“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.