In the aftermath of the Pahalgam massacre, Pakistan offered to cooperate in what it called a neutral investigation. But India never regretted the
catastrophic results of its intervention in Sri Lanka that led to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, over a year after India pulled out its Army
from NE, Sri Lanka

In a telephone call to Indian Premier Narendra Modi, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake condemned the massacre of 26 civilians – 25 Indians and one Nepali – at Pahalgam, in the Indian controlled Kashmir, on April 22.

President Dissanayake expressed his condolences and reaffirmed, what the President’s Media Division (PMD) called, Sri Lanka’s unwavering solidarity and brotherhood with the people of India.

Having described the massacre as a terrorist attack, New Delhi found fault with Pakistan for the incident. Pakistan was accused of backing a previously unknown group, identified as Kashmir Resistance.

The Indian media have quoted Indian security agencies as having said that Kashmir Resistance is a front for Pakistan-based terrorist groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. Pakistan says it only provides moral and diplomatic support.

Pakistan has denied its involvement in the Pahalgam attack. A section of the Indian media, and some experts, have compared the Pahalgam attack with the coordinated raids carried out by Hamas on southern Israel, in early October 2023.

President Dissanayake called Premier Modi on the afternoon of April 25, three days after the Pahalgam attack. The PMD quoted Dissanayake as having reiterated Sri Lanka’s firm stance against terrorism in all its forms, regardless of where it occurred in the world, in a 15-minute call.

Modi cut short his visit to Saudi Arabia as India took a series of measures against Pakistan. Indian actions included suspension of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) governing water sharing of six rivers in the Indus basin between the two countries. The agreement that had been finalised way back in 1960 survived three major wars in 1965, 1971 and 1999.

One-time Pentagon official Michael Rubin, having likened the Pahalgam attack to a targeted strike on civilians, has urged India to adopt an Israel-style retaliation, targeting Pakistan, but not realising that both are nuclear armed.

Soon after the Hamas raid some interested parties compared Sri Lanka’s war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), and the ongoing Israel war on Gaza.

The latest incident in Indian-controlled Kashmir, and Gaza genocide, cannot be compared under any circumstances. Therefore, suggestions that India adopt Israel-style retaliation against Pakistan do not hold water. Also, Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE that was brought to a successful conclusion in May 2009 cannot be compared with the conflict Israel is involved in.

Sri Lanka can easily relate to the victims of the Pahalgam attack as a victim of separatist terrorism that bled the country for nearly 30 years. India, however, never bothered to express regret over causing terrorism here.

Indian-sponsored terror projects brought Sri Lanka to its knees before President JRJ made an attempt to eradicate the LTTE in May-June 1987. JRJ resorted to ‘Operation Liberation’ after Indian mediated talks failed to end the conflict. Having forced Sri Lanka to call off the largest-ever ground offensive undertaken at that time with the hope of routing the LTTE in Vadamarachchi, the home turf of Velupillai Prabhakaran, followed by India deploying its Mi 17s on July 24, 1987, to rescue the Tiger Supremo, his wife, two children and several of his close associates – just five days before the signing of the so-called Indo-Lanka peace accord, virtually at Indian gun point.

First phase of Eelam war

During the onset of the conflict here, the LTTE routinely carried out raids on predominantly Sinhala villages where civilians were butchered. That had been part of its strategy approved by ‘controllers’ based across the Palk Straits. That had been a volatile period in the run-up to the July 29, 1987, accord. Although India established half a dozen terrorist groups here, the LTTE had been unquestionably the most violent and the dominant group. To New Delhi’s humiliation all such groups supported by it were wiped out by the marauding Tigers.

Those who compared the LTTE with Hamas, or any other group, conveniently forget that the Sri Lankan group caused significant losses to its creator. India lost over 1,300 officers and men, while nearly 3,000 others suffered injuries during the Indian deployment here (July 1987-March 1990).

The world turned a blind eye to what was going on in Sri Lanka in the ’80s. The war launched by India in the early ’80s against Sri Lanka lasted till the signing of the peace accord. That can be broadly identified as phase one of the conflict (1983 July – 1987 July). That first phase can be safely described as an Indian proxy war aimed at creating an environment conducive for the deployment of the Indian Army.

Having compelled President JRJ to accept deployment of the Indian Army in the northern and eastern regions in terms of the “peace accord”, New Delhi sought to consolidate its hold here by disarming all groups, except the one it had handpicked to run the North-East Provincial Council. The Indian Army oversaw the first Provincial Council election held on Nov. 19, 1988, to elect members to the NE council. The whole exercise was meant to ensure the installation of the Varatharaja Perumal led-EPRLF (Eelam People’s Revolutionary Liberation Forint) administration therein.

The second phase (1987 July – 1990 March) saw a war between the Indian Army and the LTTE. During this period, the Indian Army supervised two national elections – presidential on Dec. 19, 1988, and parliamentary on Feb. 15, 1989, that were won by Ranasinghe Premadasa and the UNP.

During that period, the UNP battled the JVP terror campaign and the South bled. The JVP that resorted to unbridled violence against the Indo-Lanka accord, at that time, has ended-up signing several agreements, including one on defence cooperation, recently, and the country is yet to get details of these secret agreements.

Raid on the Maldives

The second phase of the Eelam conflict ended when India pulled out its Army from NE Sri Lanka in March 1990. The sea-borne raid that had been carried out by Indian-trained PLOTE (People’s Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam) targeting Maldivian President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, in Nov. 1988, is perhaps a significant development during the second phase of the conflict, though it was never examined in the right context.

