An Open Letter To The College Students And The Non-student Youth Of India
By S.P Udayakumar
19 March, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Dear sisters and brothers:
Greetings! We are sure you are watching the massive and spontaneous student strikes that have been rocking the state of Tamil Nadu for the past one week. The students are demanding, among others, a biting resolution on Sri Lanka’s human rights record in the upcoming 22nd Session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), an independent international inquiry into the Lankan genocide and a plebiscite to set up an independent homeland for the Tamils in Lanka.
When Mahinda Rajapakse’s government and armed forces committed a genocide in 2008-2009 and butchered some 1,46,697 Tamils, we, the people of Tamil Nadu, were completely helpless. The Karunanidhi government that was ruling in Tamil Nadu that time did precious little to stop that genocide in order to safeguard his political and familial interests. The Manmohan Singh government in Delhi was actually helping the genocidal regime of Rajapakse in all possible ways. There was hardly any protest against the genocide in the other states of India.
Even after the recent revelations of disturbing genocidal crimes in Lanka, the Indian government has been engaging in military exercises with the Lankan Special Forces at Nahan, Himachal Pradesh. The Indian Navy still engages in war games with the Lankan Navy away from the waters of southern India. The central government has been very insensitive to the political sensitivities of the Tamil people here in Tamil Nadu. As a result of all this, the students and the non-student youth of Tamil Nadu are up in arms against the Indian establishment, and the political parties and politicians in Tamil Nadu and India.
This massive Tamil student strike reminds us of the Bihar Movement which was initiated by students in Bihar in 1974 under the able leadership of Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) against corruption and misrule in the Bihar government, and later turned against the Indira Gandhi government in Delhi.
In order for the Tamil people not to feel isolated and alienated and to feel part of India, people from the rest of India should stand up for us and speak up against the genocide of the Rajapakse family, government and military in Lanka. If we do not support each other in the moments of crisis, what Pastor Martin Niemoller said may really become a reality:
First they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Tamils,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Tamil.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.
All the 12 crore Tamils around the world look forward to your support and solidarity against the genocidal regime of Mahinda Rajapakse and to your call for an international inquiry into the 2008-2009 genocide against the Tamil people in Lanka.
With best regards and all peaceful wishes,
Cordially yours,
The College Students and the Non-student Youth of Tamil Nadu.
S P Udayakumar, Coordinator, People's Movement Against Nuclear Energy, spearheading the movement in Koodankulam
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