Monday, 25 June 2007
மது குடிக்க வழியில்லாமல் தற்கொலை செய்து கொண்டவருக்கு 'குவார்ட்டர்' அஞ்சலி!!!
கரூர் மாவட்டம் ராயனூர் என்ற கிராமத்தில், குடிக்க மனைவி பணம் கொடுக்க மறுத்ததால் தற்கொலை செய்து கொண்டவருக்கு அவரது நண்பர்களும்,உறவினர்களும் குவார்ட்டர் பாட்டில் மது வாங்கி வந்து இறுதி அஞ்சலி செலுத்தினர். ராயனூரைச் சேர்ந்தவர் சுப்ரமணியம். கூலி வேலை செய்து வந்தார். அவரது மனைவி சந்திரகாந்தி. நேற்று மாலை குடிப்பதற்கு மனைவியிடம் பணம் கேட்டுள்ளார் சுப்ரமணியம். ஆனால் சந்திரகாந்தி பணம் தர மறுத்துள்ளார். இதனால் இருவருக்கும் இடையே தகராறு ஏற்பட்டது. குடிக்கப் பணம் தர மறுத்து விட்டாளே மனைவி என்று வருத்தமடைந்த சுப்ரமணியம், வீட்டுத் தோட்டத்தில் உள்ள மரத்தில் தூக்குப் போட்டுத் தற்கொலை செய்து கொண்டார். தகவல் பரவியதும் சுப்ரமணியத்தின் உறவினர்கள் நூற்றுக்கணக்கில், சுப்ரமணியம் வீட்டுக்கு வந்தனர். சுப்ரமணியத்திற்கு மிகவும் விருப்பமான மது பாட்டில்களை (எல்லாம் குவார்ட்டர் பாட்டில்கள்) வாங்கிக் கொண்டு வந்து சுப்ரமணியத்திறகு இறுதி அஞ்சலி செலுத்தினர். உடலை சிதையில் வைத்தபோது குவார்ட்டர் பாட்டிலகளை உடைத்து மதுவை உடல் மீது ஊற்றி 'தண்ணீர்' மல்க அஞ்சலி செலுத்திய காட்சி படு விநோதமாக இருந்தது. ஒரு குவார்ட்டர் பாட்டில் கிடைக்காத காரணத்தால்தான் சுப்ரமணியம், தற்கொலையே செய்து கொண்டார். ஆனால் அவர் இறந்த பின்னர் நூற்றுக்கணக்கான குவார்ட்டர் பாட்டில்களைக் கொண்டு வந்து அவரது நிறைவேறாத ஆசையை நிறைவேற்றி வைத்து விட்டனர் உறவினர்கள்.
வரதட்சணைக்காக மனைவியின் கிட்னியை விற்ற கணவன் கைது
வரதட்சணை தர மனைவி வீட்டார் தாமதம் செய்து வந்ததால், கோபமடைந்த கணவன், மனைவியின் சிறுநீரகத்தை எடுத்து ரூ. 80 ஆயிரத்திற்கு விற்று விட்டார். அந்த கொடூர கணவரை பொலிஸார் கைது செய்துள்ளனர். ஈரோடு மாவட்டம் பள்ளிப்பாளையம் அருகே உள்ள கருப்பண்ணார் கோவில் என்ற பகுதியைச் சேர்ந்தவர் வரதராஜன். இவருக்கு செல்வராணி என்ற மனைவி உள்ளார். இவர்களுக்கு 1 மகன், இரண்டு மகள்கள் உள்ளனர். வரதராஜன் தறி வேலைக்குச் செல்கிறார். செல்வராணி நூல் போடும் வேலையில் ஈடுபட்டுள்ளார். இந்த நிலையில் செல்வராணி வேலை முடிந்து வீடு திரும்பிக் கொண்டிருந்தபோது அவரை வழிமறித்த வரதராஜன், கத்தியால் குத்த முயன்றார். அந்தப் பக்கமாக போனவர்கள் வரதராஜனைத் தடுத்து செல்வராணியைக் காப்பாற்றினர். காயமடைந்த செல்வராணி மருத்துவமனையில் சேர்க்கப்பட்டார். பள்ளிப்பாளையம் பொலிஸார் விரைந்து வந்து வரதராஜனைப் பிடித்து விசாரித்தனர். அப்போது அவர்களுக்கு அதிர்ச்சியூட்டும் தகவல் கிடைத்தது. அதாவது, மனைவி செல்வராணியிடம் கூடுதல் வரதட்சணை கேட்டு தொந்தரவு செய்து வந்துள்ளார் வரதராஜன். ஆனால் வரதட்சணைப் பணத்தைத் தர முடியாமல் திணறியுள்ளனர் செல்வராணியின் பெற்றோர். இதனால் கோபமடைந்த வரதராஜன், மனைவியை கோவையில் உள்ள ஒரு மருத்துவமனைக்குக் கூட்டிச் சென்று அவரது சிறுநீரகத்தை அறுவைச் சிகிச்சை மூலம் எடுத்து ரூ. 80 ஆயிரத்திற்கு விற்று விட்டார். இது தொடர்பாகத்தான் வரதராஜனுக்கும், செல்வராணிக்கும் நடுத் தெருவில் சண்டை மூண்டுள்ளது. அப்போதுதான் செல்வராணியை கத்தியால் குத்தியுள்ளார் வரதராஜன். இந்த சம்பவம் அப்பகுதியில் பரபரப்பை ஏற்படுத்தியுள்ளது.
15 வயது சிறுவன், தனது தந்தையின் மருத்துவமனையில் ஒரு பெண்ணுக்குப் பிரசவம் பார்த்த விவகாரம்!
