Midweek Review

B’caloa Tigers’ 2004 shock revolt in retrospect

Published

1 month ago

2025/04/23

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

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Midweek Review

Pahalgam massacre, Indian denial of Trump claims and Sri Lanka’s triumph over LTTE

Published

3 days ago

2025/05/21

Sahan Weerasooriya

Field Marshal Sarath Fonseka, Admiral of the Fleet Wasantha Karannagoda, and Marshal of the Air Force Roshan Goonetileke, at the war heroes' commemoration at the Battaramulla 'Ranaviru' monument on Monday (19) evening. They stand with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake who attended the event following severe criticism of his earlier decision to skip it. Fonseka, Karannagoda and Goonetileke led the combined armed forces campaign to finally crush the LTTE in the battlefield. Wartime Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa played a significant role in Sri Lanka's triumph over terrorism. (Pic courtesy PMD

There hadn’t been a previous instance of India having to contradict a sitting US President, literally, to his face. But, the swift Indian rejection of President Donald Trump’s offer to mediate in the renewed Indo-Pakistan conflict over flashpoint Jammu and Kashmir underscored India’s longstanding national policy that Kashmir wouldn’t involve any third party, under any circumstances.

US President Donald Trump’s claim that he warned both India and Pakistan that there would be significant increase in trade if they agreed on an immediate ceasefire was rejected by India. Pakistan appreciated the US President’s initiative.

Responding to Indian Premier Narendra Modi’s strongly worded statement on May 12, Pakistan, while declaring its backing for a “peaceful resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions and the aspirations of the Kashmiri people, reiterated their support for President Trump’s efforts aimed at the resolution of this dispute, which remains a source of instability in South Asia.”

For whatever reasons, Modi wanted to be in the high company of white Western powers and jumped headlong into being a member of the US-led quad to rub it into China without realising that the West only wanted to use India against Beijing and there was no quid pro quo in the event of an unforeseeable need for help by New Delhi. Had he not been so cussed to Chinese, Beijing would have been a friend- in-need whatever their differences of the past.

India, however, was explicit in its response to President Trump’s cheap shot that he brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan. In the wake of the humiliating Indian rejection, the US was compelled to call for direct communication between India and Pakistan.

In spite of the Indian blunt denial, President Trump, like so many of his other wild claims in recent weeks, on how he has got lucrative trade deal offers from many countries advantageous to Washington, reiterated his preposterous claim with regard to the ceasefire, nuclear escalation and trade when he addressed the US military, based in Qatar. India, in no uncertain terms, has denied President Trump’s repeated claims of nuclear escalation.

Close on the heels of the now-rejected claims regarding the ceasefire, nuclear escalation and increased trade, President Donald Trump again surprised India with another unsubstantiated declaration when he asserted, at a business forum in Qatar, that India had offered the United States a trade deal with “literally zero tariffs”.

Responding to President Trump’s claim, Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar declared that the ongoing negotiations were complex and far from final. Having to contradict a sitting US President is no easy task.

If India found the US propagating a narrative of its own problematic to counter, one can understand Sri Lanka’s plight in countering Western propaganda projects targeting it. But, India, unlike Colombo, swiftly and decisively set the record straight thereby prevented the US from disseminating a false narrative.

The Indian High Commission in Colombo recently reacted strongly to the Tribune report, headlined “India removes its top military spy after RAW leaks”, reproduced in the May 05 edition of The Island. Having faulted The Island for carrying the said factually incorrect news item on page 02 without a fact check, the Indian HC reminded us of the devastating 2019 Easter Sunday carnage here caused by terrorism. As expected the Indian HC statement made no reference to terrorism caused by India in Sri Lanka in the early ’80s. Terrorism sponsored by India bled Sri Lanka till May 2009.

India, too, paid a heavy price. The Indian-led destabilisation project almost overwhelmed Sri Lanka. India simultaneously conducted a proxy war while spearheading high profile diplomatic efforts meant to advance its own interests. The Indian intervention here in the ’80s should be examined keeping in mind their extremely close relationship with the then Soviet Union.

Universities of global terrorism

Prime Minister Modi’s May 12th address to the nation explained India’s stand on Pakistan vis-à-vis what he called terrorism. The Pahalgam massacre carried out on April 22, 2025, brought the country together and the armed forces were authorised to wipe out terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan.