No one – not even the Maldives – found fault with India for exporting terrorism to the island nation. India received accolades for swift air borne intervention to neutralise the PLOTE group. The Indian Navy sank a vessel commandeered by a section of the PLOTE raiders in a bid to escape back to Sri Lanka. The truth is that PLOTE, that had been trained by India to destabilise Sri Lanka, ended-up taking up a lucrative private assignment to overthrow President Gayoom’s administration.

India never regretted the Maldivian incident. It would be pertinent to mention that two boat loads of PLOTE cadres had quietly left Sri Lanka at a time the Indian Navy was responsible for monitoring in and out sea movements.

In the aftermath of the Pahalgam massacre, Pakistan offered to cooperate in what it called a neutral investigation. But India never regretted the catastrophic results of its intervention in Sri Lanka that led to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991, over a year after India pulled out its Army from NE, Sri Lanka.

Resumption of hostilities by the LTTE in June 1990 can be considered as the beginning of the third phase of the conflict. Having battled the Indian Army and gained valuable battle experience, the LTTE, following a 14-month honeymoon with President Ranasinghe Premadasa, resumed hostilities. Within weeks the LTTE gained the upper hand in the northern theatre of operations.

In spite of India banning the LTTE, after the May 1991 assassination of Gandhi, the group continued to grow with the funds pouring in from the West over the years. Regardless of losing Jaffna in 1995, the LTTE consolidated its position, both in the Vanni and the East, to such an extent their victory seemed inevitable.

But resolute political leadership given by Mahinda Rajapaksa ensured that Sri Lanka turned the tables on the LTTE within weeks after the LTTE appeared to be making significant progress at the beginning. Within two years and 10 months (2006 August – 2009 May) the armed forces brought the LTTE to its knees, and the rest is history. As we have said in our earlier columns that victory was soon soured. Spearheaded by Sarath Fonseka, the type of General that a country gets in about once in a thousand years, ended in enmity within, for the simple reason this super hero wanted to collect all the trophies won by many braves.

Post-war developments

Sri Lanka’s war has been mentioned on many occasions in relation to various conflicts/situations. We have observed many distorted/inaccurate attempts to compare Sri Lanka’s war against LTTE with other conflicts/situations.

Unparalleled Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, triggered a spate of comments on Sri Lanka’s war against the LTTE. Respected expert on terrorism experienced in Sri Lanka, M.R. Narayan Swamy, discussed the similarities of Sri Lanka’s conflict and the ongoing Israel-Gaza war. New Delhi-based Swamy, who had served UNI and AFP during his decades’ long career, discussed the issues at hand while acknowledging no two situations were absolutely comparable. Swamy currently serves as the Executive Director of IANS (Indo-Asian News Service).

‘How’s Hamas’ attack similar to that of LTTE?’ and ‘Hamas’ offensive on Israel may bring it closer to LTTE’s fate,’ dealt with the issues involved. Let me reproduce Swamy’s comment: “Oct. 7 could be a turning point for Hamas similar to what happened to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka in 2006. Let me explain. Similar to Hamas, the LTTE grew significantly over time eventually gaining control of a significant portion of Sri Lanka’s land and coast. The LTTE was even more formidable than Hamas. It had a strong army, growing air force and a deadly naval presence. Unlike Hamas, the LTTE successfully assassinated high ranking political figures in Sri Lanka and India. Notably, the LTTE achieved this without direct support from any country while Hamas received military and financial backing from Iran and some other states. The LTTE became too sure of their victories overtime. They thought they could never be beaten and that starting a war would always make them stronger. But in 2006 when they began Eelam War 1V their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran couldn’t have foreseen that within three years he and his prominent group would be defeated. Prabhakaran believed gathering tens of thousands of Tamils during the last stages of war would protect them and Sri Lanka wouldn’t unleash missiles and rockets. Colombo proved him wrong. They were hit. By asking the people not to flee Gaza, despite Israeli warnings, Hamas is taking a similar line. Punishing all Palestinians for Hamas’ actions is unjust, just like punishing all Tamils for LTTE’s actions was wrong. The LTTE claimed to fight for Tamils without consulting them and Hamas claimed to represent Palestinians without seeking the approval for the Oct.7 strike. Well, two situations are not absolutely comparable. We can be clear that Hamas is facing a situation similar to what the LTTE faced, shortly before its end. Will Hamas meet a similar fate as the LTTE? Only time will answer that question.” The above was said soon after the Oct. 2023 Hamas attack.

Swamy quite conveniently refrained from mentioning India’s direct role in setting up one of the deadliest terror projects in the world here in the ’80s.

Former Editor of The Hindu, Malini Parthasarathy, who also had served as Chairperson of The Hindu Group, released a list of politicians assassinated by the LTTE, as she hit back hard at those who raged against the comparison of the Hamas to the LTTE. The list included two Jaffna District MPs, Arumugam Murugesu Alalasundaram and Visvanathan Dharmalingam, assassinated in early Sept. 1985. Slain Visvanathan Dharmalingam’s son, Dharmalingam Siddharthan, who represents the Vanni electoral district on the Illankai Thamil Arasu Kadchi (ITAK), is on record as having said that the two MPs were abducted and killed by TELO (Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation.) gunmen. The list posted by Parthasarathy included PLOTE leader Uma Maheswaran, assassinated in Colombo in July 1989. The LTTE hadn’t been involved in that killing either. Maheswaran is believed to have been killed by his onetime associates, perhaps over the abortive PLOTE raid on the Maldives in Nov, 1988. India never bothered at least to acknowledge that the Maldives raid was carried out by men trained by India to destabilise Sri Lanka. There is no doubt that Maheswasran’s killers, too, were known to the Indian intelligence at that time.

