Commentary / Mani Shankar Aiyar

It might embarrass Chidambaram now to stand by his 1991 denunciation of his present political partner, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu

The charge against the DMK state government is that the DMK sided with the LTTE and connived in its attempts at eliminating its rivals on Indian soil, specifically in the assassination by the LTTE of EPRLF leader Padmanabha and 15 of his associates in Madras in June 1990.

The charge against the V P Singh government at the Centre is that it turned a blind eye to the doings of its National Front partner, the DMK, despite central agencies bringing to the attention of the Centre massive evidence of the DMK's collaboration with the LTTE.

The evidence before the commission of the DMK-LTTE nexus is to be found particularly in the affidavit filed by Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president Vazhapadi K Ramamurthy, and the depositions already made by Ramamurthy, Chandra Shekhar, Subodh Kant Sahay, among others.

Although Karunanidhi's home secretary, R Nagarajan, has denied any personal knowledge of the political relations between the DMK and the LTTE, he has confirmed to the commission the statement made by him before a judicial magistrate in Trichy in November 1991, where he had detailed the deliberate delay, on the instruction of chief minister Karunanidhi, in pursuing the killers of Padmanabha; the involvement of Karunanidhi's son, Azghagiri, in springing arrested LTTE activists; the role of DMK ministers and legislators in respect of specific misdemeanours and worse of LTTE cadres; and the general atmosphere of collaboration in which the LTTE was operating in Tamil Nadu before and after the Padmanabha murders.

Jayalalitha's deposition will be of absorbing and special importance. She had submitted a confidential 102-page memorandum to Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar on December 29, 1990, detailing evidence of Karunanidhi's links with the Prabhakaran gang which Chandra Shekhar found sufficiently irrefutable as to base his dismissal of Karunanidhi's lawyers and Karunanidhi in person; reciprocally, Karunanidhi can expect to have a really rough time exculpating himself or damning Jayalalitha. It is one thing to win an election, quite another to be compelled to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth on oath.

The commission has also taken on to its record P Chidambaram's 90-minute speech in the Lok Sabha on February, 25, 1991, in which, with chilling clarity, he has accused the DMK government and its leader, Karunanidhi, of being accessories before and after the fact to the Padmanabha massacre, as also the mountain of evidence relating to the DMK-LTTE nexus which justified the dismissal of that government.

Chidambaram is also privy, as Rao's minister for the investigation into the Rajiv assassination, to the implications of the DMK-LTTE, nexus in Rajiv's death. It might embarrass Chidambaram politically now to stand by his 1991 denunciation of his erstwhile political foe and present political partner, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu.

But the commission is not going to be swayed by these political considerations. Either Chidambaram will have to confirm what he then alleged; or explain why the allegations he then made were without foundation.

In particular, Chidambaram will have to tell the commission -- perhaps in camera -- of what he as minister did little or nothing in this regard. He might have to explain to the commission whether any failure to follow his own leads was because he was working on forging an alliance with the DMK. There is no doubt that ever since Chidambaram was attacked by AIADMK cadres at Trichy airport in 1991, he had been in the forefront of the search for an alternative to the AIADMK-Congress alliance that had won an overwhelming victory in the 1991 election.

That result was the consequence largely of the Tamil electorate's conviction that the DMK-LTTE nexus was responsible, at the very least, for setting the state for the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi on Tamil soil in the middle of an election which looked as if it might lead to the reinstallation as prime minister of a man who was the common political enemy of both the DMK and the LTTE.

It has been confirmed to the commission that at least six of the accused in the Padmanabha murders are also accused in the Rajiv assassination. The DMK-LTTE nexus, if any, is not only a matter of general relevance to the 'sequence of events' leading to the assassination but of specific relevance to the question of whether the links forged in the context of the Padmanabha murders persisted after the dismissal of the DMK government.

If so, what bearing did the DMK-LTTE nexus have on the assassination just 110 days later of Rajiv Gandhi by virtually the same LTTE hit-squad that had massacred Padmanabha and then, according to Chidambaram, received the patronage and protection of the DMK?

If the question interests you, please stay turned in to the Jain Commission's proceedings. For five years, the Jain Commission has been unmitigated Dullsville. At long, long last, the time has come for all good men and true to sit up and start taking notice.