DR. Subramanian Swamy, an Indian politician and Janatha Party leader, has alleged that the move to grant sanctuary and Indian citizenship to Sri Lankan refugees is a ploy. Swamy has been a bitter critic of Sonia Gandhi, the foreign-born President of the Indian National Congress. He has been a great champion of human rights and democratic values. He has fought the mighty and powerful without fear or favor. He has been very effective in the courts fighting for justice and has used the courts effectively on issues of public importance. However, he is noted for his consistent stance against the LTTE which is proscribed as a terrorist organization by 31 countries commenting, “LTTE is a terrorist organization which killed Rajiv Gandhi and has spewed poison online about India. LTTE is a part of the Sri Lankan problem, and can never be a part of the solution.” His stance against the LTTE has had five successive Indian governments place him in the ‘Z category' of Indian security, with security cover of at least 22 personnel because of the high LTTE threat to his life. He was attacked by a group of pro-LTTE lawyers. Violent clashes between the Tamil Nadu police and practicing lawyers occurred on Feb. 19th 2009, on the Madras High Court premises. He uttered that he was challenging the nefarious move to grant sanctuary to LTTE rump in India and legitimize them with grant of Indian citizenship. In a recent statement he pointed out that the Resolution of the DMK, moved by its President M. Karunanidhi demanding that all Sri Lankan Tamils residing in India should be given Indian citizenship, is a desperate bid to appease the LTTE rump that is sore with him for his inability to fight for their cause effectively while fooling them with his breakfast-to-lunch fast unto death. Swamuty alleged that DMK leader is trying to provide the remnants of the LTTE, sanctuary in India and legitimizing them by granting Indian citizenship. “Hence now he is seeking to provide them a sanctuary in India legitimized by a gratis Indian citizenship,” Swamy said in his statement. He said that the LTTE rump today is on the run worldwide with their sacks of cash on their back earned by poisoning the youth with their heroin trade. “At the urging of the now financially orphaned Dravida Kazagham chief K. Veeramani,” Swamy said, “the chief minister has capitulated by demanding this entire rump on the run be accommodated on Indian soil, knowing very well that under the Indian Constitution this cannot be done.” Swamy has vowed that “I shall certainly challenge it in the courts if the Union government yields to this illegal demand.” Most stateless persons in Sri Lanka are descendants of Indian Tamils brought to Sri Lanka by the British between 1820 and 1840 to work on the tea and coffee plantations. They are known as “Hill Tamils”. Swami suggested that if the chief minister wants to help the Sri Lanka Tamil cause, he should instead demand from the Center to honor the memory of Arulmuga Navalar who by his powerful Tamil prose fought in the nineteenth century to protect the identity of Tamils, thereby kept it alive and safeguarded. In particular, under a series of bilateral agreements between India and Sri Lanka in 1964 and 1974, Sri Lanka agreed to provide citizenship to a total of 375,000 Indian Tamils and India agreed to provide citizenship and repatriate 600,000 Tamils. A total of 506,000 people applied for Indian citizenship and 470,000 applied for Sri Lankan citizenship under these agreements. The process of granting Indian citizenship was very slow and in 1982, around 86,000 applications for citizenship to the Indian High Commission were still pending. A further 90,000 people who had been issued with Indian passports were still remaining in Sri Lanka. At this time, India advised Sri Lanka that it no longer considered the 1964 and 1974 agreements to be binding as the implementation period had expired. Sri Lanka disputed this claim.
