Are Tamilnadu’s political minions harbouring Tiger terrorists?

By Mohan Gunaratnam, Ranjan Jayakody and Ranjit Surendran

(March 12, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) During the latter 1980s there is proof that Vaiyapuri Gopalaswamy alias Vaiko of Telugu origin has been clandestinely visiting Prabhakaran in his Wanni bunkers. He has even spent long periods of time in consultations with him as well as being taught the use of firearms. This period of his visitations coincides with the time when the Tigers committed a series of killings including the decimation of Padmanabha and his EPRLF compatriots at Cholai Medu in Chennai and the leader of the Tamil United Liberation Front A Amirthalingam and his fellow Member of Parliament, Yogeswaran.

This was followed by the assassination of the former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. None of these killings had any bearing on the interests of the Sri Lankan Tamils but it must have surely served some purpose or other and intentions. In fact, each of these affected the standing and integrity of the Tamils because Prabhakaran kept on claiming that he was the sole voice of the Tamils.

Just like Gopalaswamy, Nedumaran shamelessly shared with Prabhakaran the Grand Dream of a Tamil Empire in South Asia. It was going to be a Tamil State encompassing entire Sri Lanka and Tamilnadu and even parts of other south Indian states and the Andamans and Nicobar Islands. They may even have had designs on the islands of the Maldives.

It was going to be on the lines of the ambition of Karikala Cholan who flew the Tiger flag and whose name “Karikalan” is the movement name that Prabhakaran took for himself. Karikala Cholan, believed to be among the last of the Chola dynasty is credited to have raised the banks of the River Kaveri. Unlike him, Prabhakaran and his terrorists attempted to destroy many irrigation tanks in Wanni and devastate agriculture in this area.

There are, however, many myths that claim that Chola kings have made campaigns even as far as the Himalayas gaining alliances and subjugating the kings of Vajira, Magadha and Avanti countries. These are myths propagated by vagrant and vagabond poets of the time and the Tamil cinema that dwells largely on fantasies corrupting historical truths without any conscience whatsoever.

Evidently, Nedumaran and Prabhakaran were sharing these myths disseminated of the Cholas and pondered on making them realities. Vaiko Gopalaswamy would have surely been a fellow mythical passenger and for all these the Tamils of Sri Lanka became tragic victims. It is always imprudent and unwise to fantasize events on dreams that may never have happened.

Even in our times there are people who have tried to sing the praises of Prabhakaran as an avatar of Lord Skanda overlooking the fact that from the day he killed Alfred Durayappah at the threshold of a historical Hindu temple July 1975, he has remained a brutal, merciless killer and has pursued a genocidal policy against the Tamils.

Tiger enthusiast Father Immanuel in Australia may differ. According to him, Prabhakaran and his fellow terrorists are the “Divine Soldiers of Christ” which is not a surprising claim with people like the Bishop of Mannar Joseph Rayappar being a virulent Tiger supporter. What did make him to grab the statue of the Holy Mother at the Madhu Church and rush to the Tiger-controlled area? This is also what Father James Pathinathar did with his parishioners. What is wrong with the Catholic Church and where does it stand on terrorism?

Another Tamilnadu “kalla thorni” politician who caused considerable problems in Jaffna was Janarthan of Malayalee origin and he too visited Prabhakaran clandestinely. Despite having arrived illegally, he tried to address the World Tamil Research Conference that was held in 1974. It was a cultural congress that was hijacked by the Tamil politicians. Until recently Janarthan has been quite a parasite exploiting the Tamil Diaspora to his personal and pleasurable advantage.

He was in fact a disgrace to decency and decorum talking about the Eelam dream by day indulging in the spirits of the bottle by dusk and end up in the professional hugs of those who have a price for their performance. He had his hangers on wherever he visited the pro-LTTE Tamil Diaspora. He specially preferred to be amidst Tamils in Toronto with his entire needs met to his satisfaction. .

