{"id":56131,"date":"2016-06-30T22:06:57","date_gmt":"2016-07-01T04:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=56131"},"modified":"2016-06-30T14:46:45","modified_gmt":"2016-06-30T21:46:45","slug":"tamils-gave-prabhakaran-the-revolver-to-kill-tamils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/06\/30\/tamils-gave-prabhakaran-the-revolver-to-kill-tamils\/","title":{"rendered":"Tamils gave Prabhakaran the revolver to kill Tamils"},"content":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

The violence in Sri Lanka raged for 33 years, starting from the declaration of war on May 14, 1976 at Vadukoddai by the Tamil leadership and ending\u00a0 in Nandikadal on May 18, 2009 when Velupillai Prabhakaran\u2019s body was found floating in the\u00a0 murky waters of the Lagoon. This war has been described in different ways, depending on the political orientation of the describer. It was, however, commonly described as an ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese and the\u00a0 Tamils. But the unravelling events questioned this description.<\/p>\n

The decision to go for a military solution, stated unequivocally in\u00a0 the Vadukoddai Resolution, was ratified by the Tamil leadership led by S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, the man who claimed that his ambition was to be a father to\u00a0 the Tamils\u00a0 because he never had a father to look after him in Jaffna. His\u00a0 father left\u00a0 him in Tellipallai when he was only four and went\u00a0 back to Malaysia\u00a0 and never saw him again until he was dying. It was this Father (Thanthai<\/strong><\/em> Chelva) who led his children all the way to Nandikadal.<\/p>\n

Led by Chelvanayakam, the Tamil leadership agreed at Vadukoddai that the military solution was better than the non-violent parliamentary process and decided to wage a war against the Sinhalese who were identified as the enemy of the Tamils.The distorted history, the generalised accusations and the main political thrust of the Vadukoddai Resolution were designed to demonise\u00a0 the Sinhala community and generate hate politics of the extreme\u00a0 kind against the Sinhalese. Accordingly, the hate politics inscribed in the Vadukoddai Resolution and picked up by Prabhakaran should have led Tamil violence to target only the Sinhala community as there was no other enemy identified in the Vadukoddai Resolution.\u00a0 But Velupillai Prabhakaran, the anointed proxy of the Vellahla leadership which urged the Tamil youth to take up arms, targeted the Muslims and the Tamils indiscriminately. Why? What had the Muslims done to the Tamils to massacre them? And, above all, what had the Tamils done to Prabhakaran for him to target the Tamils? Prabhakaran first turned his guns on the Tamils and killed more Tamils than all the\u00a0 others put together. No other leader had pursued hate politics to insatiable extremes as Prabhakaran. His hate politics that led to the killing of anyone whom he perceived to be his enemy was totally irrational and counter-productive.<\/p>\n

It was, above all, a deviation\u00a0 from the anti-Sinhala hate politics defined in the Vadukoddai Resolution. It gave the licence to kill only Sinhalese but not the Muslims and fellow-Tamils. If Tamil militancy was in the hands of a more rational leader the\u00a0 history of the Tamils \u2013 and that of the\u00a0 nation \u2013 would have taken a different path, possibly a path that could have saved lives and opened up space for peace\u00a0 and reconciliation much earlier than 2009. But the violent Tamil culture was neither tolerant nor broad enough to produce a more enlightened leader. The innate perversions and fury of Tamil culture had the potential to gestate only within a culture of\u00a0 violence and give birth to its one and only hero, Prabhakaran \u2013 a mass murderer compared, quite\u00a0 rightly, to Pol Pot by the New York Times<\/strong><\/em>. The Tamils had no way out\u00a0 from the tyrannical grip of the\u00a0 one-man regime\u00a0 as long\u00a0 as Prabhakaran was alive.<\/p>\n

Ironically, the Tamil were eventually liberated from Tamil tyranny by the sacrifices of the Sinhala soldiers of the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) who were labelled as the enemies\u00a0 of the Tamils. The Tamils walk the earth with dignity and self-respect today only because 27,000 Sinhala soldiers sacrificed their lives to get rid of their fascist tyrant who, among\u00a0 other\u00a0 evils, terrorised Tamil children by dragging them\u00a0 into a futile war. While the Tamils looked the other way, concocting excuses for this barbarity, it was the Sinhala soldiers who stepped in to save the Tamil children from the clutches of Prabhakaran, the Tamil Boko Haram.<\/p>\n

