The rising violence in the neighbouring Sri Lanka, a beautiful island drenched in the blood of a long-drawn ethnic war, has cast a dark shadow of all-round tension in Tamil Nadu that is separated from the conflict zone by only a thin strip of shallow sea. Signaling a significant shift in his stand that he would faithfully back Delhi's handling of the Lankan issue—which has hitherto been to stay off from direct involvement and letting Norway handle the peace-brokering between the government and the LTTE---Tamil Nadu chief minister M. Karunanidhi told the UPA government, of which his DMK is an influential constituent, that something urgent needed to be done to halt the killing of Tamils in the island.

His statement on Thursday (Nov 9) could be a bit convoluted but the message he sought to convey came out nevertheless— India can no longer remain a silent spectator, pretending that the Lankan crisis is not its baby. "I wish to bring to the notice of the Central Government the pertinent question which has now arisen as to how long India is going to keep patience.

"Hundreds of Tamils staying as refugees have been brutally killed by bombings. Apart from aerial bombing, the Sri Lankan armed forces fired missiles, resulting in heaps of dead bodies of hundreds of children," Mr Karunanidhi has said. The casualty figures could be somewhat exaggerated in his statement but the underlying agony and anger was amply justified.

Others in the Tamil political arena, besides human rights activists echoed similar and even stronger sentiments while seeking Indian intervention to halt the killings in Lanka. "If we let things go on this way, the Eelam Tamils will be entirely wiped out. We must take immediate action to prevent this. If the Centre continues to hesitate, the responsibility of pushing it into decisive action rests with the people and their rulers in Tamil Nadu," said PMK leader Dr S. Ramadoss, another important UPA partner.

With pressure from his Tamil allies thus building up, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has now come out with an assurance that he would do his best in the matter. How far Delhi can stretch its hand, chewed up by the Tigers as well as the previous rulers in Colombo not too long ago, remains to be seen.

The Tigers would like Delhi to lift the ban on the movement, imposed after it assassinated Rajiv Gandhi in May 2001. They would also like India to acknowledge the LTTE as the sole representative of the Tamils in Lanka and deal with it with the same seriousness as it does towards Colombo—something that Norway is already doing—rather remain bogged down in the stand that it ( India) wanted the Sri Lankan unity and integrity to remain intact.

The brittle ceasefire in Lanka, that has seen several breaches by both sides since it came to be inked in 2002, has never been more threatened of serious fracture as the Norway-inspired 'peace' parleys broke down in Geneva a couple of weeks ago over the Tiger demand that the A-9 highway linking Jaffna to the south be reopened and Colombo's firm 'no'. Later, the government agreed to open up the arterial road provided the LTTE stopped violence. Debunking the Tiger claim that the closure of A-9 caused severe food shortage in Jaffna, the government said supplies had been reached by sea and in any case, the LTTE was keen on the highway opening up so as to resume its 'huge' collection of taxes from traders.

The Vaharai attack was the second worst civilian disaster after August air-raid that killed 55 girls at Sencholai orphanage in Mullaitivu in north Lanka. That gruesome incident and the many smaller skirmishes, besides any number of targeted assassinations of prominent public figures (even journalists), spurred Norway and other aid countries to push Colombo and the Tigers to the negotiation table at Geneva. Though the talks broke down pretty quick, both the sides had agreed to refrain from launching any military offensives and abide by the ceasefire MoU. That promise was breached even before the negotiators flew back to the island.

Admitting that he was "very troubled by the deteriorating situation" in Sri Lanka, Oslo's International Development Minister Erik Solheim, the main negotiator in the Lankan conflict, took Colombo to task for the Vaharai killings and also the shelling of a Nordic truce monitoring team visiting north Lanka on November 8.

In the midst of all this there came yet another demonstration of how unsafe Colombo has become. Parliamentarian Nadarajah Raviraj of the pro-LTTE Tamil National Alliance, an outspoken critic of the government, was gunned down in broad daylight by unidentified motorcycle-borne killers close to his house in the heart of the city on Friday (Nov 10). President Mahinda Rajapakse at once condemned the killing and sought help from Scotland Yard. But that could hardly take the sting out of the all-round criticism of his regime, with even the Americans urging him "to begin an immediate investigation into the circumstances of his killing and to find, arrest, and prosecute those responsible on the most urgent basis."