Kethesh Loganathan:

He made the supreme sacrifice

by Ajith Samaranayake

Kethesh Loganathan who was brutally gunned down by the LTTE outside his home in Dehiwela last Saturday night could have had few illusions about his personal safety. He was after all not only the Deputy Head of the Secretariat for Co-ordinating the Peace Process but also the Secretary of the All Party Representative Committee engaged in evolving a political solution to the national question.

The presence of this one time EPRLF stalwart in these important positions was both an affirmation of the government's commitment to an honourable solution as well as a recognition that sections of the Tamil polity had confidence in the government's ability to deliver. What would have particularly irked the LTTE was Kethesh's support for what it had branded as a hardline government. Ketheshwaran Loganathan took a terrible risk and has now paid the supreme price. He deserves all the salutes of his countrymen.

Kethesh Loganathan was primarily an intellectual and belonged to that early cohort of idealistic Tamil youth who were driven to anger by the state's policy of discrimination against the Tamils and brutalised by the methods of violence it invoked to gain its ends. When he joined the EPRLF in the early 1980's he was already an alumnus of the Georgetown University, USA, and the Sussex University.

He worked as a researcher at the Social Scientists Association and in Jaffna managed the Institute for Development Research Education and Communication. However he clearly saw the need to leave the ivory tower and bring a synthesis between theory and practice. The path he chose was that of liberation for the Tamil people in alliance with the best forces of socialism in the South. He was the principal theoretician of the EPRLF and was one of the finest minds in Tamil politics. Kethesh was in the thick of both the militant struggle as well as the political struggle. He was one of the chief delegates to the Thimpu talks with the Jayawardene government.

Following the Indo-Lanka accord he eschewed participation in the North-East Provincial Council and in the wake of that council collapsing and the killing of his leader Padmanabha, gave leadership to the party. After 1994 Kethesh, like some other militants, left politics. He was briefly Associate Editor of the 'Weekend Express' and wrote to the national press under the pseudonym 'Satya'. He was a Director of the Centre for Policy Alternatives until he resigned to support the government's peace initiative.

Kethesh sacrificed much and made decisive existential choices. As the son of C. Loganathan, the legendary General Manager of the Bank of Ceylon, and as an academic in his own right, he could have picked the top plums either at home or abroad. But he chose to stay back and wake into the quagmire. He had his eyes wide open.

His killing is obviously an assertion of the LTTE's continued hegemonistic instincts and its refusal to countenance the path of peace. It is tragic that even in the face of such obduracy there should have been Tamils such as Kethesh who should have believed in a negotiated settlement. And the best tribute to his memory would be to defeat the forces of chauvinism among the Sinhala polity while politically routing the LTTE and wresting an honourable settlement for the country as a whole.