Before rushing into conclusions regarding Hamas and the LTTE, perhaps a proper examination of the circumstances they emerged is necessary. The two situations – fourth phase of the Eelam conflict and the latest Hamas strike on Israel and the devastating counter attack – cannot be compared under any circumstances. Efforts to compare the two issues is more like comparing apples and oranges, though mutually Tamils and Sinhalese have so many commonalities having intermingled throughout history like the Arabs and Jews.

It is no doubt Jews are a people that suffered persecution throughout known history under Assyrians, Babylonians to Romans and so forth. Such persecution includes expulsion of Jews from England in 1290 and from Spain 1492. So what Hitler and the Germans did was to take the historic process to another extreme.

Yet to blame the Palestinians and treat them like animals and to simply butcher them for the latest uprising by Hamas for all the humiliations and suffering they have been going through non-stop since Naqba in1948, from the time of the creation of Israel is to allow the creators of the problem, including the UK, the USA and United Nations to wash all their sins on the true other victims of this conflict, the Palestinians.

It would be pertinent to mention that Israel, in spite of having one of the world’s best fighting armed forces with 100 percent backing from the West, cannot totally eradicate Hamas the way Sri Lanka dealt with the LTTE. Mind you we did not drop 2000 pound bombs supplied by the US on hapless Tamil civilians to commit genocide as is happening in Palestine in the hands of the Israelis.

The circumstances under which the LTTE launched a large-scale offensive in Aug. 2006 and its objectives had been very much different from that of Hamas. The LTTE really believed that it could have defeated the Sri Lankan military in the North by cutting off the sea supply route from Trincomalee to Kankesanthurai and simultaneously overrunning the Kilali-Muhamalai-Nagarkovil forward defence line (FDL). The total collapse of the FDL could have allowed the LTTE to eradicate isolated fighting formations trapped north of the FDL. But, in the case of the Gaza war, the Hamas strike was meant to provoke Israel to unleash a massive unbridled counter attack that caused maximum losses on the civilians. As Hamas expected the Israeli counter attack has triggered massive protests in the West against their leaders. They have been accused of encouraging violence against Palestine. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other US allies are under heavy pressure from Muslims and other horrified communities’ world over to take a stand against the US.

But in spite of growing protests, Israel has sustained the offensive action not only against Gaza but Lebanon, Yemen and Iran.

Instead of being grateful to those who risked their lives to bring the LTTE terror to an end, various interested parties are still on an agenda to harm the armed forces reputation.

The treacherous Yahapalana government went to the extent of sponsoring an accountability resolution against its own armed forces at the Geneva-based UNHRC in Oct. 2015. That was the level of their treachery.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Asoka & Swarna’s Thrilling-Melodrama – Part III

 “‘Dr. Ranee Sridharan,’ you say. ‘Nice to see you again.’

The woman in the white sari places a thumb in her ledger book, adjusts her spectacles and smiles up at you. ‘You may call me Ranee. Helping you is what I am assigned to do,’ she says. ‘You have seven moons. And you have already waisted one.’” 

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida 

by Shehan Karunatilaka (London: Sort of Books, 2022. p84) 

(Continued from yesterday)

Rukmani’s Stardom & Acting Opportunity

Rukmani Devi is still remembered for her incomparable singing voice and her studio photograph by Ralex Ranasinghe with its hint of Film Noir mystery and seduction, and for the role of Blanch Dubois she played in Dhamma Jagoda’s Vesmuhunu, an adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. This is a role she shared on alternate nights with Irangani Serasinghe in the late 60s or early 70s. (See my Island Essays, 2024, p114) She was immensely happy to be able to act in a modern western classic directed by a visionary theatre director like Dhamma Jagoda and it was to his credit that he chose to give her that role when all acting roles had dried up for her. I observed those rehearsals held at Harrold Peiris’ open garage.

I, too, am happy that Swarna has had a chance to perform again in her 70s. The question is, how exactly has she used that very rare opportunity to act in a film that has doubled its production cost within two months, and now showing in private screenings in multiplexes in Australia with English subtitles, with ambitions to be shown on Netflix and Amazon Prime. These outlets also now fund films and make challenging mini-series. Rani has clearly been produced and marketed with this global distribution in mind. How does this important fact affect Swarna’s style of acting and the aesthetics of Asoka’s script, are the questions I wish to explore in the final section of this piece.

A Sensational-Thrilling Political & Family Melodrama

‘Melodrama’ is a popular genre with a history that goes back to 19th century theatre in the west and with the advent of film, Hollywood took it up as it offered a key set of thrilling devices known as ‘Attractions’, for structuring and developing a popular genre cinema. The word ‘Melodrama’ is a compound of the Greek word for music ‘melos’ and drama as an action, with the connotation of a highly orchestrated set of actions. The orchestration (not only with sound but also the speed and rhythm of editing, dramatic expressive lighting, ‘histrionic’ acting, etc.,) always reaches toward thrilling climaxes and at times exaggerated display of emotions. The plots are sensational, propelled by coincidences and written to reach climaxes and dramatic reversals of fortune, and sudden revelations. Hollywood was famous for its happy endings with resolution of the dramatised conflicts, while Hindi melodramas and Lankan copies often ended sadly.

