(5) Tamil nationalism and the LTTE - An outsider's comments on the Sri Lankan conflict

Like the Sinhalese, the Tamils became mired in nationalist sentiment in the decades before independence. Not all the early Tamil nationalists wanted secession, but their demands could be wild and their rhetoric shrill.

For instance, the All Ceylon Tamil Congress, led by GG Ponnambalam, lobbied for a “fifty-fifty” policy in which half the seats in the legislature should be for Tamils and other minorities, with the Sinhalese only getting half the seats despite their demographic superiority. This was never going to wash – though considering how the Sinhalese have abused their majority status, one can see the point.

Ponnambalam also militated against Sinhalese nationalism, supposedly claiming in one notorious 1939 speech that many of the early Lankan kings listed in the Mahavamsa were in fact Tamils. This played into the hands of Sinhala chauvinists, who used it as an excuse to stir up anti-Tamil riots.

After independence, the lives of Tamils became increasingly difficult in the Sinhalese-dominated state, and their politicians opted for three broad strategies.

Some became members of the two ruling parties. Ponnambalam himself joined the UNP. Some of these people were cowards and collaborators, but most were pragmatists, or people who genuinely believed in a unitary Sri Lankan state. To this day, a small but significant number of Tamils, particularly those from privileged backgrounds, side with the government.

Other Tamils campaigned in opposition parties, notably the Federal Party. After several decades without success, the opposition parties became increasingly secessionist. The Tamil United Liberation Front (TULF) ran on a separatist platform in the 1977 election, and won majorities in the North and East. It was the largest opposition party in parliament.

However, the Sinhalese changed the constitution in 1983, banning the advocacy of secession and requiring all holders of public office to commit themselves by oath to a unitary state. TULF members refused to take the oath, and were expelled from parliament. The Sinhalese-dominated state had successfully squeezed them out of democratic politics.

The third and final strategy was armed struggle. By the late 1970s, it had become clear to many Tamil nationalists that neither self-determination nor basic Tamil rights could be secured through constitutional means. Armed groups began to form, with the LTTE eventually winning out during the 1980s as the dominant force, under the leadership of Velupillai Prabhakaran.

My personal belief is that even in the dire circumstances in which the Tamils found themselves, the armed option was a mistake. It was, I think, part of the global ideology of the times. Only the most pressing and immediate peril can justify the taking of human life, and things had not reached that pass in Sri Lanka.

Within Sri Lanka, support for the LTTE remained considerable within the areas it controlled until recently, as well as within the Jaffna peninsula. There was a widespread perception among the northern Tamils that the LTTE were not so much an armed band, but part of the people – “our boys" – and their protectors against the brutal Sinhalese army.

However, there was also a fear of the LTTE, whose treatment of the Tamils under their “protection” was ruthless – necessarily so, they argued, given the wartime setting. But they were always seen by the Tamil populace as their masters, and never as their servants.

The LTTE also provided the Tamil populace with a strong negotiating hand. This would have been immensely useful, had it been used wisely. But whereas their leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, proved brilliantly effective in building the LTTE into a potent and ruthless fighting force, he lacked the political intelligence to use their power effectively.

The LTTE are invariably referred to by the Sri Lankan government as terrorists. This is false propaganda – the clash in the North has been between armies – but that said, the LTTE has always been prepared to use terrorist tactics alongside military operations, to the great weakening of the Tamil cause.

It has killed ordinary civilians with impunity. Organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented numerous atrocities and human rights violations, including massacres of villages, bombs in public places, ethnic cleansing of Sinhalese and particularly Muslims, and child soldier recruitment.

The LTTE would retort that the Sri Lankan army and rioting Sinhalese civilians took the lives of far more innocent people than the LTTE ever killed. That is correct. But that does not make it all right for the LTTE to make killing and ethnic cleansing policies of its own.

The LTTE has also used murder to stifle dissent. Scores of intellectuals, who were no friends of the Sinhala nationalist cause, but who dared to criticise the LTTE, were murdered by the Tigers. Many of these were Tamils – Tamils who were not in any sense collaborating with or abetting their foes, but who were just trying to contribute in their own way, and dared to question the Tigers.

I will mention just two, Rajani Thiranagama and Neelan Tiruchelvam.

Rajani Thiranagama was a doctor and lecturer in anatomy at the University of Jaffna, She was also a feminist and human rights activist, who condemned violations by all sides – the Sri Lankan state, the Indian Peace Keeping Force, which at that time was occupying northern Sri Lanka, and the LTTE. Because she criticised the LTTE, they shot her dead outside her house in Jaffna in 1989. She had two young daughters. She has been mourned ever since, and became well-known when a film about her life, No More Tears Sister: An Anatomy of Hope and Betrayal, was released in 2005.

Neelan Tiruchelvam was an internationally respected academic and a leader of the TULF, who tried to work out a devolution deal with President Kumaratunga. The LTTE considered him a traitor for collaborating with their enemy on a deal that fell far short of secession, and so in 1999 they killed him with a suicide bomb on the streets of Colombo.

The LTTE might have had good reasons for not liking Rajani Thiranagama and Neelan Tiruchelvam – particularly Tiruchelvam, who was working with a murderous government – but that did not justify killing them.

And quite apart from the fact that murders of this kind are wicked, barbaric and unnecessary, the LTTE seemed to have no grasp of the dire international consequences of killing respected intellectual figures. It helped turn the liberal world, whose natural instincts would be to support an oppressed people, against the Tigers.

And the LTTE’s reckless miscalculations about the consequences of killing went further still. It was the murder of Rajiv Gandhi (along with many civilians) by a female suicide bomber in 1991 that turned India, whose instinct is to protect the Tamils, irrevocably against the LTTE. Not only the Tigers, but the Tamil people are paying now for this barbarism and stupidity, as India sits back and enjoys their defeat.