திருச்சி மாவட்டம் மணப்பாறையில் 15 வயதே ஆகும், 10வது வகுப்பு படித்து வரும் சிறுவன், தனது தந்தையின் மருத்துவமனையில் ஒரு பெண்ணுக்குப் பிரசவம் பார்த்த விவகாரம் பெரும் பரபரப்பையும், சர்ச்சையையும் எழுப்பியுள்ளது. இந்த செயலுக்கு இந்திய டாக்டர்கள் சங்கம் கடும் கண்டனம் தெரிவித்துள்ளது. திருச்சி மாவட்டம் மணப்பாறையில் காந்திமதி முருகேசன் என்ற பெயரில் தனியார் மருத்துவமனை உள்ளது. இங்கு டாக்டர்களாக முருகேசனும், அவரது மனைவி காந்திமதியும் உள்ளனர். மணப்பாறை பிரிவு இந்திய மருத்துவர் சங்கத்தின் கூட்டம் கடந்த 6ம் தேதி மணப்பாறையில் நடந்தது. அப்போது டாக்டர் முருகேசன் ஒரு வீடியோ படத்தை அங்கு திரையிட்டார். ஒரு பெண்ணுக்கு அறுவைச் சிகிச்சை மூலம் குழந்தை பிறப்பது போன்ற காட்சி அதில் இடம் பெற்றிருந்தது. இதில் என்ன விசேஷம் இருக்கிறது என்று டாக்டர்கள் கேட்டனர். அதற்கு முருகேசன், இருக்கிறது, இந்த அறுவைச் சிகிச்சையை செய்தது எனது 15 வயது மகன் திலீப் என்று கூறியுள்ளார். இதைக் கேட்டதும் அங்கு கூடியிருந்த டாக்டர்கள் அதிர்ச்சி அடைந்தனர். முருகேசனின் செயலுக்கு டாக்டர்கள் பலரும் கண்டனம் தெரிவித்தனர். இது மிகவும் தவறு என்று கூறினர். அதை மறுத்த முருகேசன், கின்னஸ் சாதனைக்காக இந்த அறுவைச் சிகிச்சையை எனது மகன் செய்தான். வெற்றிகரமாக இந்த அறுவைச் சிகிச்சை முடிந்துள்ளது. இதில் என்ன தவறு இருக்கிறது என்று எதிர் கேள்வி கேட்டார் முருகேசன். ஆனால் அங்குள்ள டாக்டர்களால் முருகேசனின் செயலை ஜீரணித்துக் கொள்ள முடியவில்லை. இந்த சம்பவம் இப்போது பெரும் சர்ச்சையை கிளப்பியுள்ளது. சர்ச்சையில் சிக்கியுள்ள திலீப், பத்தாவது வகுப்பை முடித்து விட்டு மணப்பாறையில் உள்ள மான்போர்ட் பள்ளியில் பிளஸ் ஒன் படித்து வருகிறான். முருகேசனின் செயலைக் கண்டித்து இந்திய மருத்துவ சங்கத்தின் மணப்பாறை பிரிவு அவசரமாக கூடி கண்டனத் தீர்மானம் நிறைவேற்றியது. திருச்சியில் உள்ள இந்திய மருத்துவ சங்கம் மற்றும் அகில் இந்திய தலைமை அலுவலகத்திற்கும் இந்த தீர்மான நகலை அனுப்பியுள்ளனர். டாக்டர் முருகேசனின் செயல், ஒரு உயிருடன் விளையாடியதற்கு ஒப்பாகும். இதை ஏற்றுக் கொள்ளவே முடியாது என்று டாக்டர்கள் கண்டனம் தெரிவித்துள்ளனர். இந்திய மருத்துவ சங்கத்தின் மாநிலத் தலைவர் டாக்டர் மோகன்தாஸ், முருகேசனின் செயலை கடுமையாக கண்டித்துள்ளார். அவரது டாக்டர் படிப்பை ரத்து செய்யும் வகையில் பரிந்துரை செய்ய முடியும். திருச்சி மாவட்ட இந்திய மருத்துவ சங்கத்தின் அறிக்கை கிடைத்தவுடன் இதுகுறித்து தீர்மானிப்போம் என்றார். இதற்கிடையே இந்த சம்பவம் குறித்து விரிவான விசாரணைக்கு மாவட்ட ஆட்சித் தலைவர் ஆசிஷ் வச்சானி உத்தரவிட்டுள்ளார். மாவட்ட கோட்டாட்சியர் இந்த விசாரணையை நடத்தி ஆட்சித் தலைவருக்கு அறிக்கை கொடுப்பார். அதன் அடிப்படையில் முருகேசன் மீது நடவடிக்கை எடுக்கப்படும் எனத் தெரிகிறது.
இமயமலையில் “வயாக்ரா” தேடும் நேபாள மக்கள்
“தாம்பத்திய சக்தி” தரும் மூலிகைச் செடியைத்தேடி நேபாளத்தின் இமயமலைப் பகுதியில் அந்நாட்டு மக்கள் படையெடுத்து வருகின்றனர். இது குறித்து நேபாளத்தில் இருந்து வெளியாகும் “கூர்காபத்ரா” என்ற பத்திரிகை செய்தி வெளியிட்டுள்ளது. “நேபாள வயாக்ரா” என்றழைக்கப்டும் இந்த மூலிகை, உலகின் பல நாடுகளில் மிகப்பிரபலம். நேபாளத்தில் இதற்குப் பெயர் “யார்ச்ககும்பா”. இது 2 லட்சத்து 50 ஆயிரம் ரூபாவரை விலைபோகும் என்பதால் சர்வதேச சந்தையில் இந்த மூலிகைக்கு கடும் கிராக்கி இருக்கிறது. நேபாளத்தின் முகு மாவட்டத்திலுள்ள கரண்பேக் பகுதியில் “யார்ச்சகும்பா” செடிகள் அதிகளவில் கிடைக்கும் என்பதால் அண்மையில் அப்பகுதியை நோக்கி 10 ஆயிரம் பேர் சென்றனர். மிக மோசமான வானிலை, அதிக உயரத்தின் காரணமாக ஏற்படும் மூச்சுத் திணறல் ஆகியவற்றை பற்றி இவர்கள் கவலைப்படுவதில்லை. தாம்பத்திய சக்தி தரும் இந்த மூலிகையைக் கொண்டுவர பெண்களும், குழந்தைகளும் செல்வதுதான் இதில் சுவாரஸ்யமான விஷயம். கடந்த வாரம் மூலிகையைக் கொண்டுவரச் சென்ற 16 பேர் பலியானார்கள். இவர்களில் பெண்களும் குழந்தைகளும் அடக்கம் என்பது வருத்தத்துக்குரிய செய்தி. அவர்கள் தங்குவதற்காக அமைத்திருந்த கூடாரத்தை பனிக்கட்டிகள் மூடியதால் இந்தத் துயரச் சம்பவம் நேர்ந்ததாக கூறப்படுகிறது.
