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NEW DELHI: Even as it publicly refused to give Sri Lanka any offensive weapons for the war against LTTE, India had a “hidden hand” in the successof the island nation’s campaign over the terrorist outfit, says a new book.
Although in the initial days he was advised to seek a negotiated settlement with the Tamil Tigers, New Delhi saw merit in Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapakse’s argument that the LTTE was only biding its time to regroup and rearm itself and that war was inevitable sooner than later, says ‘Sri Lanka, From War to Peace’, by journalist Nitin Gokhale.
Defence and Strategic Affairs Editor with NDTV, Gokhale covered the 33-month Eelam War in Sri Lanka.
The Mi-17s that India ‘quietly gifted’ to Lanka were in addition to a Sukanya class offshore patrol vessel also gifted by the Indian Coast Guard to the Sri Lankan Navy in 2002. The choppers played a major role in several daring missions launched by the Sri Lankan Air Force to rescue the army’s deep penetration units and injured soldiers from deep inside LTTE-held territory, the book says.
“Hampered by domestic compulsion, New Delhi could not go beyond such meagre and clandestine transfer of military hardware. Publicly all India was willing to acknowledge was the supply of low-flying detection “Indra” radars to the Sri Lankan Air Force since this equipment was considered a defensive apparatus,” the author says.
Gokhale quotes senior Sri Lankan army officers saying that thanks to the Mi-17s, the soldiers operating behind enemy lines functioned with a greater degree of confidence since they knew these choppers were always at hand to come to their rescue whenever necessary. This surely was the key factor in our Special Forces delivering spectacular results.
Not wanting to annoy its Tamil Nadu allies like the DMK unnecessarily, New Delhi had a ‘politically most important message’ conveyed to Colombo to try and conclude the war against the LTTE (called Eelam War IV) before the summer of 2009 when India was expected to hold the general elections, Gokhale says.
“The Rajapakse regime was nothing if not shrewd”. Aware of dynamics that determined India’s Lankan policies, it was also conscious of India’s anxiety in losing strategic space in Sri Lanka. The Rajapakse brothers were pragmatic enough to realize that Lanka needed India’s support in war against the LTTE, total support from China and Pakistan notwithstanding”.
Colombo could ignore India but only upto a point, the author says.
So Mahinda Rajapakse hit upon an idea of an informal exchange mechanism between New Delhi and Colombo. He nominated both his brothers – Basil (MP and Presidential advisor) and Gotabaya, the Defence Secretary along with his own secretary Lalith Weeratunga.
India too reciprocated immediately. The Indian team comprised National Security Advisor M K Narayanan, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon and Defence Secretary Vijay Singh.
Colombo may have been ambivalent about meeting Indian requests to end the operations before the general elections but the Sri Lankan leadership once again gratefully acknowledged the Indian Navy’s contribution in locating and destroying at least 10 ‘floating warehouses’ owned by the LTTE that were used by the Tigers to store arms, ammunition and even armoured personnel carriers.
Well-coordinated operations by the two navies between 2006 and 2009 actually broke the backbone of the Sea Tigers, Gokhale says.
Also, under an agreement between the two countries, the Indian Navy and the Coast Guard frequently sent out ships to patrol the Palk Strait and the Gulf of Mannar. Presence of warships and Indian patrol vessels acted as firm deterrence against the Sea Tigers, the book says.
The book also notes the transformation of the Sri Lankan Air Force and Navy into lethal forces that played vital roles in victory over the LTTE. “The Sri Lankan Air Force had indeed come a long way from its inglorious days in the 1990s when it lost three aircraft to the LTTE’s ground fire in the assault on Jaffna”.
“What is not so well known is that the Sri Lankan Air Force jets almost killed Prabhakaran in one of the air raids on his hideout in Puththukudirippu. But as luck would have it, Prabhakaran had left the base minutes before the bombs rained on the target,” the book says.
Gokhale also says that if the Indians quietly helped the Sri Lankan Navy transform itself, the Lankan Air Force got a big boost from the Chinese and the Pakistanis. Pakistani personnel helped the Lankans in training and maintenance while the Chinese supplied them with vital equipment at a critical time. The Chinese gifted four F7 GS fighter planes which are the most sophisticated jets in Sri Lanka’s arsenal today with in-built air interception radar and carry four heat seeking missiles, he says.
After a successful campaign against the LTTE, President Rajapakse’s biggest challenge would be to win the peace by sparking reconciliation between its majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil ethnic populations, healing a rift that looks unbridgeable, Gokhale says. Rajapakse will have to restore to their homes and livelihoods some 300,000 Tamils in the North who fled the fighting only to be housed in camps.
“President Rajapakse and his team must avoid triumphalism to spoil the enormous goodwill that they have earned by winning the war. They must ensure that the death of one Prabhakaran does not lead to birth of another. Therein lies Mahinda Rajapakse’s test,” the book says.

