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| Sunday, 21 April 2002 |
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Armed Virgins Getting ready to celebrate life by FRANCES BULATHSINGHALA Young face The short crop which slightly juts out of her Tiger cap makes her look boyish. Tall and lanky, her gait further accentuates her boyishness. Even her name is a boyish "Selva". There is clearly a conscious attempt to hide her twenty five-year-old femininity. It is her smile which brings it out.
The smile had been wiped from her face at the age of 18 after watching both her parents die caught in a cross fire between the Tamil Tigers and the Sri Lankan army, in Jaffna. The trauma had driven her to the Tigers who promised salvation through bloody revenge and a life of grim sacrifices. When the ice was broken, Selva seemed eager to talk. "Where did you study? Is this your first visit to Vanni? Do you have Tamil friends in Jaffna?," she asks in English, after I sheepishly say "Tamil Theriya Ille" (I don't know Tamil). I give a short resume, and without much ado, shoot the all important question: "Why did you join the LTTE?". It sounds harsh even to my ears. But I proceed undeterred: "What made you join the movement?". I know it hurts. I make a feeble attempt to smoothen the impact. To my relief, Selva is cool. She has been taught to hide her emotions. "Because my parents were killed", she replies. Didn't you have others in your family to look after you?. I nudge gingerly. "No", she says with a finality. I ask no more. It is one of those moments when one realises that being a journalist is as embarrassing as being a doctor with a patient whose condition is beyond redemption. We walk through the Economic Centre of the LTTE in Vatakatchy, near Kilinochchi, to where the girls' hostel is.It is a long walk, through demolished buildings looking pale and ghostly in the moon light. The conversation has reached a dead end. And the abnormality of the circumstance begins to tell. I am a Sinhalese and a journalist. She is a Tamil and a member of one of the world's most dreaded guerrilla outfits which targetted the Sinhalese. And I am the first Sinhalese she has ever spoken to. With each passing minute, I become acutely conscious than ever of the fact that Selva has imbibed the LTTE view of the Sinhalese, having been bombarded with LTTE propaganda used while hostilities were continuing about the villainy and brutality of the Sinhalese. On reaching the girls hostel, a run down thatched building with the paint peeling off, Selva gets busy arranging the hard wooden beds. I learn that these had been moved in only for us, women journalists. LTTE cadres do not sleep on beds but on mattresses on the floor. While Selva tidy and spruce up the place, refusing to accept my offer to help, I try a question which is the girls' favourite: "Do you have a boyfriend?" . But here it smacks of blasphemy. I had been told that the puritanical LTTE did not encourage such tender relationships. Moreover, how could one have boy friends in the midst of war, death and destruction? Boyfriends are the prerogative of girls-without-a-war. Girls in whose heads death do not lurk, whose eyes do not get old in a face that is young. But I persist with my absurdity. "We are going to have peace now. Your leader says so. Have you new plans for your future?" She laughs and says with steely determination: "I'll be with the movement. It is good this way". Having for 19 years been rigged to celebrated death in an amphitheatre of war, celebrating life in the amphitheatre of peace is going to be difficult for Selva and the hundreds of others (according to previous reports there are estimated to be around 4,000 female cadres). The LTTE, since it began its armed struggle has begun proliferating a new generation of women, the female LTTE cadres having been instructed to embrace androgyny, replacing the traditional dress code of Tamil women - rich sarees, brilliant jewellery, multihued flowers in their hair, anklets and toe ring - with combat fatigues and boots, to present an unostentatious disposition heightened in its paradox by the killer cyanide capsule, Undoubtedly the enroling of females into the fighting force of the LTTE has resulted in a drastic metamorphosis with regard to the symbolic representation of women in Tamil society. The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, having wrecked havoc with this symbolism, is pointed out by those who have delved deep into the intricacies of the LTTEs dogmas for its women cadres, as having two classifications where the role of women in the 'cause' is concerned - the militant mother and the armed virgin. Neither of the two ideals is in resonance with the traditional role of the 'prosperous wife' which the Hindu culture treasures. Although it can be argued that the militant mother is a common image in the war poetry of the Tamil Golden Age or the Sangam period, where mothers rejoice when they hear tales of the brave deaths of their sons, the ideal of the armed virgin is considered purely as an innovation by the LTTE. One which apparently Adele Balasingham, the Australian born wife of Anton Balasingham and a linchpin in the streamlining of the women cadres, considers a welcome step in the liberation of women, an opinion which the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Radhika Coomaraswamy, in her writings had expressed her disagreement. Adele Balasingham's thinking is echoed by Raji, who works as the hostel mistress of the LTTE girl's hostel saying that the hostel serves as a training school for the girls. She explains that it provides an 'opportunity' for girls, which they would have otherwise missed, ending up languishing in some welfare camp or other. Raji had fled Jaffna at the height of a battle ten years ago. Having spent almost a year at a welfare camp in Jaffna with her husband, she has first hand experience of the paucity and depression that a welfare camp provides. Today, she is looked upon by the girls as the closest thing to a mother. "Even for administration work we need a lot of workforce. There are separate groups who are in charge of the farms", explains Raji, pointing to a large area of land dedicated to chicken farms. The female cadres who are not heavily involved in the military are entrusted with administrative work, Raji informs me in her restricted English vocabulary. I impose the peace brand once again interjecting a reasoning to the effect that since it is now peace or at least an atmosphere that acts as a harbinger to peace, that all the LTTE girls must be involved in administrative work. All I get is a smile as an answer. My conversation with Raji takes place when she is escorting me from the girls hostel to the place that we are to have dinner, a simple tasty meal prepared by a separate group of female cadres, a Herculean task considering that they had to cook for over four hundred people. Raji and I are joined by another girl, a twenty four year old whose hand and leg were injured and misshapen due to being caught in a land mine attack. One by one I am surrounded by girls who have lost their limbs due to mines. "The future will rectify this" - the brain surges forward a hope which is desperate. PEACE. No cyanide capsules around their necks. No suicide missions. No gun toting. One wonders whether Velupillai Prabhakaran, the father of the LTTE would make as much effort at preparing his cadres for peace as much as he did preparing them for war. |
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Femininity, however in this young woman is a forgotten element.