ஆப்பிள் பழத்திலிருந்து எரிபொருள் தயாரிப்பு
காட்டாமணக்கு போன்ற தாவரங்களிலிருந்து எரிபொருள் தயாரிக்கும் முறை ஏற்கனவே கண்டுபிடிக்கப்பட்டு அது செயற்படுத்தப்பட்டுள்ளது. இப்போது அமெரிக்காவின் விஸ்கான்சின் பல்கலைக்கழக நிபுணர்கள் ஓரஞ்சுப்பழம், ஆப்பிள்பழம் போன்றவற்றிலிருந்து உயிரியல் எரிபொருள் தயாரித்து சாதனை படைத்துள்ளனர். இந்தப் பழங்களில் ~பிரக்டோஸ் என்ற சக்கரைச் சத்துள்ளது. இந்த சக்கரைச் சத்தைப் அமெரிக்க நிபுணர்கள் எரிபொருளாக மாற்றியுள்ளனர். ஈத்தனாலை விட அதிக சக்தி கொண்ட எரிபொருளாக இது உள்ளது. இந்த எரிபொருளைக் கொண்டு கார்களை ஓட்டிக்காட்டி சாதனையும் நடத்தியுள்ளனர். இதிலிருந்து அதிகளவு காபன் புகை வெளிவருவதில்லை. ஏற்கனவே இங்கிலாந்து விஞ்ஞானிகள் கழிவுப்பொருட்கள், பிளாஷ்;டிக் பைகள் ஆகியவற்றில் இருந்து உயிரியல் எரிபொருள் தயாரித்துள்ளனர் என்பது குறிப்பிடத்தக்கது.
Vignettes of a Tamil Refugee
Where was I born? Where will I die?
This is my delayed response to Sambol’s evocative article on the pain of those who are forced to leave their strife-torn countries. It brought back memories of one such Sri Lankan Tamil family whom I had known during my stay at Madurai. The family consisted of a couple and their three daughters in the prime of youth. The youngest one had the loveliest oval face with big communicative eyes and a skin that was unusually fair and flawless for those South of the Tropic of Cancer. Unfortunately, she had some problem with her legs and could walk only with a limp. Fate seemed to have some cruel grudge against them. The lady taught me Tamil. I was in fifth grade and the school, like many in Tamil Nadu, required me to study Tamil. I, then, barely knew the alphabet. So bad was my Tamil, that my parents eagerly waited to read my answer scripts for my unintended wit and humour.
Little employment
Instead of writing “Kandhai aanalum kasakki kattu” [Even if it is a rag, wash thoroughly before wearing it], I wrote “Thandhai aanalum kasakki kattu” [Even if it is your father, wash thoroughly before wearing it]. Thanks to her, I just failed only in my second monthly test and by the end of the year, I always managed to get above 60%.
India in the pre-Manmohan Singh era provided little employment avenues for residents, let alone refugees. And of all the places, Madurai, a very sleepy town which my uncle often calls a mega-village, gave them a very slender chance of resurrecting a living that was as respectable and as secure as they had in Sri Lanka. The lady taught in a neighbourhood school and a few students from there came to her home for tuition. Except me and a few others, most of the students were Sri Lankan Tamils. They were pretty close to each other. Probably, they derived some kind of emotional coziness from each other. I used to find their accent very different and funny. Yet, I must confess that it had an element of rhythm and purity embedded in it.
When compared to the regular rustic Tamil of Madurai, even their angry spews appeared sweet. The lady was very professional at her work and ensured that the time we spent there was used only for academics. Despite this, when some student made an odd statement about someone who returned recently or some news from Jaffna, she would become both nostalgic and hopeful. Nostalgic about the past and hopeful about the future, though she knew that there was not much to hope.
Whenever, I see Kannathil Muthamittal, I wonder if she too fled amidst shelling. The song Vidai Kodu Engal Naadu empathetically captures the pain, agony and the uncertainty of being uprooted not just from your town, but from your country.
“Nan thiRandha dhesam angae
Nan moodum dhesam engae?
Where is the land where I was born.
Where is the land where I will die?”
Development led to displacement
Of course, development always led to displacement. But the displacement a refugee faces has uncertainty written all over his future. People displaced due to development lose their home. But refugees lose their homes, their claim for compensation, their land and their identity. You begin to live on someone’s mercy. A family uprooted from a river basin confidently settles down at the nearest urban slum. But a refugee is often thinking about a piece of land for him to stand. Overnight, landlords like my tuition teacher, who owned a home in Jaffna, have to think about a place to even sit. I was there for just one year. We later shifted to Hyderabad. A few summers later, I watched her walking past my grandfather’s home, where we went for our annual summer vacation. She was now giving home tuition to one of my erstwhile friends. She was just the same. Square faced with prominent cheek bones and eyes securely rested in their deep sockets. She spoke to my mom with the same cheerfulness and wished me good luck. As she walked away, my mom recollected her travails. My mom was scared to touch upon sensitive issues like daughters’ marriages. In a small town like that we could always learn from others and if there was anything very encouraging, she would have definitely shared with us. I never heard of them again.