NEW DELHI: Reeling under internal bickerings and controversy surrounding Jaswant Singh’s expulsion, the BJP on Sunday suffered furtherembarrassment when Sudheendra Kulkarni, who was a close aide of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and L K Advani, decided to quit the party over ‘ideological differences’.
He, however, maintained that his decision had nothing to do with the expulsion of Jaswant Singh over his book “Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence”.
“I decided to end my association with the BJP several weeks back. My decision has nothing to do with the unfortunate incident of Jaswant Singh-ji,” Kulkarni told Times Now.
He said he would continue to be a well-wisher of the party and added: “I have the highest regard for Advani-ji and Atal Bihari Vajpayee-ji, whom I have worked with for 13 years.”
Kulkarni, who began his political activism as a Communist, worked in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) during Vajpayee’s time and served as his speech writer, media adviser and political aide.
“From now on I will be totally independent. I will work with like-minded members of other parties…,” Kulkarni told the news channel.
BJP vice-president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that his dissociation from the BJP or its leaders is not going to have any effect on the party. “Kulkarni is not a member of BJP or an office-bearer of the party,” he said.
After BJP’s debacle in the Lok Sabha polls, Kulkarni had been critical of the party’s election campaign strategy and management as also Varun Gandhi’s hate speech. He had incurred the wrath of the RSS when he wrote about Sangh Parivar “interference” in BJP’s functioning.

INDIA, NEW DELHI: Criticizing a ban imposed on his book by Gujarat government, expelled BJP leader Jaswant Singh on Thursday said it amounted to “banning thinking” and likened the step to the one taken against noted author Salman Rushdie for his controversial work ‘Satanic Verses’.
“I am greatly saddened by it,” Singh told reporters on the Gujarat government’s decision to ban his book “Jinnah–India, Partition, Independence”.
“The day we start banning books, we are banning thinking,” said Singh, who was expelled by BJP for the book in which he has praised the Pakistan founder M A Jinnah.
He said the step taken by Gujarat government was “another example of (action taken against) Salman Rushdie and Satanic Verses” which was banned for its controversial contents on Islam.
Asked to comment on BJP’s contention that he had been expelled for his uncharitable comments in the book against Sardar Patel and that his views on Jinnah were different from those of LK Advani, he said, “Let me understand why (I was expelled). Nobody has told me”.
On his continuance as MP from Darjeeling, he said he got a telephonic call from his constituency that the people there wanted him to continue as their representative in Lok Sabha.
Gujarat government last night banned Jaswant’s book on Jinnah alleging it was an attempt to defame the image of the country’s first Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel by “questioning his patriotic spirit”.
“Jaswant Singh’s book questions role of Sardar Patel during the partition of India as well as his patriotic spirit. This is an attempt to tarnish the image of Patel who is considered the architect of modern united India,” a statement issued by the state government said.
“It is a bid to defame Patel by distorting historical facts,” it charged. “So, the state government has decided to ban the book with immediate effect for wider public interest,” it said.
“As per the ban, there cannot be sale, distribution or publication of the book in the state,” it said.

NEW DELHI: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the ideological fountainhead of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -on Monday said it did notagree with the views of senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh on his eulogy of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan.
Eulogising the founder of Pakistan in his book “Jinnah – India, Participation, Independence”, Jaswant Singh has said Jinnah was “demonised” by India while it was actually India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s belief in a centralised polity that led to partition.
“I have not read the book, but whatever reports have come in the media regarding the contents of the book … we do not agree with it,” RSS spokesperson Ram Madhav said.
Asked if he would want the BJP leadership to take action against Jaswant Singh, Ram Madhav said: “It would be premature to make any comment on this issue as I have not read the book and Jaswant Singh has also categorically said in an interview that these are his personal views.”
Speaking to a TV channel, Jaswant Singh, a former external affairs minister, said: “Nehru believed in a highly centralised polity. That’s what he wanted India to be. Jinnah wanted a federal polity. That even Gandhi accepted. Nehru didn’t. Consistently, he stood in the way of a federal India until 1947 when it became a partitioned India.”
Jaswant Singh strongly contested the popular Indian view that Jinnah was the villain of the 1947 partition or the man principally responsible for it. Asked if he thought this view was wrong, Jaswant Singh said: “It is. It is not borne out of the facts… we need to correct it.”
“I think we have misunderstood him because we needed to create a demon… We needed a demon because in the 20th century the most telling event in the subcontinent was the partition of the country,” he said.

