As LTTE leader’s death is acknowledged, new controversies arise over his roots

By Kumar Chellappan

CHENNAI: At their August 2 meeting held at Basel in Switzerland, former guerrillas of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) formally acknowledged that their chief, Veluppillai Prabhakaran, was killed in the last phase of the Eelam War by the soldiers of the Sri Lankan defence forces.

It remains unanswered why it took the LTTE sympathisers more than 16 years to accept that Prabhakaran was killed in the fight with the Sri Lankan Army on May 18, 2009, despite the pictures/videos of the corpse of the slain leader going viral.

The news about Prabhakaran's death was declared in Sri Lankan Parliament by none other than the then President Mahinda Rajapaksha, but followers of the dreaded terrorist, in their belief that their leader was immortal, refused to accept it and insisted he was alive somewhere in Europe.

P. Nedumaran, Vayyapuri Gopalasami (known by the name Vaiko), K. Veeramani (a confidant of the DMK, especially Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin) and Thol Thirumavalavan, a Tamil fanatic and Member of Parliament, went on peddling the claim that Prabhakaran was alive. “Prabhakaran is living safely in a faraway place, and I assure you all that he would stage a comeback at the right time to create the Tamil Eelam,” Nedumaran said as recently as 2023. The news-starved 24x7 satellite TV channels, some of them financed and owned by LTTE sympathisers, ‘literally celebrated’ Nedumaran’s claim.

Nedumaran, a former president of the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee, enjoyed a lot of clout with former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He joined the LTTE camp when he understood the ground reality that there was no space for people like him in the Congress or the DMK.

Since the LTTE had a lot of cash in its coffers, it could purchase disgruntled elements like Nedumaran, Vaiko, Thirumavalavan, etc., who did not let their new bosses down. The then-governments led by Karunanidhi and his bete noir M.G. Ramachandran vied with one another to supplement the LTTE with whatever amount it asked for. Besides the TV channels, the LTTE, through its operatives, ran many business houses in Tamil Nadu and some other states. There were LTTE-funded fleet operators, newspapers, magazines, and film production companies. How politicians like Vaiko, Nedumaran and Thirumavalavan flourished without doing any job remains a mystery. It is alleged that colleges and even a university in Tamil Nadu were financed by the LTTE.

The only regional political leader who took a strong stance against Prabhakaran and the LTTE was former chief minister and the AIADMK leader, J. Jayalalithaa. It was during her tenure as chief minister that the LTTE was officially banned in Tamil Nadu. The last phase of the Eelam War saw the Sri Lankan security forces eliminating the last vestiges of the LTTE in a systematic manner. Many of the terrorists had made it to Tamil Nadu, from where they fled to countries like Australia, Canada and Europe. Hundreds of LTTE activists roamed around Tamil Nadu while the DMK government offered them all kinds of tactical help.

Lt General Daya Ratnayake, the then commander of the Sri Lankan Army, had told this writer on the sidelines of the Defence Seminar in 2015 that the LTTE was active and operating from other countries, though he declined to name the countries.

The death of Prabhakaran was confirmed only after the sampling of his DNA. But some journalists, who are past masters in peddling blatant lies as truth, made it look like it was a false claim. John Gimlette, the celebrated British writer of travelogues, has written about the influence wielded by the Tamil diaspora in Britain. He writes that as of 2015 there were 110,000 Sri Lankan Tamils in Britain. There are 22 temples in London alone,” says Gimlette in his book “The Elephant Complex – Travels in Sri Lanka”.

It is alleged that these temples were conduits for mobilising funds for the LTTE fighting in the island nation for setting up a Tamil Eelam. If London city alone has more than 22 temples, imagine the number of such temples across Britain, the USA, Canada and European countries which have considerable Tamil populations and the cash they mobilised from these “Kovils”. The funds were alleged to have been directed to the terrorist organisation for financing the procurement of weapons and materials for the war against the State.

It is true that the backbone of the LTTE has been destroyed in Sri Lanka. But times have changed. Security experts caution us about the reincarnation of various Islamic terrorist organisations. In the 1980s we saw Afghan Mujahideen armed to the teeth by the USA. Over the years, it got transformed into virulent outfits like Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed, the Taliban, Islamic State, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other forces which have become a multi-headed hydra working overtime to eliminate all kafirs (infidels). There were the likes of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born medical doctor and second in command of al-Qaeda. He played a major role in the assassination of President Sadat of Egypt. He was described as the master brain behind the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre in the US. Though the US claimed a couple of times that Zawahiri was killed in counter-terrorism operations, he was around till July 31, 2022, when he was killed in a drone strike in Kabul.

It is said that a cat has nine lives. Similarly, terrorists too survive enemy attacks. No doubt, Prabhakaran is dead and has gone to meet his maker. But the possibility of another Prabakaran raising his head cannot be ruled out. While nationalists in India are confident that Prabhakaran is dead, the LTTE sympathisers, for whom there is no shortage in Tamil Nadu, are of the view that he is alive! Nedumaran and Vaiko are bedridden and are yet to react to the report from Basel. There are many politicians in Tamil Nadu who drew money from LTTE’s agents.

What has been added to the Prabhakaran “folklore” is that a Keralite family based in Kollam has come out with the claim that Prabhakaran was not a Tamilian but a Malayali who spoke chaste Malayalam. It may sound unbelievable, but the fact is that Tamil Nadu’s Dravidian leaders are mostly from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala. Ramasamy Naiker’s mother tongue was Kannada, Karunanidhi was from a Telugu family, and M.G. Ramachandran was from Palakkad in Kerala and spoke Malayalam. Her political foes described Jayalalithaa as a Kannada Iyengar, though they were afraid to say it in the open.

A link that connects Prabhakaran is his caste – Vellala Pillai. There are thousands of such Pillais in southern Kerala. Prabhakaran had the physique of a Malayali Pillai. His relatives were waiting for his return to Kollam. Prabhakkaran’s Malayali roots are the talk of the town, and many authorities on the LTTE are of the view that his ancestors are from Kerala. Let’s wait for some more time.