In the history of cinema there are highly sophisticated melodramas within Hollywood, classical Hindi cinema and also in European art cinema. Rainer Werner Fassbinder was one of the German directors who developed a modern ‘Brechtian-Melodrama’ of extraordinary political and aesthetic power in the 70s. And of course, there are very poorly conceived melodramas too like many of the Sinhala films which were copies of Indian prototypes. Melodramatic devices inflect the different genres of Hollywood, for example the Gangster Film, the Western and created durable genre types in character, e.g. the Gangster, the Lonesome Cowboy and Indians; all national stereotypes, one embodying the underbelly of American capitalism, an anti-hero and the other the American hero actualising The American Dream. ‘The Indian,’ merely the collateral damage of this phantasy!

When the stories were centred on women the genre classification was ‘Women’s Melodrama’ as it dealt with interpersonal relations, conflicts, and sadness centred on the home primarily. Feminist film theory has developed a vast archive of scholarship on the melodramatic genre, cross-culturally, with a special focus on Hollywood and Hindi cinema decades prior to the formation we now call Bollywood, made with transnational capital and global reach. It was assumed that the audience for the family melodramas was female and that as women, we enjoy crying at the cinema, hence the condescending name ‘The Weepies’. I cut my scholarly/critical teeth studying these much-maligned melodramatic films for my doctorate, which I had enjoyed while growing up in a long-ago Ceylon.

Asoka’s Melodramatic Turn

Asoka in Alborada, but more so in Rani has made melodramatic films with his own ‘self-expressive’ variations on the structure, with an ‘Art Cinema’ gloss. He has said that Rani is more like Alborada and unlike his previous films made during the civil war. This is quite obvious. Though the advertising tag line for Alborada claimed it as a ‘Poetic film that Neruda never made’ it was a straightforward narrative film. I have argued in a long essay (‘Psycho-Sexual Violence in the Sinhala Cinema: Parasathumal & Alborada’, in Lamentation of the Dawn, ed. S. Chandrajeewa, 2022, also tr. into Sinhala, 2023), that the staging of the rape of the nameless, silent, Dalit woman is conceived in a melodramatic manner playing it for both critique and exciting thrills. This is a case of both having his cake and eating it.

Swarna’s Melodramatic Turn

The film appears to be constructed, plotted melodramatically, to demonstrate Swarna’s ability to perform dramatic scenes of high excitement in areas of taboo, the opportunity for which is unavailable to a Sinhala actress, in a Sinhala film, playing the role of a Sinhala Buddhist mother, who has lost her son to an act of terror unleashed by the Sinhala-Buddhist State terror and Sinhala-Buddhist JVP.

In short, Swarna has been given the opportunity to demonstrate how well she can perform a range of Melodramatic emotions that go from say A to, say D. She has been given the chance to move smoothly from English to Sinhala as the middle classes do; use the two most common American expletives which are part of the American vernacular; drink for pleasure but also to the point of getting drunk; offer alcohol to her baffled domestic worker; coax her son and  friends to drink; dance with them in an inebriated state; pour alcohol, whisky, not arrack, like one would pour water from a bottle; chain smoke furiously; dash a full mug of tea on the floor in a rage; crumple on the floor sobbing uncontrollably; shout at her loyal aid Karu; speak with sarcasm to a police officer insisting that she is ‘Dr Manorani …’ not ‘Miss or Mrs’, like feminists did back in the day; chat intimately with a minister of the government; look angrily and scowl at President Premadasa when he comes to the funeral house to condole with her; stage Richard’s funeral in a Catholic church with a stain glass window of the Pieta; to quote a well-known Psalm of David from the Bible, ‘Oh Absalom my son, Oh my son!’; etc.

Rani is Swarna’s chance to show that she can perform in ways that no Sinhala script has allowed a Sinhala actor to do up to now, that is, behave like the Sinhala cinema’s fantasy of how the upper-class Anglophone Lankan women behave. In short not unlike, but much worse, than the ‘bad girls’ in the Sinhala melodramatic genre cinema who always ended up in a Night Club, the locus of licentiousness that tempt them. I am thinking of Pitisara Kella from the 50s and a host of other films. Sinhala cinema simply cannot convincingly present the upper-class English-speaking milieu, with any nuance and conviction, it just feels very stilted, poorly acted therefore. Saying this is not class snobbery on my part. Even Lester James Peries from this very upper class and a Roman Catholic, in Delowak Atara couldn’t do it with Irangani Serasinghe and others. The dialogue meant to be serious or just plain normal sounded stilted and even funny. But when Lester did the Walauwa as in Nidhahanaya, it was brilliant, one of our classics. Brecht it was who said (on the eve of WW2, creating a Modern Epic mode of theatre in exile, that it’s not easy to make drama about current events. It’s much easier to look back with nostalgia at a genteel aristocratic Sinhala past for sure.

In taking the opportunity to explore kinetic and emotional behaviour considered to be taboo for a Sinhala woman, a fantasy Tamil woman has been fabricated. The plot of Rani is constructed by Asoka to provide Swarna the opportunity to indulge in these very taboos. In short, the fictional Tamil Rani offers Swarna an acting opportunity to improve her career prospects in the future. In so doing she has weakened her ability, I fear, to evolve as an actress.