NEW DELHI: Delhi court on Monday held all four accused guilty in the sensational Buddha Jayanti park gangrape case.
Two accused were held guilty of rape, while the remaining ones were held guilty of robbery.
Harpreet Singh, Satyender Singh, Kuldeep Singh and Manish Kumar, belonging to cavalier guards of the elite PBG, were booked under various provisions of the IPC, dealing with gang rape, abduction and attempt to commit robbery.
The victim, 17, a student of a Delhi University college, had gone with her boyfriend Ashish to the park near Rashtrapati Bhavan on October 6, 2003, and was allegedly raped by Harpreet and Satyender while the other two accused Kuldeep and Manish kept guard, the prosecution said.
The prosecution had examined 25 witnesses, including the victim and her friend Ashish.

NEW DELHI: Rocketing domestic use and farm irrigation have seriously damaged India’s groundwater supply, and drinking water may become scarce, according to a study released on Wednesday.
The study of three states in northwest India, including the capital New Delhi, found that water was being extracted at an unsustainable rate as the region undergoes rapid economic development.
Water shortages are a growing concern in the country, with this year’s monsoon so far delivering only a fraction of the rainfall needed by farmers to save their crops.
Satellite and land data between 2002 and 2008 showed that the groundwater level was being depleted by about four centimetres a year, said the report by three US scientists and published in Nature magazine.
The extraction in the states of Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana was the equivalent to 109 cubic kilometres (26 cubic miles) of groundwater — far more than government estimates.
“The consequences for the 114 million residents of the region may include a reduction of agriculture output and shortages of potable (drinking) water, leading to extensive economic stresses,” the study’s authors said.
They said population growth, irrigation and development had put pressure on water supplies across India, where groundwater management is poor, and added that shortages could trigger social conflict.
In the short-term, the government this week warned that 80 percent of the country was threatened by drought due to the weak monsoon.
India’s hundreds of million farmers rely on the annual rains to soak the rock-hard earth and turn it into fertile soil.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh moved to quash fears of hunger, saying that grain stores were adequate after two years of good harvests.
The study was conducted by Matthew Rodell of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and Isabella Velicogna and James Famiglietti of the University of California.

MUMBAI: Three US nationals are expected to give their testimony in the 26/11 terror attack case through videoconferencing while two FBI officersare likely to appear in person before the special court here on Wednesday.
“Two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officers are also likely to appear in person to tender evidence,” special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said.
The services of Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) have been requisitioned to provide infrastructure to enable the court to hold videoconferencing for deposition of the US nationals in the Mumbai attack case, Nikam said.
The identities of the witnesses have been kept secret for security reasons, the prosecutor said.
At least four screens would be put up in the court which is housed in the high security central prison area located at Arthur Road in central Mumbai.
The witnesses would throw light on how the ten terrorists including the lone surviving gunman Ajmal Kasab were in touch with their handlers in Pakistan through mobile phones, Nikam said.
Two FBI officials are also expected to appear in person for deposition as witnesses, the prosecutor said.
This is for the first time that witnesses from abroad are deposing in a terror attack case, Nikam said.
After the 26/11 terror attacks, in which 166 persons including six Americans were killed, FBI had also conducted a probe and collected clinching evidence which would be placed before the trial court here.
FBI sleuths would tell the court how the Mumbai terror attacks were planned and executed by Lashkar-e-Taiba and its commanders.
They would also throw light on from where the Global Positioning System was activated and how during the terror attacks the terrorists were in constant touch with their handlers in Pakistan, Nikam said.
The case of the prosecution is that some terrorists had sought instructions from wanted accused based in Pakistan through voice over internet protocol (VOIP) in New Jersey, USA.
The Mumbai police had sought the services of FBI on this aspect.

NEW DELHI: A quarter of India’s districts are facing the threat of drought and sowing of crops are 20 percent lower than the previous year,finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said on Tuesday.
India is heavily dependent on the June to September monsoon rains for farm output, to help rural income and to drive economic growth. After the driest June in 83 years, the annual rains have been more than a quarter below below normal this season.
“Monsoon situation is still erratic,” Mukherjee told reporters. “One hundred and sixty one districts have been declared drought-prone. So far as sowing is concerned, 20 percent would be down,” he said.
India has 604 districts. The rain deficit since June 1 worsened to 28 percent at the weekend, raising fears that the season may turn out to be as bad as 2004 when summer crop output fell 12 percent after a drought. The rains are vital for sugarcane, oilseeds and other crops.
Mukherjee said the government was ready to manage a drought and a contingency plan was also in place. “Of course, always there is a contingency plan,” the minister said. “There is no point of pressing the panic button because you will go and start chanting drought, drought, drought and it will have an adverse impact,” he said.
Among measures the government could take to mitigate the situation are to raise imports and curtail exports. It has already stepped up efforts to buy more sugar and has banned wheat exports and restricted rice shipments.
“Fortunately, Punjab and Haryana have extensively used the ground water. Bihar and certain other states, there are shortfalls,” Mukherjee said.
Asked whether the shorfall in rains would affect India’s growth, he said he expected the economy to expand more than 6 percent in 2009/10, as predicted by the central bank. Asia’s third largest economy expanded 6.7 percent in the last fiscal year, sharply lower than the 9 percent or more it grew in the previous three years, as the global economic crisis took a toll. Mukherjee was also confident that direct tax receipts for the 2009/10 fiscal year would be surpassed.

