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| Sunday, 28 September 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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The loneliness of the elusive gunman SUNDAY ESSAY by AJITH SAMARANAYAKE There can be no wide spectrum of opinion on the subject of Velupillai Prabhakaran. To the majority (and certainly to the Sinhalese) he is a blood-thirsty killer and a megalomaniac who will not hesitate to even get rid of his own Tamil political rivals in his ambition of achieving a separate state of Tamil Eelam. To others (and this includes those Tamils who will concede this only in private) he is the only man who has confronted the State boldly and given dignity to the Tamil people in the face of discrimination by 'Sinhala Governments' since Independence. But as M.R. Narayana Swamy observes in his book 'Inside an Elusive Mind' which is sub-titled 'The first profile of the world's most ruthless guerrilla leader' (Vijitha Yapa Publications - Rs. 799) this second image has come to be somewhat blurred and distorted by the number of ruthless killings he has ordered, if not large-scale massacres of the innocent, although his formidable position in the politics of Sri Lanka remains beyond question. As the writer himself admits he had met the LTTE supremo only once and here he too is in agreement with Anita Pratap (who, of course, has met and interviewed Prabhakaran several times) that he looks anything but the dreaded killer that he is. So this book is compiled on information he has collected from talking to numerous sources, LTTE supporters and sympathisers in Sri Lanka, India, Britain and Canada but here again he says that although there are several thousand former LTTE cadres in western countries nobody would venture to talk about the insides of the LTTE; such is the dread the organisation instils even in those who have left it. Loner Prabhakaran as Narayana Swamy, recounts was the last child born to a conventional Hindu middle-class family. His father Velupillai who had been born in Singapore since his father was attached to the postal service there, was a typical example of the archetypal Jaffna man. Beginning life as a clerk he ended up as a District Land Officer and was a strict disciplinarian. He was highly respected in the area and Prabhakaran grew up something of a loner because the children of the Velupillai family were not encouraged to mix with other children. His father did not like the idea of friends dropping in to visit his son. Yet Prabhakaran had the highest respect for his father in spite of his stern ways which might encourage a 'pop' psychologist to conclude that this would have induced in him an admiration for authority figures such as what he himself would evolve to be later. 'Thambi,' as he came to be known, was not much of a student but his family became somewhat alarmed when the boy whose hobby had been kite-flying now took to the catapault and graduated to an air-gun killing birds, chameleons and squirrels. They were amused when he began learning judo and karate but Velupillai as a Government servant became distinctly alarmed when in his first act of dare-devilry Prabhakaran ganged up with some other boys and set fire to a CTB bus quite close to his home at VVT. Relations between father and son became strained and Prabhakaran began to keep away from home regularly until he left for ever in pursuit of his dream. Methods of militancy Of course in a case like this one does not know how to separate fact from fantasy. For example we are told that Thamby liked to read books about revolutionaries, about the exploits of Napoleon and watched plays by Socrates but considering the fact that these were the 1970s it is unlikely that much of this literature or drama was available in Tamil (even given the fact of imports from Tamil Nadu) particularly since we are informed that much later on as LTTE leader when Prabhakaran began to discover Che Guevara, Balasingham had to translate books on Guevara from English into Tamil for Prabhakaran's use. But what is closer to the truth is the fact that Prabhakaran was infected by the political climate of the 1970's in the North which was veering away from the parliamentary politics of the Federal Party and toying with the methods of militancy as demonstrated by Prabhakaran's own incendiary experiment on a CTB bus. As Narayan Swamy recounts Prabhakaran's greatest hero of the time and the immediate catalyst for his own rebelliousness was Sivakumaran, the first Tamil martyr. Sivakumaran, who unlike Prabhakaran was a bright student, was debarred from entering the university by the system of standardisation of marks which was then in effect. Disillusioned by this discrimination he resorted to assorted anarchic acts such as an abortive attempt to kill Jaffna's SLFP Mayor Alfred Duraiappah (later slain by Thamby himself) and took his own life by taking a cyanide capsule when he was caught by the Police trying to rob a bank. It was this atmosphere of fierce anti-Sinhala rhetoric and the anarchic methods of protesting against discrimination on the part of the youth which was the forging house for Prabhakaran's own incipient