This has created much concern in India's southern state of Tamil Nadu that erupted into the streets (and even included attempted self-immolations of which only one succeeded) and was reflected in the Lok Sabha, the more important of the two legislative houses.

Although the number of vociferous Tamil members who tried to hold the  Lok Sabha to ransom was small — other Tamil MPs, numbering more than 30, gave expression to their anger but did not disrupt the proceedings — their indignation was high. They simply demanded that the Indian government should force the government of Sri Lanka to order an immediate ceasefire and start negotiating with the LTTE. This is understandably unacceptable to the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse in Colombo. Indeed, Rajapakse is confident that his forces would finally decimate what remains of the once formidable LTTE in a matter of days. In fact, the resounding victory of his party in two provincial elections in Sri Lanka has reinforced his resolve to fight the LTTE to the bitter end.

At the same time, the Sri Lankan president has been sensible enough to accept the legitimacy of India's concern over the safety of the innocent Tamil civilians caught in the crossfire between the government forces and the LTTE within the war zone that has shrunk to a mere 150 square-kilometers from several thousand sq-kms the LTTE once controlled. The number of hapless people bottled up in this area without food, drinking water and other essentials is said to be around 200,000. Only a few thousand of them have managed to escape. The rest are in peril.

This is what has aroused huge sentiment among the people of Tamil Nadu whose number is 60 million as against just over a million Tamils, across 21 miles of sea water, in Sri Lanka. They want the government in New Delhi to somehow get the war stopped at once. This is so in spite of the fact that the era when the people of Tamil Nadu state had sympathy for the LTTE is long past. Most Indians realise that the Tamil Tigers of Lanka are a banned terrorist organization in India and 30 other countries, and that its supreme leader, Vellupillai Prabhakaran is wanted for former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991.

Yet fraternal feelings for fellow Tamils in Sri Lanka are strong and are accentuated by the threat to the lives of nearly a quarter million besieged Tamil civilians in the war zone. As if this wasn't enough, the situation has been aggravated by political exigencies and the approach of the spring election to the Lok Sabha. In the first place, the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DMK), the ruling party in Tamil Nadu, is a key ally of the Congress party in the United Progressive Alliance that rules in Delhi. The position of the 85 year old DMK Chief Minister, M. Karunanidhi — who wants to hand over the crown to his son with the improbable name M. K. Stalin — is rather shaky.  Most observers in Chennai (formerly Madras) believe that he would lose the coming election to his archrival Ms. Jayalalithaa.

To shore up his position therefore he started posturing on the issue of the threat to the Tamils by the ethnic war in Sri Lanka. Indeed, twice he threatened to leave the ruling coalition in New Delhi if it could not 'persuade' Colombo to end the war at once. The Union government's answer to this was twofold: to argue with Karunanidhi in private and publicly send to Colombo Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is currently standing in for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during the latter's convalescence after heart surgery.

In his talks with Mukherjee, Rajapakse was extremely reasonable. He said he would walk an extra mile to rescue the trapped civilians but what could he do if the LTTE was cruelly using the helpless civilians as 'human shields and buffers'? He even offered a two-day unilateral ceasefire to enable the civilians to get to safe areas. But the LTTE arrogantly refused to go along. Since then it has been alleged, not by the Sri Lankan government alone but also by the United Nations and other independent observers that the LTTE is forcing the civilians to stay where they are to serve as 'human shields'. Those trying to escape are shot. In one case a group of refugees was blown up at a military checkpoint, along with 19 soldiers, by a woman suicide bomber.

On the other hand, the International Red Cross has complained that its convoys carrying relief to the trapped civilians are unable to get the necessary passage. One UN staff member has been held hostage by the LTTE, and UNICEF has stated that the LTTE has recruited a large number of children aged 14 as its soldiers.

It is this agonising backdrop that provoked the February 18 uproar in parliament. Ironically, this happened because of a statement that Pranab Mukherjee volunteered to the house. In it he advanced a shift in New Delhi's position on beleaguered Sri Lanka Tamils from what it used to be in the past. Up to now, India was only appealing to Sri Lanka to save them. Now Mukherjee has offered 'Indian help in evacuating the trapped Tamil civilians'. While doing so, he has also blamed the LTTE for 'damaging' the Tamil cause. Half a dozen Tamil MPs screamed against this.

This has brought to the fore the divide within the Indian state of Tamil Nadu itself. Both the mainstream Tamil parties — the ruling DMK and its rival AIADMK — agree with New Delhi that there can be no sympathy for the LTTE and Prabhakaran. But the heart-rending cause of the Tamil minority must receive Indian support and succour. In the short term, India wants an early end to the military action and immediate focus on the long-term objective of a just and negotiated settlement of the ethnic issue.

New Delhi has always rejected the idea of 'Eelam' — complete independence — of Sri Lanka's Tamil regions in the north and northeast. Only some small Indian parties and fringe groups back the LTTE and its objective.

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