The Black History

History

     In the island of Sri Lanka, the separate national identity of the Tamil people grew through a process of opposition to and differentiation from the Buddhist Sinhala people. The Sinhala people trace their origins in the island to the arrival of Prince Vijaya from India, around 500 B.C. and the Mahavamsa, the Sinhala chronicle of a later period (6th Century A.D.) records that Prince Vijaya arrived on the island on the same day that the Buddha attained Enlightenment in India.

British Rule

The Tamil people and the Sinhala people were brought within the confines of a single state by the British. The struggle for freedom from British colonial rule, did lead Tamil leaders such as Ponnambalam Ramanathan and Ponnambalam Arunachalam to work together with their Sinhala counterparts in the Ceylon National Congress. But it was largely a dialogue between the English speaking Tamil middle class and its English speaking Sinhala counterpart. 

Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

The Pan Sinhala Executive Committee of the Ceylon State Council in 1936 and the formation of the All Ceylon Tamil Congress led by G.G.Ponnambalam were some of the early manifestations of the growth of a separate Sinhala nationalism and a separate Tamil nationalism in the political arena of the island of Ceylon (as it then was known).

It was a Tamil nationalism which eventually found expression in the formation of the Ilankai Thamil Arasu Katchi led by S.J.V.Chelvanayakam in 1949 and later in the 1970s in the Tamil armed resistance movement, led today by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and Velupillai Pirabaharan.That the armed resistance movement of the Tamil people should have originated in Tamil Eelam and not in Tamil Nadu is not altogether surprising. It is the nature of the discrimination and oppression which often determines the nature of the response.

Suffering unites a people and the suffering of the Tamil people in the island of Sri Lanka, in their struggle for freedom and justice, has also served to bring together Tamils living not only in Tamil Eelam and Tamil Nadu but also those living in many other lands. At the same time, in Tamil Nadu poverty and corruption have weakened confidence in existing political structures.

The Ceylon (Srilanka) government (Singhalese majority) began to target minority Tamils in the 70s and 80s . Thousands of Tamils were massacred, their property looted, their women raped and their leaders imprisoned. There was a huge population of Ceylon-Tamils who came back to India as refugees, unable to bear the burnt of the Singhalese army. At the same time, a lot of Ceylon-Tamils took to arms to counter the oppressive Singhalese. They were admired and supported by Tamils all over the world. 

Indira Ganhi

It is true that the initial help (both training & logistics) was provided by India during Indira Gandhi's Time. Almost the entire population of Tamils in India and abroad supported them in many ways. At that time LTTE was just one among the many militant organizations. The leaders of these groups were greatly admired by the Tamils for their valour. These groups had their training camps in India and had a free run inside Tamil nadu. Late in the 80s a fight ensued among these different groups to claim dominance. At this stage these outfits took Tamil Nadu (India) to ransack causing huge law and order problems and putting the Indians under difficulty. There were bomb blasts and cases of public shootings between the groups. Indira Gandhi and MGR who nurtured these groups were by then no more.                                                 The Indian government began to take a tougher stance against these groups and soon their camps were closed down. Indian governmental support ceased to exist. By this time the militant groups had lost most of the public sympathy in India due to their atrocities. But the sympathy for the Tamil cause in Sri lanka had not died among Indian Tamils. Due to this these groups still got a substantial support from private Indian Tamils and some political organizations. 

Black Mark of LTTE
                             

                    Soon the LTTE managed to eliminate its competition and emerged as the sole military representative of the Tamils. Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian Prime minister tried to initiate a peace process in SriLanka and sent the India Peace Keeping Force to the Island. Even though this was accepted by the LTTE at first, things got worse when LTTE saw the presence of IPKF a threat to their goals. Soon fighting erupted and IPKF charged with a lot of human rights abuses was called back. The LTTE showed its extreme anger by assassinating Rajiv Gandhi with a female suicide bomber, one of the most famous assassination cases in world history. This historic assassination was the black-mark event in LTTE history (this was even acknowledged by the LTTE superemo Mr.Prabakaran later). India and especially Indian Tamils were stunned and the sympathy turned to anger against LTTE.The Tigers were banned and could never again gain sympathy among the majority of the Indian Tamils. 

Present Status

But to this day the Tigers have remained one of the strongest militant groups in the world with advanced arms, superior gorilla combat capacity, excellent intelligence network and highly trained cadres of both men and women. The LTTE controls a fourth of Sri lanka which is called ?Tamil Ealam? and have their own government in their areas.