militancy. Accompanied by his cousin Periya Sothi he crossed to Tamil Nadu and found a mentor in T.R. Janardhanan, the leading champion of the Sri Lankan Tamil cause in South India. Self-taught What follows is a meticulous recounting of Prabhakaran's transformation from the leader of a ragged band of young men pursuing what looked like the chimera of a separate Tamil state to that of the supreme leader of a fighting machine which was able to hold its own not merely with the Sri Lanka Army but also the mighty Indian Army and the Indian State. The impression one gets of Prabhakaran is that of a self-taught military strategist, tactician and fighter disdainful both of theory as well as foreign military training. For example when Rajee who had trained with the Al Fatah in Lebanon and Syria visits him Prabhakaran invites him to fire at an empty milk can placed on a wall nearly 20 feet away. Rajee who is hesitant because he is not familiar with Prabhakaran's revolver only manages to graze the top of the can while Prabhakaran's own shot catches it right in the middle vastly impressing the foreign-trained guerrilla. We are told that Thamby had learnt to shoot accurately by reading a book 'Teach Yourself to Shoot' published in London although it is not clear how he was able to understand the book with his scant English knowledge. Prabhakaran believes in throwing himself on his own resources and was not very happy when the Indian Army was training the LTTE. He obviously believed that his own home-grown methods were superior just as he did not care for the theory of the Marxist kind which the other Tamil groups like EROS spouted. It was only with the advent of Anton Balasingham (who we are told was first sent by alarmed Eelamist sympathisers in London to settle the feud between Prabhakaran and Uma Maheswaran) that the LTTE assumed the veneer of a political ideology and although later classes of a theoretical kind were conducted for LTTE cadres the organisation believes in fire power and the motivation springing from their unwavering commitment to the Eelamist cause than in any broader ideology or theory. Prabhakaran also completely mistrusted the Indian Government when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi began training the Tamil groups against the Jayewardene regime. This was not merely because she gave a greater weight to groups like TELO but also because he was suspicious of the whole design of the Indira Gandhi administration in using the armed Tamil groups against the Sri Lankan Government in the quarrel that she had to pick with her counterpart J.R. Jayewardene. In fact Narayan Swamy himself hints at such Indian designs when he writes: "The trainers wanted to know details about road bridges, railway tracks, landing fields, the depth of the sea and the coast line. Some Sri Lankans were asked to get photographs, when they refused, the Indians became angry....Shankar Rajee of EROS was stunned when an Indian officer announced that the Tamils would be just an auxiliary force for the Indians if and when they invaded Sri Lanka. As the months went by the training became both sloppy and indifferent. Although this is not covered by the present book Prabhakaran is beginning to show a similar distrust of the international community's efforts at intervening particularly the US attempts at trying to lay down the law to the Tigers. So the portrait which emerges of the Tiger chieftain is that of a self-made, self-taught military leader, disdainful of theory, mistrusted of outside interventions, nursing a huge grievance with the Sri Lankan State who out of a mixture of native guile and unorthodox politico-diplomatic means has been able to pit his rivals ranging from personal foes to the Sri Lankan and Indian Governments against one another until he reaches his self-chosen goal. He has not hesitated in eliminating his closest commanders such as Mahattaya if he thought that they had an agenda of their own. With calculated cunning he exploited President Premadasa's antipathy towards India to augment the LTTE arsenal at the expense of the Sri Lankan armed forces and turned these very weapons against them. He sent emissaries to meet Rajiv Gandhi when he was out of power and lulled him into believing that he was ready to mend fences with him if he returned to power before deciding to get rid of him. Elusive mind Although he makes a huge effort Narayan Swamy cannot really get inside that elusive mind but this should not be held against him because it is doubtful if anybody can including those within Prabhakaran's own circle. The LTTE's public postures and the private Velupillai Prabhakaran deep in both his physical and mental lair are so patently at odds that a willing suspension of belief is sometimes called for when one views some of the LTTE's public actions. The hesitant Prabhakaran one saw at his last press conference and the fighter confident in his abilities are also at odds with each other and one wonders how he will get on in public without Balasingham's convenient prop. But then Prabhakaran is a very private man and one feels a very lonely man too at the top of his beanstalk. |
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