Rajpal's Column

1st August 1999

Just one strike at the heartland

By Rajpal Abeynayake

It's amazing how cocooned the Colombo elite can get. Dr. Neelan Tiruchelvam's death was received last week in the mode of denial by a large swathe of the Colombo elite. "He was never a target," "if he was, why didn't they get him before this?'' and "I still doubt the fact that he was killed in order to make a political statement,'' were among common reactions heard. It's amazing, the sense of security artificially manufactured by Colombo's mandarin classes.

Much would be made in the coming days about the fact that Neelan Tiruchelvam was an intellectual and a star in the international scholar network. His death, it has already been said, is different.

Eventually, it would seem that this position is utterly wishful, quite like the earlier denial that greeted his killing. For many reasons, Tiruchelvam's killing cannot be distinguished in any special way from all the assassinations that were carried out earlier by the LTTE, for very obvious reasons. Tiruchelvam's academic credentials were impeccable, but, the fact that he was an academic didn't quite alter the other fact that he was a politician. He became a very big player in the political ballpark, particularly after he plunged into constitutional reform hand in hand with the People's Alliance constitutional czars.

Neelan Tiruchelvam himself is said to have believed that the LTTE would not expend a suicide cadre on him, even though he didn't rule out the possibility that they might try to shoot him dead. That's a part of denial as well, it now seems.

On one remembered occasion , Neelan drove me in his car from his Kynsey Terrace office to a location closeby, on official business. On the way, when I asked him whether he had any apprehensions about LTTE threats, he scoffed at the whole idea and hinted that his Tamil credentials were so sound, that it will be laughable to think any Tamil would want him eliminated.

But, this was in a slightly different time, when Neelan Tiruchelvam had not yet joined the People's Alliance. After he took that step, Neelan seemed to be drawn securely into the vortex of power politics. It's difficult to think that Neelan Tiruchelvam trusted a Sinhala government altogether without reservations. But, despite all of this, he dived into the task of fomenting dynamic political change through constitutionalism with an effusive abandon. From a human assessment, the headiness of the feeling might have been tempting. Being at the frontiers of nation - making is always an elixir, to the best of persons. This assessment may be grating to some of the Colombo elite who are now at this moment writing Neelan Tiruchelvam's hagiography. But, there is nothing inherently wrong about political ambition, particularly if Tiruchelvam's ambition was for peace through the constitutional process.

But, it appears Neelan was so pacifist, that when the government failed to deliver the package that he had co - authored , he barely protested. In hindsight, that has probably a lot to do with his technocratic and intellectual approach to the issues.

In his grain, Neelan Tiruchelvam was not a politician, he only had a brush with politics.

Though there is absolutely no justification for Neelan Tiruchelvam's death, on the other hand , there was definitely greater motivation for the LTTE to kill Neelan Tiruchelvam's because he was a big - player who had been associated with the highest levels of decision making in a Sinhala led government. Despite all of this, it is almost incredible that the Colombo elite found it difficult to come to terms with the fact that his assassination was a political statement that the LTTE desperately wanted to make. But, the LTTE also waited till Tiruchelvam's estrangement with separatism was complete. To some extent , this answers the question " why wasn't he targeted earlier?'' Tiruchelvam's empathy with the Tamil cause was not skin deep and he was capable in successive interviews, of articulating the Tamil cause with a hard edged insider's zealousness. But, looking at it from his side of the fence at least, it seemed he at some point crossed the divide. He reached the point of no return, when he failed to disassociate himself effectively from the lethargy that was displayed by the government in making the political package he co - authored a legislative fact. Once, in what now almost feels like a different era, Anura Bandaranaike referred to Neelan Tiruchelvam in parliament as the highest grossing lawyer with gross earnings of around 2 lakhs a month or thereabout, which was mammoth by that days standards. All of it showed that Neelan Tiruchlvam if he was making such serious money, had a mind that was efficient and made basically for functioning

within the system. It would be difficult for a person in his mould to get out of that mindset and espouse separatist politics.

Of course at least latterly, Neelan would have known the mind of the LTTE, even though the Colombo elite didn't. He didn't run away despite that, and to that extent he was an idealist. But his idealism was a tempered sort; it was fostered in a comfortable vista, surrounded by an inured and insulated Colombo intellectual elite. That elite which surrounded him is now in shock. But this coterie will without much doubt settle into the comfortable groove, after the immediate sense of outrage over Neelan Tiruchelvam's assassination has abated. As always, in this conflict culture of ours, there are many martyrs, but no special martyrs.

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