Recognition in sight: Long-ignored IPKF may finally get official honour

“Ho gaya! Ho gaya,” exclaimed a jubilant veteran who’d had a tenure in the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka. This was on January 14, after Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said at a felicitation of ex-servicemen: “The decision taken by the then government to send Indian forces to Sri Lanka is open to debate. I don’t want to get into it. But I believe the sacrifices made by our IPKF soldiers who participated in Operation Pawan should be respected.” This is the closest the Government of India has ever come to recognising the IPKF as a bona fide expeditionary force and Operation Pawan as a major out-of-area military operation, if not an intervention, in a war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a terrorist group, in north and east Sri Lanka to end the ethnic conflict there (1987-90).

 

In 2024, Chief of Defence Staff Gen Anil Chauhan told IPKF veterans in Dehradun: “We have fought hundreds of operations; Operation Pawan was only a minor operation.” The National War Memorial has only a passing reference to the IPKF even though 1,157 Indian soldiers were killed and more than 3,000 wounded to maintain the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Sri Lanka. Last year, on the 35th anniversary of the return of the IPKF from Sri Lanka, (March 24) 150 Operation Pawan veterans and their families gathered for a “silent felicitation” between 3 and 4 pm. “Silent” meant no Last Post and Rouse was played by buglers to honour the fallen. For several decades now, families of those who fought in Sri Lanka and retired soldiers have been fighting to get Operation Pawan “official” recognition. The defence minister’s remarks have sent hopes soaring.

 

Why are IPKF martyrs not being officially recognised and appropriately honoured and its veterans only allowed a silent felicitation? And is the government really changing its mind on this now?

 

When the IPKF returned from Sri Lanka, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) was in power in Tamil Nadu and it was part of the coalition at the Centre. When the LTTE was defeated in 2009, the DMK was again in power in the state and part of the ruling coalition at the Centre. The domestic Tamil factor weighed heavily in India’s Sri Lanka policy due to the presence of the DMK’s 29 members of the Lok Sabha, supporting the United Progress Alliance government.

 

Governments of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) opted not to rock the Tamil Nadu boat, either. During the Atal Bihari Vajpayee tenures (1998-2004), recognition to the IPKF was not on the government’s list of emergency to-do, so pressured was it from challenges internal and external. But since 2014, when the current ruling formation came to power, January 14 this year is the first time the government came close to conceding that overlooking the IPKF’s contribution was an oversight. Till today, the uncomfortable official silence on Operation Pawan’s success lingers, mainly because while the IPKF achieved a number of political and military objectives in 32 months, the political and diplomatic tracks failed to keep up.

 

The last of the IPKF left Sri Lanka on board the INS Magar from the Trincomalee harbour and arrived in Madras (now Chennai) on March 24, 1990. It was welcomed with banners bearing ITKF (Indian Tamil Killing Force). As V P Singh, then Prime Minister, could not go to Madras to welcome the IPKF for fear of “offending” the DMK, they were flown in IL76 to Palam, to be felicitated by him there.  It was honouring them in stealth. Between then and now the external environment has changed so much that it is virtually unrecognisable. Most of the political and diplomatic leaders who dominated the narrative are no longer with us. What remains is history. And that is hard to change.

 

Earlier this month, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking him to ensure the rights of Tamils in Sri Lanka were protected under the new Constitution the Sri Lanka government is drafting. Ahead of the Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu (due later this year), there is an active attempt to revive Sri Lanka-related issues in the state. While the DMK continues to assert itself as the representative of the Tamil-speaking people across the world, there is still a constituency in Tamil Nadu which views the activities of the LTTE and other groups in Tamil Nadu as actions that put law and order in the state at risk. Jayalalithaa went so far as to demand the DMK government be dismissed for supporting the LTTE and extended the ban on it. It is presumably to this constituency that Rajnath Singh is appealing on behalf of the Bharatiya Janata Party when he seeks a more sympathetic view of the IPKF.

 

Whether the IPKF will ever get its true place in India’s military history will be for others in government to decide. For in India, politics trumps all else.