Prime Minister Modi declared: “Terrorist bases, like Bahawalpur and Muridke, are universities of global terrorism. The big terrorist attacks of the world, be it 9/11, be it London Tube bombings, or the big terrorist attacks which have happened in India in the last many decades their roots are somehow connected to these terrorist hideouts. The terrorists had wiped out the Sindoor of our sisters and India responded by destroying their terrorist headquarters. More than 100 dreaded terrorists have been killed in these attacks by India. Many terrorist leaders were roaming freely in Pakistan for the last two and a half to three decades who used to conspire against India. India killed them in one stroke.”

Of course there was no reference to Sri Lanka. The English rendering of the Indian leader’s original speech, made in Hindi, conveniently left out Sri Lanka though there cannot be a better example than Sri Lanka to highlight the successful eradication of terrorism here through military means.

Modi joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1987, the year India forced Sri Lanka to accept the deployment of the Indian Army here. One of the key objectives was to supervise the swift disarming of separatist Tamil groups that were fully sponsored by them. The Indian destabilisation project was meant to compel Sri Lanka to forgo its right to deal with terrorists militarily. A case in point is the Indian demand to call off ‘Operation Liberation’ aimed at clearing Vadamarachchi. India deployed its Air Forces across the Palk Straits in late June 1987 to rescue Prabhakaran and finalise an agreement that suited their overall objectives. Five years later Prabhakaran ordered the assassination of Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi who deployed the Indian Air Force to save Prabhakaran from certain death at the hands of the Sri Lanka Army. Had that happened, the India-created terrorist project could have collapsed. Thousands of lives, including that of Gandhi, and over 1,300 Indian soldiers, could have been saved and a sea-borne attack on the Maldives wouldn’t have materialised.

Premier Modi, too, contradicted President Trump’s claims of direct US role in the halt to Indian offensive action. Modi declared that the suspension of their retaliatory action was the result of the Pakistan Army reaching out to the Director General of Military Operations (DGMO), India.

Premier Modi’s declaration that their greatest strength is India’s unity against all forms of terrorism. “This is certainly not the era of war but this is also not the era of terrorism. Zero tolerance against terrorism is the guarantee for a better world.”

Obviously that hadn’t been India’s position during the Congress reign in the 1980s. India owed Sri Lanka an apology, at least now. Modi’s India should set the record straight, particularly against the backdrop of Western powers pursuing an anti-Sri Lanka campaign.

The anti-Sri Lanka project has taken a new turn with the unveiling of the Tamil genocide monument in Brampton, Ontario, Canada. The monument is widely reported to have been dedicated to the memory of Tamils killed in the war. The unveiling of the monument coincided with the preparations for commemorative events to mark, what the interested parties called, the Mullivaikkal massacre – 40,000 according to the highly exaggerated hatchet job of the UN Secretary General’s Panel of Experts (PoE) that inquired into military operations conducted in the Vanni theatre.

A section of the media quoted Mayor of Brampton Patrick Brown as having told the monument unveiling ceremony: “Genocide deniers, you are not welcome in Brampton, you are not welcome in Canada. Go back to Colombo.” Brown surely knows how to inspire Tamils living in his area. The Canadian media reported that about 12,000 Canadians of Sri Lankan origin live in the Brampton area.

Canada has some nerve to rake up such unsubstantiated claims against Sri Lanka despite so much innocent blood of natives there on its own hands from its colonial past. Even if we just go back to as recently as the mid-1990s when a growing outcry there forced them to close down for good church-run schools after finding remains of several thousand native children in unmarked graves on grounds of those schools that were used to ‘civilise’ them.

Tamil victims

Those who propagate the lie about deliberate massacre of Tamils during the last phase of war that was brought to a successful conclusion on May 18, 2009, conveniently forget that India launched the Sri Lanka terrorism project way back in early ’80s. Over the years various interested parties, both here and abroad, gave unsubstantiated claims regarding the number of dead. But their focus was always on those killed fighting for the LTTE. Let us remind the likes of Patrick Brown who spotlighted the fact that thousands of Tamils were killed by Tamils fighting for supremacy in the Northern and Eastern regions during the conflict.

(1) Members of various Tamil terrorist groups killed in intra-group fighting.

(2) Those killed in fighting between/among Tamil groups sponsored by India

(3) Members of Tamil groups killed in fighting Sri Lankan military and police

(4) Tamil youth killed during weapons training in India and transfer to and from Tamil Nadu via sea

(5) Terrorists killed by rival groups during their stay in India. The killing of 13 Sri Lankans, including EPRLF leader K. Padmanabha in Madras (now Chennai) in June 1990, about three months after the Indian military pulled out from Sri Lanka, exposed New Delhi’s failure to neutralise the LTTE. Their next major target was the assassination of Congress leader Rajiv Gandhi in the following year.