INDORE: A youth from Indore has now become the latest victim of racial attack in Australia.The victim, identified as Mohit Mangal, a resident of Old Palasia locality here, was attacked by four Australian youths around 1.30 am (IST) yesterday night while he was on his way to a shopping mall in Sydney.
Mohit, who works as a mall supervisor, was attacked from behind with a beer bottle on his head and beaten up with a baseball bat on his waist and leg by the four youths, sources said.
Confirming the incident, Mohit’s father Anil Mangal, who runs an automobile business here, said the condition of Mohit was out of danger.
“My son had no enmity with anyone there and the incident, it appears, might be a continuation of ongoing racial attacks on Indian students in Australia’, Anil said.
Mohit had gone to Australia about two years back to pursue his study in BE. This was the fourth incident of racial attack on Indian students in Australia after Union External Affairs Minister S M Krishna’s visit to that country.

PUNE/CHENNAI: A 35-year-old ayurvedic doctor and a four-year-old boy died of swine flu in Pune and Chennai on Monday morning, taking the toll dueSwine flu virus test Children along with their parents wait outside a hospital to get tested for H1N1 virus in Pune. (PTI)to the dreaded viral infection in the country to six.The medic, Babasahib Mane, died in the Sasoon Hospital in Pune becoming the third person in the worst-hit Maharashtra city to succumb to swine flu, a senior health official said.
Mane was ailing for sometime and blood had been found in his sputum in the last couple of days, he said.
In Chennai, a four-year-old boy, who was admitted to a private hospital with kidney and liver-related complications and had tested positive for swine flu, died on Monday, health officials said. The boy had also been suffering from asthma. This is the first case of flu death in the city.
“The boy was in a very critical condition. He had been suffering from asthma and he had been taken from one hospital to another for various complications. Ultimately he landed up in this hospital for a kidney-related problem…and they found the boy testing positive (for swine flu),” Tamil Nadu Health Secretary V K Subburaj said.
The boy, who was on a ventilator, died following “multiple organ failure,” S Ilango, Director of Public Health, said.
With the two deaths on Monday, the swine flu toll in the country has climbed to six.

PUNE: A 35-year-old man was admitted to the Sassoon hospital on Thursday night after his blood samples tested positive for H1N1 virus. The man, who reportedly had a history of rheumatic heart disease, was shifted there from a private hospital in Hadapsar area and was put on ventilator, Dr R R Pardeshi, Civic Medical Officer, said. He is reportedly in critical condition but stable.
The patient was seen in civic Naidu Hospital where this throat swabs were taken for H1N1 testing and then taken back to Nobel Hospital in an ambulance. After his blood samples tested positive for swine flu at National Institute of Virology (NIV) yesterday, he was immediately taken to the isolation ward of Sassoon General Hospital, Pardeshi said.
Dr Pardeshi said the patient had no information on “contributory history” of infection, meaning there was no known positive contact responsible for transmission.
In another case, a doctor attached to a private hospital here was admitted to the Sassoon general hospital here this morning after he tested positive for swine flu, hospital officials said on Friday.
The doctor who worked with Inlaks hospital in camp area had been kept in ICU in a quarantined ward, according to the civic medical officer.
India recorded its first fatality on Monday, when 14-year-old Rida Shaikh succumbed to swine flu in Pune. The family has blamed two private hospitals in the city for her death due to gross negligence and has filed criminals complaints against doctors of the two hospitals.

LUCKNOW: Going by all the publicity blitz and hype, UPCC Coordination Committee’s meeting on Thursday turned out to be quite a tame affair.Contrary to the expectations of partymen that special invitee Rahul Gandhi would be unfurling the blueprint of the much mentioned Mission 2012 , the three-hour jamboree proved to be nothing but a mix of staid rhetorics about “revamping the organisationa l structure and need for concerted launch against the communal and fissiparous forces”.
The star of the show — Rahul Gandhi — mostly played the part of a good listener. The young MP, insiders said, spoke sparingly. But he did spring a few surprises like meeting the MLAs on one to one basis rather than calling them en block. MLAs reportedly sputtered and faltered like school children facing the Gandhi scion who earnestly demanded to know the burning issues facing their constituency.
After deliberations and exchange of thoughts, two major resolutions were passed by the committee.