{"id":46217,"date":"2016-04-19T02:13:47","date_gmt":"2016-04-19T06:13:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=46217"},"modified":"2016-04-19T08:08:16","modified_gmt":"2016-04-19T12:08:16","slug":"having-lunch-with-the-transnational-tamil-eelam-prime-minister-rudrakumaran-in-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=46217","title":{"rendered":"Having Lunch in New York With the Transnational Tamil Eelam Prime Minister Rudrakumaran"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Visuvanathan<\/a>

Visuvanathan Ruthirakumaran<\/p><\/div>\n

by Sarah Stodder <\/strong><\/p>\n

When I step out of the rain and into the restaurant, Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran is already waiting for me. Though I\u2019m seven minutes early, I arrive to find the exiled Sri Lankan lawyer, known to his compatriots as Rudra, sitting at a corner table and peacefully watching the deluge outside.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re within walking distance of several Sri Lankan restaurants, but we meet at Rudra\u2019s suggestion at Saravanaa Bhavan, a South Indian eatery on Lexington Avenue and 26th Street. This corner of Manhattan, affectionately called \u201cCurry Hill,\u201d is peppered with restaurants boasting the regional cuisines of India and its neighboring countries. Saravanaa Bhavan specializes in the cuisine of Tamils, an ethnic population with large numbers in India and in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, the teardrop-shaped island off India\u2019s Coromandel Coast.<\/p>\n

Rudra is Tamil; for culinary, linguistic, and political reasons, he would prefer to eat at the Indian Saravanaa Bhavan than at a Sri Lankan place, which would serve the cuisine (and, potentially, the politics) of Sri Lanka\u2019s ethnic majority, the Sinhalese. The minority Tamils, led by the militant separatist Tamil Tigers, fought for 26 years for an independent homeland, dubbed Tamil Eelam, in Sri Lanka\u2019s north and east. The Tigers\u2019 tactics, including the invention of the suicide vest, made them a formidable rebel force and landed them on over 30 countries\u2019 terrorism lists. But the Sinhalese-run military finally ended the war in 2009 by annihilating the Tigers\u2019 top leaders\u2014and some 40,000 Tamil civilians, according to the UN\u2014in a final battle around the coastal town of Mullaitivu.<\/p>\n

Though he has lived in New York for over 30 years, Rudra has stayed intimately connected to Sri Lanka\u2019s civil war and its ongoing aftermath. During the war, he served as a legal advisor to the Tamil Tiger boss, Vellupillai Prabhakaran. Now, he is Prime Minister of the Provisional Transnational Government of Tamil Eelam (TGTE), the first government of its kind in the world. Headquartered in New York, the TGTE continues to peacefully assert what the Tigers asserted violently: the right to a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka\u2019s north and east.<\/p>\n

I first heard of Rudra during the year I spent as a Fulbright Scholar in Trincomalee, a majority-Tamil town on Sri Lanka\u2019s eastern coast. My Sinhalese friends saw him either as a terrorist or as the foolish figurehead of a lost cause. My Tamil friends revered him. I sat down with Rudra at Saravanaa Bhavan to learn what motivates him as Tamil Eelam\u2019s current standard-bearer, and to try to understand what drew him, a lawyer and naturalized American citizen, to aid an organization his adopted country labels \u201cterrorist.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We shake hands as he rises to greet me. \u201cVanakkam,\u201d I offer, eager to flex my atrophied Tamil. \u201cVanakkam,\u201d he answers with a raise of his eyebrows and a surprised laugh.<\/p>\n

As we sit down, I search for a conversation starter. \u201cI had a friend in Trincomalee who told me the Tigers ran really delicious restaurants.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh yes. Mr. Prabhakaran loved food,\u201d says Rudra of the deceased Tiger leader. \u201cIf you make me start talking about him then I won\u2019t stop! That\u2019s what my wife says.\u201d He scans the menu and chuckles. \u201cWhen I met him the first time, we had a luncheon and I think I casually said I like very spicy goat meat curry. And so the next time I went there, he made that curry!\u201d He speaks with the enthusiasm of a high school punter recounting his friendship with the all-star quarterback.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey call him a ruthless leader, but when I met him he was clean shaven and very respectful,\u201d Rudra continues. He rubs the half-inch-long stubble on his chin. \u201cIf someone had come into the room and picked who was the terrorist, they would have picked me!\u201d<\/p>\n

