Midweek Review

A message from Keith Noyahr at the launch of ‘Notes from the battlefield’

Published

3 years ago

2022/09/21

Foreign Minister Ali Sabry, PC, flanked by Justice Minister Wijeyadasa Rajapakse, PC, and Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative in Geneva, C. A. Chandraprema, at the 51 sessions of the ongoing Geneva sessions ( pic courtesy Foreign Ministry)

The 51 sessions of the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council is underway. Sri Lanka is again in the focus with Western powers and their lackeys targeting the war-winning Sri Lanka military.

Successive Sri Lankan governments, including the incumbent administration, failed to address core issues. Their failure to counter accusations that over 40,000 Tamil civilians died in the hands of the military is inexcusable. The Foreign and Defence Ministries, without further delay, should review Sri Lanka’s strategy or fall victim to unceasing Western machinations against the country for militarily crushing the LTTE, against their advice.

By Shamindra Ferdinando

Lankadeepa journalist Ratnapala Gamage had been with the late General Rohan de S. Daluwatte, Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), in Sept. 2001 at the latter’s Colombo office when the one-time Army Commander (May 1996-Dec 1998) was informed of the killing of Vaithilingam Sornalingam alias ‘Colonel’ Shankar.

At the time of his death the 51-year-old former Air Canada employee commanded the ‘Air Wing’ and ‘Marine Division’ of the LTTE.

The 20-minute call interrupted the exclusive interview Gamage was having with the CDS as Daluwatte had to rush for a meeting which was also to be attended by the then President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga.

Ex-Lankadeepa journalist Gamage, now domiciled in Switzerland, dealt with the high profile ‘hit’ carried out by the LRRP (Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol) aka DPU (Deep Penetration Unit) in the eastern part of the Vanni region. The raid carried out so deep, within the LTTE-held territory, sent shock waves through not only the enemy’s rank and file but the Colombo-based diplomatic community as well. Gamage in his maiden book ‘Rana Bimaka Panhinda’ (Notes from the battlefield) discussed the war that was brought to a successful conclusion in May 2009, with the focus on his experiences and visits to operational areas. The launch of ‘Rana Bimaka Panhinda’ took place at the J.R. Jayewardene Centre on Sept 13 with the presence of Lankadeepa Editor Siri Ranasinghe. The gathering was told a Tamil translation of the book would be available later this year. Gamage had an opportunity to meet one of those intrepid men who participated in that particular operation on the Oddusuddan-Puthikudirippu road, east of Kandy-Jaffna A9 hi-way on the morning of Sept. 26, 2001. Gamage reveals his failed bid to convince one of those Long Rangers to give him one of the four pictures he had of the ‘hit’ on Shankar, one of Prabhakaran’s closest associates. Gamage explained as to why the soldier declined to give him a photograph. At the time the LRRP unit triggered the claymore mine that blasted the heavily guarded vehicle, the attackers had believed Velupillai Prabhakaran was on the move in it. Operations behind enemy lines that developed over the years involved elite men, including Muslim military personnel and ex-LTTE cadres. During the Eelam War IV, the Air Force, on more than one occasion, evacuated several teams of Long Rangers who had got trapped in enemy territory. Did such highly successful operations carried out behind enemy lines prompt Prabhakaran to return to the negotiating table in Feb 2002? The Norwegians finalized the one-sided Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) that included a clause specifically meant to halt all LRRP/DPU operations. Due to an oversight on the part of Gamage, the unprecedented crisis caused by the raid on a safe house at Athurugiriya Millennium City housing scheme, operated by those conducting operations behind enemy lines, didn’t receive the attention it deserved. The UNP government crippled the clandestine operation in spite of assurances given by no less a person than the then Army Commander Lt. Gen. Lionel Balagalle that LRRP/DPU didn’t target UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Interestingly, Gamage wasn’t at the launch of his book. The ex-Lankadeepa defence correspondent addressed the gathering from his home at Aarburg, Switzerland at the onset of the event attended by several retired military officers. Retired Maj. Gen. Sanath Karunaratne, who led the defence of the Elephant Pass base way back in July 1991, in his then capacity as a Major, was among the guests at the launch. Gamage discussed the heroic defence of Elephant Pass base and the largest ever sea-borne operation ‘Balavegaya’ launched to save those trapped therein.