(6) LTTE terrorists killed by the Indian military in the Northern and Eastern regions

(7) LTTE terrorists killed during confrontations with the Indian Navy/Coast Guard

(8) Members of PLOTE (People’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) killed by Indian forces deployed to avert Sri Lankan terrorist attack on the Maldives

(9) Tamil National Army (TNA), a group that had been hastily established by India ahead of the Indian military pullout from Sri Lanka in early 1990 to protect the EPRLF puppet administration, suffered significant loss of life as a result of LTTE operations facilitated by Sri Lanka. That was the period, May 1989 to June 1990, when slain President Ranasinghe Premadasa played ball with Velupillai Prabhakaran

(10) LTTE cadres killed on the orders of Velupillai Prabhakaran. Gopalswamy Mahendraraja alias Mahattaya, whom the writer met at Koliyakulam, near Omanthai, in early January 1990, was the senior most LTTEer executed on the orders of Prabhakaran. Having accused Mahattaya of betraying the LTTE’s cause to India, Prabhakaran demanded his surrender and carried out his execution.

(11) Indian law enforcement authorities killed those who had been involved in the heinous LTTE plot to assassinate Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991. Those who had been demanding justice for Tamils killed during the conflict do not talk of members of that community who perished in India following Gandhi’s assassination.

(12) Tamils who paid the supreme sacrifice fighting for the Sri Lankan government.

(13) Deaths among the LTTE fighting cadre following the breakup of the group in 2004 that eventually paved the way for the armed forces’ success in the north.

(14) The LTTE deployed thousands of children for combat. The number of children killed due to battlefield deployment remains unknown. Those who shed copious tears for terrorists must be reminded that until the Sri Lankan military eradicated the LTTE, Velupillai Prabhakaran continued the despicable practice of forcible recruitment of children.

Elimination of Tamil political leadership

The Tamil Diaspora believe that the world can be deceived with the blatant lie that all Tamils who had been killed during the conflict were civilians. If their lies were accepted, people from the moon must have fought for the LTTE.

There is no doubt that Tamils – men, women and children who had nothing to do with the LTTE or other Tamil terrorist groups that entered the political mainstream during President Ranasinghe Premadasa’s tenure – perished in government military action. There had been serious human rights violations. There is no point in claiming ‘zero’ casualties. That claim is stupid and the government shouldn’t have resorted to such foolish propaganda projects.

Immediately after the government declared victory over the LTTE on May 18, 2009, it should have tendered an apology to the innocent Tamil speaking people killed due to military action. The government should have explained the efforts made over the years to reach a consensus with Tamil terrorist groups with the direct involvement of India. Unfortunately, the war-winning government pathetically failed in its responsibility. President Mahinda Rajapaksa gravely erred in his refusal to make representations to the UN PoE. Had that happened, Sri Lanka could have explained the circumstances leading to the war in August 2006 and avoided falling victim to hatchet jobs done by UN bodies in support of Western agendas.

Those who had been propagating Tamil genocide narrative deliberately forget how the LTTE and other Tamil groups killed elected representatives of Tamil speaking people. They should be ashamed for playing politics with slain Tamil politicians. Have you ever heard of LTTE sympathisers questioning the assassination of Tamil political leader and former opposition leader Appapillai Amirthalingam along with ex-Jaffna MP Vettivelu Yogeswaran on July 13, 1989 at a rented house in Colombo 07.

Yogeswaran’s wife, Sarojini was shot five times at her residence near Jaffna on May 17, 1998. The LTTE assassinated her because she accepted the post of Jaffna Mayor. The LTTE killed indiscriminately. Sarojini Yogeswaran was killed as the LTTE couldn’t stomach Sri Lanka’s efforts to restore normalcy in the Jaffna peninsula.

Many people tend to forget that the Jaffna peninsula and the nearby islands were brought under government control in 1995 during Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s tenure as the President. The TULF decision to contest the Jaffna Municipal Council election on January 29, 1998, infuriated the LTTE. The TULF’s move weakened the LTTE’s position. Political process always frightened the LTTE.