While I juggle the shock and\u2014I\u2019ll admit it\u2014the thrill of so casually discussing Prabhakaran, a man who was once one of the world\u2019s most wanted terrorists, the waiter comes to take our order. \u201cDo you like spicy things?\u201d Rudra asks, a common question for an American dining with a Sri Lankan. I do, and order the Mysore masala dosa at his suggestion. Rudra orders his usual thali plate, a collection of various curry bowls accompanied by a mound of rice.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read enough about Rudra to know that he is one of a handful of intellectuals who think of Prabhakaran\u2019s death on the last day of the war as merely alleged. Eager to avoid the always unsatisfying Prabhakaran conspiracy talk, I turn the conversation to Rudra\u2019s last visit to Sri Lanka. It was 2004, he says\u2014the Indian Ocean tsunami had just killed over 30,000 Sri Lankans, and the Tigers were in a rapidly disintegrating truce with the government. I ask if he got a chance to visit Jaffna, his hometown. Before the war, Jaffna was a nexus of Tamil civilization, whose landmarks included one of the largest libraries in Asia and a beautiful clock tower. The library was burned by a Sinhalese mob a year before Rudra left Sri Lanka, but the clock tower, though severely damaged in the war, still stood when I visited in 2013.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t go back,\u201d Rudra says, shaking his head. \u201cJaffna was under the control of the Army at that time. And the thing is, we thought we\u2019ll liberate Jaffna in a few months and then go back.\u201d As it turns out, the Tigers never did liberate Jaffna after that.<\/p>\n

Rudra tells me how he first left home to pursue a law degree. While most Sri Lankans gravitated toward the UK for higher studies, Rudra was drawn to the US for its strong tradition of constitutional law. \u201cI was fascinated by the Bill of Rights especially,\u201d he explains. Soon after Rudra left, anti-Tamil pogroms broke out across Sri Lanka in response to the Tigers\u2019 first high profile act of violence, the bombing of an Army convoy near Jaffna. Like many Tamils, Rudra became an exile, both afraid to go back and convinced that he could be more useful by advising from abroad.<\/p>\n

Now, Rudra\u2019s name is on the Sri Lankan government\u2019s terrorist list, which he dismisses with a wave of his hand. \u201cThey put every Jack, Tom, and Harry on that list\u2014they just took the names of the first parliament of my transnational government,\u201d he says. Seeing the puzzled look on my face, he clarifies. \u201cPeople consider it as a badge of honor!\u201d He chortles. \u201cReally! The second parliament members are not on that list for some reason, and they feel really bad!\u201d<\/p>\n

He stops suddenly to take a phone call. I catch a few words of his fast, looping Tamil, and it seems he\u2019s giving orders. He puts down the phone and continues, intent on making his point. \u201cFor the government of Sri Lanka, any Tamil who talks about human rights is a Tiger, a terrorist,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

I make the point that beginning in 1997, any Tamil who affiliated with the Tigers was considered a terrorist by the US government as well. Since their rise in the 1980s, the Tigers conducted around 200 suicide attacks, including a bombing that killed Rajiv Gandhi, the Prime Minister of India and an ally of the United States. Rudra was living in New York at the time, and he says he wasn\u2019t concerned for his safety here. As a lawyer, he challenged the \u201cterrorist\u201d label in American courts. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that he could promote the Tigers independently in the US, but he couldn\u2019t act under their direction or control.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a big grey area,\u201d I say.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a big grey area.\u201d But that\u2019s what he appreciates about the United States, he explains. In Sri Lanka, Tamils have no legal autonomy, no grey area in which to show support for a separatist cause. \u201cThe whole thing depends from what perspective you come,\u201d he continues. \u201cIt\u2019s a clich\u00e9, one man\u2019s terrorist is another man\u2019s freedom fighter, but it really has meaning. It\u2019s a sociological point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m tempted to ask whether suicide bombings are a sociological point of view, but I don\u2019t want to end our conversation too soon. The waiter mercifully arrives with our food, and I rip off a crisp dosa fragment as Rudra dips a handful of rice in a petite bowl of dal curry.<\/p>\n

The conversation turns to Rudra\u2019s current job as Prime Minister of the TGTE. He does this in addition to handling deportation cases as a lawyer in one of the tall office buildings not far from Saravanaa Bhavan. Between the two jobs, he sleeps about five hours a night. He insists that he originally didn\u2019t want to be Prime Minister\u2014and seeing the exhausted look on his face, I believe him. But the responsibility was placed on his shoulders, he says, by the only major Tiger kingpin left alive after the battle of Mullaitivu. Because he couldn\u2019t act under the direction and control of a Tiger, he walked a thin line with the law, and tried his best to act on his own.<\/p>\n

As Rudra sees it, the Tigers are finished\u2014and with them, the idea of violent struggle. Yet in America, he points out, they are still listed as a terrorist organization. \u201cThe Tigers are dead, but other governments won\u2019t let them die!\u201d he giggles. His TGTE promotes peace, he explains, but with the same goal in mind: the separate nation-state of Tamil Eelam. Rudra doesn\u2019t strike me as a violent person, so perhaps he\u2019s happier promoting a cause that doesn\u2019t involve civilian casualties. But his current course of action also seems a bit quixotic. I don\u2019t doubt his efforts, but I can\u2019t tell if he really believes his work will turn Tamil Eelam into a reality.<\/p>\n

