Eradicating the LTTE is a must . A reply to Vickramabahu Karunaratne.

Vickramabahu Karunaratne is said to be an intelligent and highly qualified individual- a professor. But reading through his article “It will be nonsense to think of eradicating the LTTE”, appearing in the pro-terrorist website Transcurrent makes one think that qualifications after all are one, and intelligence another.

On the contrary to what he asserts, LTTE is definitely not a movement that has captured the hearts and minds of the ordinary Tamil people. This man has a Sinhala name, therefore it is possible as a Sinhala he is unable to understand or evaluate the hearts and minds of the Tamil People. The Tamil people as we know are not cruel and given to criminality. They are a peaceful people, kind, friendly, and helpful.

The terrorists are just the other side of the coin. The cruelty coming from them is impossible to understand. We are born with different accumulated Kamma, and Prabhakaran’s mind is saturated with the accumulated bad kamma from his past lives that has made a devil of him in this life capable of making hell on earth for himself and others.

It is said that such people are born periodically. We had Hitler. We have Omar Ben Laden, and Prabhakaran. They are capable of whipping up the interest on an idea such as nationalism or religion every body is sentimentally attached to in some way or other. They make this idea an object to achieve. It is not the idea or the object itself that is inacceptable, but it is the method used to achieve that object which is reprehensible. An idea is after all a thought, that arises and falls away in all minds. Therefore, eradicating Prabhakaran along with the LTTE he organised to achieve his object, would be to eradicate the method –the terrorism, he used to achieve that object.

That is why there were attempts at a negotiated settlement, and the setting up of an All Party Conference to find out ways and means for devolution of power to dissuade the “terrorist method” to achieve that object.

Vickramabahu twists his ideas to win the applause of some sections of the people, possibly the Tamil diaspora who invites him for world tours. Therefore, pleasing them is assuring himself vacations in Australia, London, Canada etc at the expense of the Tamil diaspora. We do not blame him for that, but he has a greater duty to the country to bring the Communities together rather than put them asunder. For that end he should learn to condemn what should be condemned, and accept what should be accepted.

The people of the Tamil Community, as those of any other community may have the desire for a separate Eelam State where they have only their own people, religion and culture. But that desire is not born out of their opposition to Sinhala repression. The Ordinary Tamil people may not wish to have a place of their own where there are only Tamils people, speaking the same language, worshipping the same gods and having the same ceremonies and rituals. That is an ideal State !

The world is a mixed place with different people, speaking different languages and having different belief systems. That is how each Nation State exists. In such a place we have to learn to live together without inventing barriers to separate one from another, but by building bridges to bring one to the other and create an atmosphere of harmony and acceptance, to bring unity in diversity.

It is for that reason the intellectuals, spiritual leaders, the politicians and the media have to step in. Vickramabahu does not fit into that role. He proposes any method without exception- even terrorism, to achieve the object of separation or self determination.

To give credence to his point of view Vickramabahu gives I think a wrong example. He says that the then UNP thought “finishing” JVP by eliminating thousands of JVP suspects with Wijeweera, but today the modern dissidents of Wijeweera run the government of Mahinda. Vickramabahu makes meaningless assertions to justify his arguments. He does not seem to see that with the elimination of the militants of JVP, the moderates who have taken up the “idea” of Wijeweera are today toeing the democratic path, despite their old metal still showing beneath their garbs.

Vickramabahu pathetically prods on referring to the ghost of Wijeweera, and claiming that Champika Ranawaka and Wimal Weerawansa , do not represent the JVP past or present. He has jumped off rails and deviated from the trend of his thoughts. He does not seem to have grasped that with the elimination of Wijeweera and his more militant followers, the “terrorist” element of JVP had been eliminated, and what remains is not the old JVP “ method”, but only the idea of the old JVP- the “Same old wine, but in new bottles”. Nevertheless, the JVP is now more generous and human, even though they missed a promising political future by wrong decisions.

That is exactly where we are coming to with regard to events in the present context. The elimination of LTTE may not eliminate the idea or the object, but it will certainly eliminate the method, the tactics adopted by Prabhakaran to achieve that object. It will replace “terrorism” with more acceptable dialogue in a more calm, and a democratic atmosphere, without guns and bombs, as it happened in the East.

It is wrong to say that the LTTE represent the anger of the Tamil people for discrimination, humiliation or oppression of Sinhala chauvinism. All that is in Vickramabhu’s “fertile” mind. Ask a Tamil person like Anandasangaree whether he has anger towards the Sinhala for their chauvinism. I am sure he has none.

