Prabhakaran enigma
To his followers, he was a god who could do no wrong. He brooked no threat to his power, showed no mercy to perceived traitors, and signed
death warrants for rivals without compunction. Velupillai Prabhakaran acquired an aura of invincibility with a combination of revolutionary zeal, passionate commitment to the ‘Tamil Eelam’ cause and ruthless elimination of rivals and peers.
But 37 years since he formed the Tamil New Tigers, 33 since it was more formally organized and renamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), dozens of high-profile assassinations, four wars, three ceasefires and many peace processes later, Prabhakaran stands where he was at the beginning — sans recognition for his ultimate objective, with no international support and tagged the world’s most feared ‘terrorist’.
Prabhakaran was the product of a generation that felt Tamil rights and equality with the majority Sinhalese in Sri Lanka could not be obtained through moderate politics and Gandhian methods. Born to a district land officer and pious Hindu householder from Valvettithurai in the Jaffna peninsula on November 26, 1954, Prabhakaran was the youngest of four children.
He was not yet four when the 1958 anti-Tamil riots took place. Later, he heard about the riots and the burning of a Hindu temple priest. Tales of his uncle being clubbed to death and his aunt left with burns on her face made a lasting impression; it prompted him to ask “Why didn’t they hit back?”
His father was a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, but Prabhakaran’s idols were Subhash Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh.
At 17, he took his first step towards ‘armed revolution’ by leading a group named TNT in a bomb attack in September 1972. Thereafter, he began skipping school and went missing from home for days while organizing men and collecting arms.
Marksmanship became an obsession and entertainment meant Clint Eastwood films. On July 27, 1975, Prabhakaran committed what may have been his first killing when he and his associates shot dead Alfred Duraiappah, then Mayor of Jaffna. The killing was part of his plan — a lifelong one — to eliminate whoever he considered a traitor to the Tamil cause or collaborator with the government.
Prabhakaran set up a training camp in a jungle near Vavuniya, with funds raised from a bank robbery — the LTTE was born on May 5, 1976. He visualized ‘Tamil Eelam’, an ancient Tamil name for the whole island, as a nation constituting Tamil areas in the north and east.
He included the word ‘tiger’, as it was the symbol of the Chola kings, who had fought the Sinhalese. India began to arm and train various Tamil militant groups after the July 1983 riots, but Prabhakaran took care not to be seen as a stooge. Dashing the belief among Indian intelligence agencies that the LTTE would never take on India, he fought the Indian peace-keeping forces after a token surrender of arms under the Indo-Sri Lankan accord of 1987.
When the opportunity came, he decimated rival groups TELO and EPRLF and hunted down their founders like TELO’s Sri Sabaratnam. Prabhakaran’s gunmen assassinated TULF leader A Amirthalingam in Colombo in 1989.
PLOTE leader Uma Maheswaran, with whom Prabhakaran had exchanged fire in Pondy Bazaar in Chennai in 1982, was also shot dead. A hit squad was sent to Chennai to mow down EPRLF leader K Padmanabha and 13 others in a Kodambakkam apartment complex on June 19, 1990. After the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and Premadasa in 1993, LTTE became synonymous with brain-washed suicide bombers.
Prabhakaran’s most distinctive quality has been his military leadership, the organised manner in which the group was divided into operational units, intelligence, political and financial wings. He ran an international propaganda and fund-raising network, which shopped for arms and tactical equipment throughout the world and raised funds from the Tamil diaspora and managed businesses in different countries.
But 37 years since he formed the Tamil New Tigers, 33 since it was more formally organized and renamed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), dozens of high-profile assassinations, four wars, three ceasefires and many peace processes later, Prabhakaran stands where he was at the beginning — sans recognition for his ultimate objective, with no international support and tagged the world’s most feared ‘terrorist’.
Prabhakaran was the product of a generation that felt Tamil rights and equality with the majority Sinhalese in Sri Lanka could not be obtained through moderate politics and Gandhian methods. Born to a district land officer and pious Hindu householder from Valvettithurai in the Jaffna peninsula on November 26, 1954, Prabhakaran was the youngest of four children.
He was not yet four when the 1958 anti-Tamil riots took place. Later, he heard about the riots and the burning of a Hindu temple priest. Tales of his uncle being clubbed to death and his aunt left with burns on her face made a lasting impression; it prompted him to ask “Why didn’t they hit back?”
His father was a follower of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, but Prabhakaran’s idols were Subhash Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh.
At 17, he took his first step towards ‘armed revolution’ by leading a group named TNT in a bomb attack in September 1972. Thereafter, he began skipping school and went missing from home for days while organizing men and collecting arms.
Marksmanship became an obsession and entertainment meant Clint Eastwood films. On July 27, 1975, Prabhakaran committed what may have been his first killing when he and his associates shot dead Alfred Duraiappah, then Mayor of Jaffna. The killing was part of his plan — a lifelong one — to eliminate whoever he considered a traitor to the Tamil cause or collaborator with the government.
Prabhakaran set up a training camp in a jungle near Vavuniya, with funds raised from a bank robbery — the LTTE was born on May 5, 1976. He visualized ‘Tamil Eelam’, an ancient Tamil name for the whole island, as a nation constituting Tamil areas in the north and east.
He included the word ‘tiger’, as it was the symbol of the Chola kings, who had fought the Sinhalese. India began to arm and train various Tamil militant groups after the July 1983 riots, but Prabhakaran took care not to be seen as a stooge. Dashing the belief among Indian intelligence agencies that the LTTE would never take on India, he fought the Indian peace-keeping forces after a token surrender of arms under the Indo-Sri Lankan accord of 1987.
When the opportunity came, he decimated rival groups TELO and EPRLF and hunted down their founders like TELO’s Sri Sabaratnam. Prabhakaran’s gunmen assassinated TULF leader A Amirthalingam in Colombo in 1989.
PLOTE leader Uma Maheswaran, with whom Prabhakaran had exchanged fire in Pondy Bazaar in Chennai in 1982, was also shot dead. A hit squad was sent to Chennai to mow down EPRLF leader K Padmanabha and 13 others in a Kodambakkam apartment complex on June 19, 1990. After the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991 and Premadasa in 1993, LTTE became synonymous with brain-washed suicide bombers.
Prabhakaran’s most distinctive quality has been his military leadership, the organised manner in which the group was divided into operational units, intelligence, political and financial wings. He ran an international propaganda and fund-raising network, which shopped for arms and tactical equipment throughout the world and raised funds from the Tamil diaspora and managed businesses in different countries.
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