The beleaguered men of the sixth battalion of the Sinha Regiment (6SR) under Karunaratne’s command held the strategic base till seaborne ‘Balavegaya’ troops fought their way in from the Mullaitivu coast to break the siege. ‘Balavegaya’ involved 10,000 men and was considered the largest action undertaken before ‘Operation Riviresa’ (Oct-Dec 1995) that brought Jaffna and its suburbs under government control.

If not for the successful suicide attack on an advancing armour-plated LTTE bulldozer carried out by Lance Corporal Gamini Kularatne, the garrison could have probably fallen before the Army launched Operation ‘Balavegaya.’ Kularatne received Sri Lanka’s highest gallantry award ‘Parama Weera Vibhushana’ for the supreme sacrifice he made on the battlefield. Kularatne was the first recipient of the decoration.

Referring to the fall of Kokavil detachment south of Elephant Pass in June 1990, Gamage quite rightly blamed the military top brass for the shortcomings. The second recipient of the highest decoration was Captain Saliya Upul Aladeniya also of the Sinha Regiment. Aladeniya commanded besieged Kokavil detachment established for the protection of the Rupavahini transmission tower there. However, the LTTE attacks on isolated detachments along the A 9 road north of Vavuniya up to Elephant Pass should be examined against the backdrop of the then President, late Ranasinghe Premadasa’s foolish attempts to reach a consensus with the LTTE by even transferring truckloads of arms to it. In June 1990 the government lost control of the A 9 road north of Vavuniya up to Elephant Pass. That stretch of the road overland route remained inaccessible to the government until the Army systematically liberated it in the final phases of the war in January 2009.It would be pertinent to mention that though 6 SR valiantly held Elephant Pass base in 1991 with less than a battalion of troops, a Division plus troops couldn’t repulse multiple LTTE attacks on Yakachchi and Elephant Pass base in late April 2000. The 54 Division abandoned the base and retreated in all directions. The LTTE killed well over 1000 officers and men. The then Army Commander Lt. Gen. Balagalle made a vain attempt to portray the humiliating Elephant Pass defeat as a strategic withdrawal. Many fighting personnel also perished as they ran out of potable water after the LTTE destroyed their sole water source at Yakachchi

Keith Noyahr’s commendation among the well-wishers who couldn’t attend the book launch but chose to issue a recorded statement commending Gamage’s work was Keith Noyahr, the Deputy Editor of now defunct ‘The Nation. Noyahr recalled his close association with Gamage during the conflict and when he earlier worked at the Daily Mirror, the sister paper of Lankadeepa. Noyahr fled the country following his abduction and subsequent release in May 2008. The then Mahinda Rajapaksa administration was accused of targeting ‘The Nation’ journalist over his column ‘Military Matters’ that questioned the conduct of war-winning Army Commander the then Lt. Gen. Sarath Fonseka. Unidentified persons abducted Noyahr on the night of May 22, 2008 in the wake of a provocative piece titled ‘An Army is not its Commander’s private fiefdom’ on May 11, 2008. Noyahr wrote the column under the pseudonym ‘Senapathi. ’Fearing Noyahr’s fate would also befall him, Gamage quietly left the country with his only son in Dec, 2008. His wife died a few years earlier and in spite of political changes never returned to the country. The then joint Opposition comprising UNP-JVP-TNA-SLMC-CWC backing Fonseka at the 2010 presidential election must have been quite a shock for those who criticised Fonseka ‘s controversial strategies, that however brought about the unbelievable crushing of the LTTE in the battlefield, which many a pundit claimed was not within Sri Lanka’s military capability.

Gamage declared in his foreword, his close working relationship with the then Daily Mirror Editor Lalith Alahakoon (having joined The Island in June, 1987, the writer worked under Alahakoon who was the Night News Editor at that time) and his Deputy at the Daily Mirror Noyahr.

