If we want true honour to VP.We must towards a free Tamil Eelam. He still alive with his through our actions.

Keatharan

DBSJ, Any thoughts on this?

Prabhaharan was made like this by Sinhala Governments and its politicians. He was not born like this. The year year VP was born his father must have been going through hell at his work place. VP’s father left his job because he had to pass Sinhala exam inorder to get promoted. So, When VP’s mom got pregnent with VP his fathers mental status attributed to this. All fellow Tamils. THINK …………DO NOT critisize for the sake of critsizing. VP is MADE NOT BORN……..

He built a military from nothing and without any support from any other government. He created an administration and developed arts and literature.

He also developed a strong social liberation in the Tamil homeland and created progressive culture.
The huge number of woman cadres and inter marriage between castes and reigons are some of the highlights that brought aboout a radical change in the way people saw the futire of Tamil people.

The Upper caste Tamils felt the pain as they saw the Dalits of Eelam getting more dominant in a liberation struggle.

Whilst most so called progressive elements living abroad were critical of the LTTE or Prabhakaran they were themselves involved in petty politciking and rampant infighting.

As a Bangalore Tamil Prabhakaran was a symbol of resistance and he will continue to inspire us in India and abroad. He is like the Netaji he wanted to be.

Regarding about how Prabhakaran died, he died a hero as he could have had a 1000 chance to run away from the field. He steadfastly stood there and fought. To think he wanted to escape at the 11th hour is utter loss of imagination of the Sinhala mind.

He was attracted with events in history fitting to the needs of the LTTE but he never had any historical understanding of politics. He never seriously studied contempory history. He limited himself to the history of Jaffna Kingdom and South Indian mediviel rulers.

This mediviel style peasent outlook dominated in his political decesions.

Your theory of Clint Eastwood may be correct but he had great difficulties in diffrentiating Indian freedom strugle with Rommels Nazi invasion in Africa.He was highly impressed by Rommels military tactic but he failed to understand the political ideology.

First time I heard that he read Time and News Week but this didm’t help him to understand the politics of Western countries. Till last minute he believed one or other country woul bail him out of hell. He had burnt all the bridges with the killing of Rajiv Ghandhi, no one trusted him.

He had one quality that was his refusal to fully adapt to any government. He accepted the Indo-Sri Lankan pact and took the revenge. He had a pact with Premadasa and eliminated Premadasa. But this politics sealed his fate . He signed the cease fire with Ranil and helped Mahinda to come to power and everyone knows the rest.

He was told even by his enemies as a great military genius but can anyone explain why he and his entire military leadership was cornered in the same hole?.

In any case the LTTE deafeat was primarily political. The blind faith in the “International Community”. Rather than REALLY depending on the masses he believed in political manovering with India and Western countries and paid the price.

I learnt a lot about Praba

Sick person , called himself “DBSJ” wasting this pace.

Go see or read “Waiting for Godot” while waiting……….DBSJ

Ps: As a footnote may I mention that Amartya Sen thinks that one should not dislodge the Geetha from the whole in which it is contained, the Mahabaratha. He says that when you look at the enormous number of dead bodies strewn across the containing work, after the battle, it tilts the argument in favour of Arjuna’s first instincts.

Once I heard that the young LTTE cadres used to sing Tamil songs of liberation to inspire them while fighting the battles with the IPKF. This is how Prabhakaran was able to take on the large Indian army of more than 100,000 with a small number of committed cadres. He had the ability to rally his cadres to take on the fight.

Thanks for bringing out the non militant aspects of Prabhakaran in your writing. I think he had that multi-dimensional complexity of character the great leaders have. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the armed struggle, he was living in a virtual prison and most of the people didn’t get to know the humane aspects of his character.

In my opinion, since independence, not a single Tamil leader (which includes also S.J.V. Chelvanayagam) had the charisma, courage or the determination like Prabhakaran to rally his fold to take on the struggle.

The non-violent struggle by the earlier leaders was a dismal failure because the leaders themselves weren’t sincere in their efforts. When Gandhi was leading the non-violent agitation marches etc., satyagrahis didn’t run away even when they were severely attacked with clubs, shot etc. They were willing to give up their lives for the cause.

But in Lanka, our Tamil leaders just simply gave up the fight and ran away when attacked by thugs at the Satyagraha. We had spineless politicians trying to apply Gandhi’s techniques of nonviolence for which one needs the courage of kamikaze pilots.