The writer covered the Jaffna district local government elections conducted on January 29, 1998. The TULF contested only the Jaffna MC and Waligamam (north) Pradeshiya Sabha out of 17 local government authorities

Those who organised high profile events in honour of the LTTE dead must make a genuine effort to identify and formulate a list of Tamils – members of rival groups and politicians killed during the conflict. And a separate list of forcibly conscripted children. If Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown is so concerned about Tamils, he can easily check why those 12,000 Sri Lankan Tamils ended up in his area. Did they flee Sri Lanka armed forces, Indian military, or the LTTE? An attempt should be made to identify those who had fought for the LTTE or other Tamil groups living therein.

‘Forgotten Sri Lanka’s exiled victims’

Those who had been accusing Sri Lanka of, what they called, enforced disappearances during and after the conclusion of the war in May 2009, refuse to acknowledge thousands of ex-terrorists (of LTTE and other groups) who live overseas. Refusal on the part of Western governments to share information with Sri Lanka has deprived the country of an opportunity to address accusations of disappearances.

Sometime ago, an expensive survey carried out by the International Truth and Justice Project (ITJP), affiliated to the Foundation of Human Rights in South Africa, revealed ex-LTTE cadres taking refuge in western countries. The survey was titled ‘Forgotten Sri Lanka’s exiled victims.’

The release of the report in June 2016 coincided with the commencement of the on-going 32 sessions of the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The report inadvertently revealed the existence of clandestine networks, facilitating Sri Lankans of Tamil origin, including former members of the LTTE, reaching Europe, through illegal means.

The study disclosed that LTTE personnel, including those who had been with Shanmugalingam Sivashankar alias Pottu Amman’s dreaded intelligence service, had secured citizenship in European countries, including the UK.

The report dealt with information obtained from 75 Tamils, living in the UK, France, Switzerland and Norway. Almost all of them had fled Sri Lanka after the conclusion of the war, in May, 2009. The vast majority of interviews had been conducted in London. However, an ITJP bid to include some of those ex-LTTE cadres, based in Germany, had gone awry. The report claimed that the targeted group declined to participate in the process, in protest against the role of the international community in supporting the transitional justice process in Sri Lanka.

Surprisingly, ITJP hadn’t bothered about those who took refuge in India during the conflict and post-conflict period.

A group of human rights experts, international prosecutors, investigators and transitional justice experts, who had previously served the United Nations (UN) International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Court (ICC), produced the report under the guidance of Yasmin Sooka, one of the three persons on UNSG Ban Ki-moon’s PoE on Sri Lanka. Sooka teamed up with Marzuki Darusman and Steven R. Ratner to produce a Report of the Secretary General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka. Sooka functions as the executive director of the Foundation as well as ITJP

According to the report: “She is a former member of the South African & the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and was a legal advisor to Ban Ki-moon on Sri Lanka. She was the Soros inaugural Chair at the School of Public Policy and recently sat on the Panel investigating sexual violence by French peacekeeping troops in the Central African Republic.”

The writer sought a clarification from UNSG’s deputy spokesperson, Farhan Haq, regarding Sooka’s tenure as a Legal Advisor to UNSG on Sri Lanka. The Island received the following response from Haq: “Yasmin Sooka has been on high level panels, including on Sri Lanka, but she has not been the legal adviser to the Secretary-General.”

Unfortunately, Sri Lanka never really bothered to conduct a comprehensive investigation into unsubstantiated allegations taking into consideration all available facts. Thereby Sri Lanka deprived itself an opportunity to set the record straight, even 17 years after the conclusion of the conflict.

Wartime GoC of the celebrated 58 Division Shavendra Silva, who retired on Dec. 31, 2024, after serving the military for over four decades on the eve of 16th anniversary of triumph over the LTTE, squarely blamed successive governments of failing to counter war crimes accusations. In his exclusive interview with Derana anchor Chathura Alwis the Gajaba Regiment veteran held the governments, including the war-winning Mahinda Rajapaksa administration, of failing to clear the armed forces of false allegations.

Isn’t it an indictment on the entire political party leadership of this country?

Midweek Review

Jairam Ramesh’s “THE LIGHT OF ASIA: the poem that defined THE BUDDHA” – II

Published

3 days ago

2025/05/21

Sahan Weerasooriya

(Continued from Monday 12th May 2025)

Light of Asia’s ‘stunning impact in Ceylon’ forgotten and the ‘Uncrowned King’ buried

One of the dozen of books that Nehru got from his father, when he was imprisoned in a Lucknow jail by the British in 1922, was a copy of The Light of Asia. Eighteen years later, in February 1940, Nehru himself sent his daughter (Indira), who was convalescing in a hospital in Switzerland, ‘Arnold’s two little books The Light of Asia and The Song Celestial’ to keep her company’. (The Song Celestial was Edwin Arnold’s 1885 English translation of the Sanskrit language ‘Bhagavad Gita’ or literally ‘Song of the Lord’. Arnold’s choice of ‘Celestial’ as an English equivalent to Sanskrit ‘Bhagawad’ in the title reflects his deep insight into the Hindu sacred text which, A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada called, in 1984, ‘a definitive guide to the science of self-realization’.)