Prabhakaran\u2019s overall strategy was based on one delusional response to all challenges faced by him : <\/strong>kill his perceived enemies. It was a Pavlovian response that was self-destructive. Example :<\/strong> killing of Rajiv Gandhi. But he imagined that he was playing the role of the great fixer like his Hollywood idol, Clint Eastwood. Killing is the standard response of terrorist leaders. They hope to grab power by climbing\u00a0 over the dead bodies of their own people. Tragically, his stature grew\u00a0 in the eyes of the Tamils each time he piled one more corpse on the rising mounds of Tamil bodies rotting in his killing fields.<\/p>\n

Besides, the Tamils who followed him encouraged him by celebrating each death he caused in the name of\u00a0 the Tamils. There was no Tamil courageous enough to stop his macabre madness. He knew no limits. If, for instance, A is declared the enemy by B why should B take a gun and go on the rampage killing\u00a0 everybody from A \u2013 Z? His mindless killings prompted Prof. James Jupp of Australian National University to label Prabhakaran as a pathological killer\u201d. Prabhakaran\u2019s hate politics of killing anyone who crossed\u00a0 his\u00a0 path \u2013 from Rajiv Gandhi to pregnant Muslim women —\u00a0 borders\u00a0 on sadistic fascism. In the bloody sea of Vadukoddai violence he popped up as a maniacal wave, carrying with him the intense fury, of the intolerant, violent and arrogant Vellahla culture. Jaffna was never attuned to a democratic or tolerant culture. From\u00a0 the time of Sankilli it was rooted in\u00a0 Tamil fascist violence of various shades. The Tamil political class wear the democratic mask now, invoking human rights, essentially to hide the ruthless fascist face of Tamil violence that oppressed and persecuted their own people as a species of subhuman outcasts throughout their brief history. .<\/p>\n

On the contrary, the target of the Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL) was clear :<\/strong> the Tamil Tiger terrorists. Though there were excesses and also collateral damage in which non-combatant Tamil civilians were caught in the cross-fire, the GOSL forces did not target the Tamil civilians like the spiteful way the Tamil Tigers decimated the Tamils and the Muslims. Nor did GOSL persecute the Tamil dissidents who were openly in cahoots with the Tigers. While Prabhakaran went on the rampage massacring the Tamil leadership the GOSL gave refuge to those who survived his wrath with total freedom to oppose the state. The TNA MPs, for instance, who were the\u00a0 proxies for the Tigers, were not\u00a0 only given protection but given every opportunity to go along with LTTE politics. But the unfettered LTTErs, using all the space available in a democracy, fired on everything that was suspected of moving against Prabhakaran.<\/p>\n

M.K. Sivajilingam, Northern\u00a0 Provincial Council member, TNA, formerly of TELO, sums up the brutal violence of the LTTE, in the following quote picked from Q & A session with Ceylon Today<\/strong><\/em> (26.6. 2016.) :<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sivajilingam :<\/strong> Other than Kayts experience, there were two more incidents. Once the TNA parliamentary group led by R. Sambanthan went to Kandy to meet the Chief Prelates of Malwatta and Asgiriya. A group protested against us there. They attacked our vehicles with rocks. The driver drove the vehicle fast and stopped it before the house of the then Deputy Minister of Justice Shelton Ranaraja. He treated us very cordially. We left Kandy in the evening after the protest was over…..<\/p>\n

