{"id":42817,"date":"2015-04-02T13:56:01","date_gmt":"2015-04-02T20:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=42817"},"modified":"2015-04-02T13:56:01","modified_gmt":"2015-04-02T20:56:01","slug":"prabhakran-is-my-leader-but-modi-is-my-political-model-says-sri-lankan-tamil-mp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2015\/04\/02\/prabhakran-is-my-leader-but-modi-is-my-political-model-says-sri-lankan-tamil-mp\/","title":{"rendered":"Prabhakran is my Leader, but Modi is my Political Model, Says Sri Lankan Tamil MP"},"content":{"rendered":"

By P.K. Balachandran\u00a0Courtesy The New Indian Express<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

KILINOCHCHI: Successive Sri Lankan governments have dubbed Sivagnanam Sritharan, the outspoken Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP from Jaffna district, an LTTE agent. The fact that he is the brother-in-law of the dreaded LTTE military commander Colonel\u201d Theepan, only reinforced this view. Sritharan was also a bitter critic of India for its alleged indifference when thousands of Tamil civilians were killed in the last phase of Eelam War IV.<\/p>\n

But Sritharan has undergone a major political makeover, as Express discovered during an interview at his office in Kilinochchi.\u00a0\u00a0 My Thalaivar (leader) is still Velupillai Prabhakaran,\u201d Sritharan affirms. But my political model is Modi,\u201d he reveals.<\/p>\n

Modi belongs to a long line of Indian leaders who I have looked up to, such as\u00a0 Swami Vivekananda, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Subhas Chandra Bose, Annai Indira and Mother Teresa,\u201d he says.\u00a0\u00a0 Asked in what way Modi is his political model, Sritharan said: It\u2019s his clear thinking, sense of mission and his rise from the very bottom of the social ladder to the very top. Above all, he seems to have God\u2019s blessings. I saw his devotion to God when he worshiped at the Keerimalai kovil and felt that he has an inner eye through\u00a0 which he will be able to see our problems clearly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Modi\u2019s self assurance gave the Lankan Tamils a lot of hope, the MP said.\u00a0 Daring to speaking in Hindi to an audience of Tamils needed self-assurance. Asked if the Hindi speeches put him off, Sritharan said: I appreciated his speaking in his country\u2019s language (Hindi). And when he did utter a Tamil word like\u00a0 Vanakkam, he packed a lot of meaning in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tamils should accept Modi\u2019s advice to cooperate with the new Maithripala Sirisena government and give it time to attend to their issues, Sritharan said, shifting from Prabhakaran\u2019s line that Indian is best ignored.<\/p>\n

Given geopolitical realities, we cannot solve our problems without India\u2019s help, and India needs us for its own security. India needs a peaceful Jaffna because Jaffna is like the fuse of an explosive which can shatter South India,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By P.K. Balachandran\u00a0Courtesy The New Indian Express KILINOCHCHI: Successive Sri Lankan governments have dubbed Sivagnanam Sritharan, the outspoken Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP from Jaffna district, an LTTE agent. The fact that he is the brother-in-law of the dreaded LTTE military commander Colonel\u201d Theepan, only reinforced this view. Sritharan was also a bitter critic of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}