Spoiling the brats who get away with murder

By Carl Muller

It is told us by A. Jeyratnam Wilson ("S.J.V. Chelvanaykam and the Crisis of Sri Lanka and Tamil Nationalism, 1947 to 1977") before Chelvanayakam and his Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), the Tamil political tradition was ambivalent and lacked direction. However, as we know, Tamil leaders of the stamp of the Ponnambalam brothers had always emphasized the need for the Tamil community to play its due part in the Political process, adapting their strategy to the island's prevailing political circumstances and expectations.

The picture then was one of "living together". The Ceylon Tamils had a significant share in representation. They had their educational advantages which they owed to the American and British Christian organizations that functioned in the Jaffna peninsula during the nineteenth century.

It was a sort of "inter-elite co-operation" and it made Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan the first Ceylonese Unofficial Member to the Legislative Council in 1911; and Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam the first President of the Ceylon National Congress in 1919. Yet, the Ceylon Tamils were bereft of strategy and true leadership, purpose and direction until the emergence of G.G. Ponnambalam in the mid-1930's.

The background to the crisis if Tiger involvement needs to be hastily run through for, sadly enough, it is this very background that is rarely if ever referred to when we face the massive explosion of communal and racial ill-will that have rocked the very foundations of this country and claimed so much life.

With G.G. Ponnambalam's entry into the State Council in 1934, other Colombo-centered Tamils came to the fore - Chelvanayakam, Naganathan, Sivasubramaniam. They had all been brought up in Jaffna and were quickly endorsed and accepted, especially when they spearheaded the demand for balanced representation where the Sinhalese would have 50 percent of the seats and the minorities - Ceylon and Indian Tamils, Muslims, Malays, Burghers and Europeans - 50 percent.

This fifty-fifty stand was not to be and Governor Sir Andrew Caldecott refused to endorse it although G. G. Ponnambalam persisted in advocating it. He was actually backed by the Times of Ceylon and some European interests and had the ear of a great many Ceylon Tamils who had begun to decry the Sinhalese monopoly over appointments to the Public Service, State budgetary allocations and major construction projects. When G.G. launched the All Ceylon Tamil Congress (ACTC) in 1944, the Tamils were overwhelming in their support. They had found a political anchor - a solid organization which could push for balanced representation; but as is well known, the ACTC missed the bus. There were too many political gaps between the Ceylon Tamils of the Jaffna peninsula and those of Batticaloa and the East.

Other situations erupted, such as the rift between G.G. and Chelvanayakam and the fact remained that even in 1947, with a minority government headed by D.S.Senanayake, the Ceylon Tamils, as a community, long riven by social, regional and political differences, had come to a stage of being dependent on the conservative Sinhalese leadership. They had reconciled themselves to being a minority in the Ceylonese polity and even failed to support Chelvanayakam and his ITAK/Federal Party in the 1952 general elections.

Yet, Chelvanayakam raised and fomented Tamil fears. It is recalled that in 1947 he declared.

"The Tamil language is in danger of being annihilated. The Sinhalese leaders are plotting to make Sinhala the only official language in country and to relegate Tamil to the Northern and Eastern Provinces and make it a purely local language."

Again, he declared:
"The UNP is nothing more than a congregation of arch communalists whose past antics and present-day activities tend to disrupt the harmonious relations that have existed among the different communities in the island."

One pronouncement in 1956 remained the most significant of all:

"The Britishers, relying on the Sinhalese leadership to be trustworthy men who would not oppose the minority section, transferred the responsibility of the government to them. The Sinhalese, taking advantage of their numerical strength, denied the Tamils their rights".

It was from this forceful pronouncement that there emerged the subsequent Tamil claim to the right of self-determination!

It was Rousseau who realized ("Social Contract") that there probably were a thousand ways of gathering men together and that though there might be a multitude of aggregations which exist, not even two had been formed in the same way. What Rousseau saw was the necessity of popular consent, conscious expression and active agreement periodically renewed.