No doubt, The Light of Asia was Edwin Arnold’s most inspired poetic work. He drew upon many previously existing sources and his own personal interactions with the scholars as well as the ordinary people of India whom he loved. The inscription set up at the university chapel at Oxford where his ashes were deposited after his death contained the following information: Born June 10th, 1832, Died March 24th 1904. Newdigate Prizeman. (While a student at Oxford he won this prestigious prize for his poem ‘The Feast of Belshazzar’) These lines were inscribed there, too:

‘He found his sympathy with – Eastern religious thought

Inspiration for his great –

Poetical gifts.

’

Arnold had a strong moral character, a sharp intellect, a deep commitment to family and work, and meticulously cultivated social graces that enabled him to navigate interactions with people of high society as well as the common masses.That is why Jairam describes him as ‘a quintessential Victorian in every way’. He was a dedicated servant of the Empire, who was compassionate towards the subject people; he believed the British imperial system to be a protector and promoter of civilisation. A polyglot of rare ability, he was conversant in at least ten foreign languages (and indeed quite knowledgeable in some of them): Greek, Latin, Arabic, Turkish, French, German, Japanese (His third wife Tama Kurokawa, born in 1869 and hence less than half his age, was from Japan), Hebrew, Persian, Sanskrit and Marathi. Arnold’s remarkable multilingual capabilities stood him in good stead in serving the Empire in the cultural sphere through his translations between languages, thereby supporting mutual understanding among imperial subjects of different linguistic and religious cultures.

In a passing reference to Edwin Arnold’s The Light of Asia, reputed Indian historian A. L. Basham, in his 1954 book ‘The Wonder that was India’, mentioned that it was based on the Lalitavistara (a Mahayana Sutra in Sanskrit that describes the life of Gautama Buddha from his descent from Tushita heaven to his first sermon in the Deer Park at Sarnath near Varanasi or Baranas Nuwara as it is known among Sinhala speaking Buddhists. A different scholarly proposal mooted in 1960 was that Arnold’s principal source for his epic poem was Professor Samuel Beal’s translation of the Abhinishkramana Sutra (1875) combined with lesser borrowings from Spence Hardy and Arnold’s firsthand experience of Buddhism and his life in India. The year 1972 saw the emergence of yet another conclusion according to which he drew upon the knowledge he had gathered before 1879 by reading books, and also through his contact with sources of Theravada Buddhism in Ceylon (Sri Lanka).

There is lexical evidence of Arnold’s probable contact with Sinhala literary sources in the book. This is my supposition based on the fact that he was a language genius. Although Arnold had not been to Sri Lanka before 1886, he definitely had learned some Sinhala (though Jairam doesn’t mention this). When I read The Light of Asia as a teenager, I was fascinated by the fact that Edwin Arnold uses a few words of Sinhala (my native tongue) as substitutes for the Pali words which the context demands, for maintaining the metrical consistency of the lines, such as ‘sakwal’ or universes (for Pali ‘cakkavala’), ‘Seriyut’ (for the Pali name ‘Sariputta’) “Mugalan’ (for the Pali name ‘Moggallana’, ‘gow’ for Pali ‘gavuta’, and ‘dasa sil’ (for Pali ‘dasa sila). Jairam probably has no knowledge of Sinhala to have detected these Sinhalised Pali terms.

But Jairam’s apparent unfamiliarity with Sinhala has not been an impediment to his understanding of ‘the stunning impact in Ceylon’ that Arnold’s epic poem generated there, a mark of which was the annual ‘Light of Asia oratory contest’ for school children that had been conducted in Colombo for a long time. Incidentally, Jairam’s mention of this event brought to my mind the late Lakshman Kadirgamar. My article is a memorial tribute paid to him on the Vesak Day that, in Sri Lanka, fell on May 12, 2025. Though he was born into a traditional Christian family and had remained a Christian for most of his life until, in his senior years, he became an interfaith person who was, nevertheless, deeply inclined towards Buddhism (as his daughter Ajita says in her biography of her father ‘The Cake that Was Baked at Home’ (2015).

