Pro-LTTE Revivalism in TNA Election Campaign Erodes Legitimacy of Call to Withdraw Troops from the North. by Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka The men of the Sri Lankan armed forces did not die, lose their limbs, their eyesight, their futures, so that the fascist separatist Prabhakaran could be openly hailed as a great hero, his photographs distributed, his songs sung and his organisation sanitised in the same battlefields. The revivalism that we have seen in the past weeks could, among other things, trigger a backlash that may initially be subterranean but has far reaching political and systemic consequences. Jaffna’s Uthayan newspaper, as cited in the political column of the Sunday Times, (Colombo) quotes TNA’s chief ministerial candidate as having said: “Prabhakaran is not a terrorist. He is a hero and a warrior who fought for the liberation of the Tamil nation. A Sinhala newspaper that interviewed me recently, quoted me saying that I had said Prabhakaran is a terrorist. I told them Prabhakaran is not a terrorist and that he is a great hero. It is the angle from which we look at, that makes the estimation of the person. In my view he is not a terrorist. In Kandy, Keppetipola Dissawe who fought against the whites was declared as a terrorist and punished, but now the Sinhalese have installed a statue and celebrate him as a hero. One viewed by the Whites as a terrorist, was later declared a hero and warrior. It is in the same manner, Prabhakaran is seen to me as a liberation fighter…” (‘Showpiece Development in North but TNA victory inevitable’, Sunday Times, Sept 15, 2013) As far as I recall, Keppitipola didn’t murder anyone on the side of the anti-imperialist resistance while the ‘Great Hero’ Prabhakaran slaughtered pretty much the whole leadership of the TNA’s constituent parties—Amirthalingam, Yogeswaran, Mrs Yogeswaran, Neelan Tiruchelvam, Sri Sabaratnam, K Pathmanabha—as well as the former Prime Minister of the world’s most populous democracy, and the grandson of Shri Jawaharlal Nehru! Some ‘Great Hero’ that. Electoral rhetoric Meanwhile, the respected academic Prof Ratnajeevan S. Hoole, discloses that “This morning, Sept. 13…40 youths campaigning for the TNA were arrested in Kodikamam….The 40 youths had copies of the newspaper [TNA’s newspaperVeedu/House,] …and Prabhakaran’s picture for distribution.” (‘The Northern Provincial Council Election’, Colombo Telegraph, Sept 14, 2013). Prof. Hoole sees nothing wrong in the dissemination of Prabhakaran’s photograph and denounces the police action. The TNA’s electoral rhetoric is in the same category that got the Basque parliamentary party Herri Batasuna gavelled out of the game by the Spanish courts. The fealty of even well-educated Tamils to the memory of the Hitleresque Prabhakaran; the bitter reaction to the movie Madras Cafe, coupled with a continued refusal to denounce the murder of Rajiv Gandhi by the Tigers; the failure of Tamil communities in the liberal First World to absorb and replicate the values of these societies by producing a moderate Tamil political alternative reveal not only the commitment of Tamil nationalism to a secessionist project but also the covertly/latently fanatical and politically fundamentalist character of Tamil nationalist consciousness itself. If as Jesus said “tell me who your friends are and I will tell you who you are”, the same goes for heroes, especially Great Heroes, and political communities which regard them as such. Read more: dbsjeyaraj/dbsj/archives/25840
Posted on: Thu, 19 Sep 2013 02:30:49 +0000
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