Acknowledging his weekly contribution to the Sunday Lankadeepa greatly enhanced his capacity, Gamage appreciated the opportunity and support extended by both Alahakoon and Noyahr for him to do a weekly article that dealt with ‘Military Matters. According to Gamage, it had been a joint effort by him and Noyahr. By the time, Noyahr was targeted ‘Military Matters’ was penned by Noyahr for ‘The Nation.’

Having joined Lankadeepa in late 1993, Gamage moved overseas as Fonseka’s Army was making headway on the Vanni east front. Close on the heels of Gamage’s departure on Dec 18, 2008, the 59 Division brought Mullaitivu, once considered impregnable, under its control. Mullaitivu had been under LTTE control since July 1996 after the LTTE massacred well over 1,000 officers and men in a devastating assault on that isolated base shook the country.

Gamage hadn’t been with the Lankadeepa to report the last phase of the combined security forces campaign that brought the LTTE to its knees.

Wijeweera’s execution

Gamage hadn’t even thought of joining the staff of the Lankadeepa at the time the UNP battled the second JVP inspired insurgency. The government brought the counter

insurgency campaign to an end in late 1989 early 1990 with the elimination of the JVP leadership.

Controversy surrounds the circumstances, the late Somawansa Amarasinghe escaped with the help of an Army officer. The rest, including the Marxist Party’s leader, Rohana Wijeweera were apprehended and summarily executed.

Gamage recalled him raising Wijeweera’s execution with the late Brigadier Janaka Perera (the much decorated officer was killed in an LTTE suicide attack in early Oct. 2008 at Anuradhapura as he came to address an election rally after having retired as a Major General) at his quarters within the then Army headquarters (the war winning Mahinda Rajapaksa government sold that land. The Yahapalana government (2015-2019), too, sold the adjoining land).

Brigadier Perera had been the head of one of the three teams that were assigned the task of eliminating Rohana Wijeweera. Then DIG Premadasa Udugampola (He passed away in January 2019), the late Maj. Gen. Lakshman Algama (killed in LTTE suicide blast in Dec 2001) and the then Colonel Janaka Perera had been in charge of the teams that eventually hunted down the JVP leadership. Gamage recounted his stimulating conversation with Perera while sipping wine. Gamage was there on the invitation of the officer to share a meal with him. The arrest of a JVPer in the Dehiowita area by an officer attached to Perera team, his interrogation that led to the capture of JVP politburo member Disanayake Mudiyansalage Nandasena alias D.M. Ananda who revealed Wujeweera’s hideout at Ulapone. Did Janaka Perera participate in the execution of the JVP leader? What was the assurance the celebrated the army officer gave Wijeweera soon after he placed a pistol at the JVP leader’s head? Where did Janaka Perera detain Wijeweera? Who accompanied the then Army Chief Cecil Waidyaratne when he visited Wijeweera? Gamage answered all these questions and also revealed why Janaka Perera accompanied the journalist to meet a soothsayer in Anuradhapura. This was years before Gnana Akka’s entry into the scene. Gamage’s reportage of LTTE leader Prabhakaran’s press conference in the Vanni on April 10, 2002 captures the attention of the readers. How a police intelligence officer infiltrated the LTTE defences on the pretext of being a journalist from Colombo assigned to cover the much-touted media briefing and unprecedented security measures that were in place therein to prevent an attempt on Prabhakaran’s life was certainly exciting. Gamage discussed how the LTTE turned the media briefing to a propaganda exercise by non-stop screening of footage of their battlefield victories. The stunning attack on Pooneryn-Nagathivanthurai base established in the early 90s to intercept boat movements across the Jaffna lagoon spurred the LTTE. Those directly responsible for the failure weren’t punished though Army Chief Lt. Gen. Waidyaratne resigned after having accepted responsibility. The LTTE smashed the base in early Nov 1993.