Ajita Kadirgamar mentions a little-known fact about her father’s school days at Trinity College, Kandy, which is that he took pride in having won the Light of Asia contest organised by the Colombo Young Men’s Buddhist Association as a student of that Christian school. She gives some information about the contest. The particular contest was inaugurated under the leadership of the then Governor of Ceylon Herbert Stanley in 1925 and was ‘dedicated to developing oratory skills in English and inculcating Buddhist ethics and values among the younger generation of the country’. The contestants were required to recite some verses from the Edwin Arnold classic ‘Light of Asia’ and give an explanation in English in their own words. “Thus”, Ajita adds, “one sees that LK’s great interest in Buddhism began while still a schoolboy and continued throughout his lifetime to be a topic close to his heart”. This interactional contact with The Light of Asia, as in the case of Swami Vivekananda, Anagarika Dharmapala, and many other renowned personalities of the past earlier mentioned in this article, must have had its characteristic developmental impact on the formation of Lakshman Kadirgamar’s noble personality. It was not for nothing that his schoolmates at Trinity called him ‘P of P’ ‘Personification of Personality’ as Ajita mentions in her book on her father. On his brutal assassination in 2005 at the age of 73, he came to be celebrated by journalists as ‘the Uncrowned King of Sri Lanka’, as the Editor of The Island newspaper eulogised him on his death in a front page editorial as another journalist named Arjuna Hulugalle later remembered in an anecdote (that Ajita records on pp.178-9). “To many he (Lakshman Kadirgamar) was also ‘the noblest son of Sri Lanka in recent times”, Arjuna Hulugalle added. That exalted image of Kadirgamar epitomises the influence that The Light of Asia had on the thinking minds of the culturally literate intelligent Sri Lankan youth of his time.

Ajita also records something that she heard from Ajith Samaranayake, a veteran journalist and newspaper editor (who was himself no more among the living at the time she was writing ‘The Cake that …’) about her father’s humility and generosity. Samaranayake was one of the journalists included in the entourage that accompanied Kadirgamar on his first official tour abroad as the newly appointed Foreign Affairs Minister in president Chandrika Bandaranayake’s government in 1994. They were on a visit to India. Kadirgamar was accommodated in the Hyderabad House, the Government of India’s State Guest House, along with High Commissioner for India designate Mangala Moonasinghe, and Jayantha Dhanapala (formerly of the UN, and later to become the Secretary General of the Peace Secretariat). Kadirgamar arranged for the journalists also to be accommodated and to have their meals in the same hotel. What was more, on his express request, the Indian government put an Air Force helicopter at their disposal for visiting sacred sites associated with the Buddha, including Buddhagaya (Bodh Gaya). This was a double privilege (as Ajita says) for the state visitors from Sri Lanka, for Mangala Moonasinghe was a descendant of Anagarika Dharmapala, well known in Sri Lanka and other Buddhist countries like Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, China, Japan, etc., for having made concerted efforts with the help of the likes of Sir Edwin Arnold to reclaim the sacred Buddhagaya site for the global Buddhists.

In fact, The Light of Asia author was the virtual progenitor of the very idea of reclaiming Bodh Gaya for world Buddhists. The famous Panadura Vadaya (Panadura Debate) between some members of the local Christian clergy and some Buddhist monks in 1873, in which the leading debater on the Buddhist side, a learned Buddhist monk by the name of Migettuwatte Gunananda Thero, well versed in English and Latin, in addition to Sinhala, Pali and Sanskrit, who, with his advanced knowledge of Buddhism and the Bible, and his superior oratorical skills, convincingly beat his Catholic opponents. The news of the debate was widely reported in newspapers circulated in Europe and America. This drew the attention of orientalist scholars and theosophists in the West like the American Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (a veteran of the American Civil War of 1861-65), Madame Blavatsky, and others, to the fact that Buddhist monks were challenging intrusive anti-Buddhist Christian missionary activity in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). The arrival of Olcott, Blavatsky, and others in Ceylon in 1880 and their passionate activism accelerated the pace of the burgeoning local Buddhist revivalist movement. Sixteen-year-old David Hewavitarana joined them, originally as their translator. In 1885, David changed his name to Dharmapala and took the Buddhist religious vow of ‘homelessness’ with his parents’ permission and became known as Anagarika Dharmapala (Dharmapala the Homeless). (To be concluded)

by Rohana R. Wasala