Tamil refugees
Some years back, when I applied for the TNPCEE exam, I was glad that there were reservations for Tamil refugees. However, it seems that since 2003, these children are being denied admission into professional courses due to some Madras High Court order and subsequent dilly-dallying of the centre. The refugee camps, which Thiru says are equivalents of open-air prisons in Kannathil Muthamittal, are going to be worse with the rising conflict in Sri Lanka. When I read Sambol’s mail, I felt how lucky he and some of those who left comments were, to go to a western country.
There were only two occasions when I could see a gleam in my teacher’s eyes. One, when she discussed about their joyful Jaffna life. Two, when she learnt how someone in a similar situation could migrate to western countries. I hope she too got a chance to move out to greener pastures.
Courtesy: Cosmic Voices
This is my delayed response to Sambol’s evocative article on the pain of those who are forced to leave their strife-torn countries. It brought back memories of one such Sri Lankan Tamil family whom I had known during my stay at Madurai. The family consisted of a couple and their three daughters in the prime of youth. The youngest one had the loveliest oval face with big communicative eyes and a skin that was unusually fair and flawless for those South of the Tropic of Cancer. Unfortunately, she had some problem with her legs and could walk only with a limp. Fate seemed to have some cruel grudge against them. The lady taught me Tamil. I was in fifth grade and the school, like many in Tamil Nadu, required me to study Tamil. I, then, barely knew the alphabet. So bad was my Tamil, that my parents eagerly waited to read my answer scripts for my unintended wit and humour.
Little employment
Instead of writing “Kandhai aanalum kasakki kattu” [Even if it is a rag, wash thoroughly before wearing it], I wrote “Thandhai aanalum kasakki kattu” [Even if it is your father, wash thoroughly before wearing it]. Thanks to her, I just failed only in my second monthly test and by the end of the year, I always managed to get above 60%.
India in the pre-Manmohan Singh era provided little employment avenues for residents, let alone refugees. And of all the places, Madurai, a very sleepy town which my uncle often calls a mega-village, gave them a very slender chance of resurrecting a living that was as respectable and as secure as they had in Sri Lanka. The lady taught in a neighbourhood school and a few students from there came to her home for tuition. Except me and a few others, most of the students were Sri Lankan Tamils. They were pretty close to each other. Probably, they derived some kind of emotional coziness from each other. I used to find their accent very different and funny. Yet, I must confess that it had an element of rhythm and purity embedded in it.
When compared to the regular rustic Tamil of Madurai, even their angry spews appeared sweet. The lady was very professional at her work and ensured that the time we spent there was used only for academics. Despite this, when some student made an odd statement about someone who returned recently or some news from Jaffna, she would become both nostalgic and hopeful. Nostalgic about the past and hopeful about the future, though she knew that there was not much to hope.
Whenever, I see Kannathil Muthamittal, I wonder if she too fled amidst shelling. The song Vidai Kodu Engal Naadu empathetically captures the pain, agony and the uncertainty of being uprooted not just from your town, but from your country.
“Nan thiRandha dhesam angae
Nan moodum dhesam engae?
Where is the land where I was born.
Where is the land where I will die?”
Development led to displacement
Of course, development always led to displacement. But the displacement a refugee faces has uncertainty written all over his future. People displaced due to development lose their home. But refugees lose their homes, their claim for compensation, their land and their identity. You begin to live on someone’s mercy. A family uprooted from a river basin confidently settles down at the nearest urban slum. But a refugee is often thinking about a piece of land for him to stand. Overnight, landlords like my tuition teacher, who owned a home in Jaffna, have to think about a place to even sit. I was there for just one year. We later shifted to Hyderabad. A few summers later, I watched her walking past my grandfather’s home, where we went for our annual summer vacation. She was now giving home tuition to one of my erstwhile friends. She was just the same. Square faced with prominent cheek bones and eyes securely rested in their deep sockets. She spoke to my mom with the same cheerfulness and wished me good luck. As she walked away, my mom recollected her travails. My mom was scared to touch upon sensitive issues like daughters’ marriages. In a small town like that we could always learn from others and if there was anything very encouraging, she would have definitely shared with us. I never heard of them again.
Tamil refugees
Some years back, when I applied for the TNPCEE exam, I was glad that there were reservations for Tamil refugees. However, it seems that since 2003, these children are being denied admission into professional courses due to some Madras High Court order and subsequent dilly-dallying of the centre. The refugee camps, which Thiru says are equivalents of open-air prisons in Kannathil Muthamittal, are going to be worse with the rising conflict in Sri Lanka. When I read Sambol’s mail, I felt how lucky he and some of those who left comments were, to go to a western country.
There were only two occasions when I could see a gleam in my teacher’s eyes. One, when she discussed about their joyful Jaffna life. Two, when she learnt how someone in a similar situation could migrate to western countries. I hope she too got a chance to move out to greener pastures.
Courtesy: Cosmic Voices
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
Sri Lanka’s stalemated conflict
Sri Lanka’s stalemated conflict
A compromise solution is the only way to settle Sri Lanka’s ethno-national war. But the logic of violence in Sri Lanka remains deeply rooted, says Sumantra Bose.
I remember Kittu well. Kittu - full name Sathasivam Krishnakumar - was the second-in-command of Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers (the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or LTTE) during the first decade of Sri Lanka’s civil war. As LTTE commander from 1985-87 on the Jaffna peninsula - the Tamil heartland in the island’s far north - Kittu, born in 1960 in Velvettithurai, a coastal town devoted to fishing and smuggling on the peninsula, led the Tigers’ meteoric rise as the civil war intensified. When he stepped down from his command, after losing a leg to an assassination attempt in 1987, he had already achieved mythic stature as a guerrilla leader.
I had many conversations with Kittu in London in the early 1990s, and remember a bespectacled, soft-spoken man of steely resolve. Kittu believed that the escalating discrimination and violence Tamils had suffered as a minority in Sri Lanka since independence from Britain in 1948 entitled them to establish a separate state covering the island’s north (which is overwhelmingly Tamil-populated) and east (which is multi-ethnic, but has a Tamil plurality) to guarantee his people’s survival, security and dignity. He told me that he decided to join the then-tiny LTTE in 1978 after working as a teenage volunteer in camps established in Jaffna for Tamil survivors, Hindu and Christian, of mob violence that broke out in 1977 in the two-thirds of the country predominantly inhabited by Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-Buddhist majority.