When Vijitha Yapa publications gave us J. N. Dixit's "Assignment Colombo" there was none of Rousseau's "Social Contract". Dixit, as Indian High Commissioner to Colombo. from 1985 to 1989, found himself in a period of conflict, both ethnic and political; of Indian involvement with the President of Sri Lanka seeking Indian military assistance in order to safeguard the island's unity and territorial integrity. There is some relevance between "Assignment Colombo" and the new Vijitha Yapa publication, "Tigers of Sri Lanka" by Narayan Swamy. It is on the latter that I rely if only to consider the genesis and growth of Tamil militancy. As Narayan Swamy says:

"There can perhaps never be a "the" account of that bloody struggle which, incidentally shows no sign of ending".

He is right, of course, The guns may now be silent but the "struggle" continues and we will continue to struggle and squirm for God alone knows how long!

Tiger beginnings is a fascinating and quite awesome part of "Tigers of Sri Lanka." Militancy began in fits and starts in the 1970's and until 1983. It received a boost with Indian's covert involvement in Sri Lanka's affairs. "From a group which had no armoury to boast of and probably less than 50 hardcore members in 1983, (the LTTE) registered an astonishing growth, taking on the world's fourth largest army just four years later".

Yet, after 1983, there came upon the North the most terrible scourge of all- Tamils betraying Tamils! Politically, of course, this was nothing new, but with violent backdrop of the new inflammatory emotions, betrayal merited death, lamp-post executions. We are told of the April 1986 full-scale offensive by the Tigers on TELO camps all over the North. It was a swift and brutal crackdown and a bloody battle for supremacy - for a Tamil homeland - for Eelam. The book tells of the first shots fired for this Eelam. We also have Suntheralingam's open letter to the Prime Minister in mid-1957.

"I am now convinced that the Tamils of Ceylon have been tricked and betrayed. They must go all out and save themselves and their posterity from Sinhala colonization and establish in the first instance an independent Tamil Ilankai".

There is no need to dwell on the anti-Tamil rioting that swept this country in 1956 and 1958. Even Tarzie Vittachi asked, "What are we left with? A nation in ruins, some lessons which we cannot afford to forget and a momentos question: Have the Sinhalese and Tamils reached the parting of the ways?"

As the author says, by 1975 Jaffna was an embittered place. A tiny group had already embarked on a violent path. Of the four young men who waited for and gunned down Alfred Duriappah, Mayor of Jaffna in 1975, three were caught. The fourth who escaped, later said it was he who fired the fatal shot. His name was Velupillai Prabhakaran.

The author also observes that even with the incidents of sporadic violence and the attacks on soldiers, Sinhalese shopkeepers, civilians and government officials, such attacks "were more in the nature of real or perceived self-defence action against the Sinhalese majority. There was no real-long-term perspective or planning in these strikes." At the outset, it must have been a sort of instinctive action and the picture, however ludicrous, comes to my mind:

Sinhalese youth: Mummy, I shot a Tamil today.
Mummy: Good boy, Now eat your dinner and go to bed.
Tamil youth: Mummy I shot a Sinhalese today.
Mummy: Good boy, Now eat your dinner and go to bed.

Yet, Tamil militancy still remained at the time at a nascent level.

The book makes engrossing especially in the circumstances that prevail today. The Tigers needed cash in order to grow. Robbery and extortion was the answer. Also, while Prabhakaran founded the LTTE on May 5, 1976, the Tamil Congress and the Federal party formed the Taml United Liberation Front (TULF) and described the Sri Lankan Tamils as "a nation distinct and apart from the Sinhalese".

There is little doubt that the TULF sympathized with the LTTE. Then came the 1977 anti-Tamil riots and J. R. Jayewardene's thunder amidst applause from his MP's: "If you want to fight, let there be a fight; If it is peace, let there be peace. It is not what I am saying. The people of Sri Lanka say that".

In Jaffna, Tamil militancy was taking deeper root and, what was more, the Tamil society had its "boys" who were more than willing to take on the Sinhalese mobocracy. Indeed, the author notes: "Sinhalese mobocracy did more than anything to give a facade of respectability to the militants".

The LTTE came out into the open in April 1978 and the killings went on. Even the IGP, Stanley Senanayake admitted: "Members of this (Tiger) movement are not common criminals. They are educated, sophisticated youth, a factor which makes them all the more dangerous."