Because Sinhala people may be accused for any thing but chauvinism. Sinhala people had always been most accommodating and conciliatory. They have no sense of superiority over others, and they are always ready to extend their hands of friendship. The Tamil people who have lived with and come to know the Sinhala will not accuse them as supremacists or chauvinists. The emotions of anger may arise through a sense of inferiority. Prabhakaran may have suffered from that sense of inferiority. Vickramabahu’s assertion that the terrorists are the representatives of the Tamil people is a wrong.

The Tamil people are intelligent and peace loving. The vast majority of the Tamils living in Sri Lanka are different from the Tamils of the diaspora, because the local Tamils do not harbour hatred towards the Sinhala. They have unlike the Tamils of the diaspora, forgotten the “July,1983”. They have their likes and dislikes, like every body else, but without the canker of hatred that the Tamil diaspora carries like a crown on their heads.

Vickramabahu says that, “ ..the dream of Mahinda to eliminate the LTTE and brutal repression will be void in the coming period”. But he does not want to accept that the President Mahinda Rajapakse’s determination to eliminate terrorism from Sri Lanka was not a dream, but a purposeful resolution which he put successfully into effect, and came out victorious. The elimination of LTTE will definitely be the elimination of terrorism.

It is the harmful ideas of megalomaniacs’ that transform into destructive hatred. It was the hatred of Hitler towards Jews, and his desire to create an Aryan race that resulted in the death of millions in the holocaust, the destruction of Poland and many cities in Europe. It was the religious fanatism of Bin Laden that caused the deaths and destructions in New York, and London.

It was the desire to create a mono-ethnic Tamil Homeland of Prabhakaran that brought deaths and destruction into Sri Lanka which lasted for the last 30 years. The end of Hitler was the end of the holocaust, the end of Bin Laden will bring reason into the minds of the religious fanatics, and the end of Prabhakaran will be the end of terrorism in Sri Lanka.

Vickramabahu still with a mind full of old Marxist theories has not awakened to the fact that the old Marxism has been rejected , and its principles remain to be applied in a different manner in keeping with modern human attitudes, and technological developments. He again misses his point when he says that, “.. the JVP was correct to an extent , and wrong to the hilt in hating Tamil Society for its demand for equality and self determination”. The JVP cannot said to be right and wrong at the same time. JVP has shed its robe of terrorism and donned the garb of democracy. JVP does not hate the Tamil Society. Vickramabahu is only misconstruing facts for his own benefit.

Vickramabahu who sees no political future in Sri Lanka, like a drowning man holding on to a reed to keep himself afloat, holds onto his old Marxist theories hoping some one to come to hoist him and acclaim him as a leader. The statements made by the IDPs seeking safety of the army, while running away from their terrorist guardians, and that made by a terrorist woman Arulmathy , who saw 75 of her companions exploding themselves with hand grenades, refusing to die herself surrendered to the Army, paint a different picture from what Vichramabahu is trying to paint.

Most of the younger LTTE worriers are fighting “blindly” like automated robots, without any faith in the leadership or the cause for which they fight. “Arulmathy watched aghast as 75 women she had fought beside for so many months reached for their hand grenades, pulled the pins and blew themselves to pieces, as they had been ordered to do.

But Arulmathy had had enough of the Tigers' war. She had no wish to die for a cause in which she no longer believed. As the grenades detonated, she slipped into a supply trench and ran for her life. In January, as the Sri Lankan army intensified its campaign against the dwindling rebel force, she surrendered.” This is for Vickramabahu with complements from Arulmathy.

Vickramabahu then deviates from the subject, to begin a discussion on demons, neo Brahmanism haunting India, Hindu self assertion, global capital, Nazism and Hitler, Freud and the rise of Dravidians. He finally comes to the conclusion that the sacrifice made by the Tamils to-day is for the victory against neo-Brahmanism. That decoction is too difficult for me to swallow.

But then he puts me at ease, “Of course I am just speculating “, he says. He explains that the Tamil consciousness in the world has expanded due to repressive war of the Mahinda regime. He blames all global powers and India for their participation in the human suffering.

Vickramabahu who accuses global powers and India for human suffering , does not blame LTTE (terrorists) for not surrendering to the Sinhala army of the chauvinist regime- as he says. And puts the blame on the government for the deaths of thousands due to errant shootings by the terrorists. But he does not want to tell the LTTE that the only way to avoid continued suffering, hardship and death to themselves and the innocent civilian population is by laying down arms and surrendering to the army.

What does it matter even if it is the Sinhala Army of a chauvinist regime, if death and suffering could be avoided by surrendering to it. But Vickramabahu does not see it that way, and contemptuously waves it aside. In doing so, he allows the innocent Tamil people held as a human shield by the terrorists to suffer, and he sits to shed crocodile tears about the suffering of the people.

Vickramabahu seems incapable of having any sympathetic feelings towards those who suffer, if these people accept his programme of the left under his leadership, and were to become his followers, it would certainly be for them, a falling from the frying pan into the fire.