If Pakistan (or any country) was evil enough and resourceful enough and patient enough, this can be achieved.
- find a separatist kernel and nurture it; there is one in every community.
- unleash media campaign to highlight cultural and historical differences between Tamils and other Indian groups.
- unleash media campaign to highlight injustices against Tamils (real or imagined).
- unleash media campaign to highlight injustices by Tamils (real or imagined).
- a few false flag operations never hurt to inflame sentiments on both sides.
- label anyone who catches on as a conspiracy nut.
- provide sanctuary to separatist groups where they can raise money and plan mischief.
Keep the above recipe cooking for a couple of decades and voila!
However evil Pakistan is, it cannot achieve this with Tamilnadu. I can assure you Pakistan did try this formula with almost all opportunities that arose in India. Pakistan tried it in Punjab, J&K, Northeast; Pakistan even tried to nurture Islamist elements in Hyderabad where Muslims form 50% of the population.
The reasons are multi-fold and in a single line Tamils are too deeply integrated into India. If they are little xenophobic and are overly(who's to decide what overly means here?) proud of their culture, that does not mean they want to separate. May be you are confusing us with Pakistan where any attempt to retain identity, language and culture is viewed with suspicion.
You might not know this, but even the so called Dravida parties had to scale back from their racist Dravidanadu demand. Their basis for separatism was race. And they did not give up their demand because the great Jinnah did not support it. They gave up the demand because their imagined Dravidian resurgence never had the support of the non-Tamil parts of the then Madras state. Besides, whatever grass-root support these elements got was just manifestation of the lower caste anger against the Brahmin dominated Congress state party which always kept the power in Madras. Once the Dravida parties themselves got power, they had no reason to complain about the Brahmins. And the language movement was not specific to Tamilnadu, it swept all over non-Hindi speaking India and the success of the then compromise still stands today in the form of English as our official language.
So what separatist powers in Tamilnadu are you talking about? Any Tamil nationalist, even the rabid ones like Vaiko know that they will be chased away by their own people if they raise the separatist call.
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Red-Bullet :
You are right when you say that Srilankans will consider India as their enemy for generations to come. But the question before all of us now is not regarding Eelam. Eelam was dead long ago, not because of Srilankan army but because of Eelam's supporters themselves. They have demonstrated that even after getting control of the territory where they wanted Eelam, they cannot live along with the Sinhalese. Srilankan government should not do the same mistake. They should give the Tamils a reasonable representation in the government and hopefully autonomy. Otherwise Srilankan government cannot claim to represent all Srilankans.
India has been advocating Sri Lanka's territorial integrity for decades now. Even the mainstream Tamil politicians support India's stand here.
But it is simply wrong to support the human rights violations in the country and the 'who cares' attitude of the Sri Lankan government. Not only that, there are no visible signs of reconciliation.
Look at the criticism itself and not from where it is coming.