The book is an eye-opener to all who now exult in the small "peace inroads" that have been made with much attendant hype. We have the blasting of the AVRO 748 at Ratmalana, bank robberies, and with a Sri Lankan military crackdown, the split in the LTTE and the formation of PLOTE. Violence begets violence - unfortunately; and by 1981 there were cycles of violence; police rampages, the burning of more than 80,000 books in the Jaffna public library.

"Tigers of Sri Lanka" then tells us of Prabhakaran, born November 26, 1954, educated Batticaloa and Velvettithurai, growing up in a world of Tamil -Sinhalese conflict. His hero was Bengali nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose and Bose's motto became his: "I shall fight for the freedom of my land until I shed the last drop of blood." He also reveled in the military exploits of Napoleon.

After the murder of Duriappah, Prabhakaran fled to India where he lived in Kadambakkam. Returning to Jaffna in 1974, he went underground. He was always obsessed with his own safety and grew to be the supreme in shadow - the shadow killmaster. Tiger training camps were opened at Poonthottam and Mullaitivu. With his meticulous planing, the organization grew. Soon guerrillas were being trained in military warfare in Lebanon by the PLO. To the TULF, the Tigers seemed to be running out of control and when the LTTE began to claim responsibility for its killings they were seen as boys who had matured into guerrillas who could kill and disappear into nowhere. This upset the TULF. The Tigers were getting too much propaganda mileage and all the while, Prabhakaran remained aloof from the media blitz. Rather, he brought into the fold a Sri Lankan Tamil Marxist who lived in London. This man is Anton Stanislaus Balasingham.

It would be nigh impossible to detail the absolutely stunning contents of this book which, for the Vijitha Yapa Publishing house is a triumph indeed. What is significant is the reading of both Dixit's "Assignment Colombo" (the IPKF debacle) and Narayan Swamy's "Tigers of Sri Lanka" in the light of what is going on today as we proclaim peace and know it to be but a commercial driven accord to put more money into the pockets of the business tycoons of the West and the South. Prabhakaran, the greatest survivor of all, the killmaster and mastermind of wholesale death and destruction, is now elevated to a sort of stellar platform from which he can tell the world of his "just battle" against his oppressors who are also the oppressors of the Tamils. He claims to be Prime Minister and President of the North and East.

In the author's new epilogue, Narayan Swamy hints at the September 11 holocaust in the USA as a possible cause of Prabhakaran's need to legitimize himself and the LTTE. But will it all end in love and kisses or bullets and wreaths? A cartoon in a foreign magazine captioned "Sri Lanka 2005" depicts Prabhakaran at a table, head in his hands, groaning at the unending queue of Sinhalese storming the North. He wails: "What am I going to do with all these Sinhalese immigrants?"

Can this be the picture of the future? Everything is being thrown northwards today - Fisheries centers, Hotel schools, cricket and soccer stadia, netball courts for all schools, bank and company branches, even the coal-power plant at Trincomalee. The LTTE now operates buses to Colombo, hangs on to their arms, levies taxes and tolls, requisitions private vehicles, make a mockery of government machinery and is the new star in the political firmament.

The tobacco fields will once more come under cultivation, and he wines will come out of Tholagatty, paper from Valachchenai, chemicals from Paranathan and, who knows, oil from the Gulf of Mannar. Now the boys are the spoiled brats and Prabhakaran, kingpin and supreme, mass killer and cold-blooded destroyer of civilian life, the murderer of Rajiv Gandhi and striker at the economic heart of this country, can sit before TV cameras and microphones and know (and doubtless chuckle) that he has got away with murder!

Is it that the Sinhalese are a most abjectly forgiving people or is it that the price we had to pay over two decades was too high. At least, we tell ourselves the guns are silent, the roads de-mined. The sea tigers have gone fishing and the baby brigade is playing gudu after being taught to go out and kill.

"Assignment Colombo" falls into the category of a sort of re-telling of events that only heap shame on the convolutions of those days. "Tigers of Sri Lanka" brings the picture into sharp focus. The boys are still very much there. They will continue to extort - why? They will continue to carry arms - why? They will not surrender Eelam - why? Perhaps Thailand will bring matters to a head. We can only wait and see.

This is a book that begs to be read. It is a fascinating work and sounds alarm bells that we need to take heed of. There are the economic perks, true, but is all this at the price of letting the LTTE get away with murder? (Coutesy-Daily Mirror- May 06,2002)