“Man who lives by the sword dies by the sword” – An old Jungle Saying as per quite a few original Phantom comic books.
Before I say anything further I would like to make a statement that I do NOT wish to condone the suicide bombings, killings of political leaders in Sri Lanka and above all the assassination of our country’s former Prime Minister Mr. Rajiv Gandhi – all allegedlly perpetrated by the LTTE.
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I’ve always admired the LTTE and Prabhakaran from my childhood. This could be because children are easily impressionable and also because being brought up in TamilNadu there is always an undercurrent of support for the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. We were brought up with lots of emapthy towards our Tamil cousins across the sea. And this was heightened when I had very good friends who studied in my class at School who were immigrants or refugees from Sri Lanka.
To understand this empathy for Sri Lankan Tamils, you need to know that I was brought up in a place called Nagercoil in Kanyakumari District. Nagercoil being a coastal town and the district surrounded by water on three sides ours was a hotspot for LTTE activities, I suppose, before the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi.
So, combined with a sympathy for our fellow Tamils we were also fascinated by Guerilla warfare and also stories that used to come from across the sea. I cannot promise that the stories were true but my friends used to ‘claim’ that they were eye witnesses to quite a few things. Some of the stories narrated to me as a child was the Sri Lankan army bombing civilians in and around Jaffna, about biological warfare in the coastal and Jungle towns where the LTTE operated and also about civilian massacres undertaken by the SLA in other parts of Sri Lanka. I tend to believe some of the stories because the oppression of Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese majority is TRUE. This has been validated quite a few times by different International agencies at different times.
So the rootcause of all problems was the ethnic conflict between the Sri Lankan Tamils and the Sinhalese. To fight this conflict there were different political parties and other militant outfits were formed. Prabhakaran himself was a very vocal activist against the Sri Lankan government as a young man. He formed the TNT (Tamil New Tigers) in his early years which eventually became to be known officially as the LTTE. Please note that TNT and LTTE were successors to quite a few outfits which fizzled out or where ousted by Prabhakaran and his associates. This was quite necessary as far as Prabhakaran was concerned so that there was a single organization behind the freedom thrust and not many of them fighting for the same thing.
Now, another saying that comes to my mind is about how war and peace. “War cannot broker peace”. This is an old adage that has been quoted and said in different ways by different people. I am a firm believer in this statement. That was why even though I was fucking pissed off like the rest of the country when the Mumbai Terror attacks happened I was one of the very few people who were FOR a political solution between India and Pakistan rather than a full fledged war. So, one of the mistakes I can see from what LTTE did was to use warfare to bring to light the plight of the Tamils. And of course, the suicide bombings. That was deplorable.
And then the biggest mistake ever – the killing of Rajiv Gandhi at Sriperumbudur near Chennai on May 21, 1991. This was a direct reaction to Rajiv Gandhi’s initiative to support the Sri Lankan Government and to use the Indian Peace Keeping Force to fight against the LTTE.
Eighteen years later, almost to the day, the SLA has claimed the killing of Prabhakaran, the LTTE supremo.
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Apart from the brief history I have given above to the best of my knowledge, I do admire the work done by LTTE in letting the world know the suffering and ethnic harassment by the Sinhalese over the generations right from Independance in 1948.
And now, with the SLA claiming that a body charred beyond recognition to be that of the Prabhakaran the conspiracy theories will start. Just like the Osama Bin Laden theories. At the end of the day, even though the cause probably was noble to begin with, like all terrorist organizations LTTE has been dealt a deathly blow in the death of its leader.
I do hope our cousins get what they want and get political stability in Sri Lanka. I sincerely wish that there will be no more problems for the Tamils there.
Mr. Prabhakaran, I admired your courage even though I never liked your tactics. May you rest in peace. And if peace will be brokered by your death, let the world know that yours was a good death.
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I ADMIRE YOUR COMMENT S ON OUR RESPECTED TAMIL LEADER , BECAUSE I ALSO
BORN AND GROWN UP FROM A SAME SITUATION LIKE YOU
Wow, couldn’t have said it better mate!
Eugin, thanks for the comment.