Kittu admitted that an outright Tamil military victory that would lead to the birth of "Tamil Eelam" the sovereign state - looked implausible, especially once the Tamil insurgents lost India’s patronage in the late 1980s, when the Tigers fought a bitter and successful guerrilla campaign against an Indian expeditionary force sent to terminate the civil war. But he insisted that the Sinhalese-Buddhist state would never treat the Tamils as true equals, nor concede their decades-old demand for self-rule in the northeastern Tamil "homeland", until brought to its knees by relentless armed resistance.
Kittu died in January 1993, when a ship on which he was sailing to Sri Lanka to rejoin the struggle was intercepted by the Indian navy in the Indian Ocean. After a stand-off, he apparently blew up the ship rather than surrender, and went down with nine other Tigers - mostly officers of the movement’s naval wing, the Sea Tigers - after allowing the nine professional crew of the trapped ship, who were not LTTE members, to depart in a lifeboat. The LTTE’s warrior code, which asks of fighters that they kill themselves rather than be captured alive by the enemy - the LTTE’s fighters, male and female, typically bite into capsules of potassium cyanide worn around their necks to avert capture - dictated this end.Sumantra Bose is professor of international and comparative politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His books include Bosnia after Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention (Oxford University Press, 2002), Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace (Harvard University Press, 2003 (paperback edition, 2005), and Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus, and Sri Lanka (Harvard University Press, 2007)The footsoldiers’ war
The Tamil Tigers continued to wage a ferocious and ever bloodier war of independence for almost a decade after Kittu’s demise, drawing on the thousands of footsoldiers inspired by mahaveerar (great heroes) like the legendary Sathasivam Krishnakumar. I met one such footsoldier in September 2004, at the "immigration and customs" point for travellers seeking to enter the LTTE-controlled zone in Sri Lanka’s north.
He was probably in his early 20s, working at the Tigers’ checkpoint at Omanthai, ten miles north of Vavuniya, the last government-held town before Tiger territory. As he processed my paperwork, he noticed me looking at a large poster on the shed’s wall of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE’s founder and supreme leader. "That’s Prabha", he informed me, as a warm and innocent smile spread across his face and lit up his eyes. He then went on, in halting English, that he had lost both parents to the war - in either artillery shelling or aerial bombing by the government, he conveyed that some sort of explosion was responsible - while his two older brothers and one sister had all died in combat, fighting for the LTTE.
A generation earlier, Kittu had made a conscious decision to take up arms against a state he viewed as discriminatory and brutal towards his people. But this youth, manning the frontlines of a stalemated civil war, had probably not had much of a choice. Orphaned and bereaved, he is the product of a brutalised society in which the iyakkam (movement) came to represent the only remaining refuge. Between November 1982, when the first LTTE militant fell in battle, and February 2002, when a now-collapsed ceasefire agreement mediated by Norway put a temporary end to two decades of civil war, the Tigers lost 17,780 fighters in action - about a quarter of whom were female and many were children. By November 2006, that figure had risen to 18,742 killed, most since end-2005, when the ceasefire collapsed in all but name and the peace process effectively expired.
The Tigers’ turn
In 2002, the Tigers made a strategic shift. They agreed to put the armed struggle in abeyance and participate in a peace process facilitated by Norway. This was not an ideological shift - Eelam remained a sacred concept, and glorification of armed struggle and martyrdom continued. But it was more than an expedient tactical shift.
The strategic shift had three causes. First, by 2001 the war was well and truly stalemated. In 2000 a major Tiger offensive to retake the Jaffna peninsula from government control stalled after stunning initial victories, and LTTE forces were pushed back to the peripheries of the peninsula (in 2001, the Tigers repulsed a government attempt to evict them from these areas, and subsequently launched a devastating suicide-commando raid on Colombo airport to demonstrate their long reach).
Second, the areas held and administered by the Tigers on the northern mainland and the eastern province consisted primarily of jungle and rural hinterlands, their populations cut off from government-held towns like Jaffna in the north and Trincomalee and Batticaloa in the east and trapped in dire economic conditions.
Third, the Tigers were internationally more ostracised than ever, banned in India and Britain and listed as a "foreign terrorist organisation" by the United States. The LTTE leadership belatedly realised the need to recover some international credibility. In late 2002 the Tigers reformulated their agenda to "internal self-determination", based on "regional self-government" and a "system of self-rule...within a federal structure" - specifically "substantial autonomy...for north-eastern Sri Lanka, the homeland of the Tamils and Muslims [Muslims, the country’s third-largest ethnic community, are a fifth of the northeast’s population and a third in the east]".
Five years on, the conditions that made the ceasefire possible have not changed. The war is still in a strategic stalemate that is unlikely to be broken. The belligerents can score strategic victories over each other, if at all, only at prohibitive cost to themselves - an all-out Tiger attack on the Jaffna peninsula will produce LTTE casualties on a scale the movement cannot afford, while an all-out government attack on the main LTTE military formations and bases located in the Vanni region, the northern mainland south of the peninsula, will produce crippling losses for the army. Neither side may be able to hold territory gained in such large-scale offensives. That is why the renewed fighting has been limited to skirmishing, commando raids, and a few localised pitched battles, in addition to a spate of death-squad killings.
In March 2007 the Tigers unveiled their capacity to wage war from the air with a characteristically daring bombing raid on the government’s main airbase just north of Colombo, conducted by two light aircraft which flew in from the Vanni and returned safely to base. The "Tamil Eelam Air Force" repeated the sortie a month later, this time targeting oil and gas installations near the capital, and LTTE light bombers have also been in action once in Jaffna’s skies. But while the small LTTE air fleet is a feat for a non-state actor, its effect is to deepen the strategic stalemate, by making the Colombo government’s visions of a military victory ever more risky.
