Sri Lanka needs India’s help to bridge growing ethnic rift

By Atul Aneja Colombo, Jan 12 : The destruction of a war memorial in Jaffna University, followed by a decision to restore it, has yet again exposed the uneasy relationship between ethnic communities, and the need for Sri Lanka to heal from within.
On January 3, Jaffna University authorities decided to raze a war memorial commemorating the Tamil bloodbath during the last phase of the three-decade-long civil war that ended in 2009. The memorial was a reminder of the killings of Tamils at Mullivaikkal, a small village in the northeast coast of Sri Lanka.
In the late hours on January 9, several students as well as the mayor of Jaffna, Vishwalingam Maniwannan, protested outside the gates of the University, around 300 km north of Colombo.
The new cycle of inter-ethnic tensions once again reinforces that Sri Lanka and India have a shared interest in preventing an uneasy situation from getting out of hand. Sri Lanka needs India’s support to bridge its ethnic divide between Tamils and the majority Sinhala community. New Delhi’s backing would be essential for preventing the re-emergence of Tamil Nadu as a rear base for ethnic Tamils, if the internal situation inside Sri Lanka turns really ugly.
Already, the move to demolish the memorial has triggered a firestorm in Tamil Nadu, where most residents share ethnic ties with Sri Lankan Tamils. Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu E.K. Palaniswami took to Twitter to strongly condemn the demolition and said: “The news that a monument erected at the Jaffna University campus in memory of university students and the general public who were mercilessly killed in the final phase of the war in Mullivaikkal, Sri Lanka, has been demolished overnight is shocking,” ANI news agency reported.
“I strongly condemn this act of the Government of Sri Lanka which has caused great pain to the Tamils of the world and to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Jaffna who accompanied it,” Palaniswami said in another tweet.