Naveen, yeah dude. Because of the LTTE’s stupidity in killing innocent people along with the targeted assassinations the whole world has adopted the suicide bombing techniques and lost their credibility in a lot of places. Otherwise it was really a freedom fight.
i agree with your views on him.. m a north indian but i felt as strongly for him as did u or for tht matter any tamil… evn i wrote a post on him which recieved a lot of negativ comments for LTTE which of course pained me
http://parvkaushik.blogspot.com/2009/05/back-with-blues-overload.html
I parv, thanks for the comment. yes, I read your post, and not all people share the same feeling. The main reason being that the freedom struggle was lost in between for the LTTE and it became a “terrorist” organization. That was a bad thing.
Greetings Anwin, a few comments: You wrote: “Please note that TNT and LTTE were successors to quite a few outfits which fizzled out or where ousted by Prabhakaran and his associates. This was quite necessary as far as Prabhakaran was concerned so that there was a single organization behind the freedom thrust and not many of them fighting for the same thing.” CORRECTION: This was necessary so that there was a single organization and not many of them FIGHTING EACH OTHER. Prabhakaran started eliminating other groups after the RAW-EPRLF nexus. When the LTTE was surrendering its weapons to the IPKF, RAW was arming the EPRLF to eliminate the LTTE without even the knowledge of the IPKF(This is verified by IPKF Cols and Generals including Hariharan and Harikat Singh). This was when Prabhakaran decided that it was only the LTTE and no one else, not even the IPKF or any other group, home-grown, Indian-grown, or otherwise to lead the struggle because he was well aware of the divide and rule policies of those who opposed his vision of a separate Tamil Eelam. This is also why he perodically purged anyone within the LTTE he suspected of betraying the cause, like Mahataaya, etc. Interestingly enough, people have over the years criticised him for it, but in the end, he proved them wrong, unfortunately with his and the LTTE’s demise. Prabhakaran successfully weeded out all internal rivals/turncoats to maintain the unity of the struggle except for one person, Karuna, and the rest is history. Had he eliminated Karuna in time, people would have included Karuna to the list of people mercilessly killed by a “ruthless dictator”, but I am 99.999% sure that the LTTE would not be finished like it is today. Instead, it was because of Karuna that the LTTE was wiped off with such speed. Today, Karuna wears $1000 suits and $100 ties and is the VP of the SLFP while the people in the east are struggling for food. His group, the TMVP, split into 2, with Pillayan being the CM of the east and those 2 groups split into further groups 4 times over. Today, there are close to 16 different groups of militants from the original TMVP fighting each other, and terrorizing/kidnapping the people of the east to further their own goals of money and power. In the north, the EPDP and the EPRLF are at each other’s throats. Soon, the tamil people in SL will be ruled by a bunch of tamil puppets controlled by the Sinhalese south who will brutally ride the poor civilian population for their own money and power and will kill each other in turf-wars. It is only now that many SL Tamils who criticized Prabhakaran for his one-organization-only policy are starting to see the light, unfortunately, too little, too late. I know personally a person from RAW who told me why India was always weary of, and frustrated with Prabhakaran, and why they could not let him succeed. In his own words(translated into English with some editing): “The one thing that made us worried about Prabhakaran was that he could not be bought out. This was the only person we encountered that we could not sway no matter what we did. He had his own mind and own vision of things(separate nation) that we considered not in India’s interests. This is why we had to get rid of him and the LTTE. This is why we armed the EPRLF. We had to keep the tamil struggle within our reins, so that we could influence the outcome to be suitable to India’s interests aswell, but Prabhakaran would not shift from his goal. Throughout the years, we offered him everything. He could have been living like a King in India itself, we provided so many options, so many ways, so much money, but he never budged. This scared us, especially since we never encountered anyone else who would not have taken up the offers we gave him. We then targeted those within the organization, trying to buy them out, but he would purge anyone he suspected and would keep those close to him in an iron grip. But we knew that all we needed was one person in the top brass of the LTTE. One person that we could buy out and the LTTE will be finished.” My friend told me this 5 years ago. Whatever said of Prabhakaran, one thing that he has proven is that unlike all the politicians/leaders in South Asia who would change sides and policies every 10 minutes for the correct price/power, Prabhakaran did not budge from his goal of Eelam for 30 years, come what may. No one could buy him out. No other politician/leader in South Asia can hold a candle to him in that respect.