A visit to Vanni

Among other issues addressed by Gamage, perhaps one of the most important was the deficiency in the infantry. The ex-Lankadeepa journalist underscored the extreme difficulties experienced by the Army for want of sufficient men under arms. Gamage dealt with the issue against the backdrop of a visit organized by the Army for a group of Colombo-based journalists, including photographers to visit Army lines in the Vanni during Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s presidency. Ravi Ladduwahetti had been on The Island editorial at that time and was among those were taken there. Veteran journalist Ladduwahetti who had served many English newspapers passed away last week. He was 64 years old. The then Divaina Defence correspondent late Sirimevan Kasthuriarachchi and former UNL photographer Siripala Halwala were also in that media team.

Kasthuriarachchi, whose brother, an officer of the Vijayaba Infantry Regiment (VIR) died in the July 1996 Mullaitivu battle, had covered the conflict extensively and was one of those who always joined such arranged visits.

Like many other journalists Gamage, too, experienced flying with bodies of military personnel killed in action, when he was returning to Colombo from Palaly. The writer experienced the same on more than one occasion over the years.

Gamage shared his experience in flying to Palaly after the LTTE brought down two Avros with heat-seeking missiles on consecutive days in late April 1995. Among those who perished in missile attacks were three Lake House journalists. Gamage was lucky to avoid a Sam 7 hit as in spite of speaking to the then Commander of the Air Force he couldn’t secure a seat on an ill-fated Avro that flew out from Ratmalana air base. Instead, the Commander had offered him the opportunity to board the flight at the Anuradhapura air base when the Avro touched down there. Perhaps the second Avro disaster could have been avoided if the Air Force didn’t take the risk of flying there the day after the mysterious destruction of an Avro while taking off from Palaly.

There had been several other books on the conflict since the eradication of the LTTE’s conventional military capability. The books authored by our Permanent Representative in Geneva C.A. Chadraprema (Gota’s War) and the late Subramaniam Sivakamy alias ‘Col’ Thamilini (‘Thiyunu Asipathaka Sevana Yata’/In the Shadow of a Sharp Sword) are must read. Sinhala translation of ‘Oru Koorvaalin Nizhalil’, life story of high ranking LTTE cadre, ‘Col’ Thamilini, took place at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute (SLFI) on May 13, 2016.Oru Koorvaalin Nizhalil’ was launched on March 19, 2016, in Kilinochchi, the one-time LTTE bastion.

Gamage’s coverage of UNP presidential candidate Gamini Dissanayake’s assassination should be examined taking into consideration his assessment that the LTTE did so to facilitate Kumaratunga’s victory. At the following presidential election in 1999, the LTTE tried to assassinate Kumaratunga to pave the way for Wickremsinghe to secure the presidency and in 2005 engineered polls boycott to help Mahinda Rajapaksa to win the presidential poll.

Gamage refrained from commenting on why the LTTE helped Mahinda Rajapaksa to win. Perhaps, the LTTE miscalculated Mahinda Rajapaksa’s capacity.

Chief of LTTE procurement ‘KP’ in his first interview with the media given to this writer in the ‘custody’ of the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI) declared the LTTE calculated they could take an irreversible upper hand in the battlefield within two years.

All News Advertisement

Up Next

US wants travel ban on Lanka Army Chief ‘technically, factually and legally right’

Don't Miss

Russia reaffirms eastern re-orientation

Sahan Weerasooriya

Click to comment

Midweek Review

A look back at now mostly forgotten Eelam war in the aftermath of Kashmir massacre

Published

4 days ago

2025/04/30

Sahan Weerasooriya

LTTE directed two claymore mines at an overcrowded SLTB bus, at Kebithigollewa, on June 15, 2006. The blasts claimed the lives of 68 civilians. Seventeen years after the war, some interested parties sought to muddy the waters by falsely claiming the Karuna faction triggered the Kebithigollewa blasts at the behest of President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

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

Midweek Review

The Broken Promise of the Lankan Cinema:

Published

4 days ago

2025/04/30

Sahan Weerasooriya

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