Exploiting communal feelings for cheap political ends

President of the World Tamil Confederation, Pazha Nedumaran again on Sunday has stated to an Indian news website that Velupillai Prabhakaran, the former leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) which faced a crushing defeat at the hands of the Sri Lankan armed forces in 2009, is still alive and will make a comeback very soon. 

When he said this on February 13, it understandably made headlines in Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu. And the Sri Lankan army had to waste their time and energy to deny it with facts when journalists sought their response about it. Also, understandably some politicians in Sri Lanka, as if they are bankrupt in political grounds at a time when an election is announced, attempted to rouse emotions among Sinhalese people using Nedumaran’s rib-tickling statement.

Prabhakaran is dead, no doubt. World knows it being proved in DNA tests on his body. His body was identified by none other than two of his one-time close aides, Vinaygamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna Amman and the Media Spokesman of the LTTE, Daya Master. More importantly, Prabhakaran is not a man to freeze his spirit in a refrigerator to use it another day after 14 years, as Nedumaran suggests. Whether one accepts or not, the motive of his struggle, Prabhakaran, throughout his life had been a highly dynamic and energetic man hardly willing to accept defeat or humiliation. He was not a man to go for such a hibernation, if he is alive.

Exploiting racial, religious or any other communal feelings for political gains is a universal phenomenon. Nedumaran is up to it, and nothing else. And he is well-known for this kind of antics. During the early days of the war between the armed forces and several Tamil armed groups in the North, he as Tamil Nadu Kamaraj Congress (TNKC) President once in 1983 declared that he was going with his supporters to Sri Lanka in fishing boats to support Sri Lankan Tamils. Once he reached the beach in Rameshwaram, all the boats had disappeared.

Nedumaran and another marcher were literally pushed into a leaking boat by their followers and shoved out into the waters. Somehow the boat, with the two leaders clinging to supports for dear life, made it to a launch anchored a furlong from the shore and the two quickly clambered to safety. 

Again in 2007, Nedumaran, this time as the leader of the Tamil National Movement (TNM), claimed that he along with some 500 people was going to take medicine and some essential items to Sri Lanka in boats, were arrested by the Tamil Nadu police. Then another group of his supporters who also said that they were going to Sri Lanka with similar items started a fast as the police neither want to arrest them nor allowed them to go to Sri Lanka.
Not only Nedumaran, many other Tamil Nadu politicians also seem to be more concerned about the Tamils in Sri Lanka than those in their own State. Even after the war in Sri Lanka ended on May 19, 2009, some leaders of the State have been campaigning for a Tamil Eelam, a separate Tamil State in Sri Lanka, while the Tamil leaders in Sri Lanka were openly claiming that they no longer make such a demand. 

Tamil leaders in the southern most Indian State occasionally hold diametrically opposite views on their Tamil brethren in the island.  They first competed with each other in supporting various Sri Lankan armed groups in 1980s. Subsequent to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi by the LTTE in 1991, they took a 360 degree turn and accused each other for supporting those groups. Dozens of Sri Lankan Tamils in Tamil Nadu were also killed by mobs. With armed hostilities in Sri Lanka intensifying and reports of civilian casualties emanating vociferous speeches made by the Tamil Nadu leaders resulted in self-immolation of 11 people in the State in 2008 alone. 

However, when the highly fortified Kilinochchi fell to the hands of the security forces in early January, 2009, Jeyalalithaa Jeyaram who was up to then accusing the Sri Lankan armed forces for “genocide” said “killing of innocents is inevitable in a war. No country is an exception.” Her statement was so contagious that even her arch rival, the then Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi who was also a well-known LTTE supporter said that LTTE had lost the sympathy of his party, DMK as far back as 1987 when LTTE leader expressed his willingness to establish a dictatorial state in “Tamil Eelam” and “he was sick of the LTTE.” 

We also have similar politicians in Sri Lanka. Their patriotism also seems to be seasonal. At times they shout themselves hoarse against the full implementation of the 13th Amendment, but meekly submit when “13 plus” is promised by Mahinda Rajapaksa. Making people’s blood boil over “wanda Pethi”, “wanda Koththu” and “wanda dostara” prior to the last Presidential election was another similar episode. 

Voicing for the rights of a community is not despised of here. But rousing communal feelings and pitting communities each other for political mileage is a despicable crime.