Tamilnadu politicians who made their seasonal harvests among Sri Lankan Tamils living abroad were Gopalaswamy, Ramadoss, Thirumavalavan and Nedumaran. Now and then some juniors too would travel on this mission and cinema-crazy Tamils considered them as blessings from the heavens.

Reacting to the reverses the Tigers are suffering in Wanni today with their top military leaders falling like fire flies, Ramadoss who cannot win a single constituency, state or central without being hooked to one of the two principal parties, has defiantly said that Eelam would be won; may be in his small township he may persuade the locals to change the name to Eelam.

When some documents were discovered in certain Wanni bunkers with evidence of clandestine meetings between the terror chief and Tamilnadu’s political minions, many people began to wonder whether they were part of Prabhakaran’s plans to rid the Sri Lankan Tamil community of all intellectuals and political moderates and strangely with the exception of ministers Laxman Kadirgamar and Jeyaraj Fernandopulle, all the victims of his blood-letting blight were Hindus.

Prabhakaran obviously needed these political minions from Tamilnadu and it was no wonder thirty seven Tiger terrorists were kept, fed and looked after by Gopalaswamy during the time Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. They lived with him for a year and half before the killing and six months afterwards.

These coincidences cannot be ignored. India in particular must not be bowled out or run out by the terrorists in Sri Lanka and ardent terror supporters in Tamilnadu just because there is an election around. Even more, the Indian central government must make it clear to Tamilnadu politicians that Sri Lanka is out of bounds to them and their support for the terrorist cause is intolerable.

All the gymnastics that are being performed in Tamilnadu now including Jayalalitha’s fast farce from after breakfast to before evening tea as our Sri Lanka Guardian colleague appropriately claimed, have all the elements of the pre-election stunts with which they have fooled and cheated the people of Tamilnadu for decades.

Among their achievements are some emotionally rocked individuals who become hysterically overcome and listen to the voices within them to become heroes by immolating themselves. This is a kind of frenzied mob-urged murder where weak persons become victims of temporary insanity that is stirred within them. Some Tamil films have depicted how a dead body could be used to advantage in a demonstration with the dead having no connection or link to the reason why it was being held.

The DMK led by the thrice-married Karunanidhi and now propagating his thug sons for political offices and the AIADMK with Jayalalitha as its lifetime head, a legacy left behind by her paramour, must commit themselves as totally opposed to terrorism of any kind. They must also cleanse themselves of whatever politically toxic material they dabbled in which affected the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Above all, they must take the state’s political Lilliputians to task for supporting the LTTE; even charge them in courts because they have committed a crime against the laws of the country.

Above all, they must address themselves to the possibility of some of Tamilnadu’s politicians being involved in the assassination of India’s former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and also whether they offered counsel and support for a number of political killings in Sri Lanka. This is a matter for the Tamilnadu’s politicians along with the central government in New Delhi as well.

More so now, because more than Sri Lanka, it is India that needs to take care of the south and there may well be traitors in the garb of politicians in Tamilnadu and already some LTTE terrorists may have crept into Tamilnadu, Kerala and Karnataka.

Vaiko Gopalaswamy himself may be harbouring some of them if not in his house at least elsewhere. He has done it once as he publicly stated with arrogance two days ago, and he can do it again. He can do it, but Mr Gopalaswamy is not welcome in Sri Lanka and that applies to Nedumaran, Ramadoss and Thirumavalavan even Tamil cinema’s aging batman, Vijayakanth another person of Telugu origin.

This feature was prepared in great earnest to spell out that we in Sri Lanka have had enough of these Tamilnadu politicians and paid a terrible price by them supporting and helping a terrorist who will go down in history as a tyrant in the class of Cambodia’s Pol Pot.

This is also a gentle warning to New Delhi that unless strong measures are taken against these politicians, they are quite likely to engage in nurturing terrorism with the help of the fleeing LTTE cadres in Tamilnadu and consequently demand separation. -Sri Lanka Guardian