I don’t think Prabhakaran was a racist as some of the earlier Tamil politicians were. He was one pointedly focused on fighting FOR the rights of the Tamils and not AGAINST the Sinhalese as a race. But, somewhere along the line, this message got messed up.

I think at some point, he started to cave in under pressure of some of the Tamil racist goons (most probably not the ones on the battle field. Diaspora tigers?) in the movement to take the fight to the common Sinhala masses.

The attack on the Temple of Tooth was monumentally moronic. I cannot believe this idea was hatched by Prabhakaran. Also, there were some senseless, violent, terrorist acts such as the train/bus bombings etc. that killed many innocent civilians. It is very difficult for me to believe these acts were masterminded by Prabhakaran, but all of these happened under his watch.

For all the discipline Prabhakaran tried to instill in his cadres, sometimes some of these cadres went on violent fits of rage (like the earlier undisciplined Sinhalese soldiers in Jaffna) and killed innocent Sinhalese civilians in the border villages as revenge, for which, ultimately he had to be blamed.

The chasing away of Jaffna Muslims was also moronic.

The attack on the Temple of Tooth and border villages gave the Singhalese soldiers the reason to fight back. In my view, this is why Prabhakaran lost the war. Not the killing of Rajiv Gandhi, RAW, the Chinese weapons etc.

Prabhakaran was audacious and utterly sincere. And what a fight he put on! B. Raman says he made “meek and mild” Tamils stand up and fight for their rights. .

I can never agree for picking up arms and killing as the means for achieving peace. Arms are necessary only as a means of self defense against brutes.

But this is not the hour for putting ourselves on pedestals and start calling him a megalomaniac, terrorist etc., and “role his body in mud” in our speech like savages. Let us be sensitive for the loss of his family and at least have the courage to pay respects due to a dead warrior and move on.

I’ve only mentioned that VP never surrendered………………DBSJ

I would like to comment on Prabhakaran’s Kerala connection, comment #219

Prabhakaran’s Kerala connection was under investigation after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. The lady (Janaki Amma, from Quilon) who claimed to be Prabha’s cousine was interrogated by the CBI and concluded that her maternal uncle Veluppilai is not Prabha’s father. This matter surfaced again in the last phase of the war and Kerala police had conducted further enquiries and confirmed beyond doubt that Prabhakaran’s father is not her maternal uncle. This came in the malayalam dailies during the initial phase of the last war. Some English dailies again came with the news on 25 April with title, “cousine prays for Prabhakaran…” The Velupillai mentioned in the news is/was a trader and had a provision store in Jafna. But Prabhakaran’s father retired as a government servant.

I had a pen friend from Jafna during the late 80′s and 90′s. An elderly woman who studied in Madras and some women’s college in Kerala. She had many friends from Kerala and she used to write to me about the many similarities of Jafna Tamils and Keralites have. She wrote to me that Jaffna Tamil is more similar to Malayalam, many houses have ground dug wells like kerala homes etc. I stopped writing to her after Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. I was in the finishing stage of my studies and her letters were censored by the Indian authorities so I did not want to get into any trouble. More over the assassination of Rajiv made me sad. She wrote to me many letters after that but I did not respond. Later, I saw many Sri Lankan Tamils in Zurich and to my surprise I noticed that their Tamil is more similar to Malayalam. For example, tamils in TN pronounce “zha” as “la”… But the Tamils I met in Zurich were pronouncing “zha” as we malayalies pronounce!

A friend of mine from Tamilnadu duiring that time told me that Sri Lanka was fast developing and to stop that it was the govt. of India indirectly played a role in supporting the LTTE and create troubles inside SL. I do not know veracity of such an information and any comment on it would be appreciated.

I have also read that many Sinhalies also originated from Kerala. This maybe true because I read somewhere that at a time the caste discrimination was so extreme in Kerala, many belong to the lower caste, mainly people from Ezhava community, mass converted to Buddhism and migrated to Ceylon.

Not only the Flora and Fauna but the cultural connection between Sri Lanka and Kerala was once vibrant. Among the third world countries, Kerala and Sri Lanka has the highest urbanization. Many Sinhala villages are very similar to Kerala vilages etc. I never been to SL but would like to visit one day.

Recently I read in the article written by Marie Colvin that Vijay Nambiar’s role as UN envoy has come into question. His brother Sathish Nambiar is a paid consultant of SL Army. Incidently, they are also Keralites!

I have read about Prabha’s marriage in Adele Balasingham’s book, A will to freedom. She has mentioned in the book that Prabhakaran cooked himself once when she and her husband came back to SL. That tells that Prabha was a good cook.