The day the siege of Mumbai started, another besieged part of the subcontinent celebrated the birthday of the chief of a terror organization — the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam — one of the oldest in this part of the world, and still one of the most fearsome. It must have done wonders to India’s self-confidence that on Heroes’ Day in the Tamil-dominated north of Sri Lanka, Vellupillai Prabhakaran not only thanked Indian leaders for all the ‘support’ they had extended to the LTTE and its cause, but also pleaded that they exercise themselves a little further and get the ban lifted on the organization. Mr Prabhakaran has his reasons to believe in the ability of his Indian sympathizers. It is to their sincere efforts alone that the LTTE owes its resurgence as a talking point in Tamil Nadu’s local politics, if not in national politics. The scarcely-defined boundaries between sympathy for the Sinhala Tamils and that for the LTTE, marred further by the unbridled passions of leaders of the Pattali Makkal Katchi and the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, are showing promises of waylaying precious national objectives as also foreign politics. It is perhaps this hope that is encouraging the LTTE to put behind its military reversals, the worst ever in its history, and look ahead. The failure of the Sri Lankan government to achieve its much-advertized project of taking over Killinochhi on Heroes’ Day alone could not have inspired such brazenness in the LTTE leader.

The reason why the LTTE is pushing for a lifting of the ban in India is obvious. It could lead to a similar lifting of proscriptions on the organization in the United States of America and in Europe. But more than these possibilities, or India’s more pro-active support that a de-proscription may signify, it is the immediate symbolism of the move that the LTTE hankers after. This measure alone will remove the stigma that has beseeched it after Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, reaffirm the synonymity of the Sinhala Tamil cause with that of the LTTE and re-establish it as the final arbiter of the fate of the minority population in Sri Lanka. This is important because the political settlement of the Sri Lankan government, despite its limitations, and the restiveness of the Sinhala Tamil people to overthrow the yoke of the LTTE’s control and to exercise their political choice, are threatening its control. It needs a little help from beyond the border to keep its claws from slipping.