A Domestic Melodrama: The House Suspended in a Void

If Swarna so desired, if the script ‘allowed her’ to, she could have tried to develop a quieter, more restrained and therefore a more powerful Rani. A friend of the family, when asked, said that, “The most striking feature of Manorani was her quiet, confident dignity, before and after Richard.” To testify to such a person, Asoka and Swarna could have asked the obvious question, did she have any close friendships formed as undergraduates, who supported her during this tragedy, as there certainly were cherished friends who shared her grief.  After all, she was among the elite first generations of Ceylonese women to enter University in the 1940, to medical school at that!

Asoka and Swarna have entrapped their Rani in a vacuum of a house, friendless, with a little cross on Richard’s wall to signify religion. A lot of effort has gone into the set decoration and art direction of the house, as in Alborada, to stage a fantasy/phantasy melodramatic scenario. There is no real sensory, empathetic feel and understanding of the ethos (character), of this urbane Anglophone Ceylonese-Lankan mother and son, hence the fictionalised scenarios feel synthetic, cosmetic in the best traditions of the Sinhala genre cinema’s representation of the ‘excessive and even grotesque upper-class’. Except, here the Realism of the mise-en-scene (the old-world airy house and furniture and composition of the visual components) makes claims to a realist authenticity. A little modest research would have shown that Manorani and Richard moved from one rented apartment to another in the last few years of his life and when he was abducted, lived on the upper-floor of a house, in a housing estate in Rajagiriya. Asoka said in an interview that it wasn’t possible to find in Colombo the kind of old house they required for Rani. So, they went out of town to find the ideal house suited to stage their phantasy.

I suspect that it was Swarna who called shots this time, not Asoka who was recovering from a serious illness. He said that she brought the project to him and the producer and that he had no idea of making a film on Manorani, but added that he wrote the script within 3 months. I suspect that this Rani, (this out of control, angry, scowling, bad tempered, lamenting, hysterical Rani, reaching for the alcohol and cigarettes to assuage her grief, performing one sensational, thrilling melodramatic turn after another), was Swarna’s conception, her version of Manorani that she has nursed for 28 long years. Had she resisted this temptation to display her high-intensity acting-out skills yet again, she might just have been able to tap unsuspected resources within herself which she may still have as a serious actress. Its these latent affective depths that Rukmani Devi undoubtedly tapped when she was invited to play the drunken and lost Blanche Dubois, in A Streetcar Named Desire in Sinhala, as a desperate, drunken, aristocratic lady, in Dhamma Jagoda’s Vesmuhunu (1971?).

Jagoda / Irangani

It is reported that before going on stage, Rukmani Devi went on her hands and knees to pay her respects to Dhamma, not as feudal act of deference but to acknowledge his Shilpiya Nuwana, craft knowledge/intelligence’, as one very perceptive Sinhala critic put it. That gesture of Vandeema was foreign to the Tamil Christian Rukmani Devi, but nevertheless it shows her sense of immense gratitude to Dhamma for having taken her into a zone of expression (a dangerous territory emotionally for dedicated vulnerable actors), that she had never experienced before, so late in her life. But ‘late’ is relative to gender, then she was only in her 50s!

Challenge is what serious actors yearn for, strange beings who may suggest to us intensities that sustain and amplify life, all life. Swarna might usefully think about Rukmani Devi, her life and her star persona as a Tamil star in countless sarala Sinhala films, in whose shadow and echo every single Sinhala actress has entered the limelight, Swarna more so now than any other!

As for Asoka, he needs to rest and take care of himself before he commits himself to this recent track of films which are yielding less and less with each of the two films done back to back. His body of work is too important to trash it with this kind of half thought out ‘Tales of Sound and Fury’, which is a precise definition of Melodrama at its best. This film, alas, is not one of those.

That young Tamil women, often silent and traumatised, appeared following Sinhala soldiers in Lankan ‘civil-war cinema’ of the modernists, all male, is a troubling phenomenon. A ‘Sinhala Orientalism’, an exoticising of Tamil and Dalith young women as Other, is at work in some of the civil war films, as in Alborada and Rani. And then this very elevation always leads to unleashing psycho/sexual and/or other forms of violence, because the elevation (Mother Goddess in Alborada) only feeds violent male psychosexual phantasies, which in the Sinhala cinema often leads to the violence of rape and other forms of violence towards women, both Tamil and Sinhala. (To be continued)

by Laleen Jayamanne 

Pilleyan, a key element in that drama now arrested for political expediency?

The LTTE killed two Karuna loyalists on July 15, 2004 in the Batticaloa Prison. The dead included Satchi Master. The killer was an LTTEer serving a short sentence for jewellery theft and assault. The killings in the Batticaloa Prison caused anxiety among senior government officials. On Aug. 24, 2004, an LTTEer shot dead another Karuna loyalist, P. Jayakumar, in the Akkaraipattu Magistrate’s Court. A jail guard and a court clerk sustained minor injuries. The police arrested Jayakumar, along with another LTTE dissident, Saravanamuthu Shanthakumar, at a road block, at Akkaraipattu, on May 19th, 2004. They were in possession of a pistol, one hand grenade and 15 rounds of ammunition. Shanthakumar was killed on July 15, 2004 at the Batticaloa Prison along with Satchi Master.

