Jaya cold-shoulders Indian foreign policy

After bowling out Sri Lankan IPL players, Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa undermined Indian foreign policy by getting the Tamil Nadu assembly to call on the United Nations to help create Tamil Eelam.

After bowling out Sri Lankan IPL players, Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa undermined Indian foreign policy by getting the Tamil Nadu assembly to call on the United Nations to help create Tamil Eelam.

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The assembly passed on Wednesday by voice vote an unanimous resolution asking the Centre to get the UN to start the process of carving out a separate Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka.

The resolution iterated an earlier demand to impose economic sanctions against Sri Lanka. It urged the Centre to stop describing Sri Lanka as a “friendly nation”, asked New Delhi to seek stringent measures against Lanka and push for independent investigations into genocide and war crimes.

“An economic sanction should be imposed on the country till the atrocities against Tamils are stopped; and... a referendum should be held among the Tamils in Lanka and those settled abroad,” the resolution said.

The resolution’s attempts to bias Delhi’s policy to Colombo adds to a sense that regional party interference is undermining India’s global credibility. Trinamool Congress, for example, last year blocked a diplomatic breakthrough with Bangladesh.

The resolution’s call for a UN-backed Tamil Eelam overturns a long-standing Indian principle never to call for international support for separatism because of the precedent it sets for Kashmir and the Northeast.

This is the second resolution against Lanka that Jayalalithaa piloted in the assembly since coming to power in May 2011.