Q: What is the other incident?<\/p>\n

A: One day in 1986, LTTE wanted to kill me in Velvetithurai. LTTE was killing TELO sympathisers. Five of the houses of my relatives were raided in the night in search of me. I was in Mannar and saved myself. When Prabhakaran was helpless, I helped him. TELO provided him with a revolver. It was handed to Prabhakaran through Ramanathanthurai and on that day, LTTE killed him too.
\nQ: Why did LTTE respond to people like you in that way?
\nA: That was LTTE’s nature. They killed so many people who helped them. I don’t approve of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sivajilingam also stated : <\/strong>I have helped him (Prabhakaran) in many ways. If I did not help\u00a0 him\u00a0 he could have been killed.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This excerpt illustrates the experience of the Tamils in two significant ways. First, when the Tamils were threatened by the Sinhala mobs it was the Sinhala elite (Shelton Ranaraja, Deputy Minister of Justice) that\u00a0 gave them protection. Second, when the Tamils were threatened by the Tamils they received no help from the Tamils. On the contrary, the Tamils used the revolvers given to them by the Tamils and pulled the trigger to eliminate them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sivajailingam was not alone in gifting revolvers to Prabhakaran. This\u00a0 episode confirms that the guns and ammunition that killed the Tamils were supplied to Prabhakaran by the Tamil leadership, both at home\u00a0 and abroad. The Tamil diaspora in particular financed\u00a0 the Vadukoddai War that killed more Tamils than members of the other communities. Sivajilingam\u2019s confession amounts to an admission\u00a0 of guilt. As suppliers and financiers of the weapons of destruction to the LTTE, the Tamil leadership, both at\u00a0 home and abroad, were responsible for prolonging a futile war that killed more Tamils than either Sinhalese or Muslims. Having stoked the\u00a0 fires of devastating war as long as they could they are now shedding\u00a0 crocodile tears in the corridors of UNHRC accusing the GOSL of\u00a0 violating human rights. Their hypocrisy is as despicable as the brutal violence they perpetrated through their Suriya Devan\u201d.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Besides, when Sivajilingam said that killing of Tamils was LTTE\u2019s nature\u201d he admitted, perhaps unwittingly, the incurable nature of the violence inherent in the Tamil\u00a0 culture \u2013 a culture that came down from Sankilli to Prabhakaran, the crowned heir to the brutal Tamil culture of Tamils killing Tamils. The elevation of a ruthless killer of Tamils to the highest iconic level in their history reflects the inbred culture of\u00a0 violence which has no qualms\u00a0 about hero-worshipping subhuman\u00a0 violence. The Sinhalese too produced his counterpart in the person of Rohana Wijeweera, another fascist killer. But the Sinhalese have reduced him to an obscure footnote in an aberrant history that is fading\u00a0 into oblivion. The Germans have buried Hitler\u2019s memory with his ashes. Cambodians are sick to their back teeth with Pol Pot. The Tamils, on the contrary, light candles to Prabhakaran today in their living rooms as the revered hero of Tamil history. Tamils, obviously, have no one else to replace this inhuman killer.\u00a0 Arumuka Navalar and Sir. Ponnambalam Ramanathan are heroes to the reactionary Vellahlas, not to the oppressed Tamils. Jaffna, tragically, is a land without humane heroes. There was no space\u00a0 for a Gandhi or an Ambedkhar. They would have been a serious threat to the Vellahla establishment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This absence\u00a0 of respectable\u00a0 heroes questions the imagined greatness of the Tamils who never tire of boasting about a glorious culture that cannot be found\u00a0 in history books even if you peruse\u00a0 it with a magnifying glass. In any case, what humane values can the Tamils claim to possess when they worship their most noted killer as their Suriya Devan\u201d? There is a touch of pathos when Sivajilingam says:\u00a0 I have helped him (Prabhakaran) in many ways. If I did not help\u00a0 him\u00a0 he could have been killed.\u201d…….They (the Tamil Tigers) killed so many people who helped them. I don’t approve of it. But it was Sivajilingam who gave the revolver for the killings. Isn\u2019t a bit too late for remorse now?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Predictably, Tamil violence ran berserk under Prabhakaran. He had the right killer instinct to be the explosive force of the dormant Tamil culture of\u00a0 violence. And\u00a0 when the Vadukoddai Resolution activated Tamil violence it exploded with uncontrollable fury. There was no one to guide the naive gun-toting youth drunk with the political power that was legitimised\u00a0 in the Vadukoddai Resolution. The Vellahla leadership which controlled peninsular politics from feudal times discovered, rather late in the day, that power had slipped out of their hands once they declared war in the Vadukoddai Resolution and urged the Tamil youth to take up arms. The seasoned, English-educated, Vellahla elite was replaced by a megalomaniac who never knew how to handle power. That was the biggest mistake made by the Vellahla elite. They replaced their traditional casteist fascism with Prabhakaran\u2019s naked political fascism which, eventually, forced Sampanthan and Sumanthiram to go on their knees before him.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Vellahlas financed and armed the Tamil youth hoping to ride\u00a0 on their backs into power. But the Tamil youth had ideas of their own. They took the money and the arms and fired on the Tamil leaders who piously legitimised\u00a0 their violence in the Vadukoddai Resolution.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As they say, you reap what you\u00a0 sow. Chelvanyakam, the Father of the Vadukoddai Resolution, escaped the bullet of his beloved boys\u201d only because he died of natural causes before his\u00a0 political progeny could get\u00a0 him.\u00a0 Sadly, it was his anointed successor, Appapillai Amirthalingam, who had to pay the price for his sins. He was shot at point blank range by the pistols donated by Chelvanayakam\u2019s Vellahla followers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Moral :<\/strong> Tamils should beware of\u00a0 gifting pistols to Tamils. History has proved that the bullets that come out of those barrels find their loving way to lodge unerringly only in Tamil hearts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

H. L. D. Mahindapala The violence in Sri Lanka raged for 33 years, starting from the declaration of war on May 14, 1976 at Vadukoddai by the Tamil leadership and ending\u00a0 in Nandikadal on May 18, 2009 when Velupillai Prabhakaran\u2019s body was found floating in the\u00a0 murky waters of the Lagoon. This war has been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-h-l-d-mahindapala"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56131","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=56131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}