Against the backdrop of one-time LTTEer Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, alias Pilleyan’s arrest on April 08, 2025 and subsequent detention under Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) over Eastern University Vice Chancellor Prof. S. Raveendranath’s disappearance on Dec. 15, 2006, whose life was actually under threat from the TIGERS several years after Karuna and Pilleyan broke away from it, various interested parties started commenting on the role played/atrocities perpetrated by Pilleyan and Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, aka Karuna Amman, during the conflict, and after.

Both Karuna and Pilleyan entered mainstream politics before the successful conclusion of the war in May 2009. Pilleyan is the current leader of TMVP (Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal).

In a way it is a pity that the police are now trying to pin Pilleyan for the disappearance of Prof Raveendranath, obviously to please the current political masters.

Comments included their role in LTTE terrorism and what they did after switching their allegiance to the government in March 2004. Let me stress that they daringly rebelled against the LTTE during Ranil Wickremesinghe’s tenure as the Prime Minister. The UNP has repeatedly claimed the credit for the unprecedented schism in what was considered a monolithic terror organisation and some asserted that the LTTE engineered Wickremesinghe’s defeat at the 2005 presidential election to avenge the catastrophic split.

Pilleyan’s arrest caused a political storm with his counsel Udaya Gammanpila alleging that an attempt was being made to compel his client to confess complicity in the 2019 Easter Sunday suicide attacks. Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU) leader and former Minister Gammanpila is no stranger to controversy, but he has remained unscathed when it comes to his integrity.

In spite of vindictive attacks on him, Attorney-at-Law Gammanpila declared that nothing could be as ridiculous as accusing Pilleyan, who had been detained at the Batticaloa Prison for a period of five years (Oct. 11, 2015 to Nov. 24, 2020) of arranging National Thowheed Jaamaath (NTJ) to bomb churches and hotels on April 21, 2019. Having granted bail to Pilleyan and four others held in connection with the Christmas Day, 2005, assassination of TNA MP Joseph Pararajasingham on two personal sureties of Rs. 100,000/- each, the Batticaloa High Court acquitted and released them on January 13, 2021.

It would be pertinent to examine the devastating split caused by Karuna in March 2003 and its impact on the Eelam War IV (2006 August to May 2009).

Karuna’s move

Having received information that ‘Colonel’ Karuna decamped, the Kilinochchi-based leadership acted swiftly and decisively to neutralise the impending threat. The LTTE planned to take hold of both Karuna Amman, responsible for Ampara-Batticaloa sector, and his colleague, Sivasubramanium Varadanthan, aka ‘Colonel’ Paduman, in charge of the neighbouring Trincomalee District, to Kilinochchi. The Kilinochchi-based leadership, or Vanni leadership, wanted to ensure that those deployed under the command of Karuna and Paduman remaind loyal to the organisation. Both Karuna and Paduman had held the rank of ‘Colonel’ at that time, though Karuna was in the limelight due to his involvement in negotiations with the UNF government.

The Kilinochchi command cleverly used the Defence Ministry and SCOPP (Secretariat for Coordinating Peace Process) officials to arrange for an SLAF chopper to fly Karuna Amman, along with Paduman, to Kilinochchi. SCOPP records prove that on the authorisation of the Defence Ministry, it directed the SLAF to pick Paduman from Trincomalee and then touch down at a pre-arranged location in the Batticaloa District, on March 2, 2004, to take on board Karuna.

Fearing that he would have to face a firing squad in Kilinochchi, Karuna declined to join Paduman. Instead, he set in motion a strategy, which finally debilitated the LTTE’s conventional fighting capability. The writer disclosed the LTTE’s counter-move in a Sunday Island report headlined ‘Prabhakaran plotted Karuna capture’ in its March 28, 2004, edition.

Both Karuna and Paduman, at that time, confirmed the LTTE using SCOPP/ SLAF to arrange their transfer from the East to Kilinochchi.

The UNP and the Norwegians never bothered to raise the issue with the LTTE at that time. The Defence Ministry continued to provide chopper rides to the LTTE and did everything possible to appease the outfit, even at the expense of national security.

Norwegian peace facilitator and the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM), too, had been aware of the LTTE request for an SLAF chopper ride for top Tigers in the East. Had Karuna got into that chopper and ended up in a secret LTTE detention camp or executed, Eelam War IV would have taken a different course.

The Vanni leadership used Paduman, on several occasions, to counter reports of a debilitating split in the LTTE. The LTTE never allowed Paduman to leave the Vanni throughout Eelam War IV. Paduman surrendered on May 15, 2009, four days before troops killed LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, on the banks of the Nanthikadal lagoon.

Karuna caused the split just over a year after the LTTE quit the negotiating table. President CBK, PM Wickremesinghe, and the co-chairs of the peace process, agreed that the LTTE should be allowed to deal with the situation. They allowed the situation to develop into a bloody confrontation. They failed to realise that Karuna’s revolt caused irreparable damage to the organisation by dividing the LTTE’s fighting cadre on regional lines. The crisis denied the LTTE recruitment in the Batticaloa and Ampara sectors, while its operations in the Trincomalee District, too, experienced difficulties due to the detention of ‘Colonel’ Paduman, the senior man in charge of the area. ‘Colonel’ Paduman, too, was perceived as a threat due to his close association with Karuna.

Karuna acted swiftly to ensure his protection and that of the eastern cadres. The well-proven battlefield strategist felt that his security, as well as the safety of the Batticaloa fighting cadre, depended on an understanding with the Sri Lankan military. Karuna pushed for a separate agreement on the lines of the Norwegian arranged CFA between the GoSL and the LTTE in February 2002.

