CHHATTISGARH-Dangerous Game

been sponsored by M G Ramachandran and his AIADMK. Till mid-1987, the stratagem to humour the LTTE all the way had the endorsement of Rajiv Gandhi too; things turned sour only subsequently. If it is now claimed that the LTTE is conspiring to detacWkmil Nadu from India, the culpability for that would attach, posthumously, to both Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi; Madam Jayalalitha's party, a bequest to her by her lord and mentor, MGR, cannot be absolved of the responsibility either. Looked at from the practical angle; the ban is unlikely to hamper the LITE'S activities in this country to any significant extent. In any case, for the past couple of years, it has been forced to operate clandestinely. It will continue in the same manner The fact that it is being hounded as much in India as in Sri Lanka could actually attract some additional surreptitious support for it, particularly among the Tamil youth. And should Jayalalitha's administration attempt to stamp every citizen whom it does not like with the stigma of an LTTE connection and throw him or her into prison cell under TADA or some other equally dubious act, the sympathy for the LTTE might begin to grow at a faster pace. Pro scribing a movement docs not weed it out; most precedents say that it only acts as a stimulus for its acquiring greater strength and influence. By its action, the centre might therefore have helped to promote the crime it has accused the LTTE of, namely, an uprising against the established government of the land. Unlike his more illustrious namesake and predecessor, Y B Chavan, the present home minister is not known to be a bibliophile. Which is a pity, for, were it otherwise, he could have learnt a bit from Irish history, or, for the matter, from the history of our freedom movement during the British days. But, then, given the state the union government is in, remonstrating with it for its various failings, will be scarcely any different from a dialogue with the deaf.