Economic prospects continue to be critically dependent on ending the war. The limited reconstruction in LTTE-controlled areas since 2002 is in jeopardy. In the east the Tigers have been forced to let civilians living in areas they controlled leave for government-controlled zones - and subsequently, denied population cover, their fighters too have had to vacate these areas - due to intolerable pressure generated on these civilians by government blockades on essential goods, backed up by constant artillery shelling and aerial attacks by government forces.
But the economic factor cuts both ways. The government’s militarist agenda entails spiralling defence expenditures, which threaten to destroy the remnants of Sri Lanka’s once outstanding developmental state and exacerbate poverty (a previous Colombo government’s "war for peace" between 1995 and 2001 was eventually exposed as not just militarily but financially unsustainable). After the ceasefire, annual growth quadrupled from 1.4% in 2002 to 5.6% in 2003, and tourism revenues soared. All that stands to be undone.
On the international scene, the Tigers made some progress on improving their reputation after entering into the 2002 ceasefire which committed "the Parties" - the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - "to find a negotiated solution to the ongoing ethnic conflict." But after the ceasefire unravelled, the LTTE has been faced with renewed isolation. In May 2006 it was banned by the European Union, in an ill-timed decision whose effect was to encourage warmongers among the Sinhalese and hardliners in the Colombo government and its military. Colombo does not face the same specter of international isolation, since states have a legitimacy in the international system that rebel movements do not.
An unwinnable war
If the armed conflict is unwinnable by each side, and the peace dividend so obvious and substantial, what explains the breakdown of the peace process? This is a puzzle, though hardly an inexplicable one, that applies to many ethno-national conflicts.
In Sri Lanka’s case, the Tigers have contributed significantly to the breakdown. In April 2003 they suspended peace talks, on flimsy grounds, with Ranil Wickremasinghe, the relatively moderate prime minister then in office, who had signed the ceasefire agreement with Prabhakaran. The peace process never recovered momentum thereafter. In November 2005, with the process in freefall, the Tigers called on Tamils to abstain from a contest for the country’s powerful presidency between the dovish Wickremasinghe and Mahinda Rajapakse, a hardliner backed by Sinhalese chauvinist groups, on the flawed reasoning that Sinhalese politicians are uniformly inimical to Tamil aspirations. Tamil turnout was low as a result, and this enabled Rajapakse to beat Wickremasinghe by a razor-thin margin. Rajapakse’s ascent to power in Colombo dealt the comatose peace process a mortal blow.
After the ceasefire, the Tigers also continued their practices of recruiting child soldiers, and killing anti-LTTE Tamils. Lakshamn Kadirgamar, the Sri Lankan foreign minister (and a Tamil), was assassinated in Colombo in August 2005. From 2006, LTTE teams have been conducting decapitation attacks on the Sri Lankan military hierarchy - the army commander was gravely wounded by a woman suicide-bomber in Colombo in April 2006. The growing evidence of the LTTE’s unreformed nature boosted the anti-peace movement which has steadily gathered strength and momentum among Sinhalese-Buddhists since 2003 (the Tigers cite government provocations, such as the military’s use since 2004 of a renegade LTTE militia led by Colonel Karuna in the east’s Batticaloa district to murder senior LTTE officers and prominent civilian supporters). Norway, the third party in the peace process, lacked the clout to rescue the process from terminal decline.
Yet the Tigers’ foibles have simply provided additional energy to an anti-peace movement that is deeply ingrained in Sinhalese-Buddhist society, and which is essentially opposed to any political settlement with the Tamils. These elements, especially the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People’s Liberation Front / JVP), an extreme majoritarian-nationalist group, were in 2005 responsible for sabotaging the joint government-LTTE mechanism for post-tsunami reconstruction advocated by the United States and India.
From Sri Lanka to Cyprus and until recently, Northern Ireland, ethno-national majorities harbour powerful forces wedded to ideas of hegemonic dominance. Peace in Sri Lanka is contingent on the defeat of such supremacist delusions, and the reconstruction of the island as a federal state which institutionalises self-rule for a Tamil-majority northeast, combined with a measure of shared rule at the centre in Colombo for representatives of all of the island’s communities and a measure of shared rule within the autonomous northeast for its Tamil majority and Muslim and Sinhalese minorities. The extent of self-rule would have to be a compromise between the Tigers’ preference for a loose confederation, on the lines of what the Dayton agreement engineered for Bosnia and the Annan plan prescribed for Cyprus, and the moderate devolution favored by Sinhalese doves, whose model is unitary but decentralised states like the United Kingdom and Spain.
Such a solution is contingent on the LTTE’s involvement and cooperation. The Tigers are arguably no more ideologically dogmatic than the Provisional IRA had historically been. The Tigers’ influence among their people - partly coerced, but much of it genuinely popular - is comparable to that of the Palestine Liberation Organisation among Palestinians at its zenith in the 1970s. In Sri Lanka’s last parliamentary election, in April 2004, Tiger-backed candidates swept the Tamil electorates in the north and east. On the Jaffna peninsula, almost entirely under the government’s military control, candidates endorsed by the Tigers won 90% of the popular vote. In the multi-ethnic east-coast district of Trincomalee, where most Tamil voters also live in government-controlled areas, LTTE-backed candidates polled 69,087 votes, while a rival Tamil group sponsored by the government and military got 560 votes.
In early July 2007, the Tigers will observe "Black Tigers’ Day" - the twentieth annual commemoration of the first attack by the LTTE’s suicide-warfare specialists, the Black Tigers, on 5 July 1987. At the last Black Tiger commemoration in July 2006, Black Tiger martyrs stood at 273 - 199 men and seventy-four women. Unfortunately, that number, and those of their victims, looks likely to rise in the foreseeable future.
