Teachers for Human Rights and others have called it a massacre of civilians.
On 5 October 1987, 12 Tamil Tigers who were taken into custody by the Sri Lankan Navy committed suicide. They were brought by the Sri Lankan Army to the Palaly Military Base which was under Indian Peace Keeping Force control and detained along with along with 5 others.
A mass murder of Sri Lankan Police officers took place on 11 June 1990. Members of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a militant organization, are alleged to have killed over 600 unarmed Sri Lanka Police officers in Eastern Province, Sri Lanka. Some accounts have estimated the number killed as high as 774. It was the deadliest terrorist incident in the world at the time until the September 11 attacks occurred in 2001.
The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a separatist militant organization formerly based in northern Sri Lanka, had various organizations affiliated to it. These include charitable organizations, political parties, state intelligence organizations and even governments of Sri Lanka and other countries. Although the LTTE was militarily defeated in 2009, the Sri Lankan government alleges that a number of foreign-based organizations are still promoting its ideology.
Annamalai Varadaraja Perumal is a politician from Sri Lanka. He was the 1st and only Chief minister of the North Eastern Province, Sri Lanka. He is the founder of Eelam People's Revolutionary Liberation Front.
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