The Island dealt with Karuna’s move in an exclusive headlined ‘Rebel Karuna wants separate deal with government’ in the March 5, 2004 issue, which was based on information provided by Varathan, an aide to Karuna. The then Army Chief, Lieutenant General Lionel Balagalle and DIG Nimal Lewke confirmed what Varathan had to say on behalf of Karuna.

Karuna offered to negotiate a separate ceasefire in the Ampara-Batticaloa sector, though both the Norwegians and the government promptly rejected the move, while reiterating their commitment to the CFA. But, an influential section, within the establishment, supported Karuna’s move. Varathan alleged that a wave of killings in the Eastern Province, in the wake of the CFA, and a demand for 1,000 more cadres from the Batticaloa-Ampara sector for deployment in the Northern Province, too, had contributed to Karuna’s decision to break ranks.

Wobbling goverment

An unprecedented crisis caused by Karuna sent shock waves through the LTTE and its supporters. Among the affected parties were the TNA and the Tamil Diaspora. The LTTE struggled to contain the developing crisis. In spite of specific government orders issued to the Army not to intervene, at certain levels the military cooperated with Karuna.

Karuna wanted the Army to prevent a group of senior cadres, who had been under his overall command, from crossing the entry/exit point at Omanthai, north of Vavuniya, back to the Vanni. The LTTE dissident also urged the Army to facilitate an operation to help his men, deployed in the Northern Province, to return through Army lines on the night of March 3, 2004. The government prohibited the Army from supporting Karuna’s efforts, hence a group of senior cadres, including ‘Colonel” T. Ramesh and their families, crossed the entry/exit point. Immediately after their arrival in Kilinochchi, ‘Colonel’ Ramesh was declared as Karuna’s successor.

Undaunted by the government’s refusal to back his revolt against, what Karuna called, the treacherous Kilinochchi leadership, he ordered public protests in Batticaloa. The first of a series of protests was held at Kiran, Karuna’s home town, where a crowd of over 2,000 people gathered in support of Karuna. Some of them set fire to effigies of Prabhakaran and Ramesh, while Karuna reiterated his demand for a separate CFA with the government. Much to the glee of the LTTE and the Norwegians, the government rejected Karuna’s call for cooperation out of hand. But, the military continued to extend support to Karuna.

In spite of the LTTE’ pull-out from negotiations in April 2003, the government reiterated its commitment to a non-existent peace process thereby bending backwards to please the LTTE and the so-called peace facilitator with its own ultimate agenda coinciding with those of the LTTE.

The LTTE ordered the Tamil media not to provide space for the rebellious group. No one dared challenge the LTTE, though Karuna, too, exerted pressure on the media. Undergraduates from the Northern Province, studying at the Eastern University at Vantharamoolai ,returned to their villages amidst rising tension.

Regardless of the government directive that the military kept its distance from the rebel faction, an influential section of those in the military, who were earlier deployed in clandestine operations behind enemy lines, threw their weight behind the former LTTE field commander.

Batticaloa’s hostility towards the LTTE increased after an LTTE operative shot dead eight Karuna loyalists, including Kuheneshan, widely believed to be a high ranker among the renegade group, at Crystal Terrace housing scheme, Kottawa, on July 25, 2004. They were slain in their sleep

Batticaloa Tamils defied an LTTE directive prohibiting public participation at the funerals of the three Karuna loyalists killed at Kottawa. Several hundred people paid their last respects to Pakyam Amarasevan, alias Tehvan, of Main Street, Kommathurai, Chennkalady, Ponnathurai Thurainadan alias Ruban of the same address, and Kandiah Annandakumar of Kattankudy. The LTTE distributed leaflets warning the public of dire consequences if they attended, what they called, traitors’ funeral. The LTTE made an attempt to prevent public participation, having failed to dissuade families of the victims from bringing the bodies to Batticaloa. Families, living in military held areas, accepted the bodies, whereas those living in the LTTE-controlled region had no option but to accept the directive.

It would be important to examine the circumstances under which the LTTE hunted down those given refuge at the Crystal Terrace housing scheme. They had moved in on July 13, 2004, and were in the process of trying to obtain passports to leave the country. The police quoted a neighbour as having said he heard gunshots around 3.30 a.m. As people used to light crackers to scare monkeys away, he had not taken much notice, he said.

In fact, the first indication of the LTTE operation, the biggest directed against the Karuna faction in Colombo, since the March 2004 split, came to light after the military intercepted a conversation between two LTTE personnel. Although they discussed a successful hit in Colombo, there was no clue as regards the location. The conversation revealed that those involved in the operation had reached Karuna’s successor, ‘Colonel’ Thambirajah Ramesh based in the Batticaloa district. The Colombo police took about four hours to locate the scene of the massacre.

Impact on CFA

The crisis created by Karuna quickly engulfed the entire CFA process. Those trying to save the CFA soon realised that they were fighting a losing battle. They understood Karuna’s action had caused irreparable damage and nothing could resurrect the Norwegian initiative.

The SLMM (Norway led Sri Lanka monitoring mission) suspended the monitoring process in areas under Karuna’s control. Overnight, the Northern and Eastern Provinces were divided into three sectors, under the control of the GoSL, the LTTE and the breakaway LTTE faction. The Norwegians and the SLMM rejected Karuna’s overtures to have a separate CFA negotiated between the breakaway faction and the GoSL. Karuna also emphasised that the LTTE should recognise that the Batticaloa-Ampara sector was outside its purview. UNICEF and the UNHCR, too, pulled out of Karuna’s territory.