As Prime Minister of the TGTE, he says, he draws inspiration from the US constitution and Bill of Rights. But his wife is right: he can\u2019t leave out Prabhakaran. \u201cMr. Prabhakaran believed you need power to do anything\u2014in his case, hard power,\u201d Rudra says. \u201cI can\u2019t negotiate with the Sri Lankan government until I am powerful.\u201d He hopes to build soft power by harnessing the collective opinion of the 77 million Tamils around the world, who have large populations in countries as far flung as Malaysia, South Africa, and Burma (Sri Lankan Tamils number just over 2 million). Exactly what he plans to bring to the negotiating table when he is known to every Tamil in the world remains unclear. Unlike his hero Prabhakaran, Rudra doesn\u2019t have an army.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what\u2019s your end goal, then?\u201d I ask. \u201cTo return to Sri Lanka as the Prime Minister of the independent country of Tamil Eelam?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no. I compare myself with the Mahatma,\u201d he says, referring to Gandhi, who led India\u2019s independence struggle but eschewed power once independence came. \u201cI want to create Tamil Eelam, and then I\u2019ll just retire. Even Mr. Prabhakaran, the Indians offered him Chief Minister during one of the peace talks, but he didn\u2019t accept.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo you take him as a model?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, him and Gandhi.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the juxtaposition of these two figures\u2014one nonviolent, one quite violent\u2014may have surprised me an hour ago, it no longer does. I seize my chance to ask the question I couldn\u2019t get out earlier: \u201cYou say Prabhakaran did so much good for Tamils, but he also did things that were incredibly violent,\u201d I say, thinking of the countless assassinations of political figures, including moderate Tamils, ordered by Prabhakaran. \u201cI\u2019m interested in how you balance these two\u2014.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2014The thing is,\u201d Rudra cuts in, \u201cin our society, sacrifice is considered a highest form. People don\u2019t look\u2014I\u2019m not saying I\u2014people don\u2019t think about the victims. The people look at the bomber and say he\u2019s willing to give his life.\u201d<\/p>\n

He shakes rice off his fingers and continues: \u201cI would say when it comes to human rights we have this cultural difference. Here, suicide bombers, that\u2019s the worst thing in the West. Back home it\u2019s not like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd do you look at it that way?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

Rudra shrugs his shoulders, his face almost in his food. \u201cYeah. They gave their lives, which I don\u2019t think I would have been able to do. That\u2019s the picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an admission, but I don\u2019t feel any kind of \u2018gotcha\u2019 satisfaction. I am only aware of how close his reasoning comes to making sense, and of how I, a lifelong American with constitutionally protected rights, will never understand it.<\/p>\n

The waiter appears, and I order a South Indian-style filter coffee. Rudra requests a masala chai. The waiter returns quickly with our drinks, and we sit, speechless, for what seems like several minutes.<\/p>\n

I break the silence. \u201cDo you feel at home in New York after living here for so long?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Manhattan,\u201d Rudra says immediately. \u201cI have never felt like a foreigner here. It\u2019s a great city, a great city. I don\u2019t know any other country that has this kind of tolerance and acceptance. In Sri Lanka, we are not a tolerant people\u2014maybe that is why we are suffering.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you hope to take your children back to Sri Lanka someday?\u201d<\/p>\n

Rudra sips his chai slowly. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I will be able to,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I\u2019m an eternal optimist in all aspects.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s no use to be anything else,\u201d I say, involuntarily quoting Winston Churchill.<\/p>\n

\u201cFour thousand Tiger cadres gave their lives for Tamil Eelam,\u201d Rudra says. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t go to waste.\u201d He pauses, then repeats. \u201cIt shouldn\u2019t go to waste.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWould you go back to Jaffna, where you grew up?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to,\u201d he says. \u201cWe used to have a big house in Jaffna that my father built. But it went to my sister as a dowry, and then my sister moved to Australia during the war, and she sold it. I wanted to buy it, but I didn\u2019t have the money at the time.\u201d He laughs ruefully. The house still exists, now owned by a stranger. It\u2019s ash grey, with two floors and a large balcony\u2014a big house by Jaffna standards.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know the clock tower?\u201d Rudra asks. \u201cIt\u2019s ten minutes from there. Ah, but I\u2019m getting sentimental.\u201d<\/p>\n

I picture the clock tower as I saw it in 2013: the onion-shaped dome, the jet black crows cawing from its delicate white arches. The roads around it were pockmarked with bombed-out houses, some so riddled with shrapnel holes they resembled cement honeycombs. The tower gleamed in the 100-degree sun, but the rest of Jaffna town seemed broken and deserted. As I circled the tower on the back of a Tamil friend\u2019s bike, he listed for me the names of his friends who had stayed in Jaffna and died at the hands of either the government or the Tigers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know the clock tower,\u201d I say. But as much as I want to, I\u2019ll never know Rudra\u2019s Jaffna. And unless Sri Lanka changes beyond either of our wildest predictions, I don\u2019t think he\u2019ll have the chance to know the Jaffna I saw.<\/p>\n

Courtes:souciant.com<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sarah Stodder When I step out of the rain and into the restaurant, Visuvanathan Rudrakumaran is already waiting for me. Though I\u2019m seven minutes early, I arrive to find the exiled Sri Lankan lawyer, known to his compatriots as Rudra, sitting at a corner table and peacefully watching the deluge outside. We\u2019re within walking …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘Having Lunch in New York With the Transnational Tamil Eelam Prime Minister Rudrakumaran’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46217"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46217"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46228,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46217\/revisions\/46228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}