Source photography : AP
I had many conversations with Kittu in London in the early 1990s, and remember a bespectacled, soft-spoken man of steely resolve. Kittu believed that the escalating discrimination and violence Tamils had suffered as a minority in Sri Lanka since independence from Britain in 1948 entitled them to establish a separate state covering the island’s north (which is overwhelmingly Tamil-populated) and east (which is multi-ethnic, but has a Tamil plurality) to guarantee his people’s survival, security and dignity. He told me that he decided to join the then-tiny LTTE in 1978 after working as a teenage volunteer in camps established in Jaffna for Tamil survivors, Hindu and Christian, of mob violence that broke out in 1977 in the two-thirds of the country predominantly inhabited by Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese-Buddhist majority.
Kittu admitted that an outright Tamil military victory that would lead to the birth of "Tamil Eelam" the sovereign state - looked implausible, especially once the Tamil insurgents lost India’s patronage in the late 1980s, when the Tigers fought a bitter and successful guerrilla campaign against an Indian expeditionary force sent to terminate the civil war. But he insisted that the Sinhalese-Buddhist state would never treat the Tamils as true equals, nor concede their decades-old demand for self-rule in the northeastern Tamil "homeland", until brought to its knees by relentless armed resistance.
Kittu died in January 1993, when a ship on which he was sailing to Sri Lanka to rejoin the struggle was intercepted by the Indian navy in the Indian Ocean. After a stand-off, he apparently blew up the ship rather than surrender, and went down with nine other Tigers - mostly officers of the movement’s naval wing, the Sea Tigers - after allowing the nine professional crew of the trapped ship, who were not LTTE members, to depart in a lifeboat. The LTTE’s warrior code, which asks of fighters that they kill themselves rather than be captured alive by the enemy - the LTTE’s fighters, male and female, typically bite into capsules of potassium cyanide worn around their necks to avert capture - dictated this end.Sumantra Bose is professor of international and comparative politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). His books include Bosnia after Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention (Oxford University Press, 2002), Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace (Harvard University Press, 2003 (paperback edition, 2005), and Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus, and Sri Lanka (Harvard University Press, 2007)The footsoldiers’ war
The Tamil Tigers continued to wage a ferocious and ever bloodier war of independence for almost a decade after Kittu’s demise, drawing on the thousands of footsoldiers inspired by mahaveerar (great heroes) like the legendary Sathasivam Krishnakumar. I met one such footsoldier in September 2004, at the "immigration and customs" point for travellers seeking to enter the LTTE-controlled zone in Sri Lanka’s north.
He was probably in his early 20s, working at the Tigers’ checkpoint at Omanthai, ten miles north of Vavuniya, the last government-held town before Tiger territory. As he processed my paperwork, he noticed me looking at a large poster on the shed’s wall of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the LTTE’s founder and supreme leader. "That’s Prabha", he informed me, as a warm and innocent smile spread across his face and lit up his eyes. He then went on, in halting English, that he had lost both parents to the war - in either artillery shelling or aerial bombing by the government, he conveyed that some sort of explosion was responsible - while his two older brothers and one sister had all died in combat, fighting for the LTTE.
A generation earlier, Kittu had made a conscious decision to take up arms against a state he viewed as discriminatory and brutal towards his people. But this youth, manning the frontlines of a stalemated civil war, had probably not had much of a choice. Orphaned and bereaved, he is the product of a brutalised society in which the iyakkam (movement) came to represent the only remaining refuge. Between November 1982, when the first LTTE militant fell in battle, and February 2002, when a now-collapsed ceasefire agreement mediated by Norway put a temporary end to two decades of civil war, the Tigers lost 17,780 fighters in action - about a quarter of whom were female and many were children. By November 2006, that figure had risen to 18,742 killed, most since end-2005, when the ceasefire collapsed in all but name and the peace process effectively expired.
The Tigers’ turn
In 2002, the Tigers made a strategic shift. They agreed to put the armed struggle in abeyance and participate in a peace process facilitated by Norway. This was not an ideological shift - Eelam remained a sacred concept, and glorification of armed struggle and martyrdom continued. But it was more than an expedient tactical shift.
The strategic shift had three causes. First, by 2001 the war was well and truly stalemated. In 2000 a major Tiger offensive to retake the Jaffna peninsula from government control stalled after stunning initial victories, and LTTE forces were pushed back to the peripheries of the peninsula (in 2001, the Tigers repulsed a government attempt to evict them from these areas, and subsequently launched a devastating suicide-commando raid on Colombo airport to demonstrate their long reach).
Second, the areas held and administered by the Tigers on the northern mainland and the eastern province consisted primarily of jungle and rural hinterlands, their populations cut off from government-held towns like Jaffna in the north and Trincomalee and Batticaloa in the east and trapped in dire economic conditions.
Third, the Tigers were internationally more ostracised than ever, banned in India and Britain and listed as a "foreign terrorist organisation" by the United States. The LTTE leadership belatedly realised the need to recover some international credibility. In late 2002 the Tigers reformulated their agenda to "internal self-determination", based on "regional self-government" and a "system of self-rule...within a federal structure" - specifically "substantial autonomy...for north-eastern Sri Lanka, the homeland of the Tamils and Muslims [Muslims, the country’s third-largest ethnic community, are a fifth of the northeast’s population and a third in the east]".
Five years on, the conditions that made the ceasefire possible have not changed. The war is still in a strategic stalemate that is unlikely to be broken. The belligerents can score strategic victories over each other, if at all, only at prohibitive cost to themselves - an all-out Tiger attack on the Jaffna peninsula will produce LTTE casualties on a scale the movement cannot afford, while an all-out government attack on the main LTTE military formations and bases located in the Vanni region, the northern mainland south of the peninsula, will produce crippling losses for the army. Neither side may be able to hold territory gained in such large-scale offensives. That is why the renewed fighting has been limited to skirmishing, commando raids, and a few localised pitched battles, in addition to a spate of death-squad killings.
In March 2007 the Tigers unveiled their capacity to wage war from the air with a characteristically daring bombing raid on the government’s main airbase just north of Colombo, conducted by two light aircraft which flew in from the Vanni and returned safely to base. The "Tamil Eelam Air Force" repeated the sortie a month later, this time targeting oil and gas installations near the capital, and LTTE light bombers have also been in action once in Jaffna’s skies. But while the small LTTE air fleet is a feat for a non-state actor, its effect is to deepen the strategic stalemate, by making the Colombo government’s visions of a military victory ever more risky.