Today only a few remember the dicey situation the country experienced at thatime.

The SLMM also turned down an SLA request to arrange for a meeting between the Army and Karuna. In spite of the Army chief, Lt. Gen. Balagalle, who held the post of the Chief of Defence Staff, personally pushing for a meeting, which he felt could help ease tensions, the SLMM refused to comply. The LTTE insisted that there shouldn’t be any interaction whatsoever between the SLMM and the breakaway faction. Erik Solheim ruled out a Norwegian intervention, thereby effectively ending any sort of mediation effort.

In a desperate bid to settle the crisis, the UK stepped in. The UK sent its top diplomat in Colombo, Steven Evans, along with its Defence Attaché, Lt. Col. Mark Weldon, to find a way out.

Efforts to isolate Karuna failed. Premier Wickremesinghe compelled Ali Zarheer Moulana to resign his parliamentary seat after the disclosure of his role in facilitating Karuna to leave the Batticaloa district. Before that, the battlefield tactician quickly won over the confidence of the Tamil-speaking people in the region. He took advantage of the situation by offering to discuss long standing grievances of the public. Then General Officer Commanding (GoC) the Army’s 23 Division, headquartered at Welikanda, Brigadier Vajira Wijegunawardene, recalled how Karuna moved swiftly to consolidate his power in areas under his control. Karuna offered to discuss the forcible takeover of land by the LTTE in the east. Soon, the UNP and the TNA realised that the crisis was having a debilitating impact on their campaign for the April 2, 2004 parliamentary polls. In fact, Premier Wickremesinghe had to avoid Batticaloa during campaigning in the East as the Defence Ministry couldn’t guarantee his security.

Vanni move on East

Under the noses of the Norwegians, the LTTE moved cadres to beef up its strength in the Batticaloa District to take on Karuna. The SLMM and the government facilitated the transfer of LTTE cadres from the North to the East in the run-up to the parliamentary polls. The CFA permitted transfers, though there had been restrictions as regards the number of personnel. The LTTE overcame the problem by sending groups in small batches across Army controlled entry and exit points at Omanthai and Uliyankulam. Although the Army had managed to detect some of those entering the East illegally, it couldn’t thwart the LTTE plans. Then the LTTE humiliated the government by launching a series of sea landings on the night of April 9, 2004 to wipe out the breakaway group. The LTTE operation had got underway a few hours after the service commanders arrived at Trincomalee. In spite of the Defence portfolio being under her control, President Kumaratunga did nothing, while the Prime Minister and the Norwegians looked the other way. A confident LTTE leadership told the government that it intended to use sea routes to mount an operation targeting Karuna. The government was told to keep the Navy out of the LTTE’s way. The government gave in to LTTE demands. Following urgent consultations in Colombo between the military and the President, the top brass summoned a meeting at the Batticaloa Brigade Headquarters, where senior officers, in charge of the region, were told to keep out of the fight.

After Karuna’s decision to give up the fight on April 9, 2004, when the LTTE confronted his cadres on the banks of the Verugal River, many believed that Prabhakaran’s erstwhile friend wouldn’t survive.

Karuna’s decision has been influenced by the realisation that the sea borne assault was led by Batticaloa cadres, the majority of those who had fought under him. Had Karuna engaged them on the banks of the Verugal River, there would have been many casualties. Instead of fighting, Karuna ordered his men to leave the battlefield and return to their villages, while he fled Batticaloa with the help of UNP National List MP Ali Zaheer Moulana. Until Moulana acknowledged his role in Karuna’s escape, the UNP, a section of the medi, and even the Norwegians, blamed the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) for helping Karuna escape. Once the UNP had established Moulana’s involvement, PM Wickremesinghe demanded his resignation. He swiftly complied. Moulana sought protection abroad. After years in the US, he returned to the country to pledge his allegiance to President Rajapaksa.

Karuna loyalists killed five LTTE cadres, including ‘Lt. Colonel’ Neelan, the deputy head of the Batticaloa District Intelligence outfit before fleeing the area. A furious Kilinochchi leadership vowed to hit back wherever Karuna and his top men took refuge.

A spate of killings undermined SLMM efforts to restore normalcy in the Batticaloa-Ampara sector, where unidentified gunmen killed 10 LTTE personnel, in three separate incidents on April 24, May 2 and May 6, 2004. The LTTE accused the DMI of carrying out the killings, a charge vehemently denied by the DMI. The LTTE hit back. An LTTE operative shot dead Lance Corporal Wasantha Liyanage. He was shot through the head inside a private bus approaching Batticaloa town on May 9, 2004. The bus was coming from Chenkaladi.

The LTTE struck again on May 19, 2004, outside the Batticaloa hospital. Reserve police constable, Dassanayake (32658) of police intelligence shot through his head in broad daylight. The gunman walked out of the nearby post office and shot the policeman before walking away.

In spite of a change of government in April, 2004, the UPFA’s response to the LTTE, too, remained the same.

But the military responded to the LTTE threat by stepping up clandestine action, particularly in the East. A growing relationship, mutually beneficial to the military and the breakaway LTTE faction, gradually undermined the LTTE in the Eastern Province. By the time Eelam War IV erupted in Aug 2006, the LTTE had suffered a debilitating setback in the East.

By Shamindra Ferdinando