Economic prospects continue to be critically dependent on ending the war. The limited reconstruction in LTTE-controlled areas since 2002 is in jeopardy. In the east the Tigers have been forced to let civilians living in areas they controlled leave for government-controlled zones - and subsequently, denied population cover, their fighters too have had to vacate these areas - due to intolerable pressure generated on these civilians by government blockades on essential goods, backed up by constant artillery shelling and aerial attacks by government forces.
But the economic factor cuts both ways. The government’s militarist agenda entails spiralling defence expenditures, which threaten to destroy the remnants of Sri Lanka’s once outstanding developmental state and exacerbate poverty (a previous Colombo government’s "war for peace" between 1995 and 2001 was eventually exposed as not just militarily but financially unsustainable). After the ceasefire, annual growth quadrupled from 1.4% in 2002 to 5.6% in 2003, and tourism revenues soared. All that stands to be undone.
On the international scene, the Tigers made some progress on improving their reputation after entering into the 2002 ceasefire which committed "the Parties" - the government of Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam - "to find a negotiated solution to the ongoing ethnic conflict." But after the ceasefire unravelled, the LTTE has been faced with renewed isolation. In May 2006 it was banned by the European Union, in an ill-timed decision whose effect was to encourage warmongers among the Sinhalese and hardliners in the Colombo government and its military. Colombo does not face the same specter of international isolation, since states have a legitimacy in the international system that rebel movements do not.
An unwinnable war
If the armed conflict is unwinnable by each side, and the peace dividend so obvious and substantial, what explains the breakdown of the peace process? This is a puzzle, though hardly an inexplicable one, that applies to many ethno-national conflicts.
In Sri Lanka’s case, the Tigers have contributed significantly to the breakdown. In April 2003 they suspended peace talks, on flimsy grounds, with Ranil Wickremasinghe, the relatively moderate prime minister then in office, who had signed the ceasefire agreement with Prabhakaran. The peace process never recovered momentum thereafter. In November 2005, with the process in freefall, the Tigers called on Tamils to abstain from a contest for the country’s powerful presidency between the dovish Wickremasinghe and Mahinda Rajapakse, a hardliner backed by Sinhalese chauvinist groups, on the flawed reasoning that Sinhalese politicians are uniformly inimical to Tamil aspirations. Tamil turnout was low as a result, and this enabled Rajapakse to beat Wickremasinghe by a razor-thin margin. Rajapakse’s ascent to power in Colombo dealt the comatose peace process a mortal blow.
After the ceasefire, the Tigers also continued their practices of recruiting child soldiers, and killing anti-LTTE Tamils. Lakshamn Kadirgamar, the Sri Lankan foreign minister (and a Tamil), was assassinated in Colombo in August 2005. From 2006, LTTE teams have been conducting decapitation attacks on the Sri Lankan military hierarchy - the army commander was gravely wounded by a woman suicide-bomber in Colombo in April 2006. The growing evidence of the LTTE’s unreformed nature boosted the anti-peace movement which has steadily gathered strength and momentum among Sinhalese-Buddhists since 2003 (the Tigers cite government provocations, such as the military’s use since 2004 of a renegade LTTE militia led by Colonel Karuna in the east’s Batticaloa district to murder senior LTTE officers and prominent civilian supporters). Norway, the third party in the peace process, lacked the clout to rescue the process from terminal decline.
Yet the Tigers’ foibles have simply provided additional energy to an anti-peace movement that is deeply ingrained in Sinhalese-Buddhist society, and which is essentially opposed to any political settlement with the Tamils. These elements, especially the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (People’s Liberation Front / JVP), an extreme majoritarian-nationalist group, were in 2005 responsible for sabotaging the joint government-LTTE mechanism for post-tsunami reconstruction advocated by the United States and India.
From Sri Lanka to Cyprus and until recently, Northern Ireland, ethno-national majorities harbour powerful forces wedded to ideas of hegemonic dominance. Peace in Sri Lanka is contingent on the defeat of such supremacist delusions, and the reconstruction of the island as a federal state which institutionalises self-rule for a Tamil-majority northeast, combined with a measure of shared rule at the centre in Colombo for representatives of all of the island’s communities and a measure of shared rule within the autonomous northeast for its Tamil majority and Muslim and Sinhalese minorities. The extent of self-rule would have to be a compromise between the Tigers’ preference for a loose confederation, on the lines of what the Dayton agreement engineered for Bosnia and the Annan plan prescribed for Cyprus, and the moderate devolution favored by Sinhalese doves, whose model is unitary but decentralised states like the United Kingdom and Spain.
Such a solution is contingent on the LTTE’s involvement and cooperation. The Tigers are arguably no more ideologically dogmatic than the Provisional IRA had historically been. The Tigers’ influence among their people - partly coerced, but much of it genuinely popular - is comparable to that of the Palestine Liberation Organisation among Palestinians at its zenith in the 1970s. In Sri Lanka’s last parliamentary election, in April 2004, Tiger-backed candidates swept the Tamil electorates in the north and east. On the Jaffna peninsula, almost entirely under the government’s military control, candidates endorsed by the Tigers won 90% of the popular vote. In the multi-ethnic east-coast district of Trincomalee, where most Tamil voters also live in government-controlled areas, LTTE-backed candidates polled 69,087 votes, while a rival Tamil group sponsored by the government and military got 560 votes.
In early July 2007, the Tigers will observe "Black Tigers’ Day" - the twentieth annual commemoration of the first attack by the LTTE’s suicide-warfare specialists, the Black Tigers, on 5 July 1987. At the last Black Tiger commemoration in July 2006, Black Tiger martyrs stood at 273 - 199 men and seventy-four women. Unfortunately, that number, and those of their victims, looks likely to rise